This thesis deals with the relationships and interactions of Purhepecha women with significant others, including holy beings (saints, Virgins and Christ's, all of which are called <I>santitos</I>), in quotidian contexts and life-cycle situations. The research for the thesis took place in the island of Jaracuaro in the lake Patzcuaro, Central-West Mexico. This tiny island is inhabited almost exclusively by Purhepecha people, the indigenous population of the region. Daily life in Jaracuaro is significantly organised by gender and focused, in many respects, on domestic groups. The main argument of this thesis is that women interact and have meaningful relationships with the <I>santitos</I> much in the same way they do with relatives and neighbours. Saints, Virgins and Christs are present in houses, and women communicate and interact with them frequently about a variety of quotidian, domestic and personal concerns. These interactions include specific forms of physical contact, exchange and contextual perceptions (of gender, of position, of relationship, of capacity) and, due to their continuity, constitute relationships between the women and the <I>santitos</I> as personal as those taking place between the women and their relatives and neighbours. The capacity of <I>santitos</I> as significant social agents and the perceptual reality of their reciprocal intercourse make it possible for the women to dynamise processes of personal experience, as it happens in the interactions between people. These personal experiences are, in form and content, understood and shared by others, but they are also intensely personal and allow for changes in perceptions, actions and realities. Theoretically, my work touches upon several issues: it takes a critical look at the conceptualisations of the figure of Saints in the anthropological literature of Latin America, particularly focusing on the representations of saints as "symbols", and at the consequences of interpreting saints as objects and not as agents.

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This research began with the aim to investigate girls' understanding and negotiations of post-feminist femininity. There have been identified shifts in discourses of femininity across the last thirty years, with the term "new femininities" coined to encapsulate perceived changes. This term suggests a shift from patriarchal femininities founded in traditional moralities, to new discourses of femininity in terms of freedom and choice. For the purposes of this project, music video has been identified as a way to map out changing representations of femininity. Music videos, which include sound and movement with visual image, are targeted at a teenage audience. At the time the research was conducted, female artists such as Christina Aguilera and 8eyonce Knowles epitomised the successful, independent and sexy post-feminist woman. To explore girls' engagements with discourses of new femininities, a series of focus groups were conducted with girls aged thirteen and fourteen. Music videos, as a visual representation of the research question, were shown to prompt group discussion. This is an empirical project whose aim is to explore the themes that emerge in the girls' talk. A form of conversation analysis that looks specifically at female talk underpins the method of analysis. Foucault's concept of discourse is used to consider how ways of doing femininity is present in the girls' talk. The analysis also takes into account the interactions within the focus groups, producing a rich and nuanced account of both talk and embodied interaction. This research highlights how new femininities have produced new points of negotiation in contemporary accounts of growing up girl. Further, the thesis will argue that regardless of shifts in discourses of femininities, traditional moral values remain a dominant point of negotiation in the process of growing up girl. The focus on the girls' talk produces a significant contribution to debates around new femininities, by adding girls' voices to academic debate.

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Today, the conservation of biodiversity is a major international goal of policy makers and scientific researchers whose work informs policy. Increasingly, indigenous and folk knowledge of biodiversity is addressed as a significant source of insight into the ways in which ethnobotanical knowledge is not practically useful but constitutes intellectually coherent systems of knowledge. Critical analysis of biodiversity has shown that indigenous and folk ecological knowledge is gendarme to the survival of cultural identity as well as the broader biosystem and, in recent years, much attention has been drawn to the anthropogenic character of what were previously assumed to be natural features of the ecosystem. As the pressures on traditional and indigenous communities mount, the search for effective forms of documentation to support the study, conservation and transmission of indigenous knowledge is becoming increasingly urgent. This thesis explores and documents the folkecological knowledge ofthe people ofPedregal, an urban neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela. It examines those domains and aspects of folkecological and folkbotanical knowledge that have persisted throughout the transformation of Pedregal from a rural hamlet to an urban neighbourhood exploring the effects of drastic social changes on the conservation and renewal of nature related systems of knowledge.

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This thesis proposes a new ethnic formation in the UK: Anglo-Japanese (A-J). This formation refers to the growing number of young people with one White British and one racially Japanese parent residing in London and South East England. This thesis focuses mainly on the Japanese side of their ancestry which would seem to be underpinned by a pervasive ideological narrative called Nihonjinron (theories of the Japanese). This narrative sets out what it means to be Japanese. The underlying message is that Japan is both mono-racial and mono-lingual and only the so-called racially ‘pure’ Japanese permanently resident in Japan can master the intricacies of Japanese language and cultural practices. This issue is important for the Anglo-Japanese because although they are permanently resident in Britain, they are competent and active participants in a wide range of what might be called traditional Japanese practices, which would appear to contradict the message implied in the influential Nihonjinron ideology. This thesis describes and analyses the cultural practices in which the A-Js engage at Hoshūkō (Japanese Saturday [complementary] school) as well as the dense network of traditional artefacts and associated regulatory practices with which they also engage outside Hoshūkō. This active and intense engagement with Japanese practices in a variety of settings both in Britain and in Japan is very similar to that of Japanese young people in Japan. This engagement not only inculcates the Anglo-Japanese with insider notions of traditional Japaneseness but also inadvertently reinforces the ideological narrative of Nihonjinron. This thesis, influenced by British Cultural Studies, uses an ethnographic perspective to suggest an addition to the development of new ethnicities in contemporary Britain: Anglo-Japanese ethnicities.

