The world's human population and an expanding agricultural frontier are exerting increasing pressure on the Earth's systems that sustain life resulting in unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss. Carnivores, which play a key role in ecosystem function and integrity, are also particularly threatened by habitat loss and killing by humans in response to livestock predation. At the same time carnivores, particularly felids show a paucity of studies that suggests population assessments and long-term monitoring is an urgent matter. This thesis looks the how habitat loss, fragmentation and human persecution affects predators in an agricultural landscape with particular focus on a species of conservation concern: the small felid guiña (Leopardus guigna) considered vulnerable with a declining population trend. A cost-effective survey framework was developed, which shows existence of trade-offs for researchers and managers to improve population assessments. The drivers of decline of the guiña are assessed with an extensive camera-trap data set showing that the guiña can tolerate a high degree of habitat loss in agricultural land but requires the existence of large farms and high number of forest patches. Retribution killing does not seem to be a significant extinction driver, although there is uncertainty regarding the impact on the population. However, killing behaviour by farmers is predicted by encounters suggesting that poultry management is an effective mitigation measure. Predator specific predictors of killing by farmers were observed but a commonality to all is that knowledge of legal protection does not explain killing suggesting other measures must be taken. Integrating ecological and social knowledge allows us to tease apart the relative importance of different potential extinction pressures effectively and make informed recommendations as to where future conservation efforts should be prioritised.

Global biodiversity is currently facing the sixth mass extinction, with extinction rates at least 100 times higher than background levels. The Amazon Basin has the richest amphibian fauna in South America, but there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the drivers of diversity in this region and how amphibian assemblages are responding to environmental change. Surveys were conducted in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve (PSNR) in Amazonian Peru, with a view to (1) comparing assemblage structure on floating meadows and adjacent terrestrial habitats; (2) determining the predictors of diversity in these habitats; and (3) exploring the effects of disturbance and seasonal flooding on diversity measures. Eighty-one species of amphibians have been recorded in these habitats since 1996 representing 11 families and three orders. In 2012-2013 22 anuran species used the floating meadow habitat, of which 10 were floating meadow specialists. These specialists were predominantly hylids which breed on floating meadows all the year round. Floating meadows therefore host an assemblage of species which is different to that found in adjacent terrestrial areas which are subject to seasonal flooding. Floating meadows enhance the amphibian diversity of the region, and rafts of vegetation that break away and disperse frogs downstream may explain the wide distribution of hylids within the Amazon Basin. Fourteen different reproductive modes were represented within the 54 anuran species observed. The number of reproductive modes present was influenced by localised disturbance and seasonal flooding. Diversity increased in the low water period, with hylids breeding in temporary pools. When the forest is inundated most species disperse away from the flood waters. Disturbance, habitat change, emerging diseases and climate change would likely lead to changes in species composition and assemblage structure rather than wholescale extinctions. However, further studies are needed to evaluate long-term consequences of synergistic environmental change.

This thesis charts and theorises a general transition from authoritarian to participatory forms of governance and natural resource management, as viewed from the locale of a Saharan oasis town situated within wider temporal and spatial change processes. Ostrom’s (2014) work on the ability of communities to regulate access to the commons hinges on resource users jointly agreeing on and conforming to rules of use. Similarly, recent theoretical developments related to Social Ecological Systems and adaptive management also emphasise group consensus as a prerequisite for adaption. These approaches presume a degree of equality in social relations across the group. In Beni Isguen, Algeria, by contrast, the management of water commons is complicated by class inequalities. This region has recently seen a shift from religion to capital as the dominant ideology behind ruling factions, entailing the contraction of a theocratic influence, with the accession of a secular merchant class. This latter faction has achieved this by ideologically and pragmatically positioning themselves within the hierarchical administration of the nation-state, and thus conforming to national laws. This key shift in political alignment followed a long period of local resistance to over-arching ruling powers. I argue that this conformation has entailed a displacement of a localised ‘social contract’ whereby welfare, labour and regulation were previously achieved through the ‘moral economy’ of reciprocal relations, to a citizen-state contract based on the assumption of rights and certain services (e.g. protection of private property, creation and maintenance of infrastructure), and a reliance on the market to provide goods and other services (e.g. labour). These historical social changes have implications for theoretical developments regarding the role of the citizen-state relationship in terms of the protection of private property vs. protection of communal property, of anthropological perspectives of legal pluralism, and social contract theory. Furthermore, the thesis describes mixed modes of resource management involving new voluntary associations as alternative forms of local governance from below, alongside customary regulatory officials in charge of water. The emancipatory idea of some regarding civil society has received thorough critique by anthropologists (Benthall 2000; Comaroff & Comaroff 1999), yet along with Butcher (2014), I argue that despite this, the recent opening of the civic sector has created an opening for new forms of activity within the Algerian political landscape. However, the informal agreements of voluntary associations appear to lack the ‘teeth’ necessary to regulate uncooperative individuals. Authority today is locally perceived as the prerogative of the state, and so some state regulation appears necessary. The study thus views these processes from the viewpoint of the crucial determinant of life in the desert: water, and from there its social dependents, and how they organise themselves.

