<p> This thesis examines resilience among the Point Lay I&ntilde;upiat in the context of climate change. Resilience is manifest in the ability of community members to maintain meaningful subsistence practices and activities despite ongoing changes in weather, ice, and resource conditions. Twenty-one Point Lay I&ntilde;upiat were interviewed for this thesis. Respondents were divided into three cohorts: youths (ages 18-29), adults (ages 30-49), and elders (ages 50-70+). Respondents shared changes in weather, ice, and resource conditions. Respondents also shared community concerns, including concerns not attributable to climate change. Received responses were sorted and compared by cohort to identify trends in weather, ice, and resource conditions, as well as to identify adaptive and maladaptive strategies for coping with climate change and other stressors impacting the community. Whether the community can maintain meaningful subsistence practices and activities if local changes in weather, ice, and resource conditions remain unchanged or intensify is also questioned.</p>

<p> People engaged in small-scale and commercial oyster aquaculture in Southern Maryland negotiate bundled regimes of value in creating a sense of locality through their interactions with oysters. These regimes of value are oysters as food, oysters as agents of ecological restoration, and oysters as a signifier of cultural heritage. The degree to which each regime is valued in relation to the others is highly variable between individuals and contexts. The sense of locality that they produce is constructed against the backdrop of perceived failures of government to adequately protect the resources of the Chesapeake Bay and the livelihoods that depend upon it. Oyster aquaculture has become seen as a way to sustainably revitalize Maryland's oyster industry while directly contributing to the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystems. </p>

<p> This dissertation explores the nature of the anthropological writings of Georg Forster (1754-94), the German world-traveler (who accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage in the South-Seas 1772-75), cultural-historian and translator in the late eighteenth century, showing how his anthropology proposes an "ironic" or "sentimental" (in the Schillerian sense) mode of narration. Although many others at the time were exploring what it is to be human, my dissertation argues that Forster's anthropology concerned itself primarily with what it means to <i>write</i> about humanity when one supplements the empirical-rational method of observation with an emphasis on "self-reflexive" and "ironic" (&agrave; la Hayden White) modes of writing anthropology, or the story of humanity. This study therefore focuses on those writings gathered around three salient concepts in his anthropological understanding, to which he returns frequently: observation, narration, and translation, presented in three chapters. The thesis not only undertakes close readings of Forster's texts centering on observation, narration, and translation but, crucially, places them within the historical context of late eighteenth century aesthetic and anthropological discourses in Germany. This study ultimately underscores the manner in which Forster's concepts of "sentimental" &ndash; i.e. self-reflexive, ironic, and striving towards the goal of perfectibility &ndash; observation and narration allow him to accept the fragmentary, exploratory, and temporary nature of knowledge about humanity. At the same time, his "aesthetic" &ndash; sentient and open to testing &ndash; translation allows him to engage and educate his readers' tolerance towards a provisional, composite and temporal truth in anthropology. In highlighting the self-reflexive as well as an open-to-testing attitude of Forster's anthropology, this dissertation underscores the mutual interaction between eighteenth century aesthetic and anthropological modes of thought.</p>

<p> With the increasing number of Chinese international students coming to the United States every year, a more in-depth understanding of these international students' acculturation is necessary and urgent. Given the fact that past researches mostly describe Chinese immigrants, migrates or international students as oppressed cultural adaptors, who cannot avoid being marginalized; who suffer from various adjusting problems; and who have to make use of acculturative strategies to adapt to the new country, this thesis takes the factor of wealth and its relation with class, status and power into account during Chinese international students' acculturation under the globalized context. Instead of sticking to the stereotypical view of regarding Chinese International students as simply marginalized group, this thesis explores the possibility of these students as power negotiators in their everydayness of life by using the methodological tool of interview.</p>

