Digital Commons Network^™

Critical Hip-Hop Graffiti Pedagogy In A Primary School, Wade E. Brown

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Educational reform movements are constantly in the process of trying to improve a fractured educational system. Many scholars contend there is a discrepancy between educational outcomes for White students and students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Some educators in working class communities of color have begun to infuse elements of students’ social and cultural backgrounds, including popular culture, to create instructional methods that can better engage and pique student interest. Hip-hop Pedagogy is one of the methods, rooted in popular culture, which is being used in classroom settings to increase students’ awareness about the societal constructs and issues in their communities …

Unpacking Empowerment Discourse Within A Women's Reentry Organization, Amanda Nicole Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Through ethnographic research with a small organization, Jareth, that helps women transition from prison to the community, this work unpacks discourses of empowerment within reentry organizations. I argue that Jareth’s empowerment discourse works on a pragmatic level to help women become employed but it does not work well to completely meet the needs of women offenders because businesses do not want to employ former prisoners and because the general public thinks that prison can meet all of women's needs. I also argue that empowerment defines 'power' and dependence' in particular ways - through appropriate and inappropriate forms of power and …

The Ethnography Of Rhythm: Orality And Its Technologies [Table Of Contents], Haun Saussy

Literature

“Only Haun Saussy—with his historical range, theoretical breadth, and fine close-reading—could have pulled off this brilliant comparative history of ‘the perturbation caused by the idea of oral literature.’ The disciplinary range of this dazzling scholarly performance takes us from linguistics and philology to ethnography and religious studies, from physiology and psychiatry to the history of graphic and sound technologies. Be prepared to marvel—and learn.” —Linda Hutcheon, University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto

Anthropological Inquiry And The Limits Of Dialogue, Kathleen M. Gallagher

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anthropological Inquiry and the Limits of Dialogue" Kathleen Gallagher analyzes the epistemological and ethical implications created by representations of Self and portrayals of Other in two apparently different ethnographic texts, R.F. Fortune's Sorcerers of Dobu and Kevin Dwyer's Moroccan Dialogues. Specific attention is paid to the authors' portrayal of themselves and the observed and the ramifications of such portrayals in the construction of anthropological knowledge. Dwyer's work was a reaction to what he perceived as anthropology's traditional muting of other voices, an alternative to such denigration being the incorporation of dialogue into one's methodology. Gallagher describes …

Indigenous Ecuadorian Mobility Strategies In The Clandestine Migration Journey, Victoria Stone-Cadena

Publications and Research

Based on testimonials of migration journeys of indigenous Cañaris from southern highland Ecuador, this paper examines strategies of mobility and social networking employed by migrants and facilitators in the human smuggling market. Following a series of economic crises in the late 1990s, Ecuadorian transnational migration increased significantly, with a 55.5 percent increase to the United States between 2000 and 2008, and staggering 12,150 percent increase to Spain between 1998 and 2005. This article focuses on the growth of a regional migration industry in the southern high-land region, and pays special attention to the roles of indigenous Cañari migrants and migration …

Satuan Lingual Pengungkap Kearifan Lokal Dalam Pelestarian Lingkungan, Hari Bakti Mardikantoro

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

This study aims to reveal the type and the function of linguistic units as the proof of the local wisdom in preserving environment towards society of Javanese Talk. The data on the study are gathered and analyzed based on two procedures; they are the analysis on the process of collecting data and the analysis after the data are collected. The result of the study shows that the type of linguistic units consist of word, phrase, sentence, and expression. Meanwhile, those linguistic units function in expressing local wisdom such as in giving name, commanding/advising, praying, and teaching sesorah values.

Connectivity: An Ecological Paradigm For The Study Of Bronze Age, Slobodan Mitrović

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Connectivity: an ecological paradigm for the study of Bronze Age” addresses the relationship between historic and prehistoric people, and the landscapes they inhabited, moved about, and continue to inhabit. It suggests alternative methodological approaches that have broader ramifications for the discipline of (Bronze Age) archaeology. By engaging the code and innovations stemming from ecology and digital technology, the research questions concern the interface – referred to as connectivity – between the archaeological sites, resources, networks of communication, and the conditions of archaeological knowledge acquisition. Drawing on published and new data, the aim of the project is to put forward a …

Millets From The Margins: Value, Knowledge And The Subaltern Practice Of Biodiversity In Uttarakhand, India, Priya R. Chandrasekaran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Millets from the Margins: Value, Knowledge and the Subaltern Practice of Biodiversity in Uttarakhand, India analyzes what is at stake for small-scale, predominantly women, farmers as local varieties of rainfed food grains such as finger millet are being newly commodified and valued as a biodiversity resource. With support from a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, I conducted seventeen months of ethnographic research with farmers, activists, scientists, NGO leaders, government officials, transnational functionaries and agribusiness representatives in segregated yet interconnected realms ranging from a village in the Himalayan foothills to transnational institutions in Rome.

