The long, protracted civil war, spanning nearly fifty years, in the South American nation of Colombia has displaced almost four million civilians in as much time. Tens of thousands of refugees were resettled in Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela and other neighboring countries. Some, still threatened in their country of first asylum, and resettled to the United States (US) with their families, must learn to navigate the often complex systems of life and living in America. Resettlement programs that focus primarily on immediate needs such as employment and accommodations are aware of the growing need for more long&ndashterm assistance. However, while there is much research on how to improve refugee resettlement services generally, there is very limited research on the nature of services that might be needed long&ndashterm or the duration that they may be necessary, for asylum seekers specifically. This ethnographic research examines in detail the long term needs of two Colombian asylum seekers who resettled with their families to a suburban neighborhood in a city in the southern part of the United States. A series of life history interviews, participant observation, ethnographic immersion and secondary research over the course of a one&ndashyear internship with an agency servicing survivors of political torture &mdash refugees, asylees and asylum seekers &mdash uncovered opportunities for bridging perceived gaps in service and highlighting ones that are critical to the long-term successful resettlement and transition of asylum seekers. Four dominant themes emerged from the research: (1) New Identities / Roles &mdash understanding new constructions of self and other; (2) Belonging &mdash coping with new identities, building trust and setting up roots; (3) Legitimacy &mdash power, representation of asylum seekers and its effects on access to services; and (4) Aspirations &mdash goals for the future.

The goal of this study is to explore specialized and popular cultural models of trachoma, and the interaction between the trachoma elimination program and its target audience in one trachoma hyper-endemic intervention community. Eighty four million people worldwide, mainly children, are infected with active bacterial trachoma. For some, this will lead to painful and progressive corneal opacity and eventual blindness. The disease is most commonly spread by person-to-person contact or by flies, and affects very specific populations living in resource-poor areas such as rural Niger, which has one of the highest prevalence rates worldwide. The World Health Organization formed an alliance that is working toward the goal of eliminating blinding trachoma globally by 2020 through a strategy that includes behavior change communication, drug distribution, and surgery. The elimination program has been at work in Niger since the late 1990's. Trachoma prevalence in Niger showed a dramatic reduction during the beginning of the elimination program. However, disease prevalence has again increased and, at the time of this study, was nearing pre-intervention levels. While poverty is closely related to trachoma, the processes by which this economic state becomes translated into health impacts are complex, but rely on behaviors that are directly linked to disease transmission, prevention, and progression. From a social science perspective, these health behaviors can be studied by exploring the influence of both macro- (economics, structural, political), and micro- (cultural, cognitive, meaning-related) level factors. Cultural models are useful in examining the human relationship with infectious disease and how health-related decisions are made. These shared representations are drawn upon to negotiate well-being and disease, and are impacted by the introduction of new ideas or experiences. This study investigates cultural models of illness and the impact of the trachoma elimination program in one high-prevalence community in rural southern Niger. Using an ethnographic approach, which includes observation, in-depth interviews, and household surveys, data were gathered describing popular representations of the program and the disease in the research community. The main findings of this study show that the biomedical model of trachoma supported by the elimination program, amadari, has entered popular knowledge. However, this cultural model is not regularly applied to eye disease actually experienced by study households, which is seen to fit in the more general and more natural category of ciwon ido. Although the new treatments introduced for trachoma have been embraced by the intervention community, the use of the treatments has been modified to fit within popular representations of illness.

This study concerns itself with the relationship between game design and emergent social behaviour in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds. This thesis argues for a legitimisation of the study of ‘communities of play’, alongside communities perceived as more ‘serious’, such as communities of interest or practice. It also identifies six factors that contribute to emergent social behaviour and investigates the relationship between group and individual identity, and the emergent ways in which these arise from and intersect with the features and mechanics of the game worlds themselves. Methodology: Under the rubric of ‘design research’, this study was conducted as an ethnographic intervention, an anthropological investigation that deliberately privileged the online experience whilst acknowledging the performative nature of both game play and the research process itself. The research was informed by years of professional practical experience in game design and playtesting, as well as by qualitative methods derived from the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Computermediated Communications and the emerging field of Game Studies. The process of conducting the eighteen-month ethnographic study followed the progress of a sub-set of members of the ‘Uru Diaspora,’ a group of 10,000 players who were made refugees when the massively multiplayer game ‘Uru: Ages Beyond Myst’ was closed in February of 2004. Uru refugees immigrated into other virtual worlds, using their features and capabilities to create ethnic communities that emulated the culture, artefacts and environments of the original Uru world. Over time, players developed ‘hybrid’ cultures, integrating the Uru culture with that of their new homes, and eventually creating entirely new Uru and Myst-inspired content. The outcome is the identification of six factors that serve as ‘engines for emergence’ and discusses their relationship to each other, to game design, and to emergent behaviour. These include: • Play Ecosystems: Fixed-Synthetic vs. Co-Created Worlds: Online games and virtual worlds exist along a spectrum, with environments entirely authored by the designer at one end, and those comprised primarily of player-created content and assets on the other, with a range of variations between. The type of world will impact the sort of emergent behaviour that occurs, and worlds that include player-created content will be more inclined to promote emergent behaviour. • Communities of Play: Distributed groups formed around play demonstrate distinct characteristics based on shared values and play styles. The study describes in detail one such play community, and analyses the ways in which its characteristic play styles drove its emergent behaviours. • The Social Construction of Avatar Identity: Individual avatar identity is constructed through an emergent process engaging social feedback. • Intersubjective Flow: A social reading of the psychological notion of ‘flow’ that describes the way in which flow dynamics occur in a social context through play. • Productive Play: Countering the traditional contention that play is inherently ‘unproductive’ as some scholars suggest, the thesis argues that play can be seen as a form of cultural production, as well as fulcrum for creative activity. • Porous Magic Circles and the ‘Ludisphere’: The magic circle, which bounds play activities, is more porous than game scholars had previously believed. The term ‘ludisphere' is used to describe the larger context of aggregated play space via the Internet. Also identified are leakages between ‘virtual worlds’ and ‘real life’. By identifying these factors and attempting to trace their roots in game design, the study aims to contribute a new approach to the making and analysis of user experience and creativity ‘in game’. The thesis posits that by achieving a deeper cultural understanding of the relationship between design and emergent behaviour, it is possible to make steps forward in the study of ‘emergence’ itself as a design material.

