This thesis explores Dayak villagers search for prosperity at a Central Kalimantan frontier in Indonesian Borneo. Concretely, it asks how do marginalised people deal with the growing sense of uncertainty caused by livelihood instability in consequence of accelerated political-economic and environmental change? How do they navigate a present that refuses to offer stability and well-being and constantly is changing be- yond their control? To address these questions, the thesis looks at local livelihoods and their transformation, and examines the imaginaries of prosperity and well-being that inform these strategies. By doing so, it argues that both the past and the future provide people a space of hope to imagine a prosperous existence and that this back- and forward-looking is itself a way of dealing with the uncertainty of the present. Therewith, the thesis not only sheds light on what it means to make living in both a material and ideological sense in rural Borneo in contemporary times, but it seeks to offer a critical account of current Indonesian state practice of frontier development.

The thesis investigates the extent to which acting as a male provider remains an open avenue for coming of age and displaying gender belonging for the shabāb (lads) of the Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. The literature on Palestinians prior to 1948 suggests that a man would come of age by marrying at the appropriate age and bearing a son. For the Palestinian diaspora in Lebanon, and throughout the 1970s, acting as a fidāʾī (fighter) worked as an alternative mechanism for coming of age and displaying gender belonging. Accordingly, the central question of this thesis is how the shabāb today come of age and display their gender belonging, when on the one hand, Lebanese legislation, through forms of institutional violence, bars their free access to the labour market, forcing them to postpone marriage plans, and on the other hand, participation in the Palestinian Resistance Movement, at least in its military version, is not an option anymore. Through a plethora of investigative techniques – participant observation, questionnaires, focus groups, and open-ended interviews – I have registered the differences between the fidāʾiyyīn and their offspring in their coming of age and gender display. While the fidāʾiyyīn bore pure agency – understood as resistance to domination – and displayed their maturity through the fight to return to their homeland, their offspring have a far more nuanced relation to Palestine and articulate their coming of age and gender belonging in different ways, such as building a house and getting married. Effectively, by observing how the shabāb do their gender, it is not only the full historicity and changeability in time and space of masculinity that come to the fore, but also the scholarly concepts of agency and gender that can be transformed and undone. The tendency in studies of the Middle East to define gender strictly in terms of power and relations of domination fails to grasp the experiences of those, like the Shatila shabāb, with very limited access to power. It is not that the shabāb are emasculated, but rather that defining agency only in terms of resistance to domination and gender in terms of relations of power alone is rather restrictive. Throughout my fieldwork, I have also become acutely aware of anti-state forces at play in Shatila. Accordingly, this study portrays the (dangerous) liaisons between gender and agency as concepts and state machines. Thus, I reflect on what happens to gender (and agency) when state effects organizing and attempting to solidify a sex-gender system at the local level are of limited purchase. Ultimately, this ethnography points to an economics, a politics, a citizenship and sexes-and-genders of another kind, beyond the state.

The relationship between 'bushcraft' and 'indigenous knowledge' is investigated through a historical review, an examination of ethnographic literature, fieldwork amongst bushcraft practitioners, and through original case studies. Fieldwork was carried out in Sweden, the USA, and the UK. Case studies of the Saami 'kuksa', the 'figure 4' deadfall trap, and making fire by friction are used to explore a number of themes in the contemporary bushcraft world: the role of skilled-practice, ethical values, notions of an individually experienced connection with nature, practice as a personal transformative experience, and as an intersubjective relationship between practitioner and craft engagement with the material affordances in the landscape. It is argued that motivations for practice foreground a relationship with an environmental experience that counters 'alienation' through the development of techniques required to spend un-insulated time in nature which counter modern Western technocratic lifestyles. Bushcraft destabilises apparently similar categories of activity, particularly tourism, outdoor adventure recreation and education, historical re-enactment and survivalism.

