Pencak silat is a form of martial arts indigenous to the Malay derived ethnic groups that populate mainland and island Southeast Asia. Far from being merely a form of selfdefense, pencak silat is a pedagogic method that seeks to embody particular cultural and social ideals within the body of the practitioner. The history, culture and practice ofpencak in West Java is the subject of this study. As a form of traditional education, a performance art, a component of ritual and community celebrations, a practical form of self-defense, a path to spiritual enlightenment, and more recently as a national and international sport, pencak silat is in many respects unique. It is both an integrative and diverse cultural practice that articulates a holistic perspective on the world centering upon the importance of the body as a psychosomatic whole. Changing socio-cultural conditions in Indonesia have produced new forms of pencak silat. Increasing government intervention in pencak silat throughout the New Order period has led to the development of nationalized versions that seek to inculcate state-approved values within the body of the practitioner. Pencak silat groups have also been mobilized for the purpose of pursuing political aims. Some practitioners have responded by looking inwards, outlining a path to self-realization framed by the powers, flows and desires found within the body itself. Others have developed styles that reflect the demands made upon them by their immediate environment. Viewed historically these changes in the practice of pencak silat provides insights into the impact of broader processes of social and cultural change at the level of individual bodies and the institutions through which they are constructed; a politics of the body, its potentialities, limits and ‘legitimate’ use.

Thesis (Ph. D. in German)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2006. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation focuses on an understudied population of people with severe and chronic skin disorders concerning their lived realities in mainstream and specialized settings. Little is known about the life experiences of this population that, because of the rarity of these largely inherited disorders, is demographically scattered throughout North America. Through descriptive narratives from an individual perspective, the aim of this research is to educate others as to how people with severe and chronic skin disorders shape their identities, often as disabled, and experience daily life. Research participants include forty-four men and women, ranging in age from eighteen to seventy-plus years, who attended at least one of four week-long camp programs for children with severe and chronic skin disorders in the summer of 2009 at varied locations in the United States. Ethnographic research methods include participant-observation, face-to-face and telephone interviews to glean life narratives, and questionnaires for demographic and statistical analysis. Interview data are assigned to four categories: 1) Those with skin disorders who did not attend a childhood camp designed specifically for children with skin disorders, 2) those who did attend a skin disorders camp as a child and are now staff at such camps, 3) medical personnel who are camp staff, and 4) adult camp staff attendees who are not medical professionals nor any diagnoses of severe or chronic skin disorders. Through the ethnographic process themes evolved, including the effects of socially constructed markers of race, gender, age, and extent of disability, that further impact individuals' experiences of life in both the camp and mainstream settings. All persons with skin disorders interviewed report negative effects from stigmatization to a varying degree in mainstream society, while four report adverse experiences in the camp setting. All participants with skin disorders interviewed report that camp programs for children with skin disorders have positively impacted their lives in both mainstream and camp settings. Additionally, all medical personnel interviewed report positive, life-changing experiences and a new understanding of how people with skin disorders experience daily life. This dissertation also addresses the role that the social institution of biomedicine plays in the creation of camps for children with severe and chronic skin disorders, as well as how the relationships of biomedical practitioners and adults with skin disorders at camp change the perceptions of each other. Ultimately, it is the overt goal that this dissertation educates all readers with respect to how people with skin disorders are often labeled as being disabled and suffer consequences of stigmatization related to disability, as well as increase awareness of how mainstream society affects the identities of this particular population. / Anthropology

