Thesis (doctoral)--Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften, Speyer, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation examines how Guatemalan converts transformed missionary Protestantism into a locally contextualized religion in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Using archival materials from local religious groups and public archives in Guatemala alongside missionary documents from the United States, this research identifies how converts adopted certain missionary teachings but reinterpreted or rejected others. This selective application not only altered the definition of Protestantism in Guatemala but also affected the early growth of the movement by creating contextualized forms of Protestantism that attracted more interest than foreign versions. The first section of the dissertation analyzes the theologies and goals that early missionaries brought to Guatemala and explains the intramural conflicts that created the first Protestant communities in the country. Between 1882 and 1921, five North American Protestant denominations and several independent missionaries entered Guatemala, each with particular ideas about how to improve the country both spiritually and materially. This internal diversity provided new converts with the ability to choose between multiple versions of Protestantism, but more importantly it also taught them how to carve out their own space between imported religious ideologies. The second section of the dissertation analyzes how local believers reinterpreted Protestantism within those spaces by pursuing four important areas of innovation: theological primitivism, Pentecostalism, political involvement, and nationalism. Despite protests from many foreign missionaries, between 1920 and 1944 numerous Guatemalan Protestants adopted variations of these four themes in attempts to create a culturally and socially relevant religious product. As new converts opted for these new local communities over missionary-led options, these four themes became defining hallmarks of Guatemalan Protestantism, which by the twenty-first century was practiced by one-third of the country’s population. This dissertation argues that these contextualized challenges to missionary ideas in the early twentieth-century made Protestantism an attractive local product in Guatemala and sparked the movement’s growth. It also demonstrates how poor and working class Guatemalans in the early twentieth century used Protestantism as a tool to participate in national conversations about race, gender, and class. / text

This dissertation contributes an interpretation of the ancestral altar tradition among Vietnamese American first and second generation practitioners. It traces the contours of the shifting transformations in domestic religious practice, specifically the transnational and diasporic dimensions in people's lives. I address how and toward what ends the "spiritual" is accessed, experienced and/or transformed in the materiality of everyday life, in the context of a complex relationship to a diasporic homeland and an emerging second generation. The research was conducted in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio (Texas), Carthage (Missouri), Sài Gòn (Viet Nam) and Pulau Galang (Indonesia). I make two main assertions. The first is that domestic religious practices matter in exploring issues of cultural citizenship and belonging. As a collection of things, I explain how altar assemblages are constituted through the purposeful and chance encounters of the practitioner(s), which is a way to talk about the global (such as transnational mobilities or the discourses about diasporic citizenship) through the intimately local. My second claim is that ideas of cultural citizenship can intersect with religious motivations and practices, and that they happen (are performed, imagined and circulated) transnationally, or more precisely, translocatively. I document how practitioners' and groups of practitioners' struggle to combat the (current Vietnamese) state's interventions in re-narrating the circumstances of their exile and also the relative invisibility they face as historical subjects in the United States. By carefully examining ancestral altars as a constitution of "things" and as situated "spaces," I address various facets of what they are and how they work -- as ways to express a familial or diasporic imaginary; or as assemblages of things that are both intimately meaningful and private, yet situated at the intersections of geopolitical engagements and cultural politics. / text

Japanese presence on the global cultural market has steadily been increasing throughout the last decades. Fan-communities all over the world are celebrating the Japanese culture and cultural identity no longer seems bound to the local. This thesis is an empirical study which aims to examine the transnational flow of Japanese popular culture into Sweden. The author addresses the issue with three research questions; what unique dimensions could be ascribed to Swedish anime-fandom, what is appealing about Japanese popular culture and how is it influencing fan-audiences? To enable deeper understanding of the phenomenon, a qualitative research consisting of semi-structured telephone-interviews and questionnaires, was conducted with Swedish fans of Japanese popular culture. The results presented in this thesis indicate that the anime-community in Sweden possesses several unique dimensions, both in activities surrounding Japanese popular culture and consumption and habits. Japanese popular culture fills a void that seems to exist in domestic culture. It is different, and that is what is appealing to most fans. Anime and manga have inspired fans to learn about the Japanese culture, in some cases, Japanese popular culture has in a way “japanized” fans – making them wish they were born in Japan.