<p> This qualitative study not only describes the intercultural capacities of 20 high-achieving, homeschooled, evangelical university students from diverse backgrounds, but also far surpasses this original aim by generating a new model that critiques and complements cultural intelligence theory (CQ). Debate regarding tolerance among homeschoolers has lacked adequate study because the right questions have been obscured by terminology too broad (socialization) and impossibly loaded (tolerance). This constructivist, grounded-theory study thus addresses the question through intercultural lenses. </p><p> Chapter 2 reviews literature to propose a Process-Outcome Model of Socialization, a 10-pair categorization of critics' concerns, and introduces a reconceptualization of Perry's (1970) scheme of epistemological development for a faith-based university. Chapter 3 describes data-collection. In Southern California, strategies include participant observation, interview, focus-group, narrative, written reflection about Emerson &amp; Smith's (2000) <i>Divided by Faith,</i> and case study response. In metropolitan DC, shorter measures confirm theoretical saturation. Chapter 4 presents 20 participants' intercultural journeys. Chapter 5 traces cognition. Chapter 6 outlines motivation, describing intercultural self-efficacy, initiative, and perceived value. Chapter 7 offers evidence of metacognition. Chapter 8 provides the missing piece&mdash;concern&mdash;as the connector of knowledge and desire, showing that the most intense reflection and regulation operate based on higher commitments (metaphysical, existential, and ethical). </p><p> Chapter 9 integrates core categories to present two new models. One shows the complementarity of CQ and concern. The other unites them as Sustainable Cultural Concern (SCC), a model explaining why some people grow in intercultural capacities while others do not. Three assertions underlie these models: a) concern is a meta-commitment that differs from motivation; b) CQ and border-crossing concern cooperate to sustain growth; c) a culturally-concerned person seeks to wed knowledge and desire according to concern. Though most participants display sustainable cultural concern, unconcerned outliers strongly suggest that homeschoolers and organizations should intentionally cultivate it. </p><p> Methodologically, the models correct inconsistencies regarding homeschooling socialization and challenge the prevalence of quantitative studies. Theoretically, they highlight ambiguity and overlap in CQ domains and the disproportionate scope of metacognition. Practically, they guide personal evaluation of intercultural engagement and growth in perception (honor), understanding (humility), regulation (integrity), and volition (faithfulness).</p>

<p> Choro is a traditional Brazilian music that began in Rio de Janeiro during the latter half of the nineteenth century. A virtuosic instrumental music, choro developed through Brazilian interpretations of European dance genres, especially polka and waltz. Participation by both amateur and professional musicians characterizes choro's traditional pedagogy, a reflection of informal and formal learning processes and contexts. At the turn of the twenty-first century, choro schools now offer venues for defining and validating the tradition as well as inspiring an atmosphere for innovation and creation. Inherent within the concept of tradition is the dichotomy of continuity and change. This study exposes how institutions negotiate the past and present through a comparison of current and historic pedagogy and modes of learning. Choro institutions use traditional and innovative modes of learning to support and enhance the genre's current practice through community organization, which sustains and contributes to its continued performance. Chapter one focuses on defining choro music, first discussing the etymology of the word 'choro,' followed by a survey of choro's history and review of choro literature. The chapter concludes with an explanation of this investigation's purpose. In chapter two I posit the notion that a music community practices and performs choro. Biographies and stories of choro's past and present community members reveal how they learned choro. The chapter ends with an analysis of the processes that establish and reinforce the community. Chapter three examines how people learn choro. I offer prevailing learning perspectives&mdash;acquisition, participation, and knowledge creation&mdash;and establish categories for modes of learning&mdash;formal, non-formal, and informal&mdash;to define the processes and contexts involved in learning choro. Chapter four discusses the musical codes that characterize choro, what the choro community describes as a musical language. The chapter ends with a description of the curriculum at Escola Portatil de Musica, the school case study used for this dissertation. Chapter five is the summation and conclusions, revealing why musicians learn choro music.</p>

<p> This thesis examines a Taiwanese Pentecostal church's engagement with the Chinese restaurant business in southern California and its cultural significance in today's transnational world. This thesis provides insight into how the Taiwanese Pentecostal church creates a transnational imagined community for negotiating religious identity through business practices and constructs a ''third place" among consumers of Chinese food in southern California. This thesis seeks to fill the gap in literature on Pentecostalism by arguing the Taiwanese Pentecostal church's restaurant business can be seen as a new form of Pentecostal expression emerging in the global era of the 21st century. Its flourishing restaurant business facilitates its transnational outreach and networks and thus suggests a new dimension of religious transnationalism. This thesis provides a framework for examining these networks and understanding how indigenized Taiwanese Pentecostal churches engage in business to survive in today's competitive global market of religion.</p>

