This thesis puts forth an ethnographic, contextual social constructionist account of the non-mainstream body manipulations practiced at the annual Body & Soul body modification event in Western Canada. The radical practices at this event include sewing limes and other items to one’s body, flesh hook pulling, and/or receiving “third eye” piercings and cheek skewers; thus, it constitutes an example of extreme deviance subject to negative reactions from outsiders. This research assumes that meaning is discursively and symbolically constituted by people via an active process of claimsmaking wherein competition for definitional control of reality ensues. From a qualitative stance, data were derived from a combination of participant observation fieldwork at Body & Soul and subsequent in-depth interviews with participants. The results demonstrate a trend in the (counter)claimsmaking activity of practitioners of this extreme form of body modification wherein paradoxically the nature of their deviance is reconstructed and aligned with conformist goals via discursive, corporal, and symbolic claims that simultaneously offer an implicit critique of mainstream Western culture. The results are interpreted as part of a discursive competition for definitional control of extreme body modification, strategy in the negotiation and management of a stigmatized identity, means of implicit social criticism, and an unconventional expression of conventional values. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-23 12:16:30.965

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This essay deals with the individual collecting of four individuals with different backgrounds and lives. The essay investigates what, how and why people collect. It provides a stepping-stone in moving closer to understanding one, in human nature, deeply rooted phenomenon - collecting. The essay is based on a list of questions made by the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. It also includes in-depth examinations of four person’s passion of collecting, in which four individuals were interviewed: a pig collector, a collector of Mickey Mouse items, a multi-collector of objects from other cultures and one collector of items related to the artist Madonna. All of the collectors were driven by different factors, of which some were rooted far back in their childhood, and for some the urge to collect had increased because of difficulties in adult life. The investigation is based on the thesis that the market and the personal emotional feelings are the two main driving factors when it comes to collecting. This study and the people who participated in it, makes it clear that no market is strong enough to overcome the human mind and its will to decide what and how to collect. Although the market to some extent affect, for example by creating the availability or not, it is ultimately the emotional sense that decides how the collection would look like. This essay is meant to fill a gap of knowledge in the area of the individual collecting, and provide a better understanding of the driving forces that are deeply embedded in the soul of a collector.

This thesis is about border crossing. Literary Journalism is a border-crossing writing genre claiming ground in fields as diverse as science, mathematics, memoir, travel and culture. The established academic discipline of anthropology is also crossing borders as styles of writing ethnography are changing and being challenged. This work is situated at the meeting point of these two genres. It examines how literary journalism can be used to write about culture for a wider audience beyond the academic community. The defining characteristics of literary journalism – documentable subject, exhaustive research, novelistic writing techniques, voice and attention to underlying meaning – signal strengths and possible limitations to its use in writing about culture when measured against the demands of academic ethnographic writing. The requirements for research and writing about culture are examined from the perspectives of literary journalism and ethnography in Part 1 of this thesis. To explore literary journalism’s suitability to write about culture, research was conducted among the Rejang people of Sumatra. Part Two of the thesis, titled Family Strength, is presented as an example of a literary journalist approach to recording culture. It is the result of five fieldtrips to Sumatra to gather data about members of four generations of Pak Taher’s family group in the village of Kelobak in the early 21st century. Each section of Family Strength tells the story of Pak Taher’s relatives, highlighting changes within the lifetime of family members, including gender roles, religious values, the influence of education, generational change and farming practices. The work is not an exhaustive treatment of Rejang culture but records culture as several “slices of life”.

This research contributes to the discussion surrounding New Zealand’s entrepreneurial environment and Innovation Framework and addresses the research problem of whether the New Zealand government should seek to support entrepreneurship and innovation through the various knowledge-based or regulatory organisations it owns or funds, and if so, how it should go about accomplishing this. The approach taken was to use qualitative methods to examine how the government’s support for entrepreneurship and innovation was delivered to an emerging cluster of entrepreneurs from the point of view of those entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs were involved in the innovative industry of land-based aquaculture and fieldwork was carried out in the Gisborne Region, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. This study began by reviewing relevant literature from academic, industry and government sources to identify relevant sub-themes and create a framework for analysis. Fieldwork was undertaken using ethnographic methods to explore how the entrepreneurs experienced the New Zealand entrepreneurial environment and innovation framework in their interactions with knowledge-based and regulatory organisations. Data was gathered primarily by participant observation and semi-structured interviews and transcripts were coded and analysed using NVivo® software. An ethnographic narrative was produced and the interview transcripts analysed for relevance to the sub-themes from literature and to identify patterns that emerged from the data. This research reports that four of the entrepreneurs failed in their ventures due to a combination of factors both within their operations and within the entrepreneurial environment. These factors included technical difficulties maintaining livestock health and growth within an artificial marine environment, an inability to obtain assistance from knowledge-based organisations, problems in dealing with regulatory organisations, difficulty retaining trained staff, uncertainty about the market, and high energy costs. The Māori training organisation, Turanga Ararau, formed the Gisborne Aquaculture Society in an effort to establish a Gisborne aquaculture cluster however, this initiative proved unsuccessful primarily because the society failed to attract the 12 involvement of key stakeholders. This research contributes to the policy and practice of cluster facilitation by examining the extent to which best practice was followed in this attempt to establish a cluster and presents conclusions as to how the process of establishing the cluster could have been improved. This study also reports that the entrepreneurs were cut off from access to knowledge and research resources and received little advice or support from the knowledge based organisations that might have played a role in the development of their cluster. It examines how and why New Zealand’s Innovation Framework might be failing to recognise and support the vital role of entrepreneurs in economic development and suggests how this might be improved. The methodology chapters of this thesis contribute to literature regarding the use of ethnographic methods in entrepreneurship research and a further by-product of this thesis is an ethnographic account of the participant observation and semi structured interviews with the entrepreneurs. This research also provides an insight into the obstacles and challenges faced by entrepreneurs in New Zealand, in particular those involved in the emerging recirculating aquaculture industry.

