Much of what we know about workplace inequality, we know from studies on work in industrial and information-based economies. There has been less interrogation into how processes of inequality are formed and sustained in creative work and cultural industries. Given the growing trend away from traditional work rooted in formal organizations and toward cultural industries, how can we understand the relationship between work and inequality in non-standard, creative labour? To answer this question I explore the world of stand-up comedy by drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with stand-up comedians and over one hundred hours of observational data. My analysis reveals that comedy work is organized around the image of an ‘ideal worker,’ an ideal maintained by intersubjective mechanisms of rule: diversity logics, compulsory networking, and creative license. The existence of the ‘ideal worker’ influences how, when, and under what conditions work happens in stand-up comedy for those who fall outside of that ideal. Specifically, workers’ social locations shape how they self-manage, marginalized workers must self-regulate in relation to the work (like everyone else) and the ‘ideal worker.’ Finally, the analysis reveals that workers in stand-up comedy use various strategies to negotiate consent and resistance in their work arrangements in terms of where and under what circumstances they work. Overall, this research highlights how the micro politics of capital are informed by larger power relations that sustain inequality in cultural work settings. Specifically, this work demonstrates the need to address how ‘ideal workers’ are maintained in cultural work, as well as how social location shapes processes of self-management and strategic engagement within unequal work environments. / Dissertation / Doctor of Social Science

Inequalities in society, past and present, are influenced by a number of aspects of identity. The purpose of this study is to investigate dental health differences at a Romano- British site as they relate to (1) sex, (2) social status, and the (3) confluence of sex and social status, using the theoretical frameworks of Embodiment and Intersectionality. Dental health data for 342 adults from Roman Winchester (4-5th century CE) were compared between sex and social status groups. Statistical analyses showed that males exhibited higher rates of anterior antemortem tooth loss (AMTL) and higher rates of dental wear than females; additionally, the Lower Social Status group had higher rates of posterior and total AMTL than the Higher Social Status group. When analyzing sex and social status, the Higher Social Status group exhibited no statistically significant differences. Within the Lower Social Status group, however, males and females exhibited differences in anterior AMTL, anterior dental wear, and posterior dental wear. No differences in dental caries rates were found for any subgroups. Results show that in this skeletal sample, dental health between the sexes was not drastically different, suggesting, at least with respect to diet, that women were not fundamentally inferior to men, contrary to surviving literary evidence. By analyzing the confluence of sex and social status, analysis shows that the Higher Social Status group was defined by more equality between sexes, while minor differences were found in the Lower Social Status group. This may suggest that in families where resources were strained, men and women consumed slightly different diets, while in families where resources were plentiful, women and men consumed similar foods. The results of this thesis provide new insights into the lives of women and lower social status groups, and contributes to a greater understanding of inequalities and dietary variation in Roman Britain. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This master’s thesis will be discussing how nuanced experiences affects the crafting of identity among transnational and/or transracial adult adoptees raised in Sweden from an anthropological perspective.The purpose of this thesis is to show that adoptees craft their identity in numerous and complex ways, one as unique as the other. The nuanced experiences are important to underscore since the adoptee demographic is vast and it consists of multiple individuals with unique lives, and if these distinctiveness are ignored, we run the risk of depicting a flawed picture of the adoptee experience. In an attempt to avoid doing so, this thesis will use an intersection of different theoretical frameworks from previous literatureon adoption and identity, which are belonging, body, and kinning, with additional theoretical concepts on materiality to complement. This paper follows eight adoptees, who share their individual narratives that revolves around the crafting of their Swedish, Adoption, and Ethnic identity. I will bring their experiences to life by putting them in relation to each other to showcase their uniqueness. Keywords: Adoption, Belonging, Body, Kinship.

Yes / Gender archaeology has made significant strides toward deconstructing the hegemony of binary categorizations. Challenging dichotomies such as man/woman, sex/gender, and biology/culture, approaches informed by poststructuralist, feminist, and queer theories have moved beyond essentialist and universalist identity constructs to more nuanced configurations. Despite the theoretical emphasis on context, multiplicity, and fluidity, binary starting points continue to streamline the spectrum of variability that is recognized, often reproducing normative assumptions in the evidence. The contributors to this special issue confront how sex, gender, and sexuality categories condition analytical visibility, aiming to develop approaches that respond to the complexity of theory in archaeological practice. The papers push the ontological and epistemological boundaries of bodies, personhood, and archaeological possibility, challenging a priori assumptions that contain how sex, gender, and sexuality categories are constituted and related to each other. Foregrounding intersectional approaches that engage with ambiguity, variability, and difference, this special issue seeks to “de-contain” categories, assumptions, and practices from “binding” our analytical gaze toward only certain kinds of persons and knowledges, in interpretations of the past and practices in the present.

Our research applies an intersectional lens to consider how gender, ethnicity and the minority status of immigrants, shape women migrant entrepreneurs’ motivations, measure of success, and barriers at different stages of the entrepreneurial journey, accounting for the sociocultural context. We applied a qualitative approach constructed around a case study strategy and semi-structured interviews with 6 Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs running a business in Ottawa, Canada.  The results highlighted that there is wide range of motivations for women migrant entrepreneurs to start running a business and they are confronted with different barriers. They may share some similar motivations and barriers, but their socio-cultural context makes each of their situations unique. We came to the same conclusion regarding their definition of entrepreneurial success. This research brings a better understanding of the motivations and barriers faced by an understudied population and it also allowed them to define their own criteria for measuring success. The results are limited to only one study area and one ethnicity. A larger sample size with more cases from multiple study areas could provide further insights.

