Canada’s Prairie cities are an exciting context for understanding cultural growth and diversification of urban spaces because more and more Aboriginal peoples are identifying and experiencing their lives in the urban realm. At the same time though, urban spaces are also a source for serious cultural and socio-economic challenges for Aboriginal peoples. With the sustained pattern of growth in the urban Aboriginal population experienced in Canada’s Prairie cities today, there is a need for Aboriginal involvement and participation in creating policies and programs for urban Aboriginal peoples. I explore how the city of Edmonton is engaging with Aboriginal peoples and organizations in the city to enable their rights, needs and aspirations in city planning processes. The thesis engages the concept of “Aboriginality” to explore how Aboriginal cultures can be enabled by urban planning processes to develop and manifest their values and identities in the city so that urban spaces can shift toward decolonized places. Knowledge learned from the research can be used to inform municipalities across Canada on how they can emphasize their Aboriginal heritage as a civic strength for inclusive urban planning in Canada. Engaging Aboriginal peoples and their perspectives in ideas of place-making and civic future seeking will also add more depth to the diversity discourse in mainstream Canada. To explore the research questions, the thesis uses Edmonton as a case study. Interviews involving Aboriginal citizens, Aboriginal organizations, and municipal officials are used as a method for collecting the data needed for the research. Findings reveal that the City of Edmonton is willing to engage with Aboriginal peoples to integrate their perspectives and cultures in the mainstream of urban life. However, the process is still developing and much more complicated in terms of how different Aboriginal peoples want to be engaged in city planning and associated policy. Citizens express a general fondness for Edmonton and its many opportunities that can improve people’s lives. However, though on the surface the city overflows with promises for opportunity and success, underneath the surface, some Aboriginal peoples experience subtle barriers that diminish their capacity to engage and succeed in the socio-economic spheres of the life in Edmonton. Negative stereotypes persist to discriminate against and exclude Aboriginal peoples as viable constituents of the citizenry of Edmonton. Aboriginal organizations in the city are playing a fundamental role in addressing the acute social pressures that Aboriginals face. These organizations also serve to create a collective Aboriginal voice that stands to challenge the negative stereotypes in addition to fostering a non-judgmental space for healing from the impacts of intergenerational trauma. The thesis concludes with the point that Aboriginal engagement is an important platform for raising civic literacy on Aboriginal history and its intersection with city planning and development processes in Edmonton. It engages notions of the city’s identity and begins a transformation of the systemic bureaucracies that presume universal citizenship in the public domain.

Female sterilisation or tubal ligation remains the most promoted and prevalent method of contraception in India today, especially among the rural and urban poor. This thesis provides an ethnographic account of poor women’s experiences of the sterilisation procedure in order to investigate the intricate relationship between the state, biomedicine and poor women in rural North India. The thesis draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a mixed-caste village in Southern Rajasthan. Besides engaging with women in their daily lives in the village, participant observation was also carried out in regularly organised sterilisation camps, which were run by Marie Stopes India in two nearby towns. The thesis aims to explore how women experience the female sterilisation procedure, how this procedure relates to concerns beyond the sterilisation camp and how various forms and sources of authority influence reproductive decisions. The female sterilisation procedure encapsulates not only people’s engagements and negotiations with the power, practices and discourses of the state, but also with other forms of authority, such as biomedicine, and intersecting structures of gender, caste and class. The thesis approaches the main research theme – the relationship between the state, biomedicine and poor women in rural North India – by examining various relationships and power struggles within these domains as much as between them. The chapters focussing on the history of family planning in India, on local articulations of the state in the village and on local health workers who are an integral part of “motivating” women for the female sterilisation procedure reflect an effort to problematise “the state” and to investigate how local embodiments and discourses of the state contribute to women’s decisions to stop childbearing by undergoing the tubal ligation procedure. The ethnography of a sterilisation camp provides a look into processes of biomedical examinations conducted in the camp before the procedure, and shows how biomedical tools of knowing, seeing and acting are negotiated and contested by various biomedical personnel, bureaucrats, as well as by women seeking the procedure. In such a way, I problematise the category of “biomedicine” and highlight its contested nature. Finally, chapters on reproductive agency and operable bodies examine how women themselves make sense of tubal ligation, how they negotiate conditions under which to undergo the procedure, and how female sterilisation becomes a site to negotiate one’s social status. An ethnographic investigation of the state, biomedicine and poor women as categories which are not homogenous but rather are constituted through multiple internal and external contestations allows a deeper and more complex understanding of how increasing medicalisation of women’s lives in rural North India is experienced in various different ways. Furthermore, acknowledging the multiplicity of agendas, discourses and experiences within the categories of “the state”, “biomedicine” and “poor women” provides an insight into how power is contested and articulated on multiple levels and by multiple actors, resulting in theoretical contributions to the existing theories on power, governmentality and biopolitics.

