This thesis investigates the injunction to experiment in the social sciences and, more specifically, geography. This is both a geography of certain ways of thinking experiment, and an exploration of how particular strands of geographical thinking are being re-imagined and reworked as experimental under the influence of ideas and practices from within and beyond the discipline. Against the backdrop of recent debates about the status of experiment, it poses a number of key questions about what it means to be experimental, how experimental practices emerge and travel, and how these processes are inflected by the organization and atmospheres of particular sites of experimentation. These questions are addressed through a form of attentive participation at four key sites: The SenseLab and the Topological Media Lab in Montreal, the Institut für Raumexperimente in Berlin, and FoAM in Brussels. Based upon these encounters, and drawing upon the work of a range of exemplary experimentalists, the thesis develops the argument that there are new spaces of experiment which are worthy of such examination as part of a renewal of experimentation within geographical thinking. As such, the thesis outlines the logics of these forms of experiment and proposes the notion of ecologies of experiment. It also speculates on the possibilities for re-imagining what constitutes a geographical experiment, foregrounding the necessity of reactivating experiment as an ongoing ethos that needs careful cultivation and tending.

The purpose of my dissertation is to bring cultural geographic theory, including the ideas of representation, power, cultural and religious identity, and the contested and negotiated nature of places and identities, into discussions about the broader field of religious tourism. I use Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, the spiritual centre of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon or Latter-day Saint Church), as a case study to discuss and contest three theories related to religious tourism and sacred space that are prevalent in the academic literature. These include the contested space theory, where I argue that discussions about contested space must be set in the historical context and conditions under which conflict or contestation is first developed, and the pilgrim-tourist dichotomy, the utility of which I question in light of management strategies Latter-day Saint Church leaders use to destabilise identities at Temple Square. I also critique the view that religious sites lack sufficient managerial expertise to be run effectively by religious site managers. In doing this I argue that scholars and tourism industry officials need to take religious culture and history more seriously when attempting to understand how leaders of various religious faiths view tourism and how those views influence the management of their sacred sites.

The purpose of my dissertation is to bring cultural geographic theory, including the ideas of representation, power, cultural and religious identity, and the contested and negotiated nature of places and identities, into discussions about the broader field of religious tourism. I use Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, the spiritual centre of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon or Latter-day Saint Church), as a case study to discuss and contest three theories related to religious tourism and sacred space that are prevalent in the academic literature. These include the contested space theory, where I argue that discussions about contested space must be set in the historical context and conditions under which conflict or contestation is first developed, and the pilgrim-tourist dichotomy, the utility of which I question in light of management strategies Latter-day Saint Church leaders use to destabilise identities at Temple Square. I also critique the view that religious sites lack sufficient managerial expertise to be run effectively by religious site managers. In doing this I argue that scholars and tourism industry officials need to take religious culture and history more seriously when attempting to understand how leaders of various religious faiths view tourism and how those views influence the management of their sacred sites.

This thesis compares archaeological culture areas and contemporary cultural landscapes of the Hopi and Zuni tribes as an evaluation of the scale in which stakeholders consider heritage resources. Archaeological culture areas provide a heuristic for interpretations of past regional patterns. However, contemporary Hopi and Zuni people describe historical and spiritual ties to vast cultural landscapes, stretching well beyond archaeological culture areas in the American Southwest. Cultural landscapes are emic delineations of space that are formed through multiple dimensions of interaction with the land and environment. Concepts of time and space and the role of memory, connectivity, and place are explored to help to delineate the scale of Hopi and Zuni cultural landscapes. For both Hopis and Zunis, the contemporary cultural landscape is founded upon the relationships between places and between past and present cultural practices. Cultural landscapes provide a framework, for anthropological research and historic preservation alike, to contextualize the smaller, nested scales of social identity and practice that they incorporate.

