Studies of aging have often involved only those considered to be old. In this study, individual volunteers and groups from a midwestern, urban environment, representing a wide range of chronological ages, participated in storytelling circles organized around a theme of aging. Their narratives suggest that the polysemic term Aging is often understood in terms of a concept of chronological Age as this relates to life experience. People understand themselves as different from one another through interpretations of their own experiences that are referenced in terms of chronological age. This perspective appears to be shared by persons of all ages suggesting that reminiscence, often characterized as distinct to old age, is an aspect of age throughout life. This analysis is historically situated in ideologies of progress within the United States and utilizes a dialogical orientation to storytelling and social memory. Aspects of individual and collective performance are discussed.

The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis featured an anthropology exhibit consisting of living American Indians in order to display both stages in "civilization" and the benefits of federal Indian boarding school education for Indian children. Although fair organizers considered these the goals of the exhibit, the American Indians created their own experience at the fair. While the living conditions and the treatment of the native people were often deplorable, the American Indians found in many instances adventure and economic gain through selling their crafts to tourists. Analyzing the local and national media coverage of the exhibit provides an understanding of the racial and cultural ideologies disseminated throughout the country. This thesis combines a reconstruction of the American Indian experience with an analysis of the media coverage in order to understand more clearly the daily life and importance of the exhibit for all involved.

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the beliefs, behaviors and expectations of immigrant Middle Eastern Muslim women during childbirth in Western health care systems. Ethnographic methods of personal narratives, semi-structured interviews, and field notes were used with a purposeful sample of seven informants. The informants represented diverse ethnic backgrounds from the countries of Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Palestine-Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. The multiparous women were students or wives of students from a southwestern university. Five informants compared their Western birth experiences with births in their home country. Religious and cultural beliefs influenced the numerous behaviors and expectations identified during phases of childbirth: early labor, active labor, delivery, and post-delivery. The informants shared reasons for not attending childbirth classes, methods to increase labor, preferences for labor without intervention, rituals at birth, specific expectations of the nurses, and others. Recommendations for culturally and religiously congruent nursing care were offered.

This thesis characterizes feminist anthropology's past, present and future. The early years of feminist anthropology were committed to explication of the relationship between gender and power. Currently feminists are engaging in new post-modern ideas. Post-modern concerns with epistemology and knowledge/truth production resound with feminist observations, but post-modern concepts of power, resistance and deconstruction present problems for feminists. For post-modern anthropologists, traditional ethnography has been replaced by experimental texts. Feminist anthropologists created the textual innovation of "voices." Feminist anthropological texts are now focusing on how women handle the complex and diverse power structures that oppress them, incorporating a focus on media and discourse. Recent feminist anthropology combines textual experimentation with a focus on resistance at its various levels. Future feminist anthropologists will return to the discussion of gender and power begun in the 70s retaining the post-modern textual experimentation and interest in resistance and power.

This thesis examines San Miguel as a cultural symbol in the Mayan community of San Miguel Acatan, Guatemala from 1940 to 1960. During the decades examined the community underwent a series of political, economic, social, and religious changes. This thesis focuses on the religious transformations. American Maryknoll priests were assigned in 1946 as the town's first full-time priests. They sought to 'convert the pagan Catholics' by introducing a universal form of Catholicism. Resistance to the efforts of the priests culminated in 1959, when San Miguel fled the town center to the nearby village of Chimban where a chapel was built for San Miguel and a market established. The traditional religious hierarchy moved to Chimban shortly afterwards. Within a year people from the town center kidnapped and burned Chimban's image of San Miguel. The thesis draws primarily on archival and oral history sources.

<p> This thesis examines the lifestyle of the people who lived in Kaup&omacr; between 1930- 1950. A number of those who lived in Kaup&omacr; during that time were interviewed and their stories have been compiled under various topics relating to their life, the nature of the land, the community, religion, food getting, and life at home. This thesis examines their traditional Hawaiian knowledge, behavior and spirituality. Place names were also researched in order to verify names documented previously and to document additional names.</p>

