Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social sciences -> anthropology -> general anthropology'
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1
Reynolds, Rebecca Jane. "Locating persons : an ethnography of personhood and place in rural Kyrgyzstan." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4006/.
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This thesis is an anthropological investigation of the interconnections between personhood and place in rural northern Kyrgyzstan. It studies the way people negotiate and experience relations with others and with the places in which they live and work. It is based on 18 months of fieldwork carried out in Kochkor raion between June 2006 and August 2008. I look at how the interplay between conceptual forms and everyday practices constitute personhood. I show how both formal ways of reckoning kinship, such as recounting genealogies and tracing back seven generations of male ancestors, and everyday forms of socialising are both integral in what it means to be a person, and are flexible in their designation of persons of the same kind and persons that are different. I go on to show how place holds particular significance for the attribution and negotiation of personhood, but that this meaning is emergent and processual. Providing an historical overview of the linking of persons to places by successive bureaucratic structures, I highlight how understanding places as “cultured” or “pure” have important consequences for how people understand themselves and others as more or less “Kyrgyz”, more or less “modern”. I show how recent reworkings of the meaning of “lineage places” following privatisation and village resettlement have led to changing forms of personhood, shifting from state farm worker to independent farmer. Other kinds of places are also meaningful for personhood. I highlight how the home and the objects it contains are active in the negotiation of a daughter-in-law’s personhood. I examine everyday practices of caring for the home, as well as more unusual practices of building new kinds of homes. These practices are integral to varied personhoods such as being a village daughter-in-law, or seeing oneself as “modern”. These personhoods and relationships with place are subject to ongoing negotiation, and death and grief disrupt these connections. A focus on emotion both within ritual practice and during grief lived everyday enables a better understanding of how personhood emerges from intersubjective processes which involve negotiation, rejection and incorporation of social and political processes. A focus on the co-production of place and personhood allows us to see both as becoming meaningful through these interactions.
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Roques, Clare. "The treatment of pain in India : power and practice." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/41014/.
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The World Health Organization describes over 80% of the world's population as living without adequate access to treatment for pain. Improvement initiatives focus largely on the field of palliative care and on increasing access to opioid medications. Predominantly, they are led from the global North while targeting healthcare provision in the global South. I propose that the limited improvement seen from these programmes is in part, attributable to their narrow clinical focus and to a lack of understanding of practice at the local level. Using India as a single case of study, the aim of this research project is to assess critically how medical practitioners, working within and outwith palliative care, treat patients in pain. My research questions address the practice of pain management and clinicians' evaluations of this care, from the perspective that pain as a medical problem, is a professionally constructed phenomenon. In this cross-disciplinary research, I use mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative data, from interviews and surveys administered to clinicians, field observations in India and secondary analysis of a pre-existing oral history archive. I draw on theories of the policy process, postcolonialism and social constructionism. Through critically evaluating practice, I move beyond more familiar descriptions of care delivery and barriers to improvement, to understand how these issues are framed, formed and contested. The study demonstrates salient features of the Indian healthcare system: scarce resources, multiple providers, weak regulation, and the dominant role of the private sector. The availability of treatments, including opioids and non-pharmacological therapies, is low and variable. The framing of pain as a problem requiring medical treatment is ubiquitous and there is consensus regarding the need to improve the delivery of clinical care. There is variation, however, in opinions about how this should be achieved, particularly with respect to the choice of treatment modality. Power is wielded by clinicians in the form of knowledge, and is negotiated with other medical professionals, politicians and patients. In conclusion, although Indian clinicians' descriptions of individual practice recognise the unique local factors that impact on the delivery of pain management, their proposed strategies for improvement emphasise increasing the provision of medical treatments developed in the global North. There is, however, little acknowledgment of the assumptions and limitations of this western medical model when used to treat pain in India.
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Carnes, Alexander. "From longhouse to stone rows : the competitive assertion of ancestral affinities." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3803/.
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The centrepiece of this thesis is a comparative study of the stone rows of Dartmoor and northern Scotland, a rare, putatively Bronze Age megalithic typology. It is argued that these should be defined as cairn-and-rows monuments that ‘symbolise’ long mounds, and avenues in the case of Dartmoor — a circumstance that ‘explains’ the interregional similarities; other aspects of their semantic structures are also analysed using rigorous semiotic theory. An evolutionary approach is taken, drawing on biological theory to explain the active role of these monuments in social evolution, and to understand the processes at work in producing long term change in monument traditions. New theory is developed for analysing such archaeological sequences, and for understanding and explaining material culture in general. The concepts of adaptation and environment in archaeological theory to date are criticised, and environmental construction theory, and aspects of the Extended Phenotype theory, are forwarded as alternatives. The local sequences are contextualised by examining European megalithic origins, tracing the long mound ‘concept’ back to the Bandkeramik longhouses. The question of diffusion or convergence is tackled by examining the mechanisms at work during the transitions from longhouse to long mound and then to the cairn-and-rows; the explanations forwarded for the social function of the monuments is integrated with mechanisms for explaining their spread (or ‘diffusion’). It is argued that all of these related forms — longhouses, long mounds, and the cairn-and-rows — are implicated in a process of competitively asserting ancestral affinities, which explains the constraint on cultural variation, and thus the formation of remarkably stable monument traditions, and the convergence between Dartmoor and northern Scotland in the Early Bronze Age.
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Pethen, Hannah. "Cairns in context : GIS analysis of visibility at Stelae Ridge, Egypt." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2015. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2013379/.
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This thesis describes a new approach tor investigating cairns, stone enclosures, stone alignments and other small archaeological features found in the deserts around the Egyptian Nile valley. Investigation of these features has previously been restricted by their ephemeral nature, damage from modern development and the limited artefactual, epigraphic or archaeological evidence associated with them. This research focuses on a case study of eight cairns and adjacent courts at the Middle Kingdom carnelian mine of Stelae Ridge in the Gebel el-Asr quarries in southern Egypt. While accepting previous interpretations of the cairn-courts as ritual structures created for the worship of local divinities, this research sought a fuller interpretation of the site in its landscape context and a more nuanced understanding of the structures, their chronological development and the decisions which governed their location and layout. This was achieved through systematic visibility analysis of the eight cairn-courts with geographic information system (GIS) software, which provided new data concerning the patterns of visibility associated with the structures. Interpretation of these patterns in the context of the archaeological and textual evidence from the cairn-courts, practical experience of visibility at the site and evidence from the wider cultural context provided a new and more detailed understanding of the site. Stelae Ridge was chosen because cairns upon it made highly visible landmarks, particularly for people travelling south towards the other sites in the Gebel el-Asr gneiss quarrying region. Initially practical, the Stelae Ridge cairns also developed a ritual function, creating tension between the highly visible cairns and the secluded ritual courts, and suggesting that the cairn-building process became ritualised. By the end of the cairn-building period, in the reign of Amenemhat III, new cairns were constructed in less visible positions, suggesting that the ritual aspects of the cairn-courts had largely subsumed their earlier practical function as landmarks. This type of GIS research has never been undertaken on Egyptian archaeological sites and previous interpretations of visibility in Egyptian contexts have been limited. The detailed interpretation of the Stelae Ridge cairn-courts achieved here, shows that the technology and approach applied to this research can make a meaningful contribution to the investigation of other similar non-formal structures, and at Egyptian sites in general. It also reveals that GIS visibility analysis can answer relevant archaeological questions, when employed as a tool for data generation and properly contextualised with other evidence from the site.
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Miles, Stephen Thomas. "Battlefield tourism : meanings and interpretations." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3547/.
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Battlefield sites are some of the most iconic locations in any nation’s store of heritage attractions and continue to capture the imagination of visitors. They have strong historic, cultural, nationalistic and moral resonances and speak to people on a national as well as a local scale. They have the power to provoke contention but at the same time foster understanding and respect through the consideration of deep moral questions. Battlefields are suffused with powerful stories of courage, sacrifice, betrayal and even cowardice. They have a strong sense of place and can provoke a range of cognitive and emotional reactions. But as sites they are inherently unremarkable and rely on the incarnative powers of interpretation to inform and enliven otherwise empty landscapes. This thesis is a wide ranging analysis of what battlefields mean to tourists and the effect interpretation has on battlefield sites. In order to further understand these aspects the development of the sites is also investigated including the historical and cultural forces which have been at play in creating such ‘attractions’. This makes use of the semiotic interpretation of tourist sites and the ‘site sacralisation’ model of Dean MacCannell in addressing the important question of what factors are present in the creation of an attraction. The study uses the four main ‘managed’ battlefield sites in the UK – Hastings (1066), Bannockburn (1314) , Bosworth (1485) and Culloden (1746) – to illustrate these objectives and comparisons are also made with a more recent conflict, that of the First World War (1914-18) at the Western Front in France and Belgium. Using an array of qualitative and quantitative methods the study addresses a hitherto relatively understudied area of tourism in exploring the meanings attached to the more historic sites and how they compare and contrast with visitor experiences at sites of more modern conflict. Interviews with experts/stakeholders involved with battlefield sites as well as both visitors at conventional times and at a re-enactment event were made and a large corpus of material was gathered from which conclusions were drawn. Although not statistically generalisable because of methodological constraints the results from the study add an important dimension to our understanding of battlefield tourism and what conflict sites mean to people. The study demonstrates how there is a very dynamic relationship between site and visitor and this is manifested in deep and wide ranging discourses which are reflected by the visitor comments. This is complemented by the views of experts/stakeholders. The study addresses some of the salient points surrounding the nature of visitor experience using the theory of the tourist ‘gaze’ propounded by John Urry. It asserts that a broader appreciation of the visitor interaction needs to be adopted utilizing a multi-sensory approach and not restricted to the dominance of the visual in interpreting the battlefield site. Interpretation is seen as critical in endowing relatively unremarkable sites with meaning and the existing approaches taken by the agencies managing the case study sites are found to be particularly effective in educational terms. The study examined the deeper meanings thought to be attached to places of suffering and death (the numen) but found a very weak response suggesting that the commercialisation of such sites results in a diminution of any visceral type of experience. For the Western Front the deeper meanings were eclipsed by grief and the study thus concluded that the numen can be subsumed into more complex reactions to places of death and suffering. With regard to the development of the historical sites the study challenges the stages of sacralisation in that more contemporary forces involved in attraction creation are neglected. A further commercialisation stage is added to update the model. Battlefield sites have much to inform us about how heritage is received and understood by the public. This is even more instructive in the case of a conflict site where the nature of the attraction might sit uncomfortably with public perception. This study aims to shed light on the meanings of such ‘dark’ sites within society and in doing so can in turn provide vivid reflections on our own culture milieu.