A growing body of work on modern indigenous culture in the Andes has focused on various aspects of an urban, transnational and cosmopolitan identity. However, what does indigenous modernity mean in the poorest region of highland Ecuador, where indigenous identity continues to be associated with rural traditions, poverty, and racialised marginalisation? This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two rural communities in the canton of Guamote in central Ecuador. Looking at narratives of family life, religion, and tradition, it explores ambivalent engagements with modernity. In less than forty years Guamote has been transformed dramatically. Once the heartland of both the Catholic Church and the haciendas, land and local government is now in indigenous control, whilst Protestantism is steadily gaining converts in the communities. Meanwhile, the local economy has become dependent on domestic migration to the coast and the highland cities. However despite wide-ranging social, cultural and economic changes, Guamote remains an extremely poor and marginalised region. Rising aspirations have not been met and modernisation has brought its own problems. How has this frustrated modernity affected ethnic identity in Guamote? This thesis argues that, rather than understanding indigenous modernity as the hybridisation of tradition and modernity, it is more productive to look at the contemporary interaction of two frameworks of indigeneity - relatedness and alterity - that both have their roots in the colonial and postcolonial Andes. Through negotiating these related but distinct ways of being indigenous, people in Guamote make various decisions with regard to family, religion and tradition. In their nuanced and pragmatic responses to lives stretched out between city and community, and even between opposed religions, Guamoteños complicate the dichotomies of urban/rural and traditional/modern. Through stories of work and education, migration and conversion, drinking and dancing, this research explores what it means to be modern and indigenous in Ecuador.

'Conservation is about people, not just animals' argued Prince William in a letter to The Financial Times , written to gather support for ending ivory poaching and trading. This truism is often repeated by conservationists; we are frequently reminded that what we do - as humans - influences nature 'out there'. Nevertheless, conservation science often hesitates to interrogate what we do as organised human societies. Time and again, that leads to somewhat simplifying analyses of humanity's enormous power in shaping the whole Earth System -currently argued to surpass the power of geological forces. A case in point could be the isolation of corruption in Africa as the main driver for ivory market explosion in the last decade. Without considering the political-economy not just of ivory, but of the global-to-local societal organisation that allows for thousands of elephants and rhinos to be killed - for something of so low use-value such as ivory - little understanding can be shed on this alarming trend. I argue, and hope I have shown in this thesis, that we should aim towards enriching what conservation understands as its field of vision and allow the latter to encompass not just human and nonhuman nature and societies, as Prince William rightfully argues, but also the political and societal. I would be satisfied if by going through this thesis the reader would be convinced of just this argument. I am not claiming to be the first to identify this contradiction within conservation, but contra a sizeable number of scientists who work on similar subjects, I am normatively for conservation. A wealth of research has been published on conservation-society relationships that interrogates wider political, societal and economic constrains and opportunities as they relate to conservation. Usually though, research on what could be called critical conservation studies is (a) published in journals that conservationists do not read, and (b) is conducted by non-conservationists, often critical of conservation as a science and praxis per se. Thus all this wealth has little import to wider discussions about the future of conservation science and practice, and is even considered by conservationists as hostile to their agenda. I hope it is obvious from the above that I place this piece of research within the wide field of conservation science - despite drawing from a variety of disciplines. In essence, this piece of work looks at the relation between political-economic transformations and the way societies think about, manage and regulate nature. Geographically, my focus is on England, but with a sideways glance to developments at the EU level. Historically, the scope is circumscribed by two years: 1981, the year of the Toxteth riots in Liverpool, and 2015, the year I submitted. Naturally, in this country-wide, 24 year study I have not even attempted to include 'everything'. I focused on what after examination of empirical data I considered to be key moments and places in the evolution of English conservation. I begin with a section that introduces the reader into the area of study , followed and a brief literature-based summary of conservation in England from the beginning of the 20th century. The next three chapters should be read as a small trilogy that discusses the general trends in conservation policy and governance in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (Chapter 3), followed by two smaller chapters (vignettes) that study post-financial crisis landscape scale conservation from: (a) a policy and governance perspective (Chapter 4); a use of science and scientific metaphors perspective (Chapter 5). The following two chapters try to reconstruct the where and when (geography and history are important) specific conservation policies and practices emerge, always in relation to economic and political changes. Chapter 6 is a genealogy of green infrastructure, from its emergence in the post-riot Liverpool landscape of 1981, to its current amalgamation with ecosystem services and monetary-valuation-of-nature milieu. Chapter 7 looks at biodiversity offsetting and argues that changing economic and transport geographies are crucial in understanding why biodiversity offsetting emerged as a solution to wildlife-development conflict in this instance and in the South East of England in particular. I conclude with a proposal for a new conservation that places utopia at the centre of its methodology (Chapter 8).

