Drawing upon 21 months of ethnographic research in West Gao District of Santa Isabel, Solomon Islands, this thesis argues that relationships of absolute difference or 'alterity,' existing internally to one society, are central to processes of social reproduction. At the deepest level of ontology the West Gao lived world is based on a priori difference between three discrete categories of being. Each category - a matriclan, or kokolo - consists of a relational amalgam of genres of knowledge, human persons, and ancestral beings. These relationships are unified, bounded, and rendered distinct by virtue of a shared, inherent connection to a discrete territory. From a cosmogonic perspective, in isolation the three kokolo cannot reproduce their distinctiveness. To do so they must enter into relationships with each other. Consequently, two different forms of socio-cosmic relationships become crucial for understanding land-person connectivity in West Gao: those flowing internally to each exogamous matriclan; and those forged between different matriclans. I explore how these two forms of relationships are continually balanced against one another in both quotidian practices and ritualised exchanges. Whilst this balance is dictated by the poly-ontological structure of West Gao cosmology, I illustrate how the balance shifts in response to historical and politico-economic processes, in particular, conversion to Christianity and the increasing value of land as a monetary resource. Participant observation, extended interviews in Solomon Islands Pijin and the local vernacular - Gao, and two weeks of archival research in the National Library of Australia comprised the main methodologies used. I draw upon this data in seven analytical chapters that address: the role of ancestral agency in the shaping of historical processes; the 'ancestral' dynamics of Christian communities; place, personhood, and movement; origin narratives; the trans-generational reproduction of matrilineal identity; ritualised exchanges focused on the 'father-child' relationship; and practices surrounding mortality and burial.

This thesis explores the value of manufactured items among the Sanema, a hunting and horticultural people of Southern Venezuela. By extending the ‘virtue ethics’ approach prevalent in the study of Amazonian societies, I suggest that artefacts are as much a component of Sanema virtuous conviviality as corporeal practices. Manufactured items are meaningful in a distinct way to the often-studied crafted artefacts, which are widely seen to embody the human subjectivities of the maker. Instead, the valuable prefabricated properties of industrial goods, which I refer to as ‘affordances’, can allow morality to be conceptualised and materialised. The focus on manufactured items reflects the recent influx of such goods into Sanema lives that feature centrally in their daily narratives of personhood, sociality and ethical practises. In drawing attention to these industrial goods that emerge from the wider national context, I contextualise Sanema experiences within the contemporary setting of political participation, the market economy and frequent encounters with nonindigenous people. In contexts that range from expressions of care, inter-ethnic dependence, acts of justice, manoeuvrability within state apparatus, and the moral actions of nonhuman beings within the cosmos, the ethnography demonstrates that morality is often articulated as being realised through or within ‘things’. As such, my approach attempts to transcend the human-artefact dichotomy by leaving open the possibility that morality emerges from manifold material forms.

This thesis presents the results of 23 months of fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2012 in Nampula City, northern Mozambique. It analyses the manifestation of Islamic reformism in the city’s urban periphery where social organisation has historically been structured by principles of Makhuwa kinship and post-socialist citizenship, while religious life is dominated by Makhuwa ritual specialists, the Catholic Church and Sufi orders. Recently, however, the ranks of Sufi orders have been dwindling. The decline has been matched by a sharp increase in the number and influence of reformist mosques. With financial support from international Islamic donors, reformist mosques seek to bring local understandings of Islam in line with globally-oriented Salafi-inspired interpretations. The thesis describes the appropriation, contestation and impact of these interpretations. There are three main findings. First, I found that Islamic reformism unsettles existing conceptions of personhood. The majority of city dwellers combine their religious and national sense of belonging with Makhuwa notions of relatedness and conceptualise the self as interdependent. In contrast, reformists define themselves in relation to the divine, and objectify the self as they seek to make it available for self-fashioning. Second, the significance of this reorientation lies in its epistemological ramifications. A variety of social forms in northern Mozambique, including neighbourly assistance, the administration of justice and political relations, are premised on the understanding that events in this world are structured by invisible forces. Attempts of Islamic reformists to orient themselves towards God lead them to perceive reality in more objective terms, and consequently, their participation in neighbourhood sociality changes. Thirdly, this reorientation is tentative. In a setting where many do not share the outlook of reformism, it produces dilemmas and uncertainties. People cope with these uncertainties using strategies of confrontation, negotiation and compromise. Islamic reformism and other dimensions of social life become, as a result, mutually constitutive. These findings have several theoretical implications. The recent trend in anthropology has been to study Islamic reform movements through the lens of practices of ethical self-fashioning. This thesis argues that this focus is too narrow. My data shows that the multiplicity and complexity of the life worlds of Muslims need to be considered, and that attention should be paid to questions of how Islamic reformism shapes social practice as a system of knowledge.

