Within American religious culture, there is a small but significant and growing movement that overlaps and interacts with the environmental movement. It's known by many names, including Contemporary Paganism, Neo-Paganism, Earth Religion, and Nature Religion. A few years of observation at Starwood Festival, the largest annual Pagan gathering in North America, revealed that many individuals who identify as Pagan (or Wiccan, Druid, animist, or another of the identities that fall under the Pagan umbrella) include in their spiritual practice engagement with faeries or other nature spirits. My research employed qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews to examine the extent to which engagement with faeries and other nature spirits among Pagan festival attendees affects their relationships with nature and their behaviors in the natural world. The Pagan understanding of the Earth and all of its inhabitants and elements as animate or inspirited, as exemplified in the phenomenon of faery faith, conflates the wellbeing of the Earth and wild nature with the psychological wellbeing of each individual human, making this worldview highly compatible with the emerging field of ecopsychology. Drawing on theories of enchantment, consciousness, multiple realities, imagination, and play, my interpretations of the stories of my informants contribute additional perspective to the contemporary practice of Paganism as a small but growing countercultural movement within the dominant Western culture, particularly as it informs the human-(in)-nature relationship.

This project foregrounds the work and perspectives of spoken word poets of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent in connection to the NYC slam poetry scene. I trace the parallel racialization of MENA diaspora communities in the US and the development of slam poetry as a space for raising “othered” voices. Through ethnographic analysis, I consider slam poetry as a site of intersectional struggle, arguing that the engagement of MENA diaspora poets with this scene reveals the ways in which poetry both constitutes resistance to discursive violence through representation and works to mobilize audiences against tangible structures of violence.

Abstract The culture of law enforcement is an all or nothing proposition with no gray area where membership into this society is concerned. You are either “on the job” or you are not. Even references among officers to “the job” indicate there is only one job. Likened to a secret handshake, that initial phrase if answered correctly opens the door to instant fraternal acceptance, get out of violation passes, and the many other assumed privileges of brotherhood. Manning (1980) describes the powerful mystification of policing as the “sacred canopy”. He further asserts that “the police role conveys a sense of sacredness or awesome power that lies at the root of political order, and authority, the claims a state makes upon its people for deference to rules, laws and norms” (Manning, 1980, p. 21). These elements make policing unique to all other American occupations. The sacredness of the profession creates social autonomy protected by the officers’ code of silence. Operating in this vacuum apart from public accountability fosters an environment for behavior outside of laws the institution is charged with enforcing. My research shows the process of occupational socialization ushers officers into a state of becoming blue, or the enculturation of expectant behavior and actions. I confirm that assignments into the Special Operations Group (SOG) facilitate a subculture separate and apart from the institutional ideals (Librett, 2006) and encourage a darkening of the shade of blue identifying officers with a labeling of deviance. While previous research identifies the code of silence as a by-product of the policing culture, my research identifies it as fundamental for maintaining the covenant of the dark blue fraternity.

The First Republic of Czechoslovakia existed from October 1918 to March 1939. Formed from territories previously part of the Austro-Hungarian or Habsburg Empire, the nation of Czechoslovakia was a unique democratic state in a Central European region of less stable entities, establishing a modern and future oriented nation. This thesis is an examination of the representations of the concept and idea of home across several different spheres of ideation, examining in turn: the space of nation building, nationalism and nationhood, showing the uses of home in the creation of and the running of the state; architectural theorisation and modernist building projects that sought to refashion living styles and housing, and social and socialist planning manifestos are compared to the initial energy and enthusiasm of avant garde explorations of everyday life; the concept of home and home life, coupled with the housewife's life within them are examined in the stances of the populist periodicals of the era which were directed towards a female audience. The final section of the thesis examines, in the penultimate chapter, the concept of home by in-depth readings of literature and personal writings, feuilleton, diaries, letters and poetry. The final chapter presents the testimonies of residents of Prague during the interwar, using life histories and questionnaire responses, to present a completed picture of the multi-level meanings of home.

