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This thesis revises key assumptions concerning the organisation of knowledge into social science disciplines at the turn of the twentieth century, taking anthropology as its main case study. Historians of anthropology have approached their subject in a fragmentary manner that centres on national traditions, with special attention paid to institutions and practices. Concurrently, they have nevertheless assumed a fixed set of theoretical turning points in terms of which to identify anthropology and assess its trajectory. These are often stark shifts between conceptual opposites: from race to culture, evolutionary hierarchy to cultural relativism. Neither set of heuristics is warranted by the historical sources. Drawing on material from Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, this research recovers lost transnational debates concerning the human mind and the limits of science that formed the background to competing projects termed 'anthropology'. These questions were fostered and widely circulated through book translations and new scientific journals, and haunted scholars for the next six decades. Ultimately, by recovering the contingency and compromise of conceptual change, as well as its lost projects, this thesis provides an alternative to a simple, politically triumphant story of disciplinary founding.

This thesis explores how life is made to work. This means, firstly, understanding how life enters the relations of production and how it is made to expend energy and produce value. Secondly, this means understanding the arrangements and practices that make life work in the sense of reproducing it, maintaining it and preventing it from falling apart. This theme was explored through an ethnographic study of coliving - a purpose-built accommodation for professionals and entrepreneurs - which strives to create conditions most conducive to professional success. The thesis analysed the ways in which personal and domestic life is redesigned and rearranged in relation to the ideals of productivity and how new ways of living can simultaneously offer mutual support and assistance among workers while also normalising practices of overworking, precarity and (self)exploitation. This research is pertinent to debates about the impact of work and economic practices on contemporary life and argues that academic and political debates must go beyond the focus on work-life balance and address the multiple pressures on personal and domestic life both within and outside of the workplace. The thesis develops a series of wider theoretical arguments and recommendations for future research. Firstly, it is argued that to understand the preference for modifying personal and domestic life, social analysis must go beyond ideological and discursive factors. It should consider the combination of discourse, attributes of the job situation, and characteristics of social reproduction that together produce a particularly intense commitment to work. Secondly, the thesis argues that in addition to focusing on how life is balanced with or colonised by work, the social analysis should focus on the social and material arrangements that maintain working lives. Thirdly, it argues for the importance of studying reflective and evaluative operations undertaken by social actors that question but ultimately reproduce intensive work-lives.

In this thesis, I provide an account of the most recent advances made by Tony Lawson and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group in the study of socio-philosophical ontology. Whilst interconnected, socio-philosophical ontology focuses on the nature and basic structure of all social phenomena whereas socio-scientific ontology studies the natures of specific social existents. In the last five years, a number of key contributions focussing on socio-scientific ontology-exploring, in particular, the natures of the corporation and money-have emphasised social positioning as being everywhere involved in the constitution of social phenomena. Although Lawson has provided a number of detailed accounts of sociophilosophical ontology over the last decade, these do not situate social positioning as being the central constitutive process through which social phenomena come into being. In this dissertation, I provide a detailed account of socio-philosophical ontology specifically in terms of social positioning. I do so by 'working forwards' from the general features of the constitution of all phenomena, both social and non-social, to the principles involved in the constitution of social phenomena and finally, to considering examples of the different types of phenomena involved in the constitution of social reality. In chapter one, I emphasise the importance of organisation to the constitution of all phenomena, both social and non-social. In chapter two, I set out and discuss the principles associated with the social positioning process. In chapter three, I consider different types of phenomena that get positioned-non-human objects, including artefacts and non-social phenomena, human beings and whole communities. I demonstrate that this theory of social positioning constitutes an explanatorily powerful conception of sociophilosophical ontology and provides a possible alternative framework to the existing dominant approaches in social ontology.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Kurdish question has been a major challenge for Turkey. In the earlier period within modern Turkish history, the Kurds revolted many times, demanding their rights; but each time the state managed to suppress them violently. However, the armed wing of the Kurdish movement, the PKK, has fought against the state since 1984 and this conflict has been of great humanitarian and economic cost, both to Kurds and Turks. In order to end the for our-decade-long conflict, the AKP government began a peace process with the PKK in 2009. That process ended in the middle of 2015, for reasons both internal and external. This thesis examines the representation of the Kurdish question during the period of the peace talks (2009 to 2015) in three Turkish newspapers of differing ideologies. I analyse some specific events, including the peace process itself, which occurred during this six-year period, in order to explore how Kemalist, leftist and Erdoganist newspapers presented the Kurdish question and - as I shall argue -reproduced the dominant discursive practises about the Kurds. My main method is Critical Discourse Analysis. With it, I try to show: the media discourse about the Kurds tended to fluctuate according to the state's somewhat variable political stance; for the most part, that discourse remained true to what did not change in the state's discourse, and, thus, that mostly the media discourse was one of terrorism and security. Hence, and despite some intermittent support for the peace process, most of the press failed to practice the persistent advocacy of peace that would be required for that journalism to count as 'peace journalism'. The thesis faults the press for that and traces the failure to compromising ownership of the media.

This research explores the activities of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Madrid, the capital of Spain. The UCKG is a Brazilian Pentecostal church with temples in various countries worldwide, so it seemed relevant to begin by analysing this religious institution's cultural background and transnational character. Thus, I observed the arrival of the UCKG in Spain and its controversies in the public sphere, which are relevant for outsiders to understand the church's practices and the creation of internal bonds. Conducting fieldwork at the church headquarters in Madrid, I also investigated and examined the practices with commentaries about the regular activities and the most common elements in the gatherings of members and pastors. With examples of testimonials and member interviews, I tried to observe the two main branches of the church's theology as demonstrated in Madrid, prosperity theology and the spiritual battle against Satan, by analysing specific themes such as financial sacrifice, exorcisms and the creation of the 'other'. Afterwards, my main concern was with the ways that the UCKG controlled its members. Furthermore, while noting all the changes that the church brings to its members, I tried to conceptualize the church in a middle ground between the works of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, as interpreted by Antonio Flávio Pierucci. There are no boundaries in the UCKG in Madrid between the social changes observed by Weber and the consolidation of a sense of belonging studied by Durkheim.

Biorhythms are cyclic changes in an organism's growth or functioning that can be driven by an internal biological clock and synchronised through environmental cues. Evidence of two biorhythms is retained in human tooth enamel in the form of incremental growth lines. The first biorhythm corresponds with a daily, circadian, rhythm that has been linked to the secretory activity of ameloblasts. The second biorhythm is a longer period infradian biorhythm that is marked by Retzius lines and can be quantified in days as Retzius periodicity (RP). There is some evidence to suggest that body size, basal metabolic rate, life history traits, and RP might be linked by a centrally coordinated autonomic biorhythm that is related to growth and development. Earlier studies have demonstrated links in adult humans between RP and body size, and between RP and aspects of cortical bone microstructure. If the biorhythm is related to the growth and development of the body, there should also be indications of this biorhythm retained in the juvenile skeleton. This thesis examines these links, for the first time, in skeletal samples of human children from one population. The aim of this thesis is to use 2D static histomorphometry to explore how, or if, evidence of an infradian biorhythm retained in tooth enamel as Retzius line periodicity is linked to the growth of human bone growth during ontogeny. In addition to the potential effect of a biorhythm on skeletal growth, many other factors may potentially affect bone microstructure. This thesis examines some of these influences prior to investigating the biorhythm. Variation in histomorphometric measures of cortical bone microstructure is sought between children of different regions in England (Canterbury, York, Newcastle), and between high- and low-status children from Canterbury. Additionally, bone microstructure varies between the bones in a single skeleton, so the intra-skeletal microstructural variation between eight bones from ten young adults was explored and compared to their RP. Finally, the potential for a relationship between RP and rib cortical bone microstructure is investigated. This thesis begins with a background review of the underlying biology of bone growth, enamel secretion, and biorhythms. The introductory sections are followed by a detailed materials and methods chapter. The investigative parts of the thesis are presented as three data chapters that have been designed as manuscripts that are suitable for publication. Each has a focus on a specific aim and has individual introduction, aims, methods, results, and discussion sections. Together, the three data chapters contain histomorphometric variables that were measured from the skeletal remains of 188 juvenile and young adults from four archaeological sites from medieval England. The RP of a permanent tooth from each skeleton was calculated and combined with measures of bone modelling - indicated by bone size variables - and remodelling - indicated by osteon population density, osteocyte lacunae density, and osteon size and shape. This thesis ends with a discussion of the main findings of each data chapter and how they contribute to the overall aim of the thesis, which is to assess evidence of the biorhythm in tooth enamel against aspects of growth in the juvenile skeleton. The results support the idea that an infradian biorhythm coordinates aspects of human hard tissue growth, particularly relative amounts of lamellar formation during modelling and remodelling. The biorhythm was related to the proportion of interstitial and osteonal lamellar bone, and to body size. These results imply that a child with a fast biorhythm tends to have a high proportion of lamellar bone and small Haversian canals in their osteons and a high proportion of bone in their ribs compared to the medullary cavities. Whereas, a child with a slow biorhythm tends to have a low proportion of lamellar bone and large Haversian canals in their osteons and a low proportion of bone in their ribs compared to the medullary cavities. The biorhythm did not relate to any measure of bone turnover, including osteon population density, intact osteon density, fragmentary osteon density, or osteocyte density. This biorhythm could be one of the many factors that affect macroscopic bone growth and microscopic bone modelling and remodelling during childhood growth in medieval Canterbury.

