This thesis is an ethnographic account of the carving of wooden ritual statues and of the shamanic figure of the seer among the Kuna of the San Blas archipelago of Panamá. Through a study of the production of wooden ritual statues and of the birth and initiation of seers, I show that the distinction between the visible and the invisible, and between designs and images, is a crucial aspect of Kuna ways of thinking and experiencing their world. On one hand, the Kuna theory of design shows the importance of the development of social skills in the creation of person and sociality. On the other hand, the Kuna concept of image points to the relation between human and ancestral beings and to the transformative capacities of both. Through the constant interplay of the two categories, people interact with cosmic forces and create social life. The ethnography explores three aspects of the problem. First, the relationship between the islands inhabited by Kuna people and the mainland forest is described, focusing on the distance and separation of the two domains. The forest is perceived as a space populated by ancestral animal and tree entities, as well as demons and souls of the dead. Second, the carving of the ritual statues and the skill of Kuna carvers are described in relation to human and supernatural fertility. The birth of seers, different from that of other babies, provides evidence of the importance of natal design as the potential skills of each person. Third, relationships between human and supernatural beings are described considering Kuna myth and ritual action, in comparison with other indigenous American societies. This thesis concludes that it is through carving wooden statues and developing the capacity to see, Kuna people seek security in social life and protection from a predatory cosmos.

The human use of landscape causes fragmentation and loss of original habitats. Different species vary in their sensitivity to habitat loss. Especially carnivores can be more sensitive to decrease of their habitat because of lower abundance of their prey. On the other hand several opportunistic carnivores can profit in human modified habitats. This study was carried out in the České Budějovice basin, Czech Republic during the years 2008 and 2009 and the aim of this study was to determine carnivore{\crq}s habitat preferences in the fragmented landscape. During these two years were seven carnivore species monitored in forest patches by using scent stations. Records of this monitoring were compared with physiognomy of these patches and structure of surrounding landscape.

This thesis is an ethnographic analysis of kinship among the Kuna of the San Blas Archipelago of eastern Panamá, which focuses on the creation of bodies and persons. San Blas island villages are characterized by a compact layout and a burgeoning demographic concentration in relation to space. Despite land is available on surrounding mainland areas, the Kuna continue living in nucleated villages, emphasizing kinship as the value of a life in spatial and social concentration. By describing quotidian life in one Kuna community, this thesis considers what it means to live in concentration from a Kuna perspective, and how wellbeing is created through daily practices and rituals aimed at contrasting the social disengagement, that people consider an effect of domestic splitting, the ramification of collateral ties, and illnesses inflicted by invisible pathogenic beings. My analysis focuses on two main lines of enquiry: 1) the progression of social relations from close to distant. Beginning from the house, where the bodies of co-residents are made consubstantial through commensality, the thesis analyses marriageability as the management of social distance, and the celebration of communal drinking festivals as the re-patterning of relations with different types of non-kin (e.g. non co-resident kin, the dead, and pathogenic spirits) for the regeneration of fertility and wellbeing. 2) It focuses on the person and discusses how adults make sense of babies and processes of body and kinship making in relation to non-human beings. By describing how ritual and micro-quotidian practices operate according to patterns of density and repetition, this thesis demonstrates that concentration and saturation are the core notions of sociality and personhood for the Kuna. The thesis argues that saturation is interior to the ongoing creation of kinship.

The thesis focuses on the Czech architect Zdeňěk Kuna and a selection of his projects and plans from the 1960s and 1970s. These include the Prague office buildings of Motokov, Strojimport and Omnipol, the east stand of the Strahov stadium, the Permanent Representation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in Milan and Hotel Horal in Špindlerův Mlýn. His works are presented in the cultural and historical context of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and 1970s. The buildings and their interiors are not only formally described, the thesis also focuses on their contribution to the urban environment and the technologies used. The main principles of Kuna's work and the way he conceives of architecture are covered, as well as his sources of inspiration.