<p> Digital Citizenship is a concept typically used in discussions of how technology impacts our relationships with others and our physical world communities. It is also used to describe ways that we can leverage our technology use and skill to make our communities and nations better and stronger. Educators are now teaching "good digital citizenship" as part of a larger civics curriculum. </p><p> But, there is a second, emerging concept that I refer to as platform specific digital citizenship. I define this platform specific citizenship as the deep and abiding commitment and sense of responsibility that people develop in relation to a particular technology, such as software or technology brand. It may also refer to the ideas that people express in regard to how technology should ideally be used and what rights and responsibilities it requires of its adherents. </p><p> Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds (MMOWs) are one place researchers are finding this deep, platform specific digital citizenship emerging. These are persistent digital universes where people from all over the world develop online personas, leadership structures, discussion forums, and business and non-profit entities. The ability and extent to which this online organization is possible is largely due to the underlying structure, rules and allowances of the world of which people choose to be a part. </p><p> One online world, Second Life, has a large, active and vocal disabled population. They have committed to this environment because of the unique opportunities and freedoms that it provides. As a user content created environment, residents, as Second Life participants are referred to, are given an unprecedented amount of freedom to create the kind of experience they want. This may involve developing relationships and projects with other disabled residents. It can also involve exploring other aspects of themselves and their interests that are often neglected in their real lives due to social exclusion, and/or lack of financial and physical access. </p><p> Most of the research and popular media examinations of disability in Second Life centers on participation in disability specific communities or the benefits of identity exploration through avatar design. But, the reasons disabled people stay here is much broader and varied than what this limited discussion suggests. Commitment to Second Life is strong precisely because disability community commitment and disability expression are not the only options but exist among a wide range of choices. Moreover, the expression of disability and use of such mediated environments is constantly debated in both word and deed. </p><p> This dissertation explores the concept of digital citizenship and why people that identify as disabled in real life are attracted to committed participation in virtual worlds, in particular, Second Life. What opportunities and rights are disabled people afforded here through the technology structure? What are the avenues of entry into the Second Life community, and what does the variety of these entry points and special interest sub-communities tell us about what is important to them? How is commitment debated and deepened through the use of public spaces and forums? And, what can researchers, public health and information professionals learn from these features that can improve their own outreach?</p>