When and how did arboreal environments become less important, and technology become more important, for hominin survival? This fundamental question of our own evolution has been a focus of palaeoanthropological and archaeological debate for over a century. The present work aims to address this scientific problem via the analysis of the internal structure of osteological and fossil material. Specifically the trabecular, or cancellous, epiphyseal structure and the cortical diaphyseal structure of long bones, have been experimentally demonstrated to change in response to loads they experience during life. This process, known as 'bone functional adaptation' (Cowin et al., 1985; Ruff et al., 2006), holds that bone will functionally adapt to its mechanical environment and so its architecture may be used to infer the behaviours that are consistent with this environment. Therefore, this internal bone architecture can be used to infer loads experienced by fossil hominin hands and thus hand postures used in arboreal locomotion or manipulation, consistent with these loads. The following analyses focus on metacarpals because they are the long bones of the hand, amenable to diaphyseal and trabecular analysis. The metacarpophalangeal joints are bi-axial, while the trapeziometacarpal joint is further mobile, and together they provide a range of potentially loaded hand postures adopted in different grips. The internal bone architecture of fossil and osteological hand bones was analysed via micro-computed tomography. Chapter 1 - General Background. Chapter 1 contextualises the scientific problem within an in-depth discussion of the manual fossil record and bone functional adaptation. It describes in detail why functional inference based on external fossil morphology alone is open to interpretative debate. Chapter 2 - Materials and Methods. Chapter 2 describes the methods employed, from a hand bone on the collection bench to an analysed, segmented virtual model. It also provides a rationale for each successive stage of analysis. Chapter 3 - MIA-Clustering: A novel method for segmentation of paleontological material. While mentioned in Chapter 2, this chapter presents the detailed description and testing of a new method of image segmentation, developed for the present thesis, in order to accurately delineate trabecular morphology in fossils: MIA-Clustering. Chapter 4 - Metacarpal trabecular bone varies with distinct hand-positions used in hominid locomotion. Chapter 4 validates the assumption that the trabecular structure of the second to fifth metacarpals of extant hominids is consistent with what is known about hand loading, during the diverse habitual locomotor repertoires, of hominids. It provides validation of the method developed to test for inter-specific differences in trabecular distribution and, unexpectedly, provides a method of informal falsification for the current mode of fossil hominin behavioural inference. Chapter 5 - Trabecular variation in the first metacarpal reflects distinctive human manipulation among hominids. Chapter 5 validates the assumption that the trabecular structure of the first metacarpal of extant hominids is consistent with the observed manipulative grips habitually used by great apes, including modern humans. Chapter 6 - Fossil hominin hand use: Evidence for arboreality and human-like manipulation in Australopithecus. This chapter infers the likely grips of fossil hominins from both their trabecular and cortical structure. Importantly, it brings together all of the rays in a holistic analysis of internal fossil morphology, in the context of internal bone structure consistent with arboreal and manipulative grips practised by extant hominids. Chapter 7 - Discussion and Conclusion. This chapter discusses how far the present results resolve the initial scientific problem and what we can say about fossil hominin hand use. Further this chapter acknowledges the limitations of the current approach and what future data or methodologies may ameliorate them.

The greatest threats to biodiversity in Madagascar are habitat destruction, fragmentation and climate change. Complementary in situ and ex situ research can aid conservation because many aspects of natural history that can usefully inform conservation measures are difficult to study in the field. The golden mantella is an excellent model as it is unique in that it is a charismatic, high profile Critically Endangered amphibian, but is abundant in captivity and highly suitable for ex situ research. In situ research in a new protected area of Madagascar found surface temperature, litter coverage and the number of tree roots were the most important predictor variables associated with quadrats occupied by golden mantellas. Microclimatic measurements made in the field informed the design of the replicated climatic-controlled enclosures (Froggotrons) for golden mantellas at Paignton Zoo. Froggotrons revealed golden mantellas had a bimodal activity pattern during daylight hours even under different temperature regimes. At lower temperatures (16 ºC - 19 ºC) mantellas were overall less active than those at higher temperatures (20 ºC - 25 ºC), but the phasing and bimodal nature of the activity rhythm was the same under both temperature regimes. Most activity occurred when humidity levels exceeded 85%. Golden mantellas were most active, spent most time in the open and less time on leaves at 21.5 ºC. Where temperature deviated either way from 21.5 ºC there was an associated decrease in activity and an increased tendency to hide in leaves. Results also show that even under optimum temperature and humidity regimes less than 50% of the frogs were active in open areas at any one time. Ex situ results have been used to assist with the design and timing of field population assessments and shed light on issues concerning imperfect detection when applying models to assess abundance. Species distribution modelling results suggest a potential south-eastwardly shift away from current distribution range and a decrease in suitable habitat from 2110 km2 under current climate to between 112 km2-138 km2 by the year 2085. Golden mantella research is a new development in the area of collaborative, complementary conservation. Integrating in situ and ex situ research may help mitigate the multi-faceted and synergistic threats to biodiversity in Madagascar.

Large carnivores are considered an important component of an ecosystem and their role as apex predators makes them crucial for maintenance of ecosystem function and biodiversity. Yet despite their important ecological value, large carnivores are among the world's most threatened species, mostly due to human persecution and loss of their habitat and prey species. The Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) is the region's last remaining big cat, and was once widely distributed across the Arabian Peninsula but its occupied range has contracted from ~888,300 km2 to 17,400 km2 since the 1970s, and it is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Despite its threatened status, scientific information is lacking for many aspects of the Arabian leopard, including its population and evolutionary genetics. The objectives of this study were therefore to improve the knowledge base to help develop better management strategies for the long-term persistence of the Arabian leopard. By generating a comprehensive mitochondrial DNA sequence database that included sequence data from wild Arabian leopard populations across the Arabian Peninsula my study provided evidence that the Arabian leopard is evolutionarily distinct from other leopard subspecies. Assessment of genetic diversity using a suite of microsatellite markers indicate that the Arabian leopard is genetically impoverished in comparison to other leopard subspecies. However, high levels of genetic diversity and unique alleles were discovered in wild and captive Arabian leopards of Yemeni origin, compared to the wild leopards of the Dhofar mountains of Oman, an area considered to be their last stronghold. Using genetic data from wild leopards obtained via non-invasive scat surveys, we detected fine-scale spatial genetic structure within the leopard population of Dhofar which is likely due to recent human development in the region. DNA surveys of the Dhofar population provided robust estimates of density and population size that are comparable with those derived from camera trap estimates, indicating the reliability of genetic sampling for monitoring of the Arabian leopard. Based on these findings a number of conservation management strategies are proposed including genetic rescue via introgression of Yemen genes to restore the genetic diversity of impoverished populations and enhance the overall evolutionary potential of the Arabian leopard. Other suggested measures include strengthening legislation and enforcement in combination with community engagement to ease human-wildlife conflict as well as the protection and safeguarding of critical habitat and habitat corridors to address population fragmentation. Urgent adoption of these recommendations is required, and the novel information generated by this research provides the evidential basis for their effective implementation that will help ensure the long-term persistence of the Arabian leopard.

