This thesis examines the production and mobilization of Inuit knowledge in and beyond the Canadian Arctic in the context of climate change. Drawing on multi-scale, ethnographic research, it focuses in particular on the role of institutions, such as government departments and community-based organizations, in mediating between different understandings of change. Inuit knowledge is increasingly transmitted through land-based programs and supported by grant funding from outside the community. I argue that adaptation to climate change is therefore as much about understanding how to work within political and institutional frameworks as it is about responding to changes in the local environment. I examine how Inuit knowledge, represented in material forms – such as reports, maps, and films – as well as through the work of spokespersons, is mobilized in scientific conferences, bureaucratic office environments, and multilateral governance meetings like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I argue that spokespersons play a particularly significant role in rendering Inuit knowledge palatable for qallunaat (non-Inuit) audiences by selecting particular aspects to emphasize over others, and by translating Inuit observations into the language of science. A variety of factors constrain the mobility of Inuit knowledge and limit its potential to shape territorial, national, and global decision-making about climate change. These include bureaucratic commitments to written documents and hierarchical organization, as well as public narratives that emphasize the vulnerability of Inuit to climate change based on a simplistic conception of Inuit identity as traditional and rooted on the land. Inuit, however, engage with the changing Arctic in a variety of ways, including exploring the potential of oil and gas development in increasingly ice-free waters. Ultimately, I suggest that Inuit knowledge reflects the ability to endure in the face of change—most recently, anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on the comfort and stabilizing force of tradition, it is also informed by and shapes political relations in spaces far from the Arctic tundra. / Cette thèse examine la production et la mobilisation des connaissances inuit dans l'Arctique canadien et ailleurs, dans le contexte des changements climatiques. S'appuyant sur une recherche ethnographique menée à plusieurs échelles, elle s'intéresse particulièrement au rôle de différentes institutions qui servent d'intermédiaire entre différentes perspectives sur ces changements, incluant des protocoles éthiques, des ministères et des organisations communautaires. Les connaissances inuit, comprises traditionnellement comme étant liées au territoire, sont de plus en plus supportées par des programmes institutionnels et des subventions venant de l'extérieur de la communauté. Je mets de l'avant que l'adaptation aux changements climatiques dépend donc autant de la compréhension du fonctionnement de la politique et du cadre institutionnel que des réponses aux changements développées dans l'environnement local. J'examine comment les connaissances inuit, représentées sous forme matérielle (comme des rapports, des cartes ou des films) et par des porte-parole sont mobilisées dans des conférences scientifiques, des environnements bureaucratisés et des réunions de gouvernance multilatérale, comme celles de la Convention-cadre des Nations Unies sur les Changements Climatiques (UNFCCC). Je soutiens que les porte-parole jouent un rôle particulièrement significatif en rendant les connaissances inuit acceptables pour les qallunaat (non-Inuit) en mettant l'accent sur certains aspects et non sur d'autres et en traduisant les observations inuit dans un langage scientifique.Plusieurs facteurs contraignent la mobilité des connaissances inuit et limitent son potentiel à influencer la prise de décision aux niveaux territorial, national et global au sujet des changements climatiques. Ces facteurs incluent les engagements bureaucratiques envers des documents écrits et des organisations hiérarchiques, de même que des récits publics qui insistent sur la vulnérabilité des Inuits aux changements climatiques basée sur une conception simpliste de l'identité inuit qui serait traditionnelle et enracinée sur le territoire. Les Inuit, toutefois, interagissent avec l'Arctique qui se transforme de diverses manières, incluant des explorations pétrolières dans les eaux ouvertes qui augmentent de plus en plus rapidement. Ultimement, je suggère que les connaissances inuit reflètent la capacité de perdurer malgré ces changements, c'est-à-dire les changements plus récents qui sont anthropogéniques et touchent le climat. S'inspirant du confort et de la force stabilisatrice de la tradition, ces connaissances interagissent avec des relations politiques établies loin de la toundra arctique.

