abstract: Tłįchǫ, an indigenous Dene nation of subarctic Canada, maintain subsistence lifestyles based on what they consider traditional foods. Caribou are the primary Tłįchǫ food animal and their reliance on caribou culminates in a complex relationship of give and take. Tłįchǫ demonstrate reciprocity for the caribou to give their flesh to hunters. Caribou populations in Canada’s Northwest Territories have rapidly declined and the government of Canada’s Northwest Territories implemented hunting restrictions in 2010 to protect caribou herds from extinction. Some Tłįchǫ, however, maintain that caribou are in hiding, not decline, and that caribou have chosen to remain inaccessible to humans due to human disrespect toward them. Many Tłįchǫ have responded to hunting restrictions and the lack of caribou by calling for respectful hunting practices to demonstrate to caribou that they are needed and thus resulting in the animal continuing to give itself. I examine Tłįchǫ responses to contemporary caribou scarcity through three stages of Dene foodways: getting food, sharing food, and returning food and caribou remains back to the land. Analysis of Dene foodways stages reveals complex social relationships between hunters, animals, and other beings in the environment such as ancestors and the land that aids their exchange. Food is integral to many studies of indigenous religions and environmental relations yet the effects of dependence on the environment for food on social dynamics that include human and other beings have not been adequately addressed. Foodways as a component to theories of indigenous environmental relationships explain Tłįchǫ attitudes toward caribou. I draw from my ethnographic research, wherein I lived with Tłįchǫ families, studied the Tłįchǫ language, and participated in Tłįchǫ foodways such as hunting, fishing, and sharing food, to explicate Tłįchǫ foodways in relation to their worldviews and relationships with beings in the environment. I demonstrate how foodways, as an analytical category, offers a glimpse into Dene perceptions of non-human entities as something with which humans relate, while I simultaneously demonstrate the limits of environmental relations. My attention to foodways reveals the necessity of sustenance as a primary motivation for indigenous relationships to other beings, culminating in complex social dynamics. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2015

abstract: This ethnography follows mobile trajectories on roads in Nairobi to investigate how the transformation of transport infrastructure has affected people’s everyday mobility. I follow diverse mobile actors, including pedestrians, handcart (mkokoteni) workers, and minibus (matatu) operators, whose practices and ideas of moving are central to understand the city’s ordinary mobility. I also situate their everyday ways of moving in the rules, plans and ideas of regulators, such as government officials, engineers and international experts, who focus on decongesting roads and attempt to reshape Nairobi’s better urban mobility. Despite official and popular aspirations for building new roads and other public transport infrastructure, I argue that many mobile actors still pursue and struggle with preexisting and non-motorized means and notions of moving that are not reflected in the promise of and plans for better mobility. This ethnography also reveals how certain important forms of ordinary mobility have been socially marginalized. It explores what kinds of difficulties are created when the infrastructural blueprints of road “experts” and the notions that politicians promote about a new urban African mobility fail to match the reality of everyday road use by the great majority of Nairobi residents. By employing mobile participant observation of the practices of moving, this study also finds important ethnographic implications and suggestions for the study of mobile subjects in an African city where old and new forms of mobility collide. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2016

This PhD by published work critically synthesises eight papers using a meta-ethnographic methodology in the field of community sport development. In particular, it provides an overarching critical analysis of mass participation sport development policy and practice in England using research with national governing bodies, county sport partnerships, local government and school-based sport development officers. Latterly, the synthesis centres upon the communities themselves that have been the focus of policy in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympics with its associated participation legacy. Research was undertaken using a predominantly qualitative research methodology, with varied methods including 58 in-depth interviews, 10 focus groups, five video diaries, observational and field note accounts. The meta-ethnographical methodology developed by Noblitt and Hare (1988) was utilised to provide the framework and conceptual approach to developing a critical meta-synthesis across the eight individual papers. The PhD offers a rare analytical insight across organisational boundaries, industry sub-fields (teaching, local government, County Sport Partnerships, National Governing Bodies) and professional-community binary oppositions. Findings from this study highlight key drivers limiting the mass participation agenda. These themes include the increased diversity and fragility of the delivery platform provision under austerity, challenge the industry assumptions of pathways of progression and question existing behaviour change assumptions. Further future explanatory themes that emerged from the meta-ethnography included divergence and widening in sport development delivery (“the haves and have not’s”), sport development workforce challenges in an era of modernisation (emerging skills, knowledge and expectations in the field) and finally what was termed in this study ‘the policy rhetoric gap’.

