Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

A Constant Presence Of Absence: The Construction Of (In)Visibility And Immigrant Deaths In The Borderlands, Haley Planicka

Undergraduate Theses

The same nation that champions itself as a cultural “melting pot” is the very same that allows thousands of migrant bodies to rot in the heat of the United States-Mexico borderlands. It is through the sociopolitical debasement of immigrants to “bare life bodies” that thousands are made invisible and erased through their deaths, with little recognition or accountability taken on behalf of government institutions. Hiding behind the conveniently harsh desert terrain to mask any sense of culpability, the United States government exercises a sort of invisible hand over immigrant lives that is reinforced through harmful policy, Border Patrol’s “bare life” …

The Solidarity Manifesto: A New Network For Future Change, Sofia Calicchio

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Colonialism is a scheme of standpoint; colonizer versus colonized, West versus East, good versus bad. When put in the foreground, the value of what we see heavily relies on our perspective and knowledge. When learning to dissect, deconstruct, and decolonize spaces, we need to start utilizing decolonial thought as an historical tool rather than a true depiction of reality. Decolonizing spaces and recognizing Western colonization practices means challenging the normative structures in colonial history, thus breaking the cycle of oppression through building community and fostering solidarity. Drawing on theories exploring access to public spheres, representation, protection, permanence, cultural displacement and …

The Intermountain West Lgbtq+ Oral History Project: The Folklorization Of Queer Theory, John Priegnitz

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Following the passing of a friend who witnessed firsthand the transformation of Salt Lake City’s Queer community from the 1950s to 2020, I created the Intermountain West LGBTQ+ Oral History Project to document the queer experience within the Intermountain West. Since beginning the project in 2020, I have documented several diverse stories that intersect class, race, sexuality, gender, faith, and politics. By documenting the queer experience, a marginalized community will have their voices heard and preserved for the enlightenment of future generations. This presentation provides an overview of my project and its preliminary findings.

The Abolition Of Care: An Engaged Ethnography Of The Progressive Jail Assemblage, Justin Helepololei

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation draws on ethnographic research conducted with prison abolitionists and criminal justice reform activists in Western Massachusetts - a context in which the sheriffs who operate county jails see themselves as reformers. I use the concept of a “progressive jail assemblage” to analyze the varied actors and logics that sustain incarceration locally, focusing especially on the use of care discourses and practices. I consider how progressive jailing puts prison abolitionists in the position of being against some forms of care. At the same time, abolitionists have put forth competing notions of care, ones they see as building a world …

La Casita Center: An Accompaniment Based Approach To Social Justice And Social Service., Ben Harlan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Casita Center is a Louisville based nonprofit organization that accompanies Latinx immigrants in the Louisville Metro area. and that is led and staffed by Latina immigrants. In this thesis, I investigate how employees of this Latinx-immigrant led nonprofit organization, navigate challenges to both administer service and build community using the model of accompaniment. Organizations like La Casita are critically important for Latinx newcomer communities in the United States and as neoliberal and nativist-inspired policiescontinue to oppress and marginalize, La Casita provides a model for what it means to center inclusion, belonging, community, and solidarity. In a global landscape of …

“And They Wrote It All Down As The Progress Of Man”: Relationships Between Environment, Extractive Industries, And Appalachian Agency, Emma V. Kelly

Masters Theses

The landscape of Central Appalachia has shaped and been shaped by its residents for thousands of years. The advent of industrialized extractive industries greatly shifted the nature and the extent of these processes, with capitalistic domination being asserted over the environment. While this shift towards industrialization was a widespread phenomenon, it undertook a unique trajectory within Appalachia, a region which occupies a distinct position within the national perspective. Although geographically established by the Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachia is more than a politically defined set of counties: It is an incredibly diverse sociocultural region that exists on varying planes of marginalization …

You Can’T Build A Canoe Online: Activism And Identity In Indigenous Taiwan, Adam King Hinden

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Republic of China is the current government occupying the island of Taiwan –– a multiethnic land that has been populated by diverse groups for thousands of years. Today, these groups continue to face a range of adversities on behalf of the colonial government. Further, the island’s internet is dominated by Western social media platforms that exclude native modes of communication. Through ethnographic surveys and interviews, this study explores how indigenous Taiwanese activists understand their own identities, strategies of activism, and relationships to social media platforms to interrogate dominant postcolonial frameworks. It comes to two separate yet linked conclusions regarding …

