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My oil paintings, glass works, and mixed media are abstract meditations on familial relationships and their boundaries. The interaction between colors and layers of pigment reference human interaction. I apply veils of colors, which obscure, alter, or blend into previous layers of color. These layers metaphorically reference how family relationships affect the person we are and influence who we become. I approach my oil paintings serially and often refer to them as sisters or a family. I often work on two or more canvases at a time allowing each painting to share palettes and a similar language of shapes. When I work this way, it allows me to explore different responses to an experience. The interaction of the paint embodies struggle, and new shapes and shades of color emerge as the boundaries of painted areas are dissolved or declared. I also layer color and pigment in my glass paintings. Here, I place finely ground colored glass onto clear glass sheets, then fire it, rework it, and fire it again. Reworking the glass allows me to build a history of layers, which I relate to the way that a person carries around a history of experiences. Lastly, in my prints, I use multiple stencils to apply layers of ink to conceal or reveal the history of the work and reference the ever-changing nature of relationships. This dance of emergence and disappearance of color relates to the forced kinship of family and calls to mind the levels in relationships we build with people, consciously or not.

Thesis advisor: Brian D. Robinette / The proliferation in recent decades of “stewardship model” approaches for developing a theology of creation, which places human beings at the center of the cosmos as caretakers or managers of the divine oikos, is the result of an intentional effort to correct overtly problematic “dominion model” approaches that have contributed both to reifying a sense of human sovereignty and the resulting environmental degradation. However, the first part of this dissertation argues that the stewardship model of creation actually operates under many of the same problematic presuppositions as the dominion model, and therefore does not offer a correction but rather a tacit re-inscription of the very same pitfalls. After close consideration and analysis of the stewardship model, this dissertation identifies scriptural, theological, and philosophical sources to support the adoption of a “kinship” or “community of creation” model. Drawing on postcolonial theorists and theologians as key critical and constructive interlocutors, this project then proposes the concept of “planetarity” as a framework for conceiving of the relationship between human and other-than-human creation, as well as the relationship between the whole of creation and the Creator, in a new way. This theoretical framework invites a theological supplément, which, this dissertation argues, is found best in the writings of the medieval Franciscan tradition. Several distinctive characteristics of the Franciscan theological tradition offer key constructive contributions. Among these themes are the foundational sense of the interrelatedness, mutuality, and intended harmony of creation within the early spiritual texts and later Franciscan theological and philosophical writings; John Duns Scotus’s distinctive principle of individuation; the alternative appropriation of Peter John Olivi’s category of usus pauper for use in navigating the tension between creation’s intrinsic and instrumental value; and the application of a Franciscan understanding of the virtue of pietas as a proposal for environmental praxis. The result is what can be called a postcolonial Franciscan theology of creation imagined in terms of planetarity as reconceived in a theological key. It is a constructive and non-anthropocentric response to the need for a new conceptualization of the doctrine of creation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Cette thèse porte sur les relations de parenté chez les habitants de sept communautés traditionnelles de pêcheurs Caiçaras de l´archipel d´Ilhabela (Etat de São Paulo, Brésil). L´ensemble de ces communautés forme un réseau complexe fondé sur les liens de parenté et d´amitié. Au sein de ce réseau, l'identité s’impose comme clé essentielle pour comprendre les relations qu’entretiennent ces communautés, l'endogamie locale et consanguine, ainsi que les principes de parenté à l’oeuvre. Les résidents de ces communautés partagent une identité globale commune, mais en même temps présentent des particularités liées à une identification locale. Dans la description et l’analyse des relations de parenté deux axes sont privilégiés : d’un côté, l’étude des récits racontés à propos d’unions matrimoniales, de l’autre, la prise en compte systématique de données généalogique à l'aide d’outils informatiques. Ces analyses ont révélé l'existence de principes positives, comme la préférence pour le mariage avec des "cousins éloignes", et principes négatifs, comme l'évitement d’unions entre germains, d’unions obliques et de toute unions à même d’engendrer du cumul de connexions ou substances. L'adoption et la résidence, étroitement liées à des enjeux d'identité sont d’importants facteurs dans la variation au sein des principes et tendances propres au fonctionnement de la parenté dans les communautés traditionnelles Caiçaras de cet archipel. / This thesis deals with kinship and marriage relations among the inhabitants of seven traditional Caiçara fishermen communities of the Ilhabela archipelago (Sao Paulo State, Brazil). These communities compose a complex network based on ties of kinship, marriage and friendship. Identity turns out to be an essential key for understanding the relationship dynamics linking these communities, patterns of local and consanguineous endogamy, as well as the kinship and marriage principles at work. The residents of these communities share a common, overall identity, but they also present particularities linked to their particular localities. In describing and analyzing kinship and marriage relations, two approaches are favored: narratives about particular marriages on the one hand, and a systematic account of genealogical data using computerized tools on the other. These analyses revealed the presence of positive principles, such as a preference for marriage with « distant cousins », and of negative precepts, such as the avoidance of marriages between siblings, of oblique unions and of all unions giving rise to an accumulation of connections or substances. Adoption and residence, closely linked to issues of identity, are important factors in the variations that occur with respect to the principles and tendencies of the kinship system of the traditional Caiçaras communities of this archipelago.