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<p> In the past ten years or more, social complexity has taken center stage as the focus of archaeologists working on the Eurasian steppe. The Middle Bronze Age Sintashta period, ca. 2100 - 1700 BC, is often assumed to represent the apex of social complexity for the Bronze Age in the southern Urals region. This assumption has been based on the appearance of twenty-two fortified settlements, chariot burials, and intensified metal production. Some of these studies have incorporated the emergence and subsequent development of mobile pastoralism as their primary foci, while others have concerned themselves primarily with early forms of metal production and their association with seemingly nascent social hierarchies. Such variables are useful indicators of more complex forms of social organization usually accompanied by strong degrees of demographic centralization and social differentiation.</p><p> This dissertation explores the relationship between demographic centralization and the balance between social differentiation and integration based on the data collected during archaeological survey of 142 square km around and between two Sintashta period settlements, Stepnoye and Chernorech'ye, located in the Ui River valley of the southern Urals region, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian Federation. Because of the multi-component nature of archaeological survey, materials recovered date from the Mesolithic to the twentieth century. However, the focus was on Bronze Age materials to better identify and evaluate changes between demographic centralization and social differentiation.</p><p> Center-hinterland dynamics and the use of historical capital (materials, practices, and places re-used in identifiable ways) were evaluated from the Middle Bronze Age Sintashta period through to the end of the Final Bronze Age. Based on the results of the Sintashta Collaborative Archaeological Research Project (SCARP) project, the ongoing work of Russian scholars, and the results of this dissertation, there is considerable evidence that it was in the Late Bronze Age that social complexity may have become more pronounced, even as the demographically centralized Sintashta period communities dispersed. The results of the landscape and materials analyses indicate strong possibilities for land-use and craft traditions carried through to the end of the Final Bronze Age, with such traditions acting as historical capital for later communities. </p>

Texts like the World examines Nicole Brossards Picture Theory and Mauve Desert and Dionne Brands No Language is Neutral and A Map to the Door of No Return in order to demonstrate how these authors figure place in ways that are representative of utopian discourse. To do so, I draw primarily on two disciplinary perspectives: cultural geography and utopian studies. I turn to postmodern cultural geography, in particular to the work of Doreen Massey but also to works by Canadian cultural geographers Derek Gregory and Jane Jacobs, in order to examine Brossards and Brands understanding of space, time, and place. In general, postmodern cultural geographers argue that such conceptions of a socially-constructed, multiple, non-totalizable, dynamic space-time cannot be represented, or they call for some as-yet-unknown way to represent it. I turn to utopian studies to demonstrate how these authors deploy utopian discourse in order to figure such a geographical imagination. Rather than to studies of utopia as a literary genre, I draw on theories that posit utopia as a discourse in various dialectical relationships with ideology. In particular, I draw on the work of Fredric Jameson who argues that utopian discourse arises in the transitional moments between two modes of production. Through its unintentional narrative discontinuities and continual play and production, utopia figures the experience of existing within the moments inevitable contradictions, including contradictory constructions of place. Expanding on Jameson, I modify his theory of utopian discourse so that it figures the contradictions arising spatially as well as temporally. In other words, the contradictions of utopian discourse can be intentionally employed to figure the experience of existing among and within multiple co-exiting constructions of space, time, and place. Jameson argues that utopian discourse figures a world that cannot be known abstractly, and in Brands and Brossards texts, such a world is postmodern cultural geographys space-time dynamic that counters hegemonic constructions of space, time, and place. / English

This thesis examines the relationship of labour mobility and socioeconomic transformation in the Solomon Islands, and proposes that one cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Explanation is pursued both at the levels of structure and of agency, and integration of these levels is attempted in some places. This is discussed in the first part of the thesis, within a general discussion of issues of theory and method. The second part of the thesis deals with the structural parameters of labour mobility. Through the twentieth century, the institutions of government, mission and capitalist enterprise have been central in shaping the Solomon Islands social formation. The roles of these formal institutions with implications for labour mobility have ranged from purveyors of ideology to employers of labour. Another major element in the social formation is an original Melanesian mode of production which influences labour mobility through village-level institutions such as the land tenure system, kinship, and household operation. Labour circulation is a major factor in linking village and non-village institutions, and more abstractly in articulating two different modes of production. The third part of the thesis considers the ways in which individual agency operates within structure. The data base are life histories and related information from the Mbambatana language group on the island of Choiseul. This is integrated with national, regional and village-level structural information. Education is important in the way it 'selects' individuals for certain kinds of employment. This selection process occurs within the wage economy generally, but is further refined within institutions of employment. This results in labour mobility 'streams' which have identifiable characteristics related to gender, education, and employment type. Movements within each 'stream' have typical temporal and spatial characteristics. Patterns of labour mobility, especially sequence, are affected by gender and life cycle factors. For men and women the most critical changes take place in the 20s age span, but individual behaviour varies according to marriage and childrearing patterns. From a village perspective, labour circulation is a logical response to the necessity of operating within two different economic systems typified by different modes of production. This process of articulation is manifest in other ways as well, and households or families may adopt different strategies in operating within two different systems. The particular strategy adopted depends on the labour power available, degree of access to land, and employment possibilities of individual members.

