An experimental attempt to consider the history of the London Missionary Society (LMS) from the lens of the artefacts that accumulated at its London headquarters, which included a museum from 1814 until 1910. The movement of these things through space and over time offers a rich perspective for considering the impacts on Britain of its history of overseas missionary activity. Building on anthropological debates about exchange, material culture, and the agency of things, the biographies of particular objects are explored in relation to the processes involved in the assemblage, circulation and dispersal of the LMS collection. Methodologically, the research is an attempt to develop what Latour has called a symmetrical anthropology, with archaeological approaches to the material products of historical processes as an important dimension of this. Drawing on attempts to study ‘along the grain’ in historical anthropology, and to move beyond iconoclasm as a critical stance, it is argued that museums should be understood as ‘other places’ in which objects are made by techniques of inscription and confinement which have a significant ceremonial dimension. At the same time, certain charismatic objects are shown to have transcended these contexts of confinement, affecting those they encounter, and shaping history around themselves.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-14T13:30:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 386675.pdf: 1125297 bytes, checksum: 8cd8b100979a5d9a5d40f3e401c3eb17 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-11-18 / O objetivo deste estudo foi comparar a precis?o das radiografias periapical, panor?mica e tomografia computadorizada e estabelecer a margem de seguran?a nas medidas verticais. A amostra valeu-se de vinte hemimand?bulas humanas secas que foram radiografadas para avalia??o. A ?rea selecionada foi a do forame mentual, e foi realizado um tra?ado dos exames. Com o uso de um paqu?metro eletr?nico digital, foram realizadas as medi??es dos tra?ados e das mand?bulas seccionadas na regi?o proposta para o trabalho. Os valores obtidos foram comparados, e os resultados demonstraram que os melhores desempenhos foram da radiografia periapical e da tomografia computadorizada. Foi poss?vel estabelecer a margem de seguran?a para cada um dos exames radiogr?ficos estudados.

Based on fieldwork carried out in Delhi during 2006-2007 this thesis explores the social world of transparency and accountability activism in the city. I focus in particular on the activism scene that has grown up around the campaign for and implementation of the national Right to Information Act 2005. There is a global interest in improving the transparency and accountability of government bureaucracies, and in schemes to foster active citizenship. In tune with this campaigns to provide Indian citizens with a right to access government information have captured the imagination of activists, policy makers, and national and international donor organisations. For transparency and accountability activists rights to access government information offer Indian citizens opportunities to interrogate official procedures and hold officers individually accountable; to provide people with mechanisms with which they might become more ‗active‘ as citizens; and to provide a means of monitoring the performance of the state in fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities regarding welfare, equality and social justice. Taking boundaries as my theme my work looks at the activist scene in Delhi from an ethnographic perspective, investigating how activist projects work. I argue that the ideology and practice of transparency and accountability activism is concerned with boundaries in two ways. First it is directed at illuminating and delineating boundaries between the state and society, and public and private roles. The intention is to combat the effects of private influence and unofficial practices that might lead to the misallocation of government resources. Second it is directed at transcending social and spatial boundaries based on class, caste or community in order to enrol people into projects aimed at producing empowered and active citizens. However, in looking at the activist scene a number of what I call ‗boundary paradoxes‘ become apparent. Activist campaigns to get transparency and accountability legislation passed rely in part on the personal connections to the highest levels of government of activists from India‘s social elite. At the grassroots level activists play a mediating role between the local state and poor or illiterate clients. Social and cultural capital, space, class and gender distinctions emerge as significant factors in the everyday practice of activism, in turn reproducing existing social hierarchies in activist organisations. While seeking transparency and accountability from others activists have to negotiate the boundaries of transparency and accountability in their own organisations, deciding what can be made public and what should remain hidden. And, as activism is organised through informal networks sustaining a livelihood and a full time role in the scene immerses activists in webs of patron-client relations, recommendations and obligations, the antithesis of the disciplined, transparent and accountable bureaucratic organisation that transparency and accountability activism requires from the state. My thesis contains examples of the positive effects that involvement in activism can have, particularly for people from some of Delhi‘s poorer neighbourhoods. However, although activism is directed at producing a future that conforms to activist‘s ideal constructions of how India should be, activists must work in the present to bring this future about. I argue that even as activists work for change, activism itself is a site in which the existing structures of society are reproduced.

Ten experiments examined the way that automatic processing of the visual perspectives and eye gaze of others affects adults‘ perception and encoding of the social world. I investigated the amount of flexibility that automatic visual perspective computation accommodates. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 demonstrate that automatic visual perspective-computation shows some flexibility for enumerating and representing perspective contents. Experiments 4 and 5 further indicate that automatic visual perspective-taking allows selection of relevant perspective information. I also examined whether observing others‘ eye gaze affects adults‘ visual working memory encoding. Experiments 6, 7, and 8 indicate that agents‘ object-oriented gaze does not lead to more efficient encoding of agent and object information. Experiments 9 and 10 demonstrate that observing others‘ participant-oriented gaze disrupts visual working memory encoding. I argue that although adults have minimal conscious control over the activation of visual perspective-computation and processing of participantoriented gaze, the efficient mindreading system shows some flexibility.

