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Ethnic identity plays a fundamental role in the political processes, development strategies and functioning of the state in the Himalayan areas of Sikkim, Darjeeling and eastern Nepal, which are geographically contiguous but politically separate. The eastern Himalayan borderland is a geographical continuum interconnected by the history of migration from Nepal, colonisation, settlement and in recent times by the political upheaval on the basis of ethnicity. Each of these areas has experienced different facets of Nepali identity politics, a trans-border phenomenon which has not only had political repercussions on a regional level but also contributed to the history and identity formation of the entire region. The Nepali ethnic group is an ethno-linguistic category, a meta-identity which subsumes numerous ethnic groups under it. It is organized around the Hindu caste system and unified by the Nepali language. Controversial in its origins, this ethnic group is now undergoing an intense redefinition leading to a variation in the political articulation of ethnicity. Based on qualitative data gathered in Sikkim, Darjeeling and east Nepal the present research is a comparative analysis of the nexus between ethnicity and politics in South Asia. This thesis contests the narrow, parochial and limited frameworks that have been used to study the region and highlights the enactment of politics in an area of high geo-political importance which is located at the periphery of the nation-state of both Nepal and India. The thesis narrates, discusses and analyses how Nepalis in Sikkim, Darjeeling and east Nepal use their ethnicity as a political resource, albeit in very different ways. The variety in political outcomes within a single ethnic group reveals the complex nature of ethnicity and the symbiotic relationship between ethnicity and politics. The case of the Nepalis of the eastern Himalayas is a study of the processes and manifestations of ethnic politics, the various structures and institutions that facilitate identity based politics but most importantly, the resurgence of ethnic politics in rapidly globalizing countries of South Asia.

My thesis examines the complex, fractured and diverse spaces of Asian cultural production in London, highlighting the immensely creative work in this area of popular music. The creation of these spaces presents new and different ideas about the self, and, furthermore, what it means to be young, Asian cultural producers in Britain and beyond. I conducted 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in which I collected interviews and engaged in participant observation in London’s various Asian music spaces - primarily at club nights, but also video shoots, album launches and music shows (large and small) throughout the city. Through ethnographic research, this thesis challenges and adds to the existing knowledge of Asian diasporic cultural production in the UK through the investigation of lived experience of diaspora. In stressing the knowledge that arrives out of everyday interactions this thesis seeks to go beyond the textual and theoretical in understanding diasporic music cultures. Furthermore the thesis explores how the everyday strategies produced within this Asian scene present a clear break from simplistic models of resistance that still forms the dominant reading of youth cultures. I argue that cultural production cannot be identified simply as a site for resistance or accommodation, nor are these Asian cultural producers following a strict binary model of authenticity or commodification. The findings suggest that these Asian music spaces are where young Asians actively engage in and create different and alternative ways of being that move away from ‘official’ constructions of Asians available in media and public debates. Moreover, Asian identities that are forged in these Asian music spaces are complex and contradictory, inclusive and exclusive. I argue that the cultural politics within the scene around representation, identity and production rely on both progressive, open, shifting and contingent definitions and boundaries of ethnic identity and forms of belonging while, at the same time, often impose or reinforce closed, exclusive, static and conservative notions of identity, nation, and gender.

This thesis is based in fieldwork carried out in Borneo from May 1951 to May 1952. It describes something of the history and mode of life of the Penan, a nomadic people numbering about 2650, of whom a third have settled and now live in a fashion similar to that of other more familiar Bornean peoples. The nomadic Penan, with whom I am mainly concerned, live in the primary rain forests that densely cover the uplands and the rocky ridges of the interior. They wander in small groups of from thirty to forty individuals on the average, the extreme of which are separated on the map by about 140 miles of some of the worst country in southeast Asia. It is a harsh land and an exacting one; a land continually drenched with torrential rains throughout the year, folded into great ranges and broken hills and swamps, cut by fast muddy rivers and rocky streams. there is little in it to please a European who lives close enough to it to see it for what it is. The quality of a report depends much on the way the ethnographer sets about his work, and the reception given to what he presents as facts about a strange people depends to some extent on the reader's imaginative realisation (however far short this may fall) of what it costs the observer to obtain them. 'A man must judge his labours by the obstacles he has overcome and the hardships he has endured, and by these standards I am not ashamed of the results'.