In this thesis I utilise a combination of newly advanced methodological and statistical approaches to assess knowledge gaps concerning biodiversity in human-modified tropical landscapes. Specifically, I use cutting-edge LiDAR technology, occupancy modelling and soundscape analysis to document the responses of tropical birds to land-use change in Borneo. I first evaluate the contribution that riparian reserves - protected natural vegetation around waterways in production landscapes - have in supporting biodiversity. By assessing the avian community structure and richness of riparian reserves I demonstrate that these landscape features can offer significant biodiversity benefits, and support comparable levels of species diversity to logged riparian forests provided they are of sufficient size (>80 m in total width) and habitat quality (>75 tC ha-1 of tree biomass). I show that in oil palm estates riparian reserves would need to be >200 m in total width (i.e. 100 m from each riverbank) to preserve comparable numbers of forest specialist bird to logged riparian forest. I then examine whether responses of species and trait groups to habitat disruption follow linear trajectories or non-linear responses whereby abrupt changes to occupancy and diversity occur once thresholds of disturbance are exceeded. Habitat disruption across a land-cover gradient from intact forest to oil palm plantations was characterised via LiDAR metrics that quantify habitat structure in three dimensions. By scrutinising the individual responses of 171 bird species and 17 different multi-species trait groups to these metrics via hierarchical multi-species occupancy modelling, I show that the majority of species respond to habitat degradation in a non-linear fashion. I demonstrate that thresholds in species response scale up to abrupt changes in trait group richness, particularly those associated with important ecosystem functions such as pollination, seed dispersal and insectivory. I find trait groups exhibit highly varied thresholds from one another. I also highlight how exceeding particular thresholds of degradation in human modified tropical landscapes could result in abrupt changes to ecosystem functioning, thereby making human-modified tropical landscape less resilient to further perturbations. Last, I seek to test the application of recently developed acoustic approaches for monitoring biodiversity in human-modified tropical landscapes. I assess the performance of five commonly used 'soundscape' indices in corresponding to variation in observed or estimated bird diversity from field data. I find that sources of acoustic bias in production landscapes (including human produced noise and the sound of running), make broad application of acoustic monitoring technologies to heavily disturbed habitats such as intensive farmland challenging. I demonstrate that controlling for time-of-day, using noise-reduction algorithms and excluding certain habitat types, improves the capacity of acoustic indices to reflect both observed bird richness, and estimates of species numbers derived from occupancy models. Taken together, the three studies in this thesis reveal the biodiversity value of riparian areas, the potential for non-linear responses of species to habitat change, and the efficacy of novel monitoring techniques applied to biodiversity monitoring in human-modified tropical landscapes. I offer a number of recommendations and applications of these three sets of findings and explore their implication for biodiversity conservation in tropical regions. By addressing these three knowledge gaps using a combination of newly available innovations I demonstrate not only the importance of the findings themselves, but also highlight how innovations in technology, analytical technique and monitoring approach when used in conjunction can elucidate biodiversity patterns that were otherwise less well known.

This thesis explores human-dog relations and knowledge production at the nexus of dog-training and scientific research, when dogs are trained to detect the odour of human disease via biological samples. Based on twelve months of fieldwork at two dog-training and research organisations, in the UK and USA, this thesis explores the practices through which bio-detection dogs are produced and how knowledge is produced about, and with, them. Whilst a growing body of scholarship exists across and beyond the social sciences, on both human-animal relations and the role of animals in laboratory practices, the relatively recent emergence of research practices involving bio-detection dogs illustrates a novel mode of incorporating animals into scientific practice that has, until now, evaded theoretical analysis. By focusing on this practice, this thesis contributes original insights to the literature regarding both multispecies relationships and science studies. Consistent with the intellectual commitment of multispecies ethnographers to bring nonhuman beings into the ethnographic foreground, the analysis presented in this thesis pays attention not only to the dog-trainers' perceptions of the dogs, nor solely to what the dogs might be (i.e., as a species) but also to what the dogs are observed as doing themselves. Developing an analysis of how interconnectedness between human and dog is shaped among my informants, this thesis explores how the boundary between human and animal, that is often assumed to be rigid in sites of scientific practice, is called into question through the engagements between humans and dogs in the realm of bio-detection. The notion of 'response-ability' (Haraway 2008) emerges as an important analytic for understanding the practices and processes of bio-detection dog-training and research, as the capacity of both partners to respond and be affected by the other is revealed to be fundamental to both the training and research practices.

This dissertation explores the political and moral subjectivities of volunteers providing humanitarian assistance to people seeking asylum in urban Australia. Drawing upon the anthropology of humanitarianism and the anthropology of citizenship and welfare, the dissertation develops a new term: the "domestic humanitarian." This term describes the infusion of a generalised humanitarian impulse to give to a distant stranger, with more situated feelings of obligation as a citizen within a nation-state and a neighbour within a community. The relationship between domestic humanitarianism and responsibility is considered through ethnographically examining the political and moral strategies of volunteers providing aid and advocacy in Melbourne, against the backdrop of Australia's hostile deterrence policy. Four main examples are presented: an NGO campaign before the 2016 Australian election, a grassroots group providing neighbourly support and practicing the feminised domestic arts, a decolonisation movement, and a foodbank. The examples illustrate that volunteers mobilise national and local cultural idioms of fairness, mateship and neighbourliness in order to make meaning and relationships through their volunteering and to generate broader support for people seeking asylum. However, ambivalences about the structural power imbalances inherent in the provision of humanitarian aid arise. Such ambivalences are exacerbated by an ingrained discourse of egalitarianism, and a climate of sensitive racialised politics in a multicultural settler colonial state. This manifests in diverse volunteer positionalities on how to address issues of need and difference. The thesis concludes that volunteers as domestic humanitarians exhibit a heightened sense of responsibility towards people seeking asylum within Australia. This responsibility can be harnessed to effect political and social change more broadly as a form of inclusive, accessible and intimate politics that may appeal to a wide range of voters. Domestic humanitarians could therefore potentially encourage the development of more positive attitudes towards excluded others in hostile policy climates.

This dissertation is a multispecies exploration of the trade of medicinal plants in the Andean-Amazonian region of southern Colombia. It seeks to highlight the complex multilayered networks of relationships that make up folk medicine in the country by following the medicinal plants as main ethnographic subjects. It explores the roles each medicinal plant plays as it is grown, harvested, transformed, exchanged and used by different people. It also highlights a crucial axis in this region, the lowland highland dynamic, since their trade connects lowland indigenous communities to highland Andean healers and markets, facilitating not only a space for material transformation but also spaces of cultural exchange. This study has focused on six representative botanical species: Elaeagia pastoensis L.E. Mora, Maytenus laevis, Brugmansia Sp, Cyperus Sp., Banisteropsis caapi and Ethryxolyum sp. All these plants have essential roles in these trade networks being active agents in the way people perceive their health, the environment, their relationships with others, and their own identity. By using material culture methodology, this study explors the techniques in making, using and exchanging these medicines following the cultural rationales, thinking processes, and cosmological understandings that make them possible. This methodology also facilitates an analysis of the ways that the medicines are continually reimagined and reinterpreted by different people as they travel through the commodity chains, being incorporated into different ways of understanding health and the world.

This thesis investigates the relationship between historical ethnographic photographs of Native Americans, their disposition in archives and collections, and the relationship of those images to their contemporary circulation and use by Native American artists, and others, particularly in New Mexico. Having undertaken original research into mid-19th century photographs in archives internationally, pertaining to Native America in the American Southwest, new histories and a reframing of the photographs in question has been assembled. This portion of the research was undertaken both as a starting point for further investigation, and as a return to the people of New Mexico, particularly the Indigenous inhabitants of that place. In light of the newly assembled history and reframing of various historical photographs within the photography complex/network, and in acknowledging the limitations of 20th century photographic theories, a variety of anthropological and visual culture theoretical frameworks, which value notions of 'presence' and 'significance' are given weight over previous ideas of 'meaning', 'epistemology' and 'provenance'. This thesis explores the role of memory, notions of essentialism, and practices of racism, as they are strategically and aesthetically employed through the medium of the photographic image. The contemporary re-presentation of 19th century photographs by Indigenous artists is also examined, with an eye towards observing the manner in which, by reclaiming the past, Native Americans may go forward into the future in unimaginable and sovereign ways. The research centres on addressing the question: what is the role of the photographic image in the ongoing discourse about Native American identity?

