The cultural tourism industry, on which the economy of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca depends, is focused primarily on the promotion of the pre-Hispanic and colonial histories of the region, as well as the “traditional” lifeways of its contemporary population. Key sites within this tourism industry are the many craft villages that dot the countryside, where tourists can encounter and consume apparently traditional crafts made in small family workshops. Despite touristic and state-driven nationalistic discourses that frame craftwork as the materialisation of long standing cultural traditions, Oaxacan woodcarvings, sometimes known as “alebrijes,” are of recent invention and have rapidly become the economic mainstay of the field site, San Martín Tilcajete. While previous research has investigated the political economy and cultural politics of Oaxacan craft production, this thesis engages with important debates surrounding materiality, aesthetics and the production of art. Through ethnographic data from fieldwork with artisans in San Martín Tilcajete, I argue throughout the thesis that “aesthetics” can be understood anthropologically as an ongoing practice in which a variety of actors are engaged. The chapters address questions that fall within three general themes: (1) artisans’ aesthetic practice, including questions of how production is experienced aesthetically and conceptualisations of authorship, style and skill; (2) how different actors’ aesthetic sensibilities produce and reproduce the woodcarvings as a genre; and (3) the political consequences of these aesthetic practices for issues of competition, community politics, belonging and emergent understandings of aesthetic ownership, framed in terms of intellectual property. In making these arguments, the thesis also charts the nature of contemporary artisanal work from the micro-level of household workshops, to international experiences of artisans in the ethnic art markets in the United States, and to large-scale issues of the globalisation of culture.

The thesis poses three core questions: 1. What is ethnography? 2. What is the role of theory in ethnography? 3. What (and how) can ethnography contribute to the cumulative development of sociologieal theory? The thesis develops a reflexive awareness of the persuasiveness of the theory-method dialectic in ethnography. It explores the processes through which ethnography generates knowledge through social research and hence the basis upon which ethnography rests its claims about the social world. The thesis conducts a specific case study of one ethnographic 'theory' that was developed through a series of classic ethnographic research monographs. The context of the theory in relation to the historical development of ethnography is evaluated and an area for further theoretical development identified. This area was then tested in new, original fieldwork with the aim to contribute to further theoretical cumulation. The thesis offers two conclusions. The first considers what lessons have been learned through the approach to theorising used by the thesis and if it represents a model for future ethnographic research to follow. The final conclusion of the thesis calls for a greater awareness of the capacity of ethnography to contribute to theory cumulation. It suggests the role of theory has become more implicit than explicit. However, the ethnographic research conducted here has, albeit in one small case study, acknowledged the potential of theory for ethnography. This is vital if ethnography is to offer a sophisticated approach to social research and to contribute to sociological knowledge.

The dissertation studies the Vezo, fishing people who live on the western coast of Madagascar. It examines Vezo identity and Vezo notions of persorthood. These are shown to be construed around two apparently incompatible principles: the flexible principle of learning and the rigid principle of descent. The first part of the dissertation discusses the fact that Vezoness is learnt, acquired and lost, and that people are rendered Vezo through learning and knowing Vezo knowledge. Ch.l describes the knowledge that renders the Vezo Vezo and discusses how this knowledge is acquired. Ch.2 examines Vezo livelihood as one of the defining features of Vezo performative identity. Ch.3 treats Vezo political attitudes from a similar perspective. Ch.4 discusses some of the implications of defining identity on the basis of learning and practice, in particular the fact that although people are profoundly shaped by Vezoness, the latter does not become a permanent and essential characteristic of Vezo persons. The second part of the dissertation analyzes Vezo kinship, contrasting kinship among the living with kinship among the dead. Ch.5 explains how people come to be related to one another in life through links of common generation which are undifferentiated and ungendered. Ch.6 argues that unilineal descent only determines people's affiliation to a tomb. Descent is therefore a domain that concerns the dead, while the living are only shadowed by descent in anticipation and preparation of their death and burial. Chs.7 and 8 examine the ritual activities-funerals and the construction of tombs-through which the living imagine the existence of the dead and the latter's longing for life. The Conclusion argues that the undifferentiation and flexibility of Vezoness and the divisiveness and fixity of descent rather than co-existing within the Vezo person, constitute two opposed realms of experience, life and death. Although separate and irreducible to one another, these two realms are nonetheless linked.

