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This ethnographic study concerns the conceptual and symbolic interrelationships between heritage tourism and national identity. The research focuses on the World Heritage Site of Changdeok Palace in Seoul, South Korea (Republic of Korea). The study's theoretical framework suggests that heritage is not only a fundamental attribute of national culture but an important form of symbolic embodiment through which people can construct, reconstruct and communicate their sense of national belonging. This thesis examines discourses of nationalism and the nation, as well as perspectives concerning heritage tourism and past representations, emphasising that it is possible to actualise national identities and notions of nationhood in the ordinary realm of everyday life. Moreover, there is scope to examine nationalist sentiments and heritage tourism experiences within the context of a newly modernised (non-western) society. This study utilises a multi-method (qualitative) approach: ethnographic interviews with visitors and palace employees; observational accounts derived from `systematic lurking' situations; participatory techniques through active involvement in guided tours; utlisation of friendly conversations; and open evaluation of written (visitor) narratives. The findings indicate that a sense of `Koreaness' is firmly grounded in an emotional attachment to the nation, evoked during people's heritage encounters. The Changdeok experience encourages individuals to embody and personalise a sense of national belonging in a country that has been historically subjugated and geographically redefined. Visitor interpretations and representational narratives concerning the roles of `significant others' (Japan, North Korea and the West) encourages South Koreans to recontextualise their national consciousness and self-(collective) identities. Changdeok's auspicious setting arguably encourages people to escape the ordinary realms of everyday life, achieving intense but brief symbolic inversions further depicting that heritage tourism can be conceptualised as a spiritual journey of national rediscovery and cultural continuity. Heritage tourism experiences at Changdeok Palace serve as conscious mechanisms by which individuals' subjective and (inter)-contextual understanding of heritage contributes to embracing the nation's complex past, as well as helping to provide an understanding of its unique present. Finally, the work arguably illustrates that the study of heritage tourism can help to unfold the nuances and complexities associated with national identification.

This thesis asserts the importance of pleasure and playfulness in relation to 'food events' (Douglas and Nicod, 1974) in early childhood settings and posits that at the current time in the English context, the socia-cultural significance of food and eating is an often silent perspective in relation to food policy and practices, which increasingly elevate its nutritional importance alone. Adopting a social constructionist approach, this study draws on ethnographic data from four early childhood settings, including participant observations of practitioners and children engaged in the habitual activities of their settings over time (children aged six months - four years) as well as semi-structured interviews with 28 practitioners. The key themes of this study are as follows: Food events are occasions when children's bodies are especially subject to civilizing processes in terms of space; time; focusing on the task not the child; 'body rules'; and future-centredness. I develop the idea that practitioners' bodies are also 'disciplined', not least in the notion that they should act as role models of 'healthy' eating and be the physical embodiment of 'health' for young children. Food events in early childhood practice are increasingly constructed as a 'risky' business, with children as a group constructed as 'dangerous' as well as 'in danger'. Moreover, some working class families' food practices are similarly constructed. I contend that an over-concern with risk avoidance may be antithetical to other long-held ideas about early childhood practice, notably the importance of playfulness and spontaneity. In discussing the importance of playfulness in relation to food events, I develop a representation that conceptualizes food events in early childhood practice in terms of real/pretend and serious/playful in order to position practices relating to food events in terms of their 'fit' into the general activity of the early childhood settings. Throughout the study I draw upon the perspectives of practitioners and young children and emphasise that both groups engage in the joint construction of 'rules' relating to food events as well as practices that subvert the civilizing and risk-avoidance practices of the settings and the policies that inform them. I conclude by suggesting that the implications of this study go beyond a consideration of food events. I argue that early childhood practice is increasingly centred on a project of taming children's futures at the expense of their immediate and embodied experiences; something that highlighting food events brings into sharp focus. I assert that pleasure and playfulness are important for children and adults alike and need to be valued in early childhood practice.

This thesis presents the results of ethnographic research conducted from 1995 to 1997 among sex workers in two Calcutta redlight areas where a STD/HIV Intervention Project (SHIP) is being implemented. The thesis provides an in-depth study of sex workers' lives, their concepts of sexual health and their relationship to the SHIP. This material is used to critically consider a number of key concepts currently informing HIV prevention practice, specifically, sexual health, community participation, empowerment and behaviour change. Initial chapters set the background to the study and describe the complex world of the Calcutta sex trade and sex workers' struggle to construct a meaningful social identity. Subsequent chapters consider sex workers' and other actors' varying responses to, and interpretations of, the SHIP. These are related to an analysis of the process of project implementation, revealing the context-dependent, strategic, meaningful and contested nature of community, identity, participation and empowerment, and also highlighting the significance of different constructions of agency for the ways in which these concepts are expressed by different actors. The thesis goes on to examine sex workers' own (vis a vis biomedical) perceptions of sexual health and, drawing upon the SHIP as an example, analyses the representations, meanings and strategic uses of different kinds of knowledge and its perceived role in behaviour change. The next chapter looks at the varying meanings that sexual practices take on for sex workers in the context of their social and occupational position. It examines women's strategies around safer sex and uses this material to critique conventional theories of behaviour change, arguing for a perspective that acknowledges sex workers' agency yet recognizes the ways in which its expression is shaped and constrained by micro and macro level socio-cultural and economic forces. The thesis concludes by arguing that in-depth ethnographic research on sex workers' lives combined with a contextually embedded analysis of the processes and meanings of an intervention yields important insights for understanding, developing and replicating effective HIV prevention initiatives among this group.

