This thesis concerns folk performance in the French Basque Pyrenees. It is based on fieldwork research which was conducted in the easternmost area of the Basque Country, a region known in the French language as Pays de Soule or, in Basque, as Zuberoa. In particular, it examines Maskarada performance, a genre of carnival theatre popular in the area which involves the young people of a village, who disguise and mask themsselves in order to dance, sing and stage stories in a highly ritualistic way. A study of Maskarada performance in Zuberoa shows that meaningful changes have taken place throughout the twentieth century. These changes are reflected both in the enactment of the folk arts themselves and in the sociological characteristics of the region. Because these changes have affected indigenous understandings of carnival theatre and festivity, this thesis focuses on the changing socio-cultural criteria which lead the organisation of Maskarada performance in Zuberoa today. Maskarada performance echoes issues of social and cultural identity, publicly projecting notions of the self and otherness, as well as of gender and political awareness. This thesis takes a perspective which reveals that traditional folk arts are not fixed but dynamic, reflecting social change and the dynamics of traditional culture in rural Basque society.

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This thesis presents my study of “ghosthunting”—the practice of attempting to capture ghosts, primarily using cameras and audio recorders—as a metaphorical device for the use of audio-visual media within anthropology. I conducted fieldwork with ghosthunters, paying particular attention to their attendant audio-visual media practices and outputs, in order to redress the reluctance of anthropology to a) evaluate audio and visual media as mechanisms for producing anthropological critique—although some anthropologists have taken pains to do that with writing—and b) to understand the particular "haunted" history of audio-visual media as being related to critical anthropological concerns such as representation, time, and the other. The history of the use of audio-visual media within ghosthunting follows a similar trajectory to that of anthropology, and the resultant methodologies and outputs of both disciplines function in ways that are less inclined towards discursive “speaking with others” than they are towards attempting to produce demystified representations of others. Neither practice has, in contemporary times, acknowledged the historical connection of audio-visual media to the supernatural, nor its capacity to deal with the uncanny as a critical provocation. My study of ghosthunters shows that despite attempts to reify ghosts via photography, audio, and film, those media are themselves devices that maintain the uncanny as an ethical injunction towards the other—whether as ghosts or as the cultural “other” of anthropological critique. An acknowledgement of the “haunted” origins and capacities of media allows for ethical engagements with anthropological others, ultimately suggesting critical media methodologies for anthropology that, while informed by anthropology’s “crisis of representation,” radically differ from written ethnography. Viewing the relationship of media and anthropology through the lens of Derrida’s hauntology is a useful framework for thinking about media methodologies that can stand as critique.

This research examines how paranormal experiences are shared and understood collectively. The study focuses on the multimodal practices produced during a paranormal event, and observes the interactive resources drawn upon by individuals to manage, disclose and share extraordinary experiences. Drawing upon a methodological approach informed by conversation analysis, this research uses video data to observe and analyse multimodal practices. The video data presents paranormal experiences as they happen, in the moment, and was collected by the researcher prior to research-led interests. Due to the researcher’s presence as a reflective participant in the analysis of data, this study also draws upon ethnographic reflections to compliment the analytical process. The findings from this study reveal that collective paranormal experiences are noticed, their features established, and their status as paranormal determined, by organised social practices. Despite the ontological and psychological factors that may contribute to an experience, paranormal events are noticed, talked about and displayed in the presence of others. Through these practices individuals construct turns that engender certain qualities towards an event, are sensitive to the epistemic status of themselves and co-participants, and through their construction inform the future trajectory of interaction. Thus, this study argues that the experience of an individual in the context of a collective paranormal event is one that can be seen as socially constructed. Overall, this study contributes to a developing body of research that examines paranormal experiences from a sociological perspective. However, through these findings this analysis also contributes more broadly to research concerning demonstrative practice, talk and epistemics, and embodied practice.

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This study investigates the conceptualizations of 'Talk-culture" from the late 19th century through to the 1930s. "Folk-culture" was broadly discussed in this period all over Europe (and Russia) and especially in science (Philologies, Folkloristics) and literature. More precisely, the thesis examines the debates held in the context of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (Vienna and Prague) around the turn of the century. During this period of accelerating industrialization, commodification and separation of cultural spheres, a significant number of intellectuals and writers were interested in alternative forms of cultural production. As the hitherto disregarded 'Talk-cultures" provide different notions of the artwork and the artist, their interest in 'Talk-culture" and 'Talk-art" is part of the broader discussion of the societal status and function of art and literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Representing a vehicle for the analysis and reflection of current cultural developments, the theorization of folklore and other forms of folk-art seeks responses to the aforementioned processes conceived as culturally problematic. Part Istudies the emergence of 'Volkskunde' as a scientific discipline in Austria. Part IIanalyses the relations between German Philology in Prague and the German-speaking Jews in the Prague Circle,namely Oskar Baum, Max Brad, Franz Kafka and Felix Weltsch. Part 11/ deals with the Russian linguists and folklorists Roman Jakobson and Petr Bogatyrev who came to Prague in the 1920s and sought to develop, in cambining Russian and Western European theories, a new model of 'Talk culture".