This thesis addresses the 19th century sequence of Kerkplaats, a farm in the central Karoo, Northern Cape, South Africa. Over this period different colonialisms of varying power and effect were introduced. The first was to local Khoe, San and Griqua communities in the form of one of the first London Missionary Society stations in the early 19th century. A second phase between 1830 and 1860 was to sheep farmers of German, Dutch and mixed descent, who absorbed and moulded the increasing impacts of British influence and materiality into older worlds of cultural resilience and practice. From 1860, a third phase saw a flood of mass produced British goods enter the region, similar to other colonial contexts around the world. Amount, availability and choice changed significantly and provided the material substrate in which rural stock farmers re-expressed themselves within the growing stature of Empire. It is suggested that for some rural farmers, expressive cultural practice worked to underpin increased affluence brought by merino sheep farming for global markets. Through this sequence different expressions of identity, domesticity, and economic scale are assessed through a close reading of documentary and archaeological evidence. While the material opportunities through the 19th century are the result of global processes, how this material is understood has to consider local context. It is suggested that material expression and identity change is most dramatic from the middle of the 19th century, when patterns of consumption reflect the globalisation of British production.

This is a study of the application in South Africa of a social practices approach to the study of literacy. A social practices approach conceptualizes literacy practices as variable practices which link people, linguistic resources, media objects, and strategies for meaning-making in contextualized ways. These literacy practices are seen as varying across broad social contexts, and across social domains within these contexts, and they can be studied ethnographically. I examine how this approach is applied across four critical themes of study in South Africa, namely: the uses and valuations of reading and writing by adults without schooling; the historical circumstances whereby literacy comes to be identified as a resource of European culture in colonial South Africa; children's early engagement with literacy informal and informal contexts; and reading and writing in relation to electronic and digital media. I review examples of ethnographic research in each case, in which I have participated as a researcher, and examine how the approach has been applied, tested and modified in each case of its application. The research in each case showed literacy's incorporation in complex and variable ways in situated, located human activities. Whereas the first application of the social practices approach, that of the SoUL project detailed how literacy operated as everyday practice amongst people with little or no schooling, the research lacked a theoretical perspective to explain how these practices came to take the form and status that they did, as regards the influences upon them from outside the immediate settings that were studied. Over the subsequent studies I developed a revised approach to the study of literacy which detailed the explanatory usefulness of studying how literacy practices that network across larger domains than the local have effect on the construction of local practices, in both historical as well as contemporary examples. Literacy practices were not simply the products of local activity but involved rather the particular local application of communication technologies, language and artefacts that originated from outside the immediate social space. However, local applications involved original, indeterminate and varied uses of those resources. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-223).

The material for this survey was collected during field investigations in the Mount Frere district of East Griqualand during the period January to October, 1949. The Bhaca are a small group of people occupying roughly the district of Mount Frere - although a considerable number lie outside district boundaries, particularly on the Mount Ayliff side - with a Southern Nguni type of culture and speaking a dialect of Xhosa. They are of particular interest as they are representative of those tribes who were forced to flee from Natal during the chaotic period of Zulu history subsequent to T/haka's rise to power, and, unlike the Mpondo, Thembu and Xhosa tribes, they are thus fairly recent immigrants into the Cape. The Bhaca are very conscious of their Zulu origin, although "Zulu" is hardly the scientifically correct term to apply to it. Van Warmelo has stressed the fact that before the rise of T/haka (c 1816) Natal was the home of a number of different tribes, the majority little more than large clans, roughly divisible into separate groups both dialectically and culturally, viz., (a) the true Nguni or Ntungwa, (b) the Mbo and (c) the Lala tribes. The name "Zulu" should correctly be applied only to the descendants of the small Zulu clan which by rapine and conquest established political and cultural supremacy over the whole of Natal from 1816 onwards. Those tribes which did not submit were forced to flee or be annihilated, and these successive southward waves of fugitives have given rise to the establishment of numerous small tribes in the Cape, classified by van Warmelo as "Fingo and Other recent Immigrants into the Cape". Other tribal elements moved north and today exists as Swazi, Rhodesian Ndebele, Transvaal Ndebele, Ngani and others. At least a century of wandering away from Natal has modified considerably the culture of these immigrants and today the culture of Bhaca, Xesibe (in the district of Mount Ayliff) and the various Mfengu tribes, approximates more nearly to Southern Nguni than to Northern Nguni culture. Foreign influence on the Bhaca must have been strong - at one period the tribe lived in Pondoland under the protection of Faku - and today there is intermarriage with Mpondo, especially on the Eastern boundary which impinges on the district of Tabankulu, and with Hlubi and Xesibe. In the following chapters the question or cultural origins and ethnic composition will be taken up: here it is sufficient to say that ethnographically Bhaca culture today is southern Nguni in character.