Battlefield sites are some of the most iconic locations in any nation’s store of heritage attractions and continue to capture the imagination of visitors. They have strong historic, cultural, nationalistic and moral resonances and speak to people on a national as well as a local scale. They have the power to provoke contention but at the same time foster understanding and respect through the consideration of deep moral questions. Battlefields are suffused with powerful stories of courage, sacrifice, betrayal and even cowardice. They have a strong sense of place and can provoke a range of cognitive and emotional reactions. But as sites they are inherently unremarkable and rely on the incarnative powers of interpretation to inform and enliven otherwise empty landscapes. This thesis is a wide ranging analysis of what battlefields mean to tourists and the effect interpretation has on battlefield sites. In order to further understand these aspects the development of the sites is also investigated including the historical and cultural forces which have been at play in creating such ‘attractions’. This makes use of the semiotic interpretation of tourist sites and the ‘site sacralisation’ model of Dean MacCannell in addressing the important question of what factors are present in the creation of an attraction. The study uses the four main ‘managed’ battlefield sites in the UK – Hastings (1066), Bannockburn (1314) , Bosworth (1485) and Culloden (1746) – to illustrate these objectives and comparisons are also made with a more recent conflict, that of the First World War (1914-18) at the Western Front in France and Belgium. Using an array of qualitative and quantitative methods the study addresses a hitherto relatively understudied area of tourism in exploring the meanings attached to the more historic sites and how they compare and contrast with visitor experiences at sites of more modern conflict. Interviews with experts/stakeholders involved with battlefield sites as well as both visitors at conventional times and at a re-enactment event were made and a large corpus of material was gathered from which conclusions were drawn. Although not statistically generalisable because of methodological constraints the results from the study add an important dimension to our understanding of battlefield tourism and what conflict sites mean to people. The study demonstrates how there is a very dynamic relationship between site and visitor and this is manifested in deep and wide ranging discourses which are reflected by the visitor comments. This is complemented by the views of experts/stakeholders. The study addresses some of the salient points surrounding the nature of visitor experience using the theory of the tourist ‘gaze’ propounded by John Urry. It asserts that a broader appreciation of the visitor interaction needs to be adopted utilizing a multi-sensory approach and not restricted to the dominance of the visual in interpreting the battlefield site. Interpretation is seen as critical in endowing relatively unremarkable sites with meaning and the existing approaches taken by the agencies managing the case study sites are found to be particularly effective in educational terms. The study examined the deeper meanings thought to be attached to places of suffering and death (the numen) but found a very weak response suggesting that the commercialisation of such sites results in a diminution of any visceral type of experience. For the Western Front the deeper meanings were eclipsed by grief and the study thus concluded that the numen can be subsumed into more complex reactions to places of death and suffering. With regard to the development of the historical sites the study challenges the stages of sacralisation in that more contemporary forces involved in attraction creation are neglected. A further commercialisation stage is added to update the model. Battlefield sites have much to inform us about how heritage is received and understood by the public. This is even more instructive in the case of a conflict site where the nature of the attraction might sit uncomfortably with public perception. This study aims to shed light on the meanings of such ‘dark’ sites within society and in doing so can in turn provide vivid reflections on our own culture milieu.

This dissertation comments on the current period of intense social change in the former Soviet Union by charting processes of elite production at a business school in Riga, Latvia. It is concerned with an ethnically diverse group of students from the Baltic states who attend a Swedish institution established to accelerate the transition. I suggest that rather than producing 'catalysts of change' the business school represents a foreign-direct-investment into human capital. The thesis tackles the transnational complexities of the organisation by combining ethnographic description with an analysis of the historical and ideological shifts in international relations and a review of the anthropological literature on socialism. The thesis also responds to the lack of anthropological research on elites by presenting the first ethnographic study of a business school. It investigates elite schooling practices and parameters through an engagement with the debates on reproduction in education. In Riga an off-the-peg curriculum sidelines issues specifically concerned with the Baltic context; instead of addressing local problems students are increasingly drawn towards transnational corporations. During their attendance they partially develop their own agenda, which is a finding that questions prevalent assumptions about the docility of students in elite education. Other key factors of the students' transformation are language, image, style, school space and consumption. Their collective grooming project forms an important part of the esprit de corps at the school. Additionally, the thesis highlights the establishment of multiethnic networks on the basis of shared interests, thus challenging one-dimensional reports of nationalism in the region. Caught between the post-Soviet context and a forceful Swedish vision of change students experience upward mobility along with problematic negotiations of ongoing circumstances. Intended as a contribution to anthropological studies of post-socialism the thesis explains how the business school generates graduates who are willing and desirable recruits for the capitalist expansion.