Based on research undertaken with Tlicho Dene residing in Canada's Northwest Territories, this thesis explores what it means to be knowledgeable if you say you are from the land. The question came from statements constantly made by Dene during meetings with government and industrial personnel, and in the course of research associated with the telling of events and happenings connected with traditional governance, caribou and place. I take it as given that humans dwell as part of the environment, and show how they form relations with other beings who mayor may not have similar perspectives. I show that the Tlicho perspective includes the experience and growth of individuals as well as the stories that constantly weave the past and the present, allowing it to unfold in the future. Constantly reinforced through oral narratives, this perspective provides the listener with the means to embrace their own truth while respecting the personal knowledge of others, to share it and have it validated (or not) by others. As individuals grow they become . increasingly knowledgeable, aware that tP~y are part ofa constantly changing environment to which one must stay opeh by listening, experiencing, and observing in preparation to take on tasks that need doing. I consider several occurrences, both . within the bounds ofsettled life and while in the bush, that reveal a process of perpetual discovery and re-discovery that is caught in the tensions between story and experience, between older and younger, past and future, not knowing and knowing, and between leader and follower. These are not so much dichotomies as relational oppositions whose continual renewal is brought about through a practical engagement with all that is of the 'land'. In the first chapter, I explore the process by which a story grows into personal truth through experience. I show that becoming knowledgeable is a continual process, as shown by Moise who experiences a story he heard seventy years before. Chapter two explores remembering through the telling and retelling of oral narratives, and explores the past as told through the stories that are 'just told and heard' as well as told in context. I argue that temporal eras are sequential with past events residing in ~he present rather than disconnected and static. The process reinforces a perspective that can be used to guide individuals during tense periods. Chapter three discusses the concepts of 'beings' and 'place' by focusing on the way Tlicho dwell and establish relations with human persons and other-than-human . beings. This is exemplified through a description of the unpredictability of events dependent on harmonious relations occurring within the ebb and flow of seasonality. Chapter four emphasises how 'knowing' and 'using' are key to both the maintenance ofharmonious relations and the result of tension. Four significant examples are discussed in this chapter: feeding the fire, paying the land, travelling the land, and using others. Both chapters five and six focus on the period of time during which Tlicho are establishing relations with 'whites', while experiencing events and happenings with them that are remembered and told through oral narratives. These chapters emphasise the manner in which Tlicho personal autonomy is being undermined through government policy and legislation, while it is nevertheless respected by some 'white' individuals. Throughout becoming knowledgeable through experience is a priority. Chapter seven focuses on a situation in which Tlicho are strategizing to take action that will provide their descendants with personal autonomy and self-government. I argue that given the importance of following knowledgeable individuals, and given that adults invest in the young, older generations will not follow younger people until they demonstrate that 'they know something'. By providing a perspective to their descendants, elders invest in their own personal futures as well as the futures of the society. Chapter eight returns to the interplay between story and experience, demonstrating that people who both walk the land and follow the footsteps of their ancestors are respected because while travelling one is becoming more knowledgeable. This is a never-ending process; the gap between listening to stories and experiencing the story is also a time of tension in which one does not yet know. . To conclude, an understanding ofbecoming and being knowledgeable among the TijchQ Dene takes into account several dynamics. To become and be knowledgeable is a lifelong process that begins with gaining a perspective from oral narratives that originate within the de. Key elements of the TijchQ perspective include such things as knowing one's place and the place of others, interacting and maintaining harmonious relationships, and having and sharing knowledge. The principal conclusions of the thesis are as follows: 1'. • The past is continually pulled thrOUgh to the present by experiencing occurrences that originated in the past and shared through stories with social descendants. All happenings and events are continually connected as the points of entry and exit are the same. • Human individuals are never completely 'knowing', rather they are constantly becoming knowledgeable through experiencing life. • There are no empty spaces. All beings have their own place and their own trails within the de. Their place and their trails give human and other beings their unique knowledge and perspective. Becoming knowledgeable is based on actions, relationships, interaction and happenings, creating and re-creating a taskscape. Humans and other beings experience taskscapes along intersecting trails through space and time.