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There is a tradition in game studies of seeing games as ‘more than games’. In the vein of this tradition, the social aspects, in general, and the practices of playing together, in particular, are increasingly conceived of as essential for games and the relationships of the players. However, there is currently no comprehensive description of them and their roles through an integrative framework. This thesis investigated certain social aspects in and around online games, with a particular emphasis on the practices of playing together with fellow players, friends, family and romantic partners. To explain all these practices in an integrated fashion, an ethnographic study was conducted (using participant observation and 57 structured and semi-structured interviews) and the data were analysed mainly through a ritualisation framework. This framework was inspired by a multidisciplinary perspective on secular ritual in modern and post-modern societies. Notably, the concept of relationship rituals (coming from social psychology) was very useful. In the context of online games, ritual and ritualised play (but also ritualisation as a process) refer to practices through which the game is enriched with new meanings which go beyond its ludic instrumentality, that is, the game moves across the frame of being ‘just a game’. These new meanings include those focusing on relationships, social interactions (including sociability, cooperation, conflict and competition) and identity. The emerging practices of playing together belonging to two dimensions of ritualisation, mainstream and subversive ritualisation, and their functions were described and analysed in two online games, World of Warcraft (WoW) and Star Kingdoms (SK). On the mainstream dimension, two types of relationship rituals were identified and analysed in WoW, namely initiation rituals and playing together rituals. In addition, the quantitative results generated from the interviews with WoW players were similar to the ones from the literature and supported the qualitative analysis. The current findings confirmed the ideas that most players play with close others and the social aspects of online games are essential for gameplay. Most importantly, the thesis described in detail and analysed the practices of playing together and their roles, showing that ritualisation provides a comprehensive framework able to address their diversity. Subversive ritualisation was explored as well by looking at the emerging, subversive practices of playing together, taking the form of Underground Aliances in SK (which are player created social structures also called UAs, having a complex relationship with both official and player rules). These practices were found to be influenced by the way the game was designed to respond to the existing and developing relationships of the players. Moreover, this thesis identified and presented the functions of UAs. To sum up, playing together is ritualised in and around online games, that is the games transform in veritable ‘tools to relate with’ and ‘tools to build identity with’. These meanings focussing on relationship and identity support the idea that the social aspects in and around online games are essential for both the relationships/social interactions of their players and their gameplay.

This thesis explores the everyday lived experiences of people involved in the relationship between Malawi and Scotland by critically examining the historical relationship between the two countries as well as the contemporary activities, meaning and context of the existing partnerships, relationships and networks. The role of networks and scale are also considered, primarily as they relate to international ‘development’. The research demonstrates that Malawi and Scotland do have a unique relationship, one founded on the legacy of interconnectedness granted by David Livingstone’s memory, and turned into a positive historical narrative. This special relationship has been strengthened through the implementation of a small international ‘development’ fund managed by the Scottish Government and the supporting of networking organisations between Malawi and Scotland, which appear to create spaces and opportunities for people to assemble together and jump scales of activity in communicating across national and international boundaries. As such this relationship based on equality, partnership and friendship between two small counties, one in Southern Africa, one in Northern Europe, offers a hopeful vision for international co-operation, assemblages of people and of partnerships that are truly equal, as long as the ever increasing trend towards neoliberal policies and bureaucracies around ‘development’ are resisted, even rejected.

This thesis examines the ways in which spirituality as a religious form interacts with political economy in the United States. Based on 22 months fieldwork in two small Northern Arizona towns, Sedona and Valle, it traces the way spirituality is enacted by individuals through foodways, bodily practice, and relationships to nature. I argue that it is pursued as an alternative to ‘mainstream’ American values, often summed up by my informants in the ideal of the ‘American dream’. For them, the American dream is that any individual can succeed in a meritocratic system through hard work, increase their economic prosperity from one generation to the next, and pursuing this will lead to personal happiness and fulfilment. Pursuing one’s spiritual path means foregrounding personal happiness and fulfilment often at the expense of economic prosperity. Spirituality is an alternative way of living and of making a living. This renegotiation of traditional American values is held to be the necessary response to the political, economic, and environmental crises of late capitalism. Spirituality is a category of growing salience for many Americans; while its genealogy remains complex and usage fluid, it has come to mean something specific for my informants, referring to what was once known, often pejoratively, as ‘new age’. This thesis delineates the religious form called spirituality, defining it as a constellation of beliefs and practices clustered around the central concept of ‘energy’ as an all-pervasive force; ‘the universe’ as a pantheistic conception of divinity; and progressive stages of enlightenment described as a ‘spiritual path’. The centring of the individual in spirituality mirrors the emphasis on individual responsibility at the heart of neoliberal policies implemented by successive governments since the late 1970s. At the same time, the expansion of agency to all nonhuman actors in spirituality destabilises the notion of human superiority as well as American exceptionalism. In this way, spirituality presents a challenge to dominant discourses in American society at the same time as it is constrained by the limits of those discourses.

