This thesis represents part of my Ethnological research carries out in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the years 1926 and 1927. After having worked for three months in the area between the White and Blue Niles, mainly amongst the Ingassana People of the Tabi Hills, and later for some seven weeks on the West Bank of the Nule, amongst the Moro Peoples, I arrived in that part of the Bahr-el-Ghazal Province which is inhabited by the Azande towards the end of March 1927. I left for England at the end of August, thus completing a residence of five months amongst the Azande. The Thesis is arranged in two books. The first book is a condensed analysis of the structure of Zande society. In the second book I have taken native customer or institutions, divination, magic, dancing and obscene songs, and I have en-deavoured to interpret them by showing their contexts, associa-tions and functions. It is by the method exemplified in the second book of this thesis that I hope to explain one by one the institutions of the Azande. In the parts on magic and obscenity I have used the comparative method of analysis. It is this method which must eventually be applied to all institu-tions if Social Anthropology is to put forward general state-ments, or laws, and so take its place in the ranks of other inductive sciences.

The people of early Iron Age Cyprus worshipped at sanctuaries where a sacred tree was the focus of their rituals. The tree was closely associated with a goddess thought to inhabit the natural landscape in which the fields and settlements grew, and in which the people lived and worked. This thesis explores why the tree of life was the central symbol of Cypriot Iron Age rituals, covering the period from the end of the Bronze Age to 500 B.C. Although the tree of the goddess has been studied as an artistic motif, and ceramic material from Cyprus has been studied scientifically, material carrying the motif has never been studied within a fully contextualised archaeology that queries its prevalence in Cypriot material culture, its role within the sanctuaries and necropolises of the city kingdoms and the meanings the material carried in those places. This research project addresses the complex, abstract, iconography of the Geometric and Archaic material in a methodical and theoretical manner, and with respect to the local and regional landscape settlement contexts from which it was recovered. The study takes a fresh, postcolonial approach and follows contextualizing, multiscalar methods towards an improved understanding of cultural structures, meanings and individual events. Old concepts of race and fixed groups are discarded in favour of a more nuanced approach that sees individual identities as constantly changing and material culture as both a driver and an indicator of social hybridisation. This research also serves as a vehicle to study a controversial transitional phase in East Mediterranean history, when the ancient agricultural empires gave way to the poleis and colonial systems of the maritime networks. Although the emergence of a ‘great divide’ between east and west has been postulated for this period, the alliances and cultural exchanges that preceded this transformation have not yet been adequately explored in mainstream academic histories. This research focussing on Iron Age Cyprus illuminates regional interaction between African, Levantine and Aegean cultures, and shows that the island existed within a continuous and contiguous cultural milieu that stretched from the Nile to Athens.

Based on anthropological fieldwork in factories in China’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs), this dissertation examines the process of ‘growing up’ and ‘becoming independent’ for young migrant workers from the countryside, especially in relation to their decisions about employment and marriage. In ‘post-socialist’ China, as many writers have observed, the old systems and ideas have not entirely faded away but new market logics have been imposed on them. Partly as a result of this, the process of achieving adulthood – i.e. the process through which young people should, in theory, learn how to position themselves as full members of society – is now filled with uncertainties. Old expectations about interactions with others have become invalid. This is especially so for young migrant workers from the countryside who, as I argue, possess a double social being, i.e. they are caught somewhere between childhood and adulthood, and who face the challenges of multilocality, i.e. they shift back and forth between rural and urban environments. For them, migration is a mandatory rite of passage, but one that often leaves them suspended in a position of liminality and uncertainty. The research found that young workers learn, in the course of migration, that manipulating personal networks is the most efficient way for them to get the resources they need – so that they can deal with the problems of uncertainty they face. They rely on the rather traditional mode of ‘interconnected personhood’, instead of developing what might be called ‘individualistic personhood’. Having said this, they are meanwhile enjoying the freedom, opportunities and symbolic values that individualistic personhood can bring them. They stand in between the two systems and typically avoid fully committing to one or the other. This is how they deal with risks and responsibilities within the constraints imposed by their background, gender, and class position.