La présente étude en anthropologie médicale propose d’examiner la dimension socioculturelle des désordres fonctionnels gastro-intestinaux (DFGI) en considérant l’expérience de six familles québécoises francophones où un pré-adolescent souffre de symptômes associés à un DFGI. Le regard anthropologique qui nous a permis d’appréhender ces expériences de douleur s’appuie principalement sur les travaux issus de la psychiatrie transculturelle, de même que sur les influences de l’anthropologie du corps et de la phénoménologie. À travers ce regard, la somatisation est considérée comme une forme de communication de la douleur, modulée de manière importante par le contexte socioculturel et représentative d’une certaine souffrance sociale. Ce langage ponctué d’idiomes de détresse et de métaphores permet aux individus d’exprimer leur souffrance et de mobiliser un soutien social efficace pour la prendre en charge. Dès lors, le corps doit être perçu comme un corps vécu; comme un lieu de marquage du social, mais également comme un instrument de positionnement social et une frontière où des mouvements d’appartenance et de divergence sont exprimés. Par l’exploration, dans chacune de ces familles, des différentes manières de décrire les symptômes, de les interpréter et d’y réagir, nous avons procédé à la reconstruction d’histoires particulières pour voir comment ces symptômes venaient s’inscrire dans la biographie individuelle et familiale. À travers l’analyse de la construction du sens de la douleur et des pratiques adoptées pour la contrôler, la douleur abdominale nous est apparue comme intimement liée à l’expérience sociale et la médicalisation comme une base pour une meilleure appréhension de cette douleur. Par ses maux de ventre, l’enfant exprime ses limites corporelles et sociales. À l’intérieur de la famille, l’expression de cette limite peut être parfois dérangeante, confrontante, et même entraîner des rapports conflictuels. C’est ainsi qu’est « négociée » une approche appropriée à la douleur qui redéfinit les rôles de chacun par rapport à cette dernière. Le ventre devient le médiateur qui permet le compromis nécessaire au « vivre ensemble » ou au « vivre dans le monde ». À l’issue de ii cette négociation qui implique la participation du médecin traitant, les rapports sont parfois reconstruits et la relation au monde et aux autres peut devenir différente. / This study in medical anthropology is an exploration of the sociocultural dimension of functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGID) considering the experience of six frenchspeaking families of Québec where a pre-teenager suffers from symptoms associated with FGID. The anthropological perspective that allowed us to approach these experiences of pain is based mainly on work from tanscultural psychiatry, as well as on the influences of the anthropology of the body and phenomenology. Through this view, somatization is considered to be a form of communication of distress, modulated in an important way by sociocultural context and reflecting social suffering. This language punctuated with idioms of distress and metaphors allows individuals to express their suffering and to mobilize an efficient social support. From then on, the body must be seen as a lived body; as a place of social marking, but also as an instrument of social positioning and a border where movements of belonging and divergence are expressed. By exploring, in each of these families, different ways of describing the symptoms, interpret them and respond to them, we proceeded to the reconstruction of particular stories to find how these symptoms were part of the individual’s and family’s biography. Through the analysis of how those families make sense of the pain and adopte practices to control it, abdominal pain appeared to us as intimately linked to social experience and the medicalization as a basis for a better apprehension of this suffering. While telling his or her pain, the child is also expressing his or her bodily and social boundaries. Within the family, the expression of this limit can sometimes be disturbing, confrontational, even lead to conflict. Thus was “negociated” an appropriate approach to pain that redefines the roles of each in relation to it. The abdomen becomes the mediator who allows the compromises needed to “live together” or to “live in the world”. Following this “negociation” that involves the participation of the attending physician, bonding within the family is sometimes positively transformed and the relation to the world and to the others can become different.

La présente étude en anthropologie médicale propose d’examiner la dimension socioculturelle des désordres fonctionnels gastro-intestinaux (DFGI) en considérant l’expérience de six familles québécoises francophones où un pré-adolescent souffre de symptômes associés à un DFGI. Le regard anthropologique qui nous a permis d’appréhender ces expériences de douleur s’appuie principalement sur les travaux issus de la psychiatrie transculturelle, de même que sur les influences de l’anthropologie du corps et de la phénoménologie. À travers ce regard, la somatisation est considérée comme une forme de communication de la douleur, modulée de manière importante par le contexte socioculturel et représentative d’une certaine souffrance sociale. Ce langage ponctué d’idiomes de détresse et de métaphores permet aux individus d’exprimer leur souffrance et de mobiliser un soutien social efficace pour la prendre en charge. Dès lors, le corps doit être perçu comme un corps vécu; comme un lieu de marquage du social, mais également comme un instrument de positionnement social et une frontière où des mouvements d’appartenance et de divergence sont exprimés. Par l’exploration, dans chacune de ces familles, des différentes manières de décrire les symptômes, de les interpréter et d’y réagir, nous avons procédé à la reconstruction d’histoires particulières pour voir comment ces symptômes venaient s’inscrire dans la biographie individuelle et familiale. À travers l’analyse de la construction du sens de la douleur et des pratiques adoptées pour la contrôler, la douleur abdominale nous est apparue comme intimement liée à