The thesis explores the tensions in Japan between national ideologies of cultural homogeneity and the demographic and economic realities which increasingly point to the unavoidability of immigration. Based on ethnographic research in Japan and Indonesia, the thesis looks at the formation of relationships between the Japanese personnel, the employers, the cared-for elderly, and the Indonesian care workers employed in Japanese eldercare institutions under the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) initially implemented in 2008. While primarily focusing on the negotiation of relationships at an interpersonal level, the thesis also considers the intersections between the ageing of society and the Japanese discourses of nationhood. Shifting between these scales of observation, the project discusses the interplay between the bodily, interpersonal, and cultural intimacies. It examines how they are formed, maintained, negated, negotiated, and lost. In doing so, it emphasises the saliency of essentialising cultural representations. However, the research reveals that these become paralleled by identifications based on other, non-cultural areas of immediate experience. Thus, the thesis shifts the emphasis away from (but does not completely abandon) the ethnic or national underpinnings of the migration processes as a lived experience for migrants and hosts alike. Following the politico–economic background of the Indonesian workers’ presence in Japan and the introduction of the idea of culture laid out in the vocabulary of intimacy, the consecutive chapters focus on different sets of relationships forged by the Indonesian workers. The thesis concludes with the discussion of media representations and a suggestion that the ‘seeding’ of foreign workers and residents within local communities in Japan constitutes the arena in which cross-cultural intimacies emerge.

This thesis examines the role of cognitive content biases in cultural transmission. The concept of cognitive content biases suggests that humans preferentially attend to, recall and transmit certain types of information over others, and that this bias influences the transmission and evolution of cultural artefacts. A number of studies are presented which primarily use genuine urban legends as material. In using ‘real world’ material such as urban legends these studies expand our knowledge of how content biases operate and shed light on the cultural success of these legends. Methodology included qualitative analyses, experiments using participants in linear transmission chains and computational phylogenetic techniques. The studies demonstrate that content biases are an effective force in cultural transmission but that different biases may not necessarily operate in exactly the same manner. It is argued that the cultural success of urban legends can be explained by their exploitation of cognitive content biases. The studies also demonstrate the efficacy of using ‘real-world’ material such as urban legends in the examination of the mechanisms of cultural transmission and evolution.

This thesis explores the phenomenon of lifestyle migration: people mainly in their 50s who move to another country, typically with warmer climate and in some cases less stable economies, to reside there full-time. By using the built environment as a means of analysis, this project explores the different ways in which lifestyle migrants come to interact with the architecture of their houses, reflect through them, and construct a new place they are able to call home. By examining how the migrants come to inhabit their new dwellings, the thesis also reveals the underlying importance of their kinship relations with members of their extended family. It highlights how, by moving away from their families, lifestyle migrants paradoxically come to improve their kin relations, employing the transformative capacity of the move. Additionally, it details the different meanings that lifestyle migrants attach to notions of bequeathing property and how they manipulate these concepts to improve relationships with their partners, at the same time contributing to transnational intergenerational contracts within their wider kinship networks. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a community of British lifestyle migrants who reside full-time in southeastern Spain.

This thesis provides an analysis of the livelihood role of aquatic resources on an African floodplain, examining the economic, social and historical dimensions of local freshwater fisheries amid growing uncertainty over land and water tenure. The aim is to document who depends most on the resource and how. The contribution is both practical—in demonstrating the value of the current livelihood system to rural inhabitants—and theoretical, in putting forward a more ethnographically informed analysis of livelihoods by examining the social relations and cultural values structuring access to the fishery and market, and management efforts. Fieldwork focused on three villages sharing access to a permanent lake and adjacent wetlands. A structured questionnaire confirmed that half of all households in the area relied on the sector as a key income source. Individuals’ and households’ asset holdings, demographic characteristics, and wealth ranks had limited influence on these participation and reliance patterns, reflecting the ubiquity of fisheries in local livelihoods. A household survey of aquatic resource use across one year showed that people depended on a variety local freshwater fish species as their main animal protein source, with poor households consuming the least. Fishermen surveyed at the fishing camps could be distinguised by their gear choice, with the decision to participate in commercial fishing related more to lifestyle factors than asset holdings. Although a handful of individuals owned the largest commercial nets in the area, they did not monopolise supply, with a commodity chain analysis revealing the regional fish trade to be an equitable and accessible livelihood option. Through interviews and observations at village meetings, the performance of local institutions in managing the lake fishery was revealed to be hampered by unclear borders, petty corruption, and leaders’ limited accountability, the latter due in part to cultural notions of equity and forgiveness.