Montreal's radical queer scene espouses anti-state and anti-assimilation politics, offering a different approach than gay-rights movements seeking state recognition through legislative measures. Queer politics have a history of redefining and complicating norms, sexual and otherwise. As such, this thesis seeks to articulate how, in looking at safer-sex discourses in Montreal's queer community, we can imagine redefinitions of sexual 'health' and 'responsibility'. Situated in a critique of the ways in which public health operates as a tool of the state by surveying and controlling practices that violate normative sexuality, I argue this anti-assimilationist mode of sexual health challenges the 'norm' of health campaigning: that absence of infection is the epitome, entirety and ideal of sexual health. Rather, circulating discourses do not place 'safe' and 'unsafe' sex in opposition, and instead emphasize consent, accessibility, and the creation of safer spaces within which people can self-determine free from stigma, shame, and policing. Sensitive to the institutional roots of oppression, radical queers strive for solidarity to create environments conducive to autonomous choice, rather than declaring an individual need to assume the full burden of risk assessment and consequences. Using interviews, analysis of local artefacts such as zines and festival agendas, and fieldwork in queer spaces, this thesis seeks to explore some of the ways in which risk and safer sex are being (re)framed in contemporary queer communities in Montreal, Quebec. This research illuminates how any effective and respectful public health initiative requires a 'thick' description of a given community's discourses and practices around health. I offer related recommendations to sex-ed teachers in other communities, of particular importance in the wake of Quebec's 2003 sexual education reform. / Les milieux queer radicaux de Montréal s'oppose à l'État et aux politiques d'assimilation, et propose une approche différente de celle des mouvements pour les droits des homosexuels, qui tentent d'obtenir l'approbation de l'État par le biais de mesures législatives. Les politiques queer ont toujours cherché à redéfinir et à complexifier les normes, en matière sexuelle ou autre. Ainsi, ce mémoire tentera d'expliquer de quelle façon les discours de la communauté queer montréalaise peuvent nous aider à redéfinir les notions de « santé sexuelle » et de « responsabilité ». En réponse aux méthodes du système de santé public, qui permet à l'État de recenser et de contrôler les pratiques sexuelles marginales, nous affirmons que le modèle anti-assimilationniste relativise l'idée de « norme » que défend le système public, c'est-à-dire que l'absence d'infection est le fondement, l'unique raison d'être et l'idéal du principe de santé sexuelle. Plutôt que d'opposer les pratiques « sans risque » et celles « à risque », les discours actuels insistent sur les notions de consentement et d'accessibilité, et proposent la création d'espaces sûrs, où il est possible de faire des choix personnels à l'abri du jugement, de la honte ou de la coercition. Conscients des racines institutionnelles de l'oppression, les queer radicaux comptent sur la solidarité pour créer des environnements favorables au libre choix, qui ne font pas peser sur un individu le fardeau de l'évaluation des risques et des conséquences. Au moyen d'entrevues, d'analyses de documents tels des zines et des programmes de festival et d'études sur le terrain dans les milieux queer, ce mémoire explorera certaines des façons dont les notions de risque et de pratiques sexuelles sûres sont actuellement (re)formulées au sein de la communauté queer à Montréal, au Québec. Cette recherche illustre comment une initiative de santé publique efficace et respectueuse nécessite une description « épaisse » des discours et des pratiques autour de la santé d'une collectivité donnée. J'offre des recommandations aux enseignants d'éducation sexuelle dans d'autres communautés, d'une importance particulière dans le sillage de la réforme de l'éducation sexuelle au Québec en 2003.

