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Using a case-study design, this qualitative investigation examines individual linguistic identity formation and the development of multiliteracies of two second language (L2) English speakers within the context of the massively multiplayer online role-play gaming (MMORPG) community. The theories and methodologies of this study draw from perspectives of sociolinguistics, digital ethnography, and discourse studies. From October 2021- March 2022, data was collected and consisted of the participants’ personal interviews and their asynchronous computer mediated communications (ACMC) within their respective gaming discussion communities. Data analyses consisted of both qualitative coding procedures of the ACMC data into literacy features and cross examination with participants’ personal interviews. Through these two case studies, this thesis shows how two English L2 gamers- one being Russian L1 and one being both Russian and Ukrainian L1- use linguistically sophisticated employment of digital multiliteracies to express their translocal and individual identities. The findings of these case studies contribute to conceptual understandings of how modern virtual communities of practice mediated by communication technologies act in conjunction with translocal L2 identity formation.

The thesis examines how ethnography museums, in inventing and reinforcing the desire for modernity through their exhibiting clout, have been representing Self and the Other via the nexus that connects issues of identity, race, and difference. Based on research conducted using textual analysis and interviews to museum visitors, the thesis examines whether modern ethnography museums are moving past their colonial frameworks and managing to integrate the voices and experiences of the post-colonial Other through the lenses of heritage, history, and memory.

In public spaces, we constantly interact with each other - whether we are aware of it or not. Most of these interactions are indirect and subtle, ranging from flâneurial people-watching, over negotiation of turns in urban traffic, to passive aggression. This is not only true for pedestrians, but equally so for bicyclists.Bicycling is an embodied and social practice. When designing for cycle-based experiences, interaction designers face many problems while conducting research: mobility is always on the move and therefore hard to capture; the fleeting moments of interaction are almost imperceptible to the eye; and verbal accounts of bicyclists cannot represent the experiential qualities of a ride properly.While there exists a history of ethnographic studies into bicyclists' behaviour, it proves to be difficult to enquire into these more subtle interactions. More conventional representations of experience, such as video, fail to capture many of the qualities inherent in taking a ride and being 'out there'. It would be naive to neglect these qualities in our research when designing for cycle-based interaction.This thesis builds on the work of ethnographers and designers engaged in bicycling research. It explores new ways of enquiry that help researchers find out what really happens on the saddle and beyond.

<p>The McMaster University Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) is the largest IVCF chapter in Canada and the second largest recognized group of any kind at McMaster. The majority of its members are conservative Protestants who espouse "fundamentalist" interpretations of the Bible, womens' roles, the age of the earth, alcohol consumption, sexual ethics, and the necessity of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. IVCF members perceive a sharp distinction between themselves and their "non-Christian" peers and professors. An analysis of the apparently paradoxical success of this particular group should elucidate the relationship between contemporary evangelical groups and other secular institutions in North America. Drawing upon fieldwork with the McMaster IVCF, I argue that the chapter promotes two strategies for interacting with the nonChristian majority. First, the "fortress" strategy protects evangelicals and the evangelical ethos from a campus ethos many believers consider to be hostile to their values and beliefs. Second, the "bridge" strategy facilitates constructive and non-confrontational interactions between these evangelicals and their non-Christian peers. These two strategies help IVCF participants to negotiate metaphorical "contracts" between their faith on the one hand and their secular education and social setting on the other. Creative strategies such as those employed by McMaster IVCF members seem both to fortify and mitigate against evangelicals' sense of difference from non-Christians.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis investigates Brasil’s Nightclub, a Philadelphia salsa club, as a site at which notions of Latino/a identity are produced and performed. Research for the thesis was conducted over the course of five months and was ethnographic in nature. From February 2016 until June 2016, the author attended Brasil’s Nightclub and collected participant observations and interviews. Findings reveal how the club accommodates multiple conflicting narratives of Latino/a identity and how these narratives are embodied through salsa dance practices. / Dance

