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Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Heritage And Local Ecological Knowledge Under Threat: Two Caribbean Examples From Barbuda And Puerto Rico, Rebecca Boger, Sophia Perdikaris, Isabel Rivero-Collazo Dec 2019

Cultural Heritage And Local Ecological Knowledge Under Threat: Two Caribbean Examples From Barbuda And Puerto Rico, Rebecca Boger, Sophia Perdikaris, Isabel Rivero-Collazo

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

While the impacts to the infrastructures in Barbuda and Puerto Rico by Hurricanes Irma and Maria have received attention in the news media, less has been reported about the impacts of these catastrophic events on the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of these Caribbean islands. This report provides an assessment of the impacts on the cultural heritage by these storms; tangible heritage includes historic buildings, museums, monuments, documents and other artifacts and intangible heritage includes traditional artistry, festivities, and more frequent activities such as religious services and laundering. While the physical destruction was massive, the social contexts in which these …


A Genealogy Of Neoliberal And Anti-Neoliberal Resilience In The Ecuadorian Pacific Coast, Vanessa Leon Leon Nov 2019

A Genealogy Of Neoliberal And Anti-Neoliberal Resilience In The Ecuadorian Pacific Coast, Vanessa Leon Leon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Resilience appears to be everywhere, morphing and seducing global discourses, national governmental practices, and scholarship. Inasmuch as hegemonic discourses and national governments promote resilience through both disaster reduction and sustainable development policies, critical resilience scholars have emphasized resilience as a neoliberal security technique. By reinforcing resilience as a governmental practice embedded in neoliberal rationale, theory and practice are neglecting other areas to contextualize resilience. My dissertation traces a genealogy of neoliberal and anti-neoliberal State interventions underpinned by resilience thinking, organizing coastal rural lives in Ecuador. My dissertation shows, no matter the Ecuadorian governments’ rationale, both genuflected to global hegemonic discourses …


A Least Cost Analysis: Correlative Modeling Of The Chaco Regional Road System, Sean Field, Carrie Heitman, Heather Richards-Rissetto Sep 2019

A Least Cost Analysis: Correlative Modeling Of The Chaco Regional Road System, Sean Field, Carrie Heitman, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

During the ninth through twelfth centuries A.D., Ancestral Pueblo people constructed long, straight roads that interconnected the Chaco regional system across the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. The intent and use of these features has eluded archaeological consensus, although recent research has reiterated the occurrence of long distance timber importation to Chaco Canyon. To enhance our interpretation of these features we offer a large-scale least cost analysis wherein optimal pathways that are modeled to simulate timber importation are compared to the actual road locations. A series of least cost paths were produced through different energy allocation algorithms, at …


Digitally-Mediated Practices Of Geospatial Archaeological Data: Transformation, Integration, & Interpretation, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kristin Landau Aug 2019

Digitally-Mediated Practices Of Geospatial Archaeological Data: Transformation, Integration, & Interpretation, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kristin Landau

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Digitally-mediated practices of archaeological data require reflexive thinking about where archaeology stands as a discipline in regard to the ‘digital,’ and where we want to go. To move toward this goal, we advocate a historical approach that emphasizes contextual source-side criticism and data intimacy—scrutinizing maps and 3D data as we do artifacts by analyzing position, form, material and context of analog and digital sources. Applying this approach, we reflect on what we have learned from processes of digitally-mediated data. We ask: What can we learn as we convert analog data to digital data? And, how does digital data transformation impact …


Understanding Cumulative Hazards In A Rustbelt City: Integrating Gis, Archaeology, And Spatial History, Daniel Trepal, Don Lafreniere Jul 2019

Understanding Cumulative Hazards In A Rustbelt City: Integrating Gis, Archaeology, And Spatial History, Daniel Trepal, Don Lafreniere

Michigan Tech Publications

We combine the Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI) concept developed within spatial history with elements of archaeological predictive modeling to demonstrate a novel GIS-based landscape model for identifying the persistence of historically-generated industrial hazards in postindustrial cities. This historical big data approach draws on over a century of both historical and modern spatial big data to project the presence of specific persistent historical hazards across a city. This research improves on previous attempts to understand the origins and persistence of historical pollution hazards, and our final model augments traditional archaeological approaches to site prospection and analysis. This study also demonstrates …


Seduction, Promises And Disneyfication Of Barbuda Post Irma, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Emira Ibrahimpašić May 2019

Seduction, Promises And Disneyfication Of Barbuda Post Irma, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Emira Ibrahimpašić

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Under the guise of post-hurricane development, the national government of Antigua and Barbuda exploited the disasterscape of post Hurricane Irma Barbuda to usher in a new wave of economic development that has left Barbudans separated from their unique culture and identity. In this article we explore what are inhabited vs. uninhabited spaces, the effects of Colonial Christian ideas on cultivated vs. uncultivated lands and the effects of capitalist seduction to traditional landscapes and seascapes. We argue that this neocolonial approach to traditional lifeways increases vulnerability of both people and environment. By wiping out diversity and culture in order to replace …


The Impacts Of Warming Coffee: The Climate Change-Coffee-Migration Nexus In The Northern Triangle Of Central America, Connor Lynch Apr 2019

The Impacts Of Warming Coffee: The Climate Change-Coffee-Migration Nexus In The Northern Triangle Of Central America, Connor Lynch

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As climate change continues to threaten every corner of the world, one of the key features of the 21st century is migration, as a response to the myriad of effects related to a warming planet. This paper seeks to analyze the role of climate change as a motive for migration. The climate change-migration nexus is illustrated in this paper by revealing how slow-onset effects of climate change jeopardize the production of coffee in the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), a region that is particularly vulnerable to the many effects. Thousands of people who depend on coffee production around Guatemala, …


Transnational Sex-Positive Play Parties: The Sexual Politics Of Care For Community-Making At A Kinky Salon, Christina Bazzaroni Mar 2019

Transnational Sex-Positive Play Parties: The Sexual Politics Of Care For Community-Making At A Kinky Salon, Christina Bazzaroni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To date, feminist geographers and geographers of sexualities have yet to fully interrogate post sexual revolution society. In this dissertation I examine the politics of sex-positive play parties, through the case study of Kinky Salon (KS) – a global organization that claims to catalyze a contemporary sex culture revolution. This project expands on previous feminist geography and geographies of sexualities scholarship centering queer, kinky sex, demonstrating that non-normative sexual practices are informed by and contribute to sexual revolution legacies. I extend feminist geographies’ theorizing of affect and emotion to show how sexual intimacies are care-work, with the emotional power to …


After Irma, Disaster Capitalism Threatens Cultural Heritage In Barbuda, Rebecca Boger, Sophia Perdikaris Feb 2019

After Irma, Disaster Capitalism Threatens Cultural Heritage In Barbuda, Rebecca Boger, Sophia Perdikaris

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

After Hurricane Irma, disaster capitalism threatens cultural heritage in Barbuda. A year and a half after the storm hit, efforts to exploit Barbuda to benefit the rich and powerful threaten to erode culture, identity, and traditional land relations in the name of “development.”