Based on an ethnography of sporting activities, this study intended to map the formation of futsal in Santa Maria RS (Brazil), and understand the importance that this sport has in the lives of 18 players interviewed in this research. Initially barred from playing, due to familiar and governmental prohibitions, women went from fan to players, getting empowered through the expression of their subjectivities. With the implementation of their gear to do (and can also be understood that the game was an art displayed by them), these women subverted the dominant hegemony that pronounced sexist and essentialist discourses, relating to reproductive issues and that linked the feminine to private spaces, like home. These women challenged the centrality of sexual standards and behavior, entering a male-dominated arena. Over a few decades, since 1980, they occupied spaces in the soccer fields of Santa Maria, and after they started to play futsal. / Partindo de uma etnografia das práticas desportivas, o presente trabalho procurou mapear a constituição do futsal feminino em Santa Maria RS, bem como entender a importância que este esporte possui na trajetória de vida das 18 jogadoras entrevistadas para esta pesquisa. Inicialmente impedidas de jogar, devido a proibições familiares e até mesmo governamentais, as mulheres passaram de torcedoras a praticantes, empoderando-se por meio da expressão de sua subjetividade. Com a execução de suas artes de fazer (e pode-se também entender que o jogo era uma arte mostrada por elas), estas mulheres subverteram a hegemonia dominante que afirmava discursos sexistas e essencialistas, referentes à questão reprodutiva e à ligação do feminino ao mundo doméstico. Estas mulheres desafiaram imposições relativas à centralidade de padrões sexuais e comportamentais, adentrando numa arena de predominância masculina. No decorrer de algumas décadas, desde 1980, ocuparam espaços dentro dos campos de futebol santa-marienses e, posteriormente, as quadras de futsal da cidade.

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.

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.

O objetivo principal desse trabalho foi o de descrever e compreender a maneira pela qual se constituem em mantém-se as formas de sociação de uma organização chamada Casa da Cultura Digital em Porto Alegre (CCD). Para tanto, os objetivos específicos foram: descrever as sociabilidades e conflitos como formas de sociação; descrever as peculiaridades da forma se organizar da CCD; e, compreender os significados que a CCD tem para seus integrantes. Estes objetivos estão embasados nos direcionamentos das “lentes teóricas” utilizadas que buscam compreender os estilos de vida e as formas de viver em conjunto permeadas por uma saturação do indivíduo em meio às objetificações da vida moderna, as quais podem lhe constranger. Em certos casos, tais objetificações são chamadas de formas de sociação: maneiras pelas quais as pessoas associam-se umas com as outras e desenvolvem conteúdos – entendidos como motivações ou interesses – que se abrigam em uma determinada “forma”. Quando uma lógica racional-instrumental, que faz parte de tais objetificações, dá sinais de saturação, emerge uma forma de viver em comum estética, lúdica e presenteísta que, de certo modo, opõe-se às institucionalizações, ao gigantismo e ao imperativo da eficiência. Um exemplo dessa expressão acontece em tribos pós-modernas, as quais revelam um modo de ser e estar com os outros dotado de uma razão sensível. Neste trabalho, estão em foco estas duas noções: formas de sociação e tribos contemporâneas à luz do exemplo de uma organização de natureza associativa, que busca realizar eventos, palestras e encontros para informar a população sobre cibercultura, uso dos meios digitais e o universo hacker - não restrita a isso. A partir de uma aproximação etnográfica com esse campo, foi possível notar sinais de uma exacerbação das sociabilidades, dos conflitos e de algumas peculiaridades da forma de organizar as tarefas, tais como: a rejeição de formalizações, de hierarquias, certa aversão às relações demasiadamente monetarizadas, bem como o modo de uso dos espaços físicos e do ciberespaço. Tal forma de ser e de organizar-se revela aspectos de um grupo que busca expressar-se em sua criatividade, demonstrando, para além disso, uma tentativa de se opor às formas de trabalho centralizadoras e pouco criativas, formatando um espaço divergente. Nesse jogo de formas, entre proximidades e afastamentos, o sujeito mostra que quando não encontra a satisfação nos ambientes “tradicionais”, este busca maneiras de expressão concretizadas em uma organização que se aproxima da metáfora da tribo contemporânea, constituindo uma forma de sociação, a qual revela negações e rearticulações de formas de gestão. / The main objective of this work was to describe and comprehend the way through which forms of sociation are constituted and maintained in an organization named Casa da Cultura Digital (CCD) situated in Porto Alegre. Thus, the specific objectives were: to describe sociabilities and conflicts as forms of sociation; to describe the peculiarities of the way CCD is organized; and, comprehend the meanings that CCD plays to its members. These objectives are based on the directions of the “theoretical lenses” which search to comprehend the life styles and forms of living together permeated by a saturation of the individual amidst the objectifications of a modern life, which can constrain him (SIMMEL, 2005b). In certain cases, these objectifications are named forms of sociation: manners through which people associate with one another and develop contents – understood as motivations and interests – that accommodate in a certain form. When an instrumental rationality, which is part of those objectifications, displays signs of saturation, an aesthetic, playful, and presentist way of living emerges in a certain way opposing to an institutionalization, a gigantism, and an efficiency imperative. An example of this expression happens in “post-modern tribes” (MAFFESOLI, 2010b) that reveal a form of being with others permeated by a sensitive reason. In this work, both notions of forms of sociation and contemporary tribes are in focus from an example of organization named Casa da Cultura Digital, an association which seeks to perform events, lectures, meetings to inform the population about cyberculture, the use of digital means and the hacker realm – not restricted to these themes. This form of being and organizing reveals a group that seeks to express itself in its creativity, sensitiveness, hedonism, and presentist interactions, which demonstrate, beyond that, an attempt to oppose centralized and less creative forms of working, thus, formatting a different space. In this play of forms, between proximities and distances, the individual shows that when the satisfaction is not found in “traditional” realms, he searches for forms to express himself that are actualized in an organization which approaches the metaphor of a contemporary tribe constituting a form of sociation, which reveals denials and re-articulations of ways of managing.

