This thesis traces the ways of explaining the generative process by the eastern Peruvian descendants of the Capanahua. These predominately Spanish-speaking people tend to emphasize the discontinuity with their ancestors, a little known Panoan-speaking indigenous population of the Western Amazon. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and transcriptions of recorded conversations, this presentation follows and reconstructs a salient frustrative-generative dynamic in a wide range of representations, wherein alterations of self-containment or perceptibility incept the processes of differentiation and discontinuity. These processes guide a local conception of “descent” as infliction. Implications of this dynamic are examined for the formulations of kinship. The familial relations, explicitly based on notions of consanguinity and filiation – are cast in an ambiguous, if not predominately negative light. Procreation is formulated in predatory, parasitic terms, and shares dynamics with pathogenic causality and aetiology. As such, it does not naturally contribute to reproduction and continuity, but rather frustrates it by introducing difference into the vertical axis. Such results also produce horizontal differences and hierarchies, encoded as the person's divergent, hidden “descent” in the always “mixed” social life. This image of the generative process is instrumental to understanding the villagers' explanations of the acculturative processes. Because representations of acculturation focuses on the idiom of procreation and its frustrative results, it appears as the very function of procreative dynamics. This produces a series of associations between the progeny and sociality, focusing on their inherently “third” or external position and perpetual dividuality of belonging/containing. Such ambiguity might be tamed and everted, to produce cleansing or encompassment that counteracts the divisive continuity of time (qua descent, history, or kinship). In a contemporary context, these formulations are seen reflected in the villagers' construal of the Peruvian state as the urban environment that is hierarchically closer to the ideal originality and beautiful imperishability than the smaller, isolated unities of rural ancestors.

The field of X-ray imaging and X-ray diffraction have been combined in a new technique called Tomographic Energy Dispersive Diffraction Imaging (TEDDI). This diffraction imaging technique allows 3D sample images to be obtained, non-destructively, where each imaged point contains the atomic structural information associated with its diffraction pattern. The main drawback of the TEDDI technique is the long collection times needed to produce the images. In order to overcome this obstacle the rapid TEDDI (rTEDDI) system has been developed at the University of Manchester's Material Science Centre. The research and development of rTEDDI has been the focus of this PhD thesis. A proof of concept for the rTEDDI imaging technique was obtained using thin samples on station 7.6 SRS Daresbury. In this case a first generation array collimator was used in conjunction with an energy resolving Si pixelated detector. Structural information such as lattice parameters, crystal system and phase identiffcation were obtained for metal, polymer and deer antler bone samples. The use of high Z semiconductor detector material was investigated in order to increase the potential of TEDDI for larger and more dense samples. To enable penetration of larger samples high energy X-rays needed to be utilized. In order to detect these higher energies with a good efficiency the detector media was changed from Si to CdZnTe (CZT).The second generation rTEDDI, using CZT as the detection media, was intended to be used under high flux/high energy synchrotron radiation conditions. Testing of the system under these conditions on station 16.3 SRS Daresbury showed an inability to produce diffraction imaging. An in depth investigation into detector and collimator array performance showed a two fold cause. The ERD2004 detector was unable to handle the high countrates experienced during high flux/high energy synchrotron radiation conditions. The MK1.2 collimator array was found to become partially transparent to X-ray energies around the absorption edge of W resulting in the swamping of the diffraction signal under high flux/high energy synchrotron radiation conditions. A new detector Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design, developed by the detector division and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Data Aquisition (DAQ) system, developed by Aspect Systems, as well as a number of new collimator array designs were developed and tested. Testing of the new collimator array structures have shown positive results and the new HEXITECdetector which was designed to be able to handle high countrates, have shown an unprecedented inter pixel uniformity and energy resolution which have been attributed to the ASIC performance and the use of better quality CZT material.

