his study compares ethnic, age, and gender differences concerning attitudes and behaviors toward death, dying, and bereavement among Caucasian, African, Hispanic, and Asian American adult participants in north Texas with the results of a 1976 study by Kalish and Reynolds on death attitudes and behaviors of Caucasian, African, Mexican, and Japanese American adult participants in Los Angeles, California. A modified version of Kalish and Reynolds' study questionnaire was administered to 526 respondents (164 Caucasian, 100 African, 205 Hispanic, and 57 Asian Americans) recruited from community and church groups. Findings of this study were compared with those of Kalish and Reynolds in specific areas, including experience with death, attitudes toward one's own death, dying, and afterlife, and attitudes toward the dying, death, or grief of someone else. Data was analyzed employing the same statistical tools as those used by Kalish and Reynolds, i.e., chi square calculations, frequencies, percentages, averages, and analyses of variance. As compared with the earlier study, results indicated that this study's participants were less likely to have known as many persons who had died recently or to state they would try very hard to control grief emotions in public. Present study participants were more likely to have visited dying persons, to want to be informed if they were dying and believe that others should be informed when dying, to prefer to die at home, to have made arrangements to donate their bodies or body parts to medicine, to have seriously talked with others about their future deaths, to consider the appropriateness of mourning practices and the comparative tragedy of age of death from a relative standpoint, and to want to spend the final six months of their lives showing concern for others. Between study differences were found in ethnic group, age group, and gender group comparisons. Within study differences in death and dying attitudes were also found in this study among ethnic, age, and gender groups.

Although funerals are seen as universal rituals to honor the death of a loved one, their value in facilitating the grief process is not known. The present study explored the relationships between cause of death, feelings and attitudes toward the funeral, and subsequent bereavement adjustment.

Four hundred and thirty-eight participants who had lost a close friend or family in the last 2 years completed questionnaires regarding their experiences with the funeral. Results indicated individuals emotionally close to the deceased person reported higher levels of participation in funeral rituals and greater levels of bereavement adjustment. Those emotionally distant from the deceased person reported greater satisfaction with the funeral. Individuals who viewed the deceased person as a central figure in their lives had greater participation in the funeral. Those who viewed the deceased person as a peripheral figure had higher levels of bereavement adjustment. Additionally, those who viewed the death as unpreventable reported greater satisfaction with the funeral, and had higher levels of bereavement adjustment.

This study examines the history by which the local communities became separated from their ancestral heritage at Chongoni World Heritage Site in Malawi and then uses this knowledge to improve the management and conservation of rock art sites in the area. It demonstrates how various forces of the distant and immediate past came into play and systematically disconnected the Chewa communities around Chongoni area from their ancestral rock shelters once used by scores of generations for many important functions such as rock painting, rainmaking ceremonies and boys and girls initiation rituals. It shows that the separation of these communities from their heritage happened gradually in various episodes spread over the past 150 years. The key factors that directly or indirectly led to the separation included the early conquest of the Chewa communities by the Ngoni and other groups; conflicts with early Christian missionaries; heavy handed policies of the British colonial government; social and political failures of the post-independent state; the rise of multiparty politics, governance and human freedoms and others. Using local evidence, I build a case for each of the mentioned factors and shows how this community is still in danger of not only being completely separated from their ancestral heritage but also losing the remaining strands of their unique traditions. The study concludes by making recommendations for instituting participatory approaches in the management and conservation of Chongoni World Heritage Site.

“The Self: Towards A Method for Queering death” is an identity testament, a speculative method for designing the space of your own funeral before you die. It is a format to create a fair memorial of a person’s identity that does not feel welcome or fits in the current formats of burial ceremonies we have in Sweden today, usually connected to Christianity or other religious traditions. Even the secular burial traditions of Sweden today have a very clear traditional format and aesthetic that can be intimidating to a lot of members of society. “The Self” is also a method to relegate the power of narrative to whom it belongs.  “The Self “is executed through this thesis, a sacred document, a spatial installation and a film, showing a possible scenario of a burial ceremony as a result of the method of the identity testament. This thesis demonstrates and problematizes the secular burial traditions in Sweden and how the common rituals are still based on the norms of Christianity, heteronormativity and traditional values, and why this is oppressing a lot of individuals in society. It does so by using a speculative method of an identity testament, which gives every human the right to own the narrative about their persona and who they were to the afterlife. It also problematizes the hierarchies and norms in society of what “family” means, and how consanguinity is valued by state and law. The term “queer” or “queering” is used in multiple ways, both as an adjective (being queer, a queer community, a queer sexual identity) but also as a verb or an adverb, as in the method used by the Queer Death Studies Network. The content of this thesis consists of texts, pictures, research in form of written sources and interviews, queer theory, descriptive design methods and descriptions of a sculptural exploration and spatial installation as well as a motion picture. The thesis asks and answers questions such as: How could a new type of burial ceremony - based on our secular beliefs in contemporary Sweden – look, feel and be arranged to be more connected to what we can relate as religion today? Is it possible to create an organized system to collect information about a person´s identity to be used as a formal ground to create a fair burial ceremony after the person’s death? The analysis focuses upon speculative ideas about what could happen if every person had a right to state a will for their intangible possessions and assets as well as their physical ones. The thesis also goes through multiple examples of cases of queer deaths where there have been strong needs to arrange an alternative funeral to feel safe and comfortable. Finally, the thesis reflects upon how this method could be used and if it really could be applied to society, and if so, who would be able to use it?