This thesis is a study of indigenous urbanisation and ethnic identity in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Taking as its focus Shuar urban residents of the rainforest city Sucúa, it argues that urban indigenous residents feel simultaneously more and less ‘indigenous’ than their more ‘rural’ counterparts. On the one hand, the experience of living in a multiethnic city, on the ‘boundary’ of the Shuar ethnic group (Barth 1969), increases urban Shuar residents’ awareness of their ethnic identity, as Shuar and as ‘indigenous’. Furthermore, they want to identify as indigenous, as they are aware of the value that is placed on this identity by, for example, international organisations, NGOs, environmental activists, eco-tourism agencies, and indigenous political leaders. On the other hand, indigenous identity in urban areas is formed via a ‘play of mirrors’ (Novaes 1997) as a result of which urban Shuar are exposed to a variety of contradictory perspectives on what it means to be ‘indigenous’. These tend towards romanticisation and exoticisation of indigenous peoples as ‘ecologically noble savages’ (Redford 1993), creating the image of a ‘hyperreal Indian’ (Ramos 1992) that urban Shuar cannot hope to emulate. This leads many urban Shuar residents to feel that they are ‘not indigenous enough’. Nevertheless, with increased international migration and rising levels of education and professional achievement, a new urban indigenous middle class is acquiring the economic, cultural and social capital (Bourdieu 1984) to throw off the ‘burden of heritage’ (Olwig 1999) and determine for themselves what it means to be ‘indigenous’. Finally, I argue in this thesis for an anthropology of Amazonia that addresses the significant changes which are taking place in Amazonian peoples’ lives. If we continue to depict Amazonian groups as isolated, small-scale societies existing in an eternal ‘ethnographic present’ (Rubenstein 2002) we risk ignoring or misrepresenting the very real challenges and transformations that are increasingly facing our informants.

This thesis uses mass graves as a lens through which to examine how people in contemporary Cambodia use the Khmer Rouge period (1975 – 1979) to reconstitute and re-imagine the world they live in. Based on sixteen months of multisited ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis will argue that the Khmer Rouge regime was a critical event (Das 1997) in Cambodian life, and as such has triggered a re-shaping of relationships between local and the national, and the national and the global, leading to new forms of social and community life and action in post Khmer Rouge Cambodia. As physical markers of violence and political instability, mass graves are inherently political and articulate these re-imaginations on the state, community, and individual level. The Cambodian state exercises and legitimates its authority by constructing modern history in reference to a narrative of liberation from the Khmer Rouge, and the ‘innocent suffering’ of Cambodia and its people, while local communities use Buddhism and animism to narrate and conceptualise the period, bringing it into expected and understandable events within Khmer Buddhist cosmology. These approaches are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but rather represent the overlapping plurality of connections with mass graves. This thesis provides a unique exploration of social relationships to mass graves in Cambodia contributing to debates within the anthropology of politics, violence and collective memory by examining how moments of national mass violence re-shape the state and relationships within it, and how destructive periods of violence nonetheless create new fields for the imagination of the political, the religious, and the social. It also contributes to the emerging field of Cambodian ethnography that combines local considerations with wider national and geo-political discourses and how these are played out at the local level.

A new decentralisation policy in Morocco in line with international development best practice policies promises a close partnership with local communities to overcome local natural resource degradation, poverty and out-migration. Community-based resource management is believed to enhance these strategies. This thesis investigates and evaluates the mechanisms of implementation for a project to produce essential oil in a Berber community of the High Atlas Mountains, and seeks to examine the role of gendered traditional practices in this context. Using ethnobotanical and anthropological approaches, the research identifies factors that jeopardise the successful implementation of the project. At the macro level, the study suggests that a decentralisation policy claiming to be participatory does not address the central local issues, and does not build on community norms and customs that might better facilitate implementation of the project. It is shown that the aim of the government is not to integrate the community as an equal partner in decision-making, to promulgate local socio-economic development, but rather to act as an employer of a local labour force. Within the community, the project was initially perceived as promising socioeconomic leverage, but has so far benefited only a handful of individuals. Local lineage politics and traditional political culture threatens community development. Although these also influence women’s interests, my results show that traditional knowledge practices, especially those of women, are crucial to the success of the enterprise. The study reveals, however, that the community possesses inherent key features that would facilitate community-based resource management. These refer to the communities’ internal organisation, a population eager to earn an income, and an abundance of aromatic and medicinal plants, particularly thyme and lavender, from which a valuable essential oil is extracted. The communities could therefore benefit from the onward sale of these products in the country’s lucrative herbal market.

