This dissertation is an autoethnographic study, where the author, grappling with a sense of identity as a member of a religious order in the aftermath of the Ryan Report (Ryan, 2009), seeks to reconstruct a sense of self as a religious sister in 21st century Ireland. As a member of a group that for centuries were revered as carriers of Ireland's spiritual myths, and providers of education, health care and social services, the author struggles to find her place in a culture where attitudes towards religion, and in particular towards members of religious orders have hardened in the wake of revelations of the mistreatment of children uncovered in the Ryan Report (2009). Gripped by a sense of shock, dismay and embarrassment at the Report's catalogue of instances of abuse and neglect of children while in the care of religious orders between 1936 and 1993, the author is catapulted into a confused sense of self as a member of a religious order. It raises for her issues of identity as a spiritual and religious person. In an effort to re-story her identity as a member of a religious order, the writer sets out on a journey, backwards in time, as she traces her quest for spiritual meaning. The journey takes her to her earliest memory of a spiritual experience as a child of four or five, growing up in Catholic Ireland, to her experiences as a member of a religious congregation after the publication of the Ryan Report. The latter takes place against the backdrop of an Ireland that questions previously unquestioned "truths" as presented by the Catholic hierarchy who spoke with authority on social, political and religious issues. Since narrative or story telling is the primary way in which humans make meaning of their lives (Ricoeur, 1980; Bakhtin, 1981; Bruner, 1986) this study uses autoethnography as a narrative mode of inquiry, where the author accesses personal stories in search of a new understanding of self. This dissertation is not presented in the traditional format of chapters, but begins with an introduction setting out the focus of the research, followed by the main body of the work, which is presented as vignettes. The vignettes, in words and pictures, are used to map key memories and events that have shaped the author's identity as a member of a religious order. Each vignette is followed by a reflection that sometimes includes an engagement with literature and research to enhance the understanding of the cultural context of the particular vignette. This is followed by a narrative analysis and commentary. Progressing from one vignette to the next the author experiences struggle, pain and peace as she connects past and present in an evolving story of self that culminates in an acceptance of her wounded collective identity. In the concluding chapter, the author evaluates the research and reviews the autoethnographic journey, noting her emerging sense of identity within a culture from which she constantly seeks reassurance for the legitimacy of that identity.

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This thesis is an ethnographic and historical exploration of the 'Traditional Arts' in contemporary Japan. It is concerned primarily with a distinct group of the arts, linked historically and thematically with Zen Buddhism. This group comprises activities like the Tea Ceremony (<I>Chado</I>) and Martial Arts (<I>Budo</I>). They are commonly described in the literature as 'religio-aesthetic' pursuits, which through bodily gesture and the creation of highly valued objects, express core spiritual values. Ideally the experience of practising the Zen arts culminates in 'Enlightenment' (<I>Satori</I>). I have studied these claims firstly as part of the literary and intellectual history of representing Japanese Culture through the arts. This historical approach is an acknowledgement both of the ways in which the Zen arts have changed over time and that the emergence and development of the Zen arts as an object of intellectual inquiry and political considerations coincides with the start of the so called 'Modern' period (from 1868). The Zen arts became and remain a key metaphor in representations of Japanese Culture, as an internal 'Myth of Japanese Uniqueness' (cultural nationalism) and as part of an 'Oriental' (foreign) discourse. A significant part of this historical inquiry has also involved an examination of the role visual images and modern technologies have played in shaping perceptions of the Zen arts. Fieldwork was carried out in Japan over a two year period with the practical support of two institutions: St Catherines College (Oxford University) in the city of Kobe and the National Museum of Ethnology in the city of Osaka. I was actively involved at various sites, in the area around these two cities, practising the tea ceremony and one of the martial arts - Shorinji Kempo. Based upon this experience, I argue that the Zen arts are best understood in terms of a dynamic relationship between an aesthetic discourse on art and culture and the social and embodied experiences of those who participate in them. Behind this relationship, and accounting both for the cultural representations and individual perceptions of the Zen arts is the mechanism of Mimesis, which I define as a theory of visible aesthetic forms. This research is a development of current anthropological interests in cultural representations as a visual genre (Banks & Morphy, 'Rethinking Anthropology' 1997) and contributes to the general study of visible cultural forms like art, material culture and the body.

