This thesis provides an in-depth empirical analysis of the character and significance of media and communication in the World Social Forum (WSF), focusing on their relationship to processes of knowledge production. Using the concept of publics as a theoretical tool, it explores how, through mediated communication, forum organisers and communication activists seek to extend the WSF in time and space and thereby make it public. Engaging critically with the idea of the WSF as a global process, the thesis considers how mediated communication might contribute to making the WSF global, not so much in absolute terms as by creating a sense of globality, and how the idea of the global relates to other scales. It develops an understanding of the WSF as an epistemic project that seeks both to affirm the existence and validity of multiple knowledges and to facilitate convergence between them, and considers how different communication practices might further this project. Based on ethnographic research carried out in connection with the WSF 2009 in Belém, complemented by fieldwork at other social forums, the thesis is structured as a series of case studies of different communication practices, ranging from efforts to engage with conventional mass media to various initiatives that seek to strengthen movement-based communication infrastructures and enable WSF participants to communicate on their own terms. These demonstrate that there are many different approaches to making the WSF 'public' and 'global', which beyond facilitating the circulation of media content also involve mobilising new actors to participate in media production and generating a sense of identification with a global WSF process. They also show that mediated communication can contribute to knowledge production not only by facilitating information sharing, but also through the more subtle processes of empowerment, network-building, and translation across difference it can stimulate when embedded in movement dynamics.

This thesis addresses shortfalls in the sociological literature on diaspora, ethnicity and ethnicity-making amongst diasporic individuals. My original contribution is an improved and more nuanced take on diasporic individuals’ ethnicities and the mechanisms through which these ethnicities are made. I will do this by reconfiguring collectivist versions of diaspora into an individualised transdiasporic space, and redefining ethnicity as transdiasporic ethnicity. Transdiasporic ethnicities are made in the social intimacies and distances between individuals and between their ethnic lifestyles (sets of aesthetic markers). Such distances are affected by individuals’ ethnic tastes – preferences for or against different lifestyles. My arguments are based on a study of Chinese Singaporeans and their wedding rituals. Weddings are microcosms of transdiasporic space – multiple crossroads for intersecting diasporic journeys and everyday lives. I will employ a visually-focussed form of participant observation, arguing that the use of photographs with text creates a richer space to do sociological work. I will also develop a methodological framework of photography as visual poetry, creating an emotional texture that text alone struggles to achieve. Chinese Singaporeans engage in outward-facing taste performances which reveal their ethnic lifestyles to others. Juxtaposed taste performances often lead to aesthetic dissonance, which encourages individuals to make decisions affecting their ethnic tastes. This tends to result in social distancing between two socially prominent ethnic lifestyles which were politically defined and are now part of popular discourse – “heartlander” and “cosmopolitan”. These lifestyles are often held in tension and tend to be connected to different levels of economic wealth. Commercial activities in weddings perpetuate such linkages, such that socioeconomic aspirations often texture ethnic tastes. I will conclude by considering what aesthetic dissonance says about concepts of ethnic hybridity and syncretism, and propose that a Chinese Singaporean’s economic life-path continues to be affected by the ethnic lifestyles she is socially intimate with.

This thesis addresses the dialectic between the values of capitalism and those of moral economy, and the implications of that dialectic for how people who are engaged in alternative economic practices in Palermo and western Sicily experience their agency. It examines in particular the local commodity network created by people who practised ethical consumption and who worked in fair-trade retail and organic farming. It is based upon fifteen months of fieldwork in the city of Palermo, Sicily’s capital, and its rural province, among predominantly lower-middle-class citizens. In contrast to abstract views of the market logic as the dominant one in industrialised societies, the people of Palermo and western Sicily drew upon numerous values from outside a capitalist belief system to conceptualise the economy as a moral construct. However, the ways in which they did so were mobile, contested and ambiguous, and varied along the lines of production, exchange and consumption. The thesis explores how notions of value, normativity and motivations to behave ethically in economic processes all had to be negotiated through the demands of daily life. It therefore argues that the economic, political, and cultural constraints faced by people striving to build alternative economies cannot be overlooked, thus interrogating ethnographically the central anthropological issue of how and if economies are embedded in social relations. The thesis begins with an outline of the three main groups of actors—consumers, fair-traders and farmers—and how they embody the recent historical transformations that have taken place in Sicily. It then looks in detail at each group, analysing how agency is played out both at the symbolic and practical level. The final chapter highlights the commonalities and contradictions shown by this local moral economy.

