NATURE'S CLASSROOM: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDY OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION DOROTHEA JODY OWENS ABSTRACT This ethnographic case study examines the dynamic relationship between culture and environmental education within the context of a specific Florida-based public education program. The School District of Hillsborough County (SDHC) offers the program through a three-day field trip to the study site, Nature's Classroom, and accompanying classroom curriculum. The site is located in Thonotosassa on the Hillsborough River, and serves approximately 13,500 to 15,000 sixth grade students annually. The key purpose of the research was to explore public education in a local setting as a vehicle for the transfer and acquisition of cultural knowledge, values, beliefs, and attitudes related to the environment. My primary research question is as follows: What role do American cultural values play in the public education system, as demonstrated in environmental education at Nature's Classroom? Factors that guided data collection include the sociocultural and historical context, the field site itself, curriculum development and content, delivery of the curriculum to students, student outcomes, and additional or external factors that could potentially influence outcomes. This dissertation explores the six factors using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods for data collection and analysis. Methods include participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival document reviews. Results indicate that environmental education at this site has evolved in tandem with broader sociocultural trends in environmentalism, anthropology, and environmental education. Students show positive gains in knowledge and skills related to the environment.

This study investigates how heterosexual young people understand and manage risks related to meeting sexual partners online in the United States. The purpose of this study is to help inform the development of culturally-appropriate sexual risk communication and health promotion messages for young people by linking public health knowledge of adolescent sexual health and eHealth with anthropological theories of risk. With qualitative data from two rounds of semi-structured interviews and two group interviews with university students in central Florida, this study shows how young people experience and prioritize more social-emotional risks in meeting online-to-offline sexual partners compared to physical risks. The prominence of these social-emotional risks implies the need for more health promotion messages that incorporate both physical and social-emotional health risk communication.

The scale and severity of cancer, specifically breast cancer, remains significantly different across the spectrum of low-income to high-income countries. This study explores women’s beliefs about breast cancer and associated prevention and health-seeking behaviors in a rural area of Uganda. Through a critical medical anthropological perspective, the study examines the social, cultural, and economic factors that shape women’s understanding of cancer, and breast cancer specifically, and that influence their use of biomedical services. Data were collected over a three-month period through 35 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with 10 women older than 18 years in the rural setting of Nakirebe within Mpigi District, and through five interviews with health care personnel from a private and a government health care facility in Mpigi District. Quantitative and Qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 23 and MAXQDA 12.0.2, respectively. Findings suggest that women in this rural setting have limited access to screening and incomplete knowledge about breast cancer, and cancer in general, and internalize fears of a cancer diagnosis. No women were diagnosed with any type of cancer at the time of this study. Common attitudes towards cancer from the women include inevitable death, cancer is caused by contact with artificial substances and/or germs, and cancer causes pain, wounds that never heal, and the removal of body parts. Recommendations for improving cancer control and management in rural Uganda through awareness initiatives and community health outreach programs are presented.

With the advent of the telephonic and technological healthcare revolution, pharmaceutical corporations seek to improve patient compliance and quality of life by contracting with services providers. As an employee of one such provider, working for more than three years on a medication for the neurologically degenerative disease, multiple sclerosis, this investigation utilizes a mixed methodological approach. In order to improve and diversify the clinical services provided to patients, I was contracted as a consultant. I interviewed phone and PRN nurses, developed and released a PRN survey, and interviewed patients living in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area. The combined experiences and expertise of the three groups who participated would serve to inform and develop new programs and services for patients with differing disease states. The research resulted in a re-imagining of the social networking theory of health, as well as the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, to serve the evolving tele-health and technologically based healthcare workplace.

No description available.

Focusing on the everyday lives of middle-class English families in a medium size town situated in the Midlands, this doctoral thesis contributes to anthropological debates on the topics of human agency, time, domesticity, mothering, and kinship. Organized upon the idea that cultural models of time are inextricably linked to understandings of agency (Greenhouse 1996), the thesis links Moore s (2011) post-vitalist theoretical framework and the work of Foucault (1990, 2000) on ethical practices, with Gershon s (2011) critique of neoliberal agency . The concept of ordinary agency is proposed for situating everyday actions as significant actions that contribute to social transformation. Three cultural models of time are identified spontaneity, anticipation and family time and the types of ordinary agencies that they engage are described in three dedicated chapters. The first chapter discusses the theoretical framework of the thesis. The second chapter addresses methodological issues, and discusses the methods that the author developed during her ethnographic fieldwork for looking at people s relationships with time. The third chapter addresses the time mode of spontaneity, presenting ethnographic examples of digital media use at home, and introducing theoretical tools for situating the forms of agency engendered by spontaneity. The fourth chapter looks at the time mode of anticipation in relation to mothering, motherhood and care. This chapter is accompanied by a video component, titled Mum s Cup and situated in the appendix of the thesis. Based on material that the participants filmed in solitude, for a self-interviewing with video task, Mum s Cup is a visual point of departure for theorising the Mother-Multiple ontological position that is described in chapter IV. Alongside providing a visual ethnographic lever for endorsing a theoretical concept, the video project also reflects on the relationship between the researcher and the participants, a relationship that, for various reasons (some related to length limitations), is not fully described in the textual corpus of the thesis. Discussing two types of domestic sociality, the fifth chapter looks at family time and at the forms of agency engendered by the idea and by the experience of having a family-style lifestyle (Strathern 1992), and it draws on, and contributes to, bodies of literature on English kinship. The last chapter addresses the context of the research which is an interdisciplinary project looking at domestic energy consumption ; it situates the position of the author in relation to the domestic sustainability agenda and to debates on interdisciplinarity, and it formulates ideas about possible applications that the anthropological knowledge gained by the author through her research could have in relation to the context that originally framed and facilitated the research.

