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Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in Journalism and Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016 / This is a story of undocumented migrants’ journeys between Malawi and Johannesburg, exposing the challenges they face and the corruption that takes place along the borders. Modern migration between the two countries has taken place for close to two hundred years. In the past, migrants, most of whom worked in the mines, were protected by law and that eased their movements. These days, low skilled migrants do not qualify for work permits so they stay in the country illegally. The South African law qualifies such migrants as undesirable visitors and bans them from returning to the country for some time. This research project documents how such migrants return home and come back to South Africa even before their bans expire. The research exposes how the migrants are aided by corrupt officers at the borders. The story shows how some of the migrants utilised a weakness in the old Malawi identification and passport system to obtain new travel documents under false names and return to South Africa undetected. This research project adopted an ethnographic approach. The findings are presented in a longform narrative story, which forms the first part of this document. The story is accompanied by a method document, which provides the theoretical framework and explains the methodology. / GR2017

Collaborative ethnography is an innovative outgrowth of the postmodern debate and is defined as a "...co-conceived and/or co-written text (with local collaborators) that consider[s] multiple audiences outside the confines of academic discourse, including local constituencies..." (Lassiter n.d.:11). As a research and writing method, collaborative ethnographies seek to address ethical issues of authority, ownership, audience, relevance, reciprocity and representation. In this respect, I document and critically reflect on the collaborative process of the Other Side of Middletown project (OSM)—a collaboratively based ethnographic venture which involved local experts (community advisors), ethnographers and BSU students. I present the OSM project as a case study that adds to the existing data on the approaches to collaborative ethnography and explore how collaborative ethnography is useful to the negotiation of current postmodern debates. Furthermore, I track and document the collaborative process, and then synthesize the ways that collaboration was both effective, and not effective through data collected via structured and semi-structured informal interviews, focus groups and participant observation of the project collaborators.The significance of my thesis rests in documenting the collaborative process to reflect on the political, moral and ethical intricacies of present-day ethnography and to offer criticism, suggestions and/or techniques for better and more clearly articulated collaborative research and epistemology. Morespecifically, the value of this thesis is supported by the critical reflection of how the black community was represented by the OSM project. The OSM project is an interdisciplinary, intercultural, collaborative response to the debate of Western historical thinking. The collaborative approach used in the OSM project is an experimental method from the postmodern reflections and critiques that aim to resolve our ethical trepidations.While the collaborative approach is not relevant to all ethnographic research, the results of my research will be vital to the continuation of ethnography for academic purposes, and more importantly, for communities and consultants. / Department of Anthropology

"July 2003". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media & Philosophy, Department of Anthropology, 2004. / Bibliography: p. 337-345. / Introduction: representing ISKCON: spreading the message of Krishna Consciousness -- "Easy journey" to another planet: fieldwork, culture conversion, and the location of the spiritual -- A taste for Krishna: aesthetic theology and transubstantiation of culture -- Spiritual culture: varnasrama-dharma and brahminical training -- ISKCON and imitation: appropriating the model in Gaudiya-Vaisnavism -- Remembering Prabhupada: hagiography as spiritual practice -- The nectar of translation: mantra, text and the "yoga of spiritual transmission" -- Conclusion: conversion, mimesis, translation: self-realisation and the other in Krishna Consciousness. / This is a cultural anthropological study of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or the Hare Krishna movement. Data for this research derive primarily from ethnographic participant-observation, and include tape-recorded interviews with Hare Krishna informants as well as ISKCON literature collected during fieldwork. -- Analysis focuses on Hare Krishna techniques (saddhana, or yoga) of religious transformation, including physical, aesthetic, and discursive practices involved in the pursuit of spiritual realisation in ISKCON. Conversion, mimesis, and translation are the three key conceptual themes which inform a critical analysis of the production and effect of cultural difference in Hare Krishna spiritual practice. Ethnicity and conversion emerge as parallel concerns as the involvement of diasporic Indian and Indo-Fijian Hindus at the congregational level of ISKCON's ministry in Sydney, Australia, is examined for its effect on Western converts' experiences of Krishna Consciousness. A new conceptual approach to the meaning of 'conversion' to ISKCON is developed from this account. -- Recent sectarian developments in ISKCON's relationship with the Indian tradition of Gaudiya-Vaisnavism are also examined within a comparative theological framework. Hagiographic practices surrounding ISKCON's Bengali founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), and textual practices surrounding the founder's translations of Vaisnavite scripture, are both analysed as core features of Hare Krishna spirituality. The theological significance of these practices is directly correlated with recent sectarian tensions between ISKCON and the Indian tradition. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 345 p. ill. (some col.)

