Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Frequency Of Phytoestrogen Consumption And Symptoms At Midlife Among Bangladeshis In Bangladesh And London, Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Taniya Sharmeen, Khurshida Begum, Shanthi Muttukrishna, Osul Chowdhury, Gillian R. Bentley

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

There is a longstanding interest in the relationship between diet and hot flash symptoms during midlife, especially in whether phytoestrogens ease menopausal symptoms. The purpose of this study was to examine hot flashes, night sweats, trouble sleeping, and vaginal dryness in relation to the intake of foods rich in phytoestrogens among Bangladeshi women aged 35 to 59 years who were living either in Sylhet, Bangladesh (n = 157) or as migrants in London (n = 174). Consumption ranges for phytoestrogens were constructed from food frequencies. We hypothesized that diets rich in isoflavones, lignans, and coumestrol would be associated with lower …

Ecological Consequences Of A Millennium Of Introduced Dogs On Madagascar, Sean W. Hixon, Kristina G. Douglass, Laurie R. Godfrey, Laurie Eccles, Brooke E. Crowley, Lucien Marie Aimé Rakotozafy, Geoffrey Clark, Simon Haberle, Atholl Anderson, Henry T. Wright

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Introduced predators currently threaten endemic animals on Madagascar through predation, facilitation of human-led hunts, competition, and disease transmission, but the antiquity and past consequences of these introductions are poorly known. We use directly radiocarbon dated bones of introduced dogs (Canis familiaris) to test whether dogs could have aided human-led hunts of the island's extinct megafauna. We compare carbon and nitrogen isotope data from the bone collagen of dogs and endemic fosa (Cryptoprocta spp.) in central and southwestern Madagascar to test for competition between introduced and endemic predators. The distinct isotopic niches of dogs and fosa suggest that any past antagonistic …

A Perspective On Equity Implications Of Net Zero Energy Systems, Erin Baker, Inês Ml Azevedo

Publications

We present examples of energy inequity, in both the current system and in potential net zero systems, and lay out some research needs in order to center equity in the study of net zero energy systems.

•Our current energy systems are inequitable across several dimensions.

•We must recognize and address barriers to a just and equitable net zero energy system.

•We highlight inequities in energy burden and energy insecurity; health consequences of the energy system; and decision making power.

•There is a need to define, quantify, and explicitly model equity outcomes in net zero systems.

•There is a need to …

Memory And History In South Eleuthera: A Report To The People Of South Eleuthera, Elena Sesma

Archaeological Project Reports

Over the past 5 years, archaeologists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have made several short-term trips to South Eleuthera to research the history of this portion of the island. Our main interests have been in understanding how the landscape has changed over the past 150 years, and especially in the past few decades as tourism has fallen off in the south. Through a combination of ethnographic research and pedestrian survey of the South Eleuthera landscape, we have gained a clearer understanding of the history of this region, and of contemporary life today. This report offers a summary of findings …

How The Demographic Composition Of Academic Science And Engineering Departments Influences Workplace Culture, Faculty Experience, And Retention Risk, Eric E. Griffith, Nilanjana Dasgupta

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Although on average women are underrepresented in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments at universities, an underappreciated fact is that women’s representation varies widely across STEM disciplines. Past research is fairly silent on how local variations in gender composition impact faculty experiences. This study fills that gap. A survey of STEM departments at a large research university finds that women faculty in STEM are less professionally satisfied than male colleagues only if they are housed in departments where women are a small numeric minority. Gender differences in satisfaction are largest in departments with less than 25% women, smaller …

A Tale Of Two Courses: Challenging Millenials To Experience Culture Through Film, Katie Kirakosian, Virginia Mclaurin, Cary Speck

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

In this article, we discuss how adding a final film project to a revised 'Culture through Film' course led to deeper student learning and higher rates of student success, as well as increased student satisfaction. Ultimately, we urge social science educators to include experiential projects in their courses that connect to all learning styles. Such projects should also challenge students to 'create', a task that requires generating ideas, planning and ultimately producing something, which, according to Bloom's taxonomy, engages students in the highest cognitive process (Anderson and Krathwohl 2000). Although this class focused on the intersections of culture and film …

Caring Off The Clock: Cape Verdean Home Care Workers In Lisbon, Portugal, Celeste Curington

CHESS Student Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Antwerp’S Appetite For Congolese Hands, Jenny Folsom

CHESS Student Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Privatizing Creativity, Catherine Tebaldi

Presentations based on CHESS-sponsored Research

No abstract provided.

Au Gamin De Paris: Undoing Civilization In A Paris Bar, Catherine Tebaldi

CHESS Student Research Reports

No abstract provided.