This thesis is about how the Shuar, a group of people living in South-Eastern Ecuador, create centralised political institutions. Over the last century, Shuar have experienced a rapid transition from a highly mobile lifestyle based on small, fluid, politically autonomous family groups to a sedentary life in large, nucleated communities. Owing to the decline of missionary involvement, the gradual loss of power of the ethnic federations, and drastic changes in the subsistence base, Shuar have also become increasingly reliant on state-derived resources, secured by their participation in electoral politics. Based on long-term fieldwork within a network of forest sedentary communities, the thesis explores how Shuar seek to organise themselves in order to live together peacefully and to benefit from public resources while keeping the state at bay. It shows how Shuar have acted creatively to institute new forms of centralised political association which enable them to suppress longstanding antagonistic relations while still prioritising personal and domestic autonomy. Through their management of sedentary communities and their appropriation of external institutions such as schools and government offices, Shuar effectively regenerate domestic wellbeing and valued forms of selfhood. At the same time, they create new political categories and individual identities. The interplay between everyday sociality and consciously created political collectivity reveals the importance of two contrasting but interlinked processes: the flexible shifting back and forth between centralised and decentralised social arrangements; and the emergence of increasingly formalised ways of organising collective life, along with inflexible forms of inequality that escape internal control. By showing how processes of institutionalisation can result in increased formalisation and stratification, but also in social fluidity and political improvisation, the thesis contributes to the broader anthropological understanding of state formation and the political imagination.

This thesis seeks to gain a fresh perspective on the movement reflected in the Damascus Document by asking if it could be seen as a Revitalization Movement, a theoretical construct developed by the American anthropologist Anthony Wallace. Signs of a cultural identity crisis and the changes in society causing it are evident throughout the Damascus Document. By comparing the findings to Wallace's model, we understand that the movement could have developed as a reaction to a context of profound cultural changes. This study challenges the prominent view that the major crisis causing the rise of the movement was the Babylonian exile, as another paradigm related to Isa 7 .17, featuring Ephraim's departure from Judah, is alluded to in several ways. The princes of Judah are compared to Ephraim and depicted as those who depart, because they have adopted a foreign way of life, the way of the kings of Greece. While both paradigms were seen to represent collective memories used as warnings of judgment, the theme of division of the northern and the southern kingdoms in the past is portrayed as comparable to the current conflict in society.

