Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Parents' Gender Ideology And Gendered Behavior As Predictors Of Children's Gender-Role Attitudes: A Longitudinal Exploration, Hillary Paul Halpern

Masters Theses

This longitudinal study examined the association between parents’ early and concurrent gender ideology and gendered behaviors and their children’s gender-role attitudes at age six. Specifically, parents' global beliefs about women's and men's "rightful" roles in society, as well as their work preferences for mothers, were considered in relation to the gender-role attitudes held by their first-graders. In addition, parents’ gendered behaviors, including their division of household and childcare tasks, division of paid work hours, and job traditionality were examined as predictors of children’s gender-role attitudes. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized parents’ early and concurrent behavior and ideology would …

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …

Palm Trees Y Nopales: The Commodification And Hybridization Of The South Texas Borderlands, Andriana M. Foiles Sifuentes

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines social inequalities rooted in capital. Through research conducted in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, this project interrogates how social characters use capital to access goods and services. By investigating seasonal migration of US and Canadian retirees into the region, the work highlights the social construction of retirement, the use of state and local governances to establish white only enclaves, and the nation-state’s role in creating marginalized populations in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Ethnography is the primary research method with demographic and popular culture analysis as secondary modes of collecting data.

The Colonial Legacies Of “Fiesta Island”: A Critical Study Of Live-Music Events Production In Puerto Rico, Anilyn Diaz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the historical relationship between the state and national culture in Puerto Rico as seen through the case of the entertainment industry, specifically live-music events production. The dissertation is located within two bodies of literature: critical post-colonial cultural studies of cultural industries and cultural policy, and cultural approaches to scholarship on collective action and state-civil society relationships in neoliberal contexts. The research design includes archival work and analysis of organizational material, supported by a cultural ethnography approach to semi-structured informant interviews and group interviews. The interviews focus on the historical development, cultural legacies, and practices of the entertainment …

Mishoonash In Southern New England: Construction And Use Of Dugout Canoes In A Multicultural Context, Jacob M. Orcutt

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the history of New England’s dugout canoes – a history that can be traced from 8500 BCE to the twenty-first century. The historical record and archaeological evidence surrounding dugout canoes suggests that the use of dugout canoes changed significantly over time, and that their form varied considerably in different regions of New England. While historians have claimed that these varied forms represent European and colonial influences, I argue that the Eurcolonial influence on dugouts was much more visible in the way the canoes were used than in the shape the vessels took. In addition to analyzing the …

Were Neandertal Humeri Adapted For Spear Thrusting Or Throwing? A Finite Element Study, Michael Anthony Berthaume

Masters Theses

An ongoing debate concerning Neandertal ecology is whether or not they utilized long range weaponry. The anteroposteriorly expanded cross-section of Neandertal humeri have led some to argue they thrusted their weapons, while the rounder cross-section of Late Upper Paleolithic modern human humeri suggests they threw their weapons. We test the hypothesis that Neandertal humeri were built to resist strains engendered by thrusting rather than throwing using finite element models of one Neandertal, one Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) human and three recent human humeri, representing a range of cross-sectional shapes and sizes. Electromyography and kinematic data and articulated skeletons were used …

Conversations With The Community: An Ethnography Of Two Case Studies Highlighting Community-Research Partnerships In Springfield, Ma, Vanessa Martinez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is both qualitative and collaborative. It emphasizes the participant observation and ethnographic documentation of two community-researcher partnerships on community-level health interventions in Springfield, MA. Drawing upon critical theories and reflexive methods, I explore and analyze the process of building and sustaining researcher-community partnerships in an era of limited funding. Two Springfield, MA-based projects – one on healthy cooking/eating, and the other on contingency management – serve as case studies to provide a concrete picture of the complex relationships of researcher-community collaborations. I use ethnographic storytelling to provide a multi-dimensional look at two different community-research partnerships on health disparities …

