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A consistent trend in global migration has resulted in a rapidly growing multicultural population here in the United States. This trend highlights the importance of increasing nurses' cultural awareness since they will increasingly interact with the diverse populations migrating here from around the globe. This is particularly relevant for providers of obstetrical care since childbirth, being an experience fundamental to human existence and thus a most significant life event, is largely influenced by the culture in which the birthing woman is most familiar. The American Academy of Nurses and the American College of Nurse Midwives, recognize that there is yet no theoretical framework regarding migration and its implications for nursing care during pregnancy and childbirth. Therefore, this investigation seeks a greater understanding of the out-of-culture birth experience from the perspective of Cambodian mothers in the United States. It is hoped this research will contribute to nursing knowledge by extending one's understanding of childbirth as it occurs as an out-of-culture experience for women who have emigrated here from Cambodia.

Drawing on a rich archive of print and electronic sources, in-depth interviews and participant observation in three Slovak lesbian and gay nongovernmental organizations Ganymedes, Museion and Altera, this ethnography presents a culturally and historically situated analysis of the conditions and effects of the emerging visibility of sexual minorities in post-1989 Slovakia. At the core of this study is Foucault's theorizing of sexuality as an effect of discourses, and his genealogical approach to studying the links between discursive practice and different modalities of power. Through uncovering multiple and diffuse sites where heteronormativity is challenged, this study disrupts dominant narratives of social change that efface sexual-political struggle, and situates the emerging visibility of sexual minorities in Slovakia within the larger contexts of postsocialist transformations, European integration and globalization. This dissertation examines the following questions: How can we explain the rise of visibility of sexual minorities in post-1989 Slovakia? What are the sites of heightening visibility? How do various discursive practices effect the formation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer sexual-political subjectivities and activist networks in the context of Slovak language and culture? How do postsocialist transformation, European integration and globalization affect the "queering" of civil society in contemporary Slovakia? Slovak sexual minorities emerged from invisibility with the establishment of LGBT nongovernmental organizations and periodicals in a period of societal crisis triggered by the collapse of communism in 1989 and ensuing political, economic, and cultural change. During Slovakia's accession to the European Union, LGBT activism was further mobilized by access to new knowledge and resources, marginal participation in transversal decision-making, and transnational activist networking. While Slovak LGBT activists still struggle with movement participation, they continue to establish themselves as producers of counter-knowledge and as political force that can no longer be ignored. This study documents their communicative and political intervention as a record of a social movement taking shape, and as an analysis of contested sexual discourses at a key historical juncture. It aims to contribute insight and intellectual energy to future activism and to the evolution of queer culture in Slovakia.

Social theorist Jürgen Habermas describes the public sphere as a network for communicating information and perspectives that creates public opinion, a network which is neither of the state, nor of private economic and household life. The ideal public sphere is a rational communicative process allowing participation in political and scholarly debates towards finding agreement, where speakers and addressees need not talk about themselves. Habermas does not blur the line between public and private; the two complement each other instead. Intersubjectivities reach consensus---or achieve what journalism calls "professional objectivity". Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 1999 to 2003 and contextualized with historical sources, this dissertation explores these Habermasian ideals with data from the everyday life of Croatian journalists, important participants in transforming their post-socialist, post-war nation-state. Using broad strokes, the public sphere model is useful to describe transitional Croatia, but, when we look at the fine grains of the everyday lifeworld and put the newsroom in the wider context of culture, the communicative rationality of the journalistic milieu is not just the complementarity of the public and private, but the complicative, as well. The concept of the public sphere is a useful analytic descriptor for institutional creatures with a "monolithic" identity as "journalist". Ethnography, however, shows us journalists as individuals---individuals with sanguine and affinal ties, with organizational and associative pulls, with overt and covert identities. As I tell the stories of Croatian broadcast reporters and consider their ever-evolving subject matter (in this case, the Croatian presidency), I describe molecular variables of the journalistic field within wider cultural articulations. I find the concept of the public sphere needs to include a rhizomic model of communication, where uncentered connections are made or broken at any given spot, with interruptions and new networking happening at any occasion. As planes of communication mediate between structured orderly thinking on the one hand and the chaos of chance happenings and the complexity of their ever-shifting origins and outcomes on the other, Habermas' modernist attempts to find the normative place in communicative rationality are fleeting when working from the ground up in the Croatian journalistic milieu.