In 2000, Tim Ingold argued: 'people do not import their ideas, plans or mental representations into the world, since that very world ... is the homeland of their thoughts. Only because they already dwell therein can they think the thoughts they do' (2000: 186). He thus stressed the importance of place in the construction and reproduction of culture. How does this play out, however, among refugees who by virtue of their displacement must 'import' cultural concepts into alien environments? For those outside a 'homeland' how do they make sense of the world? In this thesis I examine the relationship between Tibetan refugees, the landscapes of their exile and their wider material environment. Drawing on theory in material anthropology and thirteen months' ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two contrasting Tibetan refugee settlements in northwest India, I analyse how Tibetan refugees are affected by, and in turn exert agency over their material world. Through this discussion, I reflect on the multiple and mutable meanings of home for Tibetan refugees, many of whom were born and/or raised in India. Few scholarly discussions of home encompass both its affective and imaginary dimensions; this thesis achieves this by focusing on the material and aesthetic aspects of home. Through this lens, I explore how refugees both work hard to develop a sense of home in exile, yet simultaneously destabilise this by orienting themselves towards an imagined home in a future 'free Tibet'. The discussion unfolds thematically, through chapters focusing on several material categories: landscape, the built environment, dress and objects. I develop my analysis via existing theoretical literature in material anthropology and its sub-disciplines, transnational and migration studies, and area-specialist literature in Tibetology.

Dans cette thèse, j'interroge le développement rapide, au Vietnam et dans les années 2000, d'une forme nouvelle de rituel de possession par les morts, appelée áp vong (littéralement : appliquer/apposer l'âme). L'une des particularités de ces séances est que les défunts n'y sont pas incarnés par le spécialiste rituel, qui ne joue qu'un rôle d'encadrement, mais par un client, par l'intermédiaire duquel les autres membres de la famille pourront interroger leurs morts. Après un exposé du contexte d'idées et de pratiques dans lequel ces rituels sont apparus (représentations liées à la personne, conceptions sotériologiques, autres pratiques de possession), je tente de comprendre la place qu'ils prennent dans la société vietnamienne, marquée par une transformation profonde de la relation entre les vivants et les morts liée au traumatisme de la guerre. Cela m'amène à analyser les aspects politiques de cette innovation rituelle : en effet, la popularisation fulgurante des séances de áp vong a eu pour théâtre des « centres de recherche » créés par des intellectuels vietnamiens se posant en promoteurs de ces pratiques face à un pouvoir central pris entre sa volonté d'éradiquer les « superstitions » et son devoir de prendre en charge la mémoire des victimes de la guerre. Enfin, pour tenter de comprendre ces rituels, où ceux qui incarnent les morts ne sont ni des médiums, ni des victimes de l'affliction causée par un défunt, et où la possession est constamment en train de se faire et de se défaire (j'accorde une place importante aux séances qui ne « fonctionnent » pas ou mal), j'adopte une approche constructiviste visant à lire la possession autour du possédé plutôt qu'en lui. De là, je propose de considérer la possession comme une épreuve, au sens que la sociologie pragmatique a donné à ce terme : une qualification négociée de la réalité, portant dans ce cas sur l'attribution d'une agentivité (celle d'un défunt) à un corps (celui du possédé). / In this thesis, I question the quick development, in the years 2000 in Vietnam, of a new form of possession by the dead, called áp vong (litterally : to affix the soul). One of the specificities of these séances is that the dead are not embodied by the ritual specialist, who only plays a supervizing role, but by a client, through whom other members of the family will consult their dead relatives. After a presentation of the context of ideas and practices in which these rituals appeared (person-realted reprentations, soteriological conceptions, other practices of possession), I attempt to understand the place they take in contemporary Vietnamese society, which is characterized by a deep transformation of the relation between the living and the dead related to the trauma of war. This leads me to analyze the political aspects of this ritual innovation : the dazzling popularization of áp vong séances mainly took place in « research centers » created by Vietnamese intellectuals acting as promoters of these practices, facing a central power taken between its will to eradicate « superstitions » and its duty to take charge of the memory of the victims of the war. Finally, in order to try to understand these rituels, where those who embody the dead are not mediums, nor victims of spirit afflictions, and where one can constantly witness the making and the un-making of possession (special attention is payed to to séances that « don't work »), I build a constructivist approach aiming at reading possession around the possessed subject rather than inside him. From there, I propose to consider possession as a test (épreuve), in the sense that French pragmatic sociology gave to this notion : a negociated qualification of reality, which in this case deals with the attribution of an agency (that of a dead) to a body (that of the possessed subject).