Dans ce travail de recherche, nous voulions découvrir les facteurs qui ont été determinants pour le processus de résilience des personnes qui ont subi un déplacement forcé en Colombie, le rôle qu’aurait pu jouer dans ce processus le lien de parenté et l’appui social qu’ont trouvé les victimes de ce fléau. Pour arriver à nos fins, nous nous sommes mis en contact avec des familles de déplacés qui vivent dans la ville de Medellín dans deux des quartiers qui ont reçu le plus de déplacés. Deux quartiers périphériques qui ont vu leur population augmenter du fait de l’arrivée de ces personnes. Nous avons conversé avec ces familles qui nous ont raconté comment elles vivaient avant de souffrir ce traumatisme, comment elles ont vécu le moment de la fuite et leur arrivée à Medellín où elles pensaient trouver la paix. Mais à la ville, elles ont dû faire face à d’autres problèmes, non moins graves, comme la discrimination sociale, l’absence d’un toit et d’un travail digne pour survivre. / In this study, we aimed to describe the determinants of the resilience process of people who suffered forced displacement in Colombia, and the role that kinship and social support for the victims of this scourge play in this process. To this end, we contacted displaced families living in two neighborhoods with the largest number of displaced persons in the city of Medellin. Two neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city that have seen their population increase with the arrival of these people. These families shared their stories with us, told us how they used to live before they were forced to leave their land, the pain and horrors of having to flee, and their confusion and hope when they arrived in Medellin where they thought they could find peace.

Based on the author's long term fieldwork from 2005 to 2008 in Qiaoxiang, a rural Hakka community in Xingning County, Guangdong Province, Southeastern China, this dissertation examines how the revival of tradition in contemporary China can be understood through the dynamic interaction and negotiation among state, villagers and local elites. This ethnography describes the history and reality of tumultuous social change in the community, especially in Maoist and post-Maoist times, and shows how the villagers living in weilongwu, a characteristic lineage or multi-family compound of the Hakka heartland, have managed to mobilize political, social and cultural resources to deal with outside forces in contemporary China. I analyze how the Maoist state's attempts to break down kinship ties failed and how kinship's importance has been maintained and strengthened in both collective and post-collective periods. This dissertation focuses on how the participation and collaboration of ordinary villagers and village elites facilitates a vigorous revival of tradition, including the establishment of organizations at the level of lineage and community, the reediting of genealogies, the rebuilding and renovation of ancestral halls, and most importantly, the reactivation of kinship rituals. I demonstrate how the active engagement and complicated entanglement of socialist state, overseas power and other contemporary forces has shaped and reshaped the social and cultural landscape of the local community. I argue that the revival of tradition is by no means a remnant of the past or a total invention; instead, traditions are forming within the fluctuating context of Late Imperial legacy, state imposition and uncertain modernity. I also argue that the ordinary villagers are not passive subjects of domination by state power or other forces; instead, they are sophisticated activists possessing the strategic competence and wisdom to deal with the circumstances in which they live. In this sense, tradition should be taken as the practice of ordinary people in an ongoing process of inventing and becoming.

