This thesis is a guidebook to the complex networks of representations in the Cob Mayan Jungle Adventure and Cob Mayan Village tours in Mexicos Mayan Riviera. Sold to tourists as opportunities to encounter an authentic Mayan culture and explore the ancient ruins at Cob, these excursions exemplify the crossroads at which touristic and Western scientific discourses construct a Mayan Other, and can therefore be scrutinized as staged post-colonial encounters mediated by scriptural and performative economies: the Museum of Maya Culture (Castaneda) and the scenario of discovery (Taylor). Tourist and Maya are not discrete identities but rather inter-related performances: the Maya become mysterious and jungle-connected while the tourist plays the modernized adventurer/discoverer. However, the tours foundations ultimately crumble due to uncanny and partial representations. As the roles and narratives that present the Maya as indigenous Other fracture, so too do those that construct the tourist as authoritative consumer of cultural differentiation.

This research applies an archaeological lens to an inner-city master planned development in order to investigate the tension between the design of space and the use of space. The chosen case study for this thesis is Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV), located in inner city Brisbane, Australia. The site of this urban village has strong links to the past. KGUV draws on both the history of the place in particular along with more general mythologies of village life in its design and subsequent marketing approaches. The design and marketing approach depends upon notions of an imagined past where life in a place shaped like a traditional village was better and more socially sustainable than modern urban spaces. The appropriation of this urban village concept has been criticised as a shallow marketing ploy. The translation and applicability of the urban village model across time and space is therefore contentious. KGUV was considered both in terms of its design and marketing and in terms of a reading of the actual use of this master planned place. Central to this analysis is the figure of the boundary and related themes of social heterogeneity, inclusion and exclusion. The refraction of history in the site is also an important theme. An interpretive archaeological approach was used overall as a novel method to derive this analysis.

The research question considers the possibility that culture and identity impedes Chinese New Zealanders from writing fiction about their own culture, and considers a Chinese New Zealand history as interpreted from a Chinese perspective. The research looks at various elements related to this question, such as Chinese as strangers or foreigners, the pressure to conform, and the role of communities.

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, 2008. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-196).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-76).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-182).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, 2008. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-196).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [321]-332).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-182).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-182).