The purpose of this study is to gain a holistic understanding of the Asian gang phenomenon through the application of a meta-synthesis, which is seldom utilized within the criminal justice and criminology discipline. Noblit and Hare’s (1988) seven step guidelines for synthesizing qualitative research informed this methodology. Through this process, 15 studies were selected for synthesis. The synthesis of these studies not only identified prevalent themes across the sample, but also provided the basis for creating overarching metaphors that captured the collective experience of Asian gang members. Through the interpretive ordering of these metaphors, a line of synthesis argument was developed in which three major inferences about the Asian gang experience were made. First, regardless of ethnic and geographic differences, the experiences of Asian gangs and their members are similar. Second, although extant literature has applied different theories to explain gang membership for individual ethnic gangs (e.g. Chinese, Vietnamese), this synthesis revealed that the dominant theory for explaining the onset and persistence of Asian gangs is Vigil’s (1988) multiple marginality theory. Finally, in comparison to the broader literature, Asian gangs are more similar than they are different to non-Asian gangs because of their overlap in values.

Two markets located in Bamako, Mali, West Africa specialize in the commodification of wildlife, and in so doing contest western-centric notions of globalization. Founded in traditional medicine, the Marabagaw Yoro sells wildlife to serve the needs of the local community, while the Artisana, a state sponsored institution, manufactures fashion accoutrements from wildlife and is oriented towards meeting the demands of tourists. Actors in both markets effectively curb the impact of national and international forces and demonstrate the necessity of putting local-global relations at the heart of transnational studies. Malians are not weak and reactive, but potent and proactive. They become so by engaging in networks that move out from the two markets and that intersect to a degree. Through these networks, local actors negotiate and/or manipulate national and international forces for personal benefit for example, using wildlife for profit, despite national and international sanctions. As such, these markets are sites of articulation, where local resource users engage the world at large and actively negotiate a myriad of values as well as mediate political and economic pressures. Investigating these networks helps us understand the actual, empirical complexities of globalization while allowing for the agency of local actors. Supplemental File: Wild Species of the APT and their Conservation Status This file is an Excel spreadsheet of all wild species recorded in association with the Animal Parts Trade (APT) of Mali. It includes the following classes of vertebrates: Pisces, Aves, Reptilia, and Mammalia, as well as provides their conservation status and additional details.

While studies of lesbian, gay, and transgender communities and cultural production have dramatically increased, research on bisexuality remains highly undervalued in humanities and social science disciplines. To challenge this lack of scholarship, this doctoral dissertation applies both textual and ethnographic methods to examine bisexual representation in non-realistic or “speculative” narratives and to explore the insider perspectives of bisexual people who are also science fiction fans. The overall trajectory of chapters follows a progression from grounded research and analysis to theory and application. First, I explore bisexual worldviews through ethnographic research in overlapping sexual and fan communities and through textual analysis of a 1980s bisexual fanzine. Next, I establish theoretical and methodological foundations for a new sexual paradigm, called dimensional sexuality, and work to intervene in interpretive methods that may restrict readings of sexuality in cinematic narratives. And finally, I test dimensional sexuality as an interpretive mode by offering dimensional readings of science fiction television and novels. From one direction, the project seeks to understand bisexuality as a position from which to theorize sexual knowledge. A major claim is that bisexual epistemology offers an alternative to dominant monosexual frameworks. Specifically, the multivalent logic of bisexuality refutes the “either-or” structure of heterosexuality and homosexuality. By embracing the logic of “both-and,” bisexuality as a category of knowledge enables the reorganization of sexuality within a non-binary, non-gender based multidimensional framework. From another direction, the project demonstrates the productive textual and social spaces offered by speculative narratives for questioning what we “know” about gender, sex, sexuality, and other intersections of social identities. Science fiction bears a deep structural affinity with the dialectical thinking found in critical theory. By asking “what if” questions that challenge our assumptions about “what is,” non-realistic narratives estrange us from the “known” world, interrogate our assumptions about the world, and make visible ideas and experiences outside of the norms we use to interpret what is “real” in a particular social and historical moment. As such, speculative narratives enable us to imagine sexual and gender possibilities beyond the episteme of the moment.