This thesis examines a set of intentional transformations of the government of society and individuals in the globalising (‘Europeanising’) and neoliberalising Serbia in 2010–11. It asks two closely related kinds of question about these ‘reforms’ – first, what reform is really there, of what depth, and second, whose reform is it, in and against whose interests? This inquiry strives to identify some of the dominant transformational tendencies and resistances to these, and to relate these governmental projects and their actual achievements to the conflicted interests and identities in Serbian society that undergoes profound restructuring in the context of a prolonged economic decline and political crisis. Based on ethnographic engagements with various kinds of nongovernmental organisations, social movements and public institutions, the reforms are traced at the interface of the ‘state’ and ‘civil society’ so as to examine how their mutual relations are being reimagined and boundaries redrawn. Civil society is conceptualised, building on anthropological and Gramscian approaches, as a set of ideas and practices that continually reconstitute and mediate the relationships of ‘state,’ ‘society’ and ‘economy,’ and which reproduce as well as challenge domination by consent – cultural and ideological hegemony. While a particular liberal understanding of civil society has become hegemonic in Serbia, in social reality there is a plurality of ‘civil societies’ – scenes of associational practice that articulate diverse visions of a legitimate social order and perceive each other as antagonists rather than parts of a single harmonious civil society. The discourses and practices of three such scenes – liberal, nationalist and post-Yugoslav – and their relationships to the perspectives and interests of various social groups are examined in order to identify some of the key moments of social antagonism about reform in contemporary Serbia.

The thesis, supervised by Jean Lafontaine, focussed on migration from the Comoro Islands near Madagascar, to Zanzibar and the East African Swahili coast, between the 1830s and the 1970s. Comorians had shared a common history and culture with the Swahili for many centuries; in colonial East Africa, chance offered them a unique ‘racial’ and employment niche which evaporated abruptly after 1964 and East African independence. They had suddenly to reassess marriage, residence and self-definition strategies, and their implications for the future. The thesis addressed ethnic identity (which had focussed excessively on its immutability) and demonstrated its adaptability to changing political and economic context. The study also attempted to escape from timeless, fixed-location ethnography, and followed links which led to data-collection in several East African and Comorian locations. Finally, by following Comorian choices over 150 years, the thesis made a contribution to an understanding of broader Swahili history which demands similar light-footed mobility through time and space for the processes of change to be understood. Gill Shepherd completed her PhD at a time when university recruitment was a standstill. Instead she built a career in tropical forest policy at London’s Overseas Development Institute, and focussed on rights for forest peoples.

This thesis examines the connections between ideologies of modernity and social power for three interrelated sets of elites in Mozambique. My research is based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork primarily, but not solely, among the now adult children of high-ranking members of Frelimo (Mozambican Liberation Front, the ruling party since independence) and those closely associated with the party in the capital city of Maputo. It examines how elites’ transforming relationship to the project of modernity has allowed them to survive periods of dramatic social change while maintaining power, although in a modified form. The thesis argues that “local” understandings of modernity held by dominant groups in Mozambique have created the wider political field that unifies elites and creates the parameters in which they operate. It allows them both to control the positions that underwrite their social power and to attempt to justify their positions of power. The thesis examines the source of elites’ social dominance and how it has been transformed over the generations. I also investigate how recent social, political and economic changes have created a growing backlash among social groups who were once Frelimo’s strongest supporters. The thesis argues that through the acquisition and monopolisation of “modern” skills, such as high levels of education, elites can survive contested legitimacy because there are few who seem capable of replacing them.

This thesis demonstrates the day-to-day experiences of victimisation and opinions about crime as they were encountered by a group of pupils in a rural school at one particular point in time. A number of key themes are addressed, the first being the notion of the adolescent as a victim of crime. This thesis considers what 'crime' means to the pupils at this school and documents their views of crime in the wider community. The next area addressed is the victimisation of adolescents by fellow adolescents; here the focus is on incidents of bullying that occurred on and off the school premises. Thirdly, boys as victims is an under-researched subject matter. this is regarded and the question of masculine identities is included. Furthermore, the roles the female students play are investigated, paying particular attention to their involvement in acts of violence and bullying. The fourth area explore the limits of moral conduct and how this particular age group makes decisions about the unwritten moral codes and boundaries affecting the display of violence. This in tum invites the question of how teenagers made sense of larger moral problems and problems of living inside a school interpreted as a form of institution with a distinctive 'underlife'. These themes are addressed within an analysis of the larger social organisation of childhood and adolescence. Criminologists have long recognised the importance of peer group influence in the development of offending behaviour, but the research took into account the rural context of that setting, the final analytical lens through which it is focussed. This thesis demonstrates that the intricate patterns of violence and bullying are a process whereby status and power reinforce an established hierarchy of pupil's informal relations. The importance of the peer group emerged as the key to understanding interactions between the pupils at the school researched. The power of the peer group would have to be taken into consideration in any strategies devised to curtail bullying.