Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Broom Closet Or Fish Bowl? An Ethnographic Exploration Of A University Queer Center And Oneself, Eric D. Teman Ph.D., Maria K. Lahman Ph.D.

Eric D Teman, J.D., Ph.D.

* Overconsumption And The American Food Enterprise: Anthropological Insights On The Global Nutrition Transition, John Mazzeo

John Mazzeo, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Going Anti-Postal: What Kind Of Nation Won't Fund A Post Office, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Creating Networks For Survival And Mobility: Social Capital Among African-American And Latin-American Low-Income Mothers, Silvia Domínguez, Celeste Watkins

Silvia Domínguez

In this article, we examine the social networks of low-income mothers, using a conceptual framework that differentiates social networks that offer support from those that yield leverage. This ethnographic analysis pays particular attention to how respondents generate social capital to obtain resources for survival and social mobility. Respondents identified at least three issues beyond resource constraints that work alone or in combination to positively or negatively influence their use of family as sources of social support: physical proximity, reciprocity, and family tensions. We also explore the conditions under which respondents generate social support through friendships and non-profit institutions. We find …

Caribbean Journeys: An Ethnography Of Migration And Home In Three Family Networks [Book Review], Silvia Domínguez

Silvia Domínguez

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Social Media In Community Colleges, Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Manuel Sacramento González Canché,, Regina Deil-Amen, Charles H.F. Davis Iii

Charles H.F. Davis III

Over the past decade, there has been a growing public fascination with the phenomenon of connectedness. One of the most important ways in which society is now connected is through social media –such as social networking sites. While both students and higher education institutions seem to be utilizing social media more and more, there still are enormous challenges in trying to understand the new dynamics generated by social media in higher education, particularly for the context of community colleges.

This research report has several purposes. The first is to document and to describe the various ways in which social media …

Morse, Rebecca D. (Fa 67), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 67. Thesis: “Tinsley Bottom Tennessee: An Historical Reconstruction Utilizing Oral Narrative Traditions” by Rebecca D. Morse in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts, Department of Folk and Intercultural Studies at Western Kentucky University.

Agency Through Ambiguity: Women Ngo Workers In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Melissa S. Kerr Chiovenda

Master's Theses

Pashtun women working for international NGOs and development organizations in Jalalabad Afghanistan balance the requirements of their employment with a set values, known as doing pashto, that guide their behavior as Pashtuns. These two influences on their lives are often contradictory. Based on fieldwork in Jalalabad, this study suggests that Pashtun women working for such organizations do not overtly resist Pashtun norms that often enforce a strict segregation of women. Rather, they use strategic ambiguity, maintaining that they are performing pashto well while at the same time taking part in some work activities that on the surface appear contrary to …

Ron Paul + Potheads = Racist Dopes, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Ron Paul’s popularity, given his history of racism, is troubling. More troubling, however, is the willingness of his supporters, an odd coalition of one-percenter corporatists and anti-war pothead libertarians, to ignore or excuse these views. Read more: http://artvoice.com/issues/v11n5/getting_a_grip

Signifying The Place Of Unforgettable Memory: Atrocity And Trauma In A Post-Conflict Landscape, Ralph J. Hartley

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

After active inter-group lethal violence subsides places at which atrocities occurred are often assigned significance, reflecting an altered social topography influenced by ideology that may foster the hardening of socio-ethnic boundary distinctions. While using a comparativist approach, this paper explores the relationships between socio-cultural trauma, places of atrocity, and socio-political polarization. Two sites in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, where highly publicized massacres occurred, illustrate the power of place significance in social environments vulnerable to flare-ups of violent conflict.

Invited Editorial: African Pygmies, What's Behind A Name?, Paul Verdu, Giovanni Destro-Bisol

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

No abstract provided.

Gender, Power And Justice: An Ethnographic Study Of A Union Parishad-Led Arbitration Councils In Rural Bangladesh, Zahidul Islam Biswas

Dr. Zahidul Islam

In 2012, I obtained my PhD degree from the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, for my thesis entitled ‘Gender, Power and Justice: An Ethnographic Study of a Union Parishad-led Arbitration Councils in Rural Bangladesh’. This study explores the gender and power aspects in the decision making in a rural justice system in Bangladesh, which has a great impact on the lives of the poor and disadvantaged rural population of the country. Here is chapter six of the thesis, which contains the summary and conclusions of the study. Readers and scholars may …

Multiculturalism, Identities And National Uncertainties In Southwest Europe: The Rise Of Xenophobia And Populism In Catalonia (Spain), Montserrat Clua I Fainé

