This multi-sited ethnography focuses on beliefs and practices associated with death, dying, and palliative care among the Low German-Speaking (LGS) Mennonites. The qualitative data, collected through participant-observation fieldwork and interviews conducted in three LGS Mennonite communities in Mexico and Canada, show a gap between official definitions of palliative care and its practice in real life. The LGS Mennonites’ care for their dying members, in reality, is integrated into their community lives that emphasize or reinforce discipleship by promoting the practices of mutual aid, social networks, and brotherhood/sisterhood among community members. This study also offers ethnographic insights into some difficulties that healthcare providers face while delivering the “holistic” palliative care services to their patients in general, and to the LGS Mennonites in particular. Finally, it provides some suggestions that may aid healthcare providers in developing culturally safe and competent health care services for the LGS Mennonite people living in Canada. / xi, 231 leaves ; 29 cm

At the end of the nineteenth century, St. Lawrence Boulevard, popularly known as 'the Main', attained mythical status in Montreal. Due to its particular location in the social and cultural geography of Montreal, the Main, which symbolically divides the working-class Francophone east and the Anglophone bourgeois west, has developed as a mixed-use commercial artery, an eclectic border zone of a bilingual, multi-ethnic city. The heterogeneous character of the Main is reflected in its material landscape---with its old and now largely re-used garment sweat-shops and labour halls, theatres of the red-light district, cafes, and the shops and restaurants of the mid-twentieth century immigrant shopping corridor. Shaped by the diversity of the populations that came to live, work, protest, shop or be entertained in these sites, it is an example of the social and cultural diversity of the metropolis. Such heterogeneous sites have often been interpreted as liminal spaces, but this research demonstrates that the construction and experience of the Main as a border zone have rarely been gender neutral. While physical, social and cultural heterogeneity are components of this landscape, these sites also attest to the importance of gender relations in the experience of the Main as a place of work and social life and, ultimately, as a space of representation. Its border status has often been represented through discourses and images of 'marginal' womanhood, articulated in terms of social, occupational, political, sexual and/or ethnic identity. Many of its locales, moreover, have been sites where women entered urban public life in contentious and distinctive ways. / As a place that highlights the social and cultural heterogeneity of a supposedly 'divided' city, the Main is an ideal site from which to explore how ethnicity, language, class, occupation and sexual identity intersect with gender in the experience and representation of urban life. This thesis examines how a multiplicity of female gender identities have been defined and contested along the Main over the past century. It contributes to a broad literature on geographies of gender, difference and urban public cultures through an analysis of the relationships between feminist spatial metaphors and the material production of urban space. Through a series of events that move through time and sections of St. Lawrence, I examine how portions of the landscape of this boulevard have been marked by the enactment of specific sets of gender relations and forms of representation that became central to civic debates regarding gender. I argue that the construction and experience of the Main as a border zone has involved the production of specific relations of gender, alterity and space. / A variety of qualitative methods and archival sources are used to illustrate the importance of representations of gender to the production of this place and to illustrate how women have experienced and made use of material sites to express their specific occupational, cultural, religious, social or sexual identities. This thesis demonstrates the crucial role played by the border zones of urban public cultures in the construction of female identities that depart from dominant gender norms in the expression of social, cultural and sexual differences.

The attitudes of selected memoir authors are surveyed with regard to their commentary on London Society ranging from the late Nineteenth century to the Nineteen Thirties. The experience of these Society participants is divided between aspects of continuity and change before and after the First World War. During this time-frame, London Society, as the community of a ruling class culture, may be seen to have undergone the transition from having been an aristocratic entity dominated by the political and social prestige of the landed classes, to that of an expanded body, more reflective of democratic evolution and innovation. The memoir testimony treated in this inquiry affords a means of reflecting not only Society's passage of experience but also more pointedly, its evaluation, shedding light on the values and vulnerability of a hitherto assured, discreet and otherwise adaptive class character at a time of accelerated change and challenge.