What constitutes an artistic community? Why do people come together and form a group to make art despite all the sacrifices that they need to make in terms of time, space, and resources? (Why) Do we need Community (and) Theatre? This paper is about an interpretive and auto-ethnographic field research about a local community theatre, The Stage Company, in Carbondale, Illinois. It aims to demonstrate how theatre can be a bridge between community and self and lead them to come closer, change and grow by challenging each other. It provides an extensive description of The Stage Company by focusing on the cultural and performative features of the community theatre and the individual experiences of the company members as well as the journey of the ethnographer in conducting the research. How might a `community theatre' function in the lives of its members within a particular socio-cultural context and why would a researcher, who is a cultural, ethnic, and lingual other in the field, choose to spend a year with that community theatre? What does she find and learn about the various definitions of the concept of the community theatre, the features of community theatre culture in US, the place of The Stage Company within the theoretical definition of community theatre, the role of The Stage Company in the lives of its members and the role of this research in the ethnographer's life in terms of finding her own future path in relation to theatre and community?

This reflexive ethnography investigates both the practice of cultural regeneration movement and fieldwork engagement in the context of contested development. The setting is Mt. Apo National Park where the Philippine National Oil Company has built a 250-megawatt geothermal power plant. The project aims to reduce government's dependence on imported oil and fuel its industrialisation program. Mt. Apo, however, is an ecologically and politically sensitive site, being a sanctuary of Southeast Asia's rich biodiversity, home to indigenous peoples, and shelter for armed insurgents. The local NGO and Church opposition grew into a massive national and international protest. Despite the hesitant hospitality of the affected community, PNOC managed to transform its image into a corporate environmentalist and pursue its project. This thesis explores the interaction among the various contextual actors, including social scientists and the sick, the pastors, priests and protesters. It also analyses the politicisation of rituals and the construction of advocacy in Europe. My main focus, however, is the kin-based movement called Tuddok. Tuddok aimed at cultural regeneration and territorial recognition. It emerged, apparently, from the failure of both development project and political protest to take seriously the predicament of the host community. Cultural politics research rightly treats this type of movement not simply as resistance, but as struggle for meaning and existence. Even recent literature, however, still equates movement with protest. I highlight, instead, what may be called cultural energies-the human capabilities by which people collectively re-animate themselves in face of, but not exhaustively in reaction to, political binary oppositions. My fieldwork (September 1995-January 1997) consisted mostly in accompanying Tuddok from its revival of Manobo dance, to its retrieval of Mt. Apo history and territory. As Tuddok became central to my research, my research in turn served as resource for the movement. This partnership grew tense as the ethnographer's status as Catholic priest allegedly threatened the peace of the Protestant village. The last section of the thesis reflects on the practice of fieldwork as social intervention before it is transformed into a textual invention.

There is very little research that is empirically-based about atheism in Canada; this thesis seeks to contribute foundational knowledge in this area. It begins with a historical and contemporary overview of atheism in Canada by examining its appearance in government, law, and media. It then addresses the question: “How do atheists construct their identities in the context of a religiously diverse Canada?” through an analysis of data collected from participant-observation with an atheist university club, the Atheist Community of the University of Ottawa (ACUO), followed by an analysis of five significant themes which arose from forty life history interviews (twenty with ACUO members; twenty with Ottawa-area atheists who did not belong to an atheist community that met in person). These themes are: loss of religious identity and/or development of atheist identity; group belonging; perceptions of media and public understanding of atheism; the use of the United States for narrative or comparative purposes; and the frequency of receiving a negative reaction simply for being an atheist. This study found that most interviewees perceived the Canadian public and the media as not understanding atheism because the subject is not commonly reported on or discussed, and many said that (ir)religiosity rarely came up in conversations with strangers, acquaintances, or co-workers. These notions were often seen as resulting from a Canadian social etiquette which dictates that controversial subjects should be avoided in order to minimize the risk of causing offense. Moreover, members of the ACUO often said that they joined an atheist community because they wanted a safe space to meet like-minded people with whom they could freely discuss religion without causing offense to religious others. Unlike in findings from the United States, interviewees did not speak of their atheist identities as being considered ‘un-Canadian’ or as excluding them from their conception(s) of Canadian society. While interviewees often said they were selective with whom they decided to express their atheism, most felt quite positive about living as an atheist in Canada, especially compared to the plight of atheists living in other countries, and atheism came across as being ‘just’ another ‘idea’ in a mosaic of cultural ideas.