<p>Uppsatsen handlar om hur tibetaner använder sig av Internet i strävan efter en nationell identitet och i kampen för ett fritt Tibet. Med information från fyra tibetaner analyseras olika webbplatser kopplade till den tibetanska diasporan för att se om denna koppling finns. Med hjälp av tidigare diaspora forskning och Benedict Andersons tankar om en föreställd gemenskap görs en analys av kopplingen mellan diasporan, Internet och en föreställd gemenskap. Abstracts: This essay discuss how Tibetans use Internet in their effort to maintain a national identity and their struggle for a free Tibet. With information from four Tibetans, Internet sites connected to the Diaspora is analyzed to see if this connection exists. With help from earlier Diasporaresearch and Benedict Andersons thoughts about imagined communities the essay analyse the connection between Diaspora, Internet and imagined communities.</p>

<p>This dissertation presents an ethnography of youth in Liberia and of how their lives became affected by a civil war which raged in the country between 1990 and 1997. The focus is on the experiences, motivations, and reflections of young combatants who fought for a variety of rebel factions. For these young people, the daily prospect of poverty, joblessness and marginalisation effectively blocked the paths to a normal adulthood; drawing them instead into a subculture of liminality, characterised by abjection, resentment and rootlessness. As opportunity came, their voluntary enlistment into one of the several rebel armies of the civil war therefore became an attractive option for many. Based upon one year of fieldwork during 1998, conducted among groups of ex-combatant youths in both the capital Monrovia and in a provincial town in the rural hinterland, I describe and analyse the young people’s own accounts of their involvement in the civil war; their complicity in atrocities, their coping strategies in the context of armed conflict, their position as ex-combatants in a post-war environment, and their outlook on their past, present and future.</p><p>In the first chapter I set the scene of the Liberian civil war and discuss the central concepts on which my dissertation is built. Chapter two then takes up the methodological issues relating to the particular fieldwork conditions found. This is done by providing an account of my participant observation within a volatile community of ex-combatants in Monrovia. Chapter three deals with the nature of pre-civil war Liberian political and military organisational structures and their rootedness in pre-state institutions such as local warlordism and secret societies. In chapter four I look at the cultural setting of my fieldwork and track elements found within the legacy of violence, to oral literature and patterns of socialisation. Chapter five focuses specifically on the role and predicament of young women in the civil war. Whilst some became active fighters, most participated as auxiliaries in various capacities. Their accounts convey not only the tremendous hardship and suffering, but also reveal mechanisms which helped at least some to survive. In chapter six I discuss the question of a post-war reintegration of ex-combatants into peacetime society and show that the prospects of different groups depend primarily on their social and geographical situation, rather than on the negligible effectiveness of aid programmes routinely executed by international organisations and NGOs.</p>

Pregnancy and birth are not only physiological processes but also socially and culturally organized events. Pregnancy is an individual experience as well as the focus of collective concerns and values. In this dissertation the pregnant body is understood as an arena of social truths and contesting perspectives: a public stage where different perspectives on medical technology, risk and gender are acted out. Swedish maternity care dominates the arena, and women have to adjust to the authority of medical knowledge. This, however, does not mean that women comply without questions. As the study shows they struggle for voice and agency which is reflected in pregnant women’s differing views and uses of biomedical knowledge and technology. Although the discourse on pregnancy and birth is highly ideological and marked by strong opinions, pregnant women in practice tend to be motivated by pragmatics rather than ideology. In order to understand the complexities and nuances of reproductive culture in Sweden, we need to move beyond distinctions such as the one between technology and the body, and instead focus on the experiential world of pregnant women in which technology is an integral part in everyday life and therefore taken for granted rather than problematised. The thesis is based on fieldwork at a maternity care center and interviews with pregnant women. Furthermore, discussion groups on the Internet and debates in mass media have been valuable sources of information. / Avhandlingen finns att köpa som tryckt bok för 120 SEK exkl. frakt. Maila birgitta.hellmark@comhem.se

