The long, protracted civil war, spanning nearly fifty years, in the South American nation of Colombia has displaced almost four million civilians in as much time. Tens of thousands of refugees were resettled in Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela and other neighboring countries. Some, still threatened in their country of first asylum, and resettled to the United States (US) with their families, must learn to navigate the often complex systems of life and living in America. Resettlement programs that focus primarily on immediate needs such as employment and accommodations are aware of the growing need for more long&ndashterm assistance. However, while there is much research on how to improve refugee resettlement services generally, there is very limited research on the nature of services that might be needed long&ndashterm or the duration that they may be necessary, for asylum seekers specifically. This ethnographic research examines in detail the long term needs of two Colombian asylum seekers who resettled with their families to a suburban neighborhood in a city in the southern part of the United States. A series of life history interviews, participant observation, ethnographic immersion and secondary research over the course of a one&ndashyear internship with an agency servicing survivors of political torture &mdash refugees, asylees and asylum seekers &mdash uncovered opportunities for bridging perceived gaps in service and highlighting ones that are critical to the long-term successful resettlement and transition of asylum seekers. Four dominant themes emerged from the research: (1) New Identities / Roles &mdash understanding new constructions of self and other; (2) Belonging &mdash coping with new identities, building trust and setting up roots; (3) Legitimacy &mdash power, representation of asylum seekers and its effects on access to services; and (4) Aspirations &mdash goals for the future.

The goal of this study is to explore specialized and popular cultural models of trachoma, and the interaction between the trachoma elimination program and its target audience in one trachoma hyper-endemic intervention community. Eighty four million people worldwide, mainly children, are infected with active bacterial trachoma. For some, this will lead to painful and progressive corneal opacity and eventual blindness. The disease is most commonly spread by person-to-person contact or by flies, and affects very specific populations living in resource-poor areas such as rural Niger, which has one of the highest prevalence rates worldwide. The World Health Organization formed an alliance that is working toward the goal of eliminating blinding trachoma globally by 2020 through a strategy that includes behavior change communication, drug distribution, and surgery. The elimination program has been at work in Niger since the late 1990's. Trachoma prevalence in Niger showed a dramatic reduction during the beginning of the elimination program. However, disease prevalence has again increased and, at the time of this study, was nearing pre-intervention levels. While poverty is closely related to trachoma, the processes by which this economic state becomes translated into health impacts are complex, but rely on behaviors that are directly linked to disease transmission, prevention, and progression. From a social science perspective, these health behaviors can be studied by exploring the influence of both macro- (economics, structural, political), and micro- (cultural, cognitive, meaning-related) level factors. Cultural models are useful in examining the human relationship with infectious disease and how health-related decisions are made. These shared representations are drawn upon to negotiate well-being and disease, and are impacted by the introduction of new ideas or experiences. This study investigates cultural models of illness and the impact of the trachoma elimination program in one high-prevalence community in rural southern Niger. Using an ethnographic approach, which includes observation, in-depth interviews, and household surveys, data were gathered describing popular representations of the program and the disease in the research community. The main findings of this study show that the biomedical model of trachoma supported by the elimination program, amadari, has entered popular knowledge. However, this cultural model is not regularly applied to eye disease actually experienced by study households, which is seen to fit in the more general and more natural category of ciwon ido. Although the new treatments introduced for trachoma have been embraced by the intervention community, the use of the treatments has been modified to fit within popular representations of illness.

<p> Medical experts claim that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among United States military service personnel, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to an &ldquo;epidemic of suicide&rdquo; in the U.S. However, veterans, military commanders, and mental health providers argue that feelings of grief, guilt, mistrust, rage, and alienation are actually normal moral reactions to the abnormal situations that war creates. Furthermore, they argue that these normal reactions are currently transformed into a psychiatric diagnosis that promises clinical solution &ndash; a cure. Recent epidemiologic studies suggest that evidence-based clinical treatments are ineffective for a majority of veterans with PTSD and that the main barrier to seeking treatment is self-stigma by veterans. This ethnography interrogates the failure in care and vectors of blame that surround it by documenting veterans&rsquo; own critical reactions to being diagnosed and/or labeled with PTSD. These narratives provide a moment to critically examine the medicalization and commodification of trauma, as well as the bureaucratization of care, that continue to negatively impact what I describe as veteranhood &ndash; a deep constellation of personal and military values. Everyday life for veterans becomes a clash of cultural models, worldviews and various stakeholders of their care. The lack of common ground or &ldquo;cultural consonance&rdquo; (versus PTSD/stigma) lies behind the social processes that contribute to veterans&rsquo; uneven reintegration into civilian life. This ethnography provides counter-narratives of emergent veteranhood that challenge the dominant cultural script of &ldquo;stigma as the main barrier to care.&rdquo; These narratives dismantle concepts of self-stigma by shifting the focus from the standard trauma model of victimization towards a productive veteranhood, where agency remains essential to identity and everyday life. Veterans that reframe the post-effects of war as an issue of <i>cultural dissonance,</i> as opposed to a mental disorder, are creating new personal scripts for healing that a medical anthropology and caregivers must account for. Veterans desire solutions for their distress within their communities, their culture(s), not within the confines of a medical clinic or within the categorical parameters of PTSD.</p>

