Climate change is already impacting many coastal ecosystems and the communities that depend upon them. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to it will likely further strain these socio-ecological systems. This points to the need for research that explores the socio-ecological dynamics of environmental change, in order to better understand how community resilience can best be supported during a period of rapid global environmental change. This research uses a case study of the oyster farming industry on the West Coast of British Columbia (B.C.). This thesis explores two interrelated clusters of questions: 1. How are oyster farmers on the B.C. coast perceiving and responding to environmental change, and what are the implications of this for the governance of the industry? 2. What role does—and might—the oyster farming industry play in supporting coastal sustainability in B.C., and how can researchers better support the efforts of those in the industry to solve the challenges they—and coastal communities more generally—face? Drawing on field research, including participant observation and sixteen interviews with oyster farmers and industry representatives across the region, this research finds that navigating broader social, political and economic changes is at least as important to farmers as the specific ecological changes with which they are grappling. As these findings suggest, environmental change needs to be understood within the context of the industry and culture on the coast; it should be nested within broader reforms to support the sustainability of the industry and the resilience of coastal communities to which it contributes. Furthermore, despite the myriad challenges facing oyster farmers, this research finds that they are actively seeking solutions to ameliorate the difficulties they face. In turn, environmental research and communication should consider how to better support the cultivation of environmental solutions. In summary, the research integrates the need for socio-political reform and solutions-based research and communication. It contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how to support people and places during periods of rapid change. / Graduate

This dissertation is an investigation of 13-14 year-old learners in Grade Five and Grade Six being taught and learning moral sociocultural values. The specific variables investigated are children’s perspective of values, their beliefs, goals and motives implicit or explicit in the learning of sociocultural values. The investigation uses the theoretical framework of Cultural Psychology in which Activity Theory is used to analyse and explain the school as an activity system. The working hypothesis is that activities are embedded into each other if they share a common object and envision a common outcome. The notion of embedded activities is developed based on the Engeströmian third generation Activity Theory model. The assumption is that if the school is the central activity system in a formal teaching and learning milieu, then other activities systems that support the teaching-learning processes constitute embedded activities. For instance, the classroom, a lesson, a morning assembly and any other project that contributes to the teaching-learning processes of sociocultural values. The method used for this investigation was ethnography. Data were collected using participant observation, interviews, still photographs, videography, school records, documents, and children’s artefacts. The data were analysed by Atlas.ti version 5.2 computer based qualitative data analysis software using strategies from Strauss and Corbin’s ‘microanalyses’ and Maykut and Morehouse’s ‘interpretive-descriptive’ strategy. The results showed that children at first learn sociocultural values from the culturally more able; in this way, values are taught through co-construction of knowledge. Children learn sociocultural values through what they do. This constitutes their activities: mental and practices as derived from their home ethos through to their school ethos. If this is missing, children will learn other values presuming these to be the best for their welfare, which may have undesirable outcomes and undesirable implications. Sociocultural theory provides the way out that initially children need to be taught the art of living by the culturally more able as the necessary thing to do.

How we imagine and the potency of alternative imaginings to socio-political concerns are vital questions for social science, and worldbuilding is a particular and understudied method of doing so. It is the creative making of fictional, imaginative worlds, offering a potential alternative method to imagine otherwise. This paper ethnographically explicates this craft through detailing how creators, known as worldbuilders, make their worlds, demonstrating how it is generative and impactful for them emotionally, intellectually, and politically. It is based of three months of online ethnographic/netnographic fieldwork across the multiple online ‘sites’ worldbuilders are active, particularly a forum and chatroom, as well as digital interviews with sixteen individual worldbuilders. I argue that worldbuilding is a process of toying with ontologies, which I call ontogenous play. I explain this through detailing what is dubbed making the imaginary – the worldbuilding process – going through the particulars of the process and the experiences of interlocutors, demonstrating how one achieves situated transcendence through it, and the generativity of that. In light of these observations, I also argue that worldbuilding is an art, attending to the ramifications of that designation. I draw upon anthropological understandings of making, processes, liminality, and ontologies to advance the argument, as well as the emergent scholarship on worldbuilding from ‘sub-creation studies’, and the erudite hypotheses of my interlocutors.

