This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of radical populist politics among working class residents of a Venezuelan barrio (shantytown). It draws on fieldwork conducted over 19 months and focuses on the political ideals and practices of pro-government chavista activists in the context of the “Bolivarian Revolution”. Specifically, it analyses the utopian desires that underpin activists’ engagement with a number of political organisations in their communities, uncovering how political activism is embedded in broader projects that seek personal transformation, material betterment and moral redemption. It also examines state-led efforts to establish participatory democracy at the local level, tracing the experiences of grassroots activists as they attempt to build new political institutions in their communities. My approach involves a close attention to the relationship between political discourse, state policy and everyday practice, exploring the complex interactions that unfold between state agencies and community actors. Overall, the aim of this thesis is to understand the appeal of a radical populist project by looking beyond claims that political efficacy rests solely on the redistribution of resources. I suggest that the particular appeal of chavismo lies in the fact that it also asks its adherents to usher in a new moral order by transforming themselves, their communities and their democracy in profound ways. I explore many of the complexities that are inherent to this process, analysing how activists seeking radical change encounter disjunctures between an idealised future and a compromised and contingent present.

This thesis concerns the people of Umeda village, one of the four villages which make up the Waina-Sowanda Census district of the West Sepik district of New Guinea. The thesis falls into three major parts. In the first part (Chapters 1 and 2) the major features of the social structure are outlined. The economy (based on Sago, hunting, and gardening) is described. The discussion of Social Structure looks at various 'levels' of organisation starting with the cost inclusive and working downwards. These levels are 1) the connubium, 2) the village, 3) Village societies 4) Bush associations 5) the hamlet 6) hamlet societies 7) clans and sub-clans, and 8) the household. The main theme of the discussion is the role of marriage alliance, set up through sister-exchanges between exogamous (patrilineal) clan-hamlets, as the 'lateral’ bonding element in the social structure. It is shown, for instance, that members of the society conceptualise its overall structure in terms of 'compatibilities’ set up by alliance relationships. These alliance relations, though actually shifting slightly with each generation are seen as permanent structural features. This is given symbolic expression in the Village- and Hamlet-moiety organisation. The opposition of kinship relations (within the clan-hamlet) and alliance relations (outside it) is postulated as the basis of a pervasive opposition between ‘central’ and 'lateral' -- an opposition which underlies the moiety organisation, and which is also of crucial importance in understanding the Symbolic System as found e.g. in Ritual. Later sections of Chapter 2 (viii - xi) discuss interpersonal relations in more detail. The problems posed by sorcery beliefs are discussed in relation to marriage and sexual relations generally. The concept of 'tadv' - relations (killing, eating, shooting, and copulating with the other} are discussed as the basic modality of ego-alter relations across sociological boundaries. Sorcery is the reciprocal of marriage. Chapter 3 takes up the second major theme of the Thesis. This chapter is devoted to linguistic symbolism, particularly in relation to the basic social and kinship roles. Three forms of linguistic symbolism (or 'lexical motivation’) are distinguished; 1) semantic motivation 2) morphological motivation 3) psychological motivation. Chapter 3 concerns itself only with the first two kinds, Phonological motivation in Umeda being explored in Appendix I as it poses problems which go beyond the purely Anthropological. It is shown that the Umeda vocabulary contains many implicit clues as to the symbolic system of the people. A system of analogies is demonstrated, using lexical evidence, between the structure of the body, the structure of botanical entities such as trees and the overall structure of the society. Once again the ‘central/lateral’ opposition is shown to be crucial, but this is further elaborated into a notion of ‘organic structure’ -- a structural model applicable both to biological and sociological organisms. Considerable attention is devoted to an analysis of Umeda tree symbolism: for instance, the fact that the Mother's Brother is (lexically) identified with the Sago Palm, the Ancestors with the Coconut palm and so on. Chapter 3 thus performs a 'bridging’ function between the first part of the thesis which is basically concerned with Sociological questions, and the second part which is concerned with Ritual Symbolism. Through a consideration of language, an understanding is gained both of the 'organic' metaphor at the heart of Umeda symbolism, and of the way in which this kind of metaphor meshes in with the details of the functioning of the social system, dominated by certain basic kinship roles. Chapter 4 is mainly descriptive. The Ida fertility rites, performed annually to increase the productivity of the sago palms are described in detail. A discussion of the actual ceremonies is preceded by an account of the many months of preparations for the ritual. It is argued that the ritual, and the need to accumulate supplies of food for its performance, imposes pattern and discipline on mundane economic activity. The ceremonies themselves consist of the appearance, over the course of a night and the subsequent two days, of a sequence of masked dancers (all male) representing various ritual roles. The most important roles are those of 1) cassowaries, 2) fish --- of which there are two kinds, the one red, the other black, 3) sago, 4) termites and 5) ipele bowmen, representing neophytes accompanied by preceptors. Chapter 5 takes the various ritual roles in order of their appearance and analyses their symbolic significance. A preliminary discussion is devoted to methodological issues. Subsequent sections discuss ritual roles under a number of rubrics e.g. the significance in practical or mythological terms of the animal or species represented, the significance of the constraints on actors taking certain roles, the significance of body-paint styles and mask styles, the (significances of various methods of dancing etc. All these ‘role attributes’ are set out in Tabular diagram-form (Table 5). The problem then becomes the analysis of the ritual process, seen as a sequence of transformations taking place in the attributes of successive ritual actors over the course of the total rite. It is demonstrated that the Ida ritual can be best understood as a concrete and dramatic representation of the overall process of bio-social regeneration. The cassowaries, who open the ritual, are shown transformed, and regenerated, as the (neophyte) bowmen, whose loosing off of magical arrows (ipele) is the culmination, and concluding, act of the ritual cycle. This finding is supported by detailed analyses of the transformations of mask-styles and body paint styles throughout the ritual. An extended account is given of Umeda colour symbolism. This leads, finally, to a discussion of the ritual representation of Time. It is argued that the ritual is a means of (symbolically) renewing Time. Certain contradictions inherent in the notion of temporality are specified, and the ritual is seen as a means of overcoming these contradictions within the cultural and symbolic milieu of Umeda. This chapter concludes the main part of the thesis. Two appendices deal I) with phonological motivation in Umeda – it is argued that articulatory features are employed expressively in the structure of Umeda lexical items. II) An appendix gives the complete Pul-tod Myth – a myth referred to at various points in the structure in the thesis, concerning the adventures of the ‘Oedipal’ hero, Pul-tod (Areca-man).