Leadership in an egalitarian society is a contradiction in terms. Still, a collective has to be vocal in order to gain a bargaining position, and to have its identity reflected and accepted. This is not the least true for a marginalised society like När socken, on the Swedish island of Gotland. In this farming community of some 550 inhabitants - as on Gotland in general - there are, in the conventional sense of the word, no leaders to perform this presentation. However, the concept of spokesperson is well established. They are locally defined by the use of labels, which in turn are based on descriptions or adjectives like "firebrand", "nay-sayer", "good", "balanced" etc. I propose that this way of defining spokespersons is founded on a strong egalitarian notion and is best described as a semantic field, rather than in hierarchical terms. Throughout the centuries the geographical and social base for the individual spokesperson has been the farm or ensamgård, i.e. a group of economically, jurally, ritually, as well as spatially linked homesteads. Thus, the socken of När may be described as an example of a house-based society. Successively these ensamgård have given place to more individual farms and these in turn have become linked directly with the socken as such. Presently the socken itself has ceased to exist, at least as a formal unit within the administrative set-up of Sweden. Nevertheless, locally När socken continues to act as the prime key organising symbol. As such, När socken forms the prime focus for the processes of identity formation and the most important forum for passing information, decision-making and implementation. On the one hand, the individual farms, with links of kinship, neighbourhood, co-operation, and co-ownership, constitute the basis for the formation of social ties within the socken. On the other, such ties are also established by popular participation in an astounding amount of voluntary associations as well as quite a few projects benefiting the community as a whole. These are undertakings that mobilise the absolute majority of the population. These processes have here been summarised as När’s socken-democracy. To the outsider the projects are the most obvious result of localised popular participation. From a local point of view these projects are, apart from being socially and economically significant, primarily regarded as sources of enjoyment - the satisfaction of which is considered in itself the single most important reason to participate in any collective social action. När socken is successfully represented as a thoroughly dynamic "modern" industrious and thriving community. At the same time it is regionally regarded as one of the most traditional Gotlandic farming socken with all the connotations of a warm-embracing but also somewhat backward, marginalised community. These rather contradictory rhetoric tools are successfully employed by the spokespersons as they, in unison, represent the community. However, the spokespersons of När socken are not a homogenous group with a single goal. Local solidarity obscures the fact that the presentation is based on a complex process. One can find strong urges among farmers/farms not only to be good enough (duga) but to excel at the cost of one’s neighbours, there is also a continuos competition to define what is to be the dominant local paradigm. This way of consciously devising rhetorics and keep a firm line between the community and the outside may be interpreted as a result of an expressed need to come to terms with political and economic, as well as moral marginalisation of the individual and community. Still, these rhetorics do not directly determine the ways in which the community members interact on När or vice versa. Everyday practices, be they socialising or engaging in a project, answer to a felt need to smoothen out everyday community life. The duality of a symbolically constructed rhetoric identity and local practice may be regarded as complementary ways to construct a viable collective identity in an increasingly individualised and globalised world. The combination of rhetoric and practice can be seen as answers to the expressed local concern as how to make life in the margin a feasible proposition.

Uppsatsen handlar om hur tibetaner använder sig av Internet i strävan efter en nationell identitet och i kampen för ett fritt Tibet. Med information från fyra tibetaner analyseras olika webbplatser kopplade till den tibetanska diasporan för att se om denna koppling finns. Med hjälp av tidigare diaspora forskning och Benedict Andersons tankar om en föreställd gemenskap görs en analys av kopplingen mellan diasporan, Internet och en föreställd gemenskap. Abstracts: This essay discuss how Tibetans use Internet in their effort to maintain a national identity and their struggle for a free Tibet. With information from four Tibetans, Internet sites connected to the Diaspora is analyzed to see if this connection exists. With help from earlier Diasporaresearch and Benedict Andersons thoughts about imagined communities the essay analyse the connection between Diaspora, Internet and imagined communities.

This dissertation presents an ethnography of youth in Liberia and of how their lives became affected by a civil war which raged in the country between 1990 and 1997. The focus is on the experiences, motivations, and reflections of young combatants who fought for a variety of rebel factions. For these young people, the daily prospect of poverty, joblessness and marginalisation effectively blocked the paths to a normal adulthood; drawing them instead into a subculture of liminality, characterised by abjection, resentment and rootlessness. As opportunity came, their voluntary enlistment into one of the several rebel armies of the civil war therefore became an attractive option for many. Based upon one year of fieldwork during 1998, conducted among groups of ex-combatant youths in both the capital Monrovia and in a provincial town in the rural hinterland, I describe and analyse the young people’s own accounts of their involvement in the civil war; their complicity in atrocities, their coping strategies in the context of armed conflict, their position as ex-combatants in a post-war environment, and their outlook on their past, present and future. In the first chapter I set the scene of the Liberian civil war and discuss the central concepts on which my dissertation is built. Chapter two then takes up the methodological issues relating to the particular fieldwork conditions found. This is done by providing an account of my participant observation within a volatile community of ex-combatants in Monrovia. Chapter three deals with the nature of pre-civil war Liberian political and military organisational structures and their rootedness in pre-state institutions such as local warlordism and secret societies. In chapter four I look at the cultural setting of my fieldwork and track elements found within the legacy of violence, to oral literature and patterns of socialisation. Chapter five focuses specifically on the role and predicament of young women in the civil war. Whilst some became active fighters, most participated as auxiliaries in various capacities. Their accounts convey not only the tremendous hardship and suffering, but also reveal mechanisms which helped at least some to survive. In chapter six I discuss the question of a post-war reintegration of ex-combatants into peacetime society and show that the prospects of different groups depend primarily on their social and geographical situation, rather than on the negligible effectiveness of aid programmes routinely executed by international organisations and NGOs.