This Bachelor thesis is an interpretive study, where the material has mainly been gathered through ethnographic methods, with thematically opened interviews and observations providing the primary data. A field study was conducted in Bolivia during the months of November and December of 2009; in La Paz in the Western highlands, including some interviews in the fast growing suburb El Alto, as well as in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in the Eastern lowlands. Bolivia is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in Latin America and the world, and the purpose of the study is to re-contextualise and re-interpret how inequality is created and maintained in the Bolivian society by doing a case study on gender inequality. In addition, an intersectional analysis is used that takes into account the diversity of the Bolivian society in terms of ethnicity and class. The study aims at exploring the mechanisms that create and maintain inequality in a Bolivian context as well as looking at the prospects for potential change in the unequal relations between groups of people within the new context of indigenous president Evo Morales and a new inclusive constitution. Using an abductive method, the empirical material has been re-interpreted with the help of American sociologist Charles Tilly’s framework of durable inequality. He identifies two mechanisms that create inequality, exploitation and opportunity hoarding, and two mechanisms that reinforce inequality; emulation and adaptation. Together with the concept of intersectionality, recognising women’s different experiences depending on, for instance, ethnic background or social class, these two frameworks are framing the study. Jointly they generate a new analytical tool that can deepen the understanding inequality mechanisms: the Intersecting Inequality Framework. The content of the interviews when analysed show that inequalities in Bolivia have long historical roots, and that the processes of exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation and adaptation that Tilly describes all take place in creating and maintaining an unequal position for Bolivian women. The Intersecting Inequality Framework reveals that the inequality mechanisms in the three dimensions of gender, ethnicity and class sometimes work autonomously and other times intersectionally. Changing durable inequality is a slow process; nevertheless there are signs of changed relations between categorical bounded groups in the Bolivian society. Although, in the context of Morales the main political focus at the time lays not on attaining gender equality, but rather to continue the empowerment of the indigenous populations.

This report is the outcome of a case study conducted in Kathmandu, Nepal in April 2016. The purpose of the study is to investigate in the consequences of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, from the perspective of women within socioeconomically vulnerable groups. The caste system is still practiced nearly all over Nepal and women are still facing multiple forms of discrimination. A woman belonging to the Dalits, which is the group considered to be at the bottom of the hierarchy and below the castes, have no right to control land, housing or money and are exposed to violence and forced sexual labour. The aim of the study is to shed light over how already existing discrimination leads to further examples of discrimination in the aftermath of a natural disaster and the “class-consciousness” of natural disasters. People within a society are living under different conditions and these conditions lead to different consequences when facing a natural disaster. The components of these conditions are often intertwined with each other and should therefore not be examined separately, which is why an intersectional perspective is used for this study. Furthermore, standpoint theory is used as well, to look at these issues from the viewpoint of the marginalized people of the society. Interviews were made with 6 different respondents, who are working for NGOs in and outside of Kathmandu and who through their work are coming on contact with the issues mentioned. My findings show several examples of post-earthquake consequences for women which can be linked to the strong patriarchy, the use of caste system and mistreatment from the government.

This intersectional study explores how the social constructed categories gender and ethnicity interact with each other in photos picturing Swedish athletes. The studies empirical material is collected from the sport section of the biggest Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet, and was published during the period 23rd of November, 2012 to 23rd of November, 2015. The photos has been analyzed with a semiotic analysis which establishes that there are discriminating differences in how the athletes are being portraited. The most comprehensive differences are found between the groups ethnical Swedish men and ethnical non-Swedish women.

The Western beauty standard revolves around three main attributes: thinness, youth, and whiteness. Combined, this ideal corresponds with privilege. Past studies have explored how racism and ageism are embedded in the beauty standard, but little work has explored how classism is included in the Western beauty standard. Utilizing the classical theoretical work of Bourdieu and Simmel, I explore the ways in which the Western beauty standard is dependent upon privilege and cultural capital. Using the methodology of a content analysis, the current study examines four women’s fashion and beauty magazines. I find that the both the language and the imagery used in the magazines allows for classism to be explicitly and implicitly displayed. I also explore the intersectionality of classism, racism, and ageism to develop a clearer understanding of how the three types of privilege are sustained within the beauty standard.

This ethnographic research examines the social service encounter between private providers and child recipients involved in a faith-based afterschool program located in a southern US city. I specifically focus on the tensions and divisions that developed between staff members and participating families in daily programmatic interactions and rhetoric. I highlight how race, class, and gender intersected with age to shape children’s different experiences of the afterschool program and their lives beyond the agency. I also show how these social categories converged in local stories of religious poverty relief, which build upon cultural narratives about American welfare, to blind staff to the realities of children’s lives. These issues resulted in a program where staff members sought to transform children away from imagined social ills they associated with guardians to ideologically and programmatically isolate children from their families. I explore these conditions to draw attention to some of the ways structural inequalities can be reproduced and maintained in private service provision. It is in this context that I examine the increasing prominence of faith-based organizations within domestic poverty policy and relief services.