This study examines the relative influence of traditional and biomedical theories of health and disease on the reasoning about childhood nutritional problems by mothers in rural South India. Mothers with different levels of schooling, traditional practitioners, and medical experts were interviewed. Their explanations of nutritional problems were verbally recorded and analysed using methods of cognitive analyses. / Nutritional concepts and their interpretations given in the mothers' explanations matched that of the traditional theory of Siddha medicine, prevalent in South India. With an increase in formal education, there was an increase in the use of concepts derived from modern biomedical theory. However, the mothers exhibited little understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved. Implications of these findings for designing nutrition and health education are discussed, in relation to knowledge reorganization to replace harmful concepts and relations with beneficial ones.

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Mukti Ashram is a rehabilitation center in north India that works with ex-child laborer boys. Fieldwork completed at the ashram in 1997-98 centered around the issue of the organization's attempt to enact social change through the engineering of community within the ashram's walls. Several fundamental processes that contribute to this goal have been identified: the construction and presentation of personal narratives which are ideally encased in a common structure; the encompassment of heterogeneity through careful focus on a singular point of commonality; and, the creation of national and transnational ties of horizontal solidarity, literal and "imagined." The nature of the activists' intervention, which becomes codified in the dominant ethos of the institution, presents an internal contradiction that is essentially unresolvable. It is found that power is always to some extent fought using those same tools of the powerful. Though in this case their goal of empowering the boys is to some extent compromised, such attempts still constitute a positive influence. Mukti Ashram's example demonstrates both the constraints and opportunities that may be met by organizations that work with subjugated groups. / Graduation date: 2000

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published_or_final_version / Dentistry / Master / Master of Dental Surgery

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This dissertation explores children’s (6-8 years old) perspectives and experiences of well-being in two different cultural contexts: in a Tibetan day-school (India) and in a German day-school (Germany). Ethnographic research was conducted with participants of a second-grade class (mixed gender) for six months at each site, 3-4 days a week in 2012. Participant observation was complemented by interviews with the children as well as with the staff of the school, documented by fieldnotes and sound recordings. Data was collected in line with postmodern grounded theory methodology and preliminary analysis accompanied the process of the fieldwork. The thesis explores the children’s views and social practices related to well-being which prove to be different in both cultures: the Tibetan children emphasized being skilful as a basic condition for well-being, while friendship with peers was most important at the German school. At both sites, the children would establish these conditions for well-being through competitions. Furthermore, the children’s different views and the social practices are considered against the backdrop of two ‘transcultural’ indicators of well-being: self-confidence and resilience. These indicators were not selected randomly but chosen inductively during fieldwork, as the difference in self-confidence and resilience between the children’s groups at each site was noticeable. The thesis demonstrates how these differences in self-confidence and resilience are likely to have been related to a) the children’s particular views and social practices linked to well-being b) the manner in which childhood is constructed within the children’s societies and c) particular basic beliefs and worldviews prevalent within the children’s societies. The results emphasize the usefulness of researching well-being cross-culturally and suggest that (socio-culturally specific) self- and worldviews significantly influence children’s well-being.