Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

E-Waste In Relation To Geopolitical Forces: A Case Study Of The United States - Mexico Border Region, Michael A. Hicks

Theses and Dissertations

Analysis deconstructs the electronic waste industry and its interconnectedness to geopolitical forces and economic development in the border region between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. A symbiotic business relationship exists between informal e-waste collectors, non-profit collection sites, and for-profit recyclers. Fieldwork data is analyzed from a slow/structural violence perspective.

Ambivalent Subjects In Neoliberal Times: Non-Governmental Organizations And Binational Same Sex Couples In The United States, Jara M. Carrington

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation is a critical examination of the increasingly intimate relationship between the neoliberal state, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and their constituents through the lens of NGO-produced advocacy for “binational same sex couples” in the United States. I analyze how neoliberal political and economic ideologies are reconfiguring the role of NGOs, entities traditionally understood as outside state power, as well as the aspirations of their constituencies, within the United States. In particular, I interrogate how NGOs are an increasingly important site in the (re)production of normative gay and lesbian subjects, and illustrate how LGBTQ-identified individuals negotiate these conditions as they seek …

Community Development, Elizabeth Strom

Service-Learning Syllabi

No abstract provided.

La Culpa La Tiene Derrida: La Praxis Deconstrucionista De Buitrago Y Sus Implicaciones En Mi Quehacer Archivístico, Marisol Ramos

UConn Library Presentations

En esta presentación discutiré como el antropólogo Carlos Buitrago, durante su periodo decontrucionista, influyó mi carrera académica en el campo de la archivística. En mi trabajo trazare el camino recorrido junto con Buitrago, primero como su ayudante de investigación en 1992 en un proyecto analizando los repartos vecinales del pueblo de Adjuntas (1824-1832), luego en 1993, trabajando juntos en el Archivo General de Puerto Rico donde me introdujo a los archivos de aguas de Guayama y el tema de los sistemas de riego en este pueblo durante el siglo XIX, y más tarde en 1999 cuando compartió conmigo sus transcripciones …

“That’S Enough Patients For Everyone!”: Local Stakeholders’ Views On Attracting Patients Into Barbados And Guatemala’S Emerging Medical Tourism Sectors, Jeremy Snyder, Valorie A. Crooks, Rory Johnston, Alejandro Cerón, Ronald Labonte

Anthropology: Faculty Scholarship

Background

Medical tourism has attracted considerable interest within the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. Governments in the region tout the economic potential of treating foreign patients while several new private hospitals primarily target international patients. This analysis explores the perspectives of a range of medical tourism sector stakeholders in two LAC countries, Guatemala and Barbados, which are beginning to develop their medical tourism sectors. These perspectives provide insights into how beliefs about international patients are shaping the expanding regional interest in medical tourism.

Methods

Structured around the comparative case study methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 medical tourism …

“Always A Double-Edged Sword”: How Women And Health Care Providers Navigate Issues Of Contraception In Differing Senegalese Communities, Angelina Strohbach

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper examines how women and health care providers in two distinct Senegalese settings—Dakar and Mouit, a village located within the Gandiol region-- navigate contraception as both a social and medical good. Contraception is an invaluable tool in terms of advancing women’s right to reproductive health, but major discrepancies in its usage exist across a variety of social lines in Senegal, including level of education, marital status, occupation, age, and living in a rural versus urban setting. What socially constructed thought processes and lived experiences contribute to these discrepancies? In a cultural context heavily based upon tradition and Islamic faith, …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

Culture And Conservation: Beyond Anthropocentrism, Nathan Poirier

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

No abstract provided.

Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In this chapter I argue that teaching, as we now understand the term, is historically and cross-culturally very rare. It appears to be unnecessary to transmit culture or to socialize children. Children are, on the other hand, primed by evolution to be avid observers, imitators, players and helpers—roles that reveal the profoundly autonomous and self-directed nature of culture acquisition (Lancy in press a). And yet, teaching is ubiquitous throughout the modern world—at least among the middle to upper class segment of the population. This ubiquity has led numerous scholars to argue for the universality and uniqueness of teaching as a …

Beyond Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learned Information In Forodhani Park, Jaimie Lynn Mulligan