Meine Dissertation untersucht die ökologische Landwirtschaft auf indischen Teeplantagen. Basierend auf sechsmonatiger Feldforschung auf drei Plantagen in verschiedenen Teeanbaugebieten (im Dibrugarh-Distrikt von Assam, in der Darjeeling-Region in Westbengalen und in den Nilgiri-Bergen in Tamil Nadu) beschreibe ich, wie die Interaktionen zwischen Menschen, Teepflanzen und anderen nichtmenschlichen Spezies Einfluss auf Arbeits- und Produktionsverhältnisse nehmen. Mit Bezug auf Erin Mannings Denkbild der „minor gestures“ (2013) theoretisiere ich solche Interaktionen als spontane, nicht-intentionale, kollektive Handlungen. Über das analytische Instrument der „kleinen Gesten“ skizziere ich die Akteur-Netzwerke des ökologischen Teeanbaus. Hier zeige ich zum einen die Ungleichheiten bei der Arbeit auf, die durch ökologische Anbautechniken reproduziert werden, zum anderen die verschiedenen Formen menschlichen und nichtmenschlichen Widerstands gegen das Plantagenmanagement. Kernargument der Dissertation ist, dass Bio-Pflanzer (Plantagenbesitzer) und -Berater die „kleinen Gesten“ zwischen Teepflanzen und anderen nichtmenschlichen Arten gezielt einsetzen, um Teepflanzen produktiver wachsen zu lassen. Sie weisen ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher an, Insekten, Pilze, Bodenbakterien, Kühe und Wildpflanzen strategisch in die tägliche Arbeit einzubeziehen und ökologische Zusammenhänge für die Teeproduktion nutzbar zu machen. So soll etwa der Dung von Kühen die Bodenbakterien ernähren, damit diese wiederum die Teepflanzen nähren. Pilze, die vormals als Schädlinge angesehen wurden, sollen den Geschmack von Teeblättern verfeinern. Während andere Studien Plantagen vor allem als „ökologische Vereinfachungen“ beschreiben (Tsing et al 2019: 186), wollen Pflanzer auf Bio-Teeplantagen ökologische Vielfalt nicht grundsätzlich ausschließen, sondern vielmehr gezielt beeinflussen. ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher sollen vielfältige ökologische Beziehungen gezielt kultivieren, um landwirtschaftliche Monokulturen zu optimieren. So soll ein ertragreiches „Miteinander“ (Münster 2017) verschiedener Arten innerhalb der „ökologischen Vereinfachungen“ entstehen. Meine Ethnographie arbeitet zwei zentrale Aspekte dieses Miteinanders heraus: Erstens betone ich, dass die Zusammenarbeit mit nichtmenschlichen Lebewesen mit menschlichen Ungleichheiten einhergehen kann. Das Miteinander verschiedener Arten beruht zumeist auf prekärer Arbeit, wie sie auf indischen Teeplantagen seit der Kolonialzeit vorherrscht. Ökologische Anbautechniken erhöhen den Arbeitsaufwand, da sich ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher zusätzlich zu den Teepflanzen mitunter auch noch um Mikroorganismen kümmern, Dünger herstellen oder das Wetter beobachten müssen. Für die aufwendige Pflege nichtmenschlicher Lebewesen verdienen sie dennoch weniger als den Mindestlohn. Pflanzer und Berater sind in erster Linie darum bemüht, das nichtmenschliche Miteinander zu optimieren; gute Bedingungen für ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher sind meist zweitrangig. Zweitens zeige ich, wie der Widerstand von ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher gegen ihre Arbeitsbedingungen das produktive Miteinander anderer Spezies verändert. Bisweilen protestieren ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher offen gegen ihre prekäre Situation, so auch während des Generalstreiks in Darjeeling im Jahr 2017, in dessen Folge ganze Plantagen brachlagen und verwilderten. Für gewöhnlich jedoch verhandeln ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher ihre Arbeitsbedingungen weniger offensiv, sie leisten „alltäglichen Widerstand“ (Scott 1985). Indem sie zum Beispiel bestimmte Anweisungen zu ökologischen Anbautechniken missachten, beeinflussen ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher auch die „kleinen Gesten“ zwischen Teepflanzen und anderen nichtmenschlichen Arten, was die Erträge der Teepflanzen zurückgehen lassen kann. Alltäglicher Widerstand ist also häufig kontraproduktiv, weil der Arbeitsaufwand dadurch langfristig steigt. Ähnliches gilt auch für den nicht-intentionalen Widerstand, den Teepflanzen und andere Nichtmenschen vermittels „kleiner Gesten“ leisten: Wenn der Monsun die Teepflanzen zu schnell und zu hoch wachsen lässt, oder sich die „invasive“ Lantanapflanze auf den Plantagen ausbreitet, entsteht auch hier zusätzliche Arbeit für ArbeiterInnen und Aufseher. Die Kombination von Plantagenstudien und Studien zu alternativer Landwirtschaft erweitert das Repertoire der Multispecies-Forschung. Beide Landwirtschaftsformen werden, besonders im indischen Kontext, zumeist als Gegenspieler dargestellt; alternative Landwirtschaft gilt als ökologisch und sozial regenerativ, während Teeplantagen Ökosysteme zerstören und koloniale Ausbeutungsverhältnisse reproduzieren. An dieser Schnittstelle zeigt meine Forschung, wie Bio-Teeplantagen alternative Anbautechniken als zentrale Elemente in industrielle Produktionsabläufe einbinden. Somit konsolidiert umweltfreundlichere Teeproduktion das Plantagensystem – und damit auch prekäre Arbeit. Indem ich das Zusammenspiel von Agrarökologie und sozialen Arbeitsfragen untersuche, verdeutliche ich auch das kritische Potenzial der Multispecies-Ethnographie: Gegen das ökologische Miteinander, welches das Plantagemanagement kultivieren will, leisten sowohl ArbeiterInnen und AufseherInnen als auch nichtmenschliche Lebewesen Widerstand.