This study deals with the meanings and conditions of motherhood for some Muslim women in Sweden, the majority of which live in Stockholm. The analysis is based mainly on 16 in-depth interviews with women who self-identify as Muslims. A majority of them were born in Sweden. In this study, motherhood and mothering are defined as intentional care work situated within, and shaped by, specific social, cultural and historical contexts. I examine which gendered, religious and spatial meanings are associated with mothering and Muslim identity in a Swedish transnational context. The analysis shows that religion (for most of the women) constitutes an interpretational frame for motherhood and for how children should be mothered into good Muslims and citizens. The women represent Islam as a facilitating religion by making a distinction between religion and culture. The study also shows how the women approach the problem of maintaining the children’s Muslim identities and their self-esteem in a secularized and islamophobic Swedish context, and how they stress the importance of the child developing a strong inner self. Based on the women’s own experiences of having been singled out as different, they respond to a racist logic associated with certain norms and conceptions about what counts as freedom or oppression. The interviews also reveal a transnational aspect of their mothering in which they consider what other places can offer their children. The thesis shows on the one hand how an authentic Muslim identity is related to ideas about Muslim places and origins; on the other hand it demonstrates how the women’s ambivalent affinities with Sweden, and (what they consider to be) Swedish and Muslim values, destabilize such an unambiguous connection. These ambivalent identifications show how the women’s conditional affinities become relevant for how they speak about motherhood and mothering and for how they relate to questions concerning “the good of the child”.

This dissertation analyzes the impact of musical transatlanticism on the identities of American communities. I do so through case studies in three time periods: seventeenth-century colonial Massachusetts, the post-Revolutionary Early American Republic, and early twentieth-century Progressive era Chicago. I develop an Atlantic musicology approach that which moves beyond national and nationalist frameworks and traces the strong and lasting musical connections between America and Europe. I explore three kinds of musical transatlanticism: the migration of musicians, the transmission of musical works, and the circulation of ideas about music. Music that crossed the Atlantic Ocean underwent changes wrought by transcription, translation, and contrafacting, and I argue that these changes were instrumental to the self-fashioning of American identity. Intercultural encounter and ideas of difference also drove communities to delineate their conceptual boundaries, although not without ambivalence. Ever in a state of flux, music reflected groups’ self-conceptions both locally and for transatlantic audiences in an ongoing process of conscious and unconscious musical adaptation. A wide-ranging project such as this demands a myriad of historical sources, which range from printed musical volumes to newspapers to diaries and letters. These variegated materials call for an interdisciplinary approach, and I draw on analytic methods from musicology, archival methods from history, and interpretive lenses from ethnomusicology and Atlantic history. I begin with an introduction that elucidates the conceptual and historiographical stakes of the project. The first two case studies focus on puritan psalmody in the seventeenth century. Chapter 1 analyzes puritan ideas about the affective power of music to promote personal piety, and Chapter 2 examines the role of music in colonial encounters with the native population of southern New England. Moving to the late eighteenth century, Chapter 3 traces the circulation of political song, particularly partisan and patriotic American contrafacta of British tunes, through the public print sphere. Chapter 4 turns to the domestic sphere, using one woman’s musical activities as a guide through the contemporary debates over feminine musical accomplishment. Chapter 5 enters Progressive-era Chicago, where European immigrants brought Old World folk repertories to the aesthetically and civically idealistic programs at the Hull-House Settlement. / Music

This dissertation research showcases six ethnographic case studies that focus on the experiences of Puerto Rican transnational youths and their families upon returning from the US to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a remarkable setting to study transnationalism because of its particular historical and sociopolitical relationship with the US, which grants Puerto Ricans citizenship and thus ease of movement, while retaining a strong attachment to the Island. It can be argued that Puerto Ricans define transnationalism, being simultaneously insiders and outsiders to the US national scene. The youths involved in these dynamics learn to navigate different educational and social settings on the Island and the US. Factors like language and the educational contexts are highly influential in the students' lives and their educational outcomes. The study was conducted over a period of seven months in two public schools in Puerto Rico. The data were collected through interviews, classroom observations, and home visits with return migrant students, their parents, and their teachers and school staff. The combination of these data collection methods and the variety of participants, provided a nuanced portrayal of the nature of their transnationalism and the social and educational experiences of the families in and out of the school context.

