Latinas are at risk for not engaging in optimal exercise and are at greater risk than other ethnic groups for being overweight and suffering deleterious health consequences. The current study’s researcher utilizes pedometers, exercise logs, surveys, and participatory photography to determine exercise motivators and barriers to exercise among Latinas. The specific aims of the presented research were to identify predictors of exercise, to investigate the relationship between motivation types, self-determination and acculturation among Latinas, and employ participatory photography methodology to better understand Latina’s exercise motivators and barriers. The methodology included both quantitative and qualitative methods. Exercise motivation types (Amotivation, Extrinsic, Intrinsic) using the Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-2 (BREQ-2), an exercise log and pedometer step counts were collected from 169 Latinas. Acculturation and demographic variables including income, education, and number of children were also collected. Each Latina met with the researcher to complete the BREQ-2, receive her exercise log and pedometers and to return her exercise logs. A sub-sample of 19 Latinas responded to semi-structured questions about exercise and photographed their exercise motivators and barriers. Results showed that the more acculturated to American culture, the fewer steps on average per day were recorded by participants. Demographic variables were not significant predictors of exercise. Motivation type was not found to predict exercise (recorded steps per day). The Intrinsic regulation subscale, ‘I value the benefits of exercise,’ of the BREQ-2 had the highest mean score (m = 3.28, SD = .83). Participants in the qualitative phase of the study defined exercise as physical activities done for the purpose of exercising involving a set of physical and emotional effects. Exercise motivators identified through qualitative semi-structured interviews were classified as either Extrinsic or Intrinsic with the most frequently commented on being the Extrinsic category. Exercise barriers that emerged from the data were classified into a) competing obligations, b) personal limitations, c) environmental limitations, and d) competing diversions. Cultural aspects influencing Latinas’ exercise also emerged from the data classified into the following categories: a) job stress, b) changing family roles, c) fast food availability, and d) transportation. The findings of this study suggest avenues for interventions that are family-centered and culturally-tailored based on education of what constitutes exercise. Exercise motivation is a complex issue for Latinas, and future researchers need to examine the mechanisms of becoming more Americanized that may adversely affect Latinas’ activity levels. The concept and measurement of Identified regulation may need to be revised before its further use among Latinas in addressing the significant health disparity attributable to sub-optimal exercise.

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The potential for art in peacebuilding has shown success but not complete acceptance in the peacebuilding field. Participatory photography’s method of photovoice has shown effective as a unique participatory action research tool able to allow users to communicate deeply on sensitive subjects with potential to influence larger social change. Participatory photography programs involving intergroup conflict or tensions presents an important relational component for practitioners and stakeholders to respond to, however the factors which lead to successful collaborative action, an ambitious outcome is not yet known. This thesis examines why some participatory photography programs involving intergroup conflict or tensions can reach collaborative social action more easily than others.  A structured focused comparison tests a theorized positive relationship between program duration and achievement of collaborative social action. The findings give moderate support to the hypothesis, as a low program duration shows a challenge to reach collaborative social action and a mid-range program duration proves able to achieve a high level of collaborative social action. On the other hand, an extreme high program duration can reach social action but it is not collaborative. Analysis considers some other factors affecting collaborative social action such as context and program design factors, which suggests the need for further testing to inform better practical designs of future participatory photography programs.

