As part of his anthropological fieldwork, in January 1958 Daniel J. Scheans took a census of Suba, an Ilokano barrio in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, the Philippines. The purpose of the thesis was. to use the Suban data to develop, describe and.test a method for analyzing census data for small populations (1000 or fewer persons). The method was to be complete, to generate as much information as possible based on the data collected, to expose weaknesses and gaps in the data collected and in the data collection procedures, to aid future census-takers .in structuring the content of and procedures for taking a census, to be computerized for speed and ease of analysis and adjustment, and to furnish data sufficiently free from methodological variations to allow meaningful comparisons of different populations.

The focus of this research was to obtain, specifically, data on the marriage customs of the Druze in the Shouf Mountains of southeastern Lebanon. Ten Druze informants were selected and classified according to sex, age, marital status and religious status (sheik/sheika). A detailed questionnaire was designed to use during the interviews with these informants. However, after two interviews, it became apparent that a variable questionnaire was necessary to take advantage of the new, richly-detailed, cultural information that emerged with each informant. New questions were developed, in the field, to reflect and gather this new ethnographic data on Druze marriage customs.

There is a considerable amount of unpublished source material on Kalapuyan ethnography. This consists primarily of manuscript field notes from three linguistically trained scholars: Albert S. Gatschet, who collected Kalapuyan linguistic and ethnographic data during a visit to Grand Ronde Reservation in 1877, Leo J. Frachtenberg, who worked with a number of Kalapuyan informants from 1913 to 1915, and Melville Jacobs, who worked with the last surviving speakers of Kalapuyan languages during a number of sessions between 1928 and 1936. Data from these three authorities, plus other available data, reveal many details about aboriginal Kalapuyan life (“aboriginal” here referring to the period from around first White contact until removal to the reservation). Any attempt to reconstruct ethnographic descriptions of the aboriginal Kalapuyans should fully utilize these available data. I intend this thesis as a beginning effort toward that end. It seemed to me that the ethnographic notes scattered through the Gatschet manuscripts, representing as they do the knowledge of informants who had reached adulthood under pre-reservation conditions, would prove particularly interesting in terms of ethnographic reconstruction. Thus, I selected the Tualatin Kalapuyans, the subject of Gatschet’s main effort, as my own focus. In view of the quantity of data involved, I further restricted my scope to much less than an overall ethnographic description of the aboriginal Tualatin. I have concentrated upon two related aspects of that larger picture -- subsistence and ethnobiology. Under the former, I consider aboriginal habitat, general subsistence economy, territorial and seasonal availability of subsistence resources, seasonal cycles involved in harvest of resources, subsistence-related aspects of regional interrelationships such as trade, and specific subsistence-related activities and practices. Under ethnobiology, I consider native knowledge and uses of plant and animal resources. In Chapter IV, some additional ethnographic information unrelated to these two main areas is also presented concerning the identification and localization of Tualatin winter-village groups.

The research problem that the thesis is concerned with is the definition of the components of the "attractiveness" of a regional shopping center as they pertain to the decision-making process of the consumer. In addition, variations among the shopping patterns of male and female shoppers and among income groups are examined.

Medical educators recognize the need for including cultural insights into the training of future physicians. This instructor's manual suggests selected journal articles and guidelines for their use in each of the clinical courses to illustrate the relevance of culture, inter- and intraethnic differences, an attitude of cultural relativity, and the importance of language use and communications skills for medical practice. The articles are found in journals typically available to medical students. This manual provides a baseline integrative approach applicable to other specialized training programs. A recommendation is made for evaluation and revision of history-taking interview forms to elicit additional culture-specific information. It is argued that an increase in physicians' cultural sensitivity and a decrease in medicocentrism will improve patient care.