Tigers (Panthera tigris) are Critically Endangered in Bangladesh with only 106 individuals remaining. Poaching is one of the major reasons for the rapid decline in tiger numbers across their entire range. In Bangladesh, very little is known about the utilization of tiger parts, and few details exist to date regarding their acquisition and trade. This research is an original study that explores the local usage, poaching, and trade of tiger parts in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh for the first time. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 141 respondents in the villages around the Bangladesh Sundarbans from December 2011 to June 2013. The respondents include Village Tiger Response Team members (n=46/141), general members of the village community (n=62/141), and tiger killers (n=33/141). The study revealed the local use of, and belief in, the medicinal values of tiger parts is diverse (e.g. medicinal uses, as protection from "dangers" in the forest, and to enhance personal social status and/or wellbeing), and that virtually all parts of the tiger are used including teeth, bones, meat, tongue, genital organs, claws, furs, and whiskers. The research concludes that 65% of the respondents use and/or believe in the benefits of tiger parts, 20% do not use or believe, 9% do not want to talk about the use of tiger parts and 6% are coded 'don't know'. Of the respondents who reported using and/or believing in the benefits of tiger parts, 52% used tiger parts, and 96% believed in the benefits of tiger parts in spite of personal consumption or not. A local trade of tiger parts is present in the villages around the Bangladesh Sundarbans where tiger parts are traded via local middlemen or friends or families with little or no money. Five groups were identified that are involved in tiger killing: villagers, poachers, shikari (local hunters), trappers, and pirates. Villagers kill tigers in the village predominantly for safety, while other groups kill inside the forest professionally or opportunistically. Poachers kill tigers purely for money, but the diverse incentives for the other groups are more complex. Shikari's motives are multi-faceted, encompassing excitement, profit, esteem, and status arising from providing tiger parts for local medicine. Pirates, on the other hand, not only kill tigers for profit and safety, but also as a 'protection service' to the community. The results further illustrate that each group that engages in the killing of tigers submit tiger parts to the commercial trade in exchange for money. This study, additionally, found that a recent commercial demand for tiger bones exists in the Bangladesh Sundarbans; however, the commercial trade of tiger skin was always present. In the Bangladesh Sundarbans, the tiger killers locally tan the skin using local ingredients (potash alum, blue vitriol, salt), and bury the rest of the body to collect the bones later. The price range of a skin varies between BDT 40,000-90,000 (USD520-1,169); for bones BDT 1,500-3,000/kg (USD20-39) and for a canine BDT 1,000-7,000 (USD13-91). Non-local Bangladeshi traders from other cities come and buy the bones from the tiger killers. Note, the trade chain for bones and skin are separate in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. The secondary data documented 46 incidents of tiger or tiger parts being traded in the Bangladesh from 1981 to 2015, of which most of them are confiscation of tiger/tiger parts by the law enforcement authorities (n=26). The overall tiger poaching situation in Bangladesh is complex and requires a multifaceted conservation approach based on the local benefits of tiger conservation that is generated by new development measures, combined with stronger enforcement. These suggested conservation efforts may likely represent the only sustainable solution to maintain a steady tiger population in the Bangladesh Sundarbans.

