This thesis explores the legacy of the Herero-Nama genocide that occurred in 1904 to 1908 by examining the descendant’s narrative in contrast to the preeminent state narrative. I investigate both these narratives from the emic perspective of the Herero people in Namibia, who today are a minority group. By following the narrative, I discover the fundamental emplotments and multidimensionality in the genocide narrative imperative which are tribal democracy, nationhood and ancestral land. My informants imply that the genocide is a neglected and buried memory in contemporary Namibia, and I apply theoretical concepts such as Werbner’s immediate memory and anti-memory, but also Trouillot’s notion of silencing to understand in what way the state narrative is being amplified by the ruling government, subsequently silencing the genocide. At the same time, I also want to see how the genocide narrative is being maintained in a milieu of silencing forces. The genocide is still a sensitive topic among the descendants who feel that the dignity of their ancestors has been tarnished throughout the 20th century. In Herero religion ancestor spirits hold an utterly pivotal role as mediators between the living and god.

Tourism has various effects on society. Not only economic but also immaterial effects on destinations as well as on tourists themselves. Especially regarding tourism between the Global North and South, it is arguable if tourism is a social force influencing societies in a positive way or if it rather reinforces stereotypes and colonial structures. Postcolonial approaches help to narrow down this topic and to complement classical tourism studies. This paper focuses on the situation of German tourists in a former German colony: Namibia. It examines how the tourists perceive themselves within the system of tourism in a postcolonial context, how they perceive the Other and colonial heritage during their trips. Interviews were conducted with eight German tourists who had travelled to Namibia during the last years on their experiences and thoughts to complement existing studies and broaden the picture. The interviews show that stereotypes and notions of white superiority still exist within tourism whilst the sensitivity for history, colonial times and postcolonial structures is rather weak amongst German tourists. At the same time, the tourists wish for more equality and encounters at eye level. It is reinforced that tourism scholarship as well as the tourism industry itself should have postcolonial issues in mind, as well as the non-economic effects of tourism which are in dire need to be considered stronger. The tourists showed that they are ready for a closer engagement with history if colonial heritage is presented and interpreted more intensively. If this interpretation is elaborated in communicative processes respecting all stakeholders, especially the local populations, tourism can not only impact economic development, it can also be a strong social force which ultimately would create a better understanding and experience for both stakeholders, the tourists, and locals respectively.

This thesis is a netnographic study of Save Bugoma Forest Campaign and digitally enhanced environmental activism in Uganda. Save Bugoma Forest Campaign is a crusade run by a loose coalition of Ugandan environmentalists who oppose a planned sugarcane plantation project in Bugoma Central Forest Reserve, western Uganda. By examining who the activists envisage as their audiences, what online platforms they use and how, what messages they intend to send, and how the forest is represented in online narratives, I attempt to find out how Ugandan environmental activists use digital technologies as part of their campaigning strategies, and what the digital narratives created in these practices can reveal about their relation to nature. The study is built as a netnography, a research method developed by Robert E. Kozinets, which combines online participant observations, online interactions, and semi-structured online interviews. I highlight how digital platforms, social media in particular, should be understood as a tool for campaign activities or as an infrastructure within which the struggle takes place. I also show how nature receives multiple and dynamic meanings in digital narratives which are affected by the audience of choice. The findings indicate that, in addition to better understanding movements’ online practises, netnographic research methods can also give valuable insights into understanding culturally and socially bound phenomena and lend to a deep and rich reporting of the results.

This paper examines the relationship between the sensory experience of food and cooking, how these sensory phenomena interact with questions of authenticity and memory and how this affects the process through which migrants rebuild a sense of home in theirhost nations. The data for this study has been collected through a version of short-term ethnography, where the researcher also participated in cooking sessions, which were video-recorded, in conjunction with the interviews. The findings of this study are that the sensory qualities of food are important markers of the authenticity of the food, and that this sensory authenticity has a strong ability to invoke both memories and feelings of connectedness. The conclusion drawn is that food and cooking undergotransmutational change when affected by migration, turning them from important but everyday phenomena into a series of ritual actions. The effect of these rituals is to temporarily suspend the liminal state inherent to migration and they are thus very important to the ability of migrants to be able to recreate a stable sense of home in a new place.

This thesis examines the conditions for professional and aspiring professional male theatre dancers across two separate field sites in Stockholm, Sweden. By analysing these conditions I aim to discuss how hegemonic masculine social norms inform and affect the lives of these male dancers and the consequences of those norms for the wider male population. Through interview, unobtrusive observation and dance participation I will scrutinise the male experience of dance work and training in order to understand the lives of professional male dancers and their perception of themselves and their work, as part of a very small minority of men in Swedish society. Through a comparative analysis of dance and sport, I suggest that the stark gender imbalance in dance work and training is indicative of a larger pattern of hegemonic masculine social norms that stymie male social development and undermine wider societal efforts towards gender equality.