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Traditionally migration scholarship has been concerned with the question of why people migrate. This has lead many migration researchers to search for lists of causal factors understood to influence migration decisions. More recent migration research has come to recognize that to understand why people migrate, it is important to look beyond such lists and attempt to provide a more complex and nuanced account of the migration process. This thesis draws upon these more recent studies and begins with the premise that to begin to answer the question of why people migrate, one must first try to comprehend how people negotiate, experience and understand their migrations. Through a study of the return migration of young adults to the state of Tasmania in Australia, this thesis discusses the utility of the concepts of 'mobility' and 'place' for exploring the complexities of people's negotiations, experiences and understandings of migration. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with thirty young adults (aged between twenty and thirty-eight) who had left Tasmania and subsequently returned. The thesis speaks to discussions surrounding the emigration of young adults and concerns about 'brain drain' occurring in many regions in Australia as well as internationally. The choice of Tasmania as a case study for this research is highly appropriate, as concerns surrounding the out-migration of young people from the state have influenced the State's social, economic and political life since the early 1900s. By examining return migration, the focus is shifted away from discourses that bemoan the negative effects of the emigration of young adults, instead recognising that migration can also bring benefits to both young migrants themselves and to the places they move between. The research found that people's experiences of migration were intricately tied to their negotiations and understandings of places. Through a complex analysis of constructions of mobility, place and belonging, the thesis reveals that young Tasmanians retain deep emotional and social connections to Tasmania at all stages of the migration process. These connections are influenced by constructions of Tasmania as a place that is understood simultaneously as 'bounded and insular' and as 'networked'. The thesis concludes by pointing to the implications of both mobility and place construction for the politics and economies of the places migrants move between, as well as for the practical considerations and identity constructions of the migrants themselves, and reasserts the importance of these concepts for studies of migration.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Psychology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis will re-evaluate the Chartist movement through research into day-to-day practice in four areas: sociability, material networks, gender and political subjectivity. It will demonstrate that Chartism's activism and the everyday lives of its members were indistinct. In the early years of the movement and the years preceding it, activism and political thought engaged with the quotidian to successfully build a movement that was not only relevant to but an integral part of people's everyday lives. This thesis will analyse how this interaction was not limited to Chartist activists politicising everyday grievances, but also how day-to-day practices and relationships contributed to the infrastructure, intellectual culture and political programme of the movement. This thesis will make original contributions to a number of debates. It challenges the dominant view of Chartism as first and foremost a political movement distinct from its social conditions. It will be argued that this dichotomy between the political and the social cannot be sustained, and it will be shown that activists were most successful when they drew from and were part of society. It will criticise the related trend in studies of Chartism and Radicalism to focus on political identity, meaning and forms of communication. It will argue that these topics are valuable, but need to be seen within a wider existential framework and integrated with an approach that sees cultural activity as one part of a range of activities. As such, it will illustrate the ways that cultural practices are bound with social relationships. Following this, it will make the case for practice to be looked at not just in symbolic or ritualistic terms but also in terms of day-to-day activities that were crucial for the development and maintenance of political movements. It will be argued that prosaic, mundane and day-to-day activities are integral aspects of social movements and as such are worthwhile areas of research. Finally, it will add to our understanding of Chartism by providing biographical information on Henry Vincent, an under-researched figure, and the south west and west of England, under-researched regions. This thesis is organised into two parts. The first will follow the work of activists in developing Chartism in the south west of England from the end of the Swing Riots until the Chartist Convention of 1839. Here it will be argued that Chartism relied upon a close and intensive interaction between activists and the communities they were politicising, with the result being that the movement was coloured by the politics, intellectual culture and practices of those communities. The second section will look at how the private lives and social networks of individual activists were integral to their political ideas, rhetoric and capacity to work as activists. Correspondence, documents produced by the state, the radical press and the internal records of the Chartist movement all shed light on the way everyday life and political thought and action merged.

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No description available.

No description available.