Abstract The present environmental anthropological study explores the premises and views of forest owners regarding different stages of forest management and factors affecting forest management by interviewing 24 owners of forest in the Northern Ostrobothnia region during 2005-2007. In addition, the views of forestry professionals were examined, mainly by using interviews from the ”Forest Professionals During Forestry’s Period of Transition” project collected during 1999-2002. The collected qualitative data was mostly employed in order to examine processes of reasoning in connection to both periodic- and continuous-cover silviculture. The views of the forest owners were compared to the Forestry Development Centre Tapio’s Forest Management Practice Recommendations. The research source materials also included the official documents from four cases involving forest regeneration and forest harvest sites in different parts of Finland during 2004-2008. The analysis in this study employs three perspectives, namely those of political ecology, cognitive anthropology and actor-network theory. When exploring the views of forest owners from the perspective of political ecology, these perspectives were examined as a part of the historical development of forestry and the discussion on forests in Finland. By applying the concept of cultural models from cognitive anthropology, two generalising models of thought were recognised in the interview material: an established model of forest management and an alternative model of forest management. The established model of forest management followed the management policy presented in the Forest Management Practice Recommendations. The alternative model of forest management diverged from the recommendations, but only in part. Views regarding what is natural, the implementation of different stages of forest management and how financial profitability is achieved from the forest owners’ point of view were, to some extent, different in these two models. However, it was not possible to identify the views of the interviewees as belonging entirely to one of the models only. The actor-network theory was particularly efficient in analysing court case documents in which the different views on forest management that were found in the cultural models become established. Based on the criticism presented in the source materials, it can be said that the differing views and needs of forest owners should be acknowledged in forest administration with greater versatility than is done at present. / Tiivistelmä Tässä ympäristöantropologisessa tutkimuksessa selvitettiin metsänomistajien perusteluita ja käsityksiä metsänhoidon vaiheista ja metsänhoitoon vaikuttavista tekijöistä haastattelemalla 24 Pohjois-Pohjanmaalla metsää omistavaa metsänomistajaa vuosina 2005–2007. Myös metsäalan ammattilaisten käsityksiä selvitettiin käyttäen aineistona lähinnä vuosina 1999–2002 kerättyjä ”Metsäammatit metsätalouden murroksessa” -hankkeen haastatteluita. Laadullisen aineiston avulla selvitettiin erityisesti jaksolliseen ja jatkuvaan metsänkasvatukseen liittyvää päättelyä. Metsänomistajien käsityksiä verrattiin Metsätalouden kehittämiskeskus Tapion hyvän metsänhoidon suosituksiin. Aineistona olivat myös neljän eri puolilla Suomea tapahtuneen metsänuudistamista ja hakkuita koskeneen oikeustapauksen asiakirja-aineistot vuosilta 2004–2008. Analyysissä hyödynnettiin kolmea näkökulmaa: poliittista ekologiaa, kognitiivista antropologiaa ja toimijaverkkoteoriaa. Poliittisen ekologian näkökulmassa metsänomistajien käsityksiä tarkasteltiin osana Suomen metsätalouden ja metsäkeskustelun historiallista kehitystä. Kognitiivisen antropologian kulttuuristen mallien käsitettä käyttäen haastatteluaineistosta nostettiin esiin kaksi yleistävää ajattelumallia: vaihtoehtoisen metsänhoidon malli ja vakiintuneen metsänhoidon malli. Vakiintuneen metsänhoidon malli mukaili Hyvän metsänhoidon suosituksissa esitettyä metsänhoidon linjaa. Vaihtoehtoisen metsänhoidon malli erosi suosituksista osittain. Käsitykset metsänhoidon luonnonmukaisuudesta, metsänhoidon vaiheiden toteutuksesta ja taloudellisen kannattavuuden muodostumisesta metsänomistajien kannalta poikkesivat näissä malleissa toisistaan joiltakin osin. Haastateltujen käsityksiä ei voinut jaotella aina kaikilta osiltaan vain toiseen malliin kuuluvaksi. Toimijaverkkoteoria jäsensi erityisesti oikeustapausaineistoja, joissa tiivistyivät kulttuurisissa malleissa esiintyneet käsitykset metsänhoidosta. Aineistossa esitetyn kritiikin pohjalta metsähallinnoinnissa olisi huomioitava metsänomistajien vaihtelevat käsitykset ja tarpeet entistä monipuolisemmin.

Dans cette thèse, je propose à la fois un examen minutieux des activités maritimes butonaises et un dialogue entre ce cas ethnographique et son contexte austronésien. Pour cela, je mobilise notamment l'approche phénoménologique (et principalement les travaux de Merleau-Ponty sur la perception) ainsi que l'approche historico-culturelle de la cognition développée par Vygotsky. Outre les données ethnographiques inédites concernant le monde butonais (zone linguistique cia-cia), l'analyse développée ici conduit à plusieurs contributions importantes concernant la reconstruction du monde austronésien, le débat universalisme-relativisme dans le cadre de l'anthropologie cognitive ainsi que l'usage de la méthode ethnographique - en mettant l'accent sur la transformation de l'ethnographe au cours du terrain comme objet de connaissance. /<p>This thesis proposes a detailed analysis of Butonese maritime activities as well as a dialogue between this ethnographic case study and its Austronesian context. The analysis relies in particular on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis of perception and on Vygotsky's historico-cultural conception of cognition. Besides presenting a wealth of new data about the Butonese world (and more specifically the cia-cia linguistic area), the analysis developed here leads to major contributions about the reconstruction of the Austronesian world, the universalism-relativism debate within cognitive anthropology and the use of ethnographic methodology - emphasizing on the ethnographer's own transformation.<p><p><p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.

This thesis presents a method of identifying astronomical expressionsinherent within the spatial geography, cultural landscapes, and layouts of structures with a view to implementing the systematics in an African context. In determining astronomical codes of the southern African pre - early farmer and metalworking archaeological sites - this review deals with oral tradition, rituals, formative calendars, fertility, meteorites, eclipses, bio-diversity, sustainable agriculture, rainmaking and the general star lore. Conclusions are drawn from the hypothesis that certain structures functioned as astronomical expressions by use of monoliths and other configurations, with specific examples of how these possibilities were drawn from aspects within the Mapungubwe/Zimbabwe Cultural Complex and the preceding riverine cultural formations. / Dissertation (MSc(Applied Science))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Architecture / unrestricted