<p> Utilizing ethnographic methods, this work examines how attendees of computer gaming events held by the Gaming@IU club form a community which uses technology to bring people together rather than isolate them and analyzes the ways attendees perform a unique forms of Whiteness and "nerd masculinity." Known as LAN parties, these computer gaming events are social functions where approximately 200 participants collocate their computers and play videogames with and against each other for up to twenty-four hours straight. Drawing years of fieldwork, this work uses participant observation and in depth interviews to examine how this group uses the computer gaming events to create a third place away from work and school where friendships can be created and maintained. </p><p> Based on this data, I examine the ways in which the statements of the LAN party attendees draw on a discourse of racial colorblindness to avoid dealing with the overwhelming Whiteness of these events which is not reflective of the racial and ethnic diversity of the area. I show how an avoidance of discussion of Whiteness and a general inability to articulate their thoughts about race prevents the attendees from interrogating the role the LAN party's organization may play in the racial makeup of attendees. </p><p> Focusing on issues of sexual harassment within gaming, I also look at the ways in which the games played and the social norms of the LAN party encourage the performance of hegemonic masculinity while playing the videogames but allow the attendees to inhabit a more complicit form of masculinity which is not overtly sexist. I argue that by embracing non-normative masculinity outside the games but discouraging it within the games, the LAN party participants are professing openness and acceptance but are failing to live up to that ideal.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the normative construction of a politics of language and community in north-west Wales (United Kingdom). It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily between January 2007 and April 2008, with central participant-observation settings in primary-level state schools and in the teaching-spaces and hallways of a university. Its primary finding is an account of the gap between the national visibility and the cultural (in)visibility communities of speakers of the indigenous language of Wales (Cymraeg, or &ldquo;Welsh&rdquo;). With one exception, no public discourse has yet emerged in Wales that provides an explicit framework or vocabulary for describing the cultural community that is anchored in Cymraeg. One has to live those meanings even to know about them. The range of social categories for living those meanings tends to be constructed in ordinary conversations as some form of <i>nationalism,</i> whether political, cultural, or language <i>nationalism.</i> Further, the negatively valenced category of nationalism current in English-speaking Britain is in tension with the positively valenced category of nationalism current among many who move within Cymraeg-speaking communities. Thus, the very politics of identity are themselves political since the line between what is political and what is not, is itself subject to controversy. The result is what I call the &ldquo;submergence&rdquo; of Cymraeg-oriented cultural communities: People who would say Cymraeg is an essential part of their personality and communities mark out cultural space for their sense of continuity (to the past, to others) in ways that do not require <i>or enable</i> them to make any substantive cultural claims. </p><p> Within these settings of a modalized Welsh culture&mdash;always only partially expressed&mdash; indigeneity and ethnic difference are symbolized by the emblematic and lived importance of Cymraeg, while the significance of Cymraeg tends to be implicitly conveyed by means of overt references to &ldquo;Welshness&rdquo;. </p><p> This cultural submergence of the resources for Cymraeg-centered identity seems motivated and sustained by the fact that it produces a haven from holiday-goers and English patriots who do not value Welsh cultural features as highly as do those who take pride in the Cymraeg-centered cultural community. In light of these features of local life, I suggest several terms of art&mdash;including &ldquo;language demesne&rdquo; and &ldquo;language corridor&rdquo;&mdash;because they are more fitting of local politics than is the idea of a (global) language community. </p><p> This dissertation also contributes a theoretical basis for examining the pragmatics of language communities, which requires differentiating phenomenal-level semiotic analyses from investigations of the dynamics of cultural discourse. The &ldquo;obvious&rdquo; empirical situation in Wales&mdash;as analyzed using a Peircean-phenomenological semiotics&mdash;runs contrary to the relatively opaque and counter-empirical cultural dynamics in Wales. As a result, this account of the tensions between semiotic descriptions and cultural dynamics signals a wrinkle in received theories of metapragmatics. Conventionally, metapragmatics makes sense of the text&ndash;discourse relation, but not the relations between discourse and consciousness because theories of metapragmatics apply only to the former. Unless the relationship of text-and-discourse to consciousness is explicated at the epistemological level of analysis, ethnographic descriptions of locales within language communities&mdash;particularly those rife with language politics&mdash;can take on the appearance of an ontology of human kinds. Given this condition, any broad account of the cultural dynamics of language and community must take an analytic position regarding the relationship between the surface-level of semiotics and the historical and cultural processes of community constitution. </p><p> My approach engages directly with the neglected conflict between the strategy of primordialist essentialism and that of constructivism. The analytic strategy and theoretical perspective of this dissertation avoids the scholarly tendency to treat certain local conceptions as misconstruals of sociocultural life. Instead, they are treated as locally valid and proper constitutings of divisible community. Academics would be no less inclined to reject analogous conceptual entailments in their cultural worlds despite their commitment to the view that sociocultural realities are constructed. The position adopted here underwrites an account that denaturalizes without denaturing the essentializing claims (e.g., of language activists) in north-west Wales. </p><p> In engaging with current analytic strategies in linguistic anthropology, my &ldquo;inferentialist&rdquo; and pragmatistic strategy frames the politicizing of language and community in north-west Wales using an alternative to linguistic indexes or icons, which are grounded in an empirical sense of necessity. The framework adopted here envisions an empirical field organized not only by <i>necessary</i> principles of Welsh belonging that are practiced or not, but by tensions among many different &ldquo;modal&rdquo; types of constraints&mdash;normative principles that are inferable from community-specific ways of enacting belonging to a particular sociocultural imaginary that owes its coherence to language affinity. Consequently, this dissertation treats languages themselves as inhabitable and provides a theoretical justification for doing so.</p>