Cultural evolutionary models are marked by an increased understanding that sources of variation such as cultural mutations, or copying error, form an integral part in generating population-level patterns of artefactual variation. Despite recognition that the manual manufacturing process is a fundamental component of material culture in the archaeological record, little is known about exactly how factors related to the manual manufacturing process affect rates of copying error, which potentially influence population-level trends. In addition, only a few studies have incorporated the study of shape variation into cultural evolutionary models even though artefactual shape is affected by evolutionary processes. Utilising an empirical framework that combined methods from the ‘psychology laboratory’ and morphometric shape data, it was shown on the basis of experimentally produced 3D cultural artefacts that a variety of manufacture-related components significantly impact rates of shape variation produced. Individual experiments confirmed hypotheses stating that differences in components of manufacture, such as contrasting manufacturing traditions, social learning mechanisms, economic factors associated with constraints placed on production time and distinct traditions of ‘equipment’ employed to produce material artefacts, all influence patterns of shape variation at statistically significant levels. The studies conclude that high mutation loads represent a potential cause for the ‘disintegration’ of shape traditions over repeated bouts of cultural transmission. Where shape traditions matter in the long-term (e.g., in the case of functional tools such as Acheulean handaxes or projectile points) high fidelity transmission mechanisms may become targets of selection processes associated with manual manufacture. A strong implication for cultural evolutionary models is that the study of the evolution of material culture may, therefore, not be fully characterised solely as the study of cultural transmission, but that it can be partly re-conceptualised as the study of the ‘management’ of the continuous production of mutation loads by various populations of artefact producers.

This thesis presents an anthropological perspective on the film production practices and narratives underlying the construction of contemporary Chilean national cinema. Based on a multi-sited ‘travelling’ ethnography, it reflects on small, peripheral film production in a transnational neoliberal context, where ‘local’ and ‘global’ trends converge, and focuses on the case of Chilean cinema, which has expanded its production, global circulation and exhibition. The research is grounded in the film experiences of the Chilean film community, a network of film professionals (filmmakers, critics, exhibitors and other film agents) involved in the construction of national cinema. The thesis provides a contextually-based perspective on national film, which is uncommon in both Anthropology and Film Studies, seeking to expand the still emerging field of anthropology of cinema. More than as a group of ‘national’ films, Chilean cinema is understood as both an art world and a field of cultural production, arguing that ‘national cinema’ is both a cultural artifact and a social practice, which is constructed in permanent negotiations between Chilean professionals and other agents in the field. The thesis claims that the film experience of Chilean professionals is part of a broader experience of globalisation, and discusses the formation of artistic, professional and national subjectivities in the neoliberal context, where the identity of Chilean ‘national’ cinema is often contested. It then deconstructs the idea of national cinema as a bounded cultural product, highlighting the overlapping social and cultural traits that affect Chileans’ creative processes. The thesis examines the ways in which Chilean professionals have made sense of this transnational context, reshaping both their social performances and their cinematographic imagination. By referring to the case of Chilean cinema, the thesis shows the complexities of building a contemporary peripheral film industry. It discusses the construction of national communities, cultural commodification, precarious global labour conditions, and the role of national and international social networks in media production. It argues that Chilean cinema practices, particularly at international film festivals, evince overlapping narratives of art and business as well as localism and cosmopolitanism, revealing some of the cultural paradoxes of local film production.

This research attempts to bring into a serious dialogue critical ethnography and postcolonial historiography to analyse the Kofan indigenous peoples of the Colombian amazon frontier and the transformations of their socio-spatial practices and cosmographies in a long durée perspective. The thesis is chiefly focused on problematizing "indigenous territory", the notion that is taken for granted by a diverse range of actors, including the Colombian state, indigenous activist, as well as analysts. The ethnographic exploration presented unpacks the ways in which the Kofan people constructs and perceives the territory as complex and 'shape-shifting' in a context of historical violence, colonization, missionization, cocaine production, sorcery and militarization.

The causes of morphological variation within Lower Palaeolithic stone tool assemblages have been subject to debate for decades. As a result of numerous explanatory hypotheses, it forms one of the most substantial areas of research within Palaeolithic archaeology. To date, however, very little research has ever been undertaken into the functional causes and consequences of Lower Palaeolithic stone tool form variation. Indeed, despite stone tools being functional objects tasked with the cutting and modification of aspects of the physical environment, previous researchers have preferentially sought to explain their morphology as a result of social, aesthetic, cultural, cognitive, reductive, and raw material influences. Here, this imbalance is addressed and the two principal technological components of the Lower Palaeolithic, ‘basic’ flakes and handaxes, are subject to a number of controlled, statistically robust, and archaeologically inferable experiments investigating relationships between variable tool-forms and functional performance characteristics. Results and subsequent discussion identify a number of important evolutionary, behavioural, and technological implications for Lower Palaeolithic hominins.