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which kinship and friendship are informed by cultural notions of gender in two villages of Northern Lesbos (East Aegean region of Greece) and it falls into four parts. It begins with a discussion of marriage and the creation of the domestic group, it moves on to consider relations in the predominantly female realm of house and neighbourhood and concludes with an examination of the social and cultural configurations present in the exclusively male domain of the coffeeshop and the village community at large. In the introductory chapter I briefly discuss the socio-economic and demographic context in a historical perspective. The analysis of informal courtship, match-making and dowering and the process of marriage more generally forms the focus of part one. Here it is shown that the religiously sanctioned ideal of the bilateral household (which is based on gender complementarity) is administered primarily by women and exhibits a matrilateral emphasis. This point is fully explored in part two where it is demonstrated that while men, especially those of low status, are domestically marginal, their wives in their maternal role dominate kin-based and mutually antagonistic networks of women. A close examination of the fragmented nature of male kinship and the content of affinity and neighbourship further confirms the centrality of women to kinship. The third part begins with an extensive discussion of the code of commensality and the drinking patterns it supports, the cycle of participation in different categories of coffeeshop and the symbolism of drinks. An analysis of male commensal friendship and the more asymmetric ties that arise in competitive drinking and gambling gives us the clues to understanding notions of gender that are specific to the coffeeshop and opposed to corresponding notions that arise in the context of the household. Finally the concluding part examines the values of individual personhood and 'belonging' in local society and assesses the contrast between two notions of the village and their implications for political behaviour.

