University of Oxford

DPhil students

Andrew Bowsher - ‘Limited Edition’: The Consumption of Music Box Sets and the Politics of Distinction'

Based on fieldwork in Austin, Texas, Andrew's thesis examines the interplay between consumer cultures and production in the circulation of specialist music products. By focusing on the music box set, a highly prized commodity which appeals to Western collectors of music that exist outside of mainstream popular culture, he questions assumptions in anthropology about subcultural behaviour in popular culture, the interplay between production and consumption of commodities, and the creation and negotiation of value in systems of exchange.

Ian Ewart - An Anthropology of Engineering (graduated March 2012)

Ian's research aims to question current concepts of engineering, and place them in the context of the anthropology of technology. From a layperson’s point of view, engineering is associated with industrialisation and the scientific method; a streamlined solution-provider, generating the best answer to a practical problem. Non-industrialised cultures that have demonstrated engineering prowess, on the other hand, are seen as having overcome their lack of science and conquered the natural world. Both assumptions will be explored through parallel fieldwork in Borneo and the UK that examines the process of engineering as it actually happens.

Iza Kavedzija - Living Well: Changing concepts of the ‘good life’ in Japan

Iza's research focuses on ideas of the 'good life' in contemporary Japanese society, particularly as reflected in notions of the ideal home. By looking at how the life choices of the elderly and the young are shaped in relation to decreasingly well-defined social roles, it aims to explore the changing realities of constraint and choice under the condition of 'late modernity'.

Abby Loebenberg - Risk, Play and Children's Sociality in Urban Vancouver  (graduated June 2011)

Abby's thesis explores localised global consumption through ethnographic research about children's television and associated material and spatial practices in Vancouver, Canada. Adult ideas and concerns about danger and the safety of children are contrasted with how children use various elements from television programmes to both understand and negotiate space (public, semi-public and private) and create  peer cultures.

Caitlin Meagher - Going Underground: social behaviour in Osakan commuter trains

The project explores the everyday lives of Japan’s urban and suburban dwellers in the intimate domain of the commuter subway car.   Through this ethnographic lens it returns to recurrent themes in the anthropology of Japan:  questions like the performativity of the self, technological animism, and the boundary between public and private.

Tomohiro Morisawa - Ethics and Aesthetics of work in the production of animation movies in Japan'

Tomo's thesis examines ways in which the contrasting discourses of creativity and artisanship articulate the work ethic and aesthetic ideals of animators and other 'creators' involved in the production process of animation movies in Japan. Based on fieldwork at an animation production company, his research will critically engage with emerging anthropological issues of creativity, skill, work, and intellectual property.