<p> This thesis is a study about Mapuche rural-urban, indigenous migration in Chile and how Mapuche have experienced their individual and familial migratory processes. Previous studies on Mapuche migration have taken a macro approach to examine this phenomenon and have concentrated on the experiences of migrants after their migration has taken place. This thesis, adding a new perspective to the current body of knowledge, studies the migration of Mapuche beginning with the inception of the process and continues through to trace their settlement in Santiago. With this, the study analyzes the character of Mapuche migration, examining the reasons and expectations behind this migration as well as how this process has been initiated and sustained through time. In addition to this, the study focuses on the social and cultural consequences that stem from Mapuche migrating and settling in Santiago, and pays special attention to the role that kin networks have in this process. This thesis, then, analyzes the particular characteristics of Mapuche rural-urban migration and considers the significance of individual agency in constructing different migratory paths by examining individual migration stories. In this thesis, I also examine the different mechanisms that Mapuche in Santiago have put in place to grapple with the social and cultural challenges behind their migration to and settlement in the city.</p>

<p> Current psychological research into religiosity can be located into two paradigms: the cross-cultural psychology interpretive tradition and the cultural psychology interpretive tradition. To generate support for the latter paradigm, American and Mainland Chinese respondents were asked to describe a religious or spiritual other as a way of exploring the impact of individualism-collectivism cultural values on expressions of religiosity. Statements from Chinese respondents were expected to have more socially related content compared to American respondents. Responses were analyzed using a linguistic analysis computer program with attention given to social process, family, friends, and humans content. Raters were also instructed to generate categories based on the content of the responses. No significant differences were found between American and Mainland Chinese respondents on all four content categories. Religious self-rating was found to significantly predict family content, while religious and spiritual self-ratings significantly predicted humans content. Raters also generated 11 categories from American responses, and 10 categories from Mainland Chinese responses. Methodological and theoretical implications are also discussed.</p>

<p> The aim of this thesis is to study the practices and background of Voodoo in New Orleans through a holistic lens. This holistic lens includes researching the history of Voodoo in New Orleans, previous research done on Voodoo practice in New Orleans, contacting current practitioners and performing informal interviews, and participant-observation of New Orleans Voodoo rituals. This work is divided into three sections; the first delves into the history and current state of Voodoo of New Orleans. The second section discusses how Voodoo has influenced other cultural areas in New Orleans. The third section discusses how Voodoo and tourism interrelate with one another. The conclusion of this work addresses how through out history, influences on other areas of New Orleans culture, and tourism, the original ideas of Voodoo in New Orleans has stretched out beyond the original spectacle of Voodoo into the various ways individuals think about Voodoo. This also influences how practitioners view their own practice by reacting to how non-practitioners view Voodoo. It is like the metaphor of the snake eating his own tail, how Voodoo is practiced and then perceived by outsiders keeps feeding into each other.</p>

<p> Since the late 1980s, Canadian museum personnel have been actively engaged in collaboration with Aboriginal communities on issues to do with exhibition design and collections management. Despite these collaborative successes, tensions between museum employees and Aboriginal community members are commonplace, indicating that problems still remain within the relationships that have developed. </p><p> This thesis examines the implications of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada for the future of museum practice. It argues that unresolved colonial trauma is preventing those in the museum field from moving past an initial phase of relationshipbuilding to a successful era of partnership. When viewed through the lens of trauma, the museum field is heavily influenced by denial on the part of museum personnel as to the extent of violence committed against Aboriginal peoples at Indian Residential Schools and the resulting level of dysfunction present in current relationships between Aboriginal communities and non-Aboriginal museum employees. I provide a revised account of Canadian history, which includes the aspects of colonialism that are most often censored, in order to situate these problems as part of the historical trauma that is deeply embedded in Canadian society itself.</p><p> John Ralston Saul&rsquo;s concept of the M&eacute;tis nation is used as a framework for reconciliation, portraying Canada as a country that is heavily influenced by its Aboriginal origins despite the majority belief that the national culture has been derived from European social values. As a response to this proposition, the Circle is presented as the primary Canadian philosophical tenet that should guide both museum practice and Canadian society in the future. </p>

This study concerns itself with the relationship between game design and emergent social behaviour in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds. This thesis argues for a legitimisation of the study of ‘communities of play’, alongside communities perceived as more ‘serious’, such as communities of interest or practice. It also identifies six factors that contribute to emergent social behaviour and investigates the relationship between group and individual identity, and the emergent ways in which these arise from and intersect with the features and mechanics of the game worlds themselves. Methodology: Under the rubric of ‘design research’, this study was conducted as an ethnographic intervention, an anthropological investigation that deliberately privileged the online experience whilst acknowledging the performative nature of both game play and the research process itself. The research was informed by years of professional practical experience in game design and playtesting, as well as by qualitative methods derived from the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Computermediated Communications and the emerging field of Game Studies. The process of conducting the eighteen-month ethnographic study followed the progress of a sub-set of members of the ‘Uru Diaspora,’ a group of 10,000 players who were made refugees when the massively multiplayer game ‘Uru: Ages Beyond Myst’ was closed in February of 2004. Uru refugees immigrated into other virtual worlds, using their features and capabilities to create ethnic communities that emulated the culture, artefacts and environments of the original Uru world. Over time, players developed ‘hybrid’ cultures, integrating the Uru culture with that of their new homes, and eventually creating entirely new Uru and Myst-inspired content. The outcome is the identification of six factors that serve as ‘engines for emergence’ and discusses their relationship to each other, to game design, and to emergent behaviour. These include: • Play Ecosystems: Fixed-Synthetic vs. Co-Created Worlds: Online games and virtual worlds exist along a spectrum, with environments entirely authored by the designer at one end, and those comprised primarily of player-created content and assets on the other, with a range of variations between. The type of world will impact the sort of emergent behaviour that occurs, and worlds that include player-created content will be more inclined to promote emergent behaviour. • Communities of Play: Distributed groups formed around play demonstrate distinct characteristics based on shared values and play styles. The study describes in detail one such play community, and analyses the ways in which its characteristic play styles drove its emergent behaviours. • The Social Construction of Avatar Identity: Individual avatar identity is constructed through an emergent process engaging social feedback. • Intersubjective Flow: A social reading of the psychological notion of ‘flow’ that describes the way in which flow dynamics occur in a social context through play. • Productive Play: Countering the traditional contention that play is inherently ‘unproductive’ as some scholars suggest, the thesis argues that play can be seen as a form of cultural production, as well as fulcrum for creative activity. • Porous Magic Circles and the ‘Ludisphere’: The magic circle, which bounds play activities, is more porous than game scholars had previously believed. The term ‘ludisphere' is used to describe the larger context of aggregated play space via the Internet. Also identified are leakages between ‘virtual worlds’ and ‘real life’. By identifying these factors and attempting to trace their roots in game design, the study aims to contribute a new approach to the making and analysis of user experience and creativity ‘in game’. The thesis posits that by achieving a deeper cultural understanding of the relationship between design and emergent behaviour, it is possible to make steps forward in the study of ‘emergence’ itself as a design material.

This ethnographic study examines the understanding ofthe concept of sex (pheet) among university students in Mahasarakham province in northeast Thailand. Specifically, it describes different categories of sex and related concepts, meanings associated with each, and how those are communicated through social action. Northeast Thailand has shifted away from an agricultural-based society to a cash-based agro-industrial one. This, combined with the influence of a Bangkok-centered national elite and international globalization, has resulted in an influx of new cultural knowledge and shifting meanings related to sex, some reinforcing each other, others in conflict. Many of these conceptual conflicts are located in tensions between tradition and modernity, local culture and Bangkok culture, and Thai-ness and foreign-ness. At these points oftension, meanings are reinterpreted and recreated. This study relies on a variety of research methods including participant-observation, interviews, and questionnaires, and thus is methodologically situated at a crossroads of qualitative and quantitative traditions. This mixed method approach facilitates a broad understanding ofthe concept of sex, including categories of sex, sex roles, and sex behavior.

