With the cultural theories embodied in the ideas of Gianni Vattimo, this thesis attempts to explore the relevant assessment of exchange value (versus absolute value) in re-evaluating the present cultural situation in the Philippines. Replete with influences and cultural transformations from previous groups of colonizers, the optimum time for re-evaluation is now and resolutions to the state of an appropriate attitude towards a Filipino national identity has never before been challenged. There are, in the minds of the Filipinos, aging and irrelevant symbols of national heritage that need renovation so as to express this new opportunity of somewhat total autonomy. At this crossroads of possible cultural shifts, hypotheses arise in the search for appropriation. It is possibly the time to express that shift rather than develop a prescription for a new national identity.

The three traditional strands of linguistics--theoretical, typological, and genealogical--are discussed as constructed systems of classification seeking to impose order in various ways on the world's rambunctious languages. All three strands are based on Indo-European grammatical expectations, they are enabled by literacy, and they have been empowered by a scientific mode of thought which has been dominant in the West. The postulation of "Language" as an abstract object of study is seen to emanate from an epistemology of logico-mathematics, alphabetic literacy, and the demands of a scientific methodology; note is made of the power of the Platonic metaphor. There is a growing lack of dogmatic acceptance of the three traditional linguistic approaches: the classificatory attempts to tame language are, in fact, dissolving. A focus on typological linguistics is introduced by a tracing of typological thought from 1800 to 1963. Influences from within and from without philology and linguistics which contributed to the delineation of the subfield are commented upon. The historical and epistemological interface between theoretical, typological, and genealogical linguistics is probed. The concentration on typological classification is continued by in-depth discussions of two languages which are of the statistically rare word order in which the object precedes the subject: Hixkaryana (Carib) OVS, and Tzotzil (Mayan) VOS. Interpretations of sentential word order in these languages are provided from a psychological-functional approach to discourse. The order in these languages is found to constitute an anomaly from current theoretical viewpoints: they are grammatically object-subject, functionally rheme-theme, and psychologically "diffuse"-"focused". Grammatical subjects and objects are found to have limited relevance for an understanding of the discourse of these languages. The evidence from these languages and the detailed study of the imagination which has come to dominate the study of language are meant to comprise a contribution to the dissolution of the traditional classificatory linguistic approaches. Alternatives are suggested, both implicitly and explicitly. Unified attempts to classify the world's languages in the three traditional manners are possible; the many publications devoted to this enterprise bear witness to this fact. It is suggested that what can be principally learned from these publications is an insight into the self of Western culture, and into that mode of thought which has been dominant in the West for so long.

Technoscientific identities in the Islamic world are changing. The recent resurgence of Islam has raised a new understanding of the West. In contrast to the view that the transmission of Islamic medieval sciences to the West has resulted in a continuity of Islamic values in Western science, an understanding of the West as an epoch has emerged, allowing Muslims to rethink the presumed value and culture free basis of technoscience. The ephocal view of the West sees it as based on a set of inter-related phenomenon, including a secularized Christianity and notions of rationality, progress and a universalist subjectivity. A radical critique of Western secular and universal technoscientific identity is shown to be emerging, drawing on both the critical rethinking of the foundations of technoscience and on the experiences and practices of actors bound by different contexts out of which different ideas spring forth and are enacted. Radical critique deconstructs existing technoscientific formations through invocations of the Islamic metaphysical foundation of knowledge as well as its eschatological structure of change. It is also a reconstructive force insofar as it opens the way of constructing new forms of technoscientific identities out of existing experiences and institutions. A transnational landscape delineates the terrain, where scientists and engineers play important social and political roles. Institution building and other scientific activities become subject to different global and local modalities of interaction. Through the mobility of individuals and institutions in the transnational landscape, ideas and discourses travel from one locality to another via frames of abstraction. An ethnographically informed understanding of these sites reveals contested tropes of technoscientific identities. Instead of relying on pure forms, radical critique engages in developing a critical and performative view of this condition and acts as a resource to form the basis for a new culture of curiosity.