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Tezak, Ann Louise. "“A Wound That Never Heals”: Health-Seeking Behaviors and Attitudes Towards Breast Cancer and Cancer in General Among Women in Nakirebe, Uganda." Scholar Commons, 2016. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6412.
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The scale and severity of cancer, specifically breast cancer, remains significantly different across the spectrum of low-income to high-income countries. This study explores women’s beliefs about breast cancer and associated prevention and health-seeking behaviors in a rural area of Uganda. Through a critical medical anthropological perspective, the study examines the social, cultural, and economic factors that shape women’s understanding of cancer, and breast cancer specifically, and that influence their use of biomedical services. Data were collected over a three-month period through 35 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with 10 women older than 18 years in the rural setting of Nakirebe within Mpigi District, and through five interviews with health care personnel from a private and a government health care facility in Mpigi District. Quantitative and Qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 23 and MAXQDA 12.0.2, respectively. Findings suggest that women in this rural setting have limited access to screening and incomplete knowledge about breast cancer, and cancer in general, and internalize fears of a cancer diagnosis. No women were diagnosed with any type of cancer at the time of this study. Common attitudes towards cancer from the women include inevitable death, cancer is caused by contact with artificial substances and/or germs, and cancer causes pain, wounds that never heal, and the removal of body parts. Recommendations for improving cancer control and management in rural Uganda through awareness initiatives and community health outreach programs are presented.
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Martindale, Anne-Marie. "A life lived : experiencing an acquired facial 'disfigurement' and identity shift." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2014. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2014399/.
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With the advent of facial transplantation some academic authors have suggested that faces are significant for humans and that identities are located corporeally within faces and therefore transplantable. However, there has been little evidence to support these claims, particularly from a qualitative, theoretically informed social science background. Responding to this hiatus, in this thesis I set two interconnected research objectives: • to examine socio-cultural values associated with human faces in predominantly Western societies using secondary sources; • to explore the relationship between acquired facial ‘disfigurement’ and embodied identity shift using a narrative methodology. The first objective was addressed in full through an analytical review of largely Western secondary sources. It has become clear that faces, as part of bodies, are imbued with a variety of socio-cultural meanings on multiple levels. Individually people experience the world through their body and their face, making it a significant site for perception and sense making. On a societal level, faces and facial appearance have been associated with social reproduction (Giddens, 1991). For example, inaccurate and harmful historical associations between facial appearance and moral character still pervade British society. And, utilising the concept of faciality (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p.168) Twine (2002), Dudley (2002) and Benson (2008) have illustrated that the faces of people in sub-sections of society, generally those with very little power, can be conceptualised negatively and used to serve the interests of powerful elites. In terms of the second objective, most facial ‘disfigurement’ research has been completed using quantitative methods, resulting in partial knowledge and the disconnection of persons. Through the use of a phenomenological epistemology, embodiment position and a narrative methodology I have put the experiences of the 13 participants at the heart of the research. The analysis chapters focus on the participants’ embodied identities before, during and after an acquired facial ‘disfigurement’. In terms of conclusions, I have found that faces are important however, identities are not located within them but created and reshaped through embodied life experiences. I have also found that the relationship between embodied identity shift and acquired facial ‘disfigurement’ is one of contested negotiation between wider socio-cultural facial values, transitional/liminal identity states during and after the event(s) and the aim of previous identity restoration.
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Eski, Yarin. "The port securityscape : an ethnography." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6296/.
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9/11 changed the face of maritime transport that is responsible for moving 80% of everything we consume. Ports are vital hubs in that maritime transport and any disruption there instantly affects global trade. To protect the global supply chain from crime and terrorism, both must be disrupted locally in the port by port police and security officers that are responsible for port security at operational level. Public and critical criminological attention to these key security actors, however, is virtually non-existent. This thesis therefore explores how their occupational realities and identities are (re)established in two major European ports, by providing an ethnographic account. To do so, the thesis builds on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg between 2011 and 2012, during which everyday policing and security work has been documented, followed by a thematic analysis. The key argument runs thus: the port is a local space for the global trade, which is underappreciated and underestimated by the public, and has its police and security professionals in place both aboard and on shore who protect and defend that vital trade site. The aggressive commercialist governmentality that goes on behind that vital global trade is unwillingly yielded to by these guardians but not without any bottom-up resistance. They condemn the volatile commercialist governmentality that is embodied in management, competitive and careerist colleagues and authoritarian multi-agency partners, as well as in port companies and shipping companies. The State and global market they protect, is simultaneously a threat to them. This contradiction influences their occupational identity, making it inherently conflicted and affecting their performance in the port securityscape to the extent it can create threatening situations that cause the very dangers they are supposed to prevent and eradicate.
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Andronikos, Georgios. "The trajectory to elite level : an investigation of the individual and environmental features of within career transitions in sport." Thesis, Edinburgh Napier University, 2018. http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1253325.
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While much of the ‘sport transitions' literature focusses on the ‘end of career', research focussing on within career transitions in sport has identified a number of challenging transitions, for example, the move from junior to senior sport. While there is some very focussed (e.g., Scandinavian context) quantitative research that has been conducted, our understanding regarding the factors that contribute to the adjustment of athletes through within career sport transitions is mainly based from qualitative methodologies. It is clear that there are a number of important transitions on the path to elite sport, which may vary depending on factors such as sport and culture (e.g. diversification to specialising; junior to senior; academy to professional; elite to super elite; continued longevity of success). Continuing to broaden and deepen our understanding in this area will help both researchers and practitioners working with athletes on this pathway. As such, the objectives of this thesis are to: 1) Understand the predictive factors of adjustment and satisfaction through important within career sport transitions; 2) Investigate the individual, environmental and experiential features that are associated with successful and unsuccessful transitions to elite level sport 3) Investigate the individual characteristics and environmental features of a highly successful world class elite development program. These three thesis objectives were achieved through four aims and associated studies. Specifically: a) Examining the junior to senior transition experiences of a cross-cultural population using the Transition Monitoring Survey, b) Examining the individual and environmental characteristics, and developmental experiences of athletes who successfully negotiated the transition to elite level through qualitative methodology, c) Examining the individual and environmental characteristics, and developmental experiences of athletes who were unsuccessful in negotiating the transition to elite level, through qualitative methodology, iii and d) Examining the mechanisms that underpin the success of an independent triathlon program in developing elite world-class level athletes, using a qualitative approach. Subtleties of the trajectory were identified and interestingly athletes who successfully progressed to elite level made a choice to commit to their sport after taking part in deliberate play activities during early steps. On the contrary, unsuccessful athletes specialized early and in some cases the sport they were involved was not a personal choice. Findings showed that a combination of individual and environmental characteristics is necessary in order to cope successfully with within-career transitions. Physical abilities, commitment, motivation, aspirations, mental skills and the ability to respond to challenges were acknowledged as facilitators of a successful trajectory towards elite level. As environmental features also play a significant role in the outcome of the within career transitions an environment focused on long-term development, with clear and coherent communication and goals promoting the athlete wellbeing while in the same time utilizing intentional challenge can facilitate the pathway to elite level. The integration of the selection process as part of the talent development and the use of role models within the team to enable individuals continuously learn from each other were additional features identified. On the other hand, social pressure, balancing a dual career, a winning focused environment and poor communication were the main barriers that may lead to dropout. Practical implications are that increasing the quality of athletes' preparation and equipping them with the skills and attributes required in order to cope with the challenges of the within career transitions during their trajectory to elite level competition would facilitate progression. As such, not only developing individual characteristics but also creating an environment that aids to this end would increase the chances of athletes reach at elite level. Research implications of this thesis are that key individual and environmental features that facilitate progression to elite level were identified. Future research is required regarding the potential connection of early experiences and long-term achievements in sport, differences between team and individual sports while also further examination of successful environments and longitudinal examination of within career transitions.