This thesis explores issues of embodiment and experiences that serve to orchestrate the lives of brain injured children and their families. In discerning the myriad ramifications that affect childhood disability the body is treated as both a semiological system that presents disability in a conspicuous manner and is the 'object' on which therapeutics (orthodox and alternative) are enacted. It is with reference to the brain injured child's body that explanation concerning personal disability, familial trauma and the hope for future amelioration are discussed. An anthropology, examining embodiment and experience, is initially developed through an analysis of the social construction that led to the development of childhood as an ideological state. The thesis argues that this category of childhood was, in part, constituted by the institutional powers that Foucault (1973) et al saw as the monitoring and control (primarily through the objectifying of the body) of individuals within society. 'The Orchestrated Body' discusses brain injured children's embodiment as an assimilation of divergent social states which describe the child's body with a series of competing notions. For example, the bio-medical approach gives primacy to an organic pathology that resists habitation, the consequence of this 'failure to cure' lends support to the notion that brain injury represents Goffman's (1963) deviance model. The alternative therapy centre is yet another 'orchestration' of the child's body. However, here, the ideology which underpins treatment is in contrast to that advocated by medical professionals. That cultural perceptions are involved in interpreting the behaviours that manifest an altered physical state for brain injured children are analysed with reference to their similarities with possession cults where the body, once again, comes into sharp focus as an aetiological feature of personal chaos. As disrupted motor function acts as a social emblem of disability this thesis asks can such manifestations be reinterpreted to the benefit of the child and his or her family? Finally, brain injured children are posited as self performers being personally responsible for 'orchestrating' themselves in an attempt to experientially extend an incapacitated body with detail and accounts of living from which they are typically excluded.

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of the mission place, and the imagined spaces within it that are occupied by women. Based on 21 months of fieldwork in a former mission station located in north-west Uganda, this analysis draws upon geographies of space, development, resistance and of gender and sexuality. Elements of feminist and radical theologies, which frame mission discourse for women are woven into my reflections on women's imagined spaces. A central tenet of the research has been the methodological strategy employed to explore the mission place. By living and working as a foreign lay missionary volunteer, I was integrated in the cross-cultural context of church and aid, while focusing my ethnographic attention on women's lives there. I address issues of ethical concern embodied in this research. This thesis therefore argues for a more nuanced appreciation of the contradictions and choices that characterize women's lives in mission places. Such an appreciation is grounded in the issue of 'accountability' that accompanies the donation of external aid to the mission place. Particular roles have been created for women (and men) within the mission place, which assume certain behaviours and characteristics, and which are often connected to the implementation of development initiatives in that place. Since the construction of these missionary spaces has misinterpreted the sexual role that these women continue to express, their negotiation of compromised and liminal gender roles with sexual dimensions often impinges upon the responsibilities that attend to their imagined missionary space. This results in compromised management of the development initiatives in which they are involved.

Based on anthropological fieldwork in Zaire, this thesis focuses on the relationship between Mbuti hunter-gatherers, their Bila farming neighbours and their forest environment. Earlier descriptions of Mbuti/Bila relations as being essentially one of opposition (e.g. those of Colin Turnbull) are shown to reflect the nature of colonial control rather than the fundamental interdependence which exists between these two groups. The way people attempt to cope with extractive economic forces is examined historically and in present Mbuti involvement in gold extraction. Local responses to the Forest Reserve (created in 1992) are shown to range from viewing it as resource appropriation to viewing it as a marriage. The author's study of daily Mbuti life in the forest highlights the importance of economic exchange with the Bila, and the impact of broader political forces. Conflict, gender and power are examined in the Bila/Mbuti nkumbi circumcision ritual, and in the Mbuti molimo ritual. For the Mbuti and the Bila the forest is not sacred in itself: the interactions of past generations with the forest render it sacred. This experience of the forest encompasses fearing sorcery and the evil spirits of the dead, and attempting to control and manipulate - or trusting, joking and sharing with - the "forest as ancestors". The nature of the Mbuti net hunt, demand-sharing, and sharing with the forest in song and ritual, are ultimately centred in egalitarianism and their strong identification with the forest. The argument advanced in this thesis supports that of writers such as Nurit Bird-David and Tim Ingold who argue that identity, for the Mbuti and other hunter-gathers, can be grounded in a sense of sharing with a living environment. However it collapses Ingold's absolute opposition between Mbuti and Western approaches to the environment arguing that - although Mbuti cosmology tends towards an identification with the environment, and Cartesian cosmology tends towards a belief in separation and opposition - in practice both the Mbuti and people in the West move between these opposing modes. Conversation projects in the Ituri are shown to embody a Cartesian cosmology which sees humans as separate from the environment, the latter being essentially a passive realm for humans to exploit or protect. Recent developments in these projects, combined with policies which would support local peoples' cosmology of inclusion, suggests a conservation approach which seeks to deepen, rather than restrain, local peoples' involvement with their environment.