This thesis presents an analysis of community based natural resource management (CBNRM) policies in Namibia, focusing on institutional and organizational arrangements. The analysis is based on case studies of two CBNRM institutions: the Conservancy, a community based wildlife management programme, and the Community Forest programme. First, I introduce the policies that made provision for the formation of conservancies and community forests, and examine the differences between local institutional arrangements that have resulted from these policies. The policies and institutional arrangements of the two programmes have important differences resulting in variations in how local communities can implement, participate, benefit and use resources at the local level. Second, I examine the performance of the two programmes at the local level in terms of stated programme goals. I use the enriched version of Ostrom's Institutional and Development (IAD) framework, thereby making it suitable for policy analysis. Results suggest that at the local level, both the conservancy and community forest programmes have not satisfactorily succeeded in achieving their intended goals. First, the two programmes have not sufficiently involved the majority of households affected by their formation in decision making. Rather, the likelihood of a household to influence decisions in conservancy and community forest meetings was observed to be related to gender, age, wealth and financial benefits from the programme. Second, while conservancies have collectively generated high revenues, equity in benefit distribution is not currently being achieved and benefits reach only a few households. Forests on the other hand have been found to be contributing more to rural livelihoods through both subsistence use and sale of forest resources by many households. Third, results also indicate that compliance with new rules introduced by conservancies and community forests is low. Specifically, results indicate that rule enforcement was not effective in all three case studies due to several reasons and that illegal harvesting and hunting was still taking place. Finally, based on the findings of this study, I recommend broad courses of action to the challenges encountered by common-pool resource institutions such as conservancies and community for effective governance of the resources. It is recommended that conservation programmes seek to better understand the communities they work with to ensure effective participation of all affected members. The issue of equity in benefit distribution needs to be clearly addressed in laws and operational plans to ensure the benefit of the poor segments of communities. In order for conservancies and community forests to work as development strategies and not only conservation strategies, there have to be mechanisms to enhance the amount of benefits and the distribution to a larger number of households. Lastly, there exist the need to strengthen existing rule monitoring and enforcement systems to ensure sustainable use of natural resources. In order to realize their goals, institutional arrangements in conservancies and community forests need to be re-designed on a site by site basis to reflect the varied socio-economic, cultural and institutional settings of local communities.

The thesis explores the uses and appropriations of the symbol of Aphrodite in Greek-Cypriot tourism. It focuses in the development of a particular tourism itinerary, Aphrodite’s Cultural Routes, which attempts to unite a number of southern Cypriot archaeological sites. Aphrodite—a symbol that links Cyprus with Greek antiquity—was chosen by the Greek-Cypriot tourism authorities as the logo of this particular tourism product. The narratives that supports the Routes, provides us with a good opportunity to explore how Greek Cypriots and tourists relate to Cyprus’s past, and how the Greek-Cypriot authorities appropriate Aphrodite to construct and legitimise a particular vision of cultural heritage. The thesis makes a twofold contribution to the anthropology of Cyprus: On the empirical level, it provides ample information about how the Greek-Cypriot tourism industry uses Goddess Aphrodite in order to anticipate the expectations of the tourism audience, but also in order to solidify a connection with the Greek past. Along with the official discourse, the thesis explores a number of contemporary perceptions and practices related to goddess Aphrodite, which are often reconstituted according to the way Greek-Cypriot people and the Greek-Cypriot authorities perceive their past. Information is also provided about the selective appropriation of Aphrodite, the omission of parts of Cypriot history that do not fit the nationalist paradigm, and the exclusion from the Routes of sites located in the northern part of Cyprus. On a theoretical level, the thesis draws from Michael Herzfeld, and his notion of disemia, the everlasting ambivalence of the Greeks between their formal, Western, Hellenic identity and their private, intimate, anti-Western self-identification. The thesis applies the model of disemic ambivalence to southern Cyprus to highlight the tension between Hellenism and Cypriotness, as this becomes apparent in the contradictions that emerge from the use of Aphrodite in Greek-Cypriot tourism. The Greek Cypriots continuously oscillate between a formalistic ‘European’ conception of their Self and a local, vernacular Cypriot identity. They use Aphrodite in their public representation, but do not include Aphrodite in their private lives. More generally, the appropriation of Aphrodite in southern Cyprus’ tourism—as this is ethnographically explored in the thesis—can help us appreciate how tourism naturalises the nationalist version of Greek historical consciousness, re-inscribing Aphrodite on the island’s landscape, as a textual metanarrative. Aphrodite provides a convenient connection with a formalistic Greek past, which is re-negotiated in the present—partly subverted through spontaneity, but in most cases verified. In this respect, the way Aphrodite is appropriated as a symbol in tourism is emblematic of the wider identity politics in the southern part of Cyprus. The thesis, therefore, sheds some valuable light on the Greek-Cypriot politics of heritage and exclusion as these can be seen from the local level, and in particular through the ‘lens’ of the symbolic use of goddess Aphrodite in tourism.

