In this dissertation, I examine the process of building a Sámi food movement in northern Sweden. Using 15 months of ethnographic research that included observation of food events (n=100) and semi-structured interviews with food producers and activists (n=47), I describe how Sámi individuals are incorporating global food activism frameworks into...
East School is a private, forest schooling program in the Pacific Northwest. This ethnography focuses on student engagement with teacher led efforts to "educate" them within an emergent social system depending on new subjectivities. I ground this premise in a reflexive analytical framework, unpacking an implicit ethnotheory of perception as...
For much of history, U.S. schools have employed ideologies of assimilation and nationhood - involving an exchange of immigrants' ways of life for a homogenous American identity - as frameworks for their curriculum and language education programs. However, a new ideology of multiculturalism has gained popularity in recent decades. Multicultural...
This thesis explores the experiences and negotiations of belonging for children of Mexican migrant farmworkers in Oregon. Ethnographic data was collected over the course of several months with Mexican migrant farmworkers and their children in agricultural fields in Oregon and at Oregon State University. The children in this project have...
This exploratory study was focused on the design, meaning and use of the Turkish salon (the sitting room for guests). The findings provided an understanding of the different aspects of people's experiences of their salons. Socially and personally constructed meanings were examined to gain a deeper understanding of the respondents'...
In India, globalized flows of bio-medical discourse, practices and technologies are reshaping the field of reproductive healthcare, and the performance of childbirth more specifically. These projects aim to produce institutional delivery rooms that are "safe and modernized" by equating the utilization of westernized, obstetric techniques for managing delivery with better...
The objective of this research is to shed light on the phenomenon of independent volunteer traveling. It represents a form of tourism in which travelers independently organize their own volunteer efforts and typically provide assistance to local people in return for room and board. Travelers operate outside the confines of...
In this ethnographic study, I examine how women living in downstate Illinois decide to give birth at home. I view decision-making as a process that unfolds throughout pregnancy and continues into the postpartum period, contextualizing "choice" in a region where homebirth is a politically and socially marginalized practice. The methodology...
The present thesis chemically examined 174 industrial North Staffordshire pottery fragments from an archaeological context, using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). In an integrated effort to combine an archaeometric approach with archival research and traditional analysis methods, the purpose of the thesis was to link industrial pottery manufacturers recipes to...
The objective of this thesis is to provide a predictive model for the archaeological investigation of the first farmsteads in the Pacific Northwest, established in the early- and mid-nineteenth century by Canadien and Métis families retiring from their service in the fur trade. Past studies of this population have either...