The objective of this thesis is to study the impacts of Bolivia's non-contributory pension, the Renta Dignidad, on the wellbeing of older peasants and their families. Literature on social protection has had a tendency to propose social protection policies as contributing to a broad range of objectives, and non-contributory pensions are no exception. Studies have found them to contribute not only to ‘obvious' needs such as increased consumption and income security but also to investments in productivity, social relationships, health, increased access to credit and savings, while it has become common to claim that they contribute to intangible goals such as dignity and citizenship. Moreover, because they do not impose conditionalities on recipients and are often relatively broader in their coverage than other social protection policies, social pensions have generally avoided critiques that have been aimed at conditional cash transfers and public works programmes. The danger of this literature is that it assumes that wellbeing is heavily responsive to monetary wealth, rather than other areas. To study this, an ethnographic methodology, based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews was employed in two rural communities located in the La Paz department in the highland Altiplano region of Bolivia close to Lake Titicaca. My analysis shows that older persons' wellbeing depends heavily on a combination of elements, going beyond material wellbeing into areas such as their relationships with their spouses, children, grandchildren, and the other people in the rural communities in which they live, their ability to contribute their labour and maintain their daily (agricultural) work, to participate in collective social political and religious activities, and to maintain good health. For example, older people work hard for as late in life as possible largely because it is meaningful for them to work the land and produce food. This means that health problems, which are often exacerbated by hard work, are particularly damaging to wellbeing because they inhibit older persons' ability to do this. Meanwhile, ideas and values about how older people should live are continually being negotiated and contested between older people and with their younger family members, often leading to disputes. These are not driven solely by material interests, but concern the ways in which people should live and seek cultural, social and spiritual fulfilment. This is not due to a particular conception of wellbeing held by these people because they are indigenous, as might be inferred through the romantic lens of the vivir bien concept, but because human wellbeing more generally needs to be understood in relational terms, rather than exclusively in terms of peoples' capacity to satisfy their basic needs. While the Renta Dignidad increases older persons' ability to consume, maintain livelihood security, and in some case to participate in exchanges of food and gifts with other family members, it does not respond significantly to these other areas of wellbeing, contributing little to healthcare for example. The policy implications of this are that a more integral approach needs to be adopted to older persons' wellbeing, going beyond cash transfers to greater efforts to bring healthcare services to older people in remote rural areas.

There are over a million associations in France dealing with a large variety of issues such as leisure, sports, health, social solidarity or education. Legally defined by the 1901 law, associations are complex structures that require financing and management. They can also be described as promoting ‘cultural expression' and ‘social integration'. Associations are particularly present in the French ‘banlieues' (suburbs) around town and city centers as these areas are often seen as epitomising social fragmentation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork amongst two associations in the Quartiers Nord area of Asnières, a town on the edges of Paris known for its diverse associative life, I explore the positioning, mechanisms and strategies adopted by associations in order to reduce the effects of socio-economic inequalities along territorial lines. My fieldwork mainly consisted of teaching French to newly-arrived migrant children and teenagers as well as helping others with their homework. This allowed me to gain access to a large variety of perspectives, from that of associative leaders and members of the local administration to the views of families living in the Quartiers Nord. To make sense of these multiple angles of approach, I rely strongly on Gerd Baumann's (1996) distinction between dominant and demotic discourses as it underlines the dynamic and contextual nature of interactions between residents and the local and national frameworks in which they evolve. I aim to uncover the processes through which some associations have become intermediate spaces (or interstices) of mediation between local or national administrations and the residents of given neighborhoods labeled as ‘difficult', in other words between center and periphery. By doing so, I add to the debate on the integration of banlieue inhabitants to discourses of French Republicanism.