This dissertation investigates the social life of the concept of postapartheid reconciliation. It consists of a novel, a work of fiction in four parts. As a whole it constitutes an evocation of reconciliation in contemporary South Africa. As a concept, reconciliation is found and followed and found and followed and...and also repeatedly written and read across and in the lives of three main characters and personae. The absence of an argument is an allegory for the endless process of writing and storying that began before two years of 'fieldwork' and that still continues in a context of radical change and rapid fluctuation. It is also a metaphor for the impossibility of resolving, indeed of reconciling, a fundamental agonism specific to explaining, making sense of and understanding (and hence actually living) postapartheid reconciliation: analytical and instrumental reason and rational thought on the one hand, and emotion, sentiment, intuition, and feelings on the other. A central provocation is the challenge to the dominance and absolutism, in cognition and epistemology, of rational thought and pure reason. A corollary and parallel provocation inheres in the interrogation and suggestion of possible consequences of the neglect of the sympathetic imagination in and for present day South Africa.

Following the plot of William Bartram's Travels through North Florida, this dissertation presents a multi-sited investigation of Florida's rural modernities, illuminating contingent and accidental relationships between disparate social phenomena. Bartram's Travels is a canonical text of Floridiana that can be read as an historical myth chartering the contemporary cultural production of Florida's landscape. Testing its plot against the ethnographic realities in place today leads not to a problematization of the myth but rather a discovery of the structures of feeling at work in a provincial American setting: the dominant, residual, and emergent trends in the social construction and interpretation of a region. Bartram's text becomes a found apparatus for an empirical critique. Borrowing on Bartram's major themes, connections are traced between botany, history, floral art, farming, gardening, small towns, and tourism as sites of invention and imagination, as well as disjuncture and difference.

This dissertation is about shifts in narrative conventions. During the nineteenth century, at the height of industrial capitalism, certain rhetorical conventions were established in migration discourse, which were borrowed from neoclassical economics. Europeans who emigrated to the colonies sought a better life, the prospect of land, and better opportunities. Others who faced religious or political persecution experienced immigration as a condition of exile. In both cases, however, the migrants' reasons for coming and going were borrowed from neoclassical economics. More recently, the rhetoric of 'intentionality' and 'place' can be seen as shifting in stories told by international labor migrants. As the demands of temporary work contracts rapidly change, the where, when, and why of international migration becomes problematic in comparison with the rhetoric of neoclassical liberalism. This dissertation argues that the economics of flexibility and the flexible organization of work hinders the production of future-oriented narratives that inscribe economic rationalism, planning, and individual intention. 'Broken storylines' are examined in three sites: the stories told by temporary labor migrants, the planning structures of multinational corporations (managing the international transfer of employees), and the policies designed by state immigration bureaus (designing visa programs for the entry of skilled laborers). In each case, rational technologies are shown to be short-lasting and/or ineffective. Research was conducted among temporary labor migrants living in Australia and the United States between 2001 and 2005. The theoretical framework for the thesis is borrowed from Max Weber's comparative sociology of economic actions, which stresses the importance of state regulatory mechanisms to the predictability of economic behavior and the construction of substantive rationality. Following the deregulation of state regimes in the 1970s and the 1980s, I argue that a lack of economic stability hampers the production of new ideological narratives by economic institutions. Notably, a deconstructionist approach is adopted whereby historical narratives are viewed as inherently unstable. Tools of analysis are borrowed from literary criticism. The project contributes to the theorization of the relationship between historical narratives and the operations of state market capitalism. It also argues against the claims being made about the rise of a new transnational capitalist class.

