The recent discovery of Chinese medical manuscripts in a tomb dated to the second century BC in Ma-wang-tui, Ch'ang-sha, has revealed extremely interesting new information on the subject of ancient Chinese childbirth practices. The scrolls contain detailed advice concerning a proper and auspicious treatment of the placenta, an astronomical chart for choosing the perfect location for the burial of the placenta, and a description of the custom of exposing the newborn infant on the earth directly after birth. This paper offers a translation of these paragraphs and an interpretation based on a Japanese medical text that reflects Chinese medieval practices, basic knowledge of Chinese cosmology, society and religion and also general cross-cultural patterns for the treatment of the placenta that have been established through an anthropological research into placenta-related practices, beliefs and mythology from many different traditional cultures.

The topic of resuscitative decision making for hospitalized patients has generated numerous discussions among clinicians and ethicists. Traditionally, their attention has focused on normative standards, describing how decisions should be made, rather than on how they are made in practice. This study uses qualitative techniques, including key informant and participant interviews, participant observation, and microanalysis of in-hospital discussions, to assess what influence the doctor-patient relationship and other sociocultural and contextual determinants have on actual decision making and communication regarding resuscitation. The results suggest that many factors influence these processes. These include issues of competency and ambiguity, prototypical images of life and death, and the use of a structured form for documentation purposes. In light of these findings, the discussion suggests ways in which physicians can improve resuscitative communication with patients and families.

This thesis is an historical, ethnographic, and theoretical analysis of an alternative health care system, Spiritualist healing, which specifically addresses health and illness issues pertaining to power, gender, and conceptions of the self. In the historical section, the rise of Spiritualism is discussed in terms of the dissatisfaction with orthodox religion, stereotypical gender roles, and allopathic medicine. Spiritualism is still an extant religious philosophy today, as is evidenced in the ethnographic data presented which is based upon research at Spirituality Association United (SAU), a Spiritualist chapel located in a large southwestern city. Women's continued strong participation in Spiritualism is documented and the Spiritualist cosmology at SAU is discussed which revolves around the polysemic concept of healing. Alternative healing strategies such as Spiritualist healing can be considered as partially counter-hegemonic to biomedicine: biomedical practitioners should become more cognizant of alternative health care in our society so that the needs of health seekers are met by informed and open-minded practitioners.

This study examines various sites of international travel for medical care. Focusing primarily on Yemenis' medical travel to Jordan and other countries, the study explores a variety of issues and experiences of care-seeking abroad. Topics covered include state and institutional support for treatment outside the country, linkages between countries that facilitate movements, medical travellers' funding and logistical decisions, and therapeutic reputations leading to destination selection. The following examples of medical travel are also considered: the special receptions of Arab royalty, an advanced care facility in Scotland, and organ donors and recipients. This study is set within a context of increasing globalization, where advances in medical procedures and devices, communication, and transportation all contribute to people's ideas about where to go for medical care.

<p> This descriptive phenomenological study investigated Anglo Saxon Americans' lived experience of self-identity. The focus was to determine if construction of their self-concepts was influenced by Ancestral connectedness, characterized by: (a) lived recognition of one's Ancestral origins and the experience of connection to one's larger constellation of familial lineage, (b) reverent encounter with one's Ancestors on a daily basis as expressed in Ancestor communion, and (c) felt responsibility to ensure the Ancestors' continued well-being and positive disposition toward the living through the practice of remembering the Ancestors in active storytelling, prayers to the Ancestors, and the making of libations and offerings to the Ancestors. Three Anglo Saxon Americans participated in the study. Each participant completed two half-hour, one-on-one, in-person interviews and also completed a demographic questionnaire about his or her background. Participants were asked to describe (a) their identities and how they understand themselves, (b) their understanding or definition of Ancestor, (c) how they think about their Ancestors, and (d) how their connectedness to their Ancestors influence their self-identities. Giorgi's (1985, 2009) four-step descriptive phenomenological method was used to analyze the data and produce a psychological description of the phenomenon studied. Study results revealed a general structure for the Anglo Saxon American self-concept in relation to Ancestral connectedness consisting of eight constituents: (a) a lack of importance placed on the question of self-identity, (b) an emphasis on individuality and separation, (c) a negative approach to self-identity, (d) changes in self-identity independent of Ancestry, (e) awareness of the White race and its privileges, (f) socioeconomic status, (g) an unconscious Ancestral influence, and (h) no establishment of a positive Ancestral influence on self-identity. The results also revealed a limited amount of conscious understanding of one's Ancestral origins and personal connection to a larger constellation of familial lineage, suggesting partial fulfillment of the first criterion of Ancestral connectedness. However, this was the extent of the lived experience of Ancestral connectedness in relation to the Anglo Saxon American self-identity formation.</p>

