La thèse analyse les modes de production de valeur et les mécanismes du travail dans un milieu particulier, celui de l'escalade, en empruntant les outils conceptuels de recherches menées dans le domaine de la création. En s'appuyant sur de récentes investigations sur le travail créateur réalisées dans les mondes de l'art, de la mode ou de la communication, cette étude appréhende la figure du grimpeur professionnel comme le résultat d'un processus collectif d'élaboration mobilisant différents groupes d'acteurs. En travaillant ensemble, ceuxci vont produire un idéal, celui du « professionnel » qui, grâce au soutien des marques, des entreprises ou des fédérations, voyage à travers le monde afin de réaliser sa passion. Cette enquête ethnographique menée entre 2012 et 2014 aux Etats-Unis et en Europe de l'Ouest avec certains des meilleurs grimpeurs professionnels mondiaux, des photographes, des vidéastes, des journalistes ou encore des membres de l'industrie spécialisée permet d'éclairer la construction de la « professionnalité » et les mécanismes de travail qui lui sont associés. Il est question, d'une part, d'étudier comment et pourquoi des individus travaillent ensemble et, d'autre part, d'analyser l'organisation et la structuration de ce travail créateur. En effet, derrière le sens et les représentations associés à la figure du « grimpeur professionnel » qui se dédie exclusivement à la réalisation d'une activité primaire, l'escalade, le travail de ce dernier repose fondamentalement sur la polyvalence professionnelle. Ainsi, cette étude explore le quotidien de ceux qui ont atteint le sommet de leur art et fait le pari audacieux que l'analyse réalisée contribue à la connaissance du travail créateur tel qu'il est analysé dans d'autres domaines / This research analyzes the production of value and the transformations of work and labor in climbing by drawing on the conceptual tools of recent research in the realm of creation. Building on studies of creative work in the worlds of art, fashion and communication, this research captures the persona of the professional climber as the result of a collective process of elaboration carried out by different groups of actors. By working together, they produce an ideal of the “professional”, who, thanks to the support of brands, companies and sports federations, travels across the world for climbing. An ethnographic research, conducted between 2012 and 2014 in the USA and Western Europe with some of the best professional climbers, photographers, filmmakers, and industry members, sheds light on the crafting of “professionalism” and the related mechanisms of work. The aim of the research, on the one hand, is to study how and why people work together and, on the other hand, to analyze the organization and structure of this creative work. In fact, beyond the meaning and representations associated with the persona of the professional climber whose work revolves exclusively on the primary task of climbing, the work of professional climbers is fundamentally multilayered. Therefore, this research explores the everyday livelihood of the ones who are at the top of their game and contributes to the knowledge of creative work as it has been studied in other areas

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis explores the different ways in which labour migrants in contemporary South Africa make use of cell phones in their daily lives to maintain their love relationships. I start by tracing the history of labour migration and show how the gradual change of migration has played a role in the assertion of labour migrants in their communities in Cape Town. I look specifically into the use of cell phone by Setswana and Sesotho speaking migrants in Delft, Thornton, Brackenfell and Gugulethu. While the focus of the research is on the role of cell phones in maintaining love relationships between migrants and the partners they left behind ‘at home’, I also show how the negotiation of the cell phone in the social lives of migrants helps build wider social networks. The value of the functions of the cell phone through employed communication patterns that encourage social relations and interactions are also the focus of this thesis.