This paper focuses on what people in Saga, a village on the periphery of Niamey, the capital of Niger, do in the face of illness. With limited economic assets and in a context of medical pluralism, to which therapeutic alternatives do they turn? And what factors are determinant in the choice that they make? Saga is an old village, which has become increasingly integrated into the expanding urban community of Niamey. It can be described as a semi-urban area in which elements of both rural and urban Niger are present. The therapeutic field in Saga is, as in all of Niger, characterised by medical pluralism. A number of therapeutic alternatives exist side by side. They range from ‘western’ or hospital medicine provided by the local public dispensary, the private confessional dispensary and by the unlicensed sale of medicine by ambulant vendors to ‘traditional’ treatments, such as Islamic medicine practised by marabouts and ‘traditional’ healing using herbal remedies and spirit possession rituals. This paper is about the various institutions and actors of ‘modern’ medicine in Saga, namely on the public dispensary, on the confessional dispensary and on the informal sale of pharmaceuticals. To better understand the quest for therapy in Saga this paper focuses on everyday practices of therapy seeking, on the actual and everyday choices people make in the face of illness.Special attention is paid to the therapeutic alternatives and to the relation between therapy seeker and therapy provider in what may be called the therapeutic encounter. It is argued that socio-economic factors as well as social relations, personal experiences and perceptions of trust are central to the therapeutic recourse taken. Furthermore, it is suggested that the ‘quest for therapy’ can and should be seen as a ‘quest for relief’.

This study explores public health and education provision in Niamey, the capital of Niger, by merging the ethnographic study of public services with an anthropological analysis of the state and of local politics. Based on anthropological fieldwork carried out in a group of neighbourhoods in the periphery of Niamey, the study highlights the political dimensions of public service provision in a local arena where international development interventions and national plans meet local realities and where a wide range of actors and institutions, dis-courses, meanings, and practices are mobilized in the offering of and the regulation of access to public services. It focuses on the political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of public service provision, too often hidden behind contemporary buzzwords of development such as community participation and decentralization that dominate global debates about education and healthcare in developing countries. The study brings forth the strategies of urban resi-dents in dealing with daily challenges in the consolidation of service provision and in educa-tion and health-seeking trajectories. It shows that access to a satisfactory treatment of illness or a successful school career is premised on the ability to navigate on the medical and educa-tion markets, which are made up of a plurality of providers and of official and unofficial costs and transactions. Further, these public services engage different actors such as commu-nity committees, traditional chiefs, local associations, the municipality and elected municipal councillors, emergent leaders, NGOs, and international development aid. The study demon-strates that despite the uncertainty of state support in health and education provision and a widespread dissatisfaction with these public services, the image of the state as service pro-vider is reproduced on a day by day basis through local efforts at securing public services.

<p>This paper concerns the changes in attitudes towards the use of force within the South African police force after democratisation. The paper debates the current approaches towards the analysis of violence and a new theory on community and conflict management is developed. This new theory aims to provide a new framework for analysing the use of violence. The theory is then applied on a fieldwork conducted at a local police station in Cape Town, South Africa.</p>

<p>This thesis deals with the connection between archaeological sites and</p><p>processes of identity formation in Southern Africa, as expressed in relation to the Twyfelfontein rock art site and Great Zimbabwe, and, to some extent, the White Lady site. The aim is to understand in what ways people think of, and identify with, archaeological monuments. The Twyfelfontein rock art site is presented in the form of a case study, based on my own fieldwork of 2004, while the descriptions of the other sites derive from literary sources. The theoretical discussion on identity, and ethnic identity in particular, is central to this thesis. In analysing the conditions of the different archaeological sites, a discursive approach is taken in order to</p><p>highlight the way perceptions of the past, and people’s identities, are dependant upon social and political processes.</p>