Every weekend in the Society for Creative Anachronism, people from the far reaches of the globe leave behind the structures of their everyday lives, dress themselves in clothing from the Middle Ages, and construct medieval personae. Within a pastiche of fantastical and historical influences, participants create the “Middle Ages as they should have been,” a liminal space where they experience a temporary communitas. Through their participation in informal rituals and formal ceremonies, they celebrate each other’s successes and create a community—a utopia—in which courtesy and honor are the shared core values. In addition, through their performances, people access their creative potential and explore issues of identity. When the weekend is over, the participants return to their modern lives, and—for many—a residue of their temporary creative adaptation persists and contributes to a transformation of their person. Using my insight as a participant observer, this dissertation focuses on some of the elements that contribute to the process of community creation and personal transformation.

[pt] Esta tese apresenta uma reflexão sobre a ação de design no processo de desenvolvimento de um produto. Isto envolve, fundamentalmente, o esforço do designer em tornar-se profissional e fazer design. Lancei sobre esta ação um olhar etnográfico, tomando como material central o discurso e a experiência do designer em meio ao desempenho profissional. Para tanto, realizei um estudo de campo de seis meses, em que estive vivendo com um grupo de designers em seu ambiente de trabalho, isto é, em um escritório de design. Neste período, acompanhei os designers desenvolvendo o projeto de um triciclo para uma grande empresa do setor automotivo. Acompanhando o cotidiano dos designers, a ação de design, aos poucos, deixava de se restringir às operações técnicas previstas ao projeto, e passava a revelar um jogo fervoroso, marcado por conflitos, negociações e transformações que acometiam a todos os atores envolvidos, modificavam os ritmos e dinâmicas do escritório, e afetavam essencialmente o projeto do produto. / [en] This thesis presents a discussion of the designer’s action. This involves, fundamentally, the designer s effort in becoming a professional and make design. I use an ethnographic perspective to see this movement. So, I took the discourse and experience of the designer. To that end, I conducted a study of six months, when I ve been living with designers in a design office. During this period, I followed designers developing a project of a tricycle for a big automotive company. Following the daily lives of designers, the design action gradually ceased to be restricted to technical operations, and began to reveal a passionate game, marked by conflicts, negotiations and transformations that affect all actors involved, changed office’s rhythms and dynamics, and modified the product design.

Proponho-me, nesta Tese, explorar como se constrói e se perpetua um grupo de pesquisa básica comportamental em modelo animal a partir de um laboratório universitário de neurociências voltado para o estudo da memória. Em particular, através do rastreio das práticas científicas e de suas várias ramificações, procuro entender o processo de produção de pesquisa básica comportamental no Sul do Brasil, levando em consideração desde os recursos materiais escassos até os custos emocionais elevados dos seus pesquisadores para manter um laboratório multiespécies. Travo diálogos antropológicos com humanos, ratos e drogas – aqui considerados os principais atores desse local específico de produção de conhecimentos. Nesse caso, para produzir a (neuro) ciência de base é preciso mobilizar parceiros multiespécies, incorrendo em um tipo de aprendizagem mútua planejada e, ao mesmo tempo, inesperada. Junto a cientistas e ratos, as drogas funcionam como um terceiro ator fundamental na viabilidade de relações produtivas. Rastreando parcerias institucionais, artefatos de laboratório, protocolos e práticas ligados à experimentação e à gramática usada para compor a ciência nesse lugar, investigo a maneira com que elementos heterogêneos demandam cuidado constante na manutenção de sua associação voltada a produzir conhecimento. Também considero a forma processual e contínua da aprendizagem exigida para coordenar esses elementos heterogêneos em nome da promessa que a ciência encarna. / Through the ethnographic study of a university neuroscience laboratory in Southern Brazil, I propose in this thesis to explore how a behavioral research group focused on the study of memory is built and perpetuated. In particular, by following the various ramifications of certain scientific practices connected with animal experimentation, I seek to understand the production of basic research, taking into account the full array of inputs – from scarce material resources to high emotional costs for researchers – required to maintain a multispecies laboratory in this Latin American setting. My dialogue engages with humans, rats and drugs - considered here the major actors of this specific site of knowledge production. To produce this basic (neuro) science one must mobilize multispecies partners, engaging in a kind of mutual learning that is both planned and unexpected. Together with rats and scientists, drugs act as a third fundamental actor in the definition of productive relationships. Tracing institutional partnerships, laboratory artifacts, protocols, and practices linked to experimentation and the grammar used to compose science in this laboratory, I investigate the way in which heterogeneous elements demand constant care in maintaining their association aimed at producing knowledge. I also consider the processual and continuous forms of learning required to coordinate these heterogeneous elements in name of the promises embodied in science.