Of The Currently Forming is an ethnographic exploration of a relatively recent diagnosis in clinical biomedicine – 'traumatic brain injury' or TBI. TBI has become a central preoccupation for researchers, clinicians, trauma centers, and public health departments across North America and Europe. Its epidemiological character is of startling concern, as its prevalence among the population is extraordinarily high. TBI is one of the most common causes of death in adults, and the leading cause of death and disability amongst young persons. Furthermore, TBI has become the "signature injury" of the US military in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Yet, the way we have come to know injury to the head and brain has changed fundamentally in the last thirty years. This has situated TBI as an important category for public and political debate; hospitals, neuroscientists, the CDC, and the WHO have all, within the last decade, narrowed their focus to traumatic brain injury – the "invisible injury" - as a cause for concern for both the public health sector as well as the clinical and laboratory sciences. The first section attempts to bring into focus why and how this problematic generated this kind of interest; it is one mode of understanding the dramatic visibility of an 'invisible' injury. The second section is about the conceptual and practical changes in clinical and experimental work on TBI and mild TBI today. Mild TBI, for instance, remains without widespread consensus as to its underlying pathophysiology or clinical presentation. Such indeterminacy has effectively opened up a new conceptual space for TBI research - particularly in the areas of neurological imaging and its relationship to neuropathology, applied clinical practices, post-injury assessments, and rehabilitation. Fundamental biomedical concepts – such as the 'normal' and 'pathological' – take on particular conceptual form in the midst of these spaces of uncertainty. Here, a series of ethnographic vignettes trace the interconnections and arrangements as certain clinical technologies and practices converge, giving shape to this dynamic and emergent diagnostic category. By superimposing the historical account of TBI's emergence alongside its ongoing clinical and experimental re-negotiations, Of The Currently Forming attempts to give a glimpse into the spaces of the incomplete – an exploration of the complexity, heterogeneity, and creativity that underpins contemporary brain injury medicine. / De l'actuellement en formation est une exploration ethnographique d'un diagnostic médical d'origine récente, soit le 'traumatisme craniocérébral' ou TCC. Le TCC détient aujourd'hui une place prépondérante dans le travail des chercheurs, médecins, hôpitaux spécialisés, et départements de santé publique à travers l'Amérique du Nord et l'Europe. Le profil épidémiologique du TCC peut être qualifié d'effrayant puisque sa prévalence au sein de la population est incroyablement élevée. Le TCC constitue simultanément l'une des plus fréquentes causes de mortalité chez l'adulte et la principale cause de mortalité et source d'handicap chez les jeunes. Par ailleurs, le TCC est devenue la 'blessure caractéristique' des soldats américains engagés dans les conflits armés en Irak et en Afghanistan. Cependant, la manière de penser et connaître les blessures à la tête et au cerveau a radicalement changé dans les trente dernières années. Cela a propulsé le TCC à l'avant-scène des débats publics et politiques. Depuis dix ans, hôpitaux, neurologues, le Centre pour le Contrôle et la Prévention des Maladies, ainsi que l'OMS, ont tous concentrés leurs efforts sur le TCC, cette « blessure invisible », considérée comme une source de préoccupation à la fois pour la santé publique et les sciences médicales. Dans le but de comprendre la visibilité spectaculaire d'une blessure 'invisible', la première partie de ce mémoire documente pourquoi and comment cette problématique a généré cet important intérêt. Dans une deuxième partie, nous présentons les changements conceptuels et pratiques advenant aujourd'hui dans le travail clinique et expérimental concernant le TCC et le TCC léger. À titre d'exemple, il n'y a toujours pas de consensus par rapport à la physiopathologie et aux symptômes entourant le TCC léger. Cet état d'indétermination a généré de nouvelles avenues conceptuelles pour la recherche sur le TCC, particulièrement dans les domaines de l'imagerie neurologique et ses liens avec la neuropathologie, la pratique clinique, les évaluations post-traumatiques, et la rééducation. Des concepts médicaux fondamentaux, tels que le 'normal et le pathologique', prennent des formes conceptuelles uniques au sein de ces espaces d'indétermination. Dans cette deuxième partie, une série de vignettes ethnographiques tracent les liens et suit les configurations qui se dessinent alors que certaines technologies et pratiques convergent, donnant forme à cette catégorie de diagnostic, elle-même dynamique et émergente. En présentant parallèlement l'histoire de l'émergence de la TCC ainsi que les négociations expérimentales et cliniques qui l'entourent actuellement, nous visons à offrir un récit des 'espaces de l'incomplet', comme une exploration de la complexité, hétérogénéité et créativité au cœur de la médicine du cerveau contemporaine.