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Hartley, Jane Elizabeth Katherine. "Do media portrayals of drinking and sexual/romantic relationships shape teenagers' constructions of gendered identities?" Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2855/.
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This study explores the possible influence of the media on teenagers’ constructions of gendered identities, with a specific focus on drinking alcohol and engaging in sexual/romantic relationships. Understanding the factors underlying alcohol consumption and sexual activity in this age group is an important public health priority. Teenagers in ‘western’ countries are drinking more alcohol than ever before and these drinking habits may be associated with risky behaviour, such as unprotected sex, and with morbidity and mortality. In comparison to other west European nations, the UK demonstrates a poor history of sexual health in teenagers, with the highest levels of teenage pregnancy and the second-highest level of abortions in women under the age of 20. Approximately half of all sexually transmitted infections diagnosed in the UK in 2009 were seen in the under-25s. Research also suggests that the mass media influence teenagers’ behaviours, including drinking alcohol and sexual practices. The question about the influence of the media is complex. There are two opposing theoretical positions which purport to explain the influence of the media: the 'media as powerful' versus the 'media audience as powerful'. This study adopts a theoretical approach which accommodates both of these: the 'influence of presumed media influence' theory (Milkie, 1999). A contentious issue is how the media is understood by teenagers to influence their alcohol consumption and their sexual/romantic relationships. This thesis has sought to address these issues by answering the following research questions: 1: Is the media integrated into the lives of teenage boys and girls? 2: How do teenagers’ understandings of gender-appropriate alcohol-use relate to media portrayals of alcohol use? 3: How do teenagers’ understandings of gender-appropriate engagement in sexual/romantic relationships relate to media portrayals of sexual/romantic relationships? 4: Is Milkie’s (1999) ‘influence of presumed media influence’ theory a useful way to understand the media’s position in teenagers’ lives, and specifically their understandings of gender-appropriate alcohol use, and of romantic and sexual relationships? 5: How are teenagers’ understandings of gender-appropriate behaviours with regards to drinking alcohol and sexual/romantic relationships used in the construction of their gendered identities? Fieldwork was conducted with teenagers aged 13-16 years, specifically in Edinburgh and in Ayrshire. The main sample comprised 25 semi-structured group discussions with 11 follow-up individual interviews, during which participants were asked to reflect on, and interpret, images from popular British television programmes that portrayed instances of alcohol use and sexual/romantic relationships. This method was intended both to prompt discussion on the process of media influence and to allow the participants to reflect on similar situations in their own lives. The research found that the mass media does shape teenagers’ perceptions and expectations of drinking alcohol and engaging in sexual/romantic relationships; and in doing so shapes their gendered identities. Importantly, the research confirmed Milkie’s ‘influence of presumed media influence’ theory that resolved the apparently incompatible ‘powerful media’ versus ‘powerful audience’ approaches to media influence. This suggests that media influence might be all the stronger for not being readily recognised or acknowledged as being influential. Media were more influential for teenagers’ understandings of gender-appropriate engagement in sexual/romantic relationships than they were for teenagers’ understandings of gender-appropriate drinking. The reason that media portrayals of drinking were considered to be only a minor influence among other stronger influences such as peers and family may be that these activities are more public. Sexual behaviour is less public therefore teenagers rely more on media to shape their images of what is considered to be appropriate behaviour. Sexual behaviour and drinking alcohol were intertwined. Many participants talked of how sexual negotiation and activities were often accompanied by drinking. Being drunk, or, importantly, pretending to be drunk, may be understood as a process that is useful for teenagers when trying out perceived gender-appropriate identities as they engage in their relationships. As with alcohol, romantic and sexual relationships are acted out in a particular way which is informed by discourses which specify gender-appropriate behaviour, attitudes and roles (and with the help of alcohol itself, which acts as a social ‘lubricant’) and in doing so is a component of the project of identity construction. The implication of this research is that existing concern about the influence of the media should be concentrated on the media portrayals of behaviours that are less public, such as sexual/romantic relationships, rather than media portrayals of behaviours that are more public, such as drinking alcohol.
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Williams, J. Gary. "Supervised autonomy : medical specialties and structured conflict in an Australian General Hospital /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1991. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phw7242.pdf.
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Patchett, Merle Marshall. "Putting animals on display : geographies of taxidermy practice." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2348/.
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Taxidermy specimens and displays have become increasingly liminal features in contemporary society. Viewed variously as historical curios, obsolete relics or more malignantly as ‘monstrosities’, they can be a source of discomfort for many. Taxidermy objects have become uncomfortable reminders of past scientific and colonial practices which have sought to capture, order and control animated life and as such have become increasingly problematic items for their owners. As a result many taxidermy displays have been dismantled and mounts relegated to ‘backstores’ to gather dust. The paradox is that taxidermy as a practice is a quest for ‘liveness’, to impute life back into the dead. Much like the taxidermist, my goal in this thesis is to revive and restore: to renew interest in and reassert the value of taxidermy collections by recovering what I shall term as the ‘biogeographies’ of their making and continued maintenance. Considerable academic attention has been paid to the ‘finished’ form and display of taxidermy specimens inside cabinets, behind glass – in other words, to their representation. By way of contrast, this thesis recovers the relationships, practices and geographies that brought specimens to their state of enclosure, inertness and seeming fixity. These efforts are aligned with work in cultural geography seeking to counteract ‘deadening effects’ in an active world through a prioritisation of practice (Dewsbury and Thrift 2000), and elsewhere draw on research arguments and approaches originating in historical geography, and the history of science. The thesis firstly investigates historical developments in the scientific and craft practice of taxidermy through the close study of period manuals, combined with ethnographic observations of a practicing taxidermist. Critical attention to practice then facilitates the recovery of the lifeworlds of past taxidermy workshops and the globally sited biogeographies behind the making of individual specimens and collections. The thesis required the purposeful assemblage and rehabilitation of diffuse zoological and historical remains to form unconventional archives, enabling a series of critical reflections on the scientific, creative and political potentials of taxidermy.
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Donald, Pauline Sarah Moore. ""Lessons will be learned"? : an investigation into the representation of 'asylum seekers'/refugees in British and Scottish television and impacts on beliefs and behaviours in local communities." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3628/.
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This thesis examines media representations and audience reception processes through a detailed study of media reporting and public understandings of asylum and refugee issues. It is based on sixty interviews in which refugees seeking asylum, professionals working with them and members of the general public were invited to comment on their own memories and beliefs using pictures from the TV coverage. The pictures used are included in a detailed thematic content analysis of national and regional broadcast news. Public understandings are systematically compared to the content of media reporting. In particular it explore people’s memories and beliefs of national and regional broadcast news. The content analysis revealed that the national news represents asylum in unsubstantiated and problematic ways whilst the regional news has a more balanced approach to representation of the issue. The thesis explores the diversity of audience reactions and the different ways in which people may accept or reject the media representations. However it also draws attention to the themes which recurred in all of the interviews and argues that there is strong evidence of media effects. The thesis highlights factors in media coverage which are particularly influential. It demonstrates how language, structures, and images may influence audience responses and examines how media representations may structure patterns of misinformation. The audience were poorly informed on asylum and refugee issues. In addition attention is drawn to viewers’ everyday relations and experiences. Some interviewees use specific knowledge to reject news reports. The research provides comprehensive and fruitful insights of cultural differentiation linked to ‘race’/ethnicity, gender, class and geographical location. The thesis concludes by arguing for a media studies schema which connects questions about audience reception with questions about media production and content as well as the construction of broader relations within society enabling researchers to contribute to current debates about power, control and social conditions.
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Smith, Thomas Aneurin. "At the crux of development? : local knowledge, participation, empowerment and environmental education in Tanzania." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3700/.
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Development appears to have gone through a paradigm shift, from top-down, state-led projects to bottom-up, participatory schemes which seek to take account of local knowledges. Tanzania is a country which, like many others in the ‘Global South’, faces a myriad of interlinked environmental and development problems, particularly as much of the population’s livelihood needs are deeply entwined with local environmental resources. Current environmental policies and conservation practise in Tanzania appear to reflect this new shift in development, and increasingly the Tanzanian state and a number of NGOs have aimed to increase the participation of local people in environmentally sustainable practices. Education about the environment, for both adults and young people, has become key to this approach in Tanzania since the 1990s. This thesis aims to explore the many practical and theoretical questions which remain about the suitability of participatory projects that utilise local knowledges, considering questions which are fundamentally at the heart of how development is and how it should be done, questions which are ultimately at the crux of development itself. Specifically, I aim to answer questions about how participants and communities can become ‘empowered’ through participatory initiatives, and to this end I investigate the important yet presently neglected role of young people. I further explore the nature of ‘local knowledge’, questioning its current use in development projects whilst seeking to re-conceptualise and re-orientate how ‘local knowledge’ is understood and employed. I utilise a qualitative and participatory methodology through three communities in Tanzania, each of which offers a contrasting picture of environmental issues throughout the country. I begin by exploring the current understandings of participation and local knowledges in development, and follow with an explanation of the methodological approach. The empirical chapters are then organised around three main themes: local knowledges, environmental education in Tanzania, and the role of participation in Tanzanian communities. The first of these chapters appraises the concept of ‘local knowledge’ critically by first comparing local and official discourses of the ‘environment’, assessing how far an attention to local knowledges has percolated into official environmental discourses in Tanzania. In light of local understandings of the environment encountered in these three communities, I consider how the current conceptual framework of local knowledge may be limiting our understanding of how these knowledges are constructed and communicated. The second empirical chapter examines environmental education projects in Tanzania, and from this I critically reflect on the role of NGOs and the state in local development. Through an analysis of environmental education, I consider how both local knowledge and participation agendas can be spatialised, in particular by understanding how formal and informal spaces of learning are constructed discursively in communities, and the implications this has for the outcomes of education projects. I go on to examine the notions of participation and community, exploring how participation and inclusion operate at different scales, including those beyond the local. I consider how the current conceptualisation of participation and community, derived from ‘Western’ ideals, can conflict with local understandings of responsibility, volunteerism, participation and community development. Through this, I question the ‘community’ as the necessary site of empowerment, and in particular here I draw attention to the role of young people and how their identities are reproduced at the community scale and beyond. Finally, I conclude by discussing the conceptual and practical application of local knowledge and participation in development in light of this critical appraisal. I consider the role of formal education more broadly in empowering young people, and I question the role of NGOs in the future of locally and nationally orientated development. I end with an examination of the ethics of the current development paradigm in light of the understandings of development uncovered by this study, many of which fundamentally challenge the way that participatory forms of development should be done.