This thesis examines the impacts of a protected natural area (Makuya park) on residents of Musunda village in Limpopo, South Africa. The creation of protected natural areas entails the formation of boundaries to limit access and resource use, often under the assumption that the isolation from human activity will allow 'natural' environments/habitats to re-emerge. When humans are not afforded a place in protected spaces, 'edge-dwellers' emerge. This thesis explores how the resulting changes in land use and access can impact the availability, distribution, and quality of strategically important resources, and thus influence a wide range of ecological, epidemiological, and economic processes that directly and indirectly impinge on an individual's wellbeing. Based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the HaMakuya chieftaincy, this thesis aims to explore the tangible and intangible ways in which Makuya park impacts on Musundian edge-dwellers efforts to achieve wellbeing. Specific research questions include: How do edge-dwellers understand, discuss, and enact wellbeing? How and when are natural resources used toward achieving wellbeing? How and when does land access shape land use in terms of wellbeing and in what ways? Have shifts in practices occurred as a result of the formation of protected areas? I address these questions by engaging with current debates in social, medical and environmental anthropology. Using Cohen's (2013) 'ecologies of wellbeing' as a matrix through which to explore local conceptions of health/wellbeing (mutakalo), this thesis engages with a historical 'political ecology of health' (Harper 2002) and conservation to consider health and wellbeing within 'environmental perspectives' (McElroy and Townsend 2009). In focusing on the everyday practices of Musundians, this thesis foregrounds local notions of health (mutakalo) and local perceptions of natural resource limitations imposed by the park as a way to understand edge-dwellers' local ecologies of wellbeing. This thesis provides TshiVenda speakers' (an under-represented group) perspectives; it shows the negative impacts that the park has on resource access, diet, relationships and local healing practices according to edge-dwellers. Questioning how Musundians maintained ambivalence in these challenging circumstances, I discuss how I came to realize that the park is locally understood to offer the promise of 'good things.' Exploring the ways in which hope and the park intersect, I describe how the park has become incorporated into local ecologies of wellbeing. This thesis explores some wellbeing-related experiences of Musunda's edge-dwellers, while considering the park's influence on those dwelling on the boundary of a protected natural area thereby contributing to social anthropology scholarship at the intersection of environmental and medical anthropology. In doing this, this thesis draws on related disciplines in the social sciences, contributing to literatures in human geography, public health and ecology.

This thesis investigates the population ecology and population dynamics of a species of bromeligenous frog, Crossodactylodes itambe, endemic to a highland area in the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil, within the Espinhaço Mountain Range. Bromeligenous frogs spend their entire life cycle inside bromeliads and dispersal of individuals is still unknown. There are 99 species of bromeligenous frogs, all restricted to the Neotropics, and most species are threatened. Crossodactylodes is comprised of five small-sized bromeligenous frogs and there is little information on their ecology and natural history of the whole genus. Crossodactylodes itambe occurs at the Itambé summit, above 1700 m in elevation, with an estimated area of occurrence of < 0.5 km2. Individuals are known to occupy a single species of bromeliad, which is also endemic to just two localities, including the Itambé summit. Species abundance was influenced by specific features of habitat structure, such as size of plant and presence of water, which were considered more important than local climate. Number of adults in a single plant was usually limited to one individual and the structure of the bromeliad was considered extremely important for species persistence. Distribution of plants at the Espinhaço Range was influenced by topography and specific climatic conditions, such as temperature seasonality and annual precipitation. Given the strong dependence of the frogs on the plant, using bromeliads as a surrogate for modelling frog distribution can be extended to many bromeligenous species that lack distributional data. Despite extensive survey effort, Crossodactylodes itambe cannot be found anywhere else within the southern limits of the Espinhaço Range, and the species is indeed naturally rare. Detecting declines in amphibian populations is challenging and surveys should be species-specific and designed to meet specific monitoring goals. A sampling design was suggested for Crossodactylodes itambe, which can detect large to moderate population changes with 80% statistical power. The first analysis of population trends for a bromeligenous frog was provided. Although population changes were detected at all elevational ranges covering the current species distribution, a decline was only significant at lower elevations, where bromeliads are smaller and occur at lower density. While colonization of bromeliads by frogs was driven by habitat characteristics, local extinction was explained by seasonal variation in local weather conditions. Colonization rates were negatively affected by a stochastic fire event, which decreased dramatically in burnt plants. This thesis provides valuable information on the drivers of distribution and abundance of this threatened frog species. The same methodological approaches could be broadly applied to many Data Deficient bromeligenous frogs, for which little information is available. This research also demonstrates how the frog-bromeliad system can be a useful small-scale model for investigating key demographic parameters, such as extinction and colonization, which might be unfeasible on a larger scale or in patchy habitats. Considering the population dynamics of this bromeligenous frog, in the short-term, habitat conservation should be a priority action when compared to climate change mitigation.