I Sverige lever idag cirka 400 000 kvinnor med den kroniska sköldkörtelsjukdomen hypotyreos. Var fjärde patient anser sig vara missnöjd med den nuvarande vården som erbjuds. Uppsatsen redogör för hur denna patientgrupp erfar sin relation till den svenska statens konventionella sjukvård. Fokuset har legat på hur patienters egen sjukdomsbild förhåller sig till vårdens bemötande som medicinsk tolkningsföreträdare och vilka metoder och tekniker hon använder sig av i syfte att erhålla mer inflytande över sitt medicinska varande. Uppsatsen belyser teman av smärta, genus samt trötthet. Michel Foucaults teori kring biomakt har bidragit till en djupare förståelse av maktrelationen mellan patient och läkare. Det etnografiska underlaget består av kvalitativa och personcentrerade djupintervjuer med fyra kvinnliga patienter.   Uppsatsen visar på att sjukvården upplevs besitta en okunskap och ovilja till att legitimera patientens upplevda förnimmelser av smärta och symtom. Detta leder till att patienten hamnar i ett ambivalent tillstånd av maktlöshet eftersom hennes smärta inte blir botad. Patienten upplever sig därigenom tvungen att erhålla alternativa verktyg i syfte att bli fri från sin smärta. Utsagorna visar på att självmedicinering är ett vanligt förekommande instrument. Andra metoder är att söka sig till alternativa vårdalternativ och behandlingar. Uppsatsen visar på att en ökad förståelse av kvinnans endokrina system möjligen är en förutsättning för att kunna individanpassa den konventionella sjukvården.

Antropologins kritiska förhållning till välgörenhet har tenderat att trivialisera det lokala välgörenhetsarbetet. Uppsatsens argument vidareutvecklar inte kritiken, utan har som mål att visa den produktiva dimension som finns i det lokala välgörenhetsarbetet. Med fokus på värvningsarbete på Stora Torget i Uppsala, följer uppsatsen värvningsarbetare genom en process från första kontakt till lyckad värvning. Genom värvningsprocessens gång uppenbaras ett huvudmotiv i form av imaginära praktiker som fyller projektet med mening och gör processen till något större än sig självt. Eftersom att det lokala välgörenhetsarbetet blir ett första led till det vidare välgörenhetsprojektet, anspelar uppsatsen på att även välgörenhet kan ses som ett imaginärt projekt.

Denna uppsats ämnar att undersöka välgörenhet, fokus riktas mot värvningsarbete för att ge en inblick till hur välgörenhetsarbete fungerar på ett lokalt plan. Inom det lokala blir utgångspunkten det värvningsarbete som Röda Korsets genomför på Stora Torget i Uppsala. För att analysera värvningarbetet undersöker uppsatsen hur en lyckad värvningsteknik konstitueras, där uppsatsen följer med i värvningsprocessen från första kontakt till lyckad värvning. Under värvningsprocessens gång uppenbaras ett huvudmotiv i form av imaginära praktiker som fyller projektet med mening och gör processen till något större än sig självt. Eftersom att det lokala välgörenhetsarbetet blir ett första led till det vidare välgörenhetsprojektet, anspelar uppsatsen på att även välgörenhet kan ses som ett imaginärt projekt.

