Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-68). / The study examines two volunteer programmes in Cape Town offered to international volunteers, presents the positive and negative outcomes of these programmes and analyses their value for all parties concerned. On the basis of the data gathered during eight weeks of fieldwork, I argue that these programmes are of value to both the volunteers and to the recipients of their services, albeit in different ways. The positive responses from both sides were significant indicators of the success of the programmes and of the various benefits for all parties. Open-mindedness, enthusiasm and a positive attitude on the part of the volunteers were key characteristics that had a considerable and positive effect on both their and the recipients' experiences.

Bibliography: leaves 250-268. / This study examines the natural resource utilisation and management patterns of people in the coastal village of Saadani in Tanzania, in light of the individuals' social and economic power. The study was conducted between August 1997 and March1999. It focuses on people's access to and control of natural resources both within and beyond the household. It was prompted by the need to examine how pressures arising from external factors such as shifts in macro-economic orientation and environmental management policies which initiated new utilisation practices have impinged on coastal people's livelihoods and on their ways of using natural resources. At the same time, internal dynamics of the local society have created new interpretations on claims to and use of those resources. Applying contemporary understandings on power, the study explores the different ways in which individuals as social actors, construct their lives in ways that empower them and employ strategies to achieve goals that they define within their particular historical and social contexts to overcome the limitations that are generated by these various processes. Gender is also recognised as an important analytical category because it makes it possible to engage in the diversities in local power that go beyond the state versus local opposition.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-184). / The thesis is based on fieldwork conducted in Pemba/Batoka in the Southern part of Zambia between September 2006 and July 2007. The core approach of fieldwork was case studies of nine people (four women and five men) who were suffering from TB, and their households; and a comparative sample of seven households that did not have a TB patient. The participatory methods included time lines, seasonal calendars, observation and semi-structured interviews. The main aim of all methods was to find out how the nine TB patients experienced life in a wider social context, the problems they faced within their households in terms of food security and accessing both TB and HIV treatment.

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-95).

Bibliography: leaves 112-115. / I argue that alcohol is embedded in forces of structural violence that create circumstances of social suffering amongst farm workers in the Western Cape. argue that the labour relations on the research farm are shot through with violence and I trace the use of paternalism as a means to control the work force. I argue that the principles of paternalism have been internalised by the majority of the workers. I further explore the current changes in labour relations as they are played out the field work farm and demonstrate that exploitation and oppression continue to be features of structural violence exercised today. In order to understand alcohol consumption amongst farm workers in the light of structural violence, I argue that farm workers who drink heavily in the mode of the weekend binge do so in an attempt to ameliorate the conditions of their existence. I argue that alcohol consumption is ritualised and that ritual serves to provide a space outside the everyday that facilitates escape from suffering and legitimates drinking. It is my contention that the ritual fails to provide real escape and instead serves to further immiserate farm workers. In an attempt to escape the negative consequences of alcohol consumption those who are able to abstain from drinking alcohol do so largely by converting to a form of Christianity that prohibits alcohol use. I employ the notion of unlearning drinking behaviour to understand the creation of a new person within a support system that enables new ways of being in the world, I contend though, that this new identity is fragile and the potential to revert to previous identities is always present.In addressing the phenomena of alcohol consumption and abstinence, I argue that the social suffering caused by structural violence and the perceived negative effects of alcohol use must not be conflated.

My thesis explores how Mozambican middle-class women perceive official local healthcare services in both their public and private dimensions, within their country, and why they sometimes travel abroad to South Africa in search of healthcare across a range of gynaecological services, ranging from basic procedures to more complex requirements. I trace the stories of fifteen women to convey their experiences and opinions of the Mozambican health system. I show the women negotiating their way through barriers and limitations within this system, in ways that point out its inadequacies and inefficiency. I investigate how searching for 'quality' healthcare, often abroad, is intertwined with middle-class women's crafting of identities that aspire to a certain demonstration of 'modernity' in which social status is claimed.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation examines default and adherence in drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) patients in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. The ethnographic data is drawn from three and a half months of participant-observation, illness-narrative interviews, in-depth interviews, focus groups, support-group sessions and creative methodologies such as collage and emotional mapping. The various methods revealed some contradictory experiences with treatment and cure that some patients faced when undergoing treatment for DR-TB. Through an analytical framework of affect and emotions, this paper traces the complexities and disparate conceptions of default and adherence that circulate amongst patients. This paper argues that default and adherence do not operate in isolation but are part of dynamic entanglements of relationships and self-introspection that surface throughout the course of treatment for DR-TB.