Submitted by Oliveira Santos Dilzaná (dilznana@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-05-09T14:21:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO - NATALIA LIMA FIGUEIROA.pdf: 1675224 bytes, checksum: 9ff174085dd6581bd010e3ccf59e0f9a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Hozana Azevedo (hazevedo@ufba.br) on 2016-05-09T19:24:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO - NATALIA LIMA FIGUEIROA.pdf: 1675224 bytes, checksum: 9ff174085dd6581bd010e3ccf59e0f9a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-09T19:24:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO - NATALIA LIMA FIGUEIROA.pdf: 1675224 bytes, checksum: 9ff174085dd6581bd010e3ccf59e0f9a (MD5) / Esta pesquisa procura examinar a obesidade e modo como ela é experienciada através do seu tratamento na forma da cirurgia bariátrica. No primeiro momento etnográfico alguns eventos ocorridos num ambulatório de saúde na cidade de Salvador são narrados para compreender como a obesidade é atuada de formas múltiplas, a despeito das posições teóricas que visam encerrar a controvérsia em torno da obesidade através de uma noção uniforme da mesma. Em seguida são apresentadas as realidades de dois sujeitos em seu processo de preparação para a cirurgia bariátrica, de modo a discutir as atuações das diferentes especialidades médicas envolvidas no tratamento bariátrico e evocar a noção de processo. Por fim discute-se as mudanças decorrentes da cirurgia a partir do modo como os sujeitos aprendem a lidar com a alimentação pós-cirúrgica através do desenvolvimento de habilidades, o que envolve também relativizar o que se considera sucesso neste tratamento. This research aims to examine obesity and the way it is experienced through its treatment by bariatric surgery. At its first ethnographic moment, some events that occurred at a health clinic in the city of Salvador are narrated to understand how obesity is enacted in multiple ways, regardless of theoretical positions that try to end the controversy around obesity through an uniform idea of it. Next, we present the realities of two individuals in their preparation process to bariatric surgery. We do it in a way to discuss the actions of different medical specialties involved in bariatric surgery and to evoke the notion of process. Lastly, we discuss the changes related to the surgery from the way individuals learn how to deal with postsurgical feeding through de development of abilities. This discussion also involves the relativization of the notion of success in this treatment.

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / Os processos de tornar-se aluno, mediados pelas identidades e pertencimentos, é o objeto desse estudo. O desenvolvimento desse estudo voltou-se para compreender esses processos e melhor informar, principalmente, aos que dela participam na construção de espaços e saberes que privilegiem o sujeito aluno e, possivelmente, redimensionar o papel da escola e dos professores no atual contexto sócio-educacional brasileiro. A partir dos aspectos teórico-epistemológicos, bem como dos dados metodológico-empíricos pretende-se propor uma teoria sobre o tornar-se aluno baseada no paradigma dialético de construção do conhecimento. Buscou-se compreender o cenário da escola como um espaço de inclusão que conflita com as práticas de interação socioculturais de sala de aula pela utilização de normas e ideologias distantes das propostas das políticas de uma escola inclusiva. Através da abordagem etnográfica de pesquisa objetivou-se estudar, analisar a natureza dos processos de tornar-se aluno, descrita por três grupos de participantes da pesquisa, em diferentes momentos de transição de suas vidas acadêmicas (educação infantil, ensinos fundamental e superior). Considera-se que a etnografia na educação tem um potencial dialético e sócio-interativo para explicar a perspectiva do aluno e outros sujeitos da escola sobre a escolarização e os processos de tornar-se aluno. Nesse sentido, buscou-se identificar e descrever as características das diferentes etapas do processo de escolarização a partir da vivência das práticas educacionais pelos alunos e das relações e interações dos atores escolares intermediadas pelo deveres, fazeres e saberes observados na ação pedagógica em sala de aula. Procurou-se, ainda, entender e explicitar o papel da memória na construção individual e coletiva dos alunos sobre o tornar-se aluno para o desenvolvimento acadêmico e profissional. Nesse sentido, pretende-se, com a apresentação dos resultados desse estudo, contribuir para ampliar o entendimento sobre como o aluno torna-se aluno. / The process of becoming a student, mediated by the identities and affiliations, are presented in this study. The development of this study was focused to understand these processes and to provide better information, especially to those who participate in the construction of spaces and knowledge that privilege the individual student and possibly reassess the role of schools and teachers in the current socio-educational Brazil. From the theoretical-epistemological, and methodological and empirical data it intended to propose a theory about becoming a student based on the dialectic paradigm of knowledge construction. It tried to understand the school setting as a space of inclusion that conflicts with the practices of socio-cultural interaction in the classroom through the use of standards and away from ideologies proposed from the inclusive policies to school. Through ethnographic approach the research aimed at studying and analyzing the nature of the processes of becoming a student, described by three groups of subjects, at different times of transition from their academic life (kindergarten, primary and higher). It is considered that ethnography in education has the potential socio-dialectical and interactive to explain the perspective of the student and other school subjects on education and the process of becoming a student. Accordingly, we sought to identify and describe the characteristics of different stages of education from the experience of educational practices for students and the relationships and interactions of school actors brokered by a "duty", "tasks" and "knowledge" observed in pedagogical action in the classroom. It was, also, found ways to understand and to explain the role of memory in individual and collective construction of students on the student to become the academic and professional development. Accordingly, it is intended, with the presentation of the results of this study to help to increase understanding about how the student becomes a student.

Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in población ‘La Victoria’, a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Santiago, this research describes the everyday lives of its inhabitants (pobladores) in the context of contemporary neoliberal Chile. Although the pobladores’ movement had animated Chilean politics since the 1950s, also becoming the main actor in the struggle against the dictatorship, after the return to democracy in 1990 pobladores disappeared from the political arena. Most researchers have proposed that the political absence of pobladores must be understood as an effect of neoliberal modernization – a set of policies implemented during dictatorship and maintained by successive democratic governments after 1990. Their main argument is that a major cultural transformation in Chile has degraded social ties producing a consumeristic, individualistic and depoliticized society. Instead, I propose that pobladores from La Victoria have, despite the transformations, preserved a form of conviviality based on strong affective bonds with kin, friends and neighbours – alongside equally sentimental separations and divisions from others. I argue that, due to their pervasiveness and importance in pobladores’ lives, social relationships are the main agents in the articulation of pobladores’ ethical frameworks guiding their decisions and actions in life. Pobladores’ affective social relationships have allowed them not only to mitigate the side effects of the current neoliberal model, but also to accept, adapt and contest specific aspects of it. In this sense, life in the población has a heterogeneous grammar, a way in which social relations are articulated and disarticulated, activated and de-activated, connecting personal lives to collective processes. This grammar of strong affective ties, terrible betrayals and deep but changing separations and divisions is what I call the ‘politics of the everyday life’. This politics of everyday life lies behind apparently very different historical processes, such as the pobladores’ struggle against dictatorship in the 1980s and their post-1990 absence from the political arena. I contend that what characterizes the current context is not a lack of politics or a ‘depoliticization’ but a particular way in which certain pobladores, known as ‘políticos’ – those interested in collective action in order to produce change in the world – are articulated with or disarticulated from other pobladores in the politics of everyday life in the población.

The concept of choice as it applies to the American educational system has been a topic of intense discussion in recent years. Since the development of this central institution, the freedom of scholastic choice has been an intricate part of the United States’ academic landscape. However, scholars have noted a recent shift as the country has started to take a more neoliberal approach to schooling. In order to better understanding of the concept of choice on a more individualistic level, I conducted a number of personal interviews with parents raising their children in the small rural town of Port Townsend, Washington. My exploration found that while the abundance of academic programs put strain on the educational system on a communal level, on a personal level the ability to have choices was vital for many families. Educational options are shaped by the needs community they serve, often providing flexibility and protection for families who simply want their students to have the best possible future. Thus, I conclude that while the concept of choice may be debated on a nationwide theoretical level, on a personal level it remains a complex but necessary tool for families to ensure their children’s happiness and success.