This thesis explores the Ikojts' social representations and lived experiences of type 2 diabetes (henceforth diabetes) in Southern Mexico. Despite the prevalent urban impact of the diabetes epidemic, diabetes is increasingly affecting rural and, disproportionately, indigenous communities. This epidemiological profile has prompted the reading of diabetes in terms of an ethnoracial disease (Montoya 2011), with the consequence of downplaying the social, environmental and political-economic factors behind it. A central issue is how indigenous peoples themselves make sense of diabetes as the institutions of science and the state scrutinise and turn their focus to their bodies. Drawing on one year of fieldwork in the Ikojts community of San Dionisio del Mar, in Oaxaca, this thesis examines the multiple, sometimes contradictory ways in which the Ikojts live, narrate, make sense of and cope with diabetes. Adopting a critical phenomenologically inspired approach, this thesis focuses on the body as the prime site where experience is arrayed and where greater forces -- history, political economy, culture -- inscribe themselves. I argue that the Ikojts conceive diabetes as an idiom of and for vulnerability. In fact, diabetes is simultaneously the embodied manifestation of structural and ordinary violence and the bodily metaphor through which the Ikojts express emotional distress, compelling concerns, and duress, which characterise much of their daily lives. In this 'other' light, diabetes is not connected so much to genetics as it is to the experience of vulnerability. Through the exploration of a wide range of local experiences -- from domestic tensions, to witchcraft accusations, to breaks in moral order, changes in foodways, the fearful anticipation of disease, and the distrust in biomedical practitioners -- I analyse the manifold nature of vulnerability: its ontological character, subjective dimension, and structural organisation. Fully aware of the perils of superimposing categories such as 'vulnerable' or 'marginal' to human groups, this thesis presents an experience-near conceptualisation of vulnerability which sheds light on the complexities of living with diabetes in a hostile place and which goes beyond dominant understandings of diabetes as the result of populations' vulnerability to risky genetics or 'unhealthy' lifestyles.

This thesis explored agroforestry extension's role in protected areas (PAs) conservation, focusing on extension activities conducted from 2010 to 2011 at Saracá-Taquera National Forest and Rio Trombetas Biological Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon. It relied on a mixed methods approach; data collected during an extended stay in four participating communities was complemented by interviews with PA and extension staffs. I suggest that agroforestry extension has limited potential to contribute to PA conservation at the study site. First, agroforestry was promoted by extensionists as a land use that would recover deforested areas, but their narratives tended to overlook empirical evidence. They plotted agroforestry against a 'crisis' background that reproduced, rather than critically assessed, policy discourses depicting shifting cultivation as an important driver of deforestation. Second, even considering that some do participate in the agroforestry project and could extract livelihood benefits, the expectation that agroforestry can replace activities perceived as threats is unlikely to materialise. I suggest that locals' participation was influenced both by broader factors - e.g., past experiences with PAs and social ties to community gatekeepers - and by factors specifically regarding the project - e.g., local perceptions of agroforestry. I also argue that, considering a best-case scenario in which market constraints are overcome, agroforestry could potentially reduce local inequalities significantly. The engagement of both men and women would be important in the management of competition between agroforestry and other activities in mixed livelihoods. Finally, I suggest that main threats to PAs' biodiversity include turtle hunting and cattle ranching, but also mining - the third would not be addressed by agroforestry. Furthermore, I argue that the first two are unlikely to be reduced by agroforestry as cultural incentives to hunt are strong, and economic motivations would hinder the adoption of agroforestry by hunters and favour the combination (rather than replacement) of ranching with agroforestry.