'It's just bricks and mortar' was a commonly used phrase heard in the Republic of Ireland in the drawn-out aftermath of the Global Financial Crash of 2008, as people tried to rationalise their relationship to houses that had declined significantly in value. This thesis explores attachment to the house-home in this pressured situation. It is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted via a mortgage debt advice organisation in Dublin, with people who were in the often fraught yet not uncommon situation of being at risk of losing their houses-homes, having fallen behind on mortgage payments and being unable to pay their mortgages. Through engaging with those losing their houses, it was explicated that post-purchase houses had undergone transformations to become socially alive, which I describe as a form of animation. This process is described in the first part of this thesis. The concept of animation reinvigorates a longstanding yet somewhat overlooked distinction within Anthropology concerning a higher order of material relations between people and objects and materials, whereby there is a higher tier of attachment, closeness and importance, driven by 'the force in the thing' (Mauss, 1990). The particular bond between people and their house-homes underpinned by 'the force in the thing' unfolded as people lost their houses-homes, and this is considered in the second half of the thesis. Tied to their houses, interlocutors experienced the downward value transformations of their houses in intense detail, deliberating over the worth of the materials of the house, and experiencing searing bodily symptoms. As they lost and gave up houses, people then actively deanimated them through a series of practices, in order enforce separation and engage more viscerally with the goal of reducing them to 'bricks and mortar'. Whilst questions of livingness in relation to materials have up until relatively recently drawn limited 'theoretical mileage' within Anthropology (Holbraad, 2007), there is a call to engage with these questions in the face of claims being made outside of the discipline. In considering the processes of animation and deanimation, this thesis responds to specific claims being made in relation to 'aliveness' of materials, and advocating a key role for ethnographically-engaged work in these debates going forward.

This study investigates the untheorised rock art tradition of prehistoric central-western Thailand. Of the research undertaken in the region, its rock art is generally dealt with within a processual framework of analysis; its contextual attributes are largely ignored. Phenomenology, art and agency, and metaphor form the theoretical foundations on which this study is grounded. It phenomenologically explores relationships between the rock art, the landscape and the human body in respect of the ways in which the human subject engages, corporeally and sensorially, with the rock art and its surroundings. The study then goes on to analyse the art in detail, exploring the possible significance and meanings attached to the motifs. Metaphor theory assists in finding meaning in all of these aspects. Finally, an ethnographic analysis explores how the rock art and landscape are negotiated by contemporary occupiers of the region. These lines of enquiry offer a deeper understanding of the relationships between the rock art, the landscape and of those who produced, engaged and interacted with the sites and their images. Through a multi-sensory and bodily engagement with the rock art and landscape this study reveals that the rock art of central-western Thailand are the material traces of a prehistoric cosmological belief system that was actively incorporated into their rock art tradition, the experiential qualities of the landscape, rock art sites and their images.

Relationships between humans and large carnivores are multi-layered and built on a variety of values, beliefs and interactions. When the experience of coexistence is predominantly negative, both local livelihoods and carnivore conservation can suffer. By focusing on an area of Spain where local communities have always lived alongside wolves and bears, this research aims to study how local experiences of coexistence are shaped by governance approaches. The study is a comparison between four different sites with distinct socio-political characteristics and with different large carnivore management policies. Semi-structured and informal interviews were carried out with over 60 informants, and both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a sample of livestock farmers (n=271), hunters (n=157) and beekeepers (n=40), in order to compare carnivore acceptance levels and narrative constructs across the study sites. The thesis begins by introducing the broader context in which interactions with carnivores take place, and by exploring how changes in the landscape and in traditional livestock farming practices driven by agricultural policy have shaped local perceptions of the environment and of resource user's role within it. The thesis then presents a synthesis the wolf governance systems in place across the study sites, and explores their effects on coexistence between wolves and local resource users. Using theories on environmentality, I analyse the ideological approaches underlying carnivore governance, and then look at how these approaches are received on the ground, by examining how local resource users either assimilate or resist governance approaches. The final chapter then focusses on two study areas with similar bear presence, to investigate the sociopolitical drivers that result in different levels of acceptance of bears among resource users. In doing so, it looks at the ways in which narratives over bear recovery, protected area management and land tenure resonate with each other and serve to reinforce one another.

This ethnography in the field of urban anthropology explores how the areas known as Central or Chung Wan and the Mid-Levels on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island were 'designed' - that is how building and dwelling on this steep locale with scant flat land emerged through peoples' agency as places, spaces and buildings. Central and the Mid-Levels are areas on Hong Kong Island which is part of Hong Kong, both a city and a territory, with a British colonial history (1841-1997) and that has been returned to China. This study focuses on the largest things that people make, namely buildings and the urban environment and once made, how they affect dwelling in the public realm. This trading port, driven by the profits derived from the consumption of tea, porcelain, silk and opium, was from the outset shaped by the shortage of flat land for building upon, its safe, deep harbour and the labour, practices and customs of sojourners from China and Britain. A place, with no natural resources but the resourcefulness of its people, formed global networks as a free port, a transhipment and transportation hub but was vulnerable to global and transnational financial and political events. Focusing upon a pathway along the world's longest outdoor escalator as a metonym for the design and building of and dwelling in Hong Kong Island, this research considered: the tactics of land reclamation; vertical and volumetric building, spaces and places; how the above/below dyadic principle gained ground; the assemblages created by the continual rebuilding of the city, and the emphasis upon connectivity in the city. This resulted in high density, volumetric dwelling practices and a paucity of public open space. The question posed in this study is whether the 'designing' of Hong Kong delivers a 'nowhere place' or 'good place' land.

This ethnographic study critically engages with recent theoretical writings on risk, affects and informal life politics by way of investigating the Fukushima survivors' coping strategies with the nuclear crisis. In Japan, conflicting information about the levels of radiation released and the likely health effects, forced the local populations to self-determine whether to leave, or to stay and face possible long-term biological repercussions. Different interpretations of risk resulted in social tensions on multiple levels in Fukushima, particularly along gender lines. This monograph links such local struggles to the frictions between two incommensurable stories, one of control and normalcy where risks are domesticated and absorbed into the social, and the other voicing concerns that challenge technologies of abstraction and regimes of risk of toxic exposure. Nuclear disasters reveal concealed problems of risk insecurity, and demand the affected populations to actively cope with changing political, moral and biomedical circumstances. Transformative social processes led the Fukushima survivors to apply rational decisions to their embodied sensibilities surrounding radiation, and to adopt a uniquely reflexive future orientation which is embedded in their practices of self-government, and in their new expanded horizons of expectation as neoliberal agents of social change. Through my collection of the Fukushima survivors' narratives, I contribute to building cultural continuity and historical awareness of how these people have survived, and have restored their family and community life in zones of ruination and state abandonment. Here, personal stories of displacement and suffering, but also of resilience and hope find their voice. Moreover, through a detailed comparison with the conditions of the Chernobyl victims, I place current events in Japan in a longer historical context and wider geographical setting. Ultimately, I reinforce understandings of post-nuclear disaster societies, and build-up an archive of social and cultural changes in times of crisis.

This PhD thesis is the first in-depth ethnography on the role of everyday hospitality practices for maintaining harmonious relations, thuenlam, in Bhutan, from the perspective of villagers. The aim is to provide the prerequisites necessary to integrate paying guests, tourists, into existing local guest/host relations, building on local practices and indigenous categories. Bhutanese society is characterized by principles of hierarchy, status and seniority, which is reflected in different types of thuenlam maintained with humans and the lha, deities, alike. Hospitality is the mediating framework of such relationships, expressed through local etiquette and manners, beyzhag, underpinned by ideas on what makes for a good host and guest. Small to large scale ceremonial and non-ceremonial, mundane and religious hospitality events serve to renew thuenlam with the local deities and the wider community alike. They also provide the setting for a variety of exchange of substances, services and gifts, embedded in moral worldviews that emphasize Buddhist notions of generosity and compassion whilst everyday practice is marked by a tension between mutuality and self-interest. The author looks at these phenomena within the context of the neypo (host) system between Bumthang and Lhuentse. The neypo-system refers to a cross-valley network of guest/host relationships that used to be in place before road infrastructure development took place. "Traditional highways", footpaths, connected a network of hosts across different ecological zones throughout the little kingdom and beyond. Such neypoconnections lasted over generations and some continue today. The method developed for this research is a "concurrent approach" which combines traditional ethnographic data collection with putting emerging ideas into practice whilst in the field. The resulting approach to farm/homestay tourism development has been termed the "thuenlam approach". Finally, this thesis offers a proposal and outlook on how to integrate the "paying" guest, the tourist, into existing guest/host relationships in Bhutan.