The human-nonhuman animal boundary marks the interchange between human and animal, culture and nature, the social and the natural. This powerfully symbolic site has traditionally been structured via religion-based ideas of humanity's origins, that in the West have been used to maintain a strictly impermeable boundary: humans, created in God's own image and blessed with a soul on one side, on the other the senseless, soulless beast. This image is one which has come under threat from work in multiples branches of the natural and social sciences; in the humanities; and from animal rights activists and other social movements. Such culturally contested territory makes fertile ground for the study of interactions between science and popular culture, framed via Gieryn’s concept of 'boundary-work' (1983), and Bowker & Star’s sociology of classification (2000). Using the fossilised figures of palaeoanthropological research as a prominent site at which the aforementioned boundary is constructed, the thesis considers both how such “missing links” are positioned within the popular human-nonhuman animal dichotomy, and how the boundaries between science and nonscience culture are negotiated during this process. The project makes use of two case studies - the infamous Piltdown Man (discovered 1912) and the recent Flores ‘hobbit’ (2004). Both received huge scientific and popular attention at the time of their respective discoveries, and it is a critical discourse analysis of relevant scientific and popular news media that provides the research data. The thesis addresses how missing links create connections far beyond simply their antecedents and descendants. Indeed, their emblematic position sees them use to explore fundamental notions of humanness, becoming tied to all manner of socio-political ideologies in the process. It is through this process that their ‘natural’ position is made culturally meaningful. Such actions requires repeated transgression of the science-nonscience boundary, a lesson which is used to critique ‘canonical’ and ‘continuum’ models of science communication, and to suggest a more complex, multi-directional ‘hydrological’ model in their place. The thesis concludes by drawing attention to the gaps between formally recognised categories, and how these are utilised by scientists and journalists alike, both in the translation of these missing links between different systems of meaning, and in their role as a creative space for all parties to think with.

This thesis focuses on a group of former forest based hunter-gatherers, the Batwa of South West Uganda, whose livelihoods and situations have been dramatically affected through their recent interactions with non-Batwa peoples. Once inhabitants of the rainforests of South West Uganda, the Batwa today live in bonded labour arrangements with their local neighbours and exist as a despised and marginalised group, positioned on the margins of Ugandan society. In the first part of this thesis, Global Powers, I seek to lay out the theoretical foundations for the marginalisation of the Batwa by discussing the more general marginalisation and representation of Indigenous Peoples. In the rest of the thesis, I move on to discuss two specific questions. In the second section, Local Realities, I ask why the Batwa have ended up in their current situation and I investigate the historical and social contexts of the south west of Uganda that have shaped their present predicament. In the third section, Current Interface, I ask why national and international interventions, aimed at helping the Batwa, have failed to achieve their stated aims, and in some circumstances deepened their present marginalisation? The thesis argues that representations of, and knowledge about the Batwa are constructed from an epistemology that seeks to create a subordinate ‘Other’ in order to assert a dominant ‘Self’. As such, their marginalised position replicates the situation of similar ‘Exotic Others’ found throughout the world. Importantly this construction plays a crucial role in the progression and validation of distinct social ontologies that the dominant ‘Modern World’ holds as self evident and true to its own social reality. As a result, the Batwa have only two futures which are presented to them by the dominant forces that regulate their situation. On the one hand, they are coerced to assimilate towards the identity of the dominant ‘Self’ and in doing so cast off the identity which the dominant ‘Self’ has deemed to account for their ‘Otherness’. Or on the other hand, if they choose to maintain those aspects of their identity which identifies them as the ‘Other’, they are ostracised and depicted as unfit for the ‘Modern World’. I conclude this thesis by suggesting that the current predicament of the Batwa has been constructed by external forces and that Development discourse continues to construct this marginalised position. I also conclude that in positioning the Batwa as the ‘Other’, what is being asserted is the identity of a dominant ‘Self’. This relationship between the dominant ‘Self’ and the marginalised ‘Other’, whilst being declared as a distinct and exclusionary relationship, is in fact an intertwined and entangled relationship. Finally, I argue that a fundamental shift in the paradigm of the ‘Modern World’ is needed in order to allow the Batwa, and other Indigenous Peoples, to be seen not as ‘Exotic Others’ but as equal participants in an interconnected world where multiple ways of knowing and being are mutually supported and validated.

No description available.

This thesis contributes to anthropological discussions on the relationship between production and consumption by engaging in multi-sited ethnography that investigates the design of social robots in cutting-edge Japanese research laboratories and also explores the day-to-day lives of Japanese disabled people who are potential consumers of such devices. By drawing on these disparate groups, located in disparate sites, this thesis traces connections but also disconnections as it analyses the 'friction' between the technical problem-solving of researchers and the organized activist politics of disabled people. It investigates the rationales of robot research, messy and multiple, as well as the material and political impetus behind the 'barrier free' movement for independent living. Social robots hold a special interest in Japan because not only do many people, both inside and outside of Japan, believe that the nation has a unique cultural interest and affinity for robots, but, with an ageing population, the Japanese state has looked toward social robots as potential care-givers and as a solution to the 'demographic crisis'. Through the engagement of both science and technology studies and disability studies, this thesis focuses on the theme of problems to show how the problem-making approach of robotics researchers, which identifies problems of the body as a disability to be solved by a technical fix in the form of a robot, contrasts with the perspective from disabled people themselves, who see disability as a problem of society and the environment rather than the individual and the body.

