Unlike a majority of Caribbean islands, the inhabitants of Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras came there by choice. As a result, they have handcrafted a society where the key to harmony and avoiding confrontation is “live and let live”. In addition, they harbor a fierce sense of independence from Honduras, maintaining their allegiance to the formerly British Western Caribbean. Despite sharing a ...

Modern folklore expression deals with the delicate balance between past and present, preservation of traditions and the constant change of the modernity. Folklore heritage is deeply incorporated to the societies way of being, in fact it shapes a large part of the social memory and identity of people in a very implicit way, that is often neglected. My study bring us in a little French town called ...

This thesis is about a wilderness-area in Finnish Lapland, people that dwell there and how they perceive the place. The idea of ‘wilderness’ in the socio-cultural context of this research does not exclude human-involvement and one might get surprised by how much social life that includes. The area is used by many tourists and some locals for recreation. At the same time the Saami have their reindeer’s ...

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 paper aims to analyze the daily life of some Mbororo migrant workers in Bahouan village. Due to some external and internal forces on their nomadic lifestyle, these Mbororo Muslims have decided to seek for livelihood in Bahouan, among the mainly agricultural Christian people. Since then, their strategy has been in attempting to rebuild their herd and provide for their relatives back home. This ...

This thesis focuses on housework, formal and domestic education in a Fulani community living in a small village located 37 km from Ngaoundere city, North part of Cameroon. By following a family of seven people, the study looks into the historical developmental of Fulani girls linked to the power relation and explains how power is changing in that area. To describe how social fields are connected ...

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 ...

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 ...

Nowadays there is an increasing number of people who invest (or would like to invest) in a second home in rural areas or who migrate (or would like to migrate) to rural areas. This thesis is about migration to rural areas; it addresses the question: “Which incentives and constraints do people weigh before migrating to a rural area and which challenges do they encounter once living there?” I ...

This thesis is about the consequences of kola nut use amongst the Nso' people. It offers an analysis of the socio-cultural context where kola is used and its cultural significance. The sense of unity, togetherness, and belonging is one of the issues that is connected to the production and reproduction of the social world we are engaged in. Thus, this study on kola nut practices is all about how ...