There is limited anthropological research on inclusive play and universally designed playgrounds and this study aims to make some contribution in this field. This was a qualitative research study guided by anthropological theory and methods, conducted for For the Love of the Lake (FTLOTL) Foundation. FTLOTL is a non-profit organization located in Dallas, Texas, dedicated to White Rock Lake Park's maintenance. In 2014, FTLOTL became of the view that the park's current playgrounds lacked accessibility for differently-abled children. Therefore, FTLOTL decided to undertake a renovation project of Flag Pole Hill playground to incorporate inclusiveness and diversity in the playground design. The overarching objective of this exploratory, ethnographic needs assessment was to provide insights for an inclusive playground using universal design for families with special needs children. Fourteen parents, each with at least one child having physical, social, or intellectual disabilities in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Texas metroplex were interviewed. The interviews were semi structured, each lasting for about an hour and were digitally recorded. Later these audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and then coded using Dedoose. The coded data was synthesized into coherent themes and sub-themes and finally organized into formal research findings. Observations were made of existing universally designed as well as typical playgrounds in this region. All parents interviewed supported the playground initiative and gave suggestions for physical accessibility along with social inclusion. They expressed their frustrations and apprehensions about the usability of current playgrounds. They also shared their preferences for facilities, features, and equipment to support their children's physical and social needs as well as their own. There was a unanimous agreement that a universally designed playground would have recreational, therapeutic and emotional benefits for participants and would improve the quality of their family lives and build a more closely-knit community.

This thesis explores the social and political relations of an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Senegal. NGOs and international development have been the subject of research from a number of different perspectives, including the politics (and anti-politics) of development, post-development, structural violence and the ‘everyday lives' of NGO participants and workers (Ferguson 1990; Escobar 1995; Farmer 2004; Bornstein 2005; Hilhorst 2003). The present study builds on this scholarship through an ethnographic exploration of the networks of people involved with Tostan, an American NGO based in Senegal whose developmental objective is to engender social change among rural groups in Senegal (particularly those that practice female genital cutting), using a human rights education framework. Through identification and scrutiny of the organisation's macro- and micro-level social relations, I critically examine how ‘development' operates as a cultural and political process. I focus analytically on conceptions of knowledge and ignorance, particularly the ways in which these constructions are acted upon and utilised by different actors within the organisation. I argue that, as an NGO (and thus a ‘moral actor,' Guilhot 2005: 6) within the contemporary donor-driven development industry, a key preoccupation for Tostan as an organisation is the management of perception, or a concern for the ‘spectacle of development' (Allen 2013). Flowing from this argument is the assertion that the activities carried out by actors at every level of the organisation to produce and re-produce particular narratives through strategic knowing and unknowing are as significant (if not more so) as the formal programmatic activities implemented by the organisation ‘on the ground.' As David Mosse argues, development involves not only social work, but also the conceptual work of ‘enrolment, persuasion, agreement and argument that lies behind the consensus and coherence necessary to sustain authoritative narratives and networks for the continued support of policy' (Mosse 2005: 34). As I argue here, NGO actors work to (re)produce, project and protect particular narratives, through the strategic exercise of knowledge and ignorance, in order to access or consolidate positions of power within the politics of aid. Drawing on critical theories of development and human rights (e.g. Sachs 1992; Escobar 1991, 1995; Guilhot 2005, inter alia), within a political context succinctly described by Ellen Foley (2010: 9) as ‘the neoliberalization of just about everything,' I explore how actors across the organisation are linked in a web of cultural and political presuppositions, values, and motivations.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 261 pages. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: This dissertation research is a study of the anthropology of policy with welfare reform in general and charitable choice in particular as its focus. The study begins with the notion that policies work as instruments of governance and consequently have social and political implications. These policies are examined by exploring the manner in which Catholic Charities and policy makers in Florida are responding to the charitable choice mandate and how their views are shaping local policies. The study is framed within anthropological principles pertaining to economic, humanistic and philosophical tenets. The study provides a historical background of poverty, the development of the welfare state in the United States as well as some of the social, economic, and political factors that shape social policies. / ABSTRACT: Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with representatives from Catholic Charities, government agencies, legislative committees, and faith-based organizations, and through document reviews. Data were analyzed qualitatively and were managed using the software Atlas.ti. Analysis of the data show that while there is increased convergence between the state and faith-based organizations (FBOs), there is some hesitancy on the part of religious organizations to assume full responsibility for the poor, particularly without having any funding guarantees. The data also suggests that through the implementation of charitable choice religious organizations face the risk of becoming highly dependent on the state and therefore loose their voice and the possibility of lobbying for the poor. / ABSTRACT: Furthermore, the data suggests that there are some aspects of the implementation of charitable choice that have not received congressional approval and may eventually jeopardize the entire faith-based initiative. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

International aid organizations and wealthy nations have contributed billions to combat the spread and treatment of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa; however, these programs have been critiqued for not addressing the socioeconomic and cultural context of the epidemic, instead relying upon generalized approaches. The prevalence rate in Zanzibar, Tanzania is low in the general population, but high among vulnerable segments of Zanzibari society, resulting in interventions focusing on particular groups (e.g. sex workers, drug users, and men who have sex with men). Through interviews with government agencies, non-profit organizations, medical professionals, vulnerable populations, and HIV/AIDS patients, this paper examines how local realities inform and challenge HIV/AIDS programming in Zanzibar.