Magister Artium - MA / This study explores the linguistic landscape of Metrorail in the Western Cape, South Africa. The Western Cape is a diverse, multicultural society with a history of colonialism and imperialism. For this reason, the language/s on signage was explored to reveal differences/similarities between the various groups and cultures within society.This kind of investigation entailed consideration of the signage displayed on trains,stations and other railway infrastructure. Thus, data was collected over a three-month period during 2010 which coincided with the FIFA Soccer World Cup, hosted by South Africa. A combined quantitative and qualitative approach for the analysis of data was supplemented with a multimodal, multi-semiotic approach. In addition, interviews were conducted of a cross-section of commuters as a way to give meaning to the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis explored the extent to which multilingualism and multiculturalism are reflected in the linguistic landscape of Metrorail.The focus of the study was on the degree of visibility of the official and non-official languages on signage, as faced by Metrorail commuters. The findings of the study reveal that the interplay between power relations, prestige, symbolic value, identity and vitality in the linguistic landscape of Metrorail results in a somewhat limited display of multilingualism. The findings also reflect the changed language attitudes and perceptions, the maintenance of power relations, the expression of identity, and the desire to be perceived in a certain way, in a broader South African context. Furthermore,the data reveals that the actual linguistic reality does not accurately reflect the aims of the Western Cape language policy in terms of promoting multilingualism. Moreover, it reveals that English is the preferred language of wider communication and it is also the dominant language on the official and non-official signage in the public space. Although the indigenous African languages, along with Afrikaans, are generally neglected in the public space, these languages are widely spoken by Metrorail commuters. The linguistic landscape of Metrorail therefore does not accurately reflect the linguistic reality of the various speech communities in the Western Cape. The linguistic landscape of Metrorail serves to index the broader social developments of the transformed sociolinguistic South African identity.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The purpose of this study is to investigate the writing identities constructed in the Further Education and Training (FET) Phase and the ways in which these identities either strengthen or impede academic writing at university. Success at university is predominantly dependent on students' ability to express their ideas through writing academic essays or assignments in most faculties. However, studies over the past decade highlight the inability of many South African learners, especially those for whom English is not a home language, to succeed at universities. The poor performance of such students is often linked to the lack of adequate preparation in the FET Phase, which is grades 10 to 12, the grades prior to entering first year undergraduate programmes. The significance of this study is that it sheds light on the discourse features of policy, texts, pedagogy and assessment in the FET Phase and the consequences of these for the construction of writers' identities. Further, it foregrounds the ways that policy positions teachers, learners and learning despite diversity in school cultures, identities and histories, and more importantly the ways that unique local pedagogical contexts construct writer identities as a bridge towards engagement in academic essays and the discourses valued at higher institutions. The intention was thus twofold: on the one hand to understand the writer identities constructed in the FET phase and secondly to shed light on the ways that these identities intersect with academic writing, in an attempt to inform first year writing programmes at universities. This was an ethnographic study that included participant observation, interviews with teachers and document analysis of national curriculum policies, grade 12 English Additional language external question papers and first year student texts. The participants were two grade 10 English classes from two schools with different profiles in terms of learner background, linguistic repertoire, and socio-economic circumstances. The rationale for focusing on grade 10 is that it is the first initiation point into the FET Phase and as such an important site to investigate the ways in which writing identities are activated. I thus ‘shadowed’ these learners for two years, up to the end of grade 11. Finally, I analysed first year student texts produced by learners from these two schools in their first year of study at a Cape Town university. In order to engage with my data, I first drew on Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus and capital, to illuminate the ways in which national policies constructed theories and pedagogies of language teaching and learning, and positioned teachers, as well as the consequences of these policies and positionings for constructing sound writer identities. I then focused on the different organizing practices at the two schools, in order to foreground positionings enacted in local contexts. As a result, the study sheds light on the ways that writer identities were activated at two secondary schools in Cape Town, both of which served a previously disadvantaged population but with one classified as poorly resourced while the other enjoyed the status of a well-resourced school. My study centred on the visible and invisible curricula, the differing kinds of cultural capital they produce and the conversion of this capital into other forms of cultural and symbolic capital (such as access to university) which may eventually be converted to economic capital in the form of access to well-paid kinds of employment. Secondly, I drew on Systemic Functional Linguistics, with its conception of language as socially produced and politically situated and its development by the 'Sydney school' into genre-based pedagogy, as an analytical lens to unpack the language learning and teaching theories underpinning policy documents. This lens was also useful for evaluating the extent to which curriculum, pedagogy and assessment tools inducted learners into the key 'genres of schooling' (such as information report, explanation, and argument) that are necessary for success across the curriculum at school and university. Most importantly, it allowed for a rigorous linguistic analysis of first year student scripts and the extent to which writers managed the three metafunctions, ideational, interpersonal and textual. These metafunctions are the basis for coherent, well-structured, genreappropriate writing. The study found that mismatches between policy framing and the way that writing was taught and assessed in the FET Phase resulted in massive gaps between the writer identities constructed in the FET Phase and the first year writer identities valued at universities. Findings help to pinpoint some of the reasons why particular learners manage to make the transition into tertiary study and why a large number of learners studying through English as an additional language either fail to gain access into university or fail during their first year of study. Finally, findings pointed out the effects of post democracy curriculum shifts and national examinations on classroom discourse and pedagogy, especially in relation to constructing enabling writer identities, and more importantly on the ability of learners making the transition into university to produce academically valued texts in their first year of study.