Reiki healing has become increasingly popular in the UK since the 1980s. The 'community' of Reiki in London is unbounded, both geographically spread and demographically diverse. Some practitioners gather with others to perform Reiki in 'shares', but these shares are frequently attended by different people, who disperse afterwards and have little to no contact with each other. While Reiki healers might either place their hands on the client or keep them suspended just above the body, any intimacy is contained within the episode of healing. In the episodic engagement of self-practice, Reiki practitioners 'check-in' with themselves 'in the moment'. Focusing on practitioners, this anthropological study explores the commitment to Reiki practice given its non-native, unfixed and fragmented identity in London. Noting that the incentive for practitioners to self-practice links well-being with being good, the principle exploration in this thesis is of the meaningfulness of Reiki as a practice of experience. Analysing ethnographic data from two years of participant observation and semi-structured interviews amongst Reiki practitioners in London, this study presents vital materialism, in which there is a perceived kinship between human and non-human agent-objects. In Reiki distance healing, prophetic interpretation and regression healing, practitioners are presented as expanding the present-moment, in spatial and temporal play, to curate the 'self'. While there is an aesthetic preoccupation in 'cleansing', the practice is also ethical. Individually stylised rituals of Reiki identify paradoxically arbitrary actions as arbiters of meaningfulness, orienting 'authenticity' around the individual. Individualistic authenticity revolutionises the social imagination, as practitioners transform the legitimising terms of the city, science and bureaucracy. Privileging the senses as 'intuitive' knowledge internalises the judgment of truth, exemplified by conspiracy theories. In the perception of 'energy', they seek to transform contemporary metropolitan life into an ascent of the individual.

This is an ethnography of Syrian revolutionaries who were forced to flee their country and have been displaced in the city of Antep (Turkey) after the regime's brutal crackdown on their nonviolent movement. It explores Syrians' life in the aftermath of a thwarted revolution and in the midst of war and displacement. The aim of the thesis is twofold: to understand Syrians' evolving conceptions, theorisations, experiences and imaginations of what they see as thawra, 'revolution', and to analyse the intended and unintended consequences of a defeated revolution in all aspects of Syrians' lifeworlds. The thesis argues that despite not attaining its initial aims - the overthrow of the Assad regime - the Syrian revolution is a transformational entity that has inflected Syrians' life, and has radically reshaped their world. By defining revolution as a multi-dimensional and multi-scalar transformational force, the thesis contributes to the literature on revolution, which has mainly understood revolution in terms of radical political rupture. Moreover, it inscribes itself in the emergent literature on the Arab Spring pursuing the enquiry of revolution's (non-)ending and shifting the focus to the long-lasting transformations that revolutionary processes engender. Two interconnected steps are developed in order to support this main argument. The thesis traces the ways in which the revolution affected the cosmological and the intimate scales: spatio-temporal coordinates and horizons were reshaped and new senses of self emerged. And it maps out how the revolution shifted from the political to the social domain as shapes of relations, everyday life, gender norms and types of alliances were transformed. Throughout the thesis, revolution thus appears as an evolving process that affected all dimensions of Syrians' life through a series of ruptures and disruptions.

Animal species vary widely in their cognitive abilities. However, relatively few studies, particularly in wild conditions, have assessed cognitive differences between individuals within a species, even when such differences may impact individual fitness. In this thesis, I investigate variation in the cognitive abilities and task performance of individuals belonging to two troops of wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in Namibia. I conducted three field experiments to assess individual variation in associative learning abilities, using an operant conditioning task, an extractive foraging task and a second-order conditioning task (Chapters 4-6). I then used these same tasks to explore individual differences in both task participation and the use of different foraging techniques (Chapters 7-8). In each chapter I also sought to test evolutionary hypotheses about that variation according to individual phenotype, including age, sex and social rank. I found little evidence that the baboons learnt the intended associations as initially predicted in the three tasks, and likewise little evidence of individual differences in learning ability that could be related to phenotype in the two tasks in which I was able to explore this. However, I did find consistent individual differences in task participation and feeding techniques. Overall, my findings highlight both, the challenges and opportunities of conducting tests in the wild.

Attempting to bring non-European intellectual canons into further dialogue with anthropology, this thesis revolves around the lives and narratives of scholars, artists, musicians, writers and other cultural producers - intelligentsia - in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Focusing on some of Dushanbe's earliest urban inhabitants, many originally from Samarqand and Bukhara, the thesis examines how Soviet central Asian intellectuals are recognised, understood and treated by international scholarship, the state, and canonised world histories. Accounts of travel, literary and musical exchange across Europe, south and central Asia, are looked at in particular through combined ethnographic and comparative literature approaches. These worldly, transnational experiences of intellectual life are then contextualised within the domestic, personal sphere of the 'intellectual'. In both travel and family history, forums for the exchange of ideas become central to the process of intellectual pursuit. By approaching intellectual history through family history, instead of geo-political events, this cross-generational study takes a longue durée ethnographic approach to the study of Dushanbe (as a site of cultural production), a city only formed a century ago, but home to centuries-old lineages of creative, critical thought transformed by socialism. At the time of research for this project, many urban cultural producers described a "crisis of knowledge" in contemporary Tajikistan. This thesis therefore explores the conditions in which intellectual life flourishes, stagnates or even suffocates. Throughout this ethnography of Tajik cultural life, anthropology's 'pursuit of the intellectual', both in research and professional terms, is also questioned. The methodologies, analyses and agendas behind anthropology - of the discipline and the individual anthropologist - are critically engaged with and contextualised within the (a)politics of legitimate flows of knowledge. Ultimately, 'intellectual pursuit' as an ethnographic theme helps deconstruct the anthropologist's own intellectual heritage and highlight how the intellectual life of research 'subjects' - in this case, Tajik cultural producers - impacts anthropology.

This thesis examines the meaning and making of community in London's Olympic Park where five new neighbourhoods - described as model communities for the 21st-century, and known as the Legacy Communities Scheme (LCS) - are currently under construction. 'Thriving new communities' have been identified by government as an indicator of the success of the Olympic legacy regeneration programme, which promises to transform the prosperity and life chances of people living in east London. Planned urban development is the vehicle for this transformation, of which the LCS is a significant component. This research interrogates the social and material effects of the Olympic legacy regeneration programme by examining the process of 'making' Chobham Manor, the first LCS neighbourhood, from the perspective of the professional planners, architects and regeneration practitioners engaged in the planning and placemaking process. Based on ethnographic data collected over two and a half years, the thesis describes a series of social, spatial and discursive 'voids' - territories, gaps, absences and emptinesses - that emerged as prominent and agentive entities in the work of imagining and making Chobham Manor. It examines the investments made by different actors in producing, protecting and sometimes over-coming, the potential of these voids to support, disrupt or sustain the making of 'community'. The thesis deconstructs how the voids shift through material registers and operate to produce and exert power in coercive and subtle ways, and from this empirical base, develops a typology of voids as an analytical device to interrogate the production of power, space and citizen subjectivities in the neo-liberal city. By engaging with 'voids' as vital and contingent entities that produce dynamic social, material and temporal relationalities, this thesis advances the analytical potential of the void beyond current engagements with the immaterial and transcendent.

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban areas of Bolivia, this thesis examines a local political conflict arising out of different understandings of identity and the ongoing processes of change taking place in the country. Within the Quechua-speaking highland indigenous community of Bolívar province in the Cochabamba department of Bolivia there exist multiple overlapping forms of local political authority, including the municipal government, peasant union and the traditional authorities who claim to predate the Spanish conquest. Ironically, the national project of the governing 'Movement Towards Socialism' (MAS) party of refounding the Bolivian state to include the country's 'indigenous majority' has coincided with an intensification of conflict between them. While examining the substantive content of their disagreements, this thesis also explores how legal and institutional changes which purport to advance the decolonisation of Bolivian society have served to further conflict among local leaders. In part, ideological differences are articulated through contested notions of what it means to be originario: a term roughly equivalent in contemporary Bolivia to indigenous, but which in the context of local discussions relates to what it means to be a member of their community. I suggest that a way of understanding this conflict is as an 'ethical discourse': a process in which different groups or persons contest and seek to define key elements of their shared culture, identity and morality.

Between December 2011 and autumn 2015, Chinese health authorities developed new regulations for stem cell clinical research. During this period, all pre-existing stem cell clinical research and practices were halted, and no permission was given to new project applications. Nevertheless, other biotechnologies, including immunotherapy, continued to be developed and offered in China. My fieldwork, from early 2014 to mid-2015, allowed me to learn how this regulatory change affected the life and work of some Chinese patients, researchers, health care professionals, biotech entrepreneurs, industry analysts and investors, and how differently each group understood, valued, and in some cases, used stem cell- and immune cell- therapy. Nevertheless, I noted then, and contend in this thesis that what the developers and users of 'experimental' cell therapy all valued and worked with was the medicinal potentiality of these cells. In the making and use of cell-based medicinal products, the users and developers integrated their own values and purposes that derived both from within, and outside of, the medical arena. In other words, the developers and users conceptualised and used cell-based medicine like a "tool" to address particular issues rising from specific situations - not just for health reasons. I develop the concepts of "toolised medicine" and "tooling work" to depict and analyse this "tool-like" feature and use of biomedicine, and use these concepts to reassess China's recent regulatory change in this field. In so doing, I contribute to social science theorisation and studies of biomedicine.

