This dissertation investigates the roles of color, class, and gender discourses in the lives of adolescent and post-adolescent girls in Brazil. Specifically, it examines girls' multiple perspectives, embedded in diverse social locations, and the ways in which girls interpret and deploy participular elements of color and class discourses in their projects of self-making. The results of the study provide insight into the diverse ways in which identity discourses may be experienced and a range of perspectives to contribute to qualitative analyses of color identity and relations in contemporary Brazil. Disaggregating the data according to the participants' color and class reveals distinct views on color classification, perceptions of racism, and the role of color in partner preferences. Whereas the lighter/wealthier girls (re)produce discourses of systematic racism, the darker/poorer girls (re)produced discourses of color equality and individualism. A holistic approach to their ideological systems reveals that each group selects discursive elements that grant dignity, self-worth, and personal integrity to their particular social location. The manner in which girls interpret and deploy color images is also variable. For example, the lighter/wealthier girls tended to dismiss the national image of the sexy mulata (female of both African and European heritage) as a product for export, whereas darker/poorer girls appropriated the mulata as a positive model of attractiveness and self-worth in their daily constructions of self. Furthermore, this research discusses how partner expectations and career aspirations are mutually constructive and lead to an ideal life trajectory culminating in financial independence. Although the ideal shared by all young girls, their ability to pursue the trajectory varies, patterned by color and class. The fact that poorer and darker girls cling to high professional goals in an unsupportive environment, bolstered by the ideology of individual willpower, is interpreted as a specifically adolescent discourse of hope. In summary, this dissertation illustrates multiple ways in which discourses of identity may be experienced, interpreted, and deployed in daily life and self-making. Investigating how color discourses are invoked by these adolescent girls representing particular social locations contributes to a more complex, heterogeneous understanding of color identities and relations in contemporary Brazil.

Modern botanical folk classification theory developed from studies of small-scale agriculturists, secondarily of hunter-gatherers. This work explores the little-studied pastoral subsistence mode through an examination of plant classification and plant uses among nomadic, Najdi Arabic-speaking, camel-herding tribes of eastern Saudi Arabia based on data collected 1960-1975, before oil-related economic developments had significantly impacted rural life. Bedouins' use of wild plants is primarily for livestock grazing, secondarily for firewood, although 38 species are recognized as edibles, 30 as medicinals and 25 for other uses. The role of wild food plants for famine relief is ecologically limited. Bedouin folk classification generally fits Berlin's 1992 model but with some anomalous features. The basic life form split is between annuals and perennials rather than woody and herbaceous, reflecting highly perceptible plant adaptations in a hyper-arid habitat. This leads to two levels of life forms. Labeled intermediates include an important group based on camel nutritional needs and which can hardly be separated from the general purpose classification. Folk generics number 209, of which seven are unaffiliated to life form; 65 percent of 400 scientific species are labeled. Only three generics are polytypic. While the small number of generics reflects the limited species diversity of the environment, the minuscule degree of generic polytypy may be a general characteristic of the pastoral subsistence mode, which involves less plant manipulation even than among foragers. Data from North Africa show that Arabian plant names and concepts extend 5,500 kilometers to the west among Arabic-speaking tribes of the Sahara. A comparison of today's Bedouin plant terminology with that recorded from Bedouins in Arabic lexicographic works of the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. shows that little change has occurred over 1100 years. Bedouin life since about 1980 has seen increasing loss of schooled younger people to settled pursuits and the hiring of foreign help in herding. Camel herds are still large, but indigenous knowledge of plants is threatened despite growth in the numbers of Najdi Arabic speakers and the persistence of Bedouin lore in oral and written literature.

The dissertation investigates communal forest use and management in the municipio (county) of La Campa, Honduras, and the multi-leveled interrelationships that influence ongoing transformations in the forests. The work takes a political ecology perspective, thus it evaluates the interrelationships between local, national and international processes that have shaped historical and current forest and land use patterns in the municipio. State policies have constituted an important factor in encouraging forms of forest management; the communitarian tradition imposed on Lenca Indian communities by the Spaniards following the Conquest provided a context which the people adapted to their own situation and propagated into recent years. Low population density, a relatively homogeneous populace, the pattern of subsistence agriculture, limited state interference and minimal interaction with national markets apparently contributed to the viability of common property management and the survival of forests into the present. The local context has changed in recent decades with a growing population, increased market involvement, socioeconomic differentiation, and state policies that undermine communal forms of forest management. Domination by the state forestry development institution (COHDEFOR) during the 1970s and 1980s led to logging, forest degradation, and disruption of traditional forms of forest management. A majority of the population eventually organized to oust COHDEFOR and prohibit market-oriented timber exploitation within the municipio, but communal forest management has suffered a number of shortcomings in the aftermath of COHDEFOR's departure. At present, the situation indicates an unsustainable level of forest exploitation and a gradual transformation of communal forests into private holdings. New national legislation regarding agriculture and forestry encourages the privatization of communal lands, while international market forces and economic development initiatives favor the production of agricultural export crops, such as coffee. The analysis considers the factors and interrelationships that inhibit sustainable use of communal forests in La Campa; it also recognizes the benefits and difficulties that relate to common property forest management within the current context.

