The thesis explores aspects of contemporary Greek culture as it emerges from the study of production, distribution and consumption of dairy products. Contrary to views of commoditisation as cultural homogenisation, this research is based on the premise that commodity chains constitute a central mechanism for the negotiation of cultural meaning and the construction of social relations in contemporary societies. As part of material culture studies, the research draws on insights provided by a variety of disciplines, such as social anthropology, human geography, cultural studies and marketing. In its totality, the thesis allows for a study of the transition to a highly marketised economy, considering simultaneously multiple levels of meaning formation and identity construction related to food. With particular focus on representations of time and space, the traditional and the modern, a variety of sites are explored, where cultural meaning is produced and negotiated: the marketing department of dairy companies, advertising agencies, small food stores, supermarkets and consumer households, while special reference is made to a rural-urban network of food provisioning established as a result of extensive internal migration. Fieldwork within those contexts is complemented with a consideration of global processes, such as the EU regulation on geographical indications and scientific claims about the Mediterranean model of diet. Dairy products are approached as the link between the various contexts of meaning that emerge through their circulation in society, and as mediators in the construction of social relations.

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Empathy is the ability to understand another person's subjective condition, including emotions. Depending on culture, emotions are expressed differently, hence there might occur difficulties for one person to understand emotions in another if they belong to different cultures. This study explores how depression is described in western psychiatry, compared to alternative cultural forms of similar conditions. Building on how the understanding of the client's emotions is shaped in the psychiatric meeting, the limit of empathy is discussed as well as what might influence the understanding of another person's emotions. Two limits of empathy are revealed, both depending on differences in the individuals relation to the surrounding world. The first limit is found in differences between emotions, the second limit is related to differences in experience due to when they are based in either emotional or cognitive conceptions. The conclusion of this study is that the scientific thinking and the cognitively based understanding of emotions changes the comprehension of them – from being interpreted as a way to relate to the world to being interpreted more as characteristics within the individual. Consequently, the possibility to empathetically understand the other's emotions diminishes.

This thesis focuses on the significance and articulation of divinatory practices in Cuba a place where a number of different religious traditions (mainly of African and European origins) have come to coexist. Reflecting on the particularities of my ethnography, I concentrate on three such traditions: Ocha/Ifá, Palo Monte and Espiritismo. However, rather than engaging with them as different ‘traditions’ or assuming their syncretic character, I attempt to explore the way in which they constitute distinct but related perspectives on human destiny or, as my friends and informants put it, on people’s ‘path’ (camino) perspectives, that is, which continuously constitute and recalibrate each other. Echoing the work of authors such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, I try to illustrate the nature of these perspectives by bringing to the fore the ways in which different divinatory practices instantiate and embody the efficacy or ‘point of view’ of different ‘other-than-human’ beings be they deities or the dead. Thus, while in the case of Ocha/Ifá and its oracles, I concentrate on the relation between ‘humans’ and the orichas (deities), my discussion of divinatory practices within Palo Monte and Espiritismo places the emphasis on the relation between ‘humans’ and various kinds of the dead (muertos). Treating these relations as an exchange of perspectives between ‘humans’ and ‘other-than-human’ entities, I argue for the need to focus on ‘ontology’ and the indigenous understanding of these entities’ ‘nature’ in order to avoid both ‘reductionist’ and ‘constructivist’ renderings of divination; in other words, to avoid the theoretical limits of ‘syncretic’ or ‘purist’ readings of the (Afro-)Cuban spirit world and its efficacy. This emphasis on ‘ontology’ leads me to construe divination as ‘perspectivism’ and to treat it as both a theoretical strategy and an ethnographic challenge.

Fikan är en central del i svensk kultur och en inkörsport i svensk gemenskap varför det är bland de första orden en nyanländ får lära sig. Men det är inte alltid helt klart vad konceptet innebär. Huvudsyftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur fyra svenska medelålders personer (en man och tre kvinnor) uppfattar och förhåller sig till sitt eget fika. För att kunna uppfylla syftet har jag genomfört individuella semistrukturerade intervjuer. Den primära slutsatsen är att fikan kan anta många former, men förknippas vanligtvis med kaffe, en sötsak och sällskap – gärna i gammaldags miljö.