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

The analysis of the discourses about the migratory threat takes a special feature in the Catalan case, where there is an historical strong nationalist movement that seeks to defend its own Catalan national and cultural identity against Spain. A nationalist discourse that has been self-defined as a "civic nationalism" because it claims that has historically receipted and integrated the different peoples that have arrived at its territory. But it has showed in some moments a clear xenophobic discourse against immigration, especially during the 60s and 70s, against the massive arrival of Spanish migrants that was produced at that time in …

French Far-Right Trajectories: Against A Multiculturalism That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Anne Friederike Delouis

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

Clearly, France is a peculiar place as far as multiculturalism is concerned. With its official ideology of egalitarianism, the "indivisible" Republic claims universal validity. As a consequence, the existence of different ethnic or cultural groups on the French territory is hardly recognized in legal terms and official rhetoric.

However, the social reality of poor and mostly ethnic ghettoes in all major French towns became eminently visible when the 2005 riots brought them to international media attention. Living conditions and economic opportunities for suburban ghetto-dwellers have not improved since, nor have majority attitudes towards them changed significantly. On the contrary, the …

When Opportunity Moves Off-Shore: Multiculturalism And The French Banlieue, Beth Epstein

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

Since the turn of this new century, problems of "culture" and "difference," diversity and multiculturalism, have made their way into public discourse in France. Across a dizzying array of polemics that includes social unrest in the country's disadvantaged suburbs, the rise of the National Front, post-colonial recriminations, and more, voices are being raised in favor of a more overt form of multiculturalist discourse as a means to think through contemporary social issues in relation to notions of race, identity, and discrimination. The integrationist French republican project, wherein racial or ethnic classifications are eschewed on the grounds that they enclose people …

The Intercultural Alternative To Multiculturalism And Its Limits, Katharina Bodirsky

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

Intercultural policies have gained salience in integration and regional development strategies in cities such as Berlin and in EU and European policy networks. Critiquing multiculturalism for having produced segregation by recognizing cultural communities, proponents of interculturalism (e.g. Wood and Landry 2008) emphasize the importance of intercultural exchange and an individual right to cultural identity combined with equality of opportunity as well as the political advertising of the value of diversity. This value, it is argued, is also economic, as intercultural exchange sparks creativity, which fosters innovation, which enhances competitiveness. Intercultural cities, it is posited, are moreover attractive to investors and …

Some Notes On Affect And Discourses Of Social Tense In Tense Times, Christopher Sweetapple

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

No abstract provided.

From The Intercultural Model To Its Actual Implementation In A Spanish Neighborhood, Jaime Palomera, Mikel Aramburu

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

The language of “interculturalism” has become part of the current doxa among policy-makers. It informs the ways in which new models of diversity governance are being designed, from supra-national organisms to local councils. In general terms, intercultural models tend to place high value on the question of “living together” or “conviviality”, and also on issues of equality and social justice. However, the evidence in this paper (based on fieldwork in a working-class neighborhood in Spain) suggests that in actual practice local governments do not see local “intercultural/community” projects as a means to promote social justice but as an end in …

Quebec’S Interculturalism Policy And The Contours Of Implicit Institutional Discourse, Samuel Shapiro

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

I approach the question of scales and political imaginaries through an exploration of how the Canadian province of Quebec is situated at the crossroads of several European and North American traditions. I discuss the relationship between the 2012 Quebec student strikes against the policies of then-Quebec premier Jean Charest and a welfare state model based on social protection, which is closer to that that found in France and several Scandinavian countries than in the rest of Canada. I then examine in depth how Quebec’s attempt to develop an alternative approach for the management of ethno-cultual diversity – often called interculturalism …

Not A Backlash, But A Multicultural Implosion From Within: Uncertainty And Crisis In The Case Of South Tyrol's "Multiculturalism", Dorothy Louise Zinn

EASA Workshop 2012: Working Papers

This paper considers a case in which a regime commonly identified as "multicultural", locally entrenched and stringently defended by hegemonic politics, is nonetheless undergoing crisis and uncertainty. In the autonomous province of South Tyrol (Italy), there is a heavy social, economic, legal and discursive investment in "multiculturalism", offering a case that is often celebrated as a model of social co-existence and minority protection, and even serving as a selling point in provincial self-representations. Due to the area's peculiar history—previously belonging to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire but annexed to Italy a century ago—a "separate-but-equal" system developed as a means of defending the …