This thesis brings a focus to food and its cultural geographies by examining the ways that diasporic communities forge networks of distribution and the role of homesickness in shaping tastes in consumer societies. It also adds food (as material and immaterial culture) to diasporic geographies by highlighting the importance of food practices for migrant identities and sense of belonging. Through an investigation of food practices among Brazilians in London this research also contributes to an understanding of how this recent, numerous but under researched South American group experience migration in an everyday basis in London. The investigation undertaken includes desk research on food provision systems, semi-structured interviews and documentary field research with Brazilian food providers across London, focus group discussions with Brazilian migrants, periods of observational research in case study shop and restaurant outlets, and ethnographic domestic research with case study Brazilian households in Harlesden, Brent (an area of London with marked Brazilian immigration over the last decade). My analysis considers ‘Brazilianess' as a category and cultural-culinary form being made and contested in London. An overview of the dynamics of Brazilian food provision in London shows that this making and contesting operates through both the material culture of food provision and the social lives of public spaces such as restaurants, cafes and grocery shops. Brazilian food consumption thus operates in a number of different registers linked to practicality, emotion and ethnic identification. A closer look at public Brazilian food consumption spaces reveals how such places create collective migrant spaces of belonging by translocalizing Brazilian life. In the domestic settings, food narratives and observation reveal the materialities and practices of migrant home making in mixed households and the processes through which consumption practices are negotiated and contested by different household members.

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When William Carew (1689–1744) and Reginald Pole-Carew (1753–1835) unexpectedly inherited the Antony estates in the southwest of England, each invested in material culture to create, maintain and justify his distinction as a landowning member of élite society. Discourses around the uses of visual and material culture throughout the eighteenth century are usually framed in contrast: either the ostentatious collections of the hereditary nobility which denoted rank, wealth and power, or the status-seeking “middling sorts” who used luxury goods to paper over social and cultural gaps. In the space between these two social groups were the Carews (and a great number of landed gentry like them) who built relatively unpretentious country houses and who commissioned, collected and displayed luxury goods as statements of an identity not based on declarations of affluence, prestige, or social mobility. Using original, unpublished, archival research and testing the findings against historical and contemporary studies, the interdisciplinary approaches in this thesis will analyse the Carews’ uses of luxury goods – in country-house building, landscaping and portraiture– to cultivate an identity commensurate with their aims. Unpacking a strategy of distinction for each of William Carew and Reginald Pole-Carew offers a new perspective on eighteenth-century conspicuous consumption. The findings assert that what the Carews commissioned, collected and displayed fills a gap in current scholarship and must be integrated into any comprehensive understanding of the uses of luxury goods throughout the century.

This thesis analyses the means by which items of Italian material culture came into the possession of the Tudor monarchs. The different modes of acquisition provide the structure for an investigation into Anglo-Italian relations during the sixteenth century. Although the items that came to England took many forms a synthesising approach is made possible by the fact that the 'biographies' of the objects which have been selected all share a common element - they reached England and were owned by the Tudor monarchs as a result of direct contact with Italian individuals. As a result, disparate items such as glass, armour, books, textiles and horses can be discussed as part of a broader whole in which elements of one culture travelled to another. This is not a discussion of the developing dominance of Italian culture over Western Europe during the sixteenth century, for, although the adjective 'Italian' carried clear connotations in late sixteenth-century England it appears to have been rarely used in relation to material culture. Instead it is a study of the appreciation of technical skill and the attempts that were made to appropriate it, which in turn provides a point of access to the life histories of the Italians who came to England in the sixteenth century and the way in which their interaction with the highest levels of the court played a role in shaping the idea of Italy and the Italian in England.

This thesis is an exploration of the antiquarian materiality of Walter Scott’s fiction, considering his antiquarian practices alongside his fictional output to suggest that the two are vitally and intricately connected. It locates Scott’s antiquarian researches within the context of a contemporary antiquarianism increasingly concerned with safeguarding the relics, ruins, memories and manners of the national past. The aims of this thesis are threefold. First, it illuminates a more dedicated and dynamic participation in contemporary antiquarian practices than has previously been attributed to Scott, exploring a broad scope of material antiquarian activities in which he was engaged throughout his life. Second, it demonstrates how Scott’s literary output was shaped by his participation in aspects of material antiquarianism, populating his fictions with relics and remains, and recognising the potential of the material artefact as a productive site of narrative. Finally and most importantly, it argues that Scott’s fictions frequently act as textual extensions of his material practice. Scott’s poems and novels are in multifarious and dynamic ways actively involved in the processes of collection, exhibition, preservation, and conservation evident in Scott’s material practices. In so frequently and deliberately incorporating the material relics unearthed by his antiquarian practices into the corpus of his fiction, Scott’s literary works might be regarded as an additional space in which the material past might be preserved, conserved, exhibited, and enshrined. In this way, Scott’s literary works might therefore be considered as antiquarian repositories in which predominantly Scottish antiquities might be preserved.