This work demonstrates …

Islands Within An Almost Island: History, Myth, And Aislamiento In Baja California, Mexico, Ryan B. Anderson

Faculty Publications

This paper examines the persistent histories and lasting effects of the Baja California peninsula's status as an "almost island." The peninsula is almost an island in so many ways. Its reputation as an island-like entity has also ben strengthened by a longstanding myth that it was, in fact, an actual island. In many senses it was an island - isolated, remote, difficult to envision, understand, and control. Geography and climate played a vital role in all of this, but so, too, did human imagination. The author uses the concept of shima, along with discussions about the dual meanings of the …

The Regulatory Life Of Threatened Species Lists, Irus Braverman

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 1 in Animals, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities, Irus Braverman, ed.

“The Regulatory Life of Threatened Species Lists” explores a prominent technology for the legal regulation of nonhuman life: the threatened species list. I argue that threatened species lists are biopolitical technologies: they produce and reinforce underlying species ontologies by creating, calculating, and governing the boundaries between various nonhuman species. Such a differentiated treatment of the life and death of nonhuman species through their en-listing, down- and up-listing, multi-listing, and un-listing translates into the positive protection and active governance of such species. Listing threatened species thus becomes a …

An Unusual Late Aboriginal Assemblage From The Wilson Site (41ss186), San Saba County, Central Texas, Charles A. Hixson, James K. Feathers

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The late aboriginal component in the Wilson Site in San Saba County is unusual in that most of the assemblage is consistent with that of Classic Toyah, but the diagnostic projectile point is an unnotched triangular arrow point instead of the typical Perdiz point. The absence of Perdiz points suggests that this component is associated with non-Toyah people and possibly dates to after 1700. Archaeological testing by the Llano Uplift Archeological Society (LUAS) to find supporting evidence for a historic date identified an Austin phase shell midden and a “Late Component” composed of triangular arrow points, end scrapers, a beveled …

Indigenous Curation At The Denver Museum Of Nature And Science, Julia Marie Strunk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the questions of how and why indigenous curation is incorporated into collections care and management for American Indian sacred, ceremonial, and religious items at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) through the examination of staff discourse. This thesis also discusses the importance of incorporating non-Western ontologies and epistemologies into classically Western science and natural history museums, and how this helps reconcile differing collections care and management practices. Through the presentation and examination of data and literature, I argue that it is important to include indigenous curation in museums because it aids in cultural revitalization and …

Interpreting The Intangible: Challenges To The Display Of Dance Objects In Museums, Kathryn Louise Brundige Grossman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Indigenous and non-Western dance objects in museums, examining the role of theory from material culture studies, critical museology and museum education on approaches to their interpretation and display. To explore this topic, I conducted a comparative analysis of Indigenous and non-Western dance object displays at four museums - Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma - investigating the use of Native voice, reflexive analysis and multisensory elements in the exhibits' organization, narrative …

Stewarding Our Mountains: A Program Evaluation Of Place-Based Service Learning On The Appalachian Trail, Bonnie Jean Harvey

Anthropology Theses

Appalachians’ relationships with the environment alter over time due to political, economic, and ecological factors. These changing relationships, for instance rural agrarian livelihoods shifting to urban contexts, can influence how an individual perceives personal responsibility in regional environmental stewardship, such as caring for and preserving local ecology. Observing that recent shifts resulted in less perceived youth stewardship for the Appalachian Trail (AT), the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) created the Trail to Every Classroom (TTEC) program in 2006. The TTEC program attempts to foster stewardship through the practice of place-based service learning - a diversification of education where youth learn through …

Anth 474/874: Applied And Development Anthropology—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Wayne A. Babchuk

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

In what follows, I provide an overview of the Benchmark Portfolio developed for the upper level undergraduate/graduate course ANTH 474/874: Applied and Development Anthropology taught in the Spring Semester, 2016 through the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Topics include the objectives for the portfolio, description of the course including course goals, enrollment and demographic information, teaching methods, rationale, course materials and activities, analysis of student learning, planned changes based on this experience, and an overall assessment of the portfolio process. As an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Educational Psychology and the Department of Anthropology, …