<p> My thesis examines the socially mediated construction of reality, and how through this, laws can come to be perceived as &lsquo;bad&rsquo;. I expand upon Berger and Luckmanns (1966) Social Construction of Reality theory to illustrate this process. A qualitative research approach called ethnographic content analysis or &lsquo;ECA&rsquo; was used to gather data from Twitter and Facebook (Altheide, 1996). With ECA I examine cultural artifacts like postings and publications on the Internet and in these social media networks. I explore how users of Twitter and Facebook construct a reality in which a law becomes bad through habitual use of social media. I illustrate the social mediated perception of &lsquo;bad&rsquo; laws using a case study of a proposed Arizona bill called <i>The Religious Freedom Restoration Act</i>, or &lsquo;Senate Bill 1062&rsquo; (AZ SB 1062). AZ SB 1062 would have protected a businesses right to refuse service to customers and allowed the use of a &lsquo;sincerely held religious belief&rsquo; as a defense in court for discriminating. An analysis of social media content about this &lsquo;bad&rsquo; law contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a broader look at power and influence in social media, how social media enables stereotypes, and the recycling of images and headlines. Social media reinforces the construction that a law is &lsquo;bad&rsquo; based upon carefully constructed repeated headlines that serve to typify a user&rsquo;s knowledge, in the form of an attention grabbing 140-character tweet.</p>

<p> The formation and maintenance of romantic pair bonds is a well-represented topic in human evolutionary sciences. This extensive body of work, drawn mostly from the field of evolutionary psychology, has proposed mechanisms for attracting a mate (e.g., resource display, physical cues), attaining a mate (e.g., intrasexual competition), and keeping a mate (e.g., competitor derogation, emotional manipulation). However, this evolutionary model of human pair bonding has not fully addressed relationship termination. If we accept that we have an evolved suite of behaviors that encourage and facilitate pair bonding, then we must also look to breakups and ask whether evolution has played a role in shaping &ldquo;heartbreak&rdquo;&mdash;the post-relationship grief (PRG) which many individuals endure.</p><p> The evolutionary model of human mating predicts divergent mating &ldquo;agendas&rdquo; for men and women. The first step in our research program was to conduct a modest pilot study to address how and when PRG differs between men and women. This pilot study is included as Chapter One for convenience. Having concluded that many of the existing suppositions about breakups were not supported by our initial inquiry, we set out to expand and revise the current model so that it can be used to make accurate predications regarding a more complex suite of variables (e.g., life history, sexuality). Chapter Two explains the logic and implications of this expansion via the example of a specific breakup scenario: the loss of a woman&rsquo;s partner to a romantic rival.</p><p> After presenting the possible evolutionary cause and adaptive benefits of PRG, we next tested both new and existing hypotheses as they relate to biological sex differences (Chapter Three) and life history variation (Chapter Four) in PRG. This quantitative foundation for ongoing qualitative study concludes with an overview of PRG in a population that is sorely underrepresented in evolutionary literature&mdash;individuals whose sexual orientation is not exclusively heterosexual.</p>

<p> The primary focus of this qualitative grounded theory study was the reasons for the ability or inability of expatriate workers and their families to adjust and adapt to foreign cultures. The goal for this study was to investigate experiences of the whole expatriate family unit, including the children, to identify factors that could contribute to a successful expatriation assignment as well as develop a theory or model that could be used to help guide the success of the expatriate family tour time and decrease expatriate workers&lsquo; failure to complete their assignments. The qualitative grounded theory method was used to analyze the whole of each expatriate family unit&lsquo;s experiences; however, hermeneutic phenomenology as theory was integrated into the study to get to the deeper meanings of families&lsquo; actions, responses, memorabilia shared, and body language as stories were told in conversations and in response to open-ended questions. Seven family units participated in this study, for a total of 23 participants, to include children from age 7 (with parents&lsquo; approval), and contributed to the findings of three main themes, a concept of an expatriation adaptation model, and a list of factors that are essential to global expatriation processes. The theoretical framework that guided the study consisted of family systems theory and cultural leadership theory constructs. The findings resulted from a triangulated data collection process to include questionnaire, one-on-one interviews, and group interviews. The three main themes that developed were 360-degree support, the power of knowledge, and expatriate children as future expatriates and expatriate leaders. The results also resulted in the development of an expatriation adaptation process model as well as a list of factors that could contribute to a successful expatriation assignment with the whole expatriate family unit, which would keep all family members together for the expatriation experience.</p>