This thesis is based on fieldwork carried out m Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. The main focus of the work is the Dai people, one of China's fifty-five so called 'Minority Nationalities'. I aim to paint a picture of the complex processes through which Dai ways of being and images of them are created and recreated. This is not to suggest that the Dai constitute a bounded group. Although Chinese official discourse presents a static, rigid picture of the so-called 'Minority Nationalities', I hope to have demonstrated that the everyday experiences of those in Banna are governed by a fluid and dynamic relationality. Images of 'Minority Nationalities' abound in China, these images are multiple and often contradictory. The Dai are known throughout China for their beauty, a beauty often portrayed as highly erotic. In this thesis I explore the implications of this image and the role of the Dai in its formation and continuity. With this in mind I examine the ways that the striking Dai aesthetic is used in the intricate power plays of Xishuangbanna. This work examines aspects of the Dai lived aesthetic and as such it has chapters on tattoo, architecture and feminine beauty. Dai aesthetic knowledge is interlaced with strands of moral, philosophical and cosmological insight, thus this work also includes a chapter on morality, autonomy and cooperation. The penultimate chapter uses vivid ethnography of the Water Splashing festival as a example of play of identities in Xishuangbanna. The Conclusion reiterates that the processes by which images, identities and aesthetic understandings are generated, and by which limits are explored and transgressed in Xishuangbanna are dialogic in character.

L’histoire de la Thaïlande, et sa politique d’intégration des «Montagnards», expliquent la spécificité de la situation des Karen sur le territoire national. Ces derniers ne forment pas un groupe homogène, comme le montre mon ethnographie. A partir, et par la comparaison de deux villages sgaw karen, j’appréhende le vêtement karen et la structure des garde-robes comme révélateurs de «l’identité» de ces populations qui se revendiquent à la fois Karen et Thaïlandaises. Ce qui fait le vêtement karen, les règles internes à la culture karen et les influences extérieures, se dégagent de l’analyse technologique et de la typologie qui en découle. Le processus de constitution des garde-robes, au quotidien et en contexte cérémoniel, mettent en exergue la place centrale de la femme. Le prisme du vêtement nous révèle une société attachée à la continuité des générations et intégrée dans la société thaïlandaise dont elle adopte, en partie, les codes. / The history of Thailand and its integration policy for the «people of the Mountains» account for the specific situation of the Karen on the national territory. As my ethnologic study shows, these people do not constitute a homogeneous group. Taking as a starting point the comparison between two sgaw villages, I consider the Karen garment and the structure of the wardrobes as revealing the identity of these people who claim to be both Karen and Thai. The technological analysis and the ensuing typology outline what characterizes the Karen garment, the internal rules within the Karen culture and the external influences. The process of the development of the wardrobes, in daily use and in ceremonies, highlights the central position of women. Through the prism of the garment, is revealed a society attached to the succession of generations and integrated into the Thai society whose codes it partly adopts.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by 2012 there were 15.4 million refugees and 28.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced to flee their homes due to war or violent conflict across the globe. Upon arrival in their host settings, forced migrants struggle with acute health and material needs, as well as issues related to identity, politics, power and place. The Karen ethnic minority of Burma (also known as Myanmar) has been involved in a prolonged civil conflict with the Burmese military government for nearly six decades. This fighting has resulted in massive internal displacement and refugee flight, and although a ceasefire was signed in 2012, continued violence has been reported. This study among the displaced Karen population along the Thai-Burma border examines the relationships between traditional – or indigenous – medicine, the population's health needs, and the broader social and political context. Research was conducted using an ethnographic case-study approach among 170 participants along the Thai-Burma border between 2003 and 2011. Research findings document the rapid evolution and formalisation of the Karen traditional medical system. Findings show how the evolutionary process was influenced by social needs, an existing base medical knowledge among traditional health practitioners, and a dynamic social and political environment. Evidence suggests that that Karen traditional medicine practitioners, under the leadership of the Karen National Union (KNU) Department of Health and Welfare, are serving neglected and culturally-specific health needs among border populations. Moreover, this research also provides evidence that Karen authorities are revitalising their traditional medicine, as part of a larger effort to strengthen their social infrastructure including the Karen self-determination movement. In particular, these Karen authorities are focused on building a sustainable health infrastructure that can serve Karen State in the long term. From the perspectives of both refugee health and development studies, the revival of Karen traditional medicine within a refugee and IDP setting represents an adaptive response by otherwise medically under-served populations. This case offers a model of healthcare self-sufficiency that breaks with the dependency relationships characteristic of most conventional refugee and IDP health services. And, through the mobilisation of tradition for contemporary needs, it offers a dimension of cultural continuity in a context where discontinuity and loss of culture are hallmarks of the forced migration experience.