This study sought to examine pathways of coping and healing for women experiencing homelessness and poverty in the Boston area. Data was collected through participant observations of shelter dynamics, semi-structured interviews with shelter clients (referred to as “guests”), card-sorting activities in which participants were asked to rank self-generated cards for support groups, coping mechanisms, and internal selves across a range of situations, and a free association task, which involved having participants submit whatever self-generated cards of the above groups they associated with the terms “health,” “safety,” “shame,” and “pride,” respectively. Results were subsequently organized into three analytical chapters representative of the three levels of physiological response to threat. The first level of analysis looks at social engagement in the form of receiving and giving care. The second level examines expressions of rage and how these contribute into cycles of isolation, violence, and suffering. The third level further explores these dynamics within the realm of grief and erasure. The final chapter of this thesis then discusses the implications of these areas, as well as some suggestions for how to improve or potentially intervene in the perpetuation of these cycles, with a focus on how to emphasize healing while decreasing the need for coping.

<p>The concept of security is a contested one. The United Nations definition in UNDPs Development report of 1994 is the most authoritive and commonly cited. The civil war in Sudan has led to 2 million deaths and over 5.5 million refugees. In a resolution from 2005, the UN decided that the war in Sudan was a threat to international security and peace. The 10th of January UN decided that a peace commission ought to be send with 10 000 military and civil men including 700 policemen.</p><p>The main purpose of this thesis is to improve our knowledge of those factors which can cause an increased risk of conflict within a state, and how that can affect the social conditions for individuals. First, I analyse which kind of threats to human security that are to be identified in Sudan. Secondly, I discuss and analyse the role of UN in Sudan, focusing on the human security issues. Different information from sources is analyzed through qualitative content analysis, with quantative components. The theoretical perspective is based on Johan Galtungs theory concerning positive and negative peace, but also on the concept of human security. </p><p>Based on the collected data and the theoretical framework the conclusions are that it is a clear connection between the direct violence and the structural and cultural violence in south Sudan. It depends on the historical legacy but also because of the deep rooted structures of the institutions in Sudan. The conflict is about the oil and the ethnic and cultural identification. All this is a threat to the human security in Sudan, due to the condition about social equitable and the right to have a decent life. The UN has resolved the immediate military threat in the south of Sudan. There are a lot of things to be done before the security situation reach the UN definition of human security. The Sudan government must be responsible for implementing policies to assure this security.</p>