<p> The purpose of this artistic self-case study is to explore how the role of the soldier might be transformed from service <i>in war</i> to service <i>for community,</i> via creative exploration of the archetypal figures, Warrior and Shaman. With this in mind, a creative and introspective method was tested for its efficacy in generating new images and stories to promote conflict transformation for our warrior class. </p><p> The strategy of inquiry employed is based on the case study model, modified to be a self-case study. Creation-based data was generated by the researcher to evoke intersubjective dialogue between academically rational and creatively nonrational data and processes in this research. In lieu of the traditional written chapters that comprise the body of a dissertation, &ldquo;creative chapters&rdquo; in the form of mixed media pictorial representations are presented. Data analysis was conducted using Abt&rsquo;s (2005) articulation of Jungian picture interpretation, in order to discern meaning from each creative chapter&mdash;the titles of which served as a query for topics related to the research question. </p><p> A liberation paradigm was then utilized as a critical point of departure, to guide the issues examined (healing and community roles for our warrior class), the people for whom the study is relevant (the warrior class and practitioners working with them), the researcher&rsquo;s role in the study (up front/personal; grounded in experience), and how the research was presented in its final form (written text with supporting pictorial data; conclusions drawn from creative interpretation). </p><p> The combined chapter interpretations were reviewed and analyzed in the concluding chapter for their implications in community praxis with returning soldiers and veterans. They revealed consistent themes of imbalanced masculine and feminine energies, and the need for development of an introspective, Shamanic aptitude by our Warriors in order for them to continue their duty of protection and care of their local communities. </p><p> Recommendations are then made for adapting this research model in community work with soldiers and veterans, along with suggestions for building greater levels of reliability, validity, and generalizability into creative qualitative research. </p><p> Keywords: Warrior, Shaman, trauma, conflict transformation, resilient communities, Jungian, phronesis, counterinsurgency, initiation, creative.</p>

<p> My research examines how the writers of the <i>Granada Pioneer</i>, a newspaper published in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II, used the editorial column of that publication to shape the community identity of that camp. The newspaper was published by Japanese America internees living in that camp, but their readership was composed of Japanese American internees and also non-interned non-Japanese Americans. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, I found that the internee writers were using the editorial column to shape a community habitus within the internment camp while at the same time attempting to reshape the imagined community of "America" within the minds of all their readers. In addition, I found that though the internee writers were subject to administrative censorship, they were able to circumvent that censorship by reprinting editorial columns from mainstream newspapers and thus express sentiments that they themselves were not permitted to published. </p>

This is a dissertation about care. Based on over ten years of experience with Southeast Asia and sixteen months of ethnographic research for this project, I address the issue of caregiving primarily from the perspective of those providing care at home for elderly people in urban Northern Thailand and from the vantage point of national and international public health initiatives aimed at supporting such endeavors. In turn, I use the intimate experiences of caregivers to interrogate the politics of aging, long-term care, and national identity. What emerges is an understanding of caregiving different from that of liberal humanitarianism and biomedicine alike. With a focus on social relationships and embodied care practices, I show how forms of attention, obligation, giving, and receiving in urban Thai settings do not always equate with their counterparts in standard global health accounts. Instead, local values are put into action with significant ramifications for the performance and promotion of care. I examine local and global techniques of power and care embedded in the growing number of volunteer organizations directed at the elderly. With attention to class, religion, and history, I trace the interpersonal, social, and political influences reflected in caregiver subjectivity and propose a distinctly Thai logic of psychosocial support that underlies the experience of the caregivers and aid workers with whom I worked. Examining family dynamics and the stories people tell about the future, I trace a new imaginary for long-term care at play, apparent at both the individual and the institutional level. And I develop the concept of the "social body," arguing that attention to and care of the collective is crucial for making sense not only of the disorienting varieties of volunteerism marking the shifting ground of long-term and end-of-life care in Thailand, but also of the larger scale political upheavals afoot in that country today. / Anthropology

This dissertation is a study about belonging among the Fatanis who are caught between two places, namely Makkah and Jawi. Using historical and ethnographic data collected during two years of transnational fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Malaysia, this dissertation shows that belonging is constituted as much by ideas of community, namely home and the homeland, as it is by lived experience as well as practical and cultural factors. Its central argument is that belonging is unstable, often incomplete, and always contingent owing to the dynamic quality of social life. Belonging is a condition that is volatile. It is not something that can be retained perpetually. A person might experience comfort from belonging someplace at a particular moment, while yearning to be somewhere else simultaneously. Thus, longing often accompanies belonging. In the late-eighteenth century, some Fatani men and women left Patani, on the northern Malay Peninsula, and sailed northwest until they arrived at Makkah. These migrants left in search of safety and inspiration as Siamese armies pillaged their homeland in attempts to depopulate Siam’s recalcitrant tributary kingdom from 1785-1839. Almost two and half centuries later, in contemporary times, the Fatanis are once again on the move. This time, unfavorable conditions in Makkah are the causes of reverse migration to the homeland, which the Fatanis refer to as Jawi. For the Fatanis, who are caught between Makkah and Jawi, belonging is elusive. Makkah, the place and society that many of them consider home, is familiar, but also where their right of residency as foreigners is fragile. On the other hand, Jawi, the homeland, is foreign to the Fatanis despite their status as nationals. From one page to another, this text tells the Fatanis’ stories of pain and yearning, but also of their ingenuity and perseverance. / Anthropology