This thesis examines the construction of ethnic identity, autonomy and indigenous citizenship in plurinational Bolivia. In 2009, the Kallawayas, an Andean indigenous nation, took advantage of legislation in Bolivia's new constitution to begin a process of legally constituting themselves as autonomous from the state. The objective of Indigenous Autonomy in the constitution is to allow indigenous nations and peoples to govern themselves according to their conceptions of ‘Living Well'. Living well, for the Kallawayas is understood in terms of what it means to be runa, a person living in the ayllu (the traditional Andean community). The Kallawayas are noted as healers, and sickness and health is understood as related to the maintenance of a ritual relationship of reciprocity with others in the ayllu, both living humans and ancestors, remembered in the landscape. Joint ritual relations with the landscape play an important role in joining disparate Kallawaya ayllus with distinct traditions and languages (Aymara, Quechua and the Kallawaya language Macha Jujay are spoken) together as an ethnic group. However, Kallawaya politics has followed the trajectory of national peasant politics in recent decades of splitting into federations divided along class and ethnic lines. The joint ritual practices which traditionally connected the Kallawaya ayllus adapted to reflect this new situation of division between three sections of Kallawaya society. This has meant that the Kallawayas are attempting political autonomy as an ethnic group when they have never been more fractured. This thesis then examines the meaning of autonomy and the Good Life for a politically divided and ethnically diverse indigenous people.

Quels sont les « savoirs ancestraux » des « peuples et nations indigènes » reconnus par la Constitution adoptée par l'Équateur en 1998? L’étude ethnographique d’une communauté kayambi permet de mieux comprendre comment la dynamique des mutations à l’œuvre dans cette société porte et est portée par la parole mythique et rituelle. Elle montre comment, d’années en années, à la fin juin, les rituels associés à la fête de San Pedro se perpétuent en dépit des changements qui affectent les conditions de vie des Kayambi et pourquoi l’Aya-Uma, figure centrale de ces rituels et synthèse de l'histoire de l'imaginaire kayambi, n'est pas qu'une figure du patrimoine. La parole mythique recueillie auprès des Kayambi lors de très nombreux entretiens a permis de reconstituer un système associant aussi bien les thèmes introduits par l’évangélisation que ceux de l’univers aquatique des Apus ou les éléments de la faune et de la flore. Cette parole ambivalente s’est révélée peuplée de figures elles-mêmes ambivalentes telles que la Chificha, le Condor, Sanson, ou le Chisilongo.Lorsque les Kayambi disent leurs mythes et performent leurs rites ils produisent, pour leur propre communauté, l’expression de leur réalité du moment. Ce faisant ils interprètent leur propre histoire en tant que groupe social communautaire et, parce qu’ils sont en contact avec lui, celle du groupe social plus large que constitue l’Equateur. Les institutions kayambi, à la fois héritage des contraintes coloniales et éléments, constamment réinventés, de l’organisation sociale, constituent un ensemble dont chaque composante ne peut fonctionner isolément.Les paroles mythiques et rituelles des Kayambi portent un ensemble de savoirs correspondant à une médiation sociopolitique collective dont les actes ne se réduisent pas aux moments rituels mais s’étendent à l’ensemble des relations. La préservation de ces savoirs, condition de survie du système social kayambi, repose sur la faculté de transmettre les récits mythiques et d’accomplir les rites. / What are the "traditional knowledge" of the "indigenous peoples and nations" recognized by the 1998 Ecuador Constitution?The ethnographic study of a Kayambi community allows to understand how the dynamics of the changes is carried through mythical and ritual speech. Year after year, in late June, the rituals associated with the festival of San Pedro are perpetuated despite changes that affect the lives and situation of the Kayambi and why Aya-Uma, the central figure of these rituals and a representational synthesis of the history of the Kayambi, and not only a simple patrimonial figure.Mythical speech collected from Kayambi during interviews lends to the reconstruction of a complexe system combining themes introduced by evangelization and the underwater world of the Apus, or elements of fauna and flora. This ambivalent speech is populated by ambivalent figures such as Chificha, Condor, Sanson or Chisilongo.When Kayambi speak their myths and perform their rites they express the reality of the moment for their own community. In so doing they interpret not only their own history, as a social group but the wider social group they are in contact with, that is the nation of Ecuador itself. The Kayambi institutions, both legacy of the colonial coercive order and restructuring elements, constantly reinvent kayambi social organization as a set. They cannot be considered in isolation.Mythical and ritual expressionss should be considered as complementary knowledges acting as a socio-political mediation. Their acts are not confined to ritual moments but extend to all social relations. Thus the preservation of this knowledge is a survival condition of Kayambi social system.