The House of Meaning is a study of the perception of the environment and the organisation of space in the boz üy (tent) of the nomadic Kyrgyz. It examines the boz üy as a core metaphor for Kyrgyz nomadic life and as a matrix for the social organisation of that life. I begin this dissertation with a review of Central Asian nomadic history, considering the age of the early nomads, the 'Orientalism' debate, oral history, lineage and tribal relations, and the Kyrgyz oral epic Manas. I then pose the question, "What is a nomad?" and suggest that in order to understand Kyrgyz pastoral nomadism, we need to consider the importance of movement, human-animal relations and the nomadic philosophy of nature. Following this, I consider learning and tradition, focusing on the importance of the family- and home-based nature of Kyrgyz learning, and on the importance the Kyrgyz place on non-declarative learning for the upbringing of children. Then I examine Kyrgyz shyrdak carpets, considering them in terms of the criteria of beauty, skill, form and meaning, and the context in which they are made. Finally, I examine the Kyrgyz boz üy, the felt tent itself, and, through a consideration of form and space in vernacular architecture, attempt to distil the multi-faceted significance of this seemingly simple form of dwelling. I consider geometry, the notion of 'organic' in vernacular architecture, different anthropological approaches to space in architecture, homeliness and the unfolding relationship between the person, the house and the universe. The Kyrgyz are a nomadic people. Their home moves with them and yet it is a still place, the focus and integrating force of their lives. The Kyrgyz boz üy is a 'house of meaning' because it is a generating point for social forces and a centre for learning and change. It is both a microcosm of the universe and a macrocosm of the person. It provides an essential image of the synthesis and synergy of the lives of a nomadic people.

Tibetans in the American diaspora express their identity in different ways. A good proportion of them emphasise the need for the renewal of Tibetan culture in danger of being lost and political engagement as a means of cultural resurgence. The new emerging identities of the Tibetans who have migrated to the United States and among the youth particularly those in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota) have significant roles to play in this discourse. This thesis aims not just to represent their voices but also to examine the nature of Tibetan socialisation through cultural re-education, political engagement and the establishment of space. The relinquishing of political power by the 14th Dalai Lama to Lobsang Sangay in August 2011 reinforces the importance of a struggle that has contributed to how the Tibetans’ negotiate their demands for self-rule in Asia and beyond. This research focuses on the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota) Tibetan community. It not only highlights the new cultural and political fault-lines, but also shows the emerging reality of Tibetan American identity as Tibetans contrast their life experiences and memories of living in South Asia (India, Nepal, Bhutan) as expressed through their own Tibetan narratives.