Embodied Feminism: An Ethnographic Study Of Abortion Access And Hopeful Praxis, Nicolette Tuttle

WWU Graduate School Collection

Reproductive justice is of critical concern in the United States, especially since the onslaught of abortion bans in 2019, this ethnographic study explores abortion access and activism through a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approach during my internship at the Feminist Majority Foundation in Los Angeles, California and clinic escort volunteer work with L.A. For Choice. Embodied feminism, here, takes the shape of a qualitative study of abortion access as well as the praxis of scholar-activism. Themes of opposing biopolitical values among feminist and anti-choice activism, narratives of feminist activism, and creative expression and reflection inform this thesis with further …

Piled Up, Sophia Lebowitz

Capstones

Piled Up is a 10 minute film about Anna Sacks, a dumpster diver in New York City who has recently found viral social media fame for calling out wasteful corporate practices. Meanwhile, the physical build-up of the trash she collects, and the anxiety of the never-ending cycles of waste are weighing her down and keeping her from her goals.

This is a surprising story about a woman who has found overwhelming social media success while simultaneously dealing with the mechanism of that success, waste, building up in her life. Her videos have garnered her thousands of followers and millions of …

The Boundaries Of Safety: The Sanctuary Movement In The Inland Empire, Cecilia I. Vasquez

Doctoral Dissertations

The Trump administration for many represented drastic ideological shift in American values, and for others he embodied a social threat to their lives. In response, many cities, counties, states, and schools proclaimed themselves Sanctuaries to protect their undocumented immigrant community members. The term evokes images of churches operating as a place of refuge with impenetrable walls. The declaration of Sanctuary provided an illusion of boundaries and a sense of safety. This dissertation interrogates the meanings of sanctuary and how the Inland Empire in Southern California, implemented and created sanctuary. By analyzing the California Values Act and working alongside organizers in …

Liberation And Gravy: An Engaged Ethnography Of Queer And Trans Power In Georgia, Elias Capello

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to better understand how self-identified trans activists in Atlanta, Georgia find and build community, by using queer and Black feminist community based methodologies such as participant observation, ethnographic interviews, participatory mapping, and auto-ethnography. In particular, I ask 1) How do trans people find and build community, safety, and understanding? 2) How do transgender activists create and enact place making that does not rely on policing and privatization? To create and maintain safety for wealthy communities in Atlanta, Georgia, systems of policing and privatization are increasing. Although developers, city council members, and legislators promote Atlanta, Georgia as a …

Neshnabé Futurisms: Indigenous Science And Eco-Politics In The Great Lakes, Blaire K. Topash-Caldwell

Anthropology ETDs

In the wake of global climate change anthropological work in Indigenous contexts has focused on crisis intervention. Well-intentioned scholarship has emphasized how climate change disproportionately affects Indigenous communities but in the process has also erased Native voice and agency—deleting them from the future all together. In this dissertation I argue that ecological revitalization projects by tribes, Women’s Water Walks from the ceremonial Midéwiwin Lodge, and Indigenous science fiction media together constitute “Neshnabé futurisms” that challenge or disrupt these dominant narratives. Neshnabé futurisms guide Native American ecologists, theorists, and activists in the Great Lakes region in mitigating and surviving ecological destruction …

Rezistance: Diné Grassroots Organization And Modes Of Activism, Eric Robert Dougherty

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This ethnography looks at themes of Indigeneity and activism as it exists in the everyday realities of young people living in or around the Navajo reservation in the southwest United States. Through work-related projects of hogan construction, land reclamation, watershed management, and language restoration Navajo youth are given opportunities to take control of their present circumstances and imagine a different future for themselves and their families. Besides work, youth and activism are constituted through other mediums and spaces that allow people to express who they are, what they care about, and why these things are important to them. The consistent …