This thesis explores the legacy created by the process of unification of the formerly divided city of Berlin. It is a micro study of a local community-based organisation in the East of the city, where primarily local people from East and West Berlin had set up a Neighbourhood Centre, using as their model existing neighbourhood houses in the West of Berlin. This micro- study is located in the context of global and localized processes that contributed decisively to the final collapse of the East German State. The research explores how the often cataclysmic changes and ruptures in their customary life and work affected citizens, especially women, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification with West Germany in 1990. Women played a crucial role in the everyday life and management of the organization in question. Their life stories and experiences inform much of the analysis contained in this thesis. The ethnography consistently involves people’s narratives and the transmission of different historical and intergenerational discourses and the comparative views about the previous and the current quality of life under different political and economic systems. The House, in which the Centre is located, reflects the broader history of the region. It was a Jewish Children’s Home until 1940 and thus carries the narrative of a past that was both German and Jewish. It continued to serve largely child and adolescent groups in subsequent political systems. Today, that legacy is marked and commemorated and is fundamental to the Centre’s aim of contributing to the transmission of memory to younger generations. The research explores how the often cataclysmic changes in customary life styles affected citizens and how they individually and collectively translated their experiences and life stories into ‘workable scripts’ for the present. The present is frequently framed in relation to the multiple layering of memories and the individual and collective negotiation of disillusionment. Since the Unification has been and is still being acted out in the context of global economic and geopolitical relationships, the absence of a real consensus about what kind of society people want in the light of their joint and separate experience is an ongoing, interesting and challenging process and again part of a larger discourse. My own participation in the activities in the House and in the neighbourhood shows how men and women involved in the construction of neighbourhoods and landscapes find themselves far from being victims of history and events beyond their control. Methodologically the participation in a variety of activities was central to the process of research, building relationships, gaining trust and insights into people’s different views. The research demonstrates how personally relevant and engaging relationships built around common goals and needs, can mitigate the frequently traumatising and debilitating effects of rapid transformation. The research also raises questions about the future of such small enterprises in the constantly changing climate of financial constraints.

The current thesis aimed to evaluate and extend research into children’s interpretation of violations of physical laws of causality. A central question of this thesis was: what factors might govern children’s scepticism versus credulity with respect to magical causality? Specifically, why are some children more easily fooled than others? Study 1 provided evidence of age differences in children’s beliefs with respect to mental- physical causality. Older children (11-12-year-olds) were more sceptical about the efficacy of wishing than younger children (4-5 and 6-7-year-olds). Moreover, older children were less likely than younger children to claim that mental processes can directly affect the physical world. Subsequent studies in the thesis focused on various factors that might contribute to individual differences in children’s interpretation of a conjuring trick (i.e. an event that ostensibly involved a violation of object permanence). Study 2 found that 4-6-year-olds made a distinction between real magic and tricks, but that direct social influence in the form of repetitive questioning influenced children’s offered verbal causal explanations. In contrast, Study 3 found that the majority of 9-11-year-olds interpreted the demonstration as a trick, had a clear understanding of conjuring as trickery and were less likely to conform to experimenter pressure in the form of repetitive questioning. Study 4 results suggested that 4-6-year-old children’s verbal responses are a true representation of beliefs as evidenced by verbal judgments correlating with behavioural reactions. However, an indirect social influence in the form of a visual clue that hinted at trickery influenced level of verbal scepticism. Furthermore, children’s level of social confidence was linked to their level of active exploration. The final two studies in the thesis offered support for individual differences in children’s responses that may be related to theory of mind ability. Study 5 found a link between 4-6-year-olds’ level of advanced theory of mind and responses, as well as an age-related increase in scepticism. Study 6 found a link between 5-71⁄2-year-olds’ first-order theory of mind and understanding of trickery that was not affected by age. It was, therefore, concluded that young children’s acknowledgement of trickery and level of scepticism about magical events is not characterized by a simple age-related developmental influence. Importantly, socio-cognitive skills may play a role.