This project examines the connections between popular Mexican celebrations, such as Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe and Día de los muertos, and transnational communities established in the United States in order to better understand the functions and ways in which cultural events and non-governmental organizations contribute to the (re)articulation of identity, representation, and community building in communities of residency. The aim is to study in depth the connections between Mexican transnational communities, many of them indigenous, and these popular cultural celebrations and events that take place in Mexico and in the United States. There are two regions in which transnational migrants from the Mixtec region in southern Mexico reside in significant numbers: the New York Metropolitan area, especially in New York City, and Southern California. In my analysis, I apply an eclectic methodology, stemming from Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, and Border Studies while also engaging with the work of Mexican academics in the field of Transnationalism and Anthropology. My project contends that these events reveal transnational and transregional elements that contribute to fulfill the needs of immigrants in the United States, many of who live in this country undocumented. The dissertation demonstrates how Mexican transnational communities participate in a complex system of networks that go beyond the binary perspective traditionally considered in migration studies of communities of origin and communities of arrival, while responding to a greater need to study transnational cultural events from a bi-national perspective.

Los procesos de movilidad transnacional de los individuos representan un elemento dinamizador de las instancias conflictivas articuladas “desde abajo” por los movimientos sociales. Los colectivos de solidaridad política transnacional alimentan la afirmación de estrategias de lucha inéditas que cuestionan el confinar dentro de los territorios de los Estados-nación las reivindicaciones locales. Las organizaciones de solidaridad transnacional de argentinos en Roma y Barcelona actúan en este marco estratégico. Esta tesis doctoral presenta los resultados de una etnografía multisituada en Roma, Barcelona y Buenos Aires. Analizando las acciones políticas con las que dichas organizaciones argentinas respaldan las demandas de los movimientos sociales de Argentina, se ha estudiado el entramado relacional generado por la creación de este campo social transnacional y las dinámicas correspondientes de adscripción y (re)producción identitaria en las sociedades de recepción, caracterizadas por un complejo “diálogo” entre los planteamientos políticos y los estatus de exiliado y migrante. / Transnational mobility of people in the global scale represents a catalyst for the social movements demands articulated “from below”. Transnational advocacy groups carry out strategies that overcome the national boundaries both in global conflicts and local demands. The transnational advocacy organizations of Argentines living in Rome and Barcelona work in this strategic framework. This thesis presents the results of an ethnographical work situated in Rome, Barcelona and Buenos Aires. We studied the advocacy action of argentine organizations in Rome and Barcelona supporting the demands of social movements in the country of origin. Here we examine the relations network generated by their “transnational social fields” and analyze the (re)production of identity in the receiving societies as a result of an interaction between political meanings and exile/migrant status.

This thesis explores the role of media in the lives of live-in caregivers in Montréal by looking at two Filipino newspapers and mainstream news coverage on Filipinas and the Philippines. While Filipino newspapers elaborate Filipino identity and speak back to stereotypes in mainstream news, their impact is curtailed by limited distribution and content range. Live-in caregivers in Montréal were selected as a special audience group through which to examine media representations of Filipinos because they are ‘othered’ through interlocking processes of gender and race. The live-in caregiver program (LCP), through which they migrate to Canada, lays bare the price that third world women immigrants are asked to pay for citizenship rights in Canada. LCP work is often underpaid, demeaning, and exploitative. Examining the lives and media habits of LCP workers ethnographically breaks new ground in studies of both domestic work and minorities and media in Canada.