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Taylor, Molly. "Problem drug use and fatherhood." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3376/.
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In spite of longstanding concern over the impact that parental problem drug-use may have on the lives of children, very little is currently known about the way in which problem drug-using fathers experience and interpret their parenting roles. This study explores the lived experience of fathering among problem drug-using men and considers the impact that drug addiction may have on how these fathers enact their roles as parents and the relationships that they have with their children. Through qualitative interviewing with a sample of fathers with a history of drug addiction, this research highlights the incompatibility between a problem drug-use career and an active and involved fathering role. However, it also reveals how although many of these men may not be fathering in a practical sense, they would appear to nonetheless hold well-developed notions of what qualifies as good parenting and a desire to better fulfill their role as a father. The findings suggest that greater acknowledgement of fathering issues and of men’s parenting status in the provision of services would be beneficial. Furthermore, engaging with these men as fathers and addressing their parenting issues whilst treating their drug addiction problems could potentially facilitate better, more responsible, involved, and perhaps most importantly drug-free fathering.
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Skulsuthavong, Merisa. "'Thainess' and bridal perfection in Thai wedding magazines." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2016. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/93695/.
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The object of this thesis is to explore the representation of ‘ Thainess ’ in Thai wedding magazines. The thesis adopts semiotic and multimodal analysis as methods to examine how cover pages, photographs, editorial contents and advertisement s in the magazines communicate their denotative and connotative meanings through primary markers and modality markers such as pose, objects, setting, framing, lights, shadow and colour tone. Subsequently , each image is examined through its depiction of people in the image to determine any st ereotypical cultural attributes that highlight a distinction between the traditionalised Thai and modernised Thai bride. This thesis argues that the legacy of Thailand ’ s semi colonial history constructs an ambivalent relationship with the West and Thailand ’ s self - orientalising tendency, as well as the diffusion of hybrid cultures and modern Thai beauty ideals. Self - orientalising tendencies and the desire to encapsulate ‘ Thainess ’ are thusly observed in the magazines ’ representation of traditional ‘ Thainess ’ with a nostalgic overtone, by linking the ideals of traditional beauty to the imagined qualities of heroines in Thai classic literature and aristocratic ladies from pre-modern Siam through fashion and traditional beautifying remedies.
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Rădan, Gorska Maria Miruna. "Pensiuni in Romania : rediscovering and reinventing the countryside through tourism." Thesis, University of Kent, 2016. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/54973/.
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Rural tourism is a long-established practice in the industrialised West, but it is a comparatively recent and on-going development in postsocialist contexts. This thesis examines the development of rural tourism in Romania and draws on fieldwork carried out in one of the oldest and most popular destinations of the country, as well as in a newer and less visited location. As homestays are central to rural tourism, my research has an extensive focus on what happens with guesthouses and their owners. Countryside tourism is a practice grounded in a discourse that praises images of unspoilt nature, close-knit communities, material and cultural heritage and natural healthy food. Discourses about rurality also suggest that for city dwellers, village stays in their own countries can provide a way of getting in touch with their national identity, building, at the same time a sense of belonging. In Romania, such discourses are promoted by NGOs, state institutions and tour operators that aim to develop rural tourism. In spite of their efforts, in the destinations that I studied, rural tourism has strayed away from the ideal model. Instead of bucolic cottages inspired by the vernacular architecture of the region, hosts welcome their guests into large, modern villas equipped with state-of-the art amenities. Tourists too show a strong concern with material aspects of their accommodation, they rarely venture in outdoor pursuits and have little interest in notions of ‘heritage’ or ‘traditions’. My findings show that the lived experiences of local entrepreneurs have shaped worldviews that in many respects are at odds with the ideal models and best tourism practices promoted by various institutions. I also show how hosts and guests share similar notions of achievement and success and how this has turned rural tourism into a house-centred event. In explaining why discourses have little grounding in reality, I pay close attention to the economics of tourism, trying to understand guesthouses as businesses interlinked both with the wider forces of the market and with the socio-economic history of rural Romania. I show how the development of pensiuni was influenced by specific material and social constraints, arguing that a long history of living under oppressive regimes actually endowed locals with qualities that made them ready to embark on entrepreneurial pursuits. I also examine how kinship can be both a catalyst for growth and a factor that contributes to the stagnation or decline of businesses. Most notably, however, it was the unstable and burdensome legislative environment that had perhaps the strongest impact over the evolution of guesthouses, determining over half of the owners to stay in the shadow economy. My findings raise questions about the effectiveness and utility of many of the norms currently imposed on tourist entrepreneurs and I conclude by discussing a few ways in which institutions could respond better to the needs of guesthouse owners.
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Charron, Hélène. "Les formes de l'illégitimité intellectuelle : genre et sciences sociales françaises entre 1890 et 1940." Thèse, Paris, EHESS, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/3209.
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Cette thèse en sociologie historique analyse les logiques d’inclusion et d’exclusion des femmes dans le champ des sciences sociales françaises entre 1890 et 1940 à partir de l’étude des positions sociales, des prises de position et de la réception des travaux produits par des femmes dans les principaux périodiques de sciences sociales orientés vers la sociologie et l’anthropologie.
La démonstration prend comme pivot l’accès des femmes aux savoirs et aux diplômes universitaires. La première partie porte sur les femmes non diplômées qui s’insèrent dans le champ des sciences sociales avant 1914, principalement par le biais d’une implication dans la mouvance réformiste ou dans les groupes féminins et féministes. Les figures féminines légitimes, dont les travaux ne suscitent pas de controverses, se situent aux positions les plus hétéronomes du champ là où les enjeux de la pratique réformiste priment sur les enjeux de la connaissance. Les figures de la transgression non diplômées, qui prétendent participer à l’élaboration des connaissances empiriques et théoriques sur les sociétés, provoquent au contraire des réactions négatives qui renvoient leurs analyses féministes hétérodoxes vers le champ politique.
Après 1914, le nombre de femmes et de travaux féminins dans les périodiques et les groupes de sciences sociales français diminue globalement jusqu’en 1940, et les femmes non-diplômées cèdent leur place aux diplômées. Les processus de qualification différenciée selon le genre qui contribuent à reformuler l’antinomie entre compétences intellectuelles et féminité s’adaptent à l’accès des femmes aux diplômes. D’un côté, la majorité des nouvelles diplômées s’oriente et est orientée vers les nouvelles professions sociales (surtout le travail social) et vers l’enseignement qui valorisent les compétences traditionnellement associées au féminin et qui construisent leurs identités professionnelles en opposition au travail intellectuel, particulièrement au travail théorique. De l’autre côté, les seules femmes diplômées aspirant à demeurer dans le champ des sciences sociales qui parviennent à obtenir une reconnaissance relative avant 1940 se spécialisent dans les secteurs de la recherche empirique, réalisent leurs travaux au sein d’institutions savantes, s’assimilent aux problématiques et aux perspectives légitimes et n’adoptent pas de posture militante féministe.In this dissertation in historical sociology, I analyze gender relations and the construction of women’s intellectual legitimacy in the French social sciences between 1890 and 1940. To that end, I study the social positions, the intellectual productions, and the reception of women in the main social science periodicals leaning towards sociology and anthropology. The pivotal point of my demonstration is women’s university enrolment and graduation. The first part of my dissertation is about women lacking a university diploma that nevertheless played a role in the social sciences before 1914, mainly through participating in the reformist circle of influence or by being involved in feminine and feminist groups. The “legitimate feminine figures”, i.e. women whose works did not fuel any kind of controversy, are in the most heteronomous parts of the field of study, in which issues about the reformist practice prevail over issues about knowledge. On the other hand, the “figures of transgression”, i.e. women lacking a diploma but pretending to participate in social empirical and theoretical knowledge, provoke negative reactions that, in turn, relegate their heterodox feminist analyzes to the political field. After 1914 and until 1940, the amount of women and of feminine works in periodicals and French social science groups decreased, and women with a university diploma replaced those lacking one. The gender-differentiated processes of evaluation, which contributed to reformulate the antinomy between intellectual competence and femininity, adapted itself to the fact that women had access to university diploma. On the one hand, the majority of newly graduated women heads and is directed towards new social professions (mainly social work) and teaching. Both professions promote competences traditionally associated with women, and construct the latter’s professional identities as disjoint from intellectual, and mainly theoretical, activities. On the other hand, the only graduated women aspiring to stay within the field of the social sciences, and who succeeded before 1940 in gaining a relative recognition for their competence, pursued empirical research, accomplished their work in accredited institutions, took on problems and perspectives sanctioned by the expert community, and did not play the role of feminist activists.
