Relocation, Resistance And Resilience: Squatter Community Responses To Government Intervention For Urban Development In Kathmandu, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
Relocation, Resistance And Resilience: Squatter Community Responses To Government Intervention For Urban Development In Kathmandu, Reilly Brooks
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
“Squatting,” or residing on public land illegally, is a modern urban phenomenon in developing countries. This phenomenon is attributed to rapid urbanization due to rural-to-urban migration, which leads to rising costs of living, exclusionary housing markets, a lack of affordable housing and urban inequality. Ultimately, unplanned urban growth encourages the formation and expansion of squatter settlements. These settlements are commonly characterized as slum due to the impoverished living conditions, highly congested spaces and lack of public services (water, sanitation, education, etc.) Without land certificates, squatters are denied their right to adequate housing and land security, which should be protected by …
Conservation As Mutualism: A Case Study Of Thulo Syafru, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
Conservation As Mutualism: A Case Study Of Thulo Syafru, Jennifer S. Brady
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
This study examined the opinions, perceptions, and knowledge of residents of Thulo Syafru, a small village in the buffer zone of Langtang National Park, Nepal, regarding conservation efforts spearheaded by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and the World Wide Fund for Nature. 26 community members were interviewed along with key figures in community leadership and the two aforementioned organizations. Thulo Syafru is an essential location for red panda conservation, leading to many conservation efforts being focused in the area. Overall, people expressed very positive opinions regarding red pandas and their protection, positive attitudes about conservation, and appreciation …
Continuing Efforts To Alleviate "Orange Pain" An Internship With The Da Nang Association Of Victims Of Agent Orange/Dioxin, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
Continuing Efforts To Alleviate "Orange Pain" An Internship With The Da Nang Association Of Victims Of Agent Orange/Dioxin, Loan Heilner
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
This year marked the 55th anniversary of Vietnam’s Agent Orange Disaster. Decades after the end of the war, Vietnamese people are still largely being affected by the remnants of the United States’ Agent Orange herbicide sprays. Dioxin chemical has now been confirmed detrimental to human and environmental well-being, but unfortunately it still remains in high concentrations in certain areas of Vietnam. Dioxin chemical is passed on through genetics to new generations, but one of the leading causes of dioxin-related health defects today are due to environmental residue. In Da Nang, Agent Orange was stored and loaded at the local airbase …
Welcome To The Streets: Tracing The Development Of Street Art In Nepal Since 2010, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
Welcome To The Streets: Tracing The Development Of Street Art In Nepal Since 2010, Malik Earle
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Graffiti is a process. There really is no beginning or ending to a piece. Graffiti art is practicing a design, bringing it to a wall, letting it take shape, and allowing it to interact with the environment. What makes graffiti unique, among other things, is its interaction with the environment. When international graffiti influences and local conditions drove inspired artists to bring their art to the streets, a new art form emerged in Nepal. “Local conditions” labels the forces ranging from personal drive to the history of public art in Nepal, which fuel the movement. The present study aims at …
Independent Study Project: Investigation Into The Implications Of Zooarchaeological Studies For Climate Reconstruction In The North Atlantic; Zooarchaeological Research At The Agricultural University Of Iceland, Reykjavík, Hazel Cashman
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Zooarchaeology, the study of animal remains from archaeological sites, is crucial to the understanding of human interaction with the environment in the North Atlantic region and in Iceland, where the archaeological record is quite rich (Dugmore et al., 2005). Since its inception, zooarchaeology has drawn methods and concepts from both the natural and social sciences, as well as from history and the humanities, to inform an interdisciplinary understanding of the interactions between humans and their environments and the consequences of these interactions for humans and animals (Reitz and Wing, 2008). In this way, zooarchaeology can inform discussions about historical anthropogenic …
The Importance Of Nature: An Investigation On How Geography Influences Well-Being, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
The Importance Of Nature: An Investigation On How Geography Influences Well-Being, Christina Cobb
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
The objective of this community service project (CSP) was to study how a community’s location, specifically within nature, influences their well-being. I hoped to see how the community’s location, within Chapada Diamantina national park, influences the many ways health is promoted, and how these ways are affected by their location within nature. This project was built upon a review of the literature, which found that there is a theoretical basis for the notion that contact with nature is beneficial, a term deemed Biophilia. There is a robust body of academic research that highlights the health benefits deriving from contact …
Water Resource Change And Management: Implications Of Climate Change And Water Resource Management For Pastoral Herders In Bayan Ulgii, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
Water Resource Change And Management: Implications Of Climate Change And Water Resource Management For Pastoral Herders In Bayan Ulgii, Rachel Ryan
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Mongolia is the 8th most vulnerable country in the world to climate change. The water regime of Mongolia is therefore experiencing intensive change with significant effects in the availability, distribution, and security of water resources. The implications of this change are exacerbated when aligned with poor water resource management, an issue that is prevalent as water regime change challenges current water management systems. These implications specifically affect the vulnerable rural population of Mongolian herders who maintain the practice of nomadic pastoralism. In the western province of Bayan Ulgii, the change in the numerous glaciers and other water resources that are …
Un Nuevo Fenómeno En Un Mundo De Tradición: Percepciones Del Cambio Climático En La Isla De Taquile / 99/5000 A New Phenomenon In A World Of Tradition: Perceptions Of Climate Change On The Island Of Taquile, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
Un Nuevo Fenómeno En Un Mundo De Tradición: Percepciones Del Cambio Climático En La Isla De Taquile / 99/5000 A New Phenomenon In A World Of Tradition: Perceptions Of Climate Change On The Island Of Taquile, Daniel Meagher
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
El cambio climático amenaza el estilo de vida tradicional de los agricultores de subsistencia de los Andes. Este trabajo resume y analiza las percepciones del cambio climático de los Taquileños, una comunidad de 2.500 campesinos indígenas de subsistencia que viven en la isla de Taquile en el Lago Titicaca. Esta comunidad no está aislada del mundo exterior, y hay una fuerte presencia de la iglesia cristiana y el turismo.