The original question this study posed was, "How do contemporary Christian Hawaiians identify themselves between being Hawaiian and being Christian?" This hypothetical question is fundamentally oriented in the present. In order to find better answers to the question, however, a broader historical framework is indispensable. Therefore, the dissertation is composed of two focuses: the past and the present of Hawaiian Christianity--mainly in the Congregationalist tradition. They are separated not only by time and target of investigation but also in the analytical methods used for approaching targets. However, I attempt to present them in such a manner as to make interpretation of the past and the present resonate. In the historical study of this dissertation, I investigate how Hawaiians incorporated Christianity in the latter half of the 19th century and how Hawaiian culture functioned in the process of incorporation. By locating two dissident Hawaiian Christian movements within a broader social context of the colonial condition, I aim to describe how Hawaiians were dealing with Christianity. Although their results were different, leaders of the two movements attempted to seize the initiative and establish sovereignty in the church. They wanted to establish a real church for Hawaiians. In the study of contemporary Hawaiian Christianity, I investigate how Christian Hawaiians are constructing their identity and faith. Through examining their narratives on how they deal with Hawaiian traditions and Christianity, I show how their identity and faith are diversely constructed but loosely unified under the problem that originally brings about diversity. I also point out that Christian Hawaiians are facing difficulty in the process of establishing Hawaiian Christianity because of the post-colonial condition, in which Hawaiian-ness (a symbolic complex of Hawaiian history, culture and identity) is competitively represented and has never had a fixed unitary meaning. By juxtaposing the past and present of Hawaiian Christianity, I argue that Hawaiian-ness can serve not only as a problem but also as a catalyst when constructing Hawaiian Christian faith in the present. As a post-colonial problem, the relation between culture and faith becomes a significant issue for Christian Hawaiians, who desire to make Christianity Hawaiian.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the historical traditions and ritual representations of Incan society through the conceptual framework of dual organization. Broadly defined as the division of society into opposed halves, dual organization has been an enduring pattern of social classification in South America. In Pre-Hispanic times, it characterised the social and spatial organization of Cuzco -- the imperial capital of Tawantinsuyu -- which was divided into two asymmetric moieties, Hanan and Urin, composed of several elite factions. Analysis of this system has been hitherto restricted to a branch of ethnohistory informed by structural and cultural anthropology. Very few works have yet investigated the dynamics that linked dualism with the shaping of an historical consciousness proper to the pre-Hispanic ruling elite. The present thesis offers to fill this lacuna in modern scholarship by reassessing Incan narratives in the light of moiety division. In doing so, it identifies the traits proper to two distinctive bodies of Incan traditions, each of which encloses a particular, and mutually conflicting, representation of the past reflecting the moieties' respective perspectives. Such an approach not only harmonizes many discrepancies affecting primary sources on Incan society, but also enables a re-examination of other forms of dualist representation in Incan religion. Three case studies are therefore considered through this methodological approach: the structure of Incan cosmology, the seasonal division of the metropolitan calendar, and the ritual expressions of social antagonisms. The first case study suggests that Incan religion was divided into two sub-cults headed by divinities that were complementary in overseeing water regulation throughout the annual cycle. The second case study shows that the dual division of yearly activities did not coincide sensu stricto with the temporal setting of the Andean meteorological seasons, but rather followed a time framework guided by communal activities and astronomical knowledge. The last case study reveals that the formal model of the conical clan not only clarifies the underlying structure of Incan descent, but also enlightens the triggering mechanisms of Incan succession wars and moiety conflicts. The outcome of this work decolonizes the Andean past by refining our understanding of historical representations in pre-colonial societies.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco with the University of California, Berkeley, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4757. Advisers: Sharon Kaufman; Vincanne Adams.