As knowledge about the constellating set of environmental and social crises stemming from the neoliberal global food regime becomes more pressing and popularized among US consumers, it has brought Indigenous actors asserting their political sovereignty and treaty rights with regards to their homelands into new collaborations, contestations, and negotiations with settlers in emerging food politics domains. In this dissertation, I examine solidarities and affinities being forged between Coast Salish and settler food actors in Puget Sound, attending specifically to how contested sovereignties are submerged but at play in these relations and how settler desires for belonging on and to stolen Indigenous lands animate liberal and radical food system politics. The dissertation presents my ethnographic fieldwork in South Puget Sound over a period of 18 months with two related Coast Salish food sovereignty projects that brought Indigenous and settler food actors into weedy collaborations. One was a curriculum development project for Native and regional youth focused on the revitalization of Coast Salish plant landscapes, knowledge, pedagogies, and systems of reciprocity. The other was a campaign to counter the introduction of genetically engineered salmon into US food markets and coastal production facilities across the Western Hemisphere, which I situate within longstanding salmon-centered social and political struggles in Coast Salish territories in the context of Indigenous/settler-state relations. Throughout these engagements, I identified how multicultural, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist food movement frameworks share in common with neoliberal nature privatization schemes modes of disavowing the geopolitics of Indigenous sovereignty within the US settler state. The research reveals patterns in how Coast Salish food actors push back against the ways settler food actors are plugged into settler colonial governmentality. These insights, in turn, helped to make legible how inherited liberal mythologies of the nation-state and legal orders rooted in the doctrine of terra nulliuslimit the stakes of food system work in terms of inclusion and equality, and miss their collusion with structures that unmake the human-land relationships that Coast Salish people define as existential and (geo)political. In my analysis, I engage Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism to complicate Marxian, Deleuzian, and Foucauldian analyses of North American alternative food politics, while doubling back to consider the ways the disavowal of ongoing Indigenous dispossession functions across these literatures and the social practices they influence, ultimately to consider how food-centered scholarship, environmentalism, and politics in North America stand to be transformed by what I argue is a Coast Salish ‘politics of refusal’. This project is unique in attending to how settler colonial theory, Indigenous critical theory, and Indigenous politics in North America enrich and complicate the literatures provincializing the Nature-Culture divide, as well as a largely Marxian and antiracist critical food studies literature. It contributes to settler colonial studies as a project of redefinition for the study of US politics and society while specifically bringing that interdisciplinary project into the ambit of North American critical food studies scholarship.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the way in which religious beliefs and practices are instrumentalized by a Muslim community in order to strengthen Afro-Colombian ethnic identity, in an urban context of social exclusion. The study aims to examine the relationship between ethnicity and religion, and the role they play in the process of identity construction, particularly the way in which religious concepts and behaviors can be used to fortify ethnic identity. Another aim of this research is to describe and understand the processes of social change in an ethnic-religious minority and, as a final goal, to analyze the history of the Afro-Colombian Muslim community of Buenaventura. The thesis is based on fieldwork, which includes observation activities and interviews with members of the Muslim community in Buenaventura. A total of 21 participants between the ages of 18 and 72 are included in this study, all of them of Afro-Colombian origin. It is clear that the religious conversion of Afro-Colombians to Islam took place within the complex socio-political context of the Colombian conflict. To be sure, the adoption of this new religious perspective did not evolve in an isolated manner, rather, it transformed the identity of the community by strengthening the value of ethnic differences in a place of segregation. In this way, this thesis analyzes the role of religion as an important element in the construction of ethnic identity. Departing from this paradigm, we will look into some theological concepts, such as the Islamic jurisprudence and rituals, which have been reworked, in order to accommodate local aspirations for social mobility and ethnic differentiation. It is important to keep in mind, however, that this cultural negotiation happens at the margins of the dominant society, which negatively views Afro-Colombian minorities, or simply ignores them. Other findings include the identification of key moments of the historical development of the community; the analysis of the processes of conversion to Islam in this population; and the description of the organization, institutionalization, and hierarchy in the community in accordance with the changes from the Islamic perspective they have developed through its five-decade history.

Tattooing has persisted across time and space, often developing across ancient civilizations, even before cross-cultural contact. With the current oldest verified tattoos on the mummified body of Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old Tyrolean Iceman, up to current-day tattooing, a variety of uses and meanings have been ascribed to the practice. A majority of anthropological research has been dedicated towards indigenous tattooing traditions, external perceptions of marked individuals, and tattooing's deviant associations. Only a marginal amount of work has been geared towards the internal perceptions and cultural structuring of tattoos within modern societies, especially in the West. Frequently, a ‘tattoo community' is assumed in both daily conversation and academic publications. Yet surprisingly, the small amount of research that sets out to test for the possibility of a unique community structured around tattoos cannot come to an agreement on what the current social configuration surrounding Western tattooing is. This thesis sets out to investigate if there is such a community, or if such a group fits a different social figuration instead. Due to constraints brought on by COVID-19, it has been adapted to become an in-depth literature analysis with emic input from materials published from within the tattoo industry. This study also primarily focuses on North America, but does include international resources due to the high level of cross-cultural input historically and contemporarily. With a blending of insider and outsider resources, I intend to provide the most comprehensive compilation of possible social configurations theorized across disciplines, along with theorizing as best within my abilities the possible nature of a universal tattoo group in North America in my Honors Undergraduate Thesis.

This paper focuses on how the Swedish social code known as The Jante Law plays a role in the prevalence of racism in Sweden, both on the individual and societal levels. Its core message that no one is superior to another fundamentally contradicts racism and informs government policy, but also reinforces institutionalized discrimination. I use literature review, ethnographic observations and interviews to examine the ways in which racism is understood and experienced in Sweden. This paper also investigates how concepts of sameness and community have changed over time and how the shifting of these concepts have resulted in greater inclusiveness in Swedish society. I first overview the history of Sweden’s interactions with non-Swedes and the shift in attitude regarding them. I then discuss the origins and nature of the Jante Law and how it functions as a hegemonic system as well as promoting certain behaviors as a component of governmentality. Furthermore, I analyze the trend of new cultures and ideas entering Swedish society and how such changes are causing the Jante Law to decline. I investigate how a culturally engrained notion of being modest and inconspicuous alters overt and covert racist discourse in Sweden. Additionally, I include an ethnographic account of my experience in Sweden as well as those of interviewees of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications for Swedish society as immigration increases while the Jante Law loses its influence over Swedish culture.

This thesis explores the work of historians, history teachers, and NGO employees engaged in regional initiatives to mitigate the influence of enduring ethnocentric national histories in the Balkans. In conducting an ethnography of the development and dissemination of such initiatives, I queried how conflict and controversy are negotiated in developing alternative educational materials, how “multiperspectivity” is understood as a pedagogical approach and a tool of reconciliation, and how the interests of civil society intersect with those of the state and supranational actors. My research sought to interrogate the field of power in which such attempts to innovate history education occur, with attention trained on the values encoded and deployed in this work.