The study examines the form and function of ritual dialogue in marriage customs. Particular attention is paid to Scotland, and more precisely the betrothal ceremony or <I>reiteach</I> in Gaelic tradition. Analogues from Brittany and Wales are also examined in detail. The examples from the Celtic tradition are prefaced by a general survey of comparable models from Indo- and non Indo-European tradition. Various elements of the dialogues, and the ritual dramas of which many form a part, are shown to be linked to concepts of the evil eye and to the motif of the 'false' or 'former' bride familiar to European folklorists. Their connection with 'life-cycle' dramas is also explored. Using the concept of one and two-way thresholds, the dialogues are also shown to be related in structure to other dialogic threshold rituals in Celtic society including seasonal and territorial rites and those connected to the bardic order. The role of the mediating figure of the matchmaker/bard is examined, as is the recurring motif of the mock abduction of the bride.

Based on ethnographic research in St Paul's parish, Valletta, Malta, this thesis examines the <I>festa </I>('feast') of St. Paul's Shipwreck. St Paul is both the local patron saint and the national patron; his <I>festa </I>is therefore also both the local and national. This thesis investigates the relationship between local, national and personal identities in the administration and performance of the <I>festa. </I>It contributes to current arguments in social anthropology concerning the nature of public rituals in Mediterranean Europe, and their significance in the construction of social identities. Where others have seen the primary function of such rituals as being the expression of local identity in the face of modernity and globalisation, it is argued here that as a ritual of identify, <I>festa </I>is more potent than that. <I>Festa </I>does serve as a symbolic representation of local identity, but in doing so, it also serves as a means of elaborating other types of identity, based on gender, political party allegiance, social class and nation. In Maltese society, these identities are hotly contested, because of the rapid social changes that have affected the country since its independence from colonial rule in 1964. Anxiety about the future leads to antagonism between different social groups in the parish, over how to define these identities. The <I>festa </I>involves a fleeting moment of symbolic resolution that ties together these otherwise antagonistic groups. But the activities that surround it are also the primary media for the communication of this antagonism. <I>Festa </I>is therefore simultaneously an expression of solidarity, and a vehicle for the expression of conflict. It differs from other public rituals in that the symbols it invokes - of family, community, religion and gender - are fundamental to Maltese conceptions of self-identity. This is the key to its effectiveness.

Studies of those peoples living in southern Africa who have at one time or another been referred to as Bushmen have been dominated by discussions pertaining almost exclusively to their one-time status as hunter-gatherers. In this thesis, the author makes a departure from this line of study and takes as his subject matter those Bushmen who, because they were not seen to be living exemplars of the foraging way of life, were initially of little interest to anthropologists: the "impure" Bushmen who have for several generations have been immersed in the colonial political economy, eking out a living in the margins of the Omaheke region in Namibia. In this thesis, which is the result of eighteen months fieldwork on the white-owned commercial farms and former "native reserves" of the Omaheke, the author examines the processes involved in the construction and articulation of contemporary Ju/'hoan identity. In doing this the author argues that Ju/'hoan identity is constituted, not in terms of cultural institutions left over from their hunting and gathering past, but in terms of their marginalisation and domination by others. In addressing the issue of identity in a "plural" environment, the author takes an approach which focuses on the production of identity in terms of the relations between Ju/'hoansi in the Omaheke and their various neighbours. Consequently, the author examines how other residents of the Omaheke constructed Ju/'hoansi in discourse and how these constructions influenced and transformed the narratives through which Ju/hoansi constructed themselves. In doing this the author addresses these questions from a variety of angles including, history, politics, religion, kinship and folklore. In concluding, the author highlights the degree to which Ju'hoan identity is implicated in their relations with others and suggests that in studying formerly hunting-and-gathering societies experiencing radical change, it is necessary to move beyond the theoretical frameworks and models generated for the study of them as hunter-gatherers.