l’expérience sociale et la médicalisation comme une base pour une meilleure appréhension de cette douleur. Par ses maux de ventre, l’enfant exprime ses limites corporelles et sociales. À l’intérieur de la famille, l’expression de cette limite peut être parfois dérangeante, confrontante, et même entraîner des rapports conflictuels. C’est ainsi qu’est « négociée » une approche appropriée à la douleur qui redéfinit les rôles de chacun par rapport à cette dernière. Le ventre devient le médiateur qui permet le compromis nécessaire au « vivre ensemble » ou au « vivre dans le monde ». À l’issue de ii cette négociation qui implique la participation du médecin traitant, les rapports sont parfois reconstruits et la relation au monde et aux autres peut devenir différente. / This study in medical anthropology is an exploration of the sociocultural dimension of functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGID) considering the experience of six frenchspeaking families of Québec where a pre-teenager suffers from symptoms associated with FGID. The anthropological perspective that allowed us to approach these experiences of pain is based mainly on work from tanscultural psychiatry, as well as on the influences of the anthropology of the body and phenomenology. Through this view, somatization is considered to be a form of communication of distress, modulated in an important way by sociocultural context and reflecting social suffering. This language punctuated with idioms of distress and metaphors allows individuals to express their suffering and to mobilize an efficient social support. From then on, the body must be seen as a lived body; as a place of social marking, but also as an instrument of social positioning and a border where movements of belonging and divergence are expressed. By exploring, in each of these families, different ways of describing the symptoms, interpret them and respond to them, we proceeded to the reconstruction of particular stories to find how these symptoms were part of the individual’s and family’s biography. Through the analysis of how those families make sense of the pain and adopte practices to control it, abdominal pain appeared to us as intimately linked to social experience and the medicalization as a basis for a better apprehension of this suffering. While telling his or her pain, the child is also expressing his or her bodily and social boundaries. Within the family, the expression of this limit can sometimes be disturbing, confrontational, even lead to conflict. Thus was “negociated” an appropriate approach to pain that redefines the roles of each in relation to it. The abdomen becomes the mediator who allows the compromises needed to “live together” or to “live in the world”. Following this “negociation” that involves the participation of the attending physician, bonding within the family is sometimes positively transformed and the relation to the world and to the others can become different.

At the Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada, clinicians use full body immersion virtual reality to treat a variety of health conditions, including: traumatic brain injuries, post- traumatic stress disorder, acquired brain injuries, complex regional pain syndrome, spinal cord injuries, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and lower limb amputations. The system is shared between military and civilian patient populations. Viewed by clinicians and the system’s designers as a value neutral medical technology, clinical virtual reality’s sights, sounds, movements, and smells reveal cultural assumptions about universal patient experiences. In this dissertation I draw from reflexive feminist research methodologies, visual anthropology and sensory ethnography in a hospital to centre the body in current debates about digital accessibility in the 21st Century. 40 in-depth interviews with practitioners and patients, 210 clinical observations, and film and photography ground research participant experiences in day-to-day understandings of virtual reality at the hospital. In this dissertation I address an ongoing absence of the body as a site of analytical attention in anthropological studies of virtual reality. While much literature in the social sciences situates virtual reality as a ‘post-human’ technology, I argue that virtual reality treatments are always experienced, resisted and interpreted through diverse body schemata. Furthermore, virtual reality cannot be decoupled from the sensitivities, socialities and politics of particular bodies in particular places and times. The Ottawa Hospital’s Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) system features a digitally enhanced walk-in chamber, treadmills on hydraulic pistons, surround sound audio, advanced graphics and user feedback utilizing force plates and a dynamic infrared motion capture system. The CAREN system utilizes hardware and software reliant on specific assumptions about human bodies. For example, these assumptions are echoed in depictions of race, gender, class, and indigeneity. Patients using virtual reality technologies can experience more than one disability or health condition at a time, further disrupting the idea of universal user experiences. As clinicians and patients confront the limitations of body normativity in the CAREN system’s interface design, they improvise, resist, and experience virtual reality in ways that defy design agendas, ultimately shaping patient treatments and unique paths to healing and health. / Graduate