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New discourses of foetal and infant development, individual well-being and population futures, argue that mothers matter during the first thousand days of a baby's life, which commences from conception to the age of two. Women, particularly (black, working class) pregnant women and mothers, have consequently become the target of several international and local interventions related to maternal and child health (MCH) and early childhood development (ECD). The Together from the Beginning video card is one such intervention that emphasises the value of MCH and ECD, as supported by the latest scientific research, and that presents diverse childcare knowledge and practices to parents and caregivers. The video card intervention was piloted and evaluated over a two-month period in the waiting areas of the antenatal clinic and Midwife's Obstetrics Unit (MOU) at a Community Health Clinic (CHC) situated outside of Cape Town. A total of eighty participants, including sixty pregnant women, eight partners or fathers of their babies, ten nurses and two counsellors, were interviewed and observed during this time. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the clinic, this thesis argues that while mothers do matter in the physical development of babies, mothers are 'developmentally constructed' and thus 'made to matter' through MCH and ECD development discourses and interventions that reinforce and normalise dominant discourses of motherhood. More specifically, it will be shown how three different maternal figures – 'the waiting mother', 'the educated mother', and 'the ideal mother' – were produced, developed and 'made to matter' within public healthcare spaces for the sake of development, which in turn reframed and undermined the time, knowledge, and experiences of these women.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-79). / Knowledges are not distinct entities. They cannot be held in isolation as if bounded, discrete, or systematic. They are far too dynamic and complex to be thought of in this way. 'Scientific' and 'Indigenous' knowledge, however, are often discussed polemically and held in dialogical tension against one another. They are part of a set of dualisms that work under certain universal assumptions critical to Western epistemology. These dualisms include modernity/tradition; nature/culture; and subject/object. This study examines the multiple perspectives, including both scientists and local trackers, involved in the Western Kgalagadi Conservation Corridor Project (WKCC) in an attempt to resolve some of these dualisms. It focuses on the dimensions of tracking animals and data collection with a GPS technology known as 'Cybertracker'. Involving both scientists and people from the Kalahari with knowledge of tracking animals, the dynamics of knowledge production and the movement of knowledge are explored. Their work together demonstrates ways that movement and embodiment are central to the production of knowledge. Knowledge production and the relationship between diverse knowledges and approaches in the WKCC project are investigated without reducing them to the same epistemological foundation or holding them in dualistic opposition. Knowledges become part of networks and engage with one another through their movement, embodiment, and interaction with various non-human subject-objects. The use of the Cybertracker databasing technology shows that an engagement of multiple perspectives, the significance of movement, performance, historical connections, and subject-object relations in a variety of contexts are key to understanding the production of knowledge. The movement, agency, and relatedness demonstrated in various 'knowledge objects', including data, shows that the complexities involve a continual exchange of influence in which knowledges are always changing. The presence of diverse knowledges, expressed in both their relatedness and their tensions, are evident in their very movement in these networks as actors and the interwoven trails they leave behind. In the process, the boundaries between the dualisms become blurred, if not irrelevant.

This dissertation interrogates the process of culture change and continuity among the 19th century Khoesan in the Karoo who were the descendants of precolonial hunter-gatherer and pastoralist populations. It looks at how local Karoo dwellers experienced and possibly mediated global impacts through 'older' cultural practice and belief. These impacts started in the 18th century in the Northern Cape when the trickle of Trek Boers of Dutch and German descent began to interact with, displace and disrupt San hunter-gatherers and Khoe pastoralists. This trickle turned into a torrent in the 19th century when the British displaced the Dutch East India company as administrators of the Cape and Empire asserted itself on the Cape hinterlands. In this context new creole identities were formed, especially that of 'Bastaards' whose attempt to adapt, progress and particularly to own land, were progressively marginalized. This intensified through from the 1830s when merino wool production increasingly pulled the Cape into a global export economy that was intensified by the rush to the Northern Cape diamond fields in the late 1860s. As the lattice of colonial roads, towns and railways gathered pace, the networks and nodes of Khoe and San dwelling withered. Most often classified as 'coloured', they were reduced to physical and social immobility as rural farm workers. This dissertation addresses aspects of this experience using their engraved rock art that is thematically dominated by the materiality of a colonial landscape. Horses, wagons, houses, steam engines and clothes are prominent motifs. At a glance these images seem to be disconnected from the precolonial styles and motifs of Khoekhoen and San artists. This dissertation, consequently, asks questions about the nature of this representation and the dislocation between the marginality and poverty of the artists and the material abundance and progress of the colonial world and the evidence of continuity of 'older' social practice that was expressed in new ways. It is argued that because of the diverse context of the 19th century and the undoubted continuity of Khoesan belief and practice, some of these images cannot be taken at face value and that they should be seen as creole expressions and continuities of Khoesan beliefs. Equally, however, there are aspects of these representations that are difficult to read in this way, and engravers are expressing the immediacy of their context and material marginality.