Thèse réalisée en cotutelle avec l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales
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Anderson, Bruce Edward, and Bruce Edward Anderson. "Forensic anthropology as science: Is there a difference between academic and applied uses of biological anthropology?" Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282649.
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The central issued explored by this research is whether forensic anthropology can be characterized as being fundamentally different from academically-oriented biological anthropology. My view--and thesis statement--is that they are not two fundamentally-differing pursuits. While I recognize that important differences do exist between these fields, I argue that the differences are not sufficient to draw a stark line between academically-oriented biological anthropology and its medico-legal application. The principal source of data marshaled in support of this view is my dozen-plus years experience as a student. then practitioner, of forensic anthropology. One hundred forensic anthropology case reports of mine are utilized to illustrate an example of the product that forensic anthropologists routinely supply to medico-legal and governmental agencies. However, more important than this product are the processes behind the issuance of such reports. I argue that while the product may be different--a necessity because the intended audience certainly is--the conscientious forensic anthropologist employs the same analytical processes as when engaged in academic pursuits. Thus, it is my position that forensic anthropologists remain biological anthropologists while performing medico-legal services.
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Raj, Shehzad D. "Ambivalence and penetration of boundaries in the worship of Dionysos : analysing the enacting of psychical conflicts in religious ritual and myth, with reference to societal structure." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/23662/.
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This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re-reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis, self and Other, resulting in the perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post-colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis, a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis. This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis/ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries.
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Ewart, Ian James. "An anthropology of engineering." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:69c42210-e6c0-49c7-bec2-4a27f2e9903c.
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This dissertation considers the place in anthropology of ‘production’ generally, and ‘engineering’ specifically, by asking the simple question: How do people make things? Scholars of material culture have until recently focused on issues of consumption, especially the consumption of commodities (Miller), and considered production only in the abstract. Other theoretical approaches are therefore drawn upon to act as a framework for the thesis, including network theory (Law and Latour), and environmental relationism (Ingold). A methodology of ‘parallel fieldwork’ was developed (from Bourdieu), to situate myself as an experienced engineer carrying out anthropological fieldwork. Work in a ‘familiar’ environment (the Didcot Railway Centre, UK) was used to provoke thoughts about engineering in my primary fieldsite (the Kelabit highlands, Borneo). Data from the UK thus helped frame my analysis of Kelabit engineering, presented here in four parts. First, using the construction of two bridges as a case study, I suggest that a design can be seen as the revelation of a potential future, rather than a complete plan, as is suggested by design researchers such as Lawson and Norman. Then, by looking at changing traditions of house-building, I demonstrate the intimate relationship between materials and environment, even as the environment becomes more industrialised (Tsing), and consider this example in the light of debates about materiality (Miller; Ingold). Personal involvement in the conception and building of a new suspension bridge allowed me to investigate in some depth the act of construction. As a communal project, this incorporated aspects of individual skill, in the way that Ingold has described, but also the organization of people, tools and materials, akin to Law’s ‘heterogenous engineering’. This leads me to conclude that a theory of engineering might come from due consideration of both these approaches to relational thinking. Finally, I describe an abandoned longhouse and trace its deconstruction, suggesting that this is an example of creative destruction (Colloredo-Mansfeld), and re-materialization (Gregson). The dissipation of the material parts of the building shows that engineered objects should be seen as an ongoing process of material creation and disposal, and not a unified whole. In conclusion, my hope is that this dissertation contributes to ideas about the place and nature of material culture, and advocates a more prominent place for ‘production’ within anthropology.
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Grenda, Donn Robert. "A General Theory of Economic Flow, Social Exchange, and Hegemonic Relationship." W&M ScholarWorks, 1992. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625722.
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Lohn, Christina 1962. "Women's medical knowledge and health care practices concerning the most common respiratory illnesses. A case study of a rural community in northern Germany." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/277875.
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In order to stop rising health care expenditures, 81 villagers and their health professionals were interviewed about their medical knowledge (aeteology, symptoms, treatment, illness length, necessity to consult a doctor, etc.) and health care practices concerning common respiratory illnesses. According to informants, sniffles, cough, flu, common cold, sore throat/tonsillitis, bronchitis and sinusitis are the most common respiratory illnesses. All of them are regarded to be caused by several mechanisms of getting cold and/or wet. Despite the general disbelief in the germ theory and the prevention of contagion among household members, informants have an extensive knowledge about effective treatments and consult health professionals when home-remedies fail or a doctor's excuse is needed. Due to the effectiveness of home-treatments and self-containment of most common respiratory infections, this study concludes that health insurance companies should restrict the reimbursement of prescriptions for Bagatellmedizin, inhalation apparatus and home-remedies.
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Brown, Jacqueline. "Oral Health Disparities Across Racial/Ethnic Groups." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/37.
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Oral health disparities persist across various sociodemographic groups in the United States. Data were obtained from the 2007-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey(NHANES)to investigate differences in tooth count, self-rated condition of teeth, decay in at least one tooth, and ownership of dentures across racial/ethnic groups.
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Mitchell, Eleonore. "Pre-Lent Celebrations: Shrovetide & Carnival." TopSCHOLAR®, 1988. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2661.
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The history of pre-Lent celebrations is traced through the presentation, comparison, and evaluation of the main theses of origin held by Shrovetide and Carnival scholars. It is determined that the question whether the festivals are of pagan or Christian origin is not important for the analysis of their present-day significance. Their vitality stems first of all from the general importance of celebration for humans to define themselves in a setting in which they can perform, act, and behave in non-traditional ways that cannot be transferred to everyday life. However, the festivals' uniqueness can be defined through two main characteristics: (I) the establishment of fools' or mock-governments and the ritual dismissal of the local authorities, and (2) the use of elaborate masks and costumes. Masks and costumes not only facilitate new contacts with other, particularly non-masked, members of one's community, no matter to which social level they belong; they also allow people to freely parody and thus criticize their society's political, social, and moral order, without having to suffer consequences. Although considered to be anarchic by their critics, pre-Lent celebrations actually reflect the everyday world, which they need as a background on which to stage their distinct nature. The actors, give up their performance after the reenter their routine lives they often take with them a without special equality, which they may use within interactions. called "fools," willingly festive period and misgivings. However, feeling of democracy and their everyday social interactions. The results of fieldwork done in Southwest Germany (the area of the Swabian -Alemannic Shrovetide) are reflected throughout the study. Forty-nine black-and-white photographs as well as a map give a visual impression of Shrovetide in Germany.
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Rossi, Christine Skei. "After the sixties : anthropology in sixth grade social studies textbooks." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3691.
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During the 1960s, anthropology was an important part of the social studies curriculum. This study explores the question of whether twenty years later, anthropology is still an important part of primary and secondary school curricula and textbooks. To answer that question, the author used content analysis to analyze 13 sixth grade social studies textbooks for their anthropological content. Results of the research indicate that there is very little anthropology in the texts, the same topics and concepts are covered in most of them, and that most of the anthropological material is narrative or descriptive in form rather than theoretical. The exclusion of anthropology from the textbooks would seem to be tied in with the process of textbook production, publishing, and adoption. If anthropologists wish to see more anthropology in textbooks, then they will have to involve themselves in the textbook process.
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Hansen, Gregory. "The Blankety-Blank of Bear Creek Camp: A Rhetorical Analysis of a Folk Drama." TopSCHOLAR®, 1987. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2418.
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A rhetorical theory of folklore was used to interpret how summer camp staffers use a folk drama as a means of identification and as a type of artistic expression. The performance was analyzed for ethnographic information using Kenneth Burke's theory of dramatism and for artistic techniques using Burke's theory of the psychology of audience. The dramatistic pentad contextualized the performance, and this information was analyzed for motives through the delineation of dramatistic ratios. The skit's syntagmatic structure was outlined using Burke's description of five aspects of form. The analysis demonstrates that meaning is emergent through both the content and form of the symbolic action of the folk drama. Identification is achieved primarily through the presentation of motives. The aesthetic experience is created primarily through the use of form. The interpretation demonstrates that the skit's content and form can not be understood apart from each other and that understanding content and form is but one aspect of the performance's meaning.
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Rushing, Jon. "Horsetrading: An East Texas Study in Establishing Context." TopSCHOLAR®, 1991. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2788.
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Scholarship to date on the subject of horsetrading and horsetraders has been primarily narrative collections with a minimum of attention paid to the cultural context within which the horsetrader lives and works. This thesis focuses on the lives and dealings of several horsetraders in a five county region in middle to southern east Texas.