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This ethnographic study examines Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Mji Mkongwe (Stone Town), Zanzibar, and how ecological knowledge shared by locals on the island is formed and is shared among locals in a park setting. Using a framework of political ecology, this study specifically highlights ecological pressures of local population growth, global climate change on a local scale, and local economic changes as the key drivers for the creation and cultural importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. To discover both the ecological pressures and the examples of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, I conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews in Forodhani Park, a public park on …

La Minga As A Model Of Food Justice? : A Thesis On The Motivations And Practices Of Immigrant And Native-Citizen Growers At La Minga Cooperative Farm In Prospect, Ky., Tyler Austin Short

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Progressive and radical stakeholders in the local food system call for forms of agricultural production and distribution that dialectically oppose the dominant paradigm of corporate-controlled agribusiness. This ethnographic research engages with the question of whether La Minga is a model of food justice. I collected ethnographic data from May 2015 to March 2016 via informal conversations and semi-structured interviews with members of the farm as well as secondary data gleaned from literature on anarchism, political economy, and food and agriculture. La Minga serves as a small-scale example of immigrants and native-citizens exercising their human right to produce healthy, culturally-appropriate food …

The Pedophile Prophet? Breathing A Culturally Relative Point Of View Into A Controversial Cultural Debate, Samuel S. Thompson

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

This work focuses on a controversial topic within women studies of the Islamic world, the very young marriage of Mohammad's second wife Aisha. The work attempts to meet the issue on level ground and explain that while this may seem as a spark on conflict between non-Muslim cultures and the Islamic world this marriage was not altogether that uncommon for the time.

Investigating Alternative Subsistence Strategies Among The Homeless Near Tampa, Florida, Matthew Peter Rooney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern homelessness is one of the most pressing social and political problems of our time. Several hundred thousand people experience homelessness in the United States each year, and the U.S. Department of Housing, which attempts to count those people, has admitted that their statistics are conservative estimates at best. A recent archaeological study (Zimmerman et al 2010) examining material culture associated with homeless communities in Indianapolis has suggested that those who are considered chronically homeless have generally abandoned wage labor and are instead pursuing urban foraging as a subsistence strategy. In order to better understand the structures of homeless communities, …

The Aids House: Orphan Care And The Changing Household In Lesotho, Ellen Block

Sociology Faculty Publications

HIV/AIDS has brought the connections between care and relatedness into sharp relief. In the midst of social change driven largely by the AIDS epidemic, the house has emerged as the most stable element connecting kin in Lesotho. Houses provide spaces that frame human actions, transform relationships, and reflect the social order. The house is a key crossroads for human movement. It is also the site where physical connections, emotional bonds, and feelings of love and affection are nurtured. Most significantly, it is the site where physical acts of caring take place. Based on extensive ethnographic research, I demonstrate that the …

Interpreting The Intangible: Challenges To The Display Of Dance Objects In Museums, Kathryn Louise Brundige Grossman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Indigenous and non-Western dance objects in museums, examining the role of theory from material culture studies, critical museology and museum education on approaches to their interpretation and display. To explore this topic, I conducted a comparative analysis of Indigenous and non-Western dance object displays at four museums - Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma - investigating the use of Native voice, reflexive analysis and multisensory elements in the exhibits' organization, narrative …

The Role Of Amache Family Objects In The Japanese American Internment Experience: Examined Through Object Biography And Object Agency, Rebecca Michele Cruz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates the meaning of Japanese American families' personal possessions associated with internment through the concepts of object biography and object agency. It uses material culture analysis to help anthropologists understand the Japanese American internment experience, specifically through a case study at Amache, the Japanese American internment camp in southeastern Colorado. Five semi-structured phone interviews, and one structured email interview, are the primary data used to explore the importance of material culture associated with the site and to help preserve the cultural heritage of Amache. Object agency and object biography are key components of the new material culture theory. …

Displaced But Not Without Place: Refugee And Immigrant Integration Experiences In Greeley, Colorado, Rebekah Natalie Marsh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research focuses on the integration experiences of refugees and immigrants in Greeley, Colorado and the corresponding actions and reactions of local Greeley members and leaders who are involved with this population. This thesis explains how the political, industrial and economic needs of the historical sugar beet and current meat packing industries shaped and are shaping the segregated landscape of Greeley. This in turn shapes the integration experiences for the refugees and immigrants and local members of Greeley. These industries historically recruited undocumented Mexican laborers to fill high turnover manual labor jobs. Now, the JBS meat packing plant is …

Always After: Desiring Queerness, Desiring Anthropology, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss