Feminism conjures divisive and at times conflicting thoughts and feelings in the current political climate in the United States. For some, Wonder Woman is a feminist icon, for her devotion to truth, justice, and equality. In recent years, Wonder Woman has become successful in the film industry, and this is reflected by the growing community of cosplayers at comic book conventions. In this study, I examine gender performativity, gender identity, and feminism from the perspective of cosplayers of Wonder Woman. I collected ethnographic data using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with cosplayers at comic book conventions in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, about their experiences in their Wonder Woman costumes. I found that many cosplayers identified with Wonder Woman both in their own personalities and as a feminist icon, and many view Wonder Woman as a larger role model to all people, not just women and girls. The narratives in this study also show cosplay as a form of escapism. Finally, I found that Wonder Woman empowers cosplayers at the individual level but can be envisioned as a force at a wider social level. I conclude that Wonder Woman is an important and iconic figure for understanding the dynamics of culture in the United States. In the era of #MeToo and TimesUp, Wonder Woman is a character that defies normative boundaries of gendered expectations.

This thesis examines suicide in Boston's Ethiopian Community. The act of suicide and individual cases are explored through participant narratives. Narratives from family members and acquaintances of those who died by suicide are examined. I rely on in-depth (N=8) and follow-up interviews (N=7). Drawing heavily on culturally constructed notions of self, this thesis explores what it has meant for persons of the Ethiopian community to lose fellow members to suicide. Intersections of emotions, constructions of choice and agency, and idealized notions of self emerge as central themes. The body, in life and death, is situated as a vehicle for communicating dis-eased social relationships and unrealistic cultural expectations. Participants position their perceptions of the deceased in relation to popular preconceived notions of life in the United States and stresses encountered during and after the immigration process. Memory of Ethiopia, the United States, immigration, and the suicide are significant for understanding the rigidity of culturally authoritative truths. This thesis emphasizes the progressive and beneficial methodology of an anthropological investigation into suicide. Understanding the reasons and acquiring specific knowledge about Ethiopian suicide in the United States can contribute to current conversations regarding immigrant suicide. Ultimately, this study aims to contribute to comprehensive prevention measures, which support every individual.

Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Israel between 2013 and 2016, this dissertation examines how clinicians and patients deal with the issues of cultural difference and diversity in Israel’s mental health care settings, which are increasingly called upon to practice “cultural competence.” In 2010s, the Israeli Ministry of Health started to design and execute policy measures intended to target inter-group health disparities and introduce cultural competence in health care institutions. Although modest in scope, these policies are also emblematic of the much larger tectonic shifts that have been reshaping Israeli society over the last three decades, including a neoliberal restructuring of Israeli economy and a decline of the secular Ashkenazi hegemony in political and cultural spheres. In this context, the Ministry of Health measures may be understood as a reaction of a particular segment of the Israeli political elite to the new realities and as an attempt to address mounting public anxieties, while also working within the existing neoliberal and largely non-pluralist political-economic framework. The specific discourses of the cultural competence policies construe culture as a property of individual patients that individual clinicians and institutions should learn to accommodate, without attending to structural or political considerations. And yet, the actual implementation of the governmental agenda in the sphere of cultural competence training is almost never a mere passive reflection of the official discourses: While echoing some of the essentializing and implicitly hierarchical rhetoric of the official policies, the training also smuggles in quietly subversive approaches to cultural difference and recognition. The impact of this training on actual clinical practice is, unsurprisingly, very limited, and clinicians themselves rarely find the discourses of “cultural competence” resonant or relevant. At the same time, they are constantly engaged in complex moral reasoning and ethical decision-making over the nature and limits of empathy and recognition in the face of cultural alterity and political difference. This dissertation contributes to an interdisciplinary literature on the so-called “psy” or psychological disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis etc.) by proposing an approach that is informed by the anthropology of ethics and morality.

This dissertation provides an ethnohistorical examination of the history, discourses, and practices of the Rifai Sufi order in Turkey. The Rifai order is an upper-middle class Sufi order that is currently under the leadership of an unveiled female shaykha, Cemalnur Sargut (b. 1952). The Rifais imagine Islam as a dynamic “tradition” that can adjust to new spatial and temporal arrangements. They concentrate on the inner meanings of Islam, as expressed in ethical self-formation through the cultivation of love and mindfulness of God. Rifais reconfigure mainstream Muslim gender discourses by discarding the practices of veiling and gender segregation, and extending women’s public participation to the level of community and spiritual leadership. The Rifai sheikhs reformulated the tradition by situating it within ongoing projects of sociocultural, political, and economic change over the past century in Turkish society. During Turkey’s transition from an empire into a nation-state in the 1920s, Kenan Rifai emphasized the compatibility of Sufi tradition with the processes of modernization, secularization, and Republican reform. During the Cold War Era, Samiha Ayverdi entwined the precepts of the Rifaiyye with the politics of anti-communist conservatism, with her nationalist commitment to the preservation of Turkey’s Islamic heritage in literature, music, fine arts, and architecture. Since the early 2000s, Cemalnur Sargut has reinterpreted the Rifai way of life in a manner that ethically engages the lifestyles, sensibilities, and tastes of Turkey’s diverse middle-class. Sargut has also contributed to the global revitalization of Sufism by building global Sufi networks through a series of academic initiatives, including establishing endowed professorial chairs and Sufi research institutes around the world. This study contextualizes the revival of alternative piety movements like Rifaiyye within the broader changes taking place in Turkey. The changes highlighted include the expansion of a culturally hybrid middle class, growing disillusionment with social and economic neoliberalism, increased public interest in Islamic religiosity, and the global revitalization of Sufism. The study also challenges the portrayal of Islam as a homogeneous, immutable, and ahistorical religion grounded in totalizing and essentialist readings of the sacred texts, highlighting the varieties of Islamic traditions and pious subjectivities in contemporary Turkish society. / 2027-11-30T00:00:00Z

This dissertation examines the role of women in post-Soviet Kazakhstan as both productive members of society and the loci of national anxieties that have created fault lines in public opinion, government policy, and international development programs. It explores how Kazakh cultural concepts of ideal womanhood are used to identify categories of women eligible for state support or who become targets of community intervention. These include survivors of domestic violence, unwed young mothers, and “at risk” girls who may strive to fulfill or deviate from the expected Kazakh norms deemed appropriate for their specific life stage. These contested expectations are embodied in national legislation, international human rights programs, and Kazakh civil society. They are implemented by social service officials who provide the aid and who perceive the women involved in them as objects of their reform projects. Ethnographic fieldwork that provided the bulk of the research data was conducted between March 2018 and August 2019 in urban Almaty and provincial cities in southern and eastern Kazakhstan in domestic violence shelters, homes for unwed mothers, and girls’ empowerment programs. This included extended periods of participant observation supplemented by open-ended interviews with activists, crisis shelter directors and employees, and other stakeholders to generate multi-cited case studies. Because media played a significant role, the research incorporated an analysis of relevant Kazakhstani films and plays that highlight the challenges of negotiating ideals of womanhood and motherhood, propriety and martyrdom, which are also central themes animating my text. The research concludes that women in these programs respond to directives from international human rights organizations, national legislation, and changing social mores by deploying and reinterpreting Kazakh life stage ideals of womanhood. In so doing, they illustrate how women’s work and reproductive choices intersect with the goals of a national state, a changing Kazakh society, and the global discourse on women’s rights. As a contribution to the larger discourse on identity and citizenship in post-Soviet states, gender, Islam, and contemporary Kazakhstan, this study illustrates how “women’s issues” remain an unusually sensitive barometer of social values where the implicit becomes the explicit. / 2024-03-04T00:00:00Z

The political entity of the County of Franklin, Massachusetts was created in 1811 and exists at the pleasure of the state legislature. In 1986, Franklin County politicians were given the opportunity to write a charter for the county, an event which was unique in 300 years of Massachusetts political history. I investigated the political processes by which Franklin County politicians articulated and put into operation their ideals of democracy, representation, and other dominant political concepts. My emphasis was to explore these processes anthropologically in order to discover the cultural and social processes at work in political arenas. I also document a historical moment. I conducted two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Franklin County (1986-1988) utilizing participant-observation techniques, formal and informal interviewing and archival research. My focus of attention was on the development of political conflicts between two factions who struggled to gain control of Franklin County's future. In addition, I focused on how such political operators excluded and silenced public voices and professional staff which sought to interject themselves into the conflicts. This dissertation contains representative segments of political discourses as they were framed within specific struggles. I identify such dialogues as the chief symbolic capital which was mobilized, domesticated, and used to produce various documents containing plans for the future of the county. In addition, I present my observations and information gleaned from interviews in order to describe the larger social contexts which contained this particular struggle. In my discussion, I locate my investigation of the charter process within theoretical treatments of power relations. I also discuss the implications of the charter commission in terms of public policy. And finally, I point to epistemological and methodological implications and challenges of conducting traditional anthropological fieldwork among powerful peoples.