A revolt against Colonel Muammar Gadhafi's Libyan government began in February of 2011. The conflict lasted for eight months and affected the entire country. Two distinct sides fought for control during those eight months making the conflict a civil war. This master's thesis uses a series of interviews as well as the academic and journalistic literature produced about the Libyan conflict to argue that the war should also be understood as a revolution. Considering the war a revolution introduces a number of puzzles. Firstly, Colonel Gadhafi's position within Libya was officially symbolic in much the same way Great Britain's royalty is in Canada, yet Gadhafi was named as the revolution's primary enemy. Secondly, Libya was officially a popular democracy with no executive administrative branches. A revolution against a political elite was therefore theoretically impossible. Nonetheless, the Libyans I interviewed considered Gadhafi more than the purely symbolic leader of Libya, and felt that Libya was actually closer to a dictatorship than a popular democracy. This thesis investigates the discrepancies between official and unofficial realities in Libya by exploring the role of society in the history of Colonel Gadhafi's government. My analysis is focused by the question, "what role did tribes play in Libya's revolution?" I argue that tribes provided a system for conceptually organizing Libya's society during Colonel Gadhafi's tenure. This conceptual organization of Libya's society is both in evidence and contested by the revolution. / Une révolte contre le gouvernement libyen du colonel Mouammar Kadhafi a commencé en Février 2011. Le conflit a duré huit mois et a affecté l'ensemble du pays. Deux parties distinctes se sont battus pour le contrôle pendant ces huit mois donc ce conflit peut-être considerer une guerre civile. Cette thèse utilise une série d'entrevues ainsi que la littérature académique et journalistique produite sur le conflit libyen de soutenir que la guerre doit aussi être comprise comme une révolution. Compte tenu de la guerre, une révolution introduit un certain nombre d'énigmes. Tout d'abord, la position du colonel Kadhafi en Libye a été officiellement symbolique en même façon que la royauté de la Grande-Bretagne est au Canada, mais Kadhafi a été pensé comme principal ennemi de la révolution. Deuxièmement, la Libye est officiellement une démocratie populaire sans branches administratives exécutives. Une révolution contre une élite politique était donc théoriquement impossible. Néanmoins, les Libyens que j'ai interviewé ont considéré Kadhafi plus que le leader purement symbolique de la Libye, et a estimé que la Libye était en fait plus proche d'une dictature qu'à une démocratie populaire. Cette thèse étudie les différences entre les réalités officielles et non officielles en Libye, en explorant le rôle de la société dans l'histoire du gouvernement du colonel Kadhafi. Mon analyse est focalisée par la question: «Quel est la rôle que les tribus jouaient dans la révolution de la Libye?" Je soutiens que les tribus ont fourni un système pour organiser conceptuellement la société de la Libye au cours du mandat du colonel Kadhafi. Cette organisation

Malaysian Tamils are in an unenviable position for socio-economic advancement in this relatively prosperous southeast Asian peninsula. Locked into a more or less permanent minority representing only about ten percent of the population, they are caught between Malay majority political power and a large, highly competitive, economically entrenched Chinese population. Avenues for societal integration and upward mobility are blocked at every turn by government legislation, the Tamils' inability to influence government decisions, racio-cultural discrimination, and the relatively poor economic position of the majority of Malays. Fearful of losing "control" of their country, to the economic hegemony of the Chinese, the Malays have reserved three quarters of the land mass of west Malaysia for themselves. Apart from the subdivision and sale of rubber estates there is no suitable land available to the non-Malay populations. Malaysian government efforts to rectify the "economic imbalances" among the races, manifested in the Bumiputra ("sons of the soil") movement with a four-to-one hiring quota favoring the Malays in all public agencies, has further diminished employment possibilities for Tamil socio-economic advancement. The Tamils' pursuit of socio-economic improvements has, nevertheless, been impressive. Active in the labor movement from its inception, Tamils built the largest and best organized union in the country; formed a national political party in coalition with the ruling Alliance party to represent their interests at the highest levels of government; created a cooperative society that succeeded in buying twenty plantations, covering more than 30,000 acres; and many individuals sacrificed and worked hard to acquire housing lots and ten acres of rubber land per family on state and federal agricultural land development projects. The cumulative effects of these impressive accomplishments, however, have succeeded only in maintaining a subsistence survival level for the vast majority of Tamil laborers. Their reform agencies and political associations are monopolized by a small group of urban literate elites, individuals from the small "middle class" of Tamil businessmen. Plagued by incessant political factional infighting at all levels of society the laboring masses have been manipulated into a dependent passivity by the impotency the politics of exclusion and parochial divisiveness. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI

Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork (2004-2005) amongst Iranian non-governmental political, civic, human rights, and scholarly organizations in Washington, D.C., this dissertation makes two major observations: One, that many Iranian scholars and activists as well as lay individuals see Iranian political culture as an ailing and malfunctioning body, suffering from fissures, inactivity, personalism, organizational chaos, and sentiments such as fear, distrust, suspicion, submission, alienation, indifference, envy, paranoia, hypocrisy, insecurity, and pessimism. Second, that the two major organizations that I worked with, one human rights and the other civic education, saw the cure in what I call an "ethos transplant" operation through which these traditional structures, affective landscapes, and patterns of socialization are transformed and replaced by new norms and attitudes (beliefs, knowledges, and sentiments pertaining to political processes). Whether through training Iranians in the practical skills of participation in democracy such as voting or petitioning or by teaching Iranians how to reconfigure their understanding of the individual, rights, life, sovereignty, and will in democratic as opposed to totalitarian terms, the sheer feasibility and affordability of becoming (instead of the existentialist concern with being) characterizes these organizations' mission to make American citizens (in their minds, i.e. democratic subjects). Instead of a mere critique of neo-liberalism (teaching docile subjects the norms of the capitalist world order) or resorting to National Character and Culture as Pathology studies, this dissertation aims to evoke and give form, through major native artistic traditions (Persian manuscript paintings, circa 14th-18th centuries AD) as well as non-native literary forms (Bram Stoker's Dracula), to the above-mentioned shifting and contrasting structures, affective landscapes, and patterns of socialization. In doing so, it destabilizes the categories of native and non-native, modern and traditional, democratic and totalitarian, and their utility in conceptualizing and articulating affects, ethics, and socialities. By appealing to artistic styles and writerly sensibilities, this dissertation offers a creative engagement with the age-old anthropological question of life versus mechanisms of pinning down and making sense of it.

A general geographical and cultural survey of BaAka Pygmy exploitation of the tropical rain forest environment in the Dzanga-Ndoki national park of Central African Republic, and adjacent areas of Cameroon and the Congo is presented. The fabric of BaAka society as it pertains to practices and perceptions of land use, land tenure and relationship to the environment is specifically investigated. The data obtained during the fieldwork stage of this investigation are presented herein as an original narrative ethnography with inclusions of tabular and graphic data. A collection of some contemporary experimental genres used in contemporary ethnographic writings are discussed prior to presentation of the ethnography.

This is a study of Third World developers--those involved in the development process in their own countries. Using an integrated development project in the Philippines as an example, it tries to portray the complexity of the position of these Third World elites as nationalists, post-colonial intellectuals and activists engaged in an endeavor which has the potential to make their countries independent but which often reinforces dependence on the First World. What these developers want to accomplish, how they see their work, some of the unintentional consequences of their projects and the criticism leveled against them by their colleagues will be explored. Third World intellectuals engaged in development have come under increasing criticism from a sector of their peers who maintain that modernization theory is based on false Western premises and development, as currently practiced, only serves to perpetuate dependence. They feel that social science theory has aided in the maintenance of Western hegemony and therefore needs to be reformulated i.e. indigenized, in order to rid it of its colonial bias. The literature on modernization and development is perhaps most closely associated with colonialism because of the ideology of progress which underlies both colonialism and development, development's role in pacification campaigns, and the fact that old colonial powers heavily contribute to development projects in their former colonies. Given such a critique of their efforts, why do developers persist? My contention is that a combination of factors contribute to this paradox. As Third World intellectuals calling for appropriate social science models maintain, education based in Western models is important. Theoretical rigidity, however, is mediated by career goals, personal past, bureaucratic milieu and acceptance of government modernization goals.

On the basis of field and archival research, conducted during the year of 1995 and the summer of 1996 in Russia, this project offers ethnographic and historical accounts of Russian intellectual culture in the transitional post-perestroika period of the last decade of the 20th century. The author argues that within this period of time a crucial shift has occurred in the intellectual climate of Russian society, which consisted principally in the emergence and rapid spreading of the so called "historical/cultural paradigm" in intellectual thinking. Focusing on the academic milieu and two important social discourses in Russia and the Soviet Union, that of history and that of architecture, the author explains how this particular paradigm came to be and what consequences it brought about. A set of interrelated issues, such as ideological and political moods among the academics, Slavophile and Westernizing trends, and the general state of the academy in Russia are analyzed.

An ethnographic look at different segments of the vintage clothing and used clothing markets in order to understand the practices of people who sell, purchase, collect, keep, display in museums, and auction used clothes of varying quality and desirability. That the unprecedented popularity and widespread acceptance occurred concomitant with the end of the millennium may not be coincidental. Rather, it may be a manifestation of what might be understood as millennial angst, where people were anxious about the future and needed tangible reminders of their own past or an imagined, ostensibly safer era. Having old clothes that they have saved in their closets or purchasing something similar to what they had in their youths that is either an original vintage piece or a vintage-inspired reproduction is a way for them to find safe haven in pleasant memories and reveries. In this way, collections of clothing that are in a museum, in a fashion designer's seasonal collection, or in one's wardrobe can be seen as repositories of memory where each garment comprises one part of a larger narrative about the past.