The present study was designed to contribute to the application of human security principles in vulnerable populations, using the Bateyes (sugar mill camps) from the Dominican Republic (DR) as a case study. Following the Robin Hood principle of using resources allocated for the identification and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as a base from which to build infrastructure for other health and human security needs, this project sought to reduce inequalities and promote equal rights in a vulnerable population living in isolated rural areas of the DR. The impact of a human security model versus non-intervention (standard of care) was examined longitudinally in relationship to the outcomes (prevention of morbid events such as HIV, tuberculosis, diarrhea, dengue, malaria, and model impact on breastfeeding and vaccines rates). The project was implemented in three phases: baseline assessments, implementation of a human security model over a six month period, and evaluation of the interventions at six and twelve months after the initiation of the intervention. Qualitative evaluation methods were used to complement quantitative assessments. An economic analysis was also conducted to evaluate the costs of the intervention and potential sources of economic benefits. Overall, at baseline, the owners of the houses from Batey A (Case) were more likely to respond incorrectly than the residents of Batey B (Control) questions about knowledge, attitudes and practices, for the most prevalent infectious diseases of the southwestern area of the Dominican Republic. To control for baseline differences between the study groups, a Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) score system was created. The KAP score system showed that the people living in Batey A had a higher percentage of right answers than residents of Batey B, six months after the intervention. These findings, however, were not observed at the 12 month follow-up visit, suggesting that future studies using the human security intervention model may need to be maintained for more than 6 months, to promote sustainability. Economic analysis revealed that the total cost-savings of the Program to the Ministry of Health and society overall to be 252,399USD. In addition, at the follow-up visits, morbidity and mortality rates of the study population were lower than the rates reported in a recent Demographic Health Survey conducted in the Southwestern Bateyes of the DR. The qualitative interviews allowed for the identification of community perceptions of the model, as well as the necessity for an interdisciplinary approach, including structural interventions (i.e. water pump, construction of latrines, etc) and monitoring community security-related issues through household monthly visits. The use of HIV resources demonstrated that the money allocated for HIV prevention could be utilized, not only to reduce the burden of disease, but also to invest in health systems and services. Applied to other settings, the design and outcomes of this study could have a beneficial impact on refugee and undocumented populations in other countries under the impact of the structural violence observed in the Bateyes of the DR.

The concept of security is a contested one. The United Nations definition in UNDPs Development report of 1994 is the most authoritive and commonly cited. The civil war in Sudan has led to 2 million deaths and over 5.5 million refugees. In a resolution from 2005, the UN decided that the war in Sudan was a threat to international security and peace. The 10th of January UN decided that a peace commission ought to be send with 10 000 military and civil men including 700 policemen. The main purpose of this thesis is to improve our knowledge of those factors which can cause an increased risk of conflict within a state, and how that can affect the social conditions for individuals. First, I analyse which kind of threats to human security that are to be identified in Sudan. Secondly, I discuss and analyse the role of UN in Sudan, focusing on the human security issues. Different information from sources is analyzed through qualitative content analysis, with quantative components. The theoretical perspective is based on Johan Galtungs theory concerning positive and negative peace, but also on the concept of human security. Based on the collected data and the theoretical framework the conclusions are that it is a clear connection between the direct violence and the structural and cultural violence in south Sudan. It depends on the historical legacy but also because of the deep rooted structures of the institutions in Sudan. The conflict is about the oil and the ethnic and cultural identification. All this is a threat to the human security in Sudan, due to the condition about social equitable and the right to have a decent life. The UN has resolved the immediate military threat in the south of Sudan. There are a lot of things to be done before the security situation reach the UN definition of human security. The Sudan government must be responsible for implementing policies to assure this security.

The study of identity based on the presence of disease has traditionally focused on landmark events, such as diagnosis or the introduction of treatment options. These events have been shown to significantly alter so-called “illness identities.” The project was undertaken in Atlanta, GA, which has a relatively high rate of HIV infection and a large number of HIV-related services and support mechanisms. This study contextualizes illness identities within a larger socio-political and economic paradigm, recognizing that individuals use multiple identities to inform their interactions and decisions, specifically those regarding the beginning and continuation of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. In addition, structural barriers which limit one’s access to ARV treatment are considered within a context of social and economic marginalization and inequitable power relationships within a post-industrial Western society.