Since 1984, injecting drug users have been a subculture at high risk for infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). They become infected with HIV through the sharing of infected needles and other drug equipment, and through unprotected sex. These practices are embedded in the normative behaviors of the subculture; behaviors which addicts have difficulty changing. Persons who fall victim to drug abuse share a common career that begins with the reasons they began to inject drugs and coalesces in the processes by which they maintain their addiction. The most significant aspects of this career are those that put an injection drug user in life or death situations. Their perception of risk, their risk taking, and the forces of withdrawal that lead to the taking of risk all play an important role in the transmission of HIV. Central to the career of the addict are the social agencies with which s/he may come in contact. Whether geared to rehabilitation, incarceration, or AIDS prevention, social agencies are often the only institutions to interpret, intervene, and offer assistance on behalf of the drug user's current situation. Yet, these social agencies have been unsuccessful at curtailing the rate of infection among drug addicted persons. An innovative approach that addresses the complex problem of drug addiction and AIDS is proposed and demonstrated. This approach encourages the development of a user-driven model of drug recovery. A comprehensive approach to the dual epidemic of AIDS and drug abuse is needed to arrest control of the forces that threatens the life of a growing number of young adults nationwide.

This is a study of how sixteenth-century Spaniards used fundamental aspects of material culture, and the ideas and attitudes surrounding them, to subjugate the Aztec empire of Mexico. Edicts, relaciones, court decisions, letters and chronicles have been employed to discern the attitudes of the time. Those attitudes reveal that food, clothing and shelter were used both to distinguish Spaniards from Amerindians and to bind conquerors and conquered to the same social system. Principles of hierarchy and reciprocity were employed by Spaniards and Amerindians to define the appropriate customs and means of exchange in a new, syncretic culture of conquest. Together, Spaniards and Amerindians created a sixteenth-century body politic and organic society in what Europeans deemed a "New World".

The objective of this study is to identify factors influencing language planning decisions in Mozambique by analyzing the relationship between official language policy and popular language practice. The study presents a macro perspective by examining historic and current accounts of the formulation of national policies, the official discourse, and focuses on a micro perspective by revealing ethnic and linguistic realities facing adults in Maputo, the popular consciousness. An ethnographic approach is used to gather artifacts, documents, in-depth interviews, and participant observations which together formulate the official and popular discourses. In the analysis, the promotion of a national ideology in a newly formed multilingual state is related to the realities of a multiethnic, multicultural community. During the struggle for independence, the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) promoted Portuguese as the language of liberation, due to Mozambique's diverse linguistic composition of more than thirteen major languages and their many dialects. Since independence in 1975, Portuguese has been used as the official language, promoting national unity with the explicit intention of eliminating tribalism, regionalism and racism. However, fourteen years after independence, an estimated 70% of the population remains illiterate in Portuguese as Mozambique faces war and political and economic change. Participants in the study identify three major areas of conflict regarding current popular uses of Mozambican languages versus Portuguese: the maintenance of traditional knowledge, language strategies for survival in the Mozambican state, and perceptions of Mozambican identity. The official discourse indicates that the national ideology, which mandates unity and modernity, has not promoted language policy accommodating ethnic and linguistic diversity. Language planning theory, especially related to the promotion of nationalism, is examined and discrepancies between language policy and language practice are identified. The study reveals that language planning necessitates historic and ethnographic accounts of official and popular discourses to arrive at new appropriate language planning strategies meeting official and popular needs.

The nature of the difficulty of nine-dot problem solving has been controversial. A commonly accepted explanation is that problem solvers often fixate on the square shape of the dot pattern and confine their lines to the square area. This study was designed to test how the phenomenon of the assumed boundary is affected by culture, age and sex. The study used the nine-dot problem as the task and age, culture and sex as independent variables. One hundred and sixty mainstreamed Chinese and mainstreamed American participants from four age groups: 6-7, 10-11, 15-16, 17-18, half of whom were males and half of whom were females, participated. The data examined to analyze participants' problem solving processes were: (1) the number of solution attempts, (2) the time spent before and after extending the boundary formed by the dots, and (3) the total time spent in solving the problem, or, in working on the problem, if participants gave up before finding the solution. The results of the study revealed a significant cultural and age effect in the number of successful solvers and the time spent on the problem. Although the overall sex difference was not significant an interaction between culture and sex was found. American girls spent less time on solving the problem than boys while Chinese girls spent more time than boys to solve the problem. Additional findings of this study were: (1) a new version of solution to the nine-dot problem and, (2) evidence that Chinese children who had taken thinking courses could solve the nine-dot problem more effectively than children who had not. The implications and limitations of the study were discussed, and recommendations for further research were made.