Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Shamanic Knowledge: The Challenge To Information Science, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Shamanism, a form of healing involving soul travel and trance found in many traditional societies the world over, has been studied by anthropologists and scholars of religious studies. Shamanic traditions are characterized by specialized, restricted, and esoteric knowledge domains that are encoded and communicated through condensed and mystified symbols and reproduced in ceremonies. Shamanic knowledge is acquired through direct experience of the numinous, usually in the process of overcoming personal affliction. Information science so far has been silent on shamanic knowledge. This is understandable given the latter discipline's focus on formal documentary information systems and advanced information technologies. But in …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 17, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

A new collaboration between the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center and the University of Maine will preserve a unique archival collection that documents the history and traditions of Maine, other New England states the Canada's Maritime Provinces. That collection, the entire holdings of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and History, is part of UMaine's Folklife Center.

The library will acquire the entire collection, preserve it at its state-of-the art facilities and serve it online and in person to researchers from around the world. Digital copies will remain accessible at UMaine's Maine Folklife Center.

The folklife center will contract with …

Book Review Of, Pushing For Midwives: Homebirth Mothers And The Reproductive Rights Movement, Jennifer Aengst

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book "Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement" by Christa Craven

Perceptions Of Beauty Among Female Chinese Students In The United States And China, Carly R. Staley, Ginny Qin Zhan

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This pilot study compared the perceptions of beauty among Chinese women who were exchange students in the United States with Chinese women who were students in their homeland. We interviewed 19 women in China and 19 women in the United States to determine differences in responses. In accordance with the sociocultural approach and the social comparison approach, we expected Chinese women in the United States to have a be more acculturate, more frequently conclude that American women were more beautiful than Chinese women, be more likely than those studying in China to report body dissatisfaction, be more likely to dislike …

The “Cute Dog Effect” On Sex, Money, And Justice, Harold Herzog

Speciesism and Breed Discrimination Collection

The hidden sexual, economic, and legal impact of cute dogs.

The “Cute Dog Effect” On Sex, Money, And Justice, Harold Herzog

Harold Herzog, PhD

The Double Threat Of Hiv/Aids And Drought On Rural Household Food Security In Southeastern Zimbabwe, John Mazzeo

John Mazzeo, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Anthropologists Confront Hiv/Aids And Food Insecurity In Sub-Saharan Africa, John Mazzeo

John Mazzeo, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

The Holistic Complementary Structure Of Western Bio-Medicine And Traditional Healing And Achieving Complete Health, Candace Gail Oubre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Achieving complete health requires a deep understanding of complementary cultural competency sensitivity between physician and patient. This may include but is not limited to access to preventative health care resources, access to health educational resources and access to cultural healing resources, for example, shamans, Ayurvedic physicians, and herbal healers. Advocates of cultural competency emphasize great importance on knowledge of the patients' cultural background; however, the transcendence of this knowledge can be explained further through complementary cultural competency sensitivity. This is when the cultures of the physician and patient complement each other in terms of understanding what is in the patients' …

Motivated Markets: Instruments And Ideologies Of Clean Energy In The United Kingdom , Joshua Reno

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

This article examines efforts to reconcile capitalist and ecological values, focusing in particular on the instruments and ideologies that pervade the United Kingdom's developing renewable energy sector. In keeping with neoliberal models of economic knowledge and practice, renewable energy instruments target the motivations of individuals by using incentive programs to reach environmental policy goals. The argument focuses especially on the way newly implemented market devices shape and represent the motivations of energy producers, suppliers, and traders. The centerpiece of the U.K. government's initiative is the creation of an artificial market in renewability, bought and sold as a virtual commodity. Although …

"Motorbike Guide For Westerners": Entrepreneurial Development And The Creation Of A Cultural Tourism Product In Transitional Vietnam, Karl Russell Kirby

Masters Theses

Vietnam is undergoing economic transition from a command economy to an economy with greater market characteristics. Transition is fundamentally reshaping the country through economic liberalization and increased exposure to foreign markets. The Vietnamese are developing institutions necessary for market growth and international tourists are arriving in ever-larger numbers. This research project is a case study of businesses that provide guided motorbike tours and evaluates the businesses based on two criteria: as a study of institutional growth during economic transition and as an examination of tourism production through guide interpretation. The author interviewed and observed sixteen guides in Vietnam—from Dalat in …

Beyond Risk: Emplacement And The Production Of Environmental Evidence , Joshua Reno

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

I offer a counterpoint to the prevailing risk literature that focuses not on (mis)perceptions of danger but on the production and circulation of different forms of evidence and the environmental claims they promote. Rather than reproduce the epistemic dichotomies associated with risk discourse, I discuss attempts by waste-industry technicians, government inspectors, lawyers, area residents, and activists to generate persuasive accounts of a large, U.S. landfill and its porous boundaries. I argue that the differential influence of their various claims is best understood by examining what it means to know and care for a place.

