Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Strategic Flexibility: Household Ecologies Of Ful’Be In Tanout, Niger, Karen Marie Greenough

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

(Agro)pastoralism in Sahelian Niger, as elsewhere, operates through household enterprises. Katsinen-ko’en (Fulбe) households, interconnected within kin and community networks, utilize a range of flexible strategies to manage a variety of ecological and economic risks. This dissertation argues that (agro)pastoralist households and communities maintain or improve viability in risky environments first by employing various mobility patterns, among other strategies, and relying on the tightly knit interdependence between household and herd. Secondly, households that most successfully sustain a cooperative integrity (i.e. partnerships between husband and wife, or wives, and parents and children) to negotiate decisions and strategies best withstand adversities such as …

Production, Exchange And Social Interaction In The Green River Region Of Western Kentucky: A Multiscalar Approach To The Analysis Of Two Shell Midden Sites, Christopher R. Moore

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The Green River region of western Kentucky has been a focus of Archaic period research since 1915. Currently, the region is playing an important role in discussions of Archaic hunter-gatherer cultural complexity. Unfortunately, many of the larger Green River sites contain several archaeological components ranging from the Early to Late Archaic periods. Understanding culture change requires that these multiple components somehow be sorted and addressed individually.

Detailed re-analyses of Works Progress Administration (WPA) era artifact collections from two archaeological sites in the Green River region – the Baker (15Mu12) and Chiggerville (15Oh1) shell middens – indicate that these sites are …

Going On Otor: Disaster, Mobility, And The Political Ecology Of Vulnerability In Uguumur, Mongolia, Daniel J. Murphy

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Post-socialist states have increasingly adopted rural governance and resource management policies framed around the concepts of decentralization, devolution, and de-concentration in which formerly central state powers are transferred to lower, more local levels of governance. In more recent incarnations, these policies have become inspired by neo-liberal discourses of minimal government, self-rule, and personal responsibility. Increasingly, the social science literature has argued that such forms of neo-liberal governance lead to a variety of unforeseen and diverse consequences. This dissertation attempts to understand the impact of these political transformations on household vulnerability in the context of hazardous events called zud. I …

Global Transformations, Local Activism: “New” Unionism’S Engagement With Economic And Health Care Transformation In Urban Central Appalachia, Rebecca Adkins Fletcher

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

It has long been argued that the organization of the U.S. health care system is shaped by the struggles between capital and labor, and this relationship is of increasing significance today. Transformations from an industrial to a service economy, rising insurance costs, neoliberal social policies, and decreased labor union power have increased the number of Americans with reduced access to health care, especially for service workers and women. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of how workers in two leading unions in the “new” unionism movement, the Retail, Wholesale, and Distribution Service Union (RWDSU) and the United Steelworkers (USW) in …

Disjuncture Among Classic Period Cultural Landscapes In The Tuxtla Mountains, Southern Veracruz, Mexico, Wesley Durrell Stoner

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Teotihuacan was the most influential city in the Classic Mesoamerican worldsystem. Like other influential cities in the ancient world, however, Teotihuacan did not homogenously affect the various cultural landscapes that thrived in Mesoamerica during the Classic period (300-900 CE). Even where strong central Mexican influences appear outside the Basin of Mexico, the nature, extent, and strength of these influences are discontinuous over time and space. Every place within the Classic Mesoamerican landscape has a unique Teotihuacan story. In the Tuxtla Mountains of southern Veracruz, Mexico, Matacapan, located in the Catemaco Valley, drew heavily upon ideas and symbols fostered at Teotihuacan, …

Mississippi Period Occupational And Political History Of The Middle Savannah River Valley, Keith Stephenson

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Research focusing on the political economy of Mississippian mound centers in the middle Savannah River valley has prompted a reevaluation of current interpretations regarding societal complexity. I conclude the clearest expression of classic Mississippian riverine-adaptation is evident at centers immediately below the Fall Line with their political ties to chiefdom centers in the Piedmont, and especially Etowah. By contrast, those centers on the interior Coastal Plain were politically autonomous with minimal signatures in social ranking. The scale of appropriated labor and resulting level of surplus production, necessitated by upland settlement on the Aiken Plateau, fostered social contradictions making communally-oriented and …

Political Economy Of Exotic Trade On The Mississippian Frontier: A Case Study Of A Fourteenth Century Chiefdom In Southwestern Virginia, Maureen Elizabeth Siewert Meyers

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Although the Mississippian culture area has been studied for decades, the frontier of the Mississippian region is less understood. Various Mississippian frontiers appear to have been important for the obtainment of trade goods which were important symbols of chiefly power. Studying these frontiers will allow archaeologists to better understand the emergence and maintenance of power within Southeastern chiefdoms. This dissertation explores one frontier site, Carter Robinson (44LE10) in southwestern Virginia, and its role in Southern Appalachian chiefdom power through its control of trade at the border. This research identifies ceramic and non-utilitarian markers of trade and identifies changes at the …

Nationalism And Its Expression In Cuba’S Art Music: The Use Of Folklore In Mario Abril’S “Fantasia (Introduction And Pachanga)” For Clarinet And Piano, Nikolasa Tejero

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

In the centuries since the colonization of the New World, the people of Cuba created a strong musical tradition. Initially, their music mirrored the European composition canons of structural, melodic and harmonic order. The eventual confluence of its distinct cultural elements (i.e. the European, African, and, to a lesser extent, Amerindian) led to the emergence of a new, distinctly Cuban musical tradition.