Beginning with a discussion of the merits and failings of existing scholarship, I outline the historical background leading to the unique regional context and strong sense of independence in my area of study. A combination of early isolation, radical economic and political swings, and a strong southern Baptist presence work to give this region a particular character that both condemns and supports a number of horsetraders.
Long ethically suspect, the horsetrader here has evolved from the travelling gypsy trading stock over vast areas into a fixed, though feared member of the community. The question of ethics arises in a flexible duality on the community's part as they teach and preach against al that they believe the trader guilty of, yet continually suspend these ethical values as they enter into the trader's world and attempt to beat him at his own game. A vast bank of community narrative exists to warn of the trader's deceptions, yet should a community member ever best the trader, his social status skyrockets with David and Goliath-like fame.
In order to grasp the nuances and subtleties of the trader's craft, I then describe aspects of the horsetrade in light of current folklore theory. There are elements of both folk drama and gaming in the verbal dueling and strategy of the trade, but nothing that can affix the interchange to either genre. Next I explore many of the deceptions for which the traders have become known, and more often, have become victims of themselves.
My final concern is with the changes that have taken place in the trader's world. Agribusiness that no longer relies on animal power coupled with widespread urbanization has depleted the market for horses in many respects. A new class of customers now acquire horses for specific, convenient needs, and often these are only temporary. The horsetrader has been forced to adapt to these changes or retire completely.
In summation, the region and people I studied are responsible for a unique environment that both shuns and supports horsetraders. The community depends upon the reputations of the traders to serve as examples of improper behavior and lifestyle, yet applauds the individual who can enter their ethical hinterland and return successful. (i.e. having suspended acceptable ethics). The duality works on several levels, and pervades the region and the trades, forming the very context within which the trader exists.
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Razavi, Minoo. "Navigating new national identity online| On immigrant children, identity & the internet." Thesis, Georgetown University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1536645.
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Increased immigration finds children in a quandary to develop an identity consolidating their multiple locales and cultures. Additionally, the internet is highly integrated into children's lives and plays a consequential role in their identity formation processes. "Local culture," as referred to by scholars (e.g. Elias & Lemish 2008, 2009; De Block & Buckingham 2007), is a major influence on diaspora children's identity formation. Unfortunately, "local culture" is not clearly defined in literature thus far; it can refer to any combination of at-home and outside-the-home cultures with which children in a new country interact. This paper delineates parts of local culture in a way prior literature has not and introduces the notion of "new national identity" (NNID) as a component of local culture that immigrant children acquire. NNID is derived from new national culture. It is the culture of the immigrant-receiving nation as commonly available to all immigrants regardless of their ethnic background. The case studies presented here examine NNID acquired through internet usage specifically by Iranian-American and Iranian-Canadian youth. The case studies bring to light the importance of birthplace in how children of the diaspora perceive new national identity. Their perceptions and conceptions of this development can be mitigated by many factors including, but not exclusive to, place of birth, age at which emigration occurs, parental familiarity with new national culture, local social demographics, and local co-ethnic support, to name a few.
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Margaris, Amy Vlassia. "Meat and potatoes: recipes for a range of egalitarianism in three hunter-gatherer societies." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 1996. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1316173721.
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Gaylord, Wendy A. "Reformasi and teachers' implementation of civic education in West Sumatra, Indonesia." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3344624.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, 2008.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct 30, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-02, Section: A, page: 0527. Adviser: Margaret Sutton.
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Perin, Jodi R. "Educational travel for societal change: An exploration of popular education along the Mexico-United States border." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/278807.
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During the past few decades, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in how different cultural frameworks come together. One opportunity to view such interactions is presented by travel seminars based on a transformative education model, which aim to educate middle-class people about conditions in economically depressed areas through travel. The task of this thesis is to examine the experiences of U.S. participant groups in one transformative education program, paying particular attention to interpersonal contact, both within groups and between them and local people, and to how participants experience the location of poverty. I argue that multiple factors play a role in terms of whether, how, and why trip participants appear to form new meanings based on their experiences. These factors include the individual's ability to empathize with the 'Other' (i.e. local people) met on the trip and previous experience in and knowledge of economically depressed areas, especially the Third World.
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Zwolinski, Mary. "Displays of Culture: Personal Museums in Wisconsin." TopSCHOLAR®, 1988. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2958.
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Fieldwork was undertaken in the state of Wisconsin to document and interpret privately owned and displayed collections. Collections were comprised of various types of objects, most commonly artworks created and/or collected by the collection owners. These collections often take on an environmental scope, occupying private spheres such as collection owners' homes or outbuildings. An examination of environmental type collections that are housed in bars was also undertaken.
Collections of this specific type are culturally and locally significant. The objects in the collections and the collection owners address and provide important information on such local or regional subjects as history, local storytelling practices, and local aesthetics. These collections also serve as natural repositories for the objects of various folkgroups relevant to the region. In this thesis that region is defined as the state of Wisconsin, and those folkgroups examined include occupational, recreational, and ethnic communities. Personal museums are one way that members of these communities preserve, display, interpret, and reaffirm their personal involvements in those groups. Collectors preserve and display tangible evidence of the significance of these communities and their affiliations with those groups. In this thesis I advocate a closer examination of personal museums by teachers, anthropologists, folklorists, and others interested in artifacts of culture.
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Stansberry, Donna W. "Burial practices in Southern Appalachia." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2004. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-1112104-101034/unrestricted/StansberryD112404f.pdf.
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Thesis (M.A.L.S.)--East Tennessee State University, 2004.Title from electronic submission form. ETSU ETD database URN: etd-1112104-101034 Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Internet at the UMI web site.
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Foucault, Patrick. ""L 'Homme africain" et ses masques Anthropologie psychologique de la personne, de la psychiatrie coloniale à l'École postcoloniale de l'hôpital Fann-Dakar au Sénégal." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/28741.
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Entre l'époque coloniale et la décolonisation se développa un dialogue fécond, mais inégal entre les deux disciplines que sont la psychologie et l'anthropologie (grâce à Kraepelin, Freud, Mead, Benedict, Linton et Kardiner, notamment). Une nouvelle discipline naquit alors, celle de la psychologie anthropologique, qui usa de sa scientificité pour développer un discours sur l'homme. Homme parfois ramené à une psychologie aux fondements évolutionnistes (au nègre, à l'homme de la horde), d'autre fois incompréhensible sans l'étude de sa culture (à une personnalité de base), mais, aussi compris comme totalité (l'homme total). Ainsi, grâce à l'École française de sociologie et d'anthropologie (Durkheim, Bastide, Devereux, Levi-Strauss et particulièrement Marcel Mauss), s'instaura une manière nouvelle d'appréhender l'homme, un autre regard à poser sur lui. Regard égalisant davantage les disciplines qui l'étudient. Regard désirant le saisir dans sa totalité, voulant voir l'homme concret socialement institué, la personne telle qu'elle est vécue par le groupe. Du travail maussien sur l'Homme en général sembla émerger une réflexion historico-anthropologique sur la personne, particulière selon la culture où elle se trouve. Ainsi, Marcel Mauss donna naissance à l'anthropologie de la personne, qui saura intéresser bon nombre de ses étudiants et collègues (Dumont, Griaule, Meyerson, Leenhardt), et qui marquera aussi de nombreuses recherches postcoloniales, telles que celles menées à l'hôpital Fann de Dakar. Lieu où, au sortir de la colonisation sénégalaise, les chercheurs (Collomb, Zempleni, Ortigues, Sow) s'inspirèrent de la discipline anthropologico-psychologique pour penser l'Homme africain, et particulièrement, son fou. Ils tentèrent de décoloniser la psychiatrie par la réintégration du savoir et des pratiques traditionnelles. Ils voulurent de plus créer une psychiatrie capable de saisir le personnage africain pour ce qu'il est dans son milieu, l'idéalité symbolique qu'il représente. Un personnage masqué grâce à une triple relation aux ancêtres, à la communauté et a soi-même. Personnage total à l'image de ses pratiques thérapeutiques traditionnelles, incorporant sa culture et incorporé par celle-ci.
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Savell, Kristin. "Ideal motherideal body." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=20545.
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This thesis argues that women's bodies are constituted by discourses about them. It explores the operations of power over women's bodies by analyzing the way in which the maternal body is constructed in the discourses of law, medicine and culture. Chapter One provides a theoretical context for this thesis. It examines the organization of knowledge and its relationship to power within the Western liberal tradition. Power is implicated in the production and dissemination of knowledge about the maternal body in two ways. First, scientific knowledge is privileged in legal and cultural discourses with the effect that knowledge claims based on experience are discredited. Second, scientific knowledge about the fetus, divined through the routine application of diagnostic technologies, has generated new opportunities for scrutinizing the maternal body. This information has been used to create expectations about which bodies are appropriate for reproductive purposes. These points are explored in Chapters Two and Three. Chapter Two is a study of cultural discourses about two women whose pregnancies were condemned on the basis that their bodies deviated from the ideal maternal body. In these stories, each woman was represented as a bad mother for pursuing her pregnancy against medical advice. Chapter Three is a study of the law's response to women who have failed to comply with medical advice deemed necessary for fetal well-being. It analyzes the strategies and implications of legally regulating pregnant women. Overall, this thesis poses a challenge to the way that the maternal body is represented by excavating the partial nature of the claims upon which these representations are based. Further, it argues for a re-conceptualization of the maternal body.
