Inequality has been described as a 'global pandemic' that agonises poor young people as they struggle to assemble the necessary knowledge, skills and resources for adulthood. Being excluded from the wealth and opportunities others in society enjoy is a challenging experience. This thesis explores such experiences by looking at the almajiri system in Kano State in northern Nigeria. The almajirai are boys and young men who live with an Islamic teacher to study the Qur'an. In the context of attempts to universalise primary education and escalating fears of Muslim militancy they have attracted overwhelmingly negative attention. Informed by ethnographic and participatory fieldwork, this thesis traces young people's trajectories through the 'traditional' Qur'anic education system. A declining rural economy, a public education system in disarray, and frequent family breakups sustain demand for the system despite its waning status. Almajirai and their parents invoke their religious commitment and the educative effects of hardship to explain enrolment. Yet, their experiences threaten to undermine the almajirai's self-justifications. With inequalities on the rise, they acquire aspirations during their sojourns in urban areas that match badly with the ethos underpinning almajiri education. The 'modem' forms of childhood they wish for will likely elude them, and poverty bars many from accessing the 'modem' knowledge (Islamic and secular) necessary today to earn status or a stable livelihood. While tales of alienation and radicalisation lack empirical footing, the almajirai's future prospects are bleak. Extrapolating from how the almajirai engage with their constrained circumstances, I reflect on the forms of agency available to young people who are incorporated into society on adverse terms. I conclude that groups who, like the almajirai, suffer both economic and valuational disadvantage likely pursue strategies with self-defeating or socially corrosive effects. It is therefore imperative to address the structural forces causing their disadvantage

This thesis is based on twelve months (July 1987-June 1988) fieldwork carried out among the Sharqiyin tribes of South-East Arabia. It is a community study of Wadi Ham (U.A.E.), a community which constitutes part of a whole region known as al-Hajar. The Hajar is a countainous region which embraces several tribes that practise agriculture and pastoralism. The thesis is an ethnographic study of the Sharqiyin tribes of Wadi Ham with specific reference to their social organization and religious belief in general and authority and social control in particular. In practice this thesis sets itself up to examine the relationship between the secular and religious authority, and its role in the process of social control. It is also intended to illuminate the nature of the relationship that exists between the local authority of the tribal periphery and the central authority in the urban centres. Following a discussion on the nature of the problem, together with the relevant ethnography and history of the region, the ecological environment, the pattern of tribal settlements, and the administrative system are discussed. A description and analysis of the economic organization has been provided by focusing on the agricultural regime and the land tenure system. The thesis then turns to examine the principles which underlie both the tribal and social stratification systems. Additional discussion has been provided on the domestic group. Finally, direct emphasis has been placed on Hajari leadership; on the role of its secular and religious authority, of the centre and the periphery, in maintaining social control at the community level. The results of this thesis show, firstly, that in spite of the absence of saintly and holy lineages, religious authority continues to exist and plays its role in Islamic tribal society. Secondly, that, although marginal tribal societies are seen usually as in contradiction with the urban centre or central authority, this is not always the case. For the experience of the Wadi Ham reveals, firstly, that the relationship between the tribal periphery and the centre is a complementary one. Secondly, that there exists a wide field of mutual interests and co-operation between the religious and secular authorities in maintaining order and control in peripheral tribal communities.

Publicly promoted as 'the gift of life', organ donation offers a strong contrast with forms of gift giving familiar to anthropologists, where gift exchange is conducted to create and maintain relational networks. Allowing the removal of one's organs after death, to be transplanted into other bodies for the purpose of enhancing or extending life, is commonly understood, certainly in Britain, as a voluntary and anonymous gesture. It is presumed to entail no thought for any personal benefit and no intention of establishing a relationship with the recipients of one's organs. Implicit within this understanding of organ donation is a model of the Western person as an autonomous and bounded individual, operationalised in anthropology as an analytical tool with which to contrast 'other' economies of personhood. This thesis critically re-assesses public and academic acceptance of the popular image of organ donation, and challenges the anthropological model of the Western person, revealing the partial nature of both. Using ethnographic data from a three year intensive study involving health care professionals, the families of decreased organ donors and the recipients of transplanted organs, a framework is developed within which human organ transactions can be analysed in their entire cycle. A primary focus on attitudes towards the bodies, and body parts, of decreased organ donors reveals an array of shifting subjectivities. The term refers both to the diverse perspectives held by various categories of participants and to the oscillating perspectives of individual participants, the researcher included. Studying how human organs circulate undermines the assumption that agency is (only) autoproductive. Rather less voluntarism is present than popular imagery suggests. Further, a consideration of the relationship within which organs circulate serves to illustrate that the production of self implicates other (non)-selves. What emerges is the notion of connective personhood, whereby donor families and transplant recipients inevitably participate in a self-making social relationship, through sharing the substance of the deceased donor.

Popular music plays a powerful role in people's lives. The centrality that it takes in the individual and collective lives of social actors appears to be in inverse proportion to their social, cultural and political power: relatively powerless groups have historically used music as a way to organise themselves and their understanding of the world, a way to speak in public, and speak about, among other things, the forces they believe conspire to keep them powerless. This thesis is concentrated on the cultures that have emerged around a series of genres collectively described as 'dance music' in London in the past two decades. It takes as its starting point the most promising theoretical models developed to understand cultures around music, the 'subcultural studies' of the 1970s, but it places these alongside theoretical perspectives that pay more attention to the politics of space, in particular new developments in cultural geography, and the work on transational cultures of Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. Combining a theoretical approach based on Manual Castell's notion of a 'network society', with ethnographyinterviews and participant observation data gathered over 3 years at the end of the 1990S - and case studies of specific dance music genre-networks - Rare Groove, 'Acid House' and 'Jungle' - the thesis traces the evolution of London dance cultures in relation to immigration, the changing racial and political geography of the city, and the emergence of multicultural space and practice. The thesis traces patterns of continuity and change across different dance genres, to argue that the African diaspora, and partiCUlarly the 'discrete cultural unit' defined by Gilroy as the Black Atlantic rather than the Nation, or an idea of English particularity, continue to be the appropriate contextual frame for understanding dance music activity in Britain. Some of the underlying questions to which this thesis provides the answer are: what role have London's migrant and non-white populations played in the cultural and economic life of the city? What are the mechanisms of multiculture, and what role has Afro-diasporic music played in these mechanisms? What is the relationship between the development of musical subcultures and 'the Nation'?