“Don’T Sell Your Neighbor” Class, Urban Politics, And Grassroots Mobilizations In Old Town Istanbul, Berra Topçu

CHESS Student Research Reports

The city has become the site of global movements and class struggles in the past decade. Since the Gezi uprising in the summer of 2013 in Istanbul, grassroots movements are emerging from the space of the neighborhood and the megacity in response to failures of urban governance at the level of metropolitan and local municipalities. Based on a five-month ethnographic study in a central district of Istanbul, I use participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, and media and document analysis to explore what common ground can be found in the context of: 1) official city assemblies of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality; 2) activist-led …

Activism And Ethnography In The Basque Anti-Fracking Movement, Eleanor Finley

CHESS Student Research Reports

With growing concerns in Europe over energy independence and sustainability, hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” has become a recent environmental controversy across Europe. While the wealthiest member states EU such as France and Germany have implemented bans or moratoriums, the pressure to drill concentrates on peripheral debt-burdened countries such as Ireland, Romania, and Spain. Starting in 2011, a globally-networked grassroots movement emerged in response to fracking exploratory permits across the Basque-Spanish border. In the spring and summer of 2015, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Gasteiz, in the Basque Country, just as it became a hub of transnational anti-fracking …

"Growing Together: Cross Pollinating Bio- And Community Food Politics At Czech Gardens”, Cary Speck

Presentations based on CHESS-sponsored Research

No abstract provided.

“Cheating History: Blocking A Difficult Past At The Royal Museum For Central Africa.”, Jenny Folsom

Presentations based on CHESS-sponsored Research

No abstract provided.

Climate And Species Richness Predict The Phylogenetic Structure Of African Mammal Communities, Jason M. Kamilar, Lydia Beaudrot, Kaye E. Reed

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

We have little knowledge of how climatic variation (and by proxy, habitat variation) influences the phylogenetic structure of tropical communities. Here, we quantified the phylogenetic structure of mammal communities in Africa to investigate how community structure varies with respect to climate and species richness variation across the continent. In addition, we investigated how phylogenetic patterns vary across carnivores, primates, and ungulates. We predicted that climate would differentially affect the structure of communities from different clades due to between-clade biological variation. We examined 203 communities using two metrics, the net relatedness (NRI) and nearest taxon (NTI) indices. We used simultaneous autoregressive …

Fistful Of Tears”: Encounters With Transnational Affect, Chinese Immigrants And Italian Fast Fashion, Elizabeth L. Krause

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

In the made in italy fast-fashion sector, the ultimate flexible workers are Chinese migrants, whose parenting practices include circulating children back to China. This paper draws on collaborative research in Prato, Italy, to grasp how Chinese families and individuals encounter the Italian state and negotiate the terms of transnational capitalism. The project innovates an encounter ethnography framework to guide research. This paper investigates the dialectic between economics and affect. Chinese immigrants’ desires to make money are situated in three structural encounters, each at a different level of scale: the Wenzhou regional model of economic development; a Central Italian small-firm environment …

Toward An Ecology Of Cultural Heritage, Elizabeth Brabec, Elizabeth S. Chilton

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Around the globe, the impacts of climate change are increasing the risk of catastrophic events and the resulting loss of human life and communities. Until now, responses to these events and planning for future occurrences have focused on ecological and social impacts, to the almost total exclusion of the impacts on heritage. Cultural heritage includes archaeological sites, historic buildings, and artifacts, but—more importantly—it also includes the meanings, values, and contemporary social behavior associated with these tangible forms of heritage. Thus, place attachment, sense of place, and associated forms of intangible heritage are major societal factors that must be integrated into …

Strategic Authenticity And Voice: New Ways Of Seeing And Being Seen As Young Mothers Through Digital Storytelling, Aline C. Gubrium, Elizabeth L. Krause, Kasey Jernigan

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

This paper presents the Ford Foundation-funded Hear Our Stories: Diasporic Youth for Sexual Rights and Justice project, which explores the subjective experience of structural violence and the ways young parenting Latinas embody and respond to these experiences. We prioritize uprooted young parenting Latinas, whose material conditions and cultural worlds have placed them in tenuous positions, both socially constructed and experientially embodied. Existing programs and policies focused on these women fail to use relevant local knowledge and rarely involve them in messaging efforts. This paper offers a practical road map for rendering relevant and modifying notions of voice as a form …

Plus Ça Change: From Postprocessualism To “Big Data”, Elizabeth S. Chilton

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Digging And Destruction: Artifact Collecting As Meaningful Social Practice, Siobhan M. Hart, Elizabeth S. Chilton

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Collected sites are commonly seen as places requiring expert intervention to ‘save the past’ from destruction by artifact collectors and looters. Despite engaging directly with the physical effects of collecting and vandalism, little attention is given to the meanings of these actions and the contributions they make to the stories told about sites or the past more broadly. Professional archaeologists often position their engagement with site destruction as heritage ‘salvage’ and regard collecting as lacking any value in contemporary society. Repositioning collecting as meaningful social practice and heritage action raises the question: in failing to understand legal or illegal collecting …

Borders Of Bureaucracy: Crossborder Cooperation And Its Challenges, Johanna Mitterhofer

CHESS Student Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Performing Place At Ancient Idalion, Cyprus: An Anthropological Perspective On The Lower City South Sanctuary Architecture, Rebecca M. Bartusewich