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Huxley, Angie Kay 1963. "The consequences of serum calcium homeostasis, reproductive life history and bone mineral content in postmenopausal women with implications to theories of aging." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289006.
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Type I and II osteoporosis will become an increasingly common problem in years to come, since the population structure is changing with the graying of America. This study identifies anthropometric and reproductive variables known to affect bone mineral in a mixed cross-sectional and longitudinal retrospective study. Data were collected from 3120 women and 1222 men throughout Arizona by single photon absorptiometry of the distal third of the radius by Lunar software for bone width, bone mineral content and bone mineral density and anthropometric, reproductive, nutritional and fracture histories. With age-stratified and age-adjusted statistical analyses, important relationships are found to exist between these variables. In females, the anthropometric variables--age, height and weight--are highly correlated with distal third radial width, bone mineral content and density. In males, weight is correlated with distal third radial width; age and weight with bone mineral content; and age, height and weight with bone mineral density. Reproductive variables--age, age at menarche and menopause and total reproductive span--are predictors for women who undergo surgical oophorectomy and hysterectomy, but not those who undergo natural menopause or either surgery. Variables related to pregnancy--age, height, weight, pregnancy duration and span--are predictors of distal third radial width. Only age, height and weight are predictors of bone mineral content. Age, height, weight, age at last pregnancy and one derived ratio are predictors of bone mineral density. When variables related to breastfeeding are incorporated, pregnancy duration and derived ratios are identified for predictors of distal third radial width. Only one ratio is related to bone mineral content, whereas pregnancy number, pregnancy and breastfeeding duration and derived ratios are useful predictors of bone mineral density. These findings suggest that pregnancy and breastfeeding leave lasting effects on bone mineral. While techniques exist to measure bone mineral in various locations, the distal third of the radius is more trabecular than some sites (e.g., the femoral head and vertebral centra). With such changes documented in the radius, more extreme effects are expected at more trabecular locations. Thus, a life's reproductive history is etched in bone.
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Lucas, William A. "Dynamics of Food Consumption in a Q'eqchi' Maya Community." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10604462.
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This thesis examines how a nutrition transition effects identity, locality, and economy in a Q’eqchi’ Maya aldea (hamlet) near Livingston, Guatemala, located along the Caribbean coast. The data collected explore community members’ attitudes and behaviors regarding food consumption, food sources, and health—both individual and familial. This thesis examines the structuralist categories community members created within a larger discussion of the effects of globalization and economic development on indigenous communities. Analysis explored how external processed food companies profit by hijacking internal cultural attributes. Findings indicate that, as community members have had consistent contact with external forces for at least 25 years, local notions of healthiness have accommodated processed foods into the diet. Based on these findings, this research enhances our understandings of how processed food companies have used marketing and branding to insert themselves into rural communities—what Thomas Leatherman calls “Coca Colonization.”
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Tracy, Janet. "Jack Epperson: A Modern Folk Healer." TopSCHOLAR®, 1991. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2921.
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This study in folk medicine focuses on a modern magico-religious folk healer named Jack Epperson, who utilizes the principles of bioenergetics or placing hands on an ill person's body and directing healing energy into blocked channels to heal, in the context of the small Alaskan community in which he lives and practices. The thesis is divided into seven chapters preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion.
To fit Jack Epperson into the full spectrum of folk medicine, it is necessary to comprehend fully the two categories of folk medicine: herbal or natural medicine, and magico-religious healing or shamanism. The first chapter defines these categories, places Epperson within the realm of magico-religious healing, and describes the community in which he lives. In the second chapter, a thorough description of Epperson's emergence as a healer and subsequent training with his mentor, a woman named Patricia Sun, is given. This chapter also contains extensive biographical information which relates his life experiences to his decision to become a healer.
As Epperson continued on his path into magico-religious healing, he took many physical and spiritual journeys venturing into the occult. Chapter Three describes these journeys and provides case studies on healing situations. Chapter Four continues with case studies in curing but limits these memorates to Epperson's experiences in Homer with his patients. Chapter Five establishes Epperson as a modern shaman within the traditional background of shamanism in other cultures. The next two chapters describe the role of the patient in folk medicine providing interviews with two of Epperson's patients as well as the researcher as patient. Motives for enlisting the aid of a magico-religious healer are examined in these two chapters as well. The concluding chapter focuses on the importance of Jack Epperson and modern folk healers like him in our society.
The prevailing question throughout the research and writing concerned the reason why such healers are reemerging in an increasingly technologically advanced society. With the strides the conventional medical establishment have made, it is important to understand why people are returning in increasing numbers to magico-religious healers. Healing is a profoundly cultural activity and research into folk healers provides information about human behavior and thought processes that occur when faced with traumatic illness or injury.
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Chavarria, Sara Patricia. "Anthropology and its role in teaching history: A model world history curriculum reform." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/284264.
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This study addresses the importance of committing to redesigning how world history is taught at the high school level. Presented is a model for curriculum reform that introduces an approach to teaching revolving around a thematic structure. The purpose of this redesigned thematic curriculum was to introduce an alternative approach to teaching that proceeded from a "critical perspective"--that is, one in which students did not so much learn discrete bits of knowledge but rather an orientation toward learning and thinking about history and its application to their lives. The means by which this was done was by teaching world history from an anthropological perspective. A perspective that made archaeological data more relevant in learning about the past. The study presents how such a model was created through its pilot application in a high school world history classroom. It is through the experimental application of the curriculum ideas in the high school classroom that I was able to determine the effectiveness of this curriculum by following how easily it could be used and how well students responded to it. Therefore, followed in the study was the evolution of the curriculum model's development as it was used in the pilot classroom. Thus, I was able to determine the extent of its success as a tool for teaching critically and for teaching from an anthropological perspective.
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Wilson, Victoria Arriola. "The Social Organization of the Hip Hop Graffiti Subculture." W&M ScholarWorks, 1995. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626015.
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Jucker, Jean-Luc. "Ambiguous artefacts : towards a cognitive anthropology of art." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0c90f23e-7f20-45b7-b9fd-f66dbdfaa3ab.
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This thesis proposes elements for a cognitive anthropology of visual art. Most works of art are human-made objects that cannot be approached in purely functional terms, and as such they frustrate important cognitive expectations that people have about artefacts. For this reason, it is hypothesised that art triggers speculation about the artist’s intention, and that it is intuitively approached as a form of communication. By application of Bloom’s (1996) theory of artefact categorisation, and Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) relevance theory of communication, a series of predictions are generated for art categorisation (or definition), art appreciation, and art cultural distribution. Two empirical studies involving more than 1,000 participants tested the most important of these predictions. In study 1, a relationship was found between how much a series of works of art were liked and how easy they were to understand. Study 2 comprised four experiments. In experiment 1, a series of hyperrealistic paintings were preferred when they were labelled as paintings than when they were labelled as photographs. In experiments 2a and 2b, a series of paintings were considered easier to understand and, under some conditions, were preferred, when they were accompanied by titles that made it easier to understand the artist’s intention. In experiment 3, a series of artefacts were more likely to be considered “art” when they were thought to have been created intentionally than when they were thought to have been created accidentally. The results of studies 1 and 2 confirmed the predictions tested, and are interpreted in the framework of relevance theory. The art experience involves speculation about the artist’s intention, and it is partly assessed as a form of communication that is constrained by relevance dynamics. Implications for anthropology of art, psychology of art, and the art world are discussed.
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Ahmadi, Zia. "Technology-enhanced project-based learning in a large undergraduate Anthropology lecture course." Diss., Kansas State University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/7516.
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Doctor of PhilosophyCurriculum and Instruction Programs
Rosemary S. Talab
The goal of this exploratory case study was to answer two questions: 1. How does an exemplary on-campus undergraduate large Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course encompass the PBL learning model characteristics, specifically focusing on the following: 1.1) Driving question, 1.2) Student construction of an artifact, 1.3) Teachers’ role, and 1.4) Assessment? 2. How is technology used by the professor, teacher assistants, and students to support project-based learning? To answer these questions, the researcher studied a large Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class, which consisted of the professor, ten teaching assistants (TAs), and 400 students. The students were divided into 20 recitation sections, with 20 students in each section. Each TA was assigned two recitation sections. Observations were conducted on twice-weekly Professor’s lectures and three once-weekly recitation sessions. Additionally, interviews and follow-up interviews were conducted of the professor, three teaching assistants (TA), and nine students. Finally, documents analyzed included the professor’s course materials and course management documents. With respect to Research Question 1, “How does an exemplary on-campus undergraduate large Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course encompass the PBL learning model characteristics, specifically focusing on the following: 1.1) Driving question, 1.2) Student construction of an artifact, 1.3) Teachers’ role, and 1.4) Assessment?”, research findings indicated that all four elements of the PBL model were present in this class and were executed well. Research Question 2, “How is technology used to support PBL,” findings indicated that advanced technologies were used by the professor for course purposes. These technologies included Wetpaint (the wiki course management system) and Facebook. More conventional technologies, such as e-mail, were also used for this purpose. Though students were hesitant to use course technology in the beginning. However, with the help of the professor and TA’s, the students learned to use the course technology and grew to enjoy it. Two additional themes emerged through open coding: Emotional Involvement and Non-Participation. First, the TA’s and students developed emotional ties to the cultures that they created in their recitation sections. Second, some students did not participate in either the lecture or the recitation sessions. The TAs took non-participation seriously, both in terms of class participation, individually, and in terms of student responsibilities to the group recitation session in culture construction.