This thesis involves a collaborative study of emic articulations and quotidian ways of ‘being German' and ‘being Paraguayan' in Nueva Germania, a rural municipality in Paraguay. An argument is made that the social categories focused upon during this thesis, were evoked according to different contexts. While many claimed that Germanness or Paraguayanness were key categories, essentialistic characteristics that defined them and others as people of a certain kind, in other situations these social divisions were disregarded or even contradicted. This leads me to the theoretical conclusion that social categories, and epistemic frameworks more broadly, should not be understood as universally relevant or as universally applicable, and should not be treated as such. The thesis therefore proposes to assume ‘contextual epistemic permissibility' as a key axiom for use within anthropology and in the wider social sciences. The possible theoretical and methodological consequences of such an assumption are elaborated upon. Different theories of self, social action, and agency are debated in the course of this thesis: it is asked which might best analytically accommodate the assumption of contextual epistemic permissibility. Furthermore, in order to reflect the multiplicity of emic epistemic frameworks, the thesis proposes that a notion of ‘analytical and representative complementarity' be introduced, rather than monistic theoretical models. Such complementarity is practised in the thesis through the use of different multiscalar analyses (for example, the use of different theories of nationalism), and through the simultaneous use of different forms of representation. The above theoretical divagations are intertwined and related to the individual stories of twelve people from Nueva Germania, and are presented with both textual and photographic means. The stories were created through a collaborative process. Each project participant was free to decide upon the subject of their account, and therefore the resulting stories are able to cover a variety of different themes, at the same time introducing the reader to individual histories, struggles, opinions, plans, and critiques. Some elements of these accounts directly relate to the theoretical debates focused upon within the thesis while other elements of the individual stories are left to speak for themselves, and for the reader to make sense of independently. The photographs and texts, in their intertextual presentation, allow for an embodiment of the argument concerning representational complementarity.

Cette recherche porte sur la place des petits périmètres irrigués (PPI) dans le système national de gestion de l’eau en Afrique du Sud. Nous avons choisi une approche par les représentations pour étudier et expliquer les difficultés rencontrées au sein des PPI par la création des water user associations (WUA) prévues par la réforme sur l’eau de 1998. Cette étude mène en parallèle un travail de déconstruction de la politique publique sud-africaine et un travail d’exploration des représentations sociales de petits agriculteurs. L’analyse des interprétations et des choix réalisés par les politiques dans la définition et la mise en place des WUA met en évidence une négation progressive de la capacité de participation des PPI par le biais de révisions successives du modèle de WUA. L’étude des représentations des agriculteurs est menée à l’aide d’un protocole de recherche novateur combinant méthodes discursives et visuelles. Elle révèle des représentations de la gestion de l’eau dépersonnalisées et dissociées du concept de contrôle. La notion de contrôle, centrale au discours des politiques, cristallise les problèmes rencontrés dans la participation des PPI au système national de gestion de l’eau : elle est la marque d’une divergence de représentations entre politiques et agriculteurs et la marque de la marginalisation des PPI. Notre recherche conclut en proposant de redéfinir le rôle des comités d’irrigation existants au sein des PPI mais oubliés de la réforme sur l’eau. Elle propose d’en faire des sous-comités des WUA à la fois indépendants et intégrés, des catalyseurs de la participation des PPI, et des intermédiaires entre agriculteurs et politique nationale de gestion de l’eau. / This research examines the role of small irrigation schemes (SIS) in the South African water management system. We chose to study and interpret the difficulties surrounding the creation of water user associations (WUA), undertaken following the 1998 water reform, in SIS, using a representational approach. This research consists both of a deconstruction of the South African water management policy and an exploration of farmers’ social representations using three case studies. Analysing the interpretations and choices made by officials in the definition and implementation of WUA, the study shows repeated revisions of the institution’s design leading to a gradual exclusion of SIS from participation and undermining of their capacities to contribute meaningfully to the national water management system. The study of farmers’ social representations is conducted using an innovative research design combining discursive and visual methods. It shows depersonalized representations of water management isolated from the concept of control. This concept, central to the political discourse, is at the very core of the difficulties surrounding SIS participation in the national water management system: it symbolizes the discrepancies between farmers’ and officials’ representations and the marginalisation of SIS. Our research concludes by proposing a redefinition of the role of existing irrigation committees in SIS neglected by the water reform until now. It proposes to transform irrigation committees into sub-committees of the WUA, to make them both independent and integrated, to allow them to drive SIS participation, and to establish them as intermediaries between farmers and the national water management policy.