The Complicit Anthropologist, Ruth Gomberg‐Muñoz

Ruth Gomberg-Munoz

The invitation to become “accomplices, not allies” is a timely and urgent summons to a political left that has recently swelled with renewed vigor. Galvanized to contest the Trump administration, freshly politicized young people and veteran activists alike have a spectrum of options for political engagement—few of which seriously threaten to dismantle broader systems of inequality and injustice. In line with Rosa and Bonilla's call to avoid exceptionalizing Trump in favor of more critical and robust analyses of colonialism, racism, and U.S. statehood, the call to become accomplices urges progressives to avoid the deceptive comfort of allyship, and, instead, to …

For The Wild: Ritual And Commitment In Radical Eco-Activism By Sarah M. Pike, Alda Balthrop-Lewis

The Goose

Review of Sarah M. Pike's For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism

'Fresh Seal Blood Looks Like Beauty And Life': #Sealfies And Subsistence In Nunavut, Edmund Searles

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper, I analyze the various functions, meanings and affects associated with seal hunting, eating and sharing seal meat, wearing sealskin clothing and posting #sealfies. Drawing on several decades of research with hunting and gathering families in the eastern Canadian Arctic, and starting with the cultural premise that hunting seals unites the worlds of humans, animals, and spirits, I argue that the seal is a prominent metaphor for the Inuit self. By extension, I examine how Inuit use #sealfies as an extension of other subsistence practices, as a way of making identity (personal and collective), and as a way …

The Complicit Anthropologist, Ruth Gomberg‐Muñoz

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The invitation to become “accomplices, not allies” is a timely and urgent summons to a political left that has recently swelled with renewed vigor. Galvanized to contest the Trump administration, freshly politicized young people and veteran activists alike have a spectrum of options for political engagement—few of which seriously threaten to dismantle broader systems of inequality and injustice. In line with Rosa and Bonilla's call to avoid exceptionalizing Trump in favor of more critical and robust analyses of colonialism, racism, and U.S. statehood, the call to become accomplices urges progressives to avoid the deceptive comfort of allyship, and, instead, to …

Reimagining Drugs: An Anthropological Analysis Of U.S. Drug Policy Frameworks And Student Activism, Megan A. Sarmento

Honors Undergraduate Theses

As the repercussions of the nearly 50-year U.S. War on Drugs are revealing themselves to be harmful and life-threatening, especially to lower-class and minority populations, social movements aimed at drug policy reform have been on the rise. While today's generation of college students were raised on abstinence-based discourses, which constantly warned and threatened them about the dangers of drug use, these same students often change their perspective, some as early as high school, when they begin having their own experiences with drugs and engage in more drug-related conversations. As a result, many students become motivated to change drug policy and …

Overcoming Ideology: Examining The Tension Between Sex Work And Anti-Human Trafficking Advocacy, Emily R. Williams

Masters Theses

Human trafficking has become a national conversation and concern. Grassroots organizations designed to combat human trafficking spring up rapidly and help shape public perception on what trafficking is – and what it isn’t. Drawing on participant observation and indepth interviewing, I speak with anti-trafficking advocates determined to eradicate human trafficking and sex workers who prefer to stay in their profession. This thesis will largely explore the unintended consequences of well-meaning advocacy, and the tension between their views on the sex industry and the views from within the sex industry. I aim to use this work not only as a local …

Joyful Human Rights Activism, William Simmons

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In popular, legal, and academic discourse, a subtle but significant shift has occurred: The term “human rights” is now almost always discussed in relation to its opposite, “human rights abuses.” Syllabi, textbooks, and academic articles focus largely on abuses, victimization, and trauma with nary a mention of joy or other positive emotions.

This will be obvious to most human rights scholars and practitioners once it is pointed out, but the depth of the elision is staggering. Human rights could also be discussed in the context of the most joyful of human experiences and even those victimized almost always experience …

”Not Just Based On Land”: A Study On The Ethnic Tibetan Community In Toronto, Diyin Deng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Tibetan identity first emerged as “resistance” (Winland 2002; Scott 1990). The united pan-Tibetan identity did not originally resonate with the diverse group of ethnic minorities living on the Tibetan plateau until post-Chinese occupation. Then, all the groups saw the mutual benefit of adopting the united Tibetan identity against what they perceived as a greater threat to their culture and values. As such the initial Tibetan identity that is projected internationally was harnessed as a “weapon”(Bauman and Vecchi 2004:74) against homogenizing Chinese citizenship and was intimately intertwined with activism.