This thesis is about a workforce in the midst of regional economic fragmentation. It is an ethnographic study of a commercial farm on South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe, where farmer-landowners are white Afrikaners, and workers black and overwhelmingly Zimbabwean. Fleeing the hyperinflation and violent state oppression of the ‘Zimbabwean crisis’, farm workers encounter South Africa’s neoliberal restructuring, contraction of labour-intensive industry, and land reform. Economic informalisation in both countries – a shift to short-term strategies of ‘making do’ – seems to hail the disappearance of southern Africa’s longer-term patterns of racialised migrant labour systems. This thesis, however, argues for a labour relations or ‘productivist’ perspective on current trends. Agricultural workforces on the Zimbabwean-South African border, with their established forms of everyday organisation and on-site residence, profoundly shape the local setting. Their highly structured arrangements bear the mark of the region’s labour history, yet also reflect the forms of fragmentation currently characterising southern Africa. The thesis begins by exploring white border farmers’ self-understandings through their notions of success. It then offers a wider historical account of the border’s settler capitalists, their struggles for control of land and labour, and the role played by their enterprises as hubs of settlement. Focusing on one border farm today, the study turns to the black workforce itself. It investigates how permanent workers consolidate their powerful positions in diverse areas of life, blurring spheres of work and non-work; how seasonal workers, many displaced from Zimbabwe, with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, engage with the hierarchies built around their permanent counterparts; and how, in the midst of all this, senior black workers struggle over status by means of contrasting models of authority, pitting established paternalism against idioms of corporate management. Together, these perspectives reveal how a workforce’s internal arrangements both reflect and refract the wider dynamics of the border and of Zimbabwean displacement. The thesis finally develops this central theme by addressing the position of farm work in a wider economy of trade and services on the farms and across the border. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on one border farm, and in the border area more generally (November 2006-April 2008), and supported by archival research, this thesis contributes to the anthropology of work. It shows how workplace dynamics act as a prism, refracting the meanings of work, movement and upheaval in an era of informalisation, and embed displaced migrant workers in dense webs of dependence and obligation.

The creation and management of protected areas is our principal approach to conserving biodiversity worldwide. Management and governance models for these diverse institutions have become more pluralistic in recent decades, moving away from the traditional exclusionary protected area model that has proliferated historically. Indeed, most new protected areas are being established for ‘multiple-use’ and, therefore, permit a range of human livelihood activities to occur within their boundaries. However, we know little about how such sites can be effectively managed. In this thesis, I use an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach to investigate the implementation of new multiple-use protected areas in Madagascar. Madagascar is a global conservation priority characterised by high levels of endemism, and has a largely forest-dependent biota. Since most of the human population is rural and dependent on natural resources for subsistence and income to differing extents, the expanded protected area system is managed for both conservation and socioeconomic goals (poverty alleviation and development). However, these objectives may be conflicting since human resource use can be a significant driver of biodiversity loss. I begin by examining trends in new protected area establishment at the nationwide-level to generate insights into protected area categorisation, and the role of natural resources and protected areas in poverty alleviation. I then consider the impacts of forest use on biodiversity, through a literature review and empirical study of bird and reptile communities across a degradation gradient. The findings indicate that habitat change arising from forest use may impact the high-value, endemic component of the fauna most negatively. In addition, I develop a simple index to enumerate the conservation value of different species. This is then used to determine how degradation influences the conservation value of exploited habitats, as well as assessing if the index is a suitable tool that can be used to prioritise conservation investment across a portfolio of sites. Finally, I seek to understand the drivers of natural resource use by rural communities within the Ranobe PK32 protected area, and discover that both bushmeat hunting and charcoal production are fallback activities or supplements to other livelihoods. The evidence collated in the thesis, derived from both ecological and social perspectives, suggests that managing new protected areas in Madagascar for conservation and development is overambitious, and that, at least in forest areas, management cannot be optimised towards both goals simultaneously.

No description available.

The setting for research is Abkhazia a small country south of the Caucasus Mountains and bordering Europe and the Near East. The Abkhaz hold onto custom – apswara – to make of state law an adjunct to custom as the state strives to strengthen its powers to ‘modernise’ along capitalist lines. This institution of a parallel-cum-interwoven and oppositional existence of practices and the laws questions the relationship of the two in a novel way. The bases of apswara are its concepts of communality and fairness. Profound transformations have followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the breakaway from and subsequent war with Georgia, none of which have brought the bright prospects that were hoped-for with independence. The element of hope in post-Soviet nostalgia provides pointers to what the Abkhaz seek to enact for their future, to decide the course of change that entertains the possibility of a non-capitalist modernisation route and a customary state. Apswara is founded on the direct participatory democracy of non-state regulation. It draws members of all ethnicities into the generation of nationalist self-awareness that transcends ethnicity and religions, and forms around sacred shrines and decisions taken by popular assemblies. It has topical significance for other societies where custom and law co-habit through contestation, and questions some widely accepted theories about the relationship of the two, as well as problematising anthropological concepts of ‘legal pluralism’ and post-Sovietics. The study suggests new topics for research.