<div> <div> <div> <p>Water is a critical resource for life, and communities are dependent upon reliable access to clean </p> <p>water to maintain stable quality of life. Issues of water contamination threaten this stability, creating uncertainty, threatening public health, and necessitating community response. One emerging water contamination issue involves a family of industrial chemicals called Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). This study uses an integrated multi-theory approach to examine the processes of Resilience and Collective Action within a community experiencing issues of PFAS contamination. Results indicate that the community was generally successful in enacting resilience, however some challenges were encountered in the form of high levels of uncertainty, inaccessibility of technical information, challenges foregrounding productive action, and challenges maximizing transformative potential. Results also indicated the community was general successful with collective action in the immediate aftermath of the issue. The community struggled to maintain collective action over a long period and to transition to high level advocacy. Results demonstrated that existing theoretical frames are limited in their ability to predict effective resilience and collective action in events of long-term water contamination. These limitations are described in detail and the potential for expansion of these theories is discussed. Suggestions to improve future responses to issues of PFAS contamination, as well as suggestions for intervention into the community of focus are offered. </p> </div> </div> </div>

Despite the benefits of physical activity for older adults, many residents living in long-term care homes (LTC) are relatively inactive. Previous research has revealed barriers to physical activity at the resident-level, organizational, and environmental level. However, little attention has been paid to other factors influencing physical activity within the broader institutional complex. The goal of this study was to uncover how the work of personal support workers (PSWs) related to the promotion of physical activity was socially organized. Institutional Ethnography (IE), developed by Dorothy Smith, guided this study. Smith proposed that peoples’ everyday experiences in local settings are organized, often unknowingly, by the actions of people located outside of the local setting and that this organization is textually-mediated. Two LTC homes in Ontario participated in this study. I began data collection by observing PSWs as they went about their work. Next, I interviewed PSWs and other people located inside (e.g. nurses, managers) and outside the LTC homes (e.g. representatives from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC). Lastly, I collected texts that organized the PSWs’ work, such as Ministry standards. The findings revealed that although the MOHLTC standards were viewed as producing something “good” for the residents, some of the standards disrupted the PSWs’ work, which made it challenging for them to support daily physical activity. The promotion of physical activity was seen as an additional program that happened a few times per week and it was parceled out as a professional activity that was socially organized “out” of the PSW role. The findings suggest that local solutions are needed. A good starting point would be to go and talk to PSWs and residents to determine what type of assignments would permit the incorporation of physical activity into daily care. To embed the promotion of physical activity into daily care, a major rethink and reorganization of PSWs work will be needed, including a greater investment in human and material supports for PSWs.

This thesis deals with aspects and force of gender order in Prague rock bands. It is focused on presence of gender aspects which are viewed from a gender point of view. Main aim of my research is to cover force of gender order in specificic musicial field which has connotation primarly with men. Also to obtain ethnographic description of this subculture. I'm going to fulfill the aim of my research by research in field, by interviews with informators and content lyrics analysis. This thesis is divided into two parts: theoretical and empirical. Theoretical part contains particular definitions and theoretical approaches. Empirical describes a strategy of my research, whole procedure and results of the research. Key words: culture, subculture, gender, masculinity, femininity, ethnography, rock

No description available.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro-, meso-, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the midst of the chaotic everyday activities. It advocates the explanatory force of narrative as an alternative to organizational life cycle theory for understanding organizational startups. Design/methodology/approach – This narrative ethnography involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews over a three-year period. Using grounded theory, narratives were examined to discover how they engendered and maintained order. Findings – This paper contributes to the understanding narratives as a constitutional organizing and sensemaking process, including the narratives of “Do It Yourself,” and economic production, family and home, and personal narratives that constitute community, community boundaries, and identity, adding to our knowledge of organizing. Research limitations/implications – The research examined only one local nonprofit arts center, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same types of narratives may not necessarily be found in other nonprofits. Originality/value – This paper examines a nonprofit during start-up. It validates support for the examination of organizations through narrative ethnography and narrative interviewing. It purports that narratives constitute social identity, rather than being the evidence of social identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro-, meso-, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the midst of the chaotic everyday activities. It advocates the explanatory force of narrative as an alternative to organizational life cycle theory for understanding organizational startups. This narrative ethnography involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews over a three-year period. Using grounded theory, narratives were examined to discover how they engendered and maintained order. This paper contributes to the understanding narratives as a constitutional organizing and sensemaking process, including the narratives of “do it yourself,” and economic production, family and home, and personal narratives that constitute community, community boundaries, and identity, adding to our knowledge of organizing. The research examined only one local nonprofit arts center, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same types of narratives may not necessarily be found in other nonprofits. This paper examines a nonprofit during start-up. It validates support for the examination of organizations through narrative ethnography and narrative interviewing. It purports that narratives constitute social identity, rather than being the evidence of social identity.