Esta dissertação propõe-se a fazer um mapeamento e um exercício das possibilidades de pesquisa sobre a atividade cerimonial dos índios Mebengokre (Kayapó), particularmente do subgrupo conhecido como Xikrin do Cateté, do sudoeste do Pará. A partir de uma revisão bibliográfica sobre a expressão músico-ritual indígena e sobre os processos sócio-cosmológicos que a sustentam, os principais temas explorados no trabalho giram em torno da noção xikrin de pessoa, sua construção, classificação e transformação. O pano de fundo do trabalho é a hipótese, presente na literatura, de que a produção da identidade mebengokre congrega variados domínios espaço-temporais e, possivelmente, diferentes alteridades do cosmo. Na primeira parte desta dissertação, acompanho duas discussões: (1) o lugar da \"música\" nos estudos antropológicos da experiência indígena e (2) os trabalhos sobre os Mebengokre à luz dos debates contemporâneos em torno da etnologia amazônica. Ambas as discussões convergem para a possibilidade da hipótese acima mencionada. Na segunda parte, exploro três contextos nos quais se verifica o jogo identidade-alteridade na construção da pessoa, especialmente de seu corpo: (1) as noções relacionadas às faculdades sensitivas do corpo e a maneira como elas fazem a mediação com diferentes domínios sócio-cosmológicos; (2) as possibilidades ou impossibilidades, ao longo do ciclo de vida, de um indivíduo se relacionar com a alteridade; e (3) o contexto coletivo no qual esses contatos potencializam-se: ao longo dos períodos cerimoniais. / This dissertation is intended to be a mapping out of, and an exercise in, the research possibilities on the ceremonial activity of the Mebengokre (Kayapó) Native Brazilians, especially the subgroup known as Xikrin do Cateté, in southeastern Pará, Brazil. Based on a bibliographical revision on the music-ritualistic Native Brazilian expression and on the socio-cosmological processes which support it, the main themes dealt with in this paper revolve around the Xikrin notion of person, his or her construction, classification and transformation. The backdrop of this paper is the hypothesis, present in the literature, that the production of the Mebengokre identity congregates various spatial-temporal dominions and possibly different alteritys of the cosmos. In the first part of this dissertation, I accompany two discussions: (1) the place of \"music\" in the anthropological studies on Native Brazilian experience and (2) the papers on the Mebengokre in light of contemporary debates on the Amazonian ethnology. Both discussions converge to the possibility of the above-mentioned hypothesis. In the second part, I explore three contexts in which the identity-alterity in the construction of the person, especially one\'s body, is verified: (1) the notions related to the sensitive faculties of the body and the manner in which they take measure with different socio-cosmological dominions, (2) the possibilities or impossibilities, throughout the cycle of life, of an individual having a relationship with his or her alterity, and (3) the collective context in which these contacts become potentialized throughout the ceremonial periods.

張振濤. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2001. / 參考文獻 (p. 286-295) / 中英文摘要. / Available also through the Internet via Dissertations & theses @ Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Zhang Zhentao. / Lun wen (Zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2001. / Can kao wen xian (p. 286-295) / Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.