In this thesis I describe the complex uses and symbolic resonances of fur clothing in Krakow. During my fieldwork, fur emerged as an object that was at once quotidian and evocative of an uncommonly weighty set of associations. I describe fur industry workers’ ideas about how the production and consumption of fur changed throughout the twentieth century, from its status as a nationalized industry under socialism to its status in post-European Union accession Poland. Informants rely heavily on fur’s physical features, its materiality, when discussing the ways in which fur is an object to be passed through families. I demonstrate the ways in which beliefs about inheritance are heavily contingent upon the local understanding of work as a practice that creates adult personhood. The sections of the thesis which focus on the employment trajectories of furriers show, when placed alongside chapters that explore how fur is passed through generations, that whilst informants value highly both material and intangible inheritances from older kin, they also emphasise the importance of individual action, such as entrepreneurialism. I use the multiple ways in which fur can be interpreted: as part of a dead animal and as a valuable ‘textile’ amongst other meanings, to unpack local understandings of difference and social stratification, taking into account that ‘class’ is a term seldom used in Krakow. ‘Generation’ has a specific function and meaning within Krakowian society as a type of difference that is naturalized and easily spoken of. This contrasts with differences in religion and in class, local understandings of both of which are elucidated by fur due to its associations with, firstly, both Polish Judaism and Polish Catholicism and, secondly, bourgeois ways of being and ideas about poverty in Krakow.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of middlemen and business families in a commercial town in central Sri Lanka. What I present is based on almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork, in which I followed entrepreneurial families as they started and developed various businesses, built new homes, found suitors for their children, extended their networks of effective social relations, and campaigned for political office. At the heart of the town, and at the centre of the project, is Sri Lanka’s largest wholesale vegetable market. Through an exploration of vegetable selling, I examine various types of work that transcend the boundaries of the market itself: the work of kinship within business families, in particular dealing with extending families and the task of producing new homes, the work of belonging and status among merchants, and the work of politics in a merchant town. These themes are explored in three ethnographic settings – in the households of business families, at work in the vegetable market, and at social and political gatherings. My account of the activities of merchants and merchant families in Dambulla engages and builds upon a body of anthropological literature on the production of kinship, class, and politics in Sri Lanka against the backdrop of a much broader set of social transformations that have shaped Sri Lanka’s tumultuous post-colonial modernity; notably the war and development, economic and agrarian change, and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism. The thesis provides new empirical data from ethnographic research into under researched areas of Sri Lankan social and cultural life, such as everyday domesticity and male sociality, as well as life and work in a small town in rural Sri Lanka. The ethnographic material also draws on theories from economic anthropology and economic sociology in its analysis. While some of the bigger questions in the thesis address identity and belonging among merchants, as well as the cultural implications of material change; throughout the thesis I also explore what goes on in houses, which relationships matter, how hierarchies are maintained and circumvented, how people make deals, leverage influence, protest, pursue strategies to get ahead, and transpose local issues onto broader political spheres. This, I argue, is the work that goes into the making of the merchant middle class.

This thesis uses the secular coming-of-age ritual, Jugendweihe (‘youth consecration’), as a locus for exploring the ways kinship and politics in Germany are complexly intertwined. Although Jugendweihe emerged in the mid-19th century as a substitute for ecclesiastical coming-of-age rituals, and was adopted by various movements, it is closely associated with the former GDR (German Democratic Republic/East Germany). Under the GDR, young people aged thirteen to fourteen prepared for their Jugendweihe ceremony in ten ‘youth lessons’, which aimed to craft ‘socialist personalities’. Between 1955 and 1989 more than seven million adolescents pledged allegiance to the GDR state during the public ceremony, which was followed by a family celebration. With the demise of state socialism in 1989-90, western observers and the Churches assumed the ritual would vanish, but Jugendweihe continues to be celebrated in contemporary eastern Germany – without a pledge of allegiance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between November 2012 and January 2014 in Thuringia, this thesis investigates the changed social relations between individuals, families, and the state in eastern Germany after the political caesura of 1989-90. It explores the ritual’s abiding relevance within a different socio-political context, and considers how the ritual’s metamorphosis is mediated both through the local Jugendweihe Association and the grandparental and parental generations. The research examines what values grandparents and parents, who were socialised under the GDR, seek to transmit to their offspring born after the GDR state’s demise. It demonstrates the continued (and changing) salience of connections between kinship, ritual, and politics in contemporary Germany.

This short story collection deals with themes of race, kinship, desire, subjectivity, and appearance vs. reality.