The Biosemiotics Of Aldo Leopold, Rebecca Potter

English Faculty Publications

Responding to Jean-Claude Gens’ article “Uexküll’s Kompositionslehre and Leopold’s ‘land ethic’ in dialogue,” which appeared in Sign Systems Studies in 2013, this article further develops a direct connection between Aldo Leopold’s approach to ecology and Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory. The connection between Uexküll and Leopold is especially evident in Leopold’s descriptions of animal behaviour that he presents in the first part of his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac. In this work specifically, Leopold illustrates the biosemiotic processes described by Uexküll, and does so with a purpose: to reshape our understanding of the biotic community as a place …

A Comparison Of The Utility Of Craniometric And Dental Morphological Data For Assessing Biodistance And Sex-Differential Migration In The Pacific Islands, Brittney A. Eubank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Genetic analysis of maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA and the paternally-inherited Y-chromosome yield contrasting pictures of movement of peoples into the Pacific Islands. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a matrilocal residency pattern practiced by early Pacific settlers, in which Melanesian men were brought into settler communities to intermarry with local women, yielding a higher intrapopulation variance and lower interpopulation variance exhibited in males compared to females. This research investigates the possibility of sex-differential migration in the Oceanic populations of Easter Island, Fiji, Guam, Mokapu, and New Britain through analysis of biodistance based on dental morphological trait frequencies and craniometric measures …

The Bridge River Dogs: Interpreting Adna And Stable Isotope Analysis Collected From Dog Remains, Emilia Tifental

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Excavations at the Bridge River site have been on-going since 2003, increasing our understanding of the communities that inhabited the Middle Fraser Canyon, British Columbia over 1,000 years ago. The most recent excavation at Housepit 54 in the summer of 2014 supplied further data regarding relationships between people and their dogs. Dogs are well documented in the Middle Fraser Canyon through both archaeological excavations and traditional knowledge. A household's possession of a dog has been linked to other prestigious materials, and therefore been interpreted as an indicator of wealth and status. The present study was aimed at further investigation of …

Acculturation And Its Discontents: A Case For Bringing Anthropology Back Into The Conversation, Peter J. Guarnaccia, Carolina Hausmann-Stabile

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Faculty Research and Scholarship

Anthropologists’ contribution to the study of cultural change is urgent in light of the increasing number of people of different backgrounds who are migrating around the globe and settling in new communities, and the opportunities and challenges that come along with that process. By examining the anthropological literature on acculturation going back to the 1936 Memorandum by Redfield, Linton and Herskovits, this paper reviews and assesses the discipline’s perspective on acculturation, and lays out the case for why it is critical for anthropologists to re-engage the concept. Although other disciplines, particularly psychology and sociology, have dominated the field of acculturation …

The Push And Pull Of Language Ideologies : Multilingual Communicative Practices Among Youths In An Indonesian City, Kristian Tamtomo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis deals with the use of Javanese, Bahasa Indonesia and English in the spoken and written communication of high school youths in the city of Semarang, Central Java. The thesis aims to understand the patterns in which youths make use of these languages in various communicative contexts and the way youths use languages to either enact or negotiate the polycentric "push and pull" of the various language ideologies associated with local, national, and global language. Data collection was conducted using ethnographic methods, which involved participant observation, recordings of conversations, collection of texts, as well as interviews with youth groups …

"Porque Tienen Mucho Derecho" : Parteras, Biomedical Training And The Vernacularization Of Human Rights In Chiapas, Mounia El Kotni

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This doctoral research stems from thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mexican State of Chiapas. Chiapas is one of the regions with the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. To comply with international development goals to lower maternal mortality rates, indigenous midwives are trained in detecting risk factors in pregnancy and birth, while women are encouraged to give birth in hospitals. This dissertation sheds light on the impact of such policies on poor women's access to reproductive health care and Mayan midwives' practices. Over the course of my research, I utilized the methodology of participant-observation and conducted in-depth …

The People Of Stone: A Study Of The Basalt Ground Stone Industry At Tres Zapotes And Its Role In The Evolution Of Olmec And Epi-Olmec Political-Economic Systems, Olaf Jaime-Riveron