The Postclassic (pre-conquest) Nahua often performed displays of religious devotion. Usually involving stripping victims of their skin, flesh and internal organs, these public, state-sanctioned rites have been understood as astonishing, even exceptional, for their brutality. As a consequence, scholars have focused on human sacrifice at the steps of the Templo Mayor; ritual away from the imperial capital Tenochtitlan has remained very poorly understood. Where attempts have been made to understand regional practices, scholars have generally assumed binary distinctions between central versus periphery or state versus local. Existing studies fail to appreciate Nahua ritual as fluid and dynamic, instead casting ceremonial behaviour across space as unrelated and fundamentally oppositional. Integrating the ethnohistorical and archaeological records, this thesis takes understandings of Nahua ritual in new directions by examining the relationship between the public arena, the sacred landscape and domestic spheres. Crucially, this thesis argues that rituals were sensitive to circumstantial pressures and personal imperatives, across hierarchies,space and time. In so doing, this study suggests a more fluid model for understanding Nahua ritual than binary distinctions can allow. A lack of appreciation for variation or agency in ritual performance has perpetuated the understanding that the Nahua were trapped in a cycle of ferocious ritualism which left little room for critical thought. Using alphabetic, pictorial and archaeological evidence for a rounded perspective, this thesis examines the intersection between official structures and personal agency to question the notion that all Nahuas unthinkingly repeated human sacrifice and other ritual bloodshed. This study argues that the household was a crucial arena for the normalisation of the blood debt which permitted the acceptance of mass public human sacrifice. This thesis finds that, within the Nahua's symbiotic worldview, activities of the temple, mountain and household rituals were mutually supporting. Moreover, it is shown that the Nahuas chose to adapt their rituals throughout the years, to suit individual preferences and environmental circumstances. Taken as a whole, my findings suggest that the Nahuas sought to control their daily existence by adapting rituals to assuage violent and impulsive supernatural forces.

Submitted by Alisson Mota (alisson.davidbeckam@gmail.com) on 2015-06-08T20:49:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Anna Paula de Carvalho.pdf: 1364833 bytes, checksum: df9d1b8f4f1135ce685077dd1d704f07 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-06-09T13:41:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Anna Paula de Carvalho.pdf: 1364833 bytes, checksum: df9d1b8f4f1135ce685077dd1d704f07 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-09T13:41:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Anna Paula de Carvalho.pdf: 1364833 bytes, checksum: df9d1b8f4f1135ce685077dd1d704f07 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-21 / CNPQ - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This study is of a socio-historical nature, utilizing a qualitative approach which has as its ob-jective graduation ceremonies of the Nursing School of Manaus. The following objectives were delineated: to unveil the meaning of graduation ceremonies to the graduates who partici-pate in them, describe the object symbolism of the graduation ceremony and describe the changes which have occurred in graduation ceremonies, from the graduates‟ point of view. The time period within which this study is focused spans the years from 1955 to 2010. The primary sources utilized were, principally, photographs of graduations, in addition to written documents (the records of the ceremony) and interviews with graduates. A detailed analysis of the information took place using the BARDIN technique for content analysis. The results showed that, to graduates, graduation ceremonies mean victory, personal accomplishment, personal and professional achievement. Changes occurred in object symbolism principally with regard to garments, the justification being that the Nursing School of Manaus from 1955 to 1997 was administrated by the Special Service Foundation of Public Health – FSESP De-partment of Health and, in 1998, became part of the Federal University of Amazonas – UFAM administrated by the Department of Education. We concluded that analyzing the grad-uation ceremonies of the Nursing School of Manaus from 1955 to 2010 contributed to pre-serving for regional nursing the guiding light of our profession, showing the symbolic impact that traditions exert on the fields of health and education. / Trata-se de um estudo de natureza histórico-social, valendo-se de abordagem qualitativa que tem como objeto os rituais de formatura da Escola de Enfermagem de Manaus-EEM. Os obje-tivos traçados foram: desvelar o significado do ritual de formatura para os egressos, descrever as representações objetais do ritual de formatura e descrever as mudanças ocorridas nos rituais de formatura, na compreensão dos egressos. A delimitação temporal do estudo abrange o período de 1955 a 2010. As fontes primárias utilizadas foram, principalmente, as fotografias das formaturas, além dos documentos escritos (atas de formatura) e entrevista dos egressos. O exame analítico minucioso das informações foi procedido mediante a técnica de análise de conteúdo BARDIN. Os resultados evidenciaram que os rituais de formatura para os egressos significam vitória, realização pessoal, conquista pessoal e profissional. Mudanças ocorreram nas representações objetais principalmente referente aos trajes, justificadas porque a EEM de 1955 até 1997 era administrada pela Fundação Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública - FSESP (Ministério da Saúde) e a partir de 1998 passou para Universidade Federal do Amazonas – UFAM (Ministério da Educação). Concluiu-se na análise das formaturas da EEM, no período de 1955 a 2010, que o significado do ritual de formatura para os egressos foi a vitória, a reali-zação pessoal, a conquista e que as representações objetais tiveram mudanças conforme a tradição e desenvolvimento da instituição contribuindo para a preservação da enfermagem regional a luz da nossa profissão, mostrando o efeito simbólico que as tradições exercem no campo da saúde e da educação.

Thesis (M.Ed.) --University of Limpopo, 2009