CHESS Student Research Reports

The ancient site of the Lower City South sanctuary of Idalion is a site of place making and identity formation during the 1st millennium BCE of Cyprus. This archaeological site represents repetitive building patterns and persistent cultic activity that denote a cultural tradition that withstood the changes of administrative control in the Cypro-Classical and Hellenistic periods. Certain architectural elements, like altars and water features, are characteristic of a continued tradition at the ancient site and they are evidence of a recursive building practice that falls into templates of place making and identity formation as introduced by Bourdieu and Giddens. Identities …

Luso-London: Identity, Citizenship, And Belonging In ‘Post-National’ Europe, Stephanie Aragao

CHESS Student Research Reports

This paper explores relations between Portuguese-speakers living in London. It takes the experience of Lusophones as a case study in illuminating how intragroup diversity is negotiated and transnational, multi-ethnic identities constructed and performed in everyday life. Through critical ethnography and interviewing, I provide an account of the varied experience of ‘belonging’ in Europe, for citizens and migrants who connect through similar language and cultural affinities and a shared, albeit contentious, history. By exploring daily rituals in workplaces, bars, cafes, and shops owned, operated, and patronized by Lusophones, I unpack postcolonial reconfigurations of citizens and migrants in their everyday experience of …

Response & Resistance: A Comparison Of Middle Connecticut River Valley Ceramics From The Late Woodland Period To The Seventeeth-Century, Julie Woods

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Native Americans from the middle Connecticut River Valley of New England experienced massive social disruptions during the seventeenth century due to European settlement, but not much is known about their cultural continuities and/or discontinuities during this dynamic period. As an additive technology, ceramics embody the technical choices of potters made at the time of manufacture thus enabling the study of the effect, if any, of colonialism on indigenous material culture and practices in New England. This study examines ceramic assemblages from one Late Woodland period site and one seventeenth-century site in Deerfield, Massachusetts to explore the extent to which ceramics …

Intersecting Symbols In Indigenous American And African Material Culture: Diffusion Or Independent Invention And Who Decides?, Donna L. Moody

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Native American and African American material culture of mid-19^thcentury to present day appear to hold evidence for a more ancient spiritual and cultural relationship between these two diverse peoples. There is evidence of strikingly similar, and in some instances, identical, pre-Columbian (before 1492) symbols from Africa and North America which allows us to examine questions of diffusion or independent invention.

This thesis provides an examination of cultural practices and spiritual beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of North America and Africa through symbols incorporated in the material culture of each, focusing primarily on textiles and it provides an exploration …

Of Dirt And Decomposition: Proposing A Place For The Urban Dead, Katrina M. Spade

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The intent of this thesis is to challenge our society’s existing options for the care and processing of the deceased, and to design a space and a ritual which are both deeply meaningful and ecologically beneficial. The community for whom this architecture is designed currently lacks the religious or cultural rituals which would otherwise guide them through the process of laying of their loved ones to rest. For this community, both traditional burial and cremation are devoid of meaning and culturally irrelevant ways of dealing with the deceased, in addition to being unnecessarily wasteful processes. Likewise, the community for which …

Canvas And Catalyst: Reinventing Urban Space, Ricardo A. Borges

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

As an intervention strategy set amid a stark and neglected, yet highly energized urban setting of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this project seeks to relieve a stagnating urban condition through the introduction of contemporary and dynamic forms of expression. Skateboarding and street art can be seen as interpretative modes of action that reinvent objects, spaces, and conditions within the urban landscape, lending creative and engaging gestures to the everyday. As (sub) cultural expressions in their own right, these practices transcend their mere formal representations, and present unique identities, spaces, and modes of engagement within a society, initiating a creative mindset and DIY …

“Calling The Question” The Politics Of Time In A Time Of Polarized Politics, Elizabeth L. Krause, Anurag Sharma

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

In this paper, we examine the role of time in shaping decision-making processes in a town meeting, a type of legislative body common in many New England towns. Town meetings are one of the oldest and most democratic institutions of local governance in the United States, and they provide a rich arena in which to investigate how large groups of people convene and make decisions together. A mixed-methods approach enabled our team of researchers to gain insight into the processes and dynamics that played out in one town meeting. We analyze the tensions between democratic values of “taking time” vs. …

United In Difficulty: The European Union’S Use Of Shared Problems As A Way To Encourage Unity, Grace Cleary

CHESS Student Research Reports

Since the European Union's inception, it has invested considerable resources into cultural programs aimed at fostering a sense of shared European heritage. However, these efforts have always been balanced alongside the need to leave space for diversity within and across EU nations. In this paper, which highlights the findings of my MA thesis, I examine the European Capital of Culture (ECC), which I studied in Córdoba, Spain during the spring of 2011. I look at how European identity is being defined in a specific context, and in particular how the contest is refocusing on new forms of shared heritage by …

"No Cops, No Journos, No Anthropologists": Fieldwork Challenges In Occupied Barcelona, Justin Ak Helepololei

CHESS Student Research Reports

No abstract provided.