People`s different life- opportunities can come close upon us as the interconnection of world processes continues with a high speed. Crisis in environment, economy and mass-movements of people are of our time, and from different positions and corners people “on the ground” are responding to these processes. How people respond contributes to further shaping of the world´s outlook. With this perspective, ...

At the blacksmith market in Maroua, in the Far North region of Cameroon, the hammers clang all day long. Here, the local blacksmiths turn scrap iron into objects of everyday use. Car bodies become wheelbarrows, truck wheels are transformed into ploughs and smaller scrap iron parts end as spoons. The practices of blacksmiths are representative of many other places in Africa where recycling became a ...

ABSTRACT This work was carried out among the Bamileke in the Menoua Division in the West Region of Cameroon. It presents my main informant, Kenfack Tsopmo Cecile, a handicapped woman of 44 years who uses entrepreneurship as a means to break the social rejection that many people face because of their handicap. Despite her handicap, Cecile is very active and present on various social arenas. She ...

Abstract Kamleshwor has decade long experience of pot making. He has endowed this skills by his father through which he has manage to run his big family. He is also a great devote of God Shiva and participating pilgrimage every year. Degrading demand of his pot in the market and increasing expenses to participate in pilgrimage left Kamleshwor in dilemma. Most of his community friends has already ...

Demonstrations, communal discussions and resistance are everyday matters in the Bolivian highland city of El Alto. It took on a whole new dimension in October 2003 when thousands of protesters took to the streets in this city, demanding control of Bolivia’s gas resources. Two presidents had to withdraw, leading up to the historic victory of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales who won ...

This thesis deals with observing how returnee ex-combatants re-integrate and live again in their societies and communities after being accepted by their community members. The reintegration of ex-combatants has been a major subject in the current development of post war Sierra Leone. It is in fact, one of the major challenges confronting the country. This thesis will, for the most part, be focussing ...

The Brazilian urban periphery is experiencing new opportunities, the possibility of a social mobility that was unforeseen just a decade ago, the result of years of specific policies dedicated to the urban poor, of general policies aimed at the redistribution of income, and of the stability of the Brazilian economy. My study focuses on the process of self-realization of two young Brazilians, Fabio ...

This thesis is about notions of authenticity in the Norwegian-American society Petersburg, Alaska. With the intention of gaining an understanding on why the Norwegian heritage keeps such a strong position in this society, I went into the field, and was surprised by the extensive role of food and the use of the term authentic in connection with it. I found that the idea of authenticity is closely ...

The production project of a fictional film through the collaboration between an ethnographer and a theater group from Ngaoundéré, Cameroon resulted in a film genre coined ‘ethnodrama’. This model of collaboration limits the authorship of filmmakers while preventing the ethnographic relevance of the film to be corrupted by them. This thesis describes the creative process behind the development of the ...

This research thesis is based on participant observation conducted with and without a movie camera with a family consisting of 94 year old Dolores, 54 year old Leticia and 27 year old Rodrigo from Guanajuato City in Central Mexico. By carrying out fieldwork in the months of April to August 2012 I have explored care-dynamics in the family and how their relationships unfold within the ever changing ...