abstract: Current data indicates that a growing number of individuals in the English-speaking world are identifying as “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR). Using ethnographic data collected at two important sites of spiritual pilgrimage and tourism—Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona—this project argues that seekers at these places produce spirituality as much as they consume it. Using the lens of economy, this project examines how seekers conceptualize the (super-) natural resources at these sites, the laborious practices they perform to transform these resources, and the valuation and exchange of the resultant products. In so doing, the project complicates prevailing notions, both among scholars and the public, that contemporary unaffiliated spirituality is predominantly an individualistic consumer process. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2018

abstract: Embodied Continuity documents the methodology of Entangled/Embraced, a dance performance piece presented December, 2011 and created as an artistic translation of research conducted January-May, 2011 in the states of Karnataka and Kerala, South India. Focused on the sciences of Ayurveda, Kalaripayattu and yoga, this research stems from an interest in body-mind connectivity, body-mind-environment continuity, embodied epistemology and the implications of ethnography within artistic practice. The document begins with a theoretical grounding covering established research on theories of embodiment; ethnographic methodologies framing research conducted in South India including sensory ethnography, performance ethnography and autoethnography; and an explanation of the sciences of Ayurveda, Kalaripayattu and yoga with a descriptive slant that emphasizes concepts of embodiment and body-mind-environment continuity uniquely inherent to these sciences. Following the theoretical grounding, the document provides an account of methods used in translating theoretical concepts and experiences emerging from research in India into the creation of the Entangled/Embraced dance work. Using dancer and audience member participation to inspire emergent meanings and maintain ethnographic consciousness, Embodied Continuity demonstrates how concepts inspiring research interests, along with ideas emerging from within research experiences, in addition to philosophical standpoints embedded in the ethnographic methodologies chosen to conduct research, weave into the entire project of Entangled/Embraced to unite the phases of research and performance, ethnography and artistry. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Dance 2012

abstract: A void exists in public administration, criminology, and criminal justice research as it relates to the study of power in American policing agencies. This has significant ramifications for academia and practitioners in terms of how they view, address, study, and interpret behaviors/actions in American policing agencies and organizations in general. In brief, mainstream research on power in organizations does not take into account relationships of power that do not act directly, and immediately, on others. By placing its emphasis on an agency centric perspective of power, the mainstream approach to the study of power fails to recognize indirect power relationships that influence discourse, pedagogy, mechanisms of communication, knowledge, and individual behavior/actions. In support of a more holistic inquiry, this study incorporates a Foucauldian perspective of power along with an ethnographical methodology and methods to build a greater understanding of power in policing organizations. This ethnography of an American policing organization illuminates the relationship between the exercise of power and the objectification of the subject through the interplay of relationships of communication, goal oriented activities, and relationships of power. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that sworn officers and civilian employees are objectified distinctly and dissimilarly. In summary, this study argues that the exercise of power in this American policing organization objectifies the civilian employee as a second class citizen. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Public Administration 2013