<p>Christians engaged in mission and worship have been dealing with the issues of culture and contextualization since long before the word 'culture' was even used to describe what it does today in the the social sciences. Christian discussions about the importance of context for mission and worship employ the term 'culture,' 'cultures,' and their corresponding concepts in nearly identical ways to how the social sciences use them. Mission and worship proceed from Christian understandings of salvation history, the mission of God, and the role of the church which derive from theology rooted in Scripture. The terms 'culture' and 'cultures,' are usually defined, however, in ways that exclude any specific reference to Yhwh's involvement in them, from their origins to their destiny. This fundamental dissonance between common assumptions about culture and the biblical record may obscure important aspects of the uniqueness of human societies pertaining to mission and worship from our discussion. </p><p> This study raises the question of whether Christians are adequately served in these discussions by the meaning invoked with the words 'culture' and 'people group.' If the concepts of mission and worship themselves proceed from Christian understandings of Scripture, then Scripture is a natural place to look for guidance about how mission and worship have taken place and are to take place in the present day. Here I emphasize certain categories that emerge by hermeneutical tracing of biblical themes related to the topic of ethnic cultures. </p><p> I present the study in three parts. First Part I addresses questions about biblical theological views of ethnicity and ethnic cultures in Christian identity and worship. The studies center around the biblical theme of the glory of the nations with the research questions 1) What are the specific meanings of glory ([special characters omitted]) and nations ([special characters omitted]) as they appear in Revelation 21:24, 26 in canonical perspective? 2) What are the origin and destiny of the nations ([special characters omitted]) in Scripture? And 3) How does the narrative of Salvation History clarify the development of the glory of the nations? </p><p> In Part II an ethnographic case study of Sundanese Christian churches presents ethnographic data gathered with the following two questions in mind: 4) How have elements of traditional ethnic culture shaped the distinctively Sundanese Christian church movement? And 5) How do distinctive aspects of Sunda Christian identity and worship affect the appeal of the movement? </p><p> Finally in Part III I seek to integrate the thematic biblical and ethnographic streams to expose the missiological significance of the <i>glory of the nations</i> as a distinctively Christian concept and category for understanding ethnic cultures. The study culminates with practical recommendations for the re-examination and incorporation of the biblical concepts of [special characters omitted] and [special characters omitted] and a focus on the Hebrew identity within Scripture into mission practice and application to worship and church formation in multicultural congregations. </p>

<p> 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 &amp; Lemish 2008, 2009; De Block &amp; 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.</p>

<p> This is an ethnographic and depth psychological study of Post-Cool Kids, people born into the 1960s American counterculture between 1964 and 1978. This population has been predominantly overlooked by the academy apart from the Family Lifestyles Study completed at UCLA twenty years ago. In this, the first study of its kind, I explore the ethnological specificity of this set of people, Post-Cool Kids. </p><p> I have integrated the methodologies of Michel Foucault and the theories of archetypal psychology developed by James Hillman with work done by Victor Turner as well as other work from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, feminist theory, cultural studies and histories of the sixties era. I use this interdisciplinary data to inform a qualitative study of eighteen subjects raised by countercultural parents. I asked my subjects about their lives as children, teenagers, young adults, and currently approaching midlife. Through an analysis of these interviews I identified six cultural complexes specific to the counterculture that I then deconstructed and discussed as systems of knowing within the American culture of the last forty years: freedom, anti-authority, intense experience, cool, being real, and utopia. These complexes together provide a unique way of experiencing the world that informs the ethnological and psychological perspective of Post-Cool Kids, and provides them with a multi-schematic, process-based way of engaging with the world around them. I also discuss such topics as alternative education, communal experiences, drug addiction, creative thinking, embodied trauma, parental entwinement, and personal activism. My objective was to identify the transmission of culture from counterculture parents to their Post-Cool Kids. In the process I developed several unique methodological approaches. Merging postmodern theory, archetypal psychology and methods from religious studies and anthropology, I evaluate the nature of belief within a secular cultural context. Ultimately, I place American historical concepts of utopia side by side with the experience and multi-schematic perspective of Post-Cool Kids to suggest that they represent an emergent pattern in culture, and show how they can inform new theories of utopia.</p>

<p> This thesis discusses the process and results of research gathered from a field season on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota. By engaging in a community mapping project with Oglala Lakota elders, I show the benefits and reason behind the theory of participation. The project intends to "map" the indigenous <i>tiospaye</i> groups in the Porcupine District, and ends up gathering narrative representations of place rather than explicitly cartographic ones, a reification of the theorized "dwelling space." A discussion of the mapping project leads to a wider explication of the general practice of mapping indigenous lands throughout history. How indigenous perceptions of place and landscape are represented through acts of cartography is discussed to show the potential for empowerment or disempowerment of indigenous worldviews. The thesis concludes that a divestment of power to local communities is necessary for truly sustainable development, and further that the knowledge and perceptions of the traditional Lakota elders needs to be validated on their own terms in order to decolonize the relationship between their <i> tiospayes</i> and the tribal government.</p>

<p> The following dissertation is an historical archaeological study of the material culture of gendered protective magic used by Anglo-Europeans in seventeenth-century New England as a tactic to construct boundaries that mitigated perceived personal, social, spiritual, and environmental dangers. Such boundary construction was paramount in the seventeenth-century battle between good and evil epitomized by the belief in and struggle against witchcraft. This dissertation sought to answer three interrelated research questions: 1) What constitutes protective magical material culture in seventeenth-century contexts and how is it recognizable in the archaeological record? 2) What signifies gender specific protective magical practices and what can these differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships? and 3) In what way and to what degree is the recourse to traditional beliefs significant in coping or risk management contexts? Synthesizing data from historical and folkloristic sources, and reviewing all accessible archaeological site reports and inventories from State Historic Preservation offices and principal site investigators for domestic structures in New England ca. 1620-1725 provided data to catalog and develop a typology of potential magical items. Analyzing these data then allowed the assessment of domestic and gendered patterns of magical risk management strategies. Magical content was frequently embedded within or symbolically encoded in architectural or artifactual details, whose gendered association tended to correspond with gender role activities or responsibilities; however, the general omission of magical interpretations in historical archaeology limits the visibility of potentially magical objects in site reports and inventories, so it is likely a wider range of materials and contexts exist. The final result of this dissertation was the construction of a criterion model for the identification and interpretation of magic in historical archaeological contexts, which extends the notion of ritual from specialized places and materials, and communal behaviors to include quotidian objects and settings, and individual practices. Ultimately, the results of this dissertation extend the field of the archaeology of ritual and magic in particular, and the broader field of archaeology more generally by providing theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and recognizing how magical belief contributes to physical and metaphoric boundary construction and maintenance.</p>