This thesis explores the lives of Maasai women today in general, and in particular as seen through the lens of one woman, and her social network in Kajiado County, southern Kenya. By using a storytelling approach, I let the women’s own vivid stories, thoughts and priorities stay in focus. While the women’s stories reveal personal details in their lives, I argue that their stories also broaden the perspective of what it is to be a Maasai woman today. Inspired by a framework of multispecies relations, especially the concept of relatedness, I look at the relationships – to both humans and non-humans – which shapes the women's lives, possibilities, decisions, and concerns. As I explore the women's more-than-human worlds, the agency of cows, goats, sheep, and even flies are acknowledged. In combination with inspiration from the framework of feminist political ecology – especially the concepts of resource access and displacement – I bridge understandings about how multispecies relations affect the women, with reflections on education and working situations, and matters of land. With this thesis, I wish to contribute to and broaden the literature and often stereotyped image of what it is to be a Maasai, especially a Maasai woman.

The concern that democracy in the largest country in Latin America could drive toward fascism has surfaced as a point of departure for the creation of forms of resistance among Brazilians in the diaspora. This thesis addresses this development by bringing to light the narratives of FIBRA, a transnational social movement created in 2016 to denounce the coup in Brazil. By combining militant, translocal and online ethnography, this thesis explores how FIBRA has constructed its narratives surrounding the erosion of democracy in Brazil. It looks at the experience of Brazilian migrants involved in campaigning against the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the assassination of the activist Marielle Franco, and the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. Anthropological theories on social movement, democracy and narrative are revisited in order to investigate FIBRA’s role in shaping ideas and expectations towards democracy. This thesis also explores ways to bring the artistic practices in the field into the anthropological text. I use elements of Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theater, Greek Tragedy and Carnival in my writing and employ these artistic languages as conceptual tools to develop a notion of democracy as a tragic carnivalesque hero. In the spirit of the Brazilian carnivalesque, this thesis celebrates the subversive dimension of the relation between the “playful”, the “political”, and the “academic”.

Despite recurrent academic interest in the study of race in both South Africa and in Brazil, little work has been done in Anthropology about the two countries of the Global South in relation to each other. This thesis is situated in that gap and presents an ethnographic study about the racialised experiences of Brazilian migrants in South Africa, in order to explore the different processes of racialization that occur in South Africa and Brazil. The first part of the investigation focuses on the conflictual encounter between informants’ internalized racial habitus as learned in Brazil with the one they encounter in South Africa. The second part examines the impact that such racialization has on the racial identity of Brazilian individuals. Informants found themselves in situations of racial ambiguity in which they did not fit perfectly in any of the local racial categories, and were classified by South Africans in different (and sometimes multiple) racial categories from their previous one in Brazil. I use the theoretical lens of intersectionality to explore informants’ reflections on 'what they are’ as they socially adapted to South African racial categorisations and habitus.

In the globalized world, border regimes are ambiguous, withdrawn or reinforced based on who approaches them, where and how. Borders are equally the boundaries that permeate spaces of nation-states and cut across them through racialized, gendered, and classed divisions. Following the so called "migration crisis" in Europe of 2015, there has been a wave of research documenting how practices of bordering and othering dehumanize asylum seekers, violating their rights. In this thesis, I proceed from similar observations to see how such practices, together with experiences resulting from them, affect the possibilities of agency and imagination of a common space on behalf of people with migratory background. Employing the idea of hybridity, I maintain that while the responsibility for atrocities related to migration and bordering should always remain on violators, whether official institutions or individuals, their persistence should not be seen as foreclosing agency, imagination, or practices of building a future common space on behalf of people with migratory background. The hybrid position that these people occupy does not necessarily only sustain their disempowerment, but it also equips them with unique possibilities for agency. Neither seems there to be any predefined path from exposure to harsh violations of one's rights to disempowerment. The possibilities for common and welcoming places to which everyone has a right appear through an engaged and equal attention to migrants' own agency, imagination, and capabilities, rather than through an exclusive attention to their vulnerability or a neoliberal celebration of multiculturalism.

This thesis explores different ways of relating to forests, and thus also different types of forestry. Starting with the Swedish forest industry one which is characterized by the planting of forests at the expense of natural regeneration, thus making Sweden the fifth country in the world in terms of planted area the study then examines different forests. This study is conducted with qualitative methods and by “following the seed” looks at various actors’ interests and potential flaws in the venture of planting forests. Different possibilities of doing forestry are explored in the thesis through letting modern forestry meet local forest-owners as well as a seed-collecting practice in central Sweden.  These processes are explored by understanding the forest as an assemblage of historical decisions, species and human interests, tracing relations and powers within and beyond forestsfrom a more-than-human perspective. Forestry emerges as an attempt at domestication of the forest and the thesis explores how it goes wild, as well as the meeting of modern industrialism and science with other world views, values and practices. This allows for an alternative understanding of forests, forestry beyond industrialism and modernity, and what sort of futures we might have living together with forests.