My research focuses on the formation of diasporic Tibetan identities within …

The End Of Aids: Gender, Race And Class Politics In New York's Campaign To End The Epidemic, Lauren Suchman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since its official discovery in 1981, the story of HIV/AIDS has been a story of inequality. Not only has the virus spread more easily among those marginalized due to their gender, race, or class, but AIDS activism itself has tended to elevate the voices and needs of the more powerful over those with less privilege. While we might point to 1981, when the CDC issued its first official report on HIV, as the official “beginning” of HIV/AIDS, where and how does the story end? This dissertation examines one attempt to bring the story to a close: New York State’s “Ending …

The Process To Political Mobilization In Five College Capitalism: Forms Of Antiracism, Personal Reflection And Community-Building, Caitlin B. Homrich

Masters Theses

The town of Amherst, Massachusetts is home to the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, and Hampshire College, institutions that have greatly influenced the town’s prolific history of political activism as well as the high educational attainment and economic status of the majority of its residents. Often hailed as a liberal utopia, research on the political mobilization occurring in this town provides insight into the process and limitations of ally politics: when most of the residents of Amherst are White, how do they engage in racial justice activism? When most of the residents are wealthy and/or highly …

Up Close: An Interview, Madi Vorva '17

EnviroLab Asia

A long-time US activist against the deleterious impact of oil-palm deforestation in Southeast Asia learned a great deal about the indigenous peoples’ struggles there to gain control over their lives and livelihoods.

Going Home, Johann Lim '18

EnviroLab Asia

In this reflection, Johann shares how the people he met on the trip (faculty, student fellows, activists and the indigenous people we lived with) furnished him with a lot of knowledge about his home country and the surrounding region and in the process shattered some misconceptions. He also contemplates how the experience prompted him to reevaluate his role as a consumer, activist, and future educator.

Before Me, After Me, Through Me: Stories Of Food And Community In Eastern Kentucky, Abigail Myers Huggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This text contextualizes and presents twenty-three oral history interviews conducted in eastern Kentucky during the summer of 2016 as a part of a Master of Arts thesis in southern studies. The interviews were conducted with people specifically connected to food, farming, and community activism in and near Letcher County, Kentucky. The interviews explore such topics as: past and present food traditions, seed saving, gardening, farming, food preservation, herbalism, local food systems, food access, youth, theater arts, lgbtq+ advocacy, and appalachian identity. This document complements an online collection of oral history excerpts created as an audio documentary portion of the overall …

Listening To The Mattole: Lessons In Bioregionalism, Cannabis, And Capitalism From A Northern California Community, Nicola R. Walters

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the United States, from the 1960s through the 1970s, nearly a million Americans left urban areas to establish themselves in rural environments; this exodus is now known as the back-to-the-land movement. Nestled in the mountains of Northern California, along a capricious river, and surrounded by natural beauty, the Mattole Valley became home to many of these back-to-the-land immigrants. Seasoned in the social and cultural movements of Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s, the “new settlers” transformed the social and environmental landscape of southern Humboldt County as they integrated into rural communities. The Mattole Valley offers a unique look …

Just Hospitality: Wage Theft, Grassroots Labor Organizing, And Activist Research In Nashville, Tennessee, Rachel Tyree

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This politically engaged project locally grounds the efforts of low-wage workers in the United States who are addressing the nationwide epidemic of wage theft by focusing on the particular experience of organized hospitality cleaning workers at a worker center in Nashville, Tennessee. While being both collaborative and reflexive, this activist anthropological research utilizes observant participation, in-depth interviews, and organizational and archival research to explore the issues identified by members and organizers at the worker center, illustrate the alternative theories of change being generated from grassroots labor organizing efforts in light of state mechanisms that do not protect all workers, and …

The Impact Of Anti-Gay Politics On The Lgbtq Movement, Amy L. Stone

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Research

Since the late 1970s, the Religious Right has mobilized to oppose the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) movement in the United States. Sociologists have studied the relationship between these two movements as a classic movement-countermovement dynamic, in which the strategies, actions, and framing of one movement impact the other. I analyze the way Religious Right reactive and proactive opposition to gay rights has affected the LGBTQ movement. First, I provide an overview of the literature on the negative impacts of the Religious Right, including the diversion of movement goals, transformation of frames, and marginalization of queer politics. Second, …