This thesis argues that a crucial resource of Critical Theory, the diagnosis of social pathologies, is being rendered impotent through its troubling and unnecessary marriage with a restrictive, recognition-derived approach to social theory. There is a growing literature arguing that contemporary Critical Theory has become philosophically, politically and social-theoretically unsound, increasingly blind to the meritorious insights of earlier generations of Frankfurt School scholars. This thesis argues that exactly such a development can be traced within contemporary social pathology scholarship. As a means of rejuvenating the Critical Theoretical tradition, this project serves to outline the utility of the many framings of social pathology which have been needlessly, and problematically, displaced by the ascendant recognition-based approaches to diagnosing social pathologies. This thesis seeks to champion a 'polycentric and multilateral' approach to social pathology scholarship, pointing beyond the myopically recognitive nature of contemporary Critical Theory.

This work considers 'nothing' and its effect upon the reproduction of ignorance and epistemic exclusion, by interrogating a decision to 'do nothing' made by the World Health Organisation (WHO). As a functional international organisation, its policymaking is enacted through the interplay and negotiation of scientific knowledge, international legality, and state will. In this context, the thesis contains two parts. In Part I, I look at the discussions between states over health inequities experienced by sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) from 2013 to 2016, which resulted in permanently deleting the agenda proposal in question. In Part II, drawing on and looking beyond the sociology of nothing and the sociology of ignorance, I propose normative and critical policy interventions into the discursive practices that have allowed such indecision and inaction to be justified. Therefore, this study demonstrates that nothing is productive, lending itself to a rhetorical use of sovereignty in order to circumvent a global response to SGM health injustices. This study identifies the complex power-knowledge nexus, particularly in a field in which legal, political and health discourses are competing for authority over policy legitimacy. In this respect, I employ 'lack/lacking' as an analytical concept in capturing the variable relationships between nothing (negative social phenomena) and ignorance (the limits of knowledge). In the current case, states have asserted something that is required/desired (e.g. interstate consensus, global definition, scientific evidence) is lacking, using this to justify the WHO's inertia, which, however, has reinforced SGMs' vulnerability across societies. Along with presenting the disappearance of that agenda proposal, I also presentify, based on the decolonial-queer praxis, a critical reimagining of what if another knowledge were/is possible. Taking 'nothing happened' as a point of departure for analysis, this study contributes to a better understanding of the production and functioning of ignorance, especially for the studies concerning multilateral policymaking such as international law and political sociology.

My thesis investigates non-Romani identities with the aim of forging new allies for Roma in the struggle against structural antigypsyism. The ultimate goal of the inquiry is to contribute to the emergence of a body of non-Romani activists and researchers willing and able to reflect upon and develop the concept and practice of a gebildete non-Romani identity. This is defined as an identity that is engaged with and questions its own historical roots and prejudices and seeks to actively overcome these through thoughtful and deliberate action, based on insights from hermeneutics and critical whiteness. I argue that by going back to the genealogies of this form of racism and understanding the shadow it casts upon Roma and non-Roma alike; by consciously cultivating an attitude of openness and transgressively reclaiming non-Romani identities, whether individually or collectively; and by learning how to live with and operate with and attitude of continuous openness (Bildung), non-Roma can reach a deeper understanding of antigypsyism and their role in perpetuating or indeed addressing it. To grapple with the role of non-Roma in the constellation of antigypsyism, I turn to philosophical hermeneutics, critical race theories, feminism and queer approaches to widen the lens of understanding regarding how Romani but also non-Romani identities were constructed historically and why that history matters. I exemplify how these identities play out in individual human relationships but also as part of societal structures through encounters and dialogue and how it is possible to set up a process of reimagining them in ways that are meaningful and intentional and contribute to resolving the oppression levelled at Roma.

Various forms of local food movements across the world have a shared goal of addressing the social and environmental implications of transnational, industrial, and corporate food systems. This thesis examines this trend manifesting in an under-studied context, Hong Kong, where educated young urbanites have been growing food and advocating the revival of agriculture since the 2010s. Research undertaken to date tends to view such campaigns as local resistance to the global. In affluent societies, the activism is regarded as part of the urban middle-class privilege of choosing 'green' lifestyles. However, grounded on fourteen months of multi-sited fieldwork, this thesis recognises distinctive features of the Hong Kong case. This thesis aims to contribute towards the anthropology of food and the anthropology of cities, and enhance the knowledge of locality, food localism, alternative food movements, sustainability, environmentalism, neoliberalism, and cosmopolitanism in East Asia. Hong Kong is often described as a metropolis where 'East meets West'. Hybridity and multicultural encounters brought about by colonisation and the city's position as an international financial hub are seen as natural and ordinary, whereas the meaning of 'local' is contentious. Food localism cultivated in such setting is underpinned by imported elements and trans-local interactions as opposed to anti-globalisation rhetoric or 'anti-China' sentiment that pervades Hong Kong since the 1997 handover. Localness is defined not by a sense of territoriality but a mentality that this thesis conceptualises as cosmopolitan food localism. Young farmers and activists formulate localness through reconnecting to the land and restoring social relations. A form of living that they envision, 'sustainable living', entails carving out alternatives to the current one ruled by neoliberal governmentality. Concerned with a low quality of life and soaring costs of living, educated young people do not self-identify as the middle class, nor becoming farmers a pursuit of postmaterialist values.

Lampedusa is primarily portrayed as a European border which has been subjected to intense surveillance and securitisation. On the other hand, it is also the stage for various humanitarian interventions. Apart from being a spectacularized frontier, this dissertation shows how life in Lampedusa unfolds, through stories of cooperation and mutuality between the migrants, locals and migration workers in the context of acute abandonment. By describing their tendency to struggle for a sense of wellbeing, the thesis argues against a simplistic notion of bare life, based on a reductive imagery of the migrant, and it provides the ethnographic and theoretical instruments to critically engage with philosophical reflections by means of anthropology. Based on an eleven-month period of ethnographic fieldwork in Lampedusa, the dissertation explores the triangulated intersection of lives that is at play among migration workers, locals, and migrants. It examines their daily encounters, and it gives an insight into the hardship of the locals' lives, their feelings towards migrants and the role of profit. Lampedusa can be defined as being simultaneously a borderland space, state of emergency, and realm of the absurd, where its multiple subjects, albeit in various forms, struggle to attain a balance between what they ought to do and what they can and cannot do. In transient conditions of indifference and acceptance, uncertainty and endurance, migrants, migration workers, and locals negotiate a resolution to what at times appears to be an irresolvable existential conundrum. Hence, this thesis explores humanness vis-a-vis self-interest and mutual sharing in borderlands, at geographical, historical, legal, social, and ethical boundaries.

Child punishment and maltreatment have become a global concern affecting both rich and poor countries. Child punishment and maltreatment in Kurdish families is a major social, religious and cultural issue that needs to be addressed. However, the topic receives little public recognition and is poorly understood. This research attempts to address gaps in knowledge relating to the topic of child punishment and maltreatment and to make recommendations for policy and practice. Child punishment and maltreatment are multi faceted and complex phenomena, comprising a range of concerns about the treatment of children both within and outside the family. As an under-reported and under-recognised issue in Kurdish society, this study focuses specifically on the nature and extent of punishment of children by parents in Kurdish households. Gender related issues are also considered, particularly early and forced child marriage as well as so-called 'honour killings'. The main objective of this research is to shed fresh light on child punishment and maltreatment in Kurdish families in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, particularly in its capital, Erbil City. The research used a mixed methods approach based on a survey of 320 parents of children aged between one and 18 years old, as well as semi-structured interviews with 19 professionals employed in various child welfare services such as Save the Children and Helpline 116, as well as academics in the Psychology, Social Work and Sociology Departments at Salahaddin University. Over 90% of the participating parents (mothers fractionally more than fathers) used forms of physical and emotional punishment that could constitute child maltreatment. Children of all ages were exposed to punishments constituting maltreatment, but younger children experienced less maltreatment than older children. The majority of the interview respondents believed that religion and gender are major contributory factors influencing expressions of severe child punishment and maltreatment in the Kurdistan Region. 66.9% of parents surveyed were not aware that severe forms of punishments they used amounted to child maltreatment, rather they considered them to be socially acceptable and part of normal parental disciplinary measures. Professional respondents were of the view that there is a lack of legislation in the Kurdistan Region concerning the protection of children from forms of severe punishment, as well as a lack of support for social workers engaging in attempts to intervene in the lives of abused children. The study calls for increased attention by the Kurdistan Regional Government, NGOs, Kurdish households and society to work together to raise public awareness and address abusive forms of child punishment. This includes government action to establish legal provisions to underpin more effective child protection practice.