Bibliography: leaves 68-72. / Traditional wild or weedy leafy green vegetables are an important food source in many parts of Africa, and there have been several recent calls across the continent for interventions promoting the use of these resources for their nutritional values. In South Africa relatively little research attention has been paid to traditional vegetables, known in Zulu as imifino. However it is widely thought that these plants are falling into disuse as food preferences change and exotic vegetables such as spinach or cabbage become more commonly available. This report aims to provide basic understandings to inform the promotion of traditional vegetables in South Africa by exploring their ethnobotanical, ecological and nutritional dynamics. Interdisciplinary methods incorporating anthropology, ecology, nutrition and history are required to present holistic insights into the processes of imifino use and disuse. These techniques are focused on the community of Nkonisa, a forced relocation settlement in rural KwaZulu-Natal. A total of 36 imifino species are known across Nkonisa. Most participants know only a core group of 4-6 species which are locally available and are used frequently within the households. When seasonally available, these plants are harvested by women or children and occasionally sold in local markets. There also is a scattered body of knowledge of lesser known species which are rarely used. Many of these can not be recognised in the field by most participants and are generally thought to be locally unavailable.

This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in 2011 and 2012 in an abandoned mining town in Northern Swaziland. In 2001 the isolated 'ghost town' was bought by a Faith Based Organisation and transformed into what the organisation terms a vibrant 'sustainable orphan village'. Against a backdrop of political uncertainty, deepening economic-crisis related poverty, increasing numbers of children in need of extra-familial care and the parallel proliferation of humanitarian organisations being set up to deal with these systemic vulnerabilities, this thesis explores the practices and politics of childcare and rescue in contemporary Swaziland. Focusing on a single extended case study, I trace the material affects and effects of interventionist help. Situating this study in a broader global, particularly Christian philanthropic preoccupation with the project of 'saving children', this study forms part of a burgeoning body of anthropological theory and research that critically explores the logic and practice of what Didier Fassin (2011) calls 'humanitarian government'.

This dissertation contributes to an understanding of how the entanglement of language, memory, self, and time in contemporary Western thought shapes assumptions about the personhood status of elderly persons with dementia and their capacity for meaningful relationship. The ethnographic data that informs the study was drawn from a three-month period of in-depth participant-observation conducted in a dementia ward situated in an exclusive retirement community in the Western Cape, South Africa. By taking the relationship between the elderly 'residents' living in the ward and their professional caregivers as the focus, I show how, in the face of dementia-related language and memory losses, this relationship was established and maintained across time. The focus on relationship allowed me to pay close attention to the face-to-face interactions between caregivers and residents so as to identify and discern the assumptions and practices that shaped the possibilities for personhood and relatedness within the ward. I demonstrate that the relationship between caregivers and residents was established and maintained through myriad and ongoing practices of care. This institutionally structured relation of care must be recognized as both an alternative form of sociality within which 'demented' residents are held in life and relationship, and as an instrument through which old people with dementia are subjected to the routines, norms, and temporal structures on the ward. Invocations and denials of personhood occur at the practical level of intersubjective engagement. I show that despite residents' language impairments, and the consequent importance of embodied gestures for communication and mutual interaction, language was fundamental to the relation of care, and thus to the practical engagements through which personhood was invoked and denied. Caregivers frequently engaged in a practice which involved the recollection and narration of the biographical 'facts' that constituted residents' erstwhile social lives and social identities. Defining this practice as an intersubjective memory practice, I argue that it functions to invoke personhood by establishing continuity between past and present and calling forth residents as socially recognized and situated persons. This intersubjective memory practice can be interpreted both as evidence that personhood is emergent within and through relations of care, and as a normative practice which reinforces the currently taken-for-granted assumption that the self is constructed in and through narrative. I suggest that the widespread acceptance of the notion of the narrative self, in both popular and academic domains, is indicative of the manner in and extent to which language, memory, self, and time are entangled in contemporary Western thought. In order to demonstrate the historical and cultural specificity of this entanglement, I draw attention to the way in which memory, narrative, and temporal continuity became inextricably tied to notions of personhood and relatedness within Western philosophy. I propose that expanding an understanding of the ways in which language, memory, self, and time are entangled in everyday practice provides a means of troubling the widely accepted belief that dementia leads to a loss of personhood and relationship, without resorting to the dichotomous thinking that characterizes much of the scholarly and clinical literature that is influenced by the so-called personhood approach to dementia.