Temporalidades Múltiples En La Encrucijada: Representaciones Artísticas De Lo Afro En Latinoamérica Y El Mundo Hispánico Durante La Actual Etapa De Globalización, Eduard Arriaga

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Nowadays talking about national, racial or gender identities and its representations is quite difficult due to current global-local dynamics of cultural formation. In that sense, approaching to these issues requires the use of comprehensive theories and complex tools in order to forge a better understanding. My dissertation explores the artistic representation of ‘afro’ in the Hispanic world (or the culture built upon the legacies of Africans and African-descendants in the New World and especially in the Caribbean) during the current stage of globalization. In my dissertation, I argue that afro-artistic contemporary representations are overcoming traditional ones -bound to race as …

Now Presenting...Writing Effective Conference Program Proposals (That Get Accepted)!, Raymond Quirolgico

Raymond Quirolgico

No abstract provided.

Ghost Dancing And The Iron Horse: Surving Through Tradition And Technology, Alex K. Ruuska

Publication

This article explores how railroad technologies, so critical in constructing the imagined nation of the nineteenth-century United States, were simultaneously shaped by multiple social groups including the native communities of North America. This analysis demonstrates how Native Americans’ resistance to and use of railroad technologies contributed to the revitalization and construction of ritual practices and pan-Indian identities associated with the 1890s Ghost Dance. Using case studies of the Northern Paiutes of western Nevada and the Sioux nations of South Dakota, Native Americans’ utilization of railroad technologies are examined during two periods of encroachment, revealing shifting attitudes and practices towards Euroamerican …

Making Pigs Local: Discerning The Sensory Character Of Place, Brad Weiss

Arts & Sciences Articles

This article offers an attempt to characterize the relationship between “taste” and “place” as cultivated and embodied in the production, circulation, and consumption of pasture‐raised pork. I focus on the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and offer ethnographic evidence drawn from working with farmers, chefs and restaurant workers, as well as consumers at farmers’ markets to give substance to these discussions. The argument problematizes the category of “local food,” to interrogate the very notion of “place” and its many “tastes” (and other experiential qualities) with respect to the remaking and remapping of food production in the Piedmont. “Local food” is …

Ghost Dancing And The Iron Horse: Surving Through Tradition And Technology, Alex K. Ruuska

Alex K. Ruuska

This article explores how railroad technologies, so critical in constructing the imagined nation of the nineteenth-century United States, were simultaneously shaped by multiple social groups including the native communities of North America. This analysis demonstrates how Native Americans’ resistance to and use of railroad technologies contributed to the revitalization and construction of ritual practices and pan-Indian identities associated with the 1890s Ghost Dance. Using case studies of the Northern Paiutes of western Nevada and the Sioux nations of South Dakota, Native Americans’ utilization of railroad technologies are examined during two periods of encroachment, revealing shifting attitudes and practices towards Euroamerican …

La Transición Del Orden Jurídico. Entre La Colonia Y La República En Los Procesos Criminales En Querétaro (1830-1849), Alexander Montoya Prada

Alexander Montoya Prada

Entre 1830 y 1849 se desarrolló en Querétaro una fase sustancial de la transición del orden jurídico, en un periodo en el que persistían formas y estructuras coloniales. Al mismo tiempo se retomaron las innovaciones de la Constitución gaditana y se promulgaron normas que permitieron transformaciones en el procedimiento judicial y limitaron las fuentes del derecho. En este periodo se establecieron límites, los cuales generaron tensiones alrededor de las propuestas normativas formales y su relación con las prácticas cotidianas de los operadores de justicia y las instituciones, en el marco de normas, conceptos técnicos, relaciones sociales, intereses en conflicto y …

The Huli Response To Illness / Book Review, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

What diseases afRict the Huli people of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea? How are these conceptualized by them as illness experiences? How do their behavioral responses, including the utilization of both traditional and Western health services, flow from and affect these conceptualizations? And how are these processes grounded in the broader ecological, historical, social, and cultural contexts within which individual Huli make their decisions regarding illness?

Sorcery And Social Change In Melanesia / Book Review, Terence Hays

Terence Hays

In some ways, this collection of papers is a typical symposium volume. Organizationally, it consists of a core ethnographic case studies (originally presented at the 1979 and 1980 annual meetings for the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania) bracketed with an introductory essay and concluding discussion by the editors, Marty Zelenietz and Shirley Lindenbaum, respectively. It is atypical, however, in that it largely succeeds in avoiding the most common shortcomings of such collections.