This thesis is about women migrants from different countries of Latin America who earn a living as domestic and sex workers in London. Fleeing their respective economic and social crises, these women, middle-class in their home countries, experience a variety of personal dislocations when working in London’s care service sector market that make them feel as though they have been transformed into “different people”. These temporal and personal estrangements derive from the everyday challenges they face as intimate labourers, their undocumented status and the inevitable experience of illegality, the downward status mobility they experience, and the uncertainties they feel towards the future. Exploring migrants’ narratives of their journeys to the UK, the thesis exposes both the personal predicaments and structural problems that “pushed” them to migrate, as well as recounting and analysing their everyday lives as intimate labourers, the complexities that emerge from the commodification of intimacy and the tactics they use to negotiate the conflicts (both personal and work related) that emerge from such occupations. Following their working lives, the thesis analyses their ways of recuperating the social status they think they have lost, and of constructing spaces of temporary “normality”. These choices allow them to “reconstruct their persons” while also reflecting on the limited options they have as intimate migrant labourers in London.

This thesis, based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, is about ordinary Peruvians of mixed African slave and indigenous descent. It shows that villagers in Yapatera, northern Peru, have responded to contradictory historical forces through everyday practices of ‘mixing’. Villagers live in a society that officially downplays the significance of race while it simultaneously discriminates against non-white ‘others’. The thesis finds that villagers reject the ethnic (‘AfroPeruvian’) and racial (‘black’) labels cast upon them by outsiders, and instead illustrates how villagers are engaged in a variety of social practices and local narratives which stress the cultural, social, religious, political and economic integration of the community into the local region, and which seek to deemphasise its potential ethnic distinctiveness. ‘Mixing’ permeates through villagers’ ideas and practices relating to human physiology, procreation, descent, marriage, personhood, historicity, religion, place-making, local politics, and relations with the state. However, mixing is ultimately a fragile project. ‘Race’, as a social divider, reappears often in the very practices or domains where mixing occurs. Mixing itself can be understood as an attempt to overcome thinly-veiled local racist discourses. It is also an attempt to negotiate oneself out of the very undesirable category of ‘black’, and as such it bears continuities with historical social practices. Mixing is not so much an outright resistance to racism, nor is it a straightforward appropriation of nationalist ideologies. Instead mixing is to be understood as an alternative form of knowledge: an autochthonous attempt to engage with these external forces. By bridging the gap between Andean anthropology and the study of Afro-descendants in a variety of disciplines, the thesis helps fill a gap on mestizaje as a form of lived experience. By highlighting the central role of kinship in ideas and practices of mixing, it also indicates the wider implications of mixing for anthropological theory.

This thesis represents an endeavour to study and rethink bureaucracy through an ethnography of the bureaucratic organisation called ‘Respect-the-Elderly Home’ (REH) in rural China in the first decade of the 21st century. Its contextual concern is to examine the phenomenon of old age support being transferred from primary groups (family and village) to the state in the processes of modern state formation, a context in which elderly support is portrayed by both the Chinese government and mainstream academic discourse as a symptom of family dysfunction and moral crisis; and a state project to build up REHs to host the welfare category of ‘Five-Guarantee Elderly’ is hailed to be practically therapeutic and ideologically significant. Based on long term fieldwork in one REH in southwestern China and more REHs generally (April 2010 – June 2011), this thesis reveals a secret function of this organisation, namely, ‘accommodative inversion’, and argues for a heterotopian looking-glass perspective to conceptualise it. The first chapter outlines the fieldwork setting in a way that its heterotopian qualities are simultaneously presented. The following chapters are divided into two parts. The first part delineates the realities of the institution-defined order and disorders of dining, spatial layout and temporal orientation, and explores the mechanisms which make the presumable incompatibility of these distinct orders practically irrelevant. The second part explores the dialectics of state and family in service delivery, guarantee and deprivation, and the condition of the residents as the served and the serving, and explains why structural inversions are inevitable through institutional processes beyond individual intention. This research brings the myth of our era – of bureaucracy and in particular of the Chinese bureaucracy – into a dialogue with the literature on bureaucratic organisation that has emerged in social science since the 1960s. More significantly, by disclosing and expounding the violent nature of state welfare, it presents a fundamental challenge to conventional understandings of benefactor and beneficiary in state provision.