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This study examines learning interactions around indigenous ways of knowing associated with fermented grain foods (the making of umqombothi) and the concept of alcoholic fermentation in the Grade 11 Life Sciences curriculum. As an environmental education study it also investigates the cultural significances of the fermented grain food and how learners might make better lifestyle choices. The inclusion of indigenous ways of knowing in the Life Sciences curriculum (FET band) created spaces and opportunities for the use of both knowledge's in sociocultural context and the structured propositions of the learning area in order to construct knowledge. This stimulated learners' understanding of fermentation and also led to a valuing of social context as well as the cultural capital embedded in the indigenous ways of knowing. The study suggests that parental involvement contributed to this valuing of intergenerational ways of knowing. Learners also deliberated how colonial interpretations of Nguni culture and the religious beliefs of Christians had served to marginalise and foster a widening urban rejection of isiXhosa cultural practices related to fermented foods. In their learning and discussion, learners developed new insights and respect for isiXhosa fermentation practices (ukudidiyela) that bring out the food value and nutrition in the grain. The data illustrates that lesson activity that drew on relevant Learning Outcomes and Assessment Standards to integrate Indigenous Knowledge practices in a Life Sciences learning programme, served to enhance learner understanding of alcoholic fermentation. They also document a revaluing of cultural heritage and learners bringing up the problem of alcohol abuse in the community. Curriculum work with Indigenous Knowledge thus not only assisted learners to grasp the science but to use this alongside a valued cultural knowledge capital to deliberate and act on a local concern.

One of the purposes of the Namibian curriculum is to ensure cultural inclusivity. That is, it recognises the inclusion of traditional cultural practices and experiences in science lessons where appropriate. Based on my experiences both as a learner and a science teacher, I have noted there is a rapid decline and loss of values in most of our cultural practices and heritages. This triggered my interests to do a study on an Oshiwambo traditional beverage known as Ombike. This study is therefore aimed at enhancing conceptual development, meaning making and understanding of concepts in fermentation and distillation. This study was conducted with my grade 9 learners at a school where I was teaching in Omusati region of Namibia. A community member who served as an expert was also a participant. She was involved more in discussions, interviews and most importantly in showing and demonstrating to the learners how Ombike is made practically. Essentially, the goal of this study was to investigate how the indigenous practice associated with the making of Ombike can be used to support meaning making of fermentation and distillation processes. This research is located within an interpretive paradigm where a qualitative case study was adopted. I consider this methodological framework appropriate in this study because it allowed me to use the following data gathering methods: brainstorming and discussion, observation, semi-structured and focus group interviews, and practical activities worksheet. Multiple methods were used for the purpose of triangulation and validation. An inductive analysis was used to discover data patterns and themes from the data. Moreover, ethical considerations were also taken seriously and all the participants gave informed consent. The findings of the study revealed that brainstorming and discussions were an appropriate strategy in eliciting learners’ prior everyday knowledge and experiences on, in particular, the making of Ombike. Furthermore, learner engagement and conceptual development were enhanced. This suggests that contextualisation of knowledge can enhance meaningful learning if it is properly planned. It was also found that practical activities in conjunction with mind maps helped learners to make meanings of scientific concepts. Based on my research findings, I therefore recommend the following three aspects: the consideration of learners` prior knowledge and experiences; contextualising knowledge through use of indigenous knowledge; and the learners’ active involvement in practical activities with an emphasis on key scientific concepts to be developed. That is, there is a need to teach for conceptual understanding.