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

"For A Future Tomorrow": The Figured Worlds Of Schoolgirls In Kono, Sierra Leone, Jordene Hale

Doctoral Dissertations

Current research in Sub-Sahara Africa suggests that young women face challenges in accessing and completing schooling, due among other things to gender related school based violence (Bruce & Hallman, 2008; Dunne, Humphreys, & Leach, 2006; Lloyd, Kaufman, & Hewett, 2000). These studies, while valuable in providing documentation on school enrollment and school leaving, do not explore the motivational framework where young women remain in school. The purpose of this dissertation is to trace how schoolgirls’ identities or “figured worlds” (Gee, 2011) are co-constructed in particular contexts by the same cohort of schoolgirls, their teachers, households, and communities through an ethnographic …

Understanding Health Issues Among Adolescent Females In A Northeast Province Of Afghanistan, Amina Davlatshoeva

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of the health issues facing adolescent females (ages 18-21) in rural, northeastern Afghanistan. Incorporating participant observations, in-depth interviews, and narrative inquiries, this study seeks to illustrate adolescent females’ perspectives on health issues. To achieve this goal, ten adolescent females were interviewed in rural, northeastern Afghanistan during 2010. The participants were between 18- and 21-years old. The one-on-one interviews were conducted in a multiple-response format and were structured around three research questions:

• How does a young female’s understanding of health issues shape her identity in northeastern Afghanistan?
• In what ways …

Participatory Design Ethnography In The Learning Commons: Initial Research Findings, Krista Harper

Krista M. Harper

Presentation on initial findings from research at the UMass Amherst Learning Commons using participatory design ethnography and Photovoice. In this Spring 2014 project, I guided students through a semester-length research study of students' perspectives on and practices in the library.

Loss Of Cell Surface Agal During Catarrhine Evolution: Possible Implications For The Evolution Of Resistance To Viral Infections And For Oligocene Lineage Divergence, Idalia Aracely Rodriguez

Doctoral Dissertations

The divergence of the two superfamilies belonging to the Infraorder Catarrhini –Cercopithecoidea (Old World monkeys) and Hominoidea (apes, including humans) – is generally assumed to have occurred during the Oligocene, between 38 and 20 million years ago. Genetic studies indicate that this time period was one of active genetic evolution under strong purifying selection for catarrhine primates. This includes selective pressures on the glycoprotein galactosyltransferase 1 (GGTA1) gene and subsequent inactivation “clocked” at approximately 28 ma, possibly prior to the Cercopithecoidea/Hominoidea split. The GGTA1 gene codes for an a1,3 galactosyltransferase (GT) enzyme that synthesizes a terminal disaccharide, …

Curious Monuments Of The Simplest Kind: Shell Midden Archaeology In Massachusetts, Katharine Vickers Kirakosian

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I broadly consider how the recent past has affected rchaeologist’s present understandings of the deep past. To do so, I complete a historiography of the shell midden site type on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, Massachusetts using Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods. While archaeologists have generally interpreted shell middens as places for food refuse disposal, Native oral traditions as well as ethnohistorical and archaeological data have prompted some to reconsider such monolithic views of these complex sites. Through a series of interviews with local professional and avocational archaeologists, I show that there is, in fact, little …

Youth Participation In Changing Food Systems: Toward Food Justice Youth Development, Krista Harper, Catherine Sands, Diego Angarita, Molly Totman

Krista M. Harper

We present results from a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project in which young people from Holyoke studied the school food system in order to make positive interventions in their school district. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of youth so that they themselves could document and discuss their concerns and perspectives (Wang, et al., 1996). The research was designed to gain insight about the students’ knowledge of food, nutrition, and community food systems. The research also illuminated students’ impressions of public policy, active citizenship, and community building that have arisen out of food justice …

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 …

Review Of Reclaiming Basque By Kathryn Woolard, Jacqueline Urla

Jacqueline L. Urla

Book Review of Reclaiming Basque by Kathryn Woolard. American Ethnologist February 2014.