Thirty years after redefining the political landscape of Nicaragua, Sandinismo is both a unifying discourse and one driven by different interpretations by adherents. This thesis examines the complex legacy of Sandinismo by focusing on the still widely acclaimed notion of Sandinismo as an idiom of popular participation. A central point is the current unity of the movement, as it is perceived by Sandinistas, depends on a limited number of common reference points over the last 100 years of Nicaraguan history, which are interpreted very differently Sandinistas and other groups, but which always emphasise the part Nicaraguans play in international relations and the overall importance of popular mass participation in Nicaraguan politics, rather than agreement on current, day-to-day politics. Through my analysis, this thesis questions the view often expressed in anthropological studies and the mainstream press on the development of the Sandinista movement since the 1980s as being one of decay. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in Nicaragua in 2008/09 among mainly urban Sandinistas and some non-Sandinistas in the cities on the Pacific coast, involving formal and informal interviews, the thesis concludes that Sandinismo continues to involve grassroot elements of popular participation and that Nicaragua interpretations of history across ideological groups have in common that the actions of individual Nicaraguans are seen as shaping historical changes, which in turn validates and lends importance to such grassroots elements.

This thesis is concerned with the politics of the preservation and ‘abandonment’ of female circumcision in Fouta Toro, Senegal. The focal point of analysis is the overt opposition to the law criminalising female genital cutting in 1999, and development projects raising awareness about excision in human rights and reproductive health education programmes. As an ethnography of the politics around bodily practices in the light of governmental and non-governmental intervention, the thesis looks at how different interest groups justify their position towards excision. This is a timely enquiry, given the Senegalese government’s ‘acceleration programme of the complete abandonment of excision by 2015’ and some Futanke leaders’ non-compliance with, and opposition to this intervention. After providing details about ‘the ban’ on ‘female genital mutilation’ in Senegal and a critical reflection on the events that are seen to have led to the call for this ban, I carefully disentangle what ‘the opposition to the law’ is and who disagrees with ‘the abandonment’ of the practice in Fouta Toro. The central part of the thesis is guided by an analysis of how excision is embedded in constructions of personhood, sociality and ethnic identity, and how the body is imagined and located in this process. I show how conceptions of ethnic purity and pride are formulated in terms of fear about a ‘loss of culture’ and ‘foreign invasion’ which nourishes discourses of opposition to the law and non-governmental intervention. Others use ‘human rights’ associated with non-governmental organisations and the state as a vehicle to express their views against excision and those who oppose its criminalisation. I examine how idioms like ‘the state’, ‘human rights’ and ‘Futanke way of life’ feature in discourses around the ban of excision in Fouta Toro, and how respectability and honour are maintained through competing representations of the female body as a site of morality. Some claim the female body – a reproducer of cultural identities – with reference to duties through kin obligations, others with reference to ‘human rights’ and ‘the state’. Based on 15 months’ ethnographic fieldwork in Fouta Toro and nine years working in and researching the impact of development in Senegal, this dissertation contributes to scholarship on Fouta Toro and indicates how governmental and non-governmental intervention stirs up the caste-related power structures of a society led by the Tooroɓɓe since the Islamic revolution in the 18th century. It shows how the female body is located as a site of morality, key to the reproduction of cultural identities.