Critiques of the U.S. foster care system as “broken” span multiple disciplines, including journalism, social work, sociology, psychology, and legal studies. Foster care “brokenness” is poorly defined in these critiques but generally refers to how policies and practices fail to adequately help and support people involved with the foster care system. These disciplines approach understanding “brokenness” via a single problem (e.g., specific policies, inadequate prevention programs, family and community deficits) or measures of “outcomes” (e.g., the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline, low educational attainment for fostered youth, drug abuse). This study applied anthropological methods and theories to the problem of the system’s “brokenness.” In particular, I used participant observation, semi-structured interviews, qualitative surveys, and media and historical analyses to examine foster care as a social, political, economic, and hierarchical institution comprised of the subjects of foster care, namely fostered youth, their kin, foster parents, and foster care professionals. I conducted data collection for 46 months and relied on two fieldsites: a geographic expanse of urban and rural South Texas consisting of courts, community meetings, non-profit foster care organizations, foster care training sites, and private homes, and a digital, qualitative survey with respondents across the U.S. The local South Texas fieldsite and digital field together allowed me to collect 101 narratives of foster care. A holistic anthropological approach revealed that the premise that foster care is “broken” is flawed. The assertion of “brokenness” presumes the primary goal of foster care is to help and support families and children. Exploring what the foster care system actually does for and to the families, youth, foster parents, and professionals involved with the institution made clear that the system’s most basic function is to shape, control and reform its subjects into compliant neoliberal citizens. Media analysis demonstrates how persistent meta-narratives of foster care obscure the production of structural inequalities. A historical review illuminates how foster care has always been primarily a system for managing impoverished people, rather than a system for aiding families or protecting children. Ethnographic data elucidates how well-meaning and kind judges, social workers, and foster parents become unwitting participants in structural violence that subjugates kin and fostered youth and limits their resistance. / Anthropology

This dissertation provides a better understanding of how journalists attain their personal and occupational identities. In particular, I examine the origins and meanings of journalistic objectivity as well as the professional autonomy that is specific to journalism. Journalists understand objectivity as a worldview, value, ideal, and impossibility. A central question that remains is why the term objectivity has become highly devalued in journalistic discourse in the past 30 years, a puzzling development considered in light of evidence that "objectivity" remains important in American journalism. I use Bourdieu's notion of field to explore anthropological ways of looking at objectivity, for instance, viewing it as a practice that distinguishes journalists from other professionals as knowledge workers. Applying notions of field to the journalistic field through anthropological methods and perspective permits the linkage of microlevel perspectives to macrolevel social phenomena. The dissertation demonstrates how qualitative research on individuals and newsroom organizations can be connected to the field of journalism in the United States. Additionally, it offers insight into why journalists continue to embrace objectivity, even as they acknowledge its deficiencies as a journalistic goal. / Anthropology

An ethnography based on research carried out between 2009 and 2010 in the vicinity of Bor Town, the capital of Jonglei State, in what was then Southern Sudan, this dissertation is primarily concerned with people's reflections on making agreements with one another during a period when the nature of belonging was being publically discussed and redefined. It examines historical narratives and discussions about how people ought to relate to the past and to each other in the changed circumstances following the formal cessation of hostilities between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in 2005. This dissertation departs from much of the literature on Southern Sudan by focusing on the common place, the nature of promises and ordinary talk, as opposed to state failure and armed conflict. After 21 years of multiple and overlapping conflicts in Sudan, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in January of 2005. The agreement stipulated national elections during a six-year Interim Period, at the end of which, the people of Southern Sudan were to hold a referendum on self-determination to decide whether to remain united with Sudan or to secede. This dissertation examines questions where were on many people's minds during Sudan's national elections and the run-up to the referendum, a time when questions of history, belonging, and place were very salient. The dissertation begins with a discussion of jokes and other narratives in order to sketch out some popular attitudes toward speech, responsibility and commitments. Most of the body of the dissertation is concerned with everyday talk about the past and with sketching out the background necessary to understand the stakes at play in discussions about citizenship and the definition of a South Sudanese citizen: Did it depend upon one's genealogy or one's place of birth, or one's commitments to a particular place, or their having simply suffered there with others? / Anthropology