Los datos fueron recolectados a través de entrevistas y observación participante entre las fechas del 2 de noviembre al 15 de noviembre, 2016. Las veinte entrevistas contienen las perspectivas de siete …
Cultural Variability In The Link Between Environmental Concern And Support For Environmental Action, 2016 Singapore Management University
Cultural Variability In The Link Between Environmental Concern And Support For Environmental Action, Kimin Eom, Heejung S. Kim, David K. Sherman, Keiko Ishii
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Research on sustainability behaviors has been based on the assumption that increasing personal concerns about the environment will increase proenvironmental action. We tested whether this assumption is more applicable to individualistic cultures than to collectivistic cultures. In Study 1, we compared 47 countries (N = 57,268) and found that they varied considerably in the degree to which environmental concern predicted support for proenvironmental action. National-level individualism explained the between-nation variability above and beyond the effects of other cultural values and independently of person-level individualism. In Study 2, we compared individualistic and collectivistic nations (United States vs. Japan; N = 251) …
A Review Of Climate Change Induced Effects On Avian Prey Species And Their Consequences For Arctic Fox Populations Of Western Iceland, 2016 SIT Study Abroad
A Review Of Climate Change Induced Effects On Avian Prey Species And Their Consequences For Arctic Fox Populations Of Western Iceland, Mikala Jordan
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Island arctic fox populations are considered to carry the future wellbeing of the global population. Iceland has an island population with two arctic fox eco-types: western/coastal and eastern/inland. The western fox population is protected by the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve; no such protection exists for the eastern fox population. Food sources in both regions differ from each other and vary from summer to winter, but reliable and ample winter time food sources are the most critical for fox population’s survival. A literature review on arctic foxes and their prey species in the face of climate change is important for understanding possible …
The Anxious Shadow Of A Coldwar: Affect, Biopower & Resistance In Fiction & Culture In The Period Of Intra-Anxiety 1989-2001, 2016 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
The Anxious Shadow Of A Coldwar: Affect, Biopower & Resistance In Fiction & Culture In The Period Of Intra-Anxiety 1989-2001, Kate Adler
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld stands as the framing text for this study of fiction, cultural affect, and resistance in the later part of the 1980’s – the exhausted, waning years of the Cold War – and the 1990’s, the period immediately following its collapse. DeLillo’s book is situated in the 1990’s, a period of what I term “intra-anxiety” following the Cold War and prior to the attacks of September 11th and the ensuing “War on Terror.” The Cold War had provided an organizing myth for America and American culture, absorbing and structuring anxieties and governing affect. “The Cold …
Boundaries Of Home And Work: Social Reproduction And Home-Based Workers In Ahmedabad, India, 2016 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Boundaries Of Home And Work: Social Reproduction And Home-Based Workers In Ahmedabad, India, Natascia Boeri
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation critically questions the use of women’s labor in international development and global capitalism by examining women’s participation in the informal economy, a significant source of work for women in the Global South. Based on ten months of fieldwork in Ahmedabad, India, this study considers women’s experiences with informality when they participate in home-based work, the production of goods for the market in one’s own home. I ask how women’s place-based activities redefine their roles and positions across three spheres of social life: the family, the economy, and civil society (through their participation in a non-governmental organization, or NGO). …
Can We Talk? On College Campuses - Including Mayflower Hill - Free Speech Collides With Political Correctness, 2016 Colby College
Can We Talk? On College Campuses - Including Mayflower Hill - Free Speech Collides With Political Correctness, Kate Carlisle
Colby Magazine
In a world where thoughts can pour directly out of our heads and onto another person’s computer screen, and insults can circle the globe in the time it takes to tap send, these kindergarten admonishments are taking on added resonance on American college campuses.
Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, 2016 College of the Holy Cross
Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz
Journal of Global Catholicism
Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.
The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, 2016 Colby College
The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.
Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, 2016 College of the Holy Cross
Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …
The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, 2016 Villanova University
The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico
Journal of Global Catholicism
This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …
In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, 2016 Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras, Chennai, India
In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.
Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, 2016 University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire
Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …
Opportunities For Biodiversity Gains Under The World's Largest Reforestation Programme, 2016 Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Opportunities For Biodiversity Gains Under The World's Largest Reforestation Programme, Fangyuan Hua, Xiaoyang Wang, Xinlei Zheng, Brendan Fisher, Lin Wang, Jianguo Zhu, Ya Tang, Douglas W. Yu, David S. Wilcove
Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications
Reforestation is a critical means of addressing the environmental and social problems of deforestation. China's Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) is the world's largest reforestation scheme. Here we provide the first nationwide assessment of the tree composition of GFGP forests and the first combined ecological and economic study aimed at understanding GFGP's biodiversity implications. Across China, GFGP forests are overwhelmingly monocultures or compositionally simple mixed forests. Focusing on birds and bees in Sichuan Province, we find that GFGP reforestation results in modest gains (via mixed forest) and losses (via monocultures) of bird diversity, along with major losses of bee diversity. Moreover, all …