In this narrative, the author reflects on the personal and ethical dilemmas she faces currently in the beginning stages of conducting dissertation research fieldwork, an aspect often glossed over by retrospective accounts. She is conducting ethnography of Nicaraguan labor migrant women working in Costa Rica's coffee agro-industry, with an emphasis on reproductive health and motherhood. In addition to her social position as a Western, advanced graduate student-researcher, Goldade is also a wife and mother, arriving in the field with her baby daughter just under 4 months of age. She grapples with the challenges of negotiating the moral politics of motherhood and ethnography, seeking collaboration among host country nationals and recruiting study participants, as well as the balancing act of working motherhood.

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This is an ethnographic study of student politics relating to Palestine-Israel within British universities. Palestine-Israel has been a focal issue within British campuses for over four decades, manifesting in intense, high profile conflicts, which have been subject to competing political and media framings. In this thesis, I identify this as a case of what Nancy Fraser (2008) describes as 'abnormal justice', a situation of incommensurable, spiralling conflicts over the 'what', 'how' and 'who' of political community. I show how students' engagement with Palestine-Israel raises spectres of entangled histories of the Holocaust and colonialism, and tensions over the national versus global boundaries of the polity. Moving beyond abstract portrayals of this as a conflict between discrete ethno-religious groups or autonomous moral actors, I attend to students' complex personal experiences of these political dynamics. My central argument is that PalestineIsrael exerts discomforting, at times irreconcilable, claims over participating students, arising out of violent histories, ongoing racisms, complex transnational attachments and " the rationalism of post-imperial British universities. I trace how unsettling ambiguities and a desire for moral coher.,e nce are enacted within this campus politics, analysing how institutional practices of containment and shaming lead to 'tragic' moments of passionate aggression, which then circulate in the media. Contributing to a cross-disciplinary turn towards affect, aesthetics and ethics in the study of public spheres, I stake a claim for responsive ethnography with ethical ambitions. I do so by drawing our attention beyond spectacular political conflicts, showing how students cultivate reflexive practices and express uncertainty, care and commitment within overlooked, 'ordinary' spaces of the campus. In these ways, I show how attending to intersubjective political experience provides vital insights into the motivations and desires at stake in justice conflicts, and operis up expansive possibilities for reflexivity and creativity within the public institutions of democratic societies.

The thesis is concerned with the exploration of cultural identity in the north-east of England. Superficially that exploration invites an ethnographic approach based on the detailing of socio-cultural relationships which have developed from a unique experience within the region as defined by its industrial past which receives specific expression politically through its long-term loyalty to the Labour Party a devotion unparalleled in twentieth-century England. The examination begins by considering the region's lack of response to the 1981 riots and the local press' celebration of the same. It moves on to consider the deeply-felt sense of peripherality found in the northeast in relation to the 'rest of the country'. That peripherality, marked by comparison with national socio-economic standards is examined in its most potent ethnographic context Beamish Museum. What emerges in these considerations is the importance of examining experiential data as a means of evaluating the singularity of north-eastern cultural identity. Experiential data in the form of archival material, the testimony of a 'traditional' working-class whose experiences provided the constituency for Labour politics, is the key evidence offered here. As a framework for evaluating the substantive content of this evidence, the values and beliefs of the English cultural system are delineated. A primary source for these values is identified as the 'local' press - whose ideological stance it is shown is derived less from the specifics of a north-eastern locality than its role as propagator of national values. In the thesis, two areas which are held to have a local specificity are considered industry and community. These two find their most exemplary expression in the term 'industrial community' which is the real and imagined context from which popular conceptions of 'north-easternness' spring. A third area for consideration is the region's relationship with the English imperial system. This system lacks any conceptualizations which could produce a local specificity. What is of interest is that it exemplifies the frame of reference for evaluating north-eastern particularity the comparison between region and nation. It is the involvement in and the response to this system which is crucial. Overall, this thesis examines firstly the ideology which governs the ordering and interpretation of the north-eastern experience since the industrialization of the nineteenth-century. How did the people of the region interpret these transformations and changes? Secondly, the purpose is to delineate the webs of significance from which determine these experiences. Are they 'home grown' or externally-derived by way of the material structure established a century ago and dismantled since? This is achieved by utilizing Anderson's concept of the 'imagined community' to suggest that as an English region, the north-east claims simultaneous membership in two communities one regional, the other national. It is the weight given to the latter which is in the end determinant. The conclusion being that the region's stability in the 1981 riots is founded on its adherence to the ideology which sprang from an older England that of the nineteenth-century industrial/imperial nation.

The objective of this exploratory, qualitative study was to obtain a greater understanding of educational issues experienced by teachers and students in the context of two rural Aboriginal elementary schools. Using elements of ethnographic methodology including participant-observer interactions and interviews, the data were collected from two geographically and contextually disparate elementary schools in Alberta serving predominantly Cree student populations. Surface analysis of the data revealed that challenges for teachers and students fell into either environmental or academic classification and included chronic absenteeism, transiency and problems pertaining to language mastery and reading readiness. The principal benefit identified for teachers was high job satisfaction and, for students, a safe environment where basic needs are met and programming is reflective of traditional Aboriginal worldviews. Deep Analysis delved into the role of culture in the development of the student and community; implications, practical applications, and further directions for research were discussed. / Psychological Studies in Education

White English-speaking South Africans - WESSAs - have been an understudied topic in general, and particularly within the discipline of anthropology. In this thesis, I take the reader on an autoethnographic journey of attempting to make sense of life in the suburbs of Cape Town, searching for the elusive middle-class WESSAs and trying to attain an understanding of who they are. What does it mean to be and belong among this fascinating subcategory of Africans of European origin? The thesis takes a novel approach to the topic by viewing it through Nyamnjoh's framework of incompleteness, which posits that humans are incomplete by nature and culture (and cultivation). This framework is based on West/Central African philosophy and draws inspiration from the writings of Amos Tutuola, whose storytelling and conceptual universe also informs this thesis. Two key issues emerging from my fieldwork are power and belonging. A complex interplay exists between these factors of life in Cape Town. On the one hand, I argue that middle-class WESSAs have significant power in my field-site in terms of social status, linguistic dominance as well as control of institutions and the built environment. This hegemony leads to exclusion, marginalisation and Othering of non-WESSAs and less wealthy people, especially people of colour. On the other hand, WESSAs' tendency to perceive their positionality as universal, and their quest for completeness of being, ends up causing alienation and rootlessness even for WESSAs themselves. The themes of rootlessness and non-belonging permeate this thesis, highlighting the detrimental nature of hierarchies of race and class even for those at the top. I join Nyamnjoh in his call for a convivial mode of existence which acknowledges interdependencies, interconnectedness and the inherent incompleteness of human life.

One fundamental conceptualization of the biomedical category of autism is that of the withdrawn child, isolated in an impenetrable world. This trope, and associated neurobiological, cognitive and linguistic markers, have become central to how autism is recognized in both academic research and in popular understanding. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork in Ethiopia, where the first education and care center for autism was founded in the capital of Addis Ababa in 2002. My research explores the relatively recent introduction of the diagnostic category, working principally with Ethiopian parents who have identified and sought care at the center, and educators on staff. I find that the adults understand these children not as withdrawn, but in terms of three key characteristics: a “tied mouth,” an inability to listen, and experiencing inner disturbance. Colloquially, any of these three may mean that a son or daughter is “ye otizm lij” [lit. autism’s child]. Drawing on ethnographic material, I show how, for these parents, these three markers shape how they understand and work to care for their children, and therefore, autism.