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The Great Barrier Reef is regarded as one of the natural wonders of the world and is recognised as having World Heritage significance. The wealth and complexity of its natural attributes form the basis of a rich and complementary human history. However, management of the region is focused on the conservation of natural attributes, sometimes at the cost of human interests and cultural values. This is symptomatic of the way in which many heritage properties are managed and is a source of problems in the identification and interpretation of heritage. There is a need to better understand the human dimensions of such 'natural wonders' to ensure effective management. In order to address some of these issues, this thesis explores visitor experiences and knowledge of the Great Barrier Reef with a particular focus on the non-local experiences and knowledge that underpin the region's global recognition. One of the major issues for management is the mutable nature of heritage values. This research therefore seeks to develop an understanding of how such heritage values are formed, transformed and sustained over time. It takes an historical approach to understand the ways in which visitor knowledge of the Reef has been constructed and transmitted both temporally and spatially. Methods novel to heritage assessments are developed and implemented to identify and contrast visitor experiences in the past and those of the present. The study focuses on visitor sensory experiences of the Reef as a means to understand knowledge of place. A concept of sensuousness is defined and used to understand how knowledge of place is constructed through the human senses, and communicated within and between generations. The research identifies a number of significant changes in the way in which visitors have constructed and understood the Great Barrier Reef. These include the creation of idealised Pacific islands at the expense of an Australian location and character; the transformation of the dangerous underwater world into a controlled and benign coral garden; and the synecdoche of the coral garden as representative of the Reef as a whole. Central to these constructions is the way in which simulacra are used to create experiences that are increasingly both dislocated and disembodied. As a consequence visitor knowledge of the Reef has shifted from sensuous perception of the Reef as a place or series of places, to the construction of imaginative and photographic simulacra that manifest as experiences of space and non-place. Through the exploration of this case study, the thesis makes a contribution to both theoretical and methodological issues in heritage studies.

This study is social anthropological insider research of disabled postgraduates, students and staff in tertiary educational institutions. This is also a study of enabling conditions for inclusion; and ways the participants build relationships between themselves and the wider community. I consider my participants as kin. This was a joint venture - we were related not by blood, but by the very fact that we share in communities of disabled people. We are connected even if not always interacting with each other; we seldom moved in the same circles on a day-to-day basis. These are stories of adversity, where the participants have developed successful coping strategies and made achievements, not despite their being ?othered?, but by living with and acknowledging their differences. These are reflections on our society where we compete in complex emotional relationships within employment and all other social institutions. The university seemed to be a psychologically safer setting probably because it is a place for higher learning and therefore all the people had a more highly developed consciousness. Even though in some cases there were some wider macro barriers, on the whole, the participants‘ experience was positive. We found what we as joint participants shared in that feeling of disability was just the same as the feeling of communitas as students. Thinking about communitas (Turner, 1967), the Latin for community, convinced me that community was the central theme of this whole thesis. There are communities of practice in all organisations and institutions in society and they are used by the participants in this study not only in developing strategies for inclusion, but also for learning. Because the university is a series of communities of practice a major theorist for this study is Vygotsky and his concept of a culture of learning. We are also indebted to the social anthropologist Lave and her colleagues for bringing his ideas to Western academia.

This thesis is an ethnography of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta. All ethnographies are accounts arising out of the experience of a particular kind of encounter between the people being written about and the person doing the writing. This thesis, amongst other things, reflects my changing views of how that experience should be recounted. I begin by outlining briefly who Anglo-Indians are, a topic which in itself alerts one to complexities of trying to get an ethnographic grip on a shifting subject. I then look at some crucial elements that are necessary for an “understanding” of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta: the work that has already been done in relation to Anglo-Indians, the urban context of the lives of my research participants and I discuss the methodological issues that I had to deal with in constructing this account. In the second part of my thesis I explore some crucial elements of the lives of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta: the place of Christianity in their lives, education not just as an aspect of socialisation but as part of their very being and, finally, the public rituals that now give them another way of giving expression to new forms of Anglo-Indian becoming. In all of my work I was driven by a desire to keep close to the experience of the people themselves and I have tried to write a “peopled” ethnography. This ambition is most fully realised in the final part of my thesis where I recount the lives of three key participants.

In this thesis I investigate the relationships between mass media and popular notions of archaeology in Australia, and consider the implications of these relationships for the public outreach strategies of Australian archaeologists. First, I review the limited survey data available regarding public opinions of archaeology in Australia, together with the results from more extensive surveys conducted in North America. These surveys suggest that popular perceptions of archaeology include a variety of misconceptions that are incongruous with the ethical goals of the profession. Second, I develop a theoretical model of mass media that articulates the nature of the relationships between the producers of mass media and their audiences. This model predicts that widespread popular notions of archaeology are likely to be reflected in the texts of mainstream mass media. Third, I present the results of a content analysis study undertaken in relation to archaeological documentary programs screened on Australian television, demonstrating that a number of misconceptions about archaeology are strongly reinforced by these programs. This suggests that such misconceptions are deeply entrenched within contemporary Australian society. Finally, I identify a number of pathways along which archaeologists might seek to engage mass media as part of a broader 'popularisation' approach to public outreach in Australian archaeology.

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This thesis examines unsewn cloth pieces which once belonged to Victoria Wood and places them into their social and historical context. It uses the biography of Victoria Wood and her fabrics to argue for the importance of fabric collecting and dressmaking for New Zealand women from 1935 to 1955. It questions why ubiquitous fabrics bought for dress making are not represented in historical accounts of women, or in more general accounts of historical clothing and dress. Aspects of material culture theories are employed to analyse the material properties of the fabric pieces. These are situated within a wider domestic context to demonstrate that there were intrinsic qualities of fabric that influenced and were imagined by many women in this period. Oral histories and other documentary research add to the wider account and provide evidence of the way that dressmaking fabrics reflected the shifting notions of domesticity. The thesis suggests that fabrics bought for the creation of clothing can represent the past or a person. It also demonstrates how dressmaking fabrics simultaneously embody personal and social narratives which reflect the emotional and cultural values of a particular period. In this thesis I construct narratives which are based on the social and historical findings to highlight the importance of fabric collecting and dressmaking as an everyday domestic practice.

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