With the Wootton Bassett rituals, a new landmark was set for British war commemoration. After six years of quiet military repatriations of fallen soldiers through another airbase, the flights had to be rerouted to RAF Lyneham and the hearses carrying the flag-draped coffins now passed through the heart of the nearby Wootton Bassett on their 50-mile journey to a military hospital in Oxford. Unexpectedly, this contingency triggered a series of events that gave birth to a community-led, local ritual that had remarkable national impact. This thesis is based on an in-depth ethnographic study that tells the story of the start, the consolidation and the end of this unusual and unprecedented ritual practice to commemorate the fallen and pay respect to them and their families. It takes advantage of this highly unusual opportunity to follow a process of ritualisation from its beginning, and explores how in this case ritual was employed to make sense of an unexpected and hitherto unexperienced situation, and to manage the emotional charge of that situation. In addition, the study also analyses the effect of this phenomenon and locates it within its social, cultural, historical and political context.

This thesis represents an attempt to think through the ways in which cultural diversity is conceptualised and articulated through discourses of ‘multiculturalism’ in contemporary Germany. It focuses on a period of significant political transformation during the 1990s through which issues of immigration, integration and cultural diversity emerged as central topics in political debate. The thesis uses a range of empirical and conceptual tools such as critical discourse analysis and semiotic analysis to investigate the visual and textual political discourses of two political parties: the right-wing party CDU/CSU and the left-wing Green party. It argues that the political discourses produced by the parties - framed by the notion of ‘multiculturalism’ - variously produce, and re-produce, static notions of culture and essentialist modes of belonging. My analysis intends to show that the discourses through which the parties address cultural diversity in Germany are linked in complex ways to Germany’s fascist past. They are characterised by an avoidance of critical engagement with the issue of racism, and they perpetuate an understanding of identity as fixed and unchangeable. I argue that both left- and right-wing political discourse facilitates the marginalisation and racialisation of Germany’s ‘ethnic minorities’. The final section of the thesis considers the way in which these political discourses are contested by grassroots ‘ethnic minority’ activists. I argue that these counterdiscourses provide an effective critique of the positions outlined by the political parties. The thesis argues that these creative interventions by individuals and groups hitherto constructed as different and as not belonging to Germany provide an effective critique of the discourse generated by the political parties - they offer a more productive way of thinking about contemporary multiculture in Germany today.

The thesis, based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Alexandria (Egypt) from 2011 to 2012, focuses on the Greek Alexandrian community, a socially and territorially bounded urban diaspora entity, which through institutions, spatial arrangements and face-to-face interactions articulates a sense of connection to place through claims regarding a historically continuous socio-spatial connection to both Alexandria (and Egypt) and Greece. The thesis draws on notions of time and space as a framework for discussing the social dynamics of the Greek Alexandrian community in relation to the complex context of social, economic and political transformations it has experienced over the last 60 years. The aim is to explore culturally defined concepts of identity and memory among Greek Alexandrians, particularly in relation to the major social, political and economic events that followed the Egyptian revolution of 1952, causing significant social and spatial transformations within the Greek Alexandrian community. These changes altered prevailing concepts of public and private space and affected the possibilities of successful inter-generational transmission of values and identities. As perceptions and practices explored in the thesis differ, depending on community role – leaders versus members – but also on age, the concept of generation is used to examine the diverse ways in which the past, present and future are variously understood and confronted. Changing notions of Greek Alexandrian identity are explored by focusing not only on the community’s narrative constructs but also on the visual and material objects that members of the community considered to be meaningful. A wide range of ethnographic material was examined, from narratives, texts and interviews, to visual data such as photographs, videos, films, pictures, and material elements such as urban buildings and other spatial arrangements that are recognized as being central to the community. These diverse elements are brought together in the discussion of collaboration with research participants, which resulted in an exhibition on the history of the community. The exhibition became the means through which interactions across the community’s people and places unfolded, diverse narratives and sentiments about the past, the present and the future emerged, and the area in which frictions and tensions revealed themselves.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the performative role of paid domestic work within upper-class families in Santiago, Chile in the reproduction of national narratives and difference. In 2005, Staab and Maher identified the Chilean version of the ‘servant problem’. Old and new middle- and upper-class families were struggling to find good servants; those who knew their subordinate place and performed their duties with a servile attitude. Chilean nanas, a pejorative and reiterative form of naming paid domestic workers, were no longer docile young women from rural areas; now, Staab and Maher (2005) wrote, the perception of employers was that these women knew too much about their rights and were from dangerous urban areas marked by violence and uncivilised forms of living. In addition, as the deceased poet Lemebel noted, workers were starting to behave and look like upper-class women; wearing similar clothes, going to the gym, or dyeing their hair blond. This thesis explores the routinised and repetitive acts of atonement of class and racial difference within employer/worker relations in a neoliberal Chile. It is argued that upper-class families continue to be the national norm lived in modern times through the reproduction of a culture of servitude (Camus and de la O Martinez, 2014), and that today survives and recreates the neoliberal ‘white gendered Chilean dream’ through the figure of the Chilean happy family. It is precisely this continuity of a culture of servitude that paid domestic work maintains, that enables the Chilean State to portray itself as modern and gender-friendly, with upper-class women becoming modern women – seemingly achieving forms of gender equality – while patriarchal and racist arrangements continue within the home and the nation. This thesis draws upon the theoretical work of Gutiérrez (2010) on affective labour, of Butler (1999) on performativity, of Berlant (2011) on intimacy and politics, and of Stoler (2009) on intimacy and coloniality. It uses interviews with upper-class female employers and with domestic workers.