The thesis is about the experiences of Badagas living in contemporary India as they navigate a society in flux, the extent to which change permeates and influences understandings of self and life. Badagas, like others in India, have been experiencing profound changes as new ideas, products, and ways of living have become widespread. An increasing number of people are migrating to cities in search of education and employment, and technologies such as new media now influence communication and interaction. To understand these new circumstances, the primary concern of the thesis is an investigation of the identities and life quality of Badagas in South India with reference to rural-to-urban migration and new media, an important case study of the impact of India's social and economic transformation on its people, and a timely update of the antiquated picture of Badagas in the literature. At an empirical level, the thesis unpacks how Badagas understand themselves and their lives in today's India. However, it is also about changing the ways they have been understood and represented in the literature. At a theoretical level, therefore, the thesis deconstructs and redefines the meaning of 'Badaga' portrayed in the academic literature, and rebalances inequalities of representation. The thesis, then, is an empirical and theoretical investigation of the meaning of being Badaga, a critical appraisal of previous writings combined with empirical research to advance new ideas. To set the scene of the thesis, the first chapter introduces the Nilgiri and its peoples and their general depiction in the literature, and teases out some of the themes and styles which characterise writings. It also endeavours to identify what is already known about Badagas, and gaps in knowledge, to make a case for the empirical research in subsequent chapters. Chapter one highlights the numerous markers which have been used to differentiate Badagas based on the assumption in the literature that they are a distinct social group sharing a common history and culture. It also reveals the limitations of their portrayal based on the style and trends of social science in the first and latter halves of the twentieth century which reify a simple Badaga identity, an artefact which has since become a staple of the literature. Building on this introduction, chapter two reviews in further detail the diverse ways identity has been deployed in social science generally and the Nilgiri specifically, and the varied, loose, and contradictory ways the identities of Badagas have been documented. Similarly, chapter two also explores the varied meanings of quality of life and previous studies concerning Badagas. The chapter shows the majority of writings align with classical essentialist conceptualisations of fixity and rigidity, and 'the Badagas' as a category of difference has been framed in terms of homogeneity as a bounded group, isolation in a unique region, and speculations of identity change which mirror old-fashioned views of bounded undifferentiated cultures coming into contact, namely a minority group adopting the culture of the majority, as if change among Badagas is a product of the colonial experience. Similarly, regarding their quality of life, the majority of writings are concerned with imperial history and Western culture to speak for Badagas, which positions the changed way of life in the Nilgiri after the arrival of the British as important and superior to the past. Collectively, chapters one and two show previous representation of Badagas, although a rigorous and meticulous attempt at documenting their rich culture and history, is unsatisfactory in both theoretical and practical terms when it comes to understanding identity and life quality, a failure to offer terms with which to understand their complexity and diversity. The methodology of the monograph, outlined in chapter three, provides a contemporary social constructionist approach to iron out the epistemological problems discussed above. It begins with an overview of the multi-site approach of the research, designed to overcome the limitations of previous studies which regard Badagas and the Nilgiri as local and bounded in an isolated region, essentially the removal of geographical barriers to appreciate Badagas as dynamic and mobile and to capture new forms of identities in flux in multiple situations, namely rural-to-urban migration and new media, that transcend bounded spaces. The next section of the chapter introduces the thesis's theoretical orientation, symbolic interactionism, employed to examine the shared subjective experiences, meanings, and lived experiences of Badagas in contemporary India with emphasis on agency, social process, and subjective experience, a deliberate move away from previous macro-level deterministic and functionalist trends in the literature. The remaining sections of chapter three describe the operationalization of identity in the thesis, data collection from forum posts and face-to-face interviews, data analysis involving coding and thematic analysis, and ethical considerations. The thesis's methodology, then, is an interpretative group of complementary methods-multisite ethnography, symbolic interactionism, thematic analysis, and reflexivity-focused on analytically disclosing the subjective knowledge and meaning-making of Badagas, and thus providing greater flexibility in understanding their identities and quality of life. Grounded on this methodology, chapters four and five empirically investigate the identities and life quality of Badagas in two connected locations in a multi-site approach, the first online with Internet forum users, and the second in the real world with rural-to-urban migrants in Bangalore. Specifically, chapter four examines online portrayals and understandings of identity and life among Badagas in a virtual forum community, an online website with discussions in the form of posted messages, and the nature of the new type of community. It begins with a discussion of the paucity of media and visual studies of the Nilgiri and its peoples, the need for further research, and the role of media as a prime information source and facilitator of cultural change. Next is an analysis of the content of the virtual forum, a source of information about the goings-on of Badagas including their past and current circumstances which contain new material hitherto undocumented in the literature. As the first study of new media usage among Badagas, it shows they now have an online presence, a new type of Badaga social collective connected by online social interaction and notions of culture. Regarding identity, a strong sense of being Badaga was revealed in forum dialogues, as the study analysed how forum members articulated and expressed different understandings of their caste, reasserted perceptions of distinctiveness, and deployed identity strategically in activism when they constructed images of Badagas as victims of marginalization. While the findings seem to support, at least from the perspective of forum members, the reification of an overarching Badaga identity as something tangible, the forum discussions also revealed their abstractness and diversity, a heterogeneity of Badaga identities, particularly in lively debates and discussions in which images were contested, defended, and negotiated. Regarding quality of life, a negative depiction was a salient theme in forum discussions which centred on the demise and low profitability of agriculture, and there were also concerns about education and healthcare provision.

This doctoral dissertation examines the inter-subjective processes through which young children are shaped and shape others into persons (hün), as they learn to interact through the Mongolian mode of hierarchical relations. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in the middle Gobi, the research focuses on the period when children (between two and eight years of age) lose their status as indulged and protected babies and learn to assume the role of older brother/sister (ah/egj) and younger sibling (düü). To investigate how children become competent at interacting through the Mongolian mode of hierarchical relations, the study considers three questions: how do children learn to enact etiquette (yos)? How do children develop relations within and outside of their family (ger bül) and family network (ah düü)? How do children learn to work and to become helpful? The research reveals that Mongolian social hierarchy is structurally produced by, and is the product of, an irreconcilable moral tension. On the one hand, children learn to form relations of interdependence and to actively take part in the production of asymmetrical but mutual obligations. On the other hand, children learn to use etiquette to establish relations at the safe distance of respect, and to develop social and emotional skills to protect themselves from the potential dangers of relatedness. By documenting the processes through which children learn to form relations as ah/egj and düü, this study uncovers the social mechanisms which sustain the re-production of Mongolian social hierarchy and the individual skills necessary to be a socially and morally competent Mongolian person. More generally, the dissertation contributes to the anthropological study of personhood by rethinking ‘the cultural construction of the person’ as an ongoing process of learning.