In examining the Paiwan, an indigenous group in Taiwan, this thesis illustrates how wealth affects social hierarchy amongst people in house societies. Paiwan wealth is examined through the idea of abduction of agency, as suggested by Gell (1998), to reveal how people associate with past interactions in perceiving both present and future social relations. Investigating the notion of Paiwan wealth provides a means by which Lévi-Strauss' idea of the 'house society' is reconsidered. In possessing wealth, as Lévi-Strauss (1982:194) emphasises, the house is "a corporate body holding an estate made up of both material and immaterial wealth" for organising social groups. In addition to providing an argument for how people are grouped in and by the house itself, this thesis focuses on the processes that form the house as an agent in itself. Moreover, studying Paiwan wealth gives further insights into how features of Dumontian hierarchy (Dumont 1980) and precedence (Fox 1994, 2004) can co-exist in terms of employing multiple values to achieve supreme value of owning wealth. In mapping out the aim of this thesis, discussion begins from how the fieldwork process leads to certain empirical elucidation. By re-examining pervious research about the Paiwan, the significance of processes of interactions from past to present is explored. The social interaction not only enables the position of a house to be established and further gives Christian churches hierarchical position to be a house in the society. By participating in social interaction, Paiwan wealth shows its quality of index in Gell's (1998) argument of art. The association between hierarchy, house and wealth is, therefore, can be exemplified by looking into the Paiwan marriage. Under these circumstances, the study of Paiwan society offers a channel to encompass different perspectives of anthropology to approach indigenous context.

This thesis applying a mixed methods research paradigm discerns the individual and macro level factors facilitating economic cybercrime victimisation in the UK. Understanding and exploring the adverse impacts of economic cybercrime victimisation on victims' online lifestyles, psychological well-being and protection motivation are other goals of this research. To these ends, semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two victims of economic cybercrime, ten non-victim control group participants and ten cybercrime experts. The extant cybercrime victimisation studies utilised Lifestyle Routine Activities Theory (LRAT), the latest version of the Opportunity Theories of the Victimisation Perspective, as a theoretical framework. However, the applicability of LRAT to cybercrime research is questionable (Yar, 2005) since the theory was originally proposed to explain traditional crime victimisation occurring in the physical world. This thesis critically evaluates the transposition of key LRAT concepts to cybercrime research and proposes The Contextual Vulnerabilities Approach to better understand the causes of economic cybercrime victimisation. Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) and Approach-Avoidance Paradigm were also utilised as a conceptual framework while examining the adverse impacts of victimisation experiences on Internet users' behavioural adaptation and security intentions. The Integrated Cyber Victimisation Model (ICVM) was built based on the empirical findings of this thesis to examine cybercrime victimisation holistically and understand the adverse consequences of victimisation. Past cybercrime victimisation research utilising LRAT as a theoretical framework explicitly put the onus of the victimisation on victims' shoulders. The findings of this thesis suggest that most victims faced economic cybercrime victimisation due to the congruence of the contextual factors that are beyond their controls. Technological vulnerabilities and data breaches of large companies holding personal information of the Internet users are macro vulnerabilities identified. Fear of crime, perceived severity, perceived vulnerability and self-efficacy emerged as the cognitive factors affecting Internet users' protection motivation and behavioural adaptation.

Wildlife populations are being depleted globally by pressures associated with the growing human population and non-human primate populations are in sharp decline. The Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo cares for orphaned primates with the goal of reintroducing them to the wild when appropriate. The primary aim of this study was to reintroduce the mandrills held at Tchimpounga into Conkouati-Douli National Park following the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Guidelines as closely as possible. In preparation for the release we built an enclosure at the selected release site and tested the global positioning system (GPS) collars the animals would be wearing. At the end of the study we retrieved the GPS collars and found fewer successful fixes than expected and analysed the collar fix success rates in relationship to each individual's use of three-dimensional space and mass in an effort to understand the lack of successful fixes. We found that vegetation density and collar height within the vegetation significantly affected fix success rates. Our post-release data indicated larger animals spent more time on the ground than smaller animals, and that smaller animals had more successful fixes. We found variation in GPS collar function and that how the animals interact with their three-dimensional (3D) environment affects collar function. If animals in a study group spend different amounts of time at different heights in the forest it could bias the data. Researchers should thus test the collars they will be using for height bias in circumstances where the release subjects have a 3D relationship with the environment around them. We recommend accounting for an animals' use of three-dimensional space in GPS collar studies where the species is not fully terrestrial and vegetation, topography, or human-made structures are likely to interfere with their collars' access to satellites. We also used non-invasive faecal sampling to measure the mandrills' glucocorticoid metabolite levels as a biological proxy for their stress response to each stage of the release. The findings suggest that faecal glucocorticoid metabolites can be used to capture the biological response to the stages of reintroduction. All mandrills had an increase in glucocorticoid metabolite values post transfer. It took 4 weeks for the glucocorticoid metabolite values to decrease although there was variation amongst individuals. We recommend using faecal glucocorticoid metabolite analysis in release projects to inform decisions about how long the study species should be held in a pre-release enclosure to overcome the stress of transfer and habituate to their surroundings prior to being released. The findings of this study also highlighted that different animals reacted differently to the stages of the release process, thus researchers should assess animals as individuals rather than a group to assure maximum animal welfare through the release process. Ultimately, through scientifically testing aspects of this release project we gained insight to inform future mandrill releases as well as wildlife release projects generally. We recommend GPS collars are tested in the release area and the results are reviewed prior to fitting the collars to the animals. GPS collar studies should account for an animal's 3D relationship with topographical obstruction and vegetation within their environment because systematic differences in forest usage can bias collar data. Finally, we recommend sanctuary release projects use soft release methods unless hard release had been thoroughly validated for the species under representative circumstances.

Social learning, together with innovation, form the pillars of human culture. The vast majority of research regarding innovation and social learning uses artificially created tasks (e. g. puzzle boxes) with clear goals. Studies with children are performed in nurseries, psychology laboratories and in separate rooms in science centres. This enables studies to have high experimental/internal validity. However, it is not known whether these findings also explain behaviours outside of controlled environments. In this thesis I explored how social learning and creativity could be studied in the context of an informal learning environment (Life Science Centre, Newcastle) using an open-ended task, representing a context of increased ecological validity. In Chapter 3 I explored how direct instructions, scaffolding (open questions) and no instructions impacted children's exploratory behaviour and their creativity when building with shapeshifting wooden blocks that constituted an existing exhibit in the science centre. In Chapter 4 I used an exhibit, the Interactive Research Pod (IRP), which was developed through cooperation between Durham University academics and Life Science Centre practitioners to study social learning and creativity "in the wild" whereby no experimenter is present and instructions, cameras and ethical assent is automated. I studied children, who were using building blocks, in social (transparent partitions), asocial (opaque partitions, building at or around the same time) and asocial control (opaque partitions, different day). In Chapter 5 I used the IRP to enable children to freely interact whilst building and investigated social learning and cooperation as well as the originality of the final structures. In all three studies I used a newly developed web application to evaluate the creativity of the structures children built. I recruited adult raters to acquire a relatively objective measure of the subjective value of the originality of the wooden structures. I used Bayesian statistical methods to analyse the data. Overall children built diverse structures and were not strongly impacted by the conditions (direct instruction, scaffolding, no instruction, social, asocial learning and cooperation) they were in. The findings of the thesis complement existing data regarding social learning and creativity in children in more controlled environments and demonstrate the utility of conducting such studies in ecologically valid contexts, despite the inherent issues of internal validity.