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on women with endometriosis, a gynecological condition in which tissue similar to the endometrium, or lining of the uterus which is shed during menses, grows elsewhere in the body. Despite a growing understanding of the disease in medical literature, it is still not well known by the general population or fully understood by the medical community. The paper incorporates a biomedical understanding with Emma Whelan’s idea of these women as an epistemological community, autoethnography, and narratives of sufferers in order to understand how women discuss, experience, and form communities around it. It draws upon individual interviews, a focus group, and readings of medical and social science literature and found that women of dissimilar socioeconomic backgrounds approached and discussed the disease distinctively from one another with three phases of coping with the illness: the discovery, quest, and revelation.

This study raises the issue of the trafficking of children in favor of voluntourism and orphanage tourism. The phenomenon of tourists who engage in volunteer work during a holiday has increased into a considerable form of tourism and turned in to a profitable business.  This thesis is questioning what factors triggers children to be trafficked and sexual exploited within the phenomenon of orphanage tourism and voluntourism. To conclusion of this thesis will question how the phenomenon affects the children.  This study is an abductive, qualitative desk-study with a thematic text analysis. The analysis is based on Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six step model where themes are constructed from the findings. The elements that the children within this phenomenon are affected by were categorized into these themes. The themes were afterwards analyzed individually in order to create a holistic picture of how they impact children.  The empirical data are all from secondary and tertiary sources out of both academia and media. The findings have been analyzed with the theoretical framework of Johan Galtung and his definition of presence of violence. Galtung’s concept of structural violence has been applied to analyze what drives children to be trafficked- and sexually exploited in connection to orphanage tourism, as well as how this effected the children.  The thesis suggests that the main factor, which fuels children to be trafficked in this context, is the demand for accessible children. Orphanage tourism has become a profitable business and a loophole for the corrupt to gain money on socially vulnerable families. This by presenting them to tourist who pay money in good faith and dedicate time from their vacation in belief that they are doing good.  The thesis addresses how structural violence is present and how it contributes to the phenomenon of orphanage tourism to keep operating by trafficking children in favor of it. It is also shown that psychological stress within various dimensions, which the children are exposed to, lower their actual realization from the potential. The exploitation they live under leaves the children in a disempowered position, without control of their social condition, which is argued to make a significant difference between their potential life expectancy and actual life expectancy.

The Israel-Palestine conflict constitutes one of the longest standing conflicts in modern times. Its continuation has often been attributed to the very nature of the conflict: two peoples pursuing an incompatible goal-ownership of the same piece of land. Violence has constituted a characteristic feature of this struggle, widely employed by the two peoples. The analysis of violence, however, has often been limited to acts of direct and physical violence that can be attributed to an individual subject. This thesis investigates violence in the conflict going beyond this traditional conceptualisation of violence. It employs Johan Galtung’s conceptual and theoretical framework, in which he identifies three types of violence: direct, structural and cultural. This thesis argues that all three types of violence are symbiotic in nature. The underlying assumption in this thesis is simple: violence breeds violence. Thus, in order to understand the persistence of the conflict, it is essential to analyse all three types of violence. The thesis proposes the hypothesis that the continuing failure to address all forms of violence, as well as omitting or minimising the importance of any of them, prevents the possibility of resolving the conflict, and thus has contributed to the protraction of the conflict. In order to examine this assumption empirically, the thesis investigates the violence in the conflict, concentrating on the Israeli barrier. The study poses two central research questions. The first asks what led to the construction of the barrier. The second asks why the barrier remains, and the Israeli occupation continues. The answers to the research questions and the account of violence have been the subjects of two contrasting narratives: Israeli and Palestinian. In order to provide both Israeli and Palestinian contributions to these questions, the thesis is divided into two accounts: Palestinian narrative and Israeli narrative. The empirical analysis of violence in the conflict, embedded in the theoretical framework of Galtung's conceptualisation of violence, and divided into the two narratives, reveals a complex cycle of violence in the conflict. It demonstrates the interconnection between the three types of violence and shows the impact of the violence on the intractability of the Israel-Palestine conflict.