This ethnoecological study of the Makushi Amerindians of Amazonian Guyana explores the place of plants in the indigenous culture and cosmology. The North Rupununi, the homeland of the Makushi people, is a bioculturally diverse mosaic of neotropical savannahs, forests, and wetlands. As subsistence hunters, fishers, and horticulturalists, the Makushi live in a constant and dynamic interaction with their ecologically rich surroundings. Against the human-faunal bias latent in much Amazonian anthropology, I place plants firmly at the centre of analysis, a positioning that mirrors their centrality in the ethnographic context. Human-plant encounters explored herein include swidden agriculture, the cultivation of bitter cassava, the fermentation of cassava drinks using a domesticated fungus, the use of a category of charm plants, and the consumption of plant substances in shamanic ritual. With the Makushi, I emphasise the status of plants as living selves and agents of semiosis, occupying perspectives on the world in and outside of their interactions with human beings. In order to investigate ethno-theories of life, I attempt to understand the constitution of the person - and associated notions of body and soul - in the indigenous cosmology. Makushi ontology can be characterised as animic - though as I argue, it also incorporates naturalistic and analogic elements. Thus, it is poly-ontological. This study pursues a dual goal: first, to pay heed to the trans-specific domain of living entities revealed in the Makushi ethnoecology, and second, to rethink conventional symbolic frameworks characteristic of anthropological approaches to culture. I explore the application of a more robust approach to sign-flows in nature - Peircian ecosemiotics - that allows for the analysis of plant communication, birdcalls, insect stings, and leaf patterns, as well as human language. In tracing these interspecific webs of signification, conclusions are drawn about the varied ways in which Makushi people engage with and think about their living environment. At the same time, many Makushi multispecies engagements are based on the physical transfer of substances between bodies of different kinds. In order to better account for this pervasive 'substance logic', greater attention must be paid to indigenous notions of corporeality and personhood. In doing so, I propose a dual analytical model that takes both the flows of signs and the flows of substances as its combined objective. This approach enables new conclusions to be drawn about multispecies relationality in indigenous Amazonian cosmologies.

This thesis examines three contestations involving human remains which have arisen in the Eastern Cape over the past fifteen years. It shows that the value or meaning attached to human remains is constructed through the socio-historical dynamics out of which these contestations arise. The meaning and value of human remains is neither inherent nor neutral. In Ndancama's case, the need for housing in Fingo Village led hundreds of poor residents to settle on the township's Old Cemetery in 1972. Basic material needs trumped concerns for those buried in the cemetery. When the post-apartheid municipality sought to provide sewerage and housing infrastructure for Ndancama in 2003, its development plans were constrained by new heritage legislation which protects historic cemeteries. Residents insisted that their infrastructural needs were of primary importance. In 1993, the unearthing of human remains at the Old Military Cemetery in King William's Town created a thirteen year long saga which was only resolved with the reburial of the remains in 2006. The presence of the remains proved problematic for a number of reasons. Local authorities failed to rebury the remains speedily. The burden to store them fell on the Kaffrarian Museum which came under fire because this was considered unethical in the postapartheid era. The identity of the remains became a bone of contention in 2006 when the new Amathole District Municipality concluded that the remains were those of victims who died in the 1856-57 Great Cattle Killing. The remains and their reburial became symbols of past injustice and present restoration of African heritage. The 1996 quest by 'Nicholas Gcaleka', a 'self-styled' chief and traditional healer, to search for King Hintsa's skull in the United Kingdom provoked unprecedented public engagement with the incomplete narrative on the fate of Hintsa's body. The power to represent history, and the methods through which historical truth is discovered were at the heart of the contestation. Elites such as the Xhosa Royal and the white scientific establishment were considered neither credible nor authoritative on this historical matter. Public support for Gcaleka revealed that many South Africans sought just recompense for colonial injustices.

The purpose of this project was to examine the similarities and differences in magazine advertisements directed to women in China and Taiwan. Through content analysis of advertisments in these two countries, the researcher identified how women were portrayed and the social values or lifestyle attributed to them of each society.

The purpose of this study was to identify the needs of the Purhepecha children, also referred to as Tarascan, and their families living in the Eastern Coachella Valley located in California. A questionaire was developed by the author in order to identify the population's specific needs. Ultimatley, it is with hope that the Purhepecha people's needs will be understood as relevant to their language and culture, and make these needs public for other professionals working with this population.