The international wildlife trade supports livelihoods but can seriously threaten species if not controlled. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) monitors and controls trade in over 35,000 at risk species, over 70% of which are orchids. Mitigating the negative effects of illegal wildlife trade is difficult as traders are motivated by the large potential profits (an estimated $7-10 billion per year in total) to frequently adopt new methods to avoid detection, such as the increasing use of the internet as a marketplace. In this thesis I use the international orchid horticultural trade as a case study in which to explore issues relating to the structure and function of online wildlife trade networks. I start by investigating consumer behaviour, one of the major gaps in knowledge relating to the function of wildlife trade networks. First I test the use of choice experiments to reveal information about consumer preferences, with a focus on identifying particular orchid attributes that may drive demand. I also identify specific groups of consumers who may be buying from the illegal market, with a particular focus on those buying online. I then extend this focus on behaviour to explore non-compliance with CITES rules amongst an international group of orchid growers. I test the use of a specialized questioning method known as the Unmatched Count Technique alongside direct questions to identify which types of growers are breaking the rules and why. I then move on to focus on the structure of trade networks currently operating online, beginning with a gap analysis of access and benefit sharing from the online orchid trade in Southeast Asia, to identify countries that are not selling their own species. The region is a centre of orchid diversity and export but the lower income countries are not currently benefitting from the widespread online trade in their own species. Following the study of formal online trade I switch to the informal trade operating within orchid themed groups on an international social media website. I use social network analysis to identify closely linked communities within the wider network and make recommendations for how best to communicate with these networks. I also assess the prevalence of both legal and illegal trade taking place via posts within these groups. The findings of this thesis have the potential for application to the conservation of species threatened by wildlife trade and the methods used provide new potential approaches to studying the structure and function of online trade networks in particular. My findings address key gaps in conservation knowledge relating to consumer behaviour, online trade networks and the efficacy of current regulations. For policy makers and practitioners it emphasises the importance of a coordinated and adaptive approach to tackling illegal online wildlife trade and strengthening the legal trade. It also highlights the current status of the orchid trade and emphasises the current lack of conservation attention being given to the trade in plants.

Between 1810 and 1826 Spain lost most of her possessions in the Americas, and the inhabitants of Spanish America ceased to be subjects of the king, and became citizens of a series of new republics such as Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia. This thesis explores how the transition from colonial to republican rule was experienced by the inhabitants of the provinces of Santa Marta and Riohacha (Colombia), and the extent to which the transition implied a radical break with the colonial past. Santa Marta was among the most important royalist strongholds in the northern part of Spanish South America, and the thesis offers an interpretation of the much-neglected theme of Spanish American royalism during the independence period. It focuses on the social and 'ethnic' configuration of the provinces, and it discusses how different social/ 'ethnic' groups were constructed in the colonial period, how they responded and acted during the wars of independence and what the transition to republican rule implied for the make-up of nineteenth-century society. The analyses of late colonial and early republican society are done principally (but not exclusively) through a detailed discussion of marriage practices and patterns. The study is based primarily on archival sources from Spanish and Colombian depositories.

Within the genus Homo, we observe a decrease in mandibular robusticity and in the size of anterior and postcanine dentition, a trend that is usually referred to as reduction or gracilisation. Factors linked to diet, food processing and encephalization have been suggested to be the main drivers of this trend. Stone tools and fire would have allowed Pleistocene hominins to reduce food toughness, thus relaxing the selective pressures on the masticatory apparatus. In the Holocene, the changes in human lifestyle triggered by agriculture would have determined the reduction in human tooth size. Brain expansion may have acted as a constraint on the development of the lower jaw. In this work, a primate perspective was adopted to clarify the relative influence of adaptive and non-adaptive factors on mandibular and dental reduction in the genus Homo. The effect of diet and structural constraints (allometry and encephalization) on dental and mandibular size and robusticity were analysed. The results show that incisor size and mandibular robusticity correlate significantly with diet proxies in non-human extant catarrhines and with neurocranium shape changes in the neurocranium in Homo sapiens. In non-human African apes, the elongation of the neurocranium influences postcanine tooth size. In Homo, body size plays an important part in tooth size allometry, but not in robusticity. These results suggest that improvements in tool-based food preparation may have been a leading factor in the reduction of incisor size in hominins. Molars and premolars were probably influenced by the expansion of the neurocranium during Pleistocene, and incisor size may be constrained by neurocranium shape changes in H. sapiens. This work confirmed the importance of food processing in the trend of reduction and produced convincing evidence for the significance of structural constraints in the evolution of the hominin anatomy. These findings contribute to explain the complex evolution of the human skull.