The wars for independence that began in the United States and Europe in the eighteenth century created a surge towards political and cultural autonomy that swept across the Latin American colonies, generating a wave of nationalism during the …

La Mujer Se Va Pa’Bajo: Women’S Health At The Intersections Of Nationality, Class, And Gender, Mary Alice Scott

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This research utilizes an intersectionality framework to examine the complexity of social location and its effects on women's health. By examining connections among the state, processes of globalization, and the production of health inequalities for poor women in a rural community in southern Veracruz, Mexico, the research highlights the nexus of nationality, class, and gender. Four interconnected contexts are explored: (1) women's increasing paid and unpaid labor in the context of a poverty of resources brought on by sustained economic crisis; (2) the maintenance of reproductive labor as the responsibility of women; (3) the development of migrant "illegality" and its …

“Everyday Symbols For Mediation” Conflict And Cooperation Over The Management Of Cultural And Natural Resources Within The Big South Fork National River And Recreation Area, Carol Jo Evans

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods, this in-depth ethnographic study of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area (BSFNRRA) examines social conflict and resistance stemming from competing values, definitions, and concerns over the management of cultural and natural resources within the region. The timing of this project is fortuitous for the National Park Service (NPS) has completed the creation of a ten year General Management Plan. Thus, we are provided with an opportunity to study and analyze the policy and methodology that park officials are required to follow in creating a management plan and eliciting public participation.

The first …

Interpreting The Architectonics Of Power And Memory At The Late Formative Center Of Jatanca, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, John P. Warner

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This works examines the Late Formative Period site of Jatanca (Je-1023) located on the desert north coast of the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru. Je-1023 is a complex site made up of numerous free-standing compounds that are organized around several predictably located, replicated interior complexes that were important in determining the overall shape and interior organization of the site. While this work relies on a number of data sets traditionally used by archaeologists as a means of examining prehistoric cultures such as ceramics, ethnobotanical analysis, and the surrounding relic landscape, architectural analysis is the primary means by which Je-1023 is examined.

This …

Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Colonization And Regionalization In Northern Perú: Fishtail And Paiján Complexes Of The Lower Jequetepeque Valley, Greg J. Maggard

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Until relatively recently, the view of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in the Americas was dominated by the “Clovis-first” paradigm. However, recent discoveries have challenged traditional views and forced reconsiderations of the timing, processes, and scales used in modeling the settlement of the Americas. Chief among these discoveries has been the recognition of a wide range of early cultural diversity throughout the Americas that is inconsistent with previously held notions of cultural homogeneity.

During the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene, the development of widely varying economic, technological and mobility strategies in distinct environments is suggestive of a range of different adaptations and traditions.

It …

Social Categories And Health Care Outcomes: African American Women And Hiv Survival In The Urban South, Alyson J. O'Daniel

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This ethnographic research examines the daily life and institutional conditions under which low-income Black women in urban North Carolina perceived and attended to HIV health-related needs. I focus specifically on the interplay among women’s living conditions, programmatic service needs, and their strategies for navigating the local system of care to explore and refine the categorical label “low income.” I found that there were significant differences among study participants in terms of their monthly incomes and financial resources, housing quality and status, and personal experiences with incarceration and substance abuse. The economic differences among women translated into social differences within the …

Building Sustainable Societies: Exploring Sustainability Policy And Practice In The Age Of High Consumption, Cindy Isenhour

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is an attempt to examine how humans in wealthy, post-industrial urban contexts understand sustainability and respond to their concerns given their sphere of influence. I focus specifically on sustainable consumption policy and practice in Sweden, where concerns for sustainability and consumer-based responses are strong. This case raises interesting questions about the relative strength of sustainability movements in different cultural and geo-political contexts as well as the specific factors that have motivated the movement toward sustainable living in Sweden.

The data presented here supports the need for multigenic theories of sustainable consumerism. Rather than relying on dominant theories of …

Assessing Factors Influencing Participation And Dissemination In Community-Based Public Health Coalitions: An Exploration Of Social Change, Chad Tyler Morris

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The community-based public health coalition has proliferated in public health practice since the 1970‘s as a favored means of achieving community participation in public health promotion. There is concern, however, that many contemporary coalitions are not particularly inclusive, and that population health indicators fail to demonstrate significant improvement in health outcomes resultant from coalition practice. This dissertation research was designed to critically examine participation and dissemination of coalition-derived ideas through ethnographic study of five community-based participatory public health coalitions in the United States. The research answers calls from public health scholars to improve upon the coalition theory base and to …

Painting The Mountains: An Investigation Of Tourist Art In North America, Kristin Mary Agnes Helen Kant

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the use of regional cultural icons, like hillbillies, nineteenth century pioneer caricatures, and rural/wilderness landscapes, in paintings from an Appalachian tourist center. These icons, produced by the public media’s portrayal of the Appalachian region over several generations, contribute to a sense of cultural difference associated with people of Appalachia. The research question driving this project is: would cultural distinctiveness exist if cultural stereotypes were not a part of the tourist center’s local economics, politics, and social life? Building on ideas from consumption studies, this project explores consumption practices of artists and tourists as they interact with icons …

Community Strategies In The Aztec Imperial Frontier: Perspectives From Totogal, Veracruz, Mexico, Marcie L. Venter

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Using archaeological and ethnohistorical data, this dissertation examines the character of the relationship between the Late Postclassic (ca. AD 1250-1520) frontier center of Totogal, located in the western Tuxtla Mountains (Toztlan) of southern Veracruz, Mexico, and the expanding Aztec Empire. Traditional models of imperialism examine frontiers from a core perspective that limits the autonomy and agency of groups in the path of expansion. Recent ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological studies of other boundaries, however, suggest that considerable room for negotiation exists within the space of interactions, whether asymmetrical amounts of power characterize the home bases of those groups.

I argue that …