This thesis argues for a re-thinking around young men, masculinities and urban cultures. It asks how are young masculinities practiced and what are the tensions that arise for young men in maintaining their gender identity? As a five-year ethnographic study of young men conducted through youth work spaces in South London, it gives a detailed account of the ways young men do gender and the relational practices through which vernacular cultures are made, maintained and (re)produced. Young masculinities are over-determined in the urban imagination readily explained through crime, gangs and violence and stereotypical representations of cultural productions and resistance. Bringing together literatures on urban cultures and space, young men in urban contexts, and masculinities it offers an understanding of how young men and masculinities can be better understood in relation to urban cultures and spaces. Moving across four youth work projects it examines the inter-personal and group relationships amongst young men giving an account of their emotional life, to show how belongings are practiced and re-made in the active production of urban multiculture. Young men carry their bodies in certain ways and embody distrust operating an instrumental relationship to language. But these practices are also active in building relationships and are used as ways to address uncertainties and develop knowledge in gendered ways. The thesis shows how young men navigate their peer relationships and the complex belongings of urban life through navigating exclusions and threats and remaking local identities linked to place whilst focusing on their futures, by maintaining codes of humour, respect and trust.

Global biodiversity losses are being driven by anthropogenic pressures; the most pervasive of which is habitat loss resulting in fragmentation and population isolation. These issues are prevalent throughout Europe due to high intensity agriculture and increasing human population densities. Limitations imposed by resources and the secretive lifestyles of many species hinder the ability of conservationists to undertake status assessments and identify conservation actions. This thesis investigates the threats to an isolated population of grass snakes Natrix helvetica on the island of Jersey, providing recommendations for conservation management and recovery, whilst testing the suitability of tools for monitoring cryptic species. Grass snakes were historically widespread throughout Jersey; however, anthropogenic influences have restricted their distribution to the west and southwest. Furthermore, recent monitoring efforts have detected few individuals and their status is unknown. Intensive surveys to locate individuals combined with occupancy and N-mixture (abundance) models identified continued occupancy of semi-natural sites in the island's west and southwest, but also highlighted poor detectability of the species unless utilising a large survey effort. Therefore, a large amount of effort is required to determine absence of snakes, and declines in the population cannot be detected with reasonable power. Occupancy models were more reliable than N-mixture models, particularly due to the risks of closure violation when estimating abundance. Nonetheless, N-mixture models estimated an abundance of 48 snakes (95% CI: 23‒1279) across the study sites. Radio-tracking also provided evidence for low detection rates. Additionally snakes demonstrated small ranges (mean: 2.48 ha ± 3.54 SD), site fidelity, preferences for ranges close to paths and compost heaps, but avoided crossing roads. Snakes were positively associated with structurally complex habitats including rough grassland, dense scrub and gorse at multiple spatial scales, but negatively with open and wooded habitats. Species distribution modelling indicated similar habitat preferences to radio-tracking and poor suitability of agricultural habitats. Areas close to amphibian prey populations were also suitable whereas those with high road densities were not. A fifth of Jersey contained priority conservation areas, however almost 90% of these areas do not receive statutory protection. Those in the west and southwest should be prioritised for protection due to their proximity to extant subpopulations. Mitochondrial genes identified the population to belong to a western lineage of grass snakes Natrix helvetica helvetica, with a probable natural colonisation prior to separation from northwest France. Within Jersey, microsatellite markers identified three subpopulations, with significant differentiation between snakes in the south and west. This coincides with a dense urban area, through which connectivity needs improvement. The Jersey grass snake population can be classified as regionally Vulnerable (D2) under IUCN guidelines. The study illustrates how nature reserves are important for maintaining isolated subpopulations and the potential avenues by which statutory protection, sympathetic management practices and efforts to improve inter-reserve connectivity can contribute to conservation objectives.