This thesis presents an account of research into the presence, absence and actual distribution of primate species in the Central American country of Panama, including research on local human perceptions of primates and their implications for the survival of primate populations. I mixed qualitative research methods and a variety of quantitative methods to examine primate population presence/absence, distribution and size. This thesis gives an account of a range of techniques to easily evaluate primates' presence, their densities and habitats, revealing factors limiting primate survival, including the key factors that influence human communities' attitudes to wildlife (analysis of the perceptions of primates held by a sample of Panamanian adults and children was employed in the latter case). From April 21 of 2001 to March 20 of 2016 I collected 1,144 presence points in a non-systematic order, including literature review of previous presence points cited in old references. MaxEnt Species Distribution Modelling was then applied to this data. This was complemented with information I obtained about population densities in continuous forest and fragmented habitats. I concluded that annual mean temperature (0.45-0.75 AUC), annual precipitation (0.60-0.75 AUC), human population presence and density are very important factors determining likelihood primate presence (0.92 AUC). These environmental parameters are affecting the presence of primates in Panama, and their migration within the country, as is the growing human population. Methodologically, I show that for small size primate species it is reasonable to run the MaxEnt programme with only environmental variables, and still have good accuracy for habitat suitability; however, for medium size primates such as spider and howler monkeys, it is recommended that remote sensing and indigenous people's local knowledge be included to complement the accuracy of the distribution models. An innovative 'camera trap' system, or OCS, was used to gather visual data relevant to the estimation of primate group size. Formal and informal interviews with adults resident in Azuero peninsula, and data from school-age in the form of drawings and compositions on the theme of primates I obtained a Shannon Index of 3.8 in terms of diversity of 77 words used by local people in relation to primates, being categorized as negative, neutral, and positive. Analysis of this data provided an overview of how local people think about primates, and of their base of biological knowledge, and allowed the researcher to identify areas where improvements are needed to assist primate conservation. The conservation status of Panamanian primates was last reviewed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1996 and 2008. This thesis presents a new conservation status evaluation, one that permits a useful assessment of the actual threats and habitat requirements of primate survivorship in Panama. This thesis proposes certain updates to the IUCN Criteria, via a new perspective on the situation facing Panamanian primates. The case study of primate evaluation and research presented in this thesis is not only relevant to Panama: it will also be useful to other countries in the Neotropics, especially those where conservation education is needed. Environmental education is an important part of conservation activities: in this thesis I show how it can be enhanced by an understanding of local people's knowledge base as it relates to their local environments in general and to local primate species in particular. I recommend to other researchers, and those active in conservation work, the methods I have been using to survey primates in diverse habitats, and to understand the links between cultural values and primates in Azuero, one of the more fragmented areas in Panama. The research presented here will also be relevant to management support, in the case of Panamanian or other authorities needing to assess translocation options or release primates after rehabilitation.

The consumption of culture has often been ascribed the power to reflect and reproduce social inequalities. However, most work in this area has focused upon music and the arts. Sport is an important element of culture that can and should be studied in a similar fashion as others (Bourdieu, 1978). This thesis thus seeks to bring the theoretical frameworks and analytical tools of sociologies of culture further into the realm of sport. Substantively, this thesis provides an updated and comprehensive re-examining of the relationship between direct sports participation and social stratification in the relatively unexplored national context of Canada. I also innovatively provide an examination of the relationship between social stratification and professional sports consumption. Finally, this thesis fills a gap in the literature by analysing where the consumption of sport fits within broader cultural lifestyles. For these investigations, I use large-scale survey data and various statistical methods to test the foundational theories of Pierre Bourdieu, the 'omnivore' thesis, and individualisation arguments of social action to explain these patterns. The findings show direct sports participation relying primarily on dispositions towards the body which are stratified by education and income, especially for the most elite sports. They also show the two most selective omnivorous profiles for professional sport, rather than the most omnivorous, with the highest levels of education and income. This thesis thus sheds doubt on the omnivore thesis within sport, while also showing elements of individualisation regarding age and sex differentiation in consumption. Sports consumption in Canada thus cuts across all three theories of the relation between socio-economic position and sport. These more delimitated consumption profiles contrast with the general adherence to the omnivore thesis within broader cultural lifestyles. This therefore suggests that sport may be a cultural domain where general omnivores practise more distinctive consumption.

This thesis is concerned with the lasting impact of austerity policies on expressions and experiences of dissent. It draws on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Madrid between 2016 and 2018, creating a new anthropological gauge for political resistance in the wake of crisis. The city of Madrid became, in 2011, a centre-stage for new waves of social movements, in which a wide cross-section of participants mobilised in protests against austerity measures in the midst of the Eurozone crisis. This thesis, removed temporally from the immediacy of these protests, evaluates their form and lasting impact in retrospect. It draws upon a wide sample of narratives and case studies to establish why and how resistance to pervasive economic practices has receded despite the enduring actuality of crisis experiences. While the public engagement of 2011 has shown some resonance on the Spanish electoral scene, readings of resistance as solidary and spontaneous have failed to translate into lasting resistant engagement for many local actors. This thesis broadens anthropological readings of resistance to include not only its active moments and members, but also the latency and sub-strata that make up much of its local reality. Through ethnographic analysis of activists, producers of activist content, and partially resistant audiences, this thesis posits that resistance to austerity in Madrid cannot be explained solely by neoliberal binaries. Rather, it draws upon aesthetic and narrative sub-texts, which local actors recognise and re-use to shape their own actions as resistant. I argue that local sub-texts of dissent are articulated along pre-existing socio-historic fractures in Spain, setting resistance in retrospective and disenchanted gazes which hinder its creative potential in the face of neoliberal oppression.

The interactions between predators and prey have long been considered to play an important role in behaviour, physiology, and evolution. Both predators and prey can influence one another's spatial and temporal patterns in activity and space use. To understand such dynamic processes, one must simultaneously assess the behavioural ecology of both predator and prey within the same environment. Such analyses have been rare in primatology. With the aid of behavioural, telemetry, and environmental data collected between the years 2012 and 2017, a combination of methods including home range analyses, resource selection functions, activity pattern analyses and spatial regression models were used to independently test hypotheses relating to space use and activity patterns in chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) and their main predator, the leopard (Panthera pardus) within the western Soutpansberg Mountains, South Africa. Collectively, the results allowed me to test hypotheses about how baboons spatially and behaviourally respond to the threat posed by predation. The utilisation of spatial-temporal data deriving from two sympatric species provides not only a detailed assessment on how such animals independently use their environment yet is a novel approach for understanding the complex dynamics of predator-prey interactions. My results showed that leopards established home ranges in topographically complex and highly vegetated areas while avoiding humans and also preferentially used areas of dense vegetation. Leopards were also less active in these areas, preferentially resting in areas of cover and away from human activity. Although primarily crepuscular, leopards shifted their behaviour when in proximity to humans with an increase in nocturnal activity, with day length and weather also influencing their activity scheduling. Despite the presence of leopards on the landscape, baboons primarily avoided areas that were perceived to be risky from the threat imposed by other baboon groups rather than leopards. In contrast, the probability of encountering leopards had the biggest influence on spatial variation in vigilance. In confirmation of previous studies, risk effects exceeded the importance of food availability in determining range use, although baboons selected areas of greater food availability during winter when food was shortest suggesting that they trade off an increase in risk for foraging opportunities at these times. Despite clear seasonal constraints on behaviour in winter, however, the baboons did not appear to compensate with increased nocturnal activity at these times. This study highlights the value of integrating information on both predators and prey into studies of primate-predator interactions and suggests potential avenues for future research.

Introduction: Sedentary time is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, but the association between sedentary time and gestational diabetes (GDM) has not been tested. The primary aim of this mixed-methods study was to test associations between objectively measured sedentary time during pregnancy, as well as time spent in two specific sedentary behaviours (television time and occupational sitting time), and incident GDM, glucose levels, and other pregnancy-related outcomes. This thesis also aims to explore the social context of sedentary time during pregnancy. Methods: Pregnant women (n=260) with a risk factor for gestational diabetes wore an activPAL accelerometer for one week at 20 weeks' gestation and reported their usual television time and occupational sitting time in the second trimester. Of these women, 192 provided 4 days of accelerometry data and were included in analyses. GDM diagnoses and glucose levels were measured through standard glucose tolerance tests at 24-28 weeks' gestation. Further outcomes were extracted from medical records following birth. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a subsample (n=18) of participants in the third trimester. Results: Objectively measured sedentary time was not associated with the development of GDM (OR 1.003 (95%CI 0.998, 1.008)), but was associated with fasting (β=0.16 (95%CI 0.01, 0.31)) and 2-hour glucose levels (β=0.15 (95%CI 0.01, 0.30)) among women who did not have GDM. Higher television time was associated with increased risk of GDM (OR 3.03 (95%CI 1.21, 7.96)), while higher occupational sitting was associated with decreased risk (OR 0.20 (95%CI 0.06, 0.59)). The main theme that emerged from the interviews was that there is a social expectation for women to sit down and to rest during their pregnancies. Conclusion: Only television time was associated with increased likelihood of developing GDM. However, objectively measured sedentary time was associated with glucose levels during pregnancy. Any interventions designed to reduce sedentary time during pregnancy should aim to address broader social perceptions about the 'importance of rest' during pregnancy.