This study is based upon15 months of ethnographic research conducted during 2006-2007 in the Indian industrial city of Jamshedpur. I analyse how the global shift towards casual labour is locally enabled through practices of state and trade union corruption. The past decade has seen the majority of Jamshedpur�s industrial workforce move from formal, permanent employment into various grades of lower paid, insecure casual labour. The move towards casual labour is a development replicated across international industry. However, the localised forms of this development require an understanding of the economy of violence and favour which characterises the region�s labour politics. My analysis is therefore based upon ethnographic data collected from industrial workers on the shop floor of an automobile plant, trade union leaders and criminals. I argue that the economies of crime, corruption and business do not operate in their own discrete spheres of influence, but rather rely upon one another for the symbiotic exchange of favour and capital. My research focuses upon the interaction between industrial and criminal economies in the casualisation of a company town labour force.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of a village in Fisakana, an area of highland Madagascar where the institution of formal education has had great social, economic and cultural influence. Although the principal means of subsistence in Fisakana is wet rice cultivation, a severe shortage of good land has led to large-scale emigration. Schooling has provided opportunities for social and spatial mobility that have shaped the character of the region. Migration and movement are dominant themes in the ethnography of Madagascar. The thesis examines three different types of migration in Fisakana. Each entails a different type of relationship between the migrants and their ancestral land. These are discussed in the context of other literature dealing with this topic in the anthropology of Madagascar. The region is characterised by inequalities of wealth. People working in the profession sector have prospered economically in comparison to those dependent on agriculture. This thesis makes an original contribution to the literature on social and economic differentiation in the highlands by treating the subject from an ethnographic perspective. The role of formal education in widening socio-economic differentiation is explored in detail. Then the thesis studies how this differentiation is elaborated symbolically through the building of houses and tombs. it also points out the ambiguous nature of tomb ceremonies: whilst ostensibly symbolising social unity and cohesion, they also imply fissure and exclusion. The thesis then examine the Betsileo social construction of knowledge. Through an exploration of what is learned inside and outside the classroom the thesis shows how local notions of traditional and foreign knowledge articulate with missionary, colonial and post-colonial ideologies of schooling, and with the social and spatial differentiation and displacement produced by formal education.

A stable and peaceful country by West African standards, Mali uneasily fits the paradigm of a ‘failed state.’ While government and development agencies tend to interpret Mali’s stability as the outcome of successful institutional reform, foreign scholars and local intellectuals emphasise the power of enduring traditions and their adaptation to changing conditions in Malian society. Critically assessing both views, this dissertation explores political relations and practices in post-colonial Mali in a rural locality of Mande, the region south-west of the capital Bamako. The work draws on 18 months of field research in the rural municipality of Bancoumana to document an intensely mediated form of government resulting from the dynamic process of grouping and of building cooperative relations in everyday social life. I examine how projects broadly intended to deepen state control such as the ‘framing’ of resident and migrant populations by the state, the betterment of the land, the recognition and the registration of ‘traditional’ rights, among other practices of bureaucratic ‘fixing’ are dealt with in the locality. The analysis links their history to processes of fission and fusion of social groups, where the interventions may exacerbate tensions or, instead, create solidarity among different village factions. Thus, the practices and processes of government in the locality are able to successfully fill the gap between the state and other agencies, and society. Contributing to the anthropological tradition studying law, politics and the state in Africa, the dissertation links recent trends in the anthropology of the state, and of more specific regulatory domains such as land development and taxation, to a reanalysis of the traditional chestnut of the anthropology of West Africa, a ‘segmentary style’ of social organization.