Thesis (MPhil (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / Please refer to full text for abstract

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Abstrakt: Laxå kommun blev tidigare i år (2017) utropat till Sveriges första “ekoturismområde”. Syftet med beslutet var att locka besöksnäring till kommunen genom naturturism där kommunen kan profileras som miljövänlig. Det finns dock flera motsägelser i naturturismens anspråk att kunna värna om natur och om dess gynnsamhet som verktyg i arbetet för en hållbar utveckling. Denna uppsats undersöker vilken natursyn som finns i framställningar av natur på Tivedens hemsida, vilket är den nationalpark i Laxå kommun som flest naturturister besöker. Undersökningen visar att naturen inom naturturism framställs som en idealbild. Idealbilden av naturen inom naturturism döljer i sin tur de strukturer som orsakar miljöförstöring. Uppsatsen visar att naturturism separerar människor från naturen snarare än att skapa en mer intim relation till naturen. Naturturism blir ett verktyg för  kapitalistisk expansion och neoliberalisering av natur vilket upprätthåller människans exploateringen av naturen.

This thesis examines marginality as a regime of interconnectedness. Drawing on the ethnographic material from a 16-month-fieldwork between October 2009 and December 2010 on the street economy and streetlife in Arada, the old city centre of Addis Ababa’s inner city, I argue that marginalized subjects are not to be seen as social actors that inhabit and create alternative and parallel social, political and economic realities away from the mainstream society. Rather, the way the urban poor are connected and integrated in the broader political economy of the Ethiopian urban society frames and defines modalities, forms and experiences of marginality. From this perspective, this thesis focuses on the on-going reconfiguration of the street economy in Addis Ababa’s inner city. Since the early 2000s, the increasing concern with poverty reduction and good governance in the development agenda has concurred with the attempts of the ruling party to expand its machinery of political control and mobilization at the grassroots of urban society. In this context, under the impact of development programs promoting the establishment of small-scale enterprises, the street economy has undergone a pervasive process of formalization and politicization that has come to advance the realization of an authoritarian form of developmental state, while imposing a regime of unskilled and badly paid labour on the street. This thesis examines this process by looking at the history of streetlife in Arada, as a terrain of social, economic and political practice, and it recounts the everyday life and life trajectories of those involved in the street economy. In particular, I look at how the political reconfiguration of the street economy has come to intertwine with the way living through marginality and dealing with forms of social inequality on the street have been historically conceptualized and experienced in Addis Ababa’s inner city.

This dissertation analyses an ethnographic study of how people in a peri-urban, agricultural village in western Kenya have responded to the questions of who will care for children, and how, when those children’s parents, or other primary caregivers, have died. It examines the practical and ideological implications of wide-scale orphaning among a population that has experienced increased numbers and proportions of orphaned children mainly due to HIV/AIDS, as well as the gradual depletion of resources in terms of both the availability of middle-aged adults and the security of economic livelihoods. The research explores how specific caring relationships, as well as general sociality, have been challenged, adapted, and affirmed or rejected normatively and practically in this context. The research revealed a high degree of questioning in people’s efforts to forge responses to children’s orphaned situations. Rarely was there unambiguous consensus in the study context concerning what should be done in response to children’s orphanhood in light of families’ diminished livelihood capacities. More broadly, there was a distinctive concern with how such situations might be appraised in moral terms. The analysis therefore focuses on three main concerns, including: how to understand uncertainty as a condition of life, and the implications of this; how a shared perspective of uncertainty has spurred a concern with morality in the study context, and specifically galvanised a moral economy of kinship; and how the concern with morality affected what was deemed at stake in people’s lives.

In this thesis I examine familial dynamics and relations between Kenyan migrants in London and their non-migrant kin remaining in Kenya. Two transnational family configurations predominate: younger migrants and their non-migrant parents and siblings, and older transnational couples (migrant wives and non-migrant husbands). If migration is understood as a morally-laden social process, then how migrant and non-migrant kin engage with the distance(s) between them become the grounds on which what it means to be related is expressed and negotiated. Distance emerges not only as geographic and physical, but also as socially generated by the actions and inactions of kin. I argue that the emplacement of kin in different contexts post-migration, particularly younger migrants within a nascent Pentecostal community in London, mediates transnational kin relations. The thesis challenges a predominant strand of research on transnational families, which contends that migration disrupts kin relations and contributes to the commodification of love and care. Moreover, the focus on transnational Kenyan families fills a gap in African diaspora research that has largely focused on migrants from West Africa and issues of identity, diaspora politics, and development, while also addressing themes in African anthropology, such as, intergenerational reciprocity, social reproduction, and change.

This study takes the changing role of the military as a starting point for exploring a set of broader ongoing processes at the intersection of security and humanitarianism. The focus is on one particular assemblage, described here as conflict preventionism. This notion brings together the transformation of the military, the proliferation of civil-military cooperation, and the increasing interest in managing and preventing violent conflicts within a single framework. As such, conflict preventionism helps render visible how various actors, concepts, and organizational techniques converge in emergent forms of intervention. The research was carried out during the planning, execution, and evaluation of Viking 03, a civil-military exercise organized in 2003 by the Swedish Armed Forces. An examination of Viking 03 evinces intriguing resemblances between conflict preventionism and organizational facets of neoliberalism, epitomized by increasingly ubiquitous concepts such as “partnership,” “transparency,” and “evaluation.” Also, it shows that conflict preventionism does not settle on one particular understanding of conflict, but rather imposes directionality on contemporary engagements with the world.

Studien undersöker volontärer och deras egna upplevelse av sitt språkcafé som drivs i Röda Korsets regi i en kyrkas lokal i en svensk mellanstor stad, där volontärer och deltagare träffas en kväll i veckan för att träna svenska. Mitt angreppssätt för studien är kvalitativt och mitt empiriska material baseras på mina fältanteckningar från sju deltagande observationer som jag gjort under november och december månad 2018 samt fyra enskilda intervjuer jag utfört med volontärer på språkcafét under samma tid. Studiens resultat visar språkcaféts betydelse för volontärerna och ger en bild av hur miljön inverkar på språkcafét samt hur lärandet sker.