This thesis examines the relationship of labour mobility and socioeconomic transformation in the Solomon Islands, and proposes that one cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Explanation is pursued both at the levels of structure and of agency, and integration of these levels is attempted in some places. This is discussed in the first part of the thesis, within a general discussion of issues of theory and method. The second part of the thesis deals with the structural parameters of labour mobility. Through the twentieth century, the institutions of government, mission and capitalist enterprise have been central in shaping the Solomon Islands social formation. The roles of these formal institutions with implications for labour mobility have ranged from purveyors of ideology to employers of labour. Another major element in the social formation is an original Melanesian mode of production which influences labour mobility through village-level institutions such as the land tenure system, kinship, and household operation. Labour circulation is a major factor in linking village and non-village institutions, and more abstractly in articulating two different modes of production. The third part of the thesis considers the ways in which individual agency operates within structure. The data base are life histories and related information from the Mbambatana language group on the island of Choiseul. This is integrated with national, regional and village-level structural information. Education is important in the way it 'selects' individuals for certain kinds of employment. This selection process occurs within the wage economy generally, but is further refined within institutions of employment. This results in labour mobility 'streams' which have identifiable characteristics related to gender, education, and employment type. Movements within each 'stream' have typical temporal and spatial characteristics. Patterns of labour mobility, especially sequence, are affected by gender and life cycle factors. For men and women the most critical changes take place in the 20s age span, but individual behaviour varies according to marriage and childrearing patterns. From a village perspective, labour circulation is a logical response to the necessity of operating within two different economic systems typified by different modes of production. This process of articulation is manifest in other ways as well, and households or families may adopt different strategies in operating within two different systems. The particular strategy adopted depends on the labour power available, degree of access to land, and employment possibilities of individual members.

This thesis examines the relationship of labour mobility and socioeconomic transformation in the Solomon Islands, and proposes that one cannot be understood in isolation from the other. Explanation is pursued both at the levels of structure and of agency, and integration of these levels is attempted in some places. This is discussed in the first part of the thesis, within a general discussion of issues of theory and method. The second part of the thesis deals with the structural parameters of labour mobility. Through the twentieth century, the institutions of government, mission and capitalist enterprise have been central in shaping the Solomon Islands social formation. The roles of these formal institutions with implications for labour mobility have ranged from purveyors of ideology to employers of labour. Another major element in the social formation is an original Melanesian mode of production which influences labour mobility through village-level institutions such as the land tenure system, kinship, and household operation. Labour circulation is a major factor in linking village and non-village institutions, and more abstractly in articulating two different modes of production. The third part of the thesis considers the ways in which individual agency operates within structure. The data base are life histories and related information from the Mbambatana language group on the island of Choiseul. This is integrated with national, regional and village-level structural information. Education is important in the way it 'selects' individuals for certain kinds of employment. This selection process occurs within the wage economy generally, but is further refined within institutions of employment. This results in labour mobility 'streams' which have identifiable characteristics related to gender, education, and employment type. Movements within each 'stream' have typical temporal and spatial characteristics. Patterns of labour mobility, especially sequence, are affected by gender and life cycle factors. For men and women the most critical changes take place in the 20s age span, but individual behaviour varies according to marriage and childrearing patterns. From a village perspective, labour circulation is a logical response to the necessity of operating within two different economic systems typified by different modes of production. This process of articulation is manifest in other ways as well, and households or families may adopt different strategies in operating within two different systems. The particular strategy adopted depends on the labour power available, degree of access to land, and employment possibilities of individual members.