The place of birth for First Nations is a contested issue in Canada today. For the past 30 years, the practice of removing women from communities to birth in urban centre hospitals, called maternal evacuation, has been a part of the dialogue between First Nation organisations, the Canadian state, policy makers, and Academics. Concurrent to the practice of evacuation, there is a movement to repatriate birth to First Nations through Aboriginal midwifery. This multi-sited ethnography is based on 15 months of fieldwork in Manitoba, Canada and follows the practice of evacuation and the establishment of an Aboriginal midwifery practice in one northern First Nation community. The ethnography reveals that both evacuation and returning birth is a complex, multi-layered negotiation of risk between various actors. From women and their families, doctors and nurses, midwives and other health professionals: the management of risk is at the forefront of this discussion. This study takes into account how risk is imagined, created and targeted in the practice of maternity care for First Nations in Manitoba. The concept of risk and risk management takes on multiple forms as the practice of evacuation moves from the community to the urban centre, from federal land to provincial land, from the hospital to the board room. Through participation observation in the places of birth and interviews with the range of actors involved in maternity care for First Nations, this ethnography reveals the messiness of the concept of risk, and identifies where these actors collude and conflict on the topic of evacuation and repatriation. The study also traces how the state has co-opted the language of risk on all sides of this debate and how the bodies of the First Nations mother and midwife becomes sites in which these contestations over risk, responsibility, knowledge and safety occur.

Every fall, Eduardo Zayas-Bazán, a native of Cuba who was a veteran of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and who taught Spanish at East Tennessee State University for over 30 years, hosts a Cuban-style pig roast in Tennessee for family and friends. "Among my fondest memories are the pig roasts we had in Cuba on special occasions," said Zayas-Bazán, who marinates his pigs in grapefruit juice mixed with garlic and oregano, and cooks them in a contraption that he says "looks like a shoe box with a grill inside."" With the annual pig roast as context, the film tells the story of Zayas-Bazán's life, both in Cuba and the U.S. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1098/thumbnail.jpg

The purpose of this thesis is to identify common themes presented in several illness narratives with specific attention paid to the relationship between patients and their physicians and patients and their families. Only illness narratives written in America and Western Europe were used for this thesis so the topic could be narrowed to the experience within the western biomedical field. While most research on illness narratives focuses on defining illness and illustrating the importance of introspective work, this thesis identifies patterns in a way that can shape the future treatment of chronically ill patients. This thesis also allows me to creatively explore a personal illness narrative, reinforcing these themes and contributing to the discussion of what physicians and families can do to make the illness experience more bearable for the patient.

The purpose of this study was to sort out and specify the dimensions of acculturation for kaigaishijo, Japanese sojourning students who presented an anomaly in a monocultural setting, based on factors that surfaced through data collected in the interviews and observations as a result of my conceptual framework that focused on the family, educational environment, and maturity. By sorting the data and comparing and contrasting one child's experiences to those of others as individuals and as an aggregate, nine factors appeared to repeatedly impact the process of acculturation. These essential factors that provide insights into acculturation are (1) the mother's role, (2) language acquisition, (3) clothing, (4) artistic endeavors, (5) educational experiences, (6) a receptive attitude, (7) personality, (8) length of residency, and (9) family value of education.;Elements of two of the three original concepts that organized my thinking, interviewing, and observations, that is family and school, played significant to moderate roles in the acculturation process of all four students of the study. The children, according to information gleaned from their parents, teachers, and school records, had met appropriate maturational milestones; therefore, the concept of maturation did not impact in these cases. Specific elements from the familial and educational environments did, however, impact the process. Two factors directly pertaining to the individual children's social and psychological make-up rendered significant consequences in the process.;Numerous variables impacted the acculturative process and each child's story was varied and complex. The nine common factors isolated in the study do not appear to influence the process of acculturation with equal weight. Some constitute a more salient role than others. It was concluded that three factors appear to play a minor role in acculturation, four appear moderately important, and two factors, personality and a receptive attitude, display the greatest importance.;The study was conducted in a Middle Atlantic state where the author was a school administrator. The dimensions of the process of acculturation should raise consciousness levels regarding the need to dispel stereotypes and to acknowledge differences as means to understanding and accepting diversity. Further study is needed to ascertain the generalizability of the findings to other cross-cultural populations.