The purpose of this study is to explore the world of anatomical gifts, specifically whole body donations for anatomical dissection, and to examine the relationship between laboratory cadavers and anatomy students. This relationship is rooted in the "anatomical gift" of a body to science. As a result of this gift, the physical remains of a dead person are transformed into a liminal artifact—one that possesses characteristics of both person and thing—whose purpose is to be cut apart for scientific study. Two inherently anthropological concepts that can help us to understand the cadaver and its relationships are "the gift" and the body as material culture. Anthropology has traditionally divided the world in such a way as to separate mind, body, and material things. Yet the gift to science of a dead human body occupies material, biological, and cultural domains—and as such both challenges and sheds light on subdisciplinary boundaries. What sort of people donate their bodies "to science," and why do they do it? How do anatomy students respond to working with cadavers? What is the nature of the relationship between cadaver and student? To address these questions, I focus on the experiences of prospective body donors and occupational and physical therapy students in western Massachusetts. I combine quantitative and qualitative data, drawn from survey questionnaires completed by a self-selected sample of prospective donors and by three cohorts of OT and PT anatomy students, to contribute to our understanding of the anatomical gift, the body as material culture, and subdisciplinary boundaries. As a result of this research, several points have emerged that may be of use to anatomy students, prospective donors, and body donor programs. To further the analysis of whole body donation for anatomical dissection, I propose three lines of more specifically focused research. Such continued research would make valuable contributions to the pedagogy of anatomy. At a broader and more theoretical level, it would also enhance our appreciation of the complex relationships between persons and things, and between the living and the dead, at the intersection of human biological, material, and cultural domains.

Mongolian gazelles (Procapra gutturosa) are one of Asia's last large populations of ungulates and their 275,000-km2 steppe habitat is considered to be the largest remaining example of a temperate grassland ecosystem. The gazelles and their habitat are increasingly threatened, primarily as a result of human-induced activities. In order to provide informed recommendations to best address these threats, studies concerning steppe vegetation composition and nutritional qualities, the degree of and economic factors contributing to wildlife hunting by rural households, seasonal movements, and population and distribution estimates were conducted from 2000 to 2006. The most common forage species in the steppe are Stipa spp. grasses, Artemesia spp. shrubs, and Allium spp. forbs. Steppe vegetation appears to be of sufficient quality to meet Mongolian gazelles' nutritional demands, at least during the summer season. Wildlife harvesting is an important economic and subsistence activity by a majority of rural households with 65% having harvested at least one of the five game species commonly occurring in the steppe. Mongolian gazelles were the most sought after species with 71% of hunting families harvesting an average of 5.6 gazelles/year. As a household's livestock holdings decreased and family size increased they were more likely to participate in hunting activities. A rural household of 5.5 people earned just over US$1,200/year, and hunting households earned approximately 9% of their income from wildlife products. Movements of Mongolian gazelles do not appear to follow a specific pattern and do not show fidelity to any given range. Annual range size of 4 marked adult gazelles was 26,500-km2 with little range overlap occurring between seasons. The Mongolian gazelle population that occurs to the east of the UB-Beijing RR was estimated by driving long distance line transects in May and June 2005. Density estimates ranged between 2.9–10.9 gazelles/km2 suggesting a total population size of 1.126 million gazelles. Herding household density had significant negative impacts on the density of Mongolian gazelles; gazelle numbers dropped exponentially with each additional household per 5.75-km2 block, and gazelles were virtually absent in regions with more than 4 households/block. Conservation actions are needed to ensure the long term viability of Mongolian gazelles.

This dissertation addresses the questions: How do activists sustain hope while increasingly aware of social complexity? How is agentive hope related to experiences of systemic power relations, including class, race, and gender? In a political climate increasingly circumscribed by neoliberal and neoconservative policies and rhetoric, the question of how scholars and teachers, both formal and informal, can support hopeful, agentive, social democratic citizens becomes critical. Employing a mixed genre format, based in an ethnographic position informed by Virginia Dominguez's "politics of love and rescue" and Hirokazu Miyazaki's "method of hope," I examine hope and its relationship to diversity and citizenship through analysis of in-depth field research conducted in undergraduate citizenship education courses. Through both traditional anthropological analysis and a full-length, ethnographically inspired novel, I explore activists' motivation, life stories, and political values, asking how their ability to sustain hope for the short term and the long term articulates with their lived experiences of systemic power relations and their visions of citizenship. Key factors in sustaining a long-term orientation toward hope include perspective-taking ("the wide angle lens"), loving relationships, and doing and reflecting on direct action, especially across social boundaries. I conclude that reflective, relational, action-focused pedagogies can effectively support diverse groups of hopeful, agentive citizens committed to progressive visions of social justice.