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Taft, Ann. "At the Spiritual Grassroots: An Analysis of Visionary Art & Artists." TopSCHOLAR®, 1986. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2896.
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In this thesis I focus on an art form alternately described as "naive," "visionary," "environmental," "singular," "individual," or "grassroots." Not easily placed within established academic or popular art categories, such art usually lands by default in the folk art pile and is quickly cast to the peripheries of that genre. In this thesis, I am not concerned with inventing another label for these artists and their work. Instead, I explore the possibility that visionary art may be a separate genre, but one to which folklore analysis may usefully be brought to bear.
Chapter One is a historical and bibliographical analysis of visionary art. Beginning with an overview of the literature on the subject, I review the development of the definitional debate in the United States as well as in Europe and trace the gradual evolution of this art form into a loosely separate category.
Chapter Two consists of an analysis of visionary art. I construct a "behaviorist" model which draws not only upon the usual criteria of building styles or materials used but also examines such subjects as the artist's motivations, personal visions, life history and community role.
In Chapter Three I test this model using the work of Valenty Zaharek, an Arizona woodcarver and ceramicist. Zaharek's previously undocumented work, "Pecos West," is a three-dimensional carved depiction of Western scenes. It is aesthetically magnificent and falls along the borders of a variety of art forms --folk, visionary, popular.
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Boyd, Varna G. "A Reflection to Life: A Social and Economic Study of Cedar Grove Cemetery, Williamsburg, Va." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625440.
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Hunt, B. Joby. "Place-based consciousness and social transformation| Perspectives from Flagstaff, Arizona's STEM City." Thesis, Northern Arizona University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1594170.
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Since WWII, the United States has experienced unprecedented economic growth and global expansion through the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Today, STEM technological innovations permeate many aspects of the social experience, from education to career to home-life, contributing to a pervasive technocratic ideology emphasizing global U.S. economic and political superiority. Many sectors of American society now tout STEM initiatives as a premium for U.S. education, contributing to the neoliberal model of producing effective, efficient, and skilled laborers. But, does STEM necessarily contribute to those social forces that routinely devalue the principles of a liberal, democratic educational ideal?
In 2014, I investigated new forms of collaboration between the commercial sector and education system in Flagstaff, AZ. The STEM City Center is a non-profit organization that seeks to bridge the gap between community and schools by identifying local assets and sponsoring integrated STEM experiences for students. Using STEM as a conceptual tool to support interdisciplinary approaches to education, participants of this project revealed the core values that motivate social transformation in a town that borders multiple ethnic and cultural realities recognized as under assault by increasingly globalized markets. STEM City's model emphasizes increased critical thinking, collaborative learning, creativity, and effective communication and supports an implicit goal of encouraging a critically engaged, politically aware, and socially conscious society.
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Kleinberg, Krista F. "Facial anthropometry as an evidential tool in forensic image comparison." Thesis, Thesis restricted. Connect to e-thesis to view abstract, 2008. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/245/.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2008.Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Medicine, Division of Cancer Sciences and Molecular Pathology, Forensic Medicine and Science, University of Glasgow, 2008. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.
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Janssen, Catherine Jo. "An Ethnographic Study of The Moth Detroit StorySLAM." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1461.
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The Moth Detroit StorySLAM is one of many storytelling events staged in urban bar environments. Unlike the increasingly aged audiences attending the National Storytelling Festival and similar story festivals, the Detroit StorySLAM consistently yields at capacity crowds of college students and young professionals.
Participants were informally interviewed during the September, October, and November slams of 2010 and the January 2011 slam. In addition to conducting these interviews, the researcher was a participant observer—throwing her name into the hat and being twice called to the stage. Data are presented as a thick description organized according to Richard Bauman's 6 situational factors of the performance event.
Until now questions about the nature and meaning of storytelling have been largely considered from the storyteller's perspective. By redirecting those questions to the listeners, this study reveals the ethos of hundreds of story enthusiasts—an undisputed admiration for the revelation of authentic, individual truths.
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Wandu, Jotham G. "An integrated conceptual model of crises intervention for Gikuyu people utilizing traditional family social support systems, Christian resource systems and crisis theories (Kenya)." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 1995. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/AAIDP14688.
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The purpose of the dissertation is to construct an integrated conceptual model of crises intervention for Gikuyu people that would effectively inform the conceptualization of the nature, the methods employed and the purpose of utilizing traditional Gikuyu families and Christian resources for crises intervention. It will also inform the values for integration and the usefulness of systems and the crisis theories for the construction of the model for the Gikuyu. Moreover, the dissertation will report the significance of Christian pastoral resources and the relation to Gikuyu.
The model is a strategy in the attempt to revive some of the distorted Gikuyu people's values of family unity (belongingness), which was their norm for intervening into family crises. Family values of unity for the Gikuyu suffered distortion over the years of the Christian missionary work to the Gikuyu in the nineteenth century. The model is limited for use in the Presbyterian Church in Kenya. However, other churches serving Gikuyu people are welcome to use it.
The study is intended to be a foundation for the development of authentic literature, focusing upon new approaches toward crises intervention for Gikuyu, intended to mobilize families systems, Christian resources, and other networking systems for better work of crisis intervention.
From the systems and the crisis perspectives, the study examines the usefulness of systems and the crisis theories for their relevancy in developing a model of crises intervention for Gikuyu families. It examines the viability of correlation between traditional Gikuyu families resources and the Christian resources, examining how each one is related to the other.
The term 'crisis intervention' refers to the usefulness and the effect of the work of correlating resources from the two perspectives. Correlation is the criteria for determining the interdependence of the two sources of intervention. The term 'model' refers to the proposed methods of approaches utilized in reviving values of families interdependency, unity, and belongingness. The term 'differentiation of self' informs the need for family members and significant others to work together for better working crisis, while each maintains individual unique abilities of differentiating intellectual decision-making from those of families emotional fusion.
The dissertation uses two methods. The first method is founded on the concepts of families systems and the crisis theories for the construction of an effective model of crisis intervention for the Gikuyu and informing the reasons for its use.
Second is the method of correlation which is a theological application to the action of mobilizing and utilizing the traditional Gikuyu resources together with Christian Gikuyu resources. In this second method Christ becomes the common norm of correlation for the purpose of liberation and the giving of hope to the individual and families in crisis. Moreover, through the theological method the integration of the model is accomplished.
Before examining the usefulness of systems and crisis theories for analyzing data from the case study of illness, the history of the Gikuyu is examined. The purpose of the history is to inform the guidelines to which this model of crisis intervention should respond. For clarification purposes, these guidelines are the origin of the Gikuyu people, the nature of their corporate living; and the kinship governing principles. As part of the historical motivation of this dissertation, the role which was played by the social protest of the Gikuyu against Europeans and the missionaries is also examined. The protest was a symbol of dissatisfaction of the Gikuyu upon the mistreatment and the abuse of family values.
The dissertation has several illustrations of crises intervention based on various concepts of family therapy which include: Uri Rueveni in networking families in crises, Murry Bowen's eight interlocking ideas of family therapy, Edward Wimberly's theory of pastoral care of the Black Church, and also the work of Nancy Boyd-Franklin in multisystems approach to family therapy.
In concluding this study, it has been found that Gikuyu family and relational systems can be mobilized to resolve crises within the systems. It has also been discovered that the implication for further research is viable through the analyzing and the questioning of the claims in the data provided in this dissertation.
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Perez, David M. "Native Subordination Through The Franciscan Institutions During The Sixteenth Century." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2015. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/189.
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My thesis, building on over two centuries of scholarly research on colonialism and evangelism in Mexico, seeks to heighten the visibility of the Franciscan order in New Spain. I intend to clearly establish how the Virgin de Guadalupe’s influence on native conversions was mediated through, and controlled by, the Franciscan institutional systems between 1523 and 1572.
Many scholars have argued that the most influential factor in converting the Nahua populations was the apparition of the Virgin de Guadalupe, in 1533. These scholars have argued that at the time of her appearance the conversion of the country had been incomplete, but following her appearance Guadalupinist Catholicism spread rapidly in Central Mexico and became the “focal value of Aztec culture” (Madsen 1967, 378), resulting in some nine million baptisms by 1537.
Although the Virgin de Guadalupe proved to be a substantial contributing factor for conversion in New Spain, I will argue that these scholars have given disproportionate emphasis to the Virgin, in the process neglecting the institutional systems implemented by the Franciscans between the years of 1523 and 1572.
This thesis will discuss the desire of the Franciscan administration to establish a moral order, defined by leading scholar of Globalization Christopher Chase-Dunn as, people’s agreements about definitions of right and wrong, obligations, and legitimate conflicts (Chase-Dunn 2014, 176). Using Michel Foucault’s theories about power and the subjected I will expand on this definition and argue that the moral order helped define the relationship and the roles of the Franciscans and the Natives; the Franciscans becoming the administrators of a new society that they largely defined and managed, while using the institutions they developed as tools of social regulation and control to produce docile native subjects, deprived of a unique cultural heritage.