Jag skall i denna uppsats relationen mellan myndigheter och transpersoners kroppar, och se på statens påverkan på enskilda individers transitioner. I Sverige krävs det könskodade performanser från individen för att staten ska erkänna individen som ett annat kön. Hur individer hanterar myndigheter och statens influens över deras liv, och vilka tekniker de har för att interagera med sin egen könsutredning kommer att undersökas. Hur enskilda personer inom transvården iscensätter, och bibehåller normer kommer även att beröras. På vilket sätt enskilda transpersoner skapar handlingssätt

Bibliography: pages 254-266. / Workers domiciled in Qwaqwa, South Africa's smallest 'homeland', experience high rates of unemployment and job instability. Yet most terminations of employment are employee-instigated. This dissertation examines the reasons for employment instability among wage workers resident in a housing section in Phuthaditjhaba, the 'homeland's' only urban area. The approach adopted in the dissertation is primarily ethnographic. It describes the everyday experiences of African workers and treats their own perspectives of their working lives as central. Quantitative and qualitative data, collected from two samples drawn from the population in the housing area selected for study, are presented. It is argued that employment instability must be understood as a consequence of a web of interrelated circumstances and cannot be explained in terms of any one single causal factor. The following employment and employment-related circumstances are examined: workers' views of, and reactions to, wages and working conditions; problems with transport between places of work and home, and with workplace accommodation; conflicts of interest arising from domestic pressures undermining workers' ability to remain in a job; and the experience of joblessness. These various factors are then drawn together to show that workers do not perceive these factors in isolation from one another, but that they experience the oppressive conditions of their domestic and working lives as a totality. Any attempts to find ways to increase workers' job stability will have to look both within and beyond the workplace.

Migrationsverket’s National Service Centre in Sundbyberg is a borderscape displaced from the outer contours of the nation. This borderscape of the interior, perform bordering and difference-making functions in its deciding of who gets to become a citizen, who is to be considered a legitimate refugee and in a sense who you are. Asylum-seekers visiting the Service Centre attempt to make sense of the maze-like bureaucratic organisation they find themselves caught up in. This thesis engages with the materialization and realization of the border, narratives about emotions in the asylum process, and the sensebreaking qualities of the bureaucratic organization of Migrationsverket as a Kafkaesque institution through participatory, narrative and engaged ethnographic methodologies.

Bibliography: pages 177-190. / This ethnographic study of Nieu Bethesda, a village in the Eastern Cape district of South Africa, is the product of a total of five months of fieldwork. The research was conducted between 1993 and 1995, a period that spanned the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994. The ethnography explores the effects of apartheid on life in Nieu Bethesda. It traces the dynamic interactions between social life and worldviews as these were manifested in the village. Geographically isolated, and to a large extent cut off from mainstream politics, the processes and effects of apartheid in this village have taken an idiosyncratic form. The research suggests that racial stratification has been remarkably resilient throughout the history of the village. Such stratification must be understood in terms of ideas shaped both during and before the apartheid era, rather than solely in terms of state action or the violence of apartheid. Ideologies of segregation have found their expression in paternalistic practices on the part of Whites, and the relations of dependence thus generated may account for the apparent lack .of overt opposition to apartheid. However, the thesis acknowledges the multiplicity of voices in the village, and negates the notion of a shared set of ideas and values sanctioned by the population of Nieu Bethesda. Subtle change has taken place in the 1990s, only some of which is attributable to the demise of apartheid. In addition, factors such as the provision of electricity and a dramatic increase in tourism have reduced the isolation of the village, and networks of mutual support link the people of Nieu Bethesda with other parts of South Africa. It is suggested that change in the foreseeable future is more likely to originate from the increased communication that such networks make possible, than from changes in legislation, or improvements in material conditions, resulting from development projects.

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