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation analyzes the basalt ground stone industry at the archaeological site of Tres Zapotes, Mexico. Artifacts and by-products were recovered in the excavations conducted by a University of Kentucky project directed by Christopher Pool. All contexts were examined, and the corpus of this study comprises the whole sequence of production, use, and discards of basalt such as by-products of manufacture, unfinished and finished tools, and discarded artifacts. In this opportunity was possible to study over time a change from the Early/Middle Formative period (Olmec occupation) a centralized and exclusionary political economic system to the Late/Terminal Formative period (Epi-Olmec occupation) …

Developing Methods For The Estimation Of Stature And Their Use As A Proxy For Health Among The Ancient Chachapoya Of Peru, Armando Anzellini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Population mean stature and patterns of health are often linked in anthropological studies, yet few studies control for the multifactorial nature of achieving adult standing height. This thesis explores the intersection of health and stature by analyzing the skeletal remains of 161 adult individuals from the archaeological site of Kuelap, in the eastern slopes of the northern Peruvian Andes, and also tests current biometric methods for estimating stature from skeletal remains. This Chachapoya site dates to the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900 – 1470) and Late Horizon (AD 1470 – 1536) and resides in the high altitude sub-tropical forests of …

The Crossed Bands Motif: What Does It Mean?, Brittany Luther

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The crossed bands motif is an iconographic symbol that appears among many Mesoamerican cultures' art including Olmec, Izapan and Maya spanning from the Early Pre-Classic to the Classic periods in Mesoamerica. Pierce explains in his theory on signs that icons, symbols and indices all contain meaning. This meaning was given to the signs by the one who commissioned the medium on which the sign is placed; therefore it is important to understand the meaning of these signs to learn more about the person or people who built them. The crossed bands motif has previously been studied based on individual pieces …

Inside And Out: The Interaction Of The U.S. Immigration System And Indian Immigrant Families In Columbus, Ohio, Madeline English

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

The purpose of this study is to consider how Indian immigrant families, who come from cultures that are shaped around culturally distinct forms of family, navigate and adapt to U.S. culture and institutions that are structured based on the idealized American family form. The main research questions being considered are: How is family defined by immigration policies? How are Indian immigrant families affected by these policies? An ethnographic methodological approach, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, is used to gather data in the Columbus metro area in order to address the above questions. Observations and semi-structured interviews were completed with …

Animism Among Western Buddhists, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Myriad instances of animist phenomena abound in the Buddhist world, but due to the outdated concepts of thinkers such as Edward Tylor, James George Frazer, and Melford Spiro, commonly scholars perceive this animism merely as the work of local religions, not as deriving from Buddhism itself. However, when one follows a number of contemporary scholars and employs a new, relational concept of animism that is based on respectful recognition of nonhuman personhoods, a different picture emerges. The works of Western Buddhists such as Stephanie Kaza, Philip Kapleau Roshi, and Gary Snyder express powerful senses of relational animism that arise specifically …

A Spectacle Of The Odd: Constructing Otherness In The Odditoriums Of Ripley’S Believe It Or Not!, Sarah Haughenbury

Theses and Dissertations

Since Robert Ripley’s inception of the concept behind Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in 1918, Ripley Entertainment Inc. has continued to capture the attention of the public with their display of purportedly strange and unbelievable people, animals, and artifacts from across the globe. Using theories of categorization, Othering, materiality, the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and the gaze, this ethnographic study examines how persons and things in the company’s odditoriums are constructed as odd through the arrangement and decoration of exhibits and odditorium space and through the language used in advertisements and information panels.

I argue that Ripley’s uses similar techniques as …

3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Reaction To Stimulus Figures In Chimpanzee Drawings, Alexandra Bobrinskoy Casti

All Master's Theses

Seven captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) produced drawings at the University of Oklahoma between November 1971 and November 1972. Chimpanzees drew on sheets of paper that were either blank or had a stimulus. The stimulus was located in the center or offset from the center. These drawings were scanned and digitized. Analysis tested whether chimpanzee mark placement was contingent on the location of stimulus figures. Centroid locations significantly changed between stimulus type for all drawing categories and among participants for free choice and central figure drawings. Participants drew in the empty space opposite offset figure drawings. Findings support previous …

Empires Of The Turning Tide: A History Of Lewis And Clark National Historical Park And The Columbia-Pacific Region, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This book illuminates the history of the many people who together have called this region home, and their relationships with the park landscapes, waters, and natural resources that continue to set the Columbia-Pacific region apart.