<p> This dissertation contributes to debates on processes of state formation and their relationship to indigenous policies and politics in Argentina. It analyzes and compares two major political economic configurations of the state: the neoliberal from 1989 to 2001, and the so-called "post-neoliberal" from the 2001 national crisis to the present. The study analyzes anthropologically how these two state models shaped strategies concerning the indigenous population that reflected specific political and economic orientations and interests; and conversely, the ways in which indigenous peoples have experienced continuities and variations between the two periods, as well as the changing indigenous' strategies resulting from these political fluctuations. While much has been written on the nature of the post-neoliberal state in indigenous regions for the Bolivian case and Ecuador, the Argentine experience has been largely overlooked, due perhaps to the strong state-led homogenizing tradition which has obscured the country's multiethnic character. If we assume that we are indeed witnessing a change of epoch in some Latin American nations, and that there is an evident process of recovery of state functions, the novelty and contribution of this dissertation will be to explore not only the nature of those claims but also to expand on de Sousa Santos' proposal: Which kind of state is back? (de Sousa Santos 2010). Which are the characteristics of this novel state model? To what extent it is it actually (and entirely) "new" or if it is taking/using elements, strategies and procedures of the prior neoliberal phase. And if so, which elements of neoliberalism still persist in this new political era and which ones are different from that period. Finally, this dissertation contributes to the bottom-up perspective, while analyzing the state considering societal mediators, societal actors that interface with the state. This inclusion allows us to observe in a very detailed manner the ways in which these actors shape and negotiate hegemony and state from below, while also being part of the state structure.</p>

<p> This dissertation is an ethnography of human-soil relations that examines the cultural, scientific, political-economic, and ethical stakes of alternative agricultural practices and life processes that resist military-led, growth-oriented development. Moving across laboratories, greenhouses, forests and farms, it weaves together a symmetrical analysis of two kinds of local-practitioners&mdash;soil scientists in the capital city of Bogot&aacute; and small farmers in the southwestern frontier department of Putumayo&mdash;to track how soils emerge with political importance in the construction of what I call agro-life proposals for peace in the Colombian Amazon. Theoretically, it interrogates concepts of "sustainability" emerging among scientists and farmers, suggesting they imply a complex reframing of liberal notions of property, health, wellbeing, labor and autonomy. These observations reimagine the interface between political economy and ecology and science and technology studies that can account for new ecological notions of territoriality linked to practices of economic 'degrowth', and the alternative agricultural life-worlds I encountered in southwestern Colombia.</p>

<p> Exploring a "call" to a place, this work uses the Alchemical Hermeneutic method developed by Robert Romanyshyn, along with elements of Rosemary Anderson's Intuitive Inquiry and Craig Chalquist's Terrapsychology to reflect on the "soul" of a part of Monterey, California, on a hill known to the Rumsen Ohlone people as "Hunukul." With a view of the Monterey Bay, which conceals a mile-deep canyon and provides the environment for the upwelling of a teeming marine life, a portal is found through which to enter the depths of Psyche, both historically and existentially. </p><p> Many groups have met in this place, from the time that the first buildings were erected by a group of Theosophists from Pasadena in 1918 to the current occupation by Saint James Episcopal Church. Young people with disabilities, addicts and alcoholics, people with psychiatric diagnoses seeking expression through art, Zen meditators, Korean evangelicals, and the Monterey Bay Friends of C. G. Jung have all found refuge in the place, and a way to dwell together. </p><p> Archetypal commonalities among these groups are herein explored, including the wounded image of <i>Christos Dionysos</i> (contrasted with the heroic image of <i>Christos Mithras</i>), strong manifestations of women's leadership and power, and an ongoing presence of the shadow of war. </p><p> Rather than postulate a quasi-material soul of this place, the relationship of human psyche and the psychic dimensions of place are seen as part of an ongoing process, the boundaries of which pulse in space and time through the life expressed in this place. Place may not "have" a soul. From one perspective, place may "be" soul.</p>

<p> This thesis explores the intersection of nationalism, popular music, and sport as they collided with German identity politics and discourses of twentieth-century history. I contextualize public performances of German national identity during the 2006 World Cup within the broader historical context of national identity construction through music and sport in the last two hundred. I contextualize Germans' public performance of national pride and hospitality during the World Cup as the latest in a long line of cultural performances of German identity that have shaped and been shaped by historical circumstances and socially conditioned discourses of national identity. Taking a broad historical and conceptual perspective on cultural performance, I argue that cultural performances of German national identity&mdash;communicated in music, sport, and visual symbolism in the public landscape (i.e., through the use of posters, ads, popular press, etc)&mdash;have been tailored to and contingent on the social and discursive exigencies of particular historical and political junctures of the past two hundred years. Likewise, cultural performances during the 2006 World Cup must be seen as particular to twenty-first-century German society. Analyzing the Germans' public performance of national identity as well as popular songs and their audio-visual texts (i.e., music videos), I argue that some supposedly nationalist performances of German identity gained traction and popular support during the World Cup because of the strong role played by popular music and sport in framing the terms of their performance and interpretation.</p>