This thesis provides a sociological investigation of contemporary branding practices and their increasing investment in consumer involvement, participation and co-creation. Revisiting the role of brands in contemporary capitalism, it shows that brands are not discrete, purely economic entities, but emerge in relations to multiple actors and are distributed across a series of spaces, societal issues and temporalities. The key objective of this thesis is to explore how brands are involved in (re)organising the boundaries between economy and society, allowing for a multiplication and continuation of value production. In an empirical exploration featuring two case studies on Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and American Apparel, this thesis brings together social and digital research methods in order to trace and map the distributed becoming of both brands. Attention is directed to three key intersections: the embeddedness of brands in relations, the distributed spatialisation of brands, and the role of bodies and sexuality as issue deployed in branding practices. What a brand stands for, I argue, cannot be limited to its strategic ‘making’, but is tied to its emergent and distributed ‘happening’. Informed by my the fieldwork, I develop the claim that contemporary brands are increasingly partible, as they are reliant on their constant re-appropriation by a variety of actors and are therefore entangled in a ‘becoming topological’, as they are defined through relations which can only be accounted for from the inside. Brands emerge as a specific socio-economic form involved in what I call ‘continuous economies’, in which economic value production increasingly arises from non-economic activities and becomes inherently partible in social activities. Such continuous economies are being animated by the brands’ capacity to create multi-valence, in which consumer activities are at the same time social, cultural and economic acts. Continuity, in this context, addresses a specific mode of boundary making, one that brings together brands and consumers without dissolving them into each other but that maintains a specific imbalance and asymmetry between them. Brands do not, as suggested by some sociological critique, merely subsume social activities into exploitative labour, but enable the organisation of continuity and discontinuity between the social and the economic in immanent ways, while at the same time displacing value production temporally and pre-structuring its potential futures.

This thesis is a sociological investigation on the recycling of urban waste. It is based on fieldwork carried out in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. The author used a combination of interviews, analyses of quantitative data, and participant observation to understand the work and modes of organisation of informal collectors of recyclables in this city. Curitiba is known in Brazil as the “first-world capital” and, in the world of urban planning, as a “model city” or an “ecological capital city”. These encomiums result in part from Curitiba’s ground-breaking recycling campaigns and systems of waste collection, sorting, and commercialisation. However, the city’s model image hides an army of urban poor and circuits of informal transactions that actually do most of the recycling work. These informal infrastructures are mostly responsible for the city’s official recycling rates, which are comparable to those of the most recycle-minded European cities. The main objective of this research project was to highlight what has been wasted in the building of these idealised images, both of the city and of municipal recycling. The work, organisation, and political struggles of waste-pickers in Curitiba provided the opportunity to carry out this project. Through their work and forms of organisation, waste-pickers (catadores) struggle for a space and for change in the urban economy. The author’s thesis is that catadores’ position in between systems of value, presents a chance to challenge dominant discourses on recycling, which waste people and resources. I introduce the notion of 'countercycling' in order to make sense of the hidden politics of urban recycling.

This thesis is an examination into how nationalism continues to be an important source of identification and solidarity for people participating in alter-globalisation movements. Based on ethnographic research throughout the Zapatista Other Campaign, this thesis looks at the process of building Zapatista solidarity. This research thus follows Zapatismo, looking at how nationalism is a way of talking and of thinking about belonging in ways that develop ‘real’ material structures of solidarity and recognition. It explores what happens to ‘the national’ in the consolidation of ‘neozapatismo’ – a social and political project imagined as an alternative to neoliberal globalisation. Much of the academic literature on alter-globalisation lacks a critical engagement with questions of nationalism and national identity preferring instead to focus on global connections, and how these produce new, radical and innovative social imaginings. By radicalising notions of ‘democracy, justice and liberty’ the Zapatistas are seen to exemplify the possibility of radical politics in their practice of autonomy. Through research carried out in multiple sites across Mexico, Los Angeles and New York City, this thesis looks at how autonomy is lived and experienced in the everyday. It explores some of the different discourses of and about the Zapatistas that have emerged, looking to understand some of the ways in which neozapatismo is mediated, identifying two key players: Subcomandante Marcos and ‘alternative’ media. This thesis addresses questions of how to re-think ‘the national’ in imaginings of alternative forms of globalisation that can translate into social and political action.