This thesis employs two approaches to investigate water stress at the early and mid Epipalaeolithic site of Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan. Firstly, the archaeobotanical analysis explores the local environment by using the ecology of identifiable charred seeds to indicate water availability (autoecology). Included alongside this is a seed catalogue, which presents the unique archaeobotanical assemblage recovered through sampling. Secondly, to further explore the local palaeoenvironment and due to the potential broad hydrological tolerances of some species, stable carbon isotope δ13C analysis of the archaeobotanical remains is used to track changes in water stress during the occupation of the site. These analyses provide a complementary approach to traditional archaeobotanical studies. Combined, these data offer considerable insight into questions about the local environment, particularly water stress, and the potential use of plants during the occupation of Kharaneh IV. The results presented here demonstrate that Kharaneh IV experienced variable water stress throughout its occupation, with a drying out of the site coincident with the end of occupation. This signature of drying is found within both the isotopic and autoecological analyses, providing multiple lines of evidence for this pattern. This thesis serves as a case study for the usefulness and inferential power of multi-method approaches that combine archaeobotanical and isotopic analysis.

The Philippines is one of the world’s largest ‘sending communities’ for international labour migrants, with roughly 10% of the population ‘absent’ due to emigrations associated with permanent relocation or short-term contract work. Anthropologists studying Filipino migrations have often focussed on the migrants themselves, and particularly their experiences of diaspora and transnationalism in the present; this thesis instead looks at the perspectives of those who remain in the Philippines, particularly the children and young people who are affected by labour migration, and who often consider working overseas as part of their own futures. The thesis investigates children’s and young people’s social lives in the province of Batangas, exploring their labour practices, kinship relations and, most importantly, their education and schooling. Findings are based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in two educational institutions: a public secondary school in a small rural village, and a private vocational college in a larger ‘peri-urban’ town. Research was primarily conducted with children and young people who attended the school or college, as well as their teachers, families and communities. I argue that understandings of the purpose and practice of schooling have become thoroughly entwined with the transnational economies of labour migration and remittances. This process has generated or contributed to wide-ranging cultural vocabularies for talking about and acting on the future and the potential of young people, which encompass idioms pertaining to the moral value of children, concepts of movement and mobility, indebtedness across intergenerational relations, and the ‘domestication’ of external or foreign sources power. My conclusions contribute to anthropologies of childhood and youth, critical analysis of the articulation of schooling and labour, theories of global capitalism and transnationalism, and themes within the wider ethnographic study of the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of communities, businesses and individuals in a city in the Pacific Northwest region of the US who participate in a reforming turn within evangelical Christianity that critiques the American evangelical church’s emphasis on programmatic evangelism and church growth, and its association with conservative politics. The thesis begins by introducing the ideas of ‘community’ and ‘intentionality’ as they orient individuals’ ethical self-fashioning within an intentional community that participates in this turn. The thesis goes on to examine this and other groups’ ethos of communitarian localism, in which people imagine the possibilities for social and ethical renewal in explicitly placial terms; largely eschewing verbal evangelism in favour of the material and ritual work of ‘placemaking’, and personal commitments to living as much of one’s life as possible locally. We see an ambiguous posture of industry and disavowal, as people pursue transformative action in the neighbourhood, while holding an ethical presumption against all forms of power, and seeking to resist the capitalist temporalities of ‘development’. The thesis examines how people use enterprise to enact their localism; showing how doctrines of ethical capitalism, understood by some scholars as ‘neoliberal’, but seen locally as potentially ‘radical’, are deployed in service of a petit-bourgeois ideal of a morally embedded small-town economy. The final chapter addresses this subculture’s cosmological and sociological outlooks, notably its anti-modernity. I argue that the turn toward ‘holistic’ community, symbolised in mixed-use urban space, and imagined theologically as the Kingdom of God, represents an aspiration to ethicise the public sphere, and close the gap between private and public by rescaling society to the level of interpersonal interaction. In this sociologically reflexive subculture, we see an ambition of recuperating the morally choosing Protestant individual from the distributed personhood entailed in a functionally differentiated economy and society.