This auto-ethnographic study (i.e. an autobiographical genre of writing and research, written in the first-person voice, where the workings of self are expressed both cognitively and emotionally) qualitatively explores the changing assumptions of a training therapist. It shows how various therapies were negotiated during the training period, and explores how meaning was constructed according to basic, underlying epistemological assumptions. Significant experiences and therapies are presented, showing how the therapist's most basic, linear assumptions, were directly challenged by eco-systemic training. The study produces an in-depth, thick description of both the emotional and the cognitive journey of a training therapist, and traces the therapist's movement away from the stability and certainty of a linear epistemological 'way of knowing' to the instability and uncertainty characteristic of an eco-systemic 'way of knowing'. Conclusions are idiosyncratic and are not intended for generalization. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

Anthropological film and videomakers use their media for both research and education. In both cases, a formal technique of observational camerawork is required. In this thesis, appropriate continuity methods and a model of decision-making in camerawork are proposed, which are designed to deal with the certainties and uncertainties encountered in the observational type of ethnographic film. The ethnographic context of the research is the community in the Shixini area of the Transkei, where the author made video-recordings of a number of ritual and everyday events between 1981 and 1984. The model is tested on the case study of a "small event". There is an extensive amount of video material of a four-day mortuary ritual. The model is examined through a first-person account of the influences on decisions during shooting, and through formal analysis. Both of these examinations refer in detail to the unedited video material which accompanies the thesis, and assess how the decisions deal with time and space: with regard to the ritual markers and the continuity method. The thesis concludes that the model of camera work can be used to provide a coherent observation of the small event. The suitability of the model for editing is then tested. The unedited material of the case study is compared with an edited version. The ritual is represented in a narrative segment within a longer documentary, "Shixini December: Responses to Poverty in the Transkei". The complexity of editing operations is examined in detail by a variety of methods, and refers closely to the longer documentary. The fit between continuity in the unedited camera work and the edited version is established. A video copy of this documentary also accompanies the thesis. The unedited observational material is then tested for its use in research. An anthropologist screened the unedited material to ritual participants to elicit their responses, and with the results wrote a dissertation combining interpretation and ethnography. The detail of the ethnography and the consistency of the interpretation demonstrates the value of an observational video record. It does not conclusively demonstrate its validity for research, because the effect of video on memory needs further exploration. Instead of stimulating memory of off-camera action as may be expected, the video seems to anaesthetise it. Continuity methods can provide a clear but partial and fragmented observational record. This record has formal characteristics which are a necessary but not sufficient condition for editing into narrative. Continuity methods may provide a video record that is useful for research. If the video is used for reflexive validation, then a possible effect on the memory of off-camera events must be taken into account. The continuity characteristics of unedited video which result from in-camera editing can, but need not be, evident in subsequent texts based on them.