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In contrast to orthodox presentations of 'long distance nationalism' as an abstract politics without accountability or responsibility by theorists like Benedict Anderson, I argue that it is essential in the case of conflict diasporas to conceptualize the nature of diaspora support for homeland insurgencies as a contingent product of lived experience, perception, culture and history. Based on qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork, including an analysis of in-depth personal narratives from within the London Tamil diaspora, I attempt to describe the (trans) formative effects of violence, loss and displacement. I contend that the resulting viewpoints and aspirations carry the imprint of the de-territorialised ‘imagining’ of relationships, belonging and moral community which define the content of long distance nationalism. Using inter-disciplinary ideas from a range of theorists including Arjun Appadurai, I focus on a ‘process of becoming’ by which a specific transnational consciousness is engendered. The idea that conflict diaspora identity is defined by a complex interplay between a contextual and subjective understanding of political discourse; as well as the intellectual, moral, psychological and existential experience of being in diaspora is developed and held up against the current literature. Rather than seeing such displaced communities through the prism of a society in conflict in a distant homeland, I argue that we should consider how conflict has produced a particular epistemology of diasporic space and identity. I conclude by arguing that diaspora identity has its roots not only in a distant homeland but also in the hearts, minds and imagination of diaspora Tamils, where the complex obligations of being human in a time of conflict, override that of being a citizen, physically emplaced within a particular territory. I contend that such a perspective is both essential and yet often overlooked when seeking to interrogate the content of long distance nationalism in the dominant literature.

Depuis des décennies, l’origine du peuple Sakha interroge les chercheurs en raison de ses particularités économiques et linguistiques. L'histoire de la Iakoutie est abordée via les données historiques et les études menées par diverses écoles scientifiques. On assiste, dès la colonisation de la Iakoutie au XVIIème siècle, à une évolution culturelle, notamment sous l'influence de la culture russe et de l’orthodoxie. L'étude historique de la société iakoute au sein de l'État russe, via les données en partie inédites, nous permet d’envisager les facteurs de son évolution au cours des siècles et ses mutations sociétales. Notre étude s'appuie aussi sur les données ethnoarchéologiques qui sont issues des travaux de la mission archéologique française en Sibérie Orientale et en Mongolie.À travers l’ethnoarchéologie, j’étudie le peuplement et l’histoire de cette population. La conservation exceptionnelle de tombes fouillées, liée à la présence du pergélisol, nous permet de mener des études approfondies sur les pratiques funéraires et culturelles à travers le riche mobilier associé à ces tombes. Cette approche transversale de la culture Sakha est utilisée dans notre recherche afin de mieux cerner son évolution, ses ruptures et ses transformations ethniques et culturelles. La visée principale de cette recherche est de montrer la transformation culturelle de la société Sakha entre le XVIIème et le début de XXème siècle avec un regard posé sur les siècles précédents. / For many decades researchers have been interested in the origins of the Sakha culture because of its economic and linguistic distinctive features. The Yakutia history has been examined through historical data and studies conducted by various scientific schools. With the colonization of Yakutia in the 17th century, comes a cultural evolution due in particular to the rise of the influence of Russian culture and Orthodoxy. The historical study of the colonized Yakute society within the Russian State, via the data unedited, enables us to understand the factors of its evolution over the centuries along with its societal mutations. Our study is also based on ethnoarcheological data resulting from the work the French archeological mission in Eastern Siberia and Mongolia. Through ethnoarcheology, I study the population and the history of these people. Thanks to permafrost, the excavated graves are exceptionally well preserved, which gives us the opportunity to conduct in-depth studies on funerary and cultural practices through the rich movable property found with these graves. In our research, we use this transversal approach of the Sakha culture in order to better understand its evolution, discontinuities as well as its ethnic and cultural transformations. The main objective of this research is to highlight the cultural transformation of the Sakha society from the 17th century to the 20th century while observing the previous centuries.

The thesis sets out to examine key aspects of the identity formation of the second-generation of Sri Lankan professional expatriate community in Oman. Brought up in a multicultural environment, the respondents of the current study live in a contradiction in terms of their identity. Sri Lankan youths found themselves excluded from both cultures. They found themselves challenging the stereotypes produced by the mainstream society within which they lived, while also demanding freedom from the taboos and customs followed by their parents. Therefore, the thesis sets out to discover the sense of in between-ness felt by the second-generation respondents that was generated through their encounters with family and multicultural society they inhabited. Although a myriad of variables are known to influence an individual’s identity, the current study focuses on the following factors, identified here as having an impact on second-generation migrant identity formation: the complex nature of migration, the resulting cultural encounters and intergenerational tensions that play a role in shaping and framing of migrant youth identities. The study discusses media exposure, in the form of international satellite TV programming in the Middle East, and its possible impacts on migrant identity formation. The study moves from a media-centric view of social development to a more society-centred view in which media are one part of a matrix of migrant youth identity formation. The findings on identity formation of this research are further explored by examining the two main types of identity: hybrid and cosmopolitan, identified within the research as pertinent in understanding the second generation of Sri Lankan youths’ identity formation. By exploring the intergenerational tensions and the occurrence of in between-ness in identities among second-generation of the Sri Lankan professional expatriates in Oman, it is the aim of this research to add to the general understanding of the dynamics integral to the process of identity construction of migrant youths.