In this thesis I describe the complex uses and symbolic resonances of fur clothing in Krakow. During my fieldwork, fur emerged as an object that was at once quotidian and evocative of an uncommonly weighty set of associations. I describe fur industry workers’ ideas about how the production and consumption of fur changed throughout the twentieth century, from its status as a nationalized industry under socialism to its status in post-European Union accession Poland. Informants rely heavily on fur’s physical features, its materiality, when discussing the ways in which fur is an object to be passed through families. I demonstrate the ways in which beliefs about inheritance are heavily contingent upon the local understanding of work as a practice that creates adult personhood. The sections of the thesis which focus on the employment trajectories of furriers show, when placed alongside chapters that explore how fur is passed through generations, that whilst informants value highly both material and intangible inheritances from older kin, they also emphasise the importance of individual action, such as entrepreneurialism. I use the multiple ways in which fur can be interpreted: as part of a dead animal and as a valuable ‘textile’ amongst other meanings, to unpack local understandings of difference and social stratification, taking into account that ‘class’ is a term seldom used in Krakow. ‘Generation’ has a specific function and meaning within Krakowian society as a type of difference that is naturalized and easily spoken of. This contrasts with differences in religion and in class, local understandings of both of which are elucidated by fur due to its associations with, firstly, both Polish Judaism and Polish Catholicism and, secondly, bourgeois ways of being and ideas about poverty in Krakow.

Many individuals develop strong bonds with their pets, viewing them as close “furry” friends or family. When these beloved companions die, both their relational and physical absences are deeply felt. Lacking socially recognized rituals to mourn and memorialize their pets, owners turn to and adapt traditional “human practices,” primarily that of keeping meaningful or significant items of the deceased. Using both personal experiences and perspectives from multiple fields, this thesis discusses the life-cycle of the human-animal bond, examines the types of items owners keep or create, and how these are used to facilitate both mourning (the outward expression of grief) and memorialization (the practice of remembering). I argue that because they allow owners to both literally and symbolically recreate the sensory experiences of pet ownership, material items such as hair, impressions, collars, cremains, and models are ideal ways to remember deceased pets. As a result, this study adds to and deepens the understandings of the complexities surrounding the human-animal bond, in addition to how owners use and extend folkloric behaviors and principles, such as tradition and the material culture genre to include experiences and relationships with pets.

Embodied in my art practice is the exploration of the relationship between my subjective self as consumer and the material culture of home. As an artist this praxis suggests alternative ways of reconstructing domestic subjectivity (self-portrait) through the formal processes of drawing and cataloguing insignificant collections acquired through 'lived experience'. This analysis utilises Michel de Certeau's concept of bricolage, a 'tactic' of fragmentation that 'makes do with what is at hand' to corrupt the 'proper' space and time of a contemporary productionist society. In the course of developing an art practice, I seek to re-value marginal space and reappropriate time from a modern culture designed for efficiency.Through the introduction of key elements in process drawing, I have adopted a method to subvert modernist representations of the domestic. As Certeau writes 'mak[ing] use of techniques of re-employment in which we can recognise the procedures of everyday practice' is a political deployment, an individual 'tactic' orchestrated against social 'strategy'. A fragmentary tactical operation allows me fleeting moments of visibility to record 'lived experience' through an installation based art practice.

This thesis is an attempt to assess the degree of differentiation between two regions, Otago and Southland, to be found in the styles of four types of artefact; Bird-spear points, One-piece fish-hooks, Composite hook points, Adzes. In order to assess the significance of these differences the comparison has been made not only between the two regions mentioned above but also with a set of samples from the northern North Island used as a bench-mark. The data has been collected in the form of non-metrical (presence/absence) and metrical (continuous or ratio-type) variables specific to each artefact type. The method of analysis of the data is concerned with the study of the relative frequencies of these ranges of variables. This is supported by Chi� and Student�s T tests. As well as seeking to establish the degree of differentiation between the material cultures of the regions the interpretation also seeks to distinguish between causal factors for these differences (for example, variations in functional requirements, differing or limited access to material types, etc.).

An interdisciplinary approach to the study of change and retention in Maori material culture during the protohistoric is recommended. The principal disciplines involved are history, ethnology, ethnography and archaeology. Each exploits a different research resource and together in synthesis they can offer a more comprehensive understanding of culture change. This study concentrates on the material culture subsystem of Maori culture; yet it can only be effectively studied if the relationship between this subsystem and others is unravelled. Hence the need for an interdisciplinary methodology. �Classic� Maori material culture is briefly outlined in Chapter One. Historical aspects of the protohistoric period are discussed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three outlines the various potential sources of interdisciplinary input in a study of contact period Maori material culture change and assesses contributions made to this study by other researchers. Chapter Four summarizes the major themes of retention and adaptation in relation to particular aspects of post-contact Maori material culture change in the protohistoric period are outlined in Chapter Five. This study has taken a generalized approach to a problem which has a number of different regional manifestations. A framework is provided within which detailed regional assessments can be made. Such studies will be the most effective way of testing whether the hypotheses derived from this research are adequate to explain the changes, retentions and adaptations in Maori material culture during the protohistoric period.