This study of social interaction in a small religious group used ethnography of communication as a research method to collect and analyze data from 20 months of fieldwork. As a long-term participant-observer in a women-only interdenominational Bible study, I investigated the group’s patterned ways of speaking, how print and electronic learning materials influenced the practical application of Scripture to daily life, and how the contemporary format for women’s Bible study alters the traditional Bible study experience. Patterned ways of speaking in this setting included group discussions and conversational narratives about religion, motherhood and lack of time. Using affirmations of faith, mentoring advice and troubles talk that included indirect complaints, the women co-constructed new meanings in relational talk. The mediated Bible study experience shifts to women interpretive authority that has been dominated by clergy and men. Text and talk in the workbooks and videos stimulated interpretive conflict and reframing that gave the women intellectual autonomy and recognition for co-constructing knowledge as social worth. Storytelling in the workbooks, videos and local group membered the participants through shared identity, and multimodal learning materials stimulated critical thinking and mediated emotional intimacy in a national and global community. This interpretive community was therefore engaged in what I call women-centered practical theology, and their individual and collective reinterpretation of Scripture is characteristic of the postmodern reformation of Christianity.

Ce travail de thèse concerne, principalement, les mutations des pratiques professionnelles des travailleurs dans une team d’une multinationale américaine de l’hightech, dotée de technologie numériques de l’information et de la communication. Dans le cours de la recherche, on a cherché à développer une description dynamique et pratique du quotidien des travailleurs observés dans des « environnements technologiquement denses » (Bruni 2005; Bruni & Gherardi 2007), qu’ils habitent habituellement pendant leur activité de travail. La « narration » de ces environnements de travail a favorisé la compréhension du fonctionnement de l’ «infrastructure technologique » (Gherardi 2007) de la team qui s’occupe de gérer la présence de la multinationale sur les médias sociaux. On observe, donc, que cette infrastructure technologique diffère complétement de celles observées dans les années 90 du XXème siècle d’un certain nombre de recherche (Joseph 1994; Heath e Luff 1992; Suchman 1997; 2000; Star 1999; Grosjean 2004). Cette différence se traduit presque dans une mutation anthropologique et sociale qui est mise en évidence dans la façon de travailler et dans la manière de s’autoreprésenter au travail. / This thesis concerns, firstly, change in workers professional practices of a teamwork of an American high-tech corporation, pushed by ICT. During the research, we tried to develop a dynamic and practical description of the daily life of workers observed in “technologically dense environments” (Bruni 2005; Bruni & Gherardi 2007), who live habitually during their work activities. The “narrative” of these working environments has fostered understanding the operation of the “technological infrastructure” (Gherardi 2007) of the team in charge of managing the presence of that multinational on social media. So we observed that this technological infrastructure is completely different from those observed in the 90s of XX century by many scholars (Joseph 1994; Heath e Luff 1992; Suchman 1997; 2000; Star 1999; Grosjean 2004). This difference translates almost in an anthropological and social change which is evident in the way they work and represent themselves at work.

Can a force that escalates conflict, deescalate conflict? Historically, religion has been a force that divides and unites. While most academic research has focused on the horror of religious wars, William Ury’s concept of the Third Side offers an alternate lens. The sovereignty conflict in Hawaii is rooted in a religious narrative meeting this criterion. The purpose of this research was to investigate how the Hawaiian Kingdom Nationals view the role that religion played in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom; and concurrently, how they perceive the role that religion played in reconciling their struggles. To understand how this force harmed and healed the Hawaiian Kingdom Nationals, a mixed method approach of ethnography and transcendental phenomenological was applied. Snowball sampling was used to identify each participant. Subsequently, the primary data were collected through interviews, observations, field notes and Queen Lili‘uokalani’s memoirs. Afterwards, the data were analyzed by implementing a descriptive phenomenological thematic structure revealing four emerging themes: the Lokahi Triangle, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Peacemakers and the Hawaiian Kingdom Still Lives. Finally, these four evolving units illuminate the essence of each Hawaiian Kingdom National’s lived experience: There is a diamond in the Pacific, the aloha state, but it is not in a state of aloha. A storm of betrayal sent a tsunami of shockwaves through time leaving damaged souls in its wake. Yet amid the tumult a Queen’s prayer echoes in the wind. Her legacy is humility and forgiveness for all. In Paradise transformed, the aloha spirit blows in with the island breeze calming the raging seas of injustice.

