Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
This article examines the persistent authority of the customary practice for forming recognized marriages in many South African communities, centered on bridewealth and called “lobola.” Marriage rates have sharply fallen in South Africa, and many South Africans blame this on the difficulty of completing lobola amid intense economic strife. Using in-depth qualitative research from a village in KwaZulu-Natal, where lobola demands are the country’s highest and marriage rates its lowest, I argue that lobola’s authority survives because lay actors, and especially women, have innovated new repertoires of lobola behavior that allow them to pursue emerging needs and desires for marriage …
“Well, Don’T Walk Around Naked... Unless You’Re A Girl”: Gender, Sexuality, And Risk In Jamtronica Festival Subcultural Scenes, Kaitlyne A. Motl
“Well, Don’T Walk Around Naked... Unless You’Re A Girl”: Gender, Sexuality, And Risk In Jamtronica Festival Subcultural Scenes, Kaitlyne A. Motl
Theses and Dissertations--Sociology
The purpose of this study was to explore emerging issues surrounding gendered fear, threat, and violence perpetration at music festivals – particularly events that feature a synthesis of jam band and electronic dance music acts – a genre termed jamtronica by its fans. Though gendered violence perpetration and prevention have been widely studied within other party-oriented settings (i.e., sexual violence perpetration on college campuses), very little research exists to address how wider disparities of gender and sexuality permeate a community whose members frequently claim the scene’s immunity from external inequalities.
In this three-year multi-sited ethnography, I incorporate participant observations, group …
"I Am A Teacher, A Woman's Activist, And A Mother": Political Consciousness And Embodied Resistance In Antakya's Arab Alawite Community, Defne Sarsilmaz
"I Am A Teacher, A Woman's Activist, And A Mother": Political Consciousness And Embodied Resistance In Antakya's Arab Alawite Community, Defne Sarsilmaz
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Often pointed to as the region’s model secular state, Turkey provides an instructive case study in how nationalism, in the name of conjuring ‘unity’, often produces the opposite effect. Indeed, the production of nationalism can create fractures amongst, as well as politicize, certain segments of a population, such as minority groups and women. This dissertation examines the long-term and present-day impacts on nationalist unity of a largely understudied event, the annexation of the border-city of Antakya from Syria in 1939, and its implications on the Arab Alawite population. In doing so, it deconstructs the dominant Turkish narrative on the annexation, …
Christians’ Cut: Popular Religion And The Global Health Campaign For Medical Male Circumcision In Swaziland, Casey Golomski, Sonene Nyawo
Christians’ Cut: Popular Religion And The Global Health Campaign For Medical Male Circumcision In Swaziland, Casey Golomski, Sonene Nyawo
Anthropology
Swaziland faces one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world and is a site for the current global health campaign in sub-Saharan Africa to medically circumcise the majority of the male population. Given that Swaziland is also majority Christian, how does the most popular religion influence acceptance, rejection or understandings of medical male circumcision? This article considers interpretive differences by Christians across the Kingdom’s three ecumenical organisations, showing how a diverse group people singly glossed as ‘Christian’ in most public health acceptability studies critically rejected the procedure in unity, but not uniformly. Participants saw medical male circumcision’s promotion and …
Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, And Persistent Inequalities, Coralynn V. Davis
Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, And Persistent Inequalities, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
In the context of shifting cultural anchors as well as unstable global economic conditions, new practices of intimacy and sexuality may become tactics in an individual’s negotiation of conflicting desires and potentials. This article offers reflection on the interface between global forces, powerful transcultural narratives, and state policies, on the one hand, and local, even individual, constructions and tactics in regard to sexuality, marriage, migration, and work, on the other. The article focuses on the life trajectory of Gudiya, an ambitious young Hindu woman who started out life with little social capital and few economic resources in a dusty corner …