Thesis (PH.D.) -- Syracuse University, 2004. / Adviser: Burdick, John S. "Publication number AAT 3132697."

Proefschrift - Amsterdam.

Contemporary scholarship of neoliberalism tends to emphasize its ubiquity, underscoring capitalism's permeation into life's most intimate spheres. However, I show through careful ethnographic description that even within the paradigmatically capitalist conditions of New Brunswick, Canada - popularly christened a 'company province' - marginalized communities continue to maintain anti-capitalist moralities. Based on eighteen months of participant observation, this ethnography examines how an Acadian forest community in northwestern New Brunswick cultivates an alternative regime of values and also how those values are contained, eroded, and politically disarmed. I explain how a moral system based in the division between insiders and outsiders emerged to ensure the survival of rural Acadian communities throughout longstanding historical conditions of material precarity. This moral dualism serves to maintain fierce egalitarianism between insiders while justifying underhanded and illegal techniques for appropriating resources from the outsider sphere. While the persistence of this communitarian, egalitarian, anti-materialist insider moral order and the sharing economy it sustains is notable, especially given prevalent scholarly assessments about neoliberalism's colonization of our very imaginations, I show that maintaining the insider moral order in the face of community members' increasing material engagements with capitalism produces compromises, contradictions, and violences. The Acadians' dualist moral system absorbs hierarchies such as race and gender in ways that ultimately violate insider aspirations to egalitarianism and obstruct the development of insider moral persistence into more politically transformative resistance. Preservation of the insider sphere also demands periodic renegotiation of its boundaries under the pressures of new forms of precarity, such that the cost of maintaining the insider community is the expulsion of some of its members. This dissertation is thus a study of how capitalism comes to accommodate dissident moralities in its midst in ways that defuse their political threat, and the mechanisms by which compliance with capitalism is coaxed and coerced even in contexts of ideological opposition.

My broadest aim in this thesis is to explore some of the central ethical concerns of social anthropologists vis-a-vis the phenomena of development. In particular, what I want to bring out and examine is the dynamics of the 'moral experience' and 'moral force' of anthropologists in this area. I go about this by considering the historical unfolding of the anthropological conceptual and evaluative apprehension of planned social and economic change. On this basis, I also consider the nature of the critiques and contributions that social anthropology has generated. I also make an attempt to review the major conceptual moral controversies and agendas that are intrinsic to development from an anthropological perspective. Whilst the concepts and values that emanate from social anthropology are multi-faceted and many stranded, I believe that the anthropological standpoint is both distinctive and potentially counter hegemonic. I look specifically at the moral resources that can be unearthed from the emerging field of 'development ethics' which is largely articulated in terms of the maxims that are fundamental to Western moral and political traditions. I attempt to set out the terrain of the ethical deliberation of anthropologists involved in development in terms of some of the moral difficulties of Western society. I argue that Western moral reasoning, as a result of deep disagreements about the sources of value human life and society, tends to rely upon procedural, instrumental and coercive ethical frameworks. On this basis, one of my assertions is that communitarian arguments, whilst also being needed as a healthy antidote to the excesses of liberal individualism, also constitute a reflection of the aspirations of people(s), many of whom are beleaguered by the alienation, atomism and instrumentalism of modern society. The communitarian perspective also underpins a political commitment to supporting those besieged indigenous communities that struggle to defend their integrity in the face of the aggressive intrusions of the market mentality. This may involve supporting the maintenance of 'traditional' versions of moral reasoning, well being, and sociality (such as indigenous life-worlds), collective rights in the face of the fragmentary and individuating neo-liberal development policies, and to support the 'construction of new associative networks such as 'new social movements' that represent the aspirations, and embody the values, of marginalised and disempowered social groups.

Thesis (M.A.(Anthropology))-University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Polyvocal hypermedia publications provide an avenue of redress for certain postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial critiques of ethnographic and social sciences research and reportage. The thesis opens with a critical positioning of anthropology in colonialism and the construction of an exoticised "other' with reference to representations of the Nuu¬chah-nulth (Nootka) and Upper St'at'imc (Lillooet) First Nations with whom the author has worked collaboratively. This critical enquiry sets the background for an explication of the current politics, ethics, and methodologies for ethnographic research and publication. In light of these issues and current responses, the latter half of the thesis explores hypermedia publication as an avenue for further experimentation in research and publishing methods. An analysis of the features, benefits, possibilities and challenges of working in hypermedia is provided with illustrations from two hypermedia projects that the author co-produced with Nuu-chah-nulth and Upper St'at'imc organizations. In conclusion, the author supports further experimentation in hypermedia while raising concerns about navigational design and technological obsolescence.

For over two decades, academia and health related fields have battled against the transmission and spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2004, twenty-five million people were reported as HIV positive, with young people having the highest incidence rate. Research has shown consistent condom use can reduce the spread of HIV. However, African sexual behavioural studies show consistent reluctance to use condoms. Based on the principles of social epidemiology, this study uses 2007 sexual behaviour survey data from the Ariaal Rendille community of Karare to delineate barriers and opportunities to condom use among the unmarried men and women. The methodological approach for this study lies in categorical data analysis of responses to questions concerning the function and perceptions of condoms.

In the study of the economic and labour history of the West Coast Native people of British Columbia most research has centered on activities such as fishing, farming and forestry. This thesis turns the attention from what was primarily men's work in the dominant society to the Coast Salish wool working industry where women worked with the help of their children and husbands. I examine the significant economic and cultural contribution Coast Salish woolworkers had on West Coast society, the meeting place woolworkers' sweaters provided between the Coast Salish and the newcomers and the changes which took place in the industry during the last century. This story includes many voices most of which are recorded in newspapers, correspondence and journals, and in the memories of those that lived and worked in the industry.

In the study of the economic and labour history of the West Coast Native people of British Columbia most research has centered on activities such as fishing, farming and forestry. This thesis turns the attention from what was primarily men's work in the dominant society to the Coast Salish wool working industry where women worked with the help of their children and husbands. I examine the significant economic and cultural contribution Coast Salish woolworkers had on West Coast society, the meeting place woolworkers' sweaters provided between the Coast Salish and the newcomers and the changes which took place in the industry during the last century. This story includes many voices most of which are recorded in newspapers, correspondence and journals, and in the memories of those that lived and worked in the industry.

This thesis ethnographically examines the globalising of the Japanese animation (anime) business in the context of the creative industries, of Japan's politico-economic position in Asia, and of brokerage. Influencing the world's entertainment, creators, and youth culture, anime is one of the crucial lenses through which one can examine Japan's presence in the world. Despite the prevalent assumption that anime is globally popular, this thesis highlights the precarious performance of the anime business overseas, and examines it through an entrepreneurial anime business project trying to bridge the Japanese anime business into the Indian market. The ethnography of the project centres on its founding entrepreneur, focusing on how he tried to ally with insiders in the Japanese anime sector and the Indian market. The thesis's 12-month fieldwork accompanied his business in Japan (Tokyo) and India (Delhi), revealing a perspective of the entrepreneur as a broker who intermediates between the discrepant positions of his stakeholders to keep his business afloat. It also highlights the two most critical discrepancies: the dichotomies of art versus commerce (one of the central topics in creative industries studies) and the 'Japanese' versus 'Indian' ways of doing business (one of the prominent topics in Japan's political economy vis-à-vis the Asian region). The ethnography found the entrepreneur's liminal dual agency in bridging, blurring and reorienting the dichotomies was a driving force carrying his business forward. This thesis counterbalances previous anthropological studies on the creative industries (including anime) that tend to advocate the centrality of creators and fans, by focusing on the businessperson in a creative project. It also suggests that the broker is a crucial point of reference when examining how to create workable compromises between art and commerce, and allowing Japanese and Asian businesspeople to get along. The thesis also enhances our understanding of entrepreneurship by revealing most of its function as brokerage.