This auto-ethnographic study (i.e. an autobiographical genre of writing and research, written in the first-person voice, where the workings of self are expressed both cognitively and emotionally) qualitatively explores the changing assumptions of a training therapist. It shows how various therapies were negotiated during the training period, and explores how meaning was constructed according to basic, underlying epistemological assumptions. Significant experiences and therapies are presented, showing how the therapist's most basic, linear assumptions, were directly challenged by eco-systemic training. The study produces an in-depth, thick description of both the emotional and the cognitive journey of a training therapist, and traces the therapist's movement away from the stability and certainty of a linear epistemological 'way of knowing' to the instability and uncertainty characteristic of an eco-systemic 'way of knowing'. Conclusions are idiosyncratic and are not intended for generalization. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. There are over 1000 languages found there, reflecting a complex history of migration and interaction. The Upper Sepik is one of New Guinea’s most linguistically heterogeneous areas but because the area has not been marked by the significant population movement and intense and far-reaching exchange systems apparent for some parts of New Guinea, this diversity may be more indicative of processes that maintain rather than lead to linguistic diversity. Accordingly, the region may offer great potential for those investigating population histories. With this potential in mind ethnographers went into the Upper Sepik during the 1960s and 1970s with the intention of making representative material culture collections for the language groups found there. These collections combine to be, arguably, one of the most fine-grained material culture datasets that exist for New Guinea. This thesis describes the manner in which these collections were documented and used to create a dataset to test for relationships between material culture and language. It begins with an overview of the study area including descriptions of the geography, environments, subsistence systems, settlement structures and social patterns, including an appraisal of marriage exchange, ritual, trade and warfare and how these may have facilitated or inhibited the spread of culture. This appraisal leads to an assertion that the sociality and mobility of men and women are affected differentially by such mechanisms, and that material culture belonging to men and women may differentially reflect population histories and the social processes that underpin the evolution of linguistic diversity. The thesis then describes a round of analytical procedures used to test for relationships between language and attributes belonging to string bags and arrows which are respectively and exclusively produced by women and men. Associations between languages, measured in terms of their material culture similarity, are then compared to those determined according to their linguistic family relationship and their relative positions in geographical space. The analysis also tests whether differences in the way that women and men socialise and move through space influence the way in which material culture patterns through space. The thesis concludes that attributes of classes of material culture are distributed differently for objects made by men compared to those made by women, that distance seems to be a stronger factor than language, and that environmental factors are also relevant. This study foreshadows ongoing research involving the dataset. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. There are over 1000 languages found there, reflecting a complex history of migration and interaction. The Upper Sepik is one of New Guinea’s most linguistically heterogeneous areas but because the area has not been marked by the significant population movement and intense and far-reaching exchange systems apparent for some parts of New Guinea, this diversity may be more indicative of processes that maintain rather than lead to linguistic diversity. Accordingly, the region may offer great potential for those investigating population histories. With this potential in mind ethnographers went into the Upper Sepik during the 1960s and 1970s with the intention of making representative material culture collections for the language groups found there. These collections combine to be, arguably, one of the most fine-grained material culture datasets that exist for New Guinea. This thesis describes the manner in which these collections were documented and used to create a dataset to test for relationships between material culture and language. It begins with an overview of the study area including descriptions of the geography, environments, subsistence systems, settlement structures and social patterns, including an appraisal of marriage exchange, ritual, trade and warfare and how these may have facilitated or inhibited the spread of culture. This appraisal leads to an assertion that the sociality and mobility of men and women are affected differentially by such mechanisms, and that material culture belonging to men and women may differentially reflect population histories and the social processes that underpin the evolution of linguistic diversity. The thesis then describes a round of analytical procedures used to test for relationships between language and attributes belonging to string bags and arrows which are respectively and exclusively produced by women and men. Associations between languages, measured in terms of their material culture similarity, are then compared to those determined according to their linguistic family relationship and their relative positions in geographical space. The analysis also tests whether differences in the way that women and men socialise and move through space influence the way in which material culture patterns through space. The thesis concludes that attributes of classes of material culture are distributed differently for objects made by men compared to those made by women, that distance seems to be a stronger factor than language, and that environmental factors are also relevant. This study foreshadows ongoing research involving the dataset. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009