This thesis explores how mediums in contemporary Taiwan engage themselves in the complicated project of modernity. In 1989---around the period when the government lifted martial law---a group of mediums founded their own association. It represents a conscious self-recognition of a time-honored religious professional who strives to come to terms with modern frame of professionalization. It is also a spiritual endeavor that tries to respond to contemporary Taiwanese political and moral struggle by appealing to the traditional Chinese cultural resources and the modern educational design. This thesis investigates the theorizations of the Association and explores how its reformative vision combines the ancient Chinese mediumship with modern nationalist discourse and modern Chinese intellectuals' concern for "saving China." The intertwining of religious mission and nationalist concern is further explored by the discussion of the Association's religious practices and activities, including the Moral Maintenance Movement it promoted, the mediums' meeting for the visiting of spirits, the ritual of national protection and spiritual appeasement, and their pilgrimage to the Mainland. This thesis draws on the ideas of de Certeau about the 'writing back the outlawed voice' and argues that the Association writes itself into the official discourse kaleidoscopically, creating a new topography by rearranging available fragments. It neither reiterates the dominant discourse, nor invents a new version; its practice of historical writing constitutes an exercise of reflexive thinking within the structure of normative codes and power relations. The Association's concern for the further education and cultivation of mediums is investigated through their educational activities. Through the care of one's body and spirit, the mediums make efforts to constitute themselves into ethical beings who are able to change a degraded society. The cooperation of medium and spirit is regarded as a co-constituted ethical project. It is explored by Foucault's scheme of the four parameters of the ethical fields. The other reformative visions of mediumship are further investigated through a college student's accounts of mediumistic experiences and a medium writer's works. In sum, these reformative visions of mediumship have added a significant reflective power both to conventional mediumship and to the various trends of modernity.

Messianic Jews assert that one can be Jewish and also believe in Jesus Christ. They claim a continuous tradition originating with the disciples of Jesus, who were all practicing Jews and believers. However, a survey of the development of Messianic Judaism shows that there is no continuous tradition. Messianic Judaism is more accurately considered the result of social forces such as Protestant missions to the Jews, the counterculture movement, and the resurgence of Jewish ethnic identity after the 1967 war. In mixing Jewish heritage and Christian belief, Messianic Jews obscure the Jewish/Christian boundary. This thesis analyses the construction of culture within the framework of that boundary. Field methods were employed to gain insight into two Messianic communities. In considering these groups, particular attention is given to the roles of history and ritual in the mediation of ethnic boundaries and the shaping of a viable Messianic Jewish identity.

This dissertation explores, ethnographically, what the terms "family," "home," and "place" mean for individuals in a specific place, the Texas Hill Country. Contemporary mobility makes the meanings of these terms complex and crucial. While most academic research dismisses nostalgia, I argue that it continues to have powerful familial, regional, national, and even transnational attraction. Such nostalgia suggests a longing for connectedness to the stories and memories embedded in places. It relies especially on rural, or marginalized areas to convey some feeling of richness and fullness, what theorists identify as an "aura of authenticity," for modern urban culture. Through storytelling I evoke local practices that create a sense of place. I also show how rural places like the Texas Hill Country become identified as places of tradition and rootedness to the earth where mobile, urban Americans eagerly seek connection by purchasing antiques and sacred objects. This dissertation lays intellectual and emotional groundwork by orienting the reader to the place and people of the Texas Hill Country, then continues with several narratives focused on a single site to explore how "place" can become a container for memory and story. Subsequent sections include a more essayistic grappling with family, home, and place; a life history of an 80-year old native of Blanco County, Texas; and an examination of the problematics of the social construction of Fredericksburg, Texas, as a "home" and place of history. While I partially focus on narratives of history and how they are constructed, I also tell stories about people of my own times--about how we live in cities created either as placeless, ahistorical malls, or in towns self-consciously constructed as tourist sites; what we do with a commodified history; what life is like in a problematic world of questions regarding our places.

This thesis evolved from the discovery of a specific building type called a mikvah, a Hebrew word, for which the primary translation is pool or gathering of water. Generally used for spiritual cleansing and purification, the mikvah is an immersion pool, that dates as far back as the Torah where the basis for its design and construction is first articulated. My interpretation and re-contextualization of the mikvah has spawned a building with an agenda and that differs from that of the traditional institution. Ultimately, my proposal attempts to reconsider this age old ritual and simultaneously incite thought about the potential for architecture to graft itself into an environment by engaging a context on a different set of terms; from this, a new level of meaning and relevance might emerge. A larger goal is to integrate the form, the experience, the function and the site to the point where the existence of one depends on the presence of the others.