Abstract The research investigates how student agency is inscribed as challenging or as misbehaviour in schools. The purpose is to open up and enable alternative ways of interpreting student agency. The empirical part of the research is based on reflexive ethnography and narrative methodology. The data is comprised of narrative and thematic interviews conducted during a period of 3 years (2006–2009), and 4 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the autumn of 2008. The context for analyzing the meanings inscribed in student agency is a northern Finnish village school. In the villagers’ narrations, the research villages were presented as centres of the people’s lives, dynamic even in their quietude, and life in the villages was presented as an active choice. These stories challenge the national representations that tend to derive from the discourse of social exclusion. These societal discourses ‘other’ the life in northern villages and direct children, through education, concretely, socio-culturally, and emotionally away from their villages towards southern cities. Based on the fieldwork and applying Mihail Bakhtin’s dialogism and interactionist approach to emotions, I find that the meanings inscribed in student agency are determined dialogically. The meanings and emotions with which student agency is inscribed in a particular situation is, thereby, not determined by the students but come from the broader social, cultural, and political contexts, and the histories of those involved in the dialogue. Thereby, for instance “bad behaviour” cannot be improved simply by targeting the student or by changing student behaviour. This derives from the fact that any action, for example smashing potatoes, can end up carrying historical, political, social, and cultural meanings, and thus, any action can become inscribed as contesting behaviour. I conclude that contesting behaviour of a student does not cause as much as it performs challenging emotions that derive from broader societal, sociocultural, and political contexts. Thereby the problem is not that challenging emotions take place in school but the illusion that they should not. If challenging emotions in school are imagined to indicate failure, it is assumed that they must be excluded rather than endured and managed. / Tiivistelmä Tarkastelen tutkimuksessa, miten oppilaan toiminta saa merkityksen haastavana tai huonona käytöksenä koulussa. Tavoitteenani on avata ja mahdollistaa vaihtoehtoisten merkitysten näkeminen oppilaan toiminnalle. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osa nojautuu refleksiiviseen etnografiseen ja narratiiviseen metodologiaan, ja aineistona on käytetty haastatteluaineistoa 3 vuoden ajalta (2006–2009) sekä hieman yli neljän kuukauden mittaista kouluetnografiaa syksyllä 2008. Oppilaan toimijuuden tarkastelun kontekstina on pohjoinen pienkylän koulu. Kyläläisten omissa kertomuksissa kylät näyttäytyvät hiljetessäänkin dynaamisina elämän keskuksina, ja eläminen kylissä aktiivisena valintana. Nämä kertomukset haastavat valtakunnalliset representaatiot, jotka rakentuvat usein syrjäytymispuheelle. Syrjäytymispuhe toiseuttaa elämää pohjoisissa pienkylissä ja ohjaa koulutuksen kautta lapsia konkreettisesti, kulttuurisesti ja kokemuksellisesti pois kylästään, kohti etelää ja kaupunkeja. Mihail Bakhtinin dialogismia soveltaen ja kenttätyöhön pohjautuen totean, että oppilaan toiminnan saamat merkitykset ja siihen liittyvät tunteet määrittyvät dialogisesti. Toiminnan saamat merkitykset ja siihen liitetyt tunteet eivät siis ole oppilaan omassa hallinnassa vaan tulevat laajemmasta sosiaalisesta, poliittisesta, kulttuurisesta ja yhteiskunnallisesta kehyksestä sekä dialogin osapuolten erillisistä ja yhteisestä historiasta. Näin ollen, esimerkiksi ”huonoa käytöstä” ei voida parantaa yksinkertaisesti kohdistamalla toimenpiteitä oppilaaseen tai tämän käytökseen. Tämä johtuu siitä, että lähes mikä hyvänsä toiminta, tutkimuksessa muun muassa perunan soseuttaminen, voi päätyä kantamaan historiallisia, poliittisia, sosiaalisia ja kulttuurisia merkityksiä ja tulla siten merkityksi haastavaksi käytökseksi. Tutkimuksessa totean, että oppilaan haastava toiminta ei niinkään aiheuta vaan pikemminkin performoi haastavia tunteita, jotka juontuvat laajemmista yhteiskunnallisista, sosiokulttuurisista ja poliittisista konteksteista. Tällöin ongelma ei ole haastavien tunteiden esiintyminen koulussa vaan luulo, että niitä ei pitäisi esiintyä koulussa. Jos haastavat tunteet erehdytään koulussa kuvittelemaan jonkin tai jonkun epäonnistumiseksi, ne yritetään sulkea pois sen sijana että ne kestettäisiin ja käsiteltäisiin.