This dissertation presents a political ecological case study of a Tongan village. Political ecology includes the methodological approaches of cultural ecology, concerned with understanding human/resource relations, and political economy, concerned with the historical examination of the political and social organization of production and power. The ethnography of political ecology is primarily interested in understanding how certain people use specific environmental resources in culturally prescribed and historically derive ways. With this in mind, the research provides an historical and ethnographic account of a diversified, local economic system characterized by a highly productive but depreciating smallholder agriculture once regenerative and sustainable. The smallholders in the Kingdom of Tonga are imperfectly articulated with market systems and rely on agricultural production for a significant proportion of household consumption and ceremonialized obligations to kin, and community. The dissertation presents an historical account of the political economic changes in Tonga beginning in the nineteenth century and culminating in recent alteration of traditional farming techniques and the loss of economic self-sufficiency and agricultural sustainability.

Due to demographic changes, the number of older Americans has risen dramatically since the turn of the century. Along with steady improvements in longevity, however, middle class elderly perceive themselves to be less healthy than their parents. Along with escalating worry over health among this group is a diminished tolerance for minor illness, an increased expectation for optimal health and the perception that all disease is either preventible or curable. This increasing sense of concern coincides with escalating medical costs, the rise of managed care and a resurgence of health preventive and promotive discourse. In the United States arenas of health promotion and disease prevention have followed two paths. One includes the use of screening tests which promise early detection and more favorable outcomes from complex conditions like heart disease and cancer. The other is individual lifestyle modification. Both paths, testing and behavioral change, offer the illusion of decreased risks from chronic disease. Since these diseases, however, are hard to differentiate from changes related to normal aging, most of these promises are incapable of being fulfilled. Therefore, middle class elderly are burdened with personal and societal blame when they continue to suffer from age related symptoms. Screening medical test results, often abnormal in this group, are often followed by more intensive diagnostic tests and treatments. These follow-ups are not only costly in economic terms but are physiologically and socially problematic. Drug side effects, complications from surgery, infections and a lowered quality of life are often the result. This ethnographic study of white elderly middle class clients and providers attempts to show some lived consequences of our cultural discourse about disease prevention and health promotion. Aging has become a disease which turns healthy elderly into worried well.

User-friendliness is a common goal of microcomputer software design, yet little attention has been paid to the importance of many conversation-like features of user interface. Computers are incapable of accessing the vast amount of contextual information that humans routinely employ in conversation. Through other means, microcomputers imitate features of conversation, often establishing in users false expectations of communicative competence. Such means usually fail to meet what Goffman (1976) has characterized as the "systemic" and "ritual" constraints of interaction. The increasing ubiquity of microcomputers in our society has been accompanied by a number of attempts to facilitate better human-computer interaction. Customer support provides one type of solution. Support personnel go beyond simply providing technical information to end users. They must additionally act as interactional "surrogates" for software, attending to communicative functions of which software is incapable or neglectful. Additionally, evidence suggests that this type of situation may intensify in the future.

Herein find a deeper look at hippie culture from the anthropological perspective, but still as observations from one deeply involved in that culture. Most of what has been written about the hippie culture has been written with an upturned nose, seemingly full of distaste. Many Native American academics share this distaste, although a true picture of hippie culture has never been offered. Leonard Wolf's Voices of the Love Generation is, perhaps, a singular exception, as his book of interviews gives voice directly to the flower children. The spiritual ties represent the most notable bonds of this community. Hippies believe all life is connected, and carry this philosophy into all aspects of ceremony. Thus, the wisdom of all peoples is essential, not merely relevant; Native American wisdom particularly important because contemporary Native Americans know more about the earth we tread here than anyone else alive can know.

Montado landscapes are agro-silvo-pastoral systems where pastures and crops occur under the canopy of trees. They are specific to the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. In Alentejo, two types of montado with different origins, geographic distribution, and economy can be distinguished: the Holm Oak Montado and the Cork Oak Montado. Changes in Alentejo's socioeconomic situation have led to montados, until recently the most profitable land use for the poor soils of the region, being currently in danger of extinction either by abandonment or substitution. This thesis seeks to identify the structure, dynamic evolution, and possible future of montados. It demonstrates, within an historical perspective, that these landscapes can assume different forms, corresponding to varying degrees of intensity and uses. Therefore, the preservation of their productive, ecological, and cultural values necessitates redefinition of their form in relation to the evolving socioeconomic context.

Navajo blankets and rugs collected by Washington Matthews and Marjorie Merriweather Post are now held by the Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Matthews, medical doctor and anthropologist, actively collected Navajo blankets; to preserve them in museums and gather knowledge about them in publications. His goal was to learn about the Navajos before they merged into dominate American culture. Post, philanthropist, art collector, and socialite, collected Navajo blankets and rugs as status symbols, decorations and souvenirs when they were marketed by traders and weavers. Her collections once exhibited at her estates are now exhibited at the Hillwood Museum and the Museum of Natural History, in Washington, D.C. This thesis is about the collectors, their collections and why they collected Navajo blankets and rugs. Tables and photographs illustrate the collection.

The Japanese family/firm analogy has been utilized in the past by anthropological and business scholars for the purposes of better understanding the traditional Japanese family household (the ie) and the modern-day firm. The purpose of this study is to determine the appropriateness and utility of this analogy. To accomplish this, the study reconstructs the analogy by describing the models and theories upon which it is based and then examines it from a critical viewpoint. The conclusions are mixed. The study finds that the family/firm analogy is applicable, but only within the narrow limits defined by the specific ie and modern firm models. The analogy suffers further from its misrepresentation of Japanese families and firms, internal contradictions, and a disregard for social, economic, and political contexts. What is ultimately lost through the use of the analogy is the great complexity and diversity of Japanese society.