My thesis "Quechua Religious Terms in the Departments of Apurimac and San Martin, Peru" deals with the problem of changing meaning-loads of Quechua religious terms. I chose the departments (counties) of Apurimac and San Martin as representative of a montana (jungle) and sierra (mountain) Quechua culture respectively. The purpose of the thesis is to show though the analysis from a corpus of one hundred and thirty-two terms that Quechua religious terms still carry much of tine nearing load they had before the Spanish conquest despite more than four hundred years of religious and other cultural pressures. This study also highlights the difficulties and unresearched areas in the fields of dialectology and folklore of the Quechua culture, a culture that is still very much the life of some ten million people in Latin America today.

This is an ethnographically influenced and interpretive study into the ways teachers and students co-construct language classroom culture. Classroom culture is viewed as comprising the everyday discoursal practices and actions of teachers and students. These cultural practices on the one hand represent and reflect the micro culture of the classroom, and on the other construct, sustain and develop this culture. Data is drawn from two multilingual and multicultural secondary one classrooms in Singapore, both in the same school.  These classrooms were selected because of their student composition:  one is made up of supposedly more competent language learners than the other. This lends to the study a comparative dimension where data from one classroom is matched against data from the other, allowing for an exploration of similarities and differences which facilitate data interpretation and analysis. Research findings indicate that both micro cultures share similar cultural traits, and that these traits mirror the macro aspects of the classroom, i.e. the culture of the general education system and the broader national culture in Singapore. More interesting and unexpected however, are findings that point at the striking differences between these micro cultures. Although teachers and students co-construct the culture in both classrooms, it appears that these cultural differences are attributable to the different roles played by the teachers in their attention to classroom procedure, and to classroom management. These teacher differences are manifested in their delivery of procedural instructions, which in one class encourage student questions, and in the other deter them. In exploring the relationship between classroom discourse and the evolving classroom culture, this study captures an insider’s view of the co-construction of two different micro cultures. In one class, the classroom culture promotes academic success, and in the other, it promotes academic failure. Conclusions are drawn for further research into classroom culture in general and student questioning behaviour in particular. Recommendations are made for the pre-service teacher training which aim at improving the ways in which the education system in Singapore serves society.

This thesis focuses on a place making process in semi-rural England. ‘Place’ in this thesis means personally meaningful environment. The thesis describes and analyses various efforts made by residents in two parishes in West Midlands to connect themselves with their immediate environment. Most of the agents appear in this thesis are immigrants of various lengths of residency. Unlike those who were born and bred there, those who moved in later in their lives cannot claim the ‘natural’ relationship to the environment. Their relationship to the environment is not given by birth. They have to build up the relationship consciously. The thesis examines what elements are mobilised in the process and how. The general ethnographic details of two sites are given in Part I. Part I also plays the role of the introductory section to the discussion to be developed in Part II. The highlighted points are different in two sites. In Dymock part, a history of the parish and people’s activities generated around the history are described in detail. In Colwall part, on the other hand, a planning issue and a debate caused by a proposed housing development are followed in detail. Part II is organised by a theme rather than a location. The first chapter in this part is dedicated to the issue of history and memory. How the elements of time and past is deployed in the process of place making is examined. More specifically, the chapter focuses on the passion for recording the history in the forms of document and performance. The second chapter examines a regulatory framework of space, or the space management system, in England and the way people negotiate with the system to form or maintain the ideal place. The chapter also considers a class element involved with the process. Throughout Part II, the desire of control and the sense of ownership are considered. People in both Dymock and Colwall often mention that they live in the country side, which has a special meaning for them. Living in the countryside forms the crucial part of their sense of place. In the final part, the thesis examines this heavily culturally value-laden space of English country side. Part III describes the recent debate over the fox-hunting with dogs which reveals various sentiments that are not always accessible or acceptable for those who are described in previous Parts. This Part also examines the idea of stewardship of the country side as a compromise to create a sense of shared ownership of the place.

This thesis explores the intersections between conventions of travel and individual travellers’ representations of their travel practices, identities and performance. Part one explores and analyses travel conventions, broadly conceived, around ideas about ‘the art of travel’ and how these overlap with individual travellers’ values and interests to form their constructions of ‘good travel practice’. Two interconnected bodies of literature in particular, both published over a lengthy time-period, are examined for this purpose: writing which is reflective on the nature of the travel experience, and the more prescriptive genre of travel guidebooks. Part Two explores women’s travel writings, taking as its case studies the diaries and letters of prominent women travellers written across the twentieth century. The ways each of the writers narrates her relationship to constraints in the context of travel is examined, including, for example, those of ‘normative’ femininity, familial influence, and physical and bureaucratic restrictions on mobility. Part three addresses the centrality of visual images in many aspects of travel, both in the production of travel conventions and also in travellers’ own representations of travelling. Taking women’s online travel diaries as case studies, travel photography is considered alongside travel writing and the performative aspects of travel representations are highlighted.

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