The purpose of the thesis is to investigate how sound creates distinct, cognitive and spatial entities, sound spaces, and to find out how sound spaces constitute forms of human interaction. A further aim is to establish concepts used when studying sound spaces, thus contributing to a Swedish terminology for describing and analysing sound and sound spaces.   The analysis follows a hermeneutic spiral, alternating between inductive and deductive methodology, between the individual and the general. Conclusions are transferred from Istanbul to a broader level; to people in general. Forms of representation are developed by composing an exposition of pictures, maps, graphs, notes and links to acoustic files, alongside the written account. The study is based on well-established music and acoustic terminology. Terms that are used in the thesis are explained in information boxes. Altogether, this constitutes an attempt to build a comprehensive cultural analytical vocabulary to describe in text what a sound space sounds like. The study shows how sound has much to tell about the lived life in a large city, here represented by sound spaces in Istanbul. Sound is greatly significant in people’s lives. Sound spaces can be regarded as arenas for communication between people and are included in a world of sound containing interaction and crucial information. By investigating and bringing attention to spaces of sound that are shaped by their users in such places as urban environments, insights are won concerning the significance of everyday life in the city environment. With emphasis on the importance of sound, the interconnection between the subjective and the objective world of sounds is studied, contributing to enhance the understanding of how the world functions through sounds. The sound spaces of Istanbul are the sounds of a metropolis, which means that the study not only portrays and analyses sound spaces in general, but stresses metropolis sound spaces, and conditions for listening, being heard and communicating in large cities.  The study contributes to bringing attention to and clarifying the knowledge that can be extracted by recognising the value of sound and listening in the research of cultural studies.

This thesis is an ethnography that took place in an ‘underperforming’ school in the South of England. The school is located on a deprived estate, taking its pupils from an area in the bottom quintile with regard to deprivation indicators, and regularly features at the bottom of local league tables. Recently converted to academy status, the school was in the process of being rebuilt. The school in question is seen as abject by the broader community and features a large number of disruptive and disaffected students. The overarching research questions that this study focuses on are: What kind of person do resistant pupils want to be recognised as and what kind of place do they want school to be? Within this, the thesis examines how students develop an identity of non-participation as well as how they act in order to make their voice heard and affect the nature of the place they are in. In order to investigate these questions the paper draws on the work of Foucault (1979, 1982, 2003) who suggested that in order to understand how power relations work it is necessary to investigate resistance rather than trying to understand power from the perspective of its own rationality. This approach is useful since students in school do not resist specific institutions or groups, but specific instances of power personified by those that they come into immediate contact with on a day to day basis. It also mobilises concepts of space and place developed by Doreen Massey (2005) and Tim Ingold (2008) whereby space is a product of interrelations permanently under construction as opposed to simply a surface and place becomes a product of these intersections within the wider power geometry of space. This is particularly relevant to the context of a failing school, seen as abject by the surrounding community and struggling to maintain any improvement. The concept of voice as defined by Nick Couldry (2010) and the students’ belief that they lack control over their lives in school is also key in terms of understanding the motivations for their resistance. The thesis argues that the fact that the school is gradually being demolished and rebuilt is seen as a threat as well as an opportunity by the participants. Since the school was intimately bound up with their identity, the changes made were an assault on their identity. However, the cracks opened up by the construction work offered them opportunities to carve out places for themselves. The participants suggest that the lip service paid to student voice by the school is a key issue in causing students’ resistant behaviour. The students in the study find that their agency is denied by the school and this, coupled with their desire to be seen as adults with legitimate opinions about their schooling, results in their resistant behaviour.