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This thesis considers the relationships between the human and non-human animals involved in foxhunting, an activity traditionally dismissed as 'sportive' (and therefore highly immoral) by external commentators. However, in light of five years of fieldwork which involved riding to hounds, working as an agricultural laborer, and breeding, exhibiting and dealing 'livestock' as a member of a farmers' hunt in a rural community in West Wales, I suggest that the foxhunting enacted in this specific context can be regarded as a form of subsistence hunting, even though the quarry itself is not eaten. I argue that once the emotional and embodied experiences of the mounted followers of the hunt in question are understood, their motivations for participating in this activity can be articulated as responses to four key questions what constitutes an animal, what constitutes community, what does it mean to be 'Welsh' and what constitutes normalcy In order to appreciate the importance of these questions, and formulate my own responses alongside those of my informants, I had to experience this way of life in its entirety. This entailed coming to terms with the inescapable fact that while non-human animals were integral to my informants' day-to-day existence, animal death was a more significant reality. Viewed in these terms, 'hunting' took on new meaning, as the duality of life and death in the countryside was negotiated in a sacrificial ritual, and local Welsh farmers reasserted their individual and collective identities in response to external threats. My informants' narratives are interwoven with an account of my own reflexive 'journey' from staunch 'anti' to tolerant sympathizer, an outcome which I had certainly not anticipated, and which makes the conclusions all the more resonant in the current political climate, where 'hunting' is not only widely perceived as 'deviant' but is now also a criminal activity.

Grounded in long-term fieldwork, this thesis develops an ethnography of two aspects of Dogon material culture: the Dogon landscape and the Dogon habitation, both of which are defined as containers. The examination of these two discrete metaphorical and material epistemologies, which are conceptualised as 'skin envelopes', seeks implicit forms of worldviews that are objectified in their materiality. In other words, the research focuses on the expressions of a daily generative cosmology as it is grounded in pragmatic, material and routine embodied activities that relate to the 'making' and 'doing' of these two forms of container. Framed within an Anthropology of Techniques, the study employs a combined praxeological and phenomenological approach entailing the participant observation of body-kinetic and sensory experience of containers. In addition, observations of the body movements involved in the making and storing of things in the compound expose the containers in a visual sequence called 'chaine operatoire' that also constitutes a frame of analysis, one devised through the recording of the manufacturing and use of the containers. Thus, through an empirical, descriptive, reflexive, and processual approach to Dogon containers and related worldviews, my research elaborates theoretical perspectives on a Dogon philosophy of containment that is defined within a materiality perspective. In doing so, I demonstrate that particular local ways of 'being-in-the-world' or 'being-at-home in a world container' are generated through the material qualities of the Dogon landscape, or cosmoscape, and the domestic sphere of the compound. These operate through a gathering process and boundary-making devices that create the inside/outside locales in which people dwell and which generate a sense of ontological security in a particular scarce environment.

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This PhD examines horseracing in Britain. It is based upon fifteen months fieldwork in Newmarket, Suffolk, often referred to as the International Headquarters of Flat Racing. My research consisted of participant observation within the four main aspects of the racing industry; on a stud, at a training stable, at the Tattersalls sales and with professional gamblers and bookmakers on the racecourse. I also conducted interviews with racing officials and with individuals who considered themselves to be members of 'Newmarket families'. In addition, I examined the consumption of horseracing by gamblers. Betting on horseracing contradicts the ideology of pedigree whereby breeding will determine ability, and is therefore one of the sources of conflict between the suppliers and the consumers of racing. My intention was to examine the idea of pedigree as it is applied to the English thoroughbred. I have sought to specify the mechanism by which this idea can be applied to the human contingent of racing society, such that the hierarchy amongst animals naturalises the hierarchy amongst humans and vice versa. The thesis focuses particularly upon the ideas of relatedness held by members of racing society who consider themselves to be 'real Newmarket families'. Racing ability is envisaged as born and bred rather than taught, and racing credentials rest upon one's claims to kinship with successful individuals. Despite the apparent basis of this system in the sharing of blood, connections may also be created in its absence. It is argued that the ideology of pedigree contains a descriptive element, according to which relations of blood are mapped, and also a cultural imperative whereby ability must be explained on the basis of breeding. I suggest that it is this imperative which maintains the class based division of labour within racing. The naturalisation of class inequalities through the conventions of the racecourse, the jockey's apprenticeship, and the embodiment of taste (Bourdieu 1984) are all considered at length. I describe the ideology of pedigree as containing a theory of reproduction similar to that described by Delaney (1986), and ideas of relatedness which Bouquet has identified in the genealogical method (1993). These ideas are most completely worked out in relation to favoured animals, particularly racehorses. However, ideas of nature in Newmarket enable the application of pedigree to humans also. Nature in Newmarket is both a separate realm from humanity and also a realm encompassing humans. Racehorses can thus be made to stand, metaphorically, for persons, whilst in other contexts they may be conceptualised as 'man's noblest creation', such that humans are outside, and opposed to, nature. Both these conceptions of 'nature' are illustrated with relevant fieldwork examples. The final section of this thesis considers the impact of the new reproductive technologies upon thoroughbred breeding. These techniques are explicitly outlawed by the International Stud Book, and the debate surrounding their use in the future stresses ideas of the loss of control of blood. I argue that racing society in Britain is thus experiencing a literalising process (Strathern 1992b) whereby the class imperatives which inhere in the ideology of pedigree may be exposed.

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