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Heavy Metal: An Anthropological Approach To A Religious Phenomenon, Alexandra Durazo

Whittier Scholars Program

This essay will consider whether the experience of heavy metal music can be understood as a religious phenomenon. Through field research and an exploration of ways to understand religion, I will show that the culture of heavy metal music parallels that of a religious phenomenon while considering whether heavy metal culture qualifies as a legitimate religion. From first-hand experience as well as observation and analysis and using anthropological methods of field research, I have gathered data in a journal to provide evidence of my experiences and analysis at heavy metal concerts from May 2, 2009 to April 8, 2010. I …

Worldliness In Out Of The Way Places, Eric Gable

Cultural and Philosophical Inquiry Articles

This paper looks at such youthful cosmopolitan aspirations among Manjaco of Guinea-Bissau and Lauje in Sulawesi. It is often argued that these attempts at worldliness reflect claims for equal rights of membership in an unequal global society. Yet, an aspiration to worldliness also entails their assertion that we are, or at least should be, like them. This paper suggests that Manjaco and Lauje might seem to want to look like us but they talk very differently about what they expect of us in a world we mutually make.

Study Abroad Dynamics: Anthropological Perspectives, Jonathan Maravelias

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Americans typically lack cultural reflexivity--most Americans will even deny that there is a specific American culture. Many Americans often experience heightened states of anxiety and feelings of alienation, which several anthropologists and cross-cultural psychologists attribute to an unhealthy reliance on individualism and consumerism. If Americans could learn cultural reflexivity, then they may experience a sense of connectedness and higher self-esteem. Since cultural reflexivity can be learned, I have investigated whether or not study abroad programs help to teach it. More generally, I have studied the education abroad experience anthropologically through participating in a 35-day tour of the Mediterranean offered by …

Newman, Oscar: Defensible Space Theory, Patrick G. Donnelly

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

The concept of “defensible space” was first explicated by Oscar Newman in a 1972 book by the same title. The concept, which contains elements of a theory of crime as well as a set of urban design principles, became popular in the 1970s as urban crime problems continued to rise. Defensible space was discussed, utilized, and critiqued widely by criminologists and other social scientists, as well as urban planners, law enforcement officials, and architects.

The design concepts have also been implemented in numerous communities in the United States and around the world. Later works by Newman, including Community of Interest …

Indigenous Archaeology: Historical Interpretation From An Emic Perspective, Stephanie M. Kennedy

Nebraska Anthropologist

This inquiry explores indigenous archaeology as a form of resistance to dominant Western science. Literature was identified and analyzed pertaining to the success of indigenous archaeology in the United States, British Columbia, and Australia. It is argued that a more inclusive archaeology is necessary, one that encourages partnerships with Indigenous groups in the interpretation of their own past. This study has implications for how we perceive Indigenous peoples from an archaeological perspective.

Doing Ethnography In An Urban Hospital Emergency Department Setting: Understanding How Culture Was Related To Emergency Physician Habitus, Renady Hightower

Wayne State University Dissertations

This hospital ethnography focused on the relationship between culture and emergency physician habitus. The habitus of these physicians was defined as those routine, patterned forms of behaviors and practices performed by the physicians while in the emergency department and while interacting with the patient during the physician-patient interaction. Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory was used to address how culture was related to the habitus of the emergency physician. The researcher found that culture was not only related to the habitus of these physicians, but it reproduced, and at times created, aspects of the habitus through the practices performed while in the …

Lucayan Beads From San Salvador, Bahamas (Ca. A.D. 900-1500), Jeffrey P. Blick, Richard Kim, Tyler G. Hill

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

A variety of Lucayan shell, stone, and coral beads as well as beadmaking waste was recovered from several sites on San Salvador, Bahamas. Following detailed analysis, comparisons to other beadmaking sites in the Greater Caribbean region indicate that fabrication, material, color preference, and even general forms are similar across great distances from the Maya region to the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the Bahamian Archipelago. In some cases, beads appear to have been made at the household level (Middle Pre-Classic Maya, Post Saladoid Lucayans), although certain stratified societies (later Maya, Classic Taíno) seem to have exerted more control or monopoly …

The Place Of The Person In Lis Research: An Exploration In Methodology And Representation, David H. Michels

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this exploratory study, the researcher reflects on personal experience as a student at an academic library over the course of one year of PhD study. Data were gathered using an autoethnographic methodology, and the reflections on these data are presented in the form of three two-minute video clips narrated with accompanying poems. This study assumes that the different paradigms and theories about information behaviour affect how the individual is understood within this system. These reflections raise questions about the influences our models have at ground level of the library profession and the people libraries claim to serve.

The Burden Of Pursuing Treatment Abroad: Three Stories Of Medical Travelers From Yemen, Beth Kangas

Peer Reviewed Articles

This case study features stories of patients from Yemen, a low-income country in the Arabian Peninsula, who traveled abroad for medical care. Their stories, drawn from interviews with Yemeni medical travelers in India, highlight the economic and emotional burden of pursuing treatment abroad. These stories of chronic non-communicable diseases and serious injuries depart from the common portrayal of medical tourists as wealthy elective patients from the North traveling for cosmetic surgery. The stories center on the demand and benefit of technological medicine for patients from low-income countries and raise questions about what constitutes ‘health’ when non-communicable conditions often entail ongoing …

Re-Imagining The Nature Of Development: Biodiversity Conservation And Pastoral Visions In The Northern Areas, Pakistan, Nosheen Ali

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

Examines how, in the mountainous village of Shimshal, national parks and “community-based” conservation projects such as trophy hunting are deeply problematic, promoting exploitive ideologies of nature and development while delegitimizing the values and rights of pastoralists. The Shimshalis have creatively resisted the appropriations of their land by creating a Shimshal Nature Trust, implementing a model of ecological sovereignty instead of “community participation”—challenging the very logic of protected areas in international conservation.

Race, Class, And Whiteness In Gifted And Talented Identification: A Case Study, Kathleen Barlow, C. Elaine Dunbar

Anthropology and Museum Studies Faculty Scholarship

What began fifteen years ago as a volunteer effort to promote desegregation via a gifted and talented magnet school has become a case study analyzing inequalities in the identification of young children for gifted and talented services. We use Cheryl Harris’ (1993) argument that “whiteness” is a form of property that creates and maintains inequalities through the conjoining of race and class. We show how gifted and talented status meets the criteria of white property interests and is defended by recourse to law and policy. Efforts to improve identification of students for gifted services reveal that the implicit operation of …

Ethnographic Reflection On Group Formation In Blizzard's "World Of Warcraft", John Christopher Spottke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cyberanthropology or the anthropology of cyber space/culture is an emerging subfield of cultural anthropology that deals with the varied integration of human beings and technology. This specialized area of study focuses on topics ranging from new technologies used in ethnographic research to information and communication technologies utilized by specific societal groups. Communication technology encompasses the World Wide Web, email, and online multiperson interactive spaces such as chatrooms and video games. In this work, I ethnographically investigate human social interactions in the online gaming realm of World of Warcraft. On the whole, the expanding numbers of virtual communities in existence today …

Sticks And Stones: Fracture Analysis Of The University Of Iowa-Stanford Collection, Diane Eddie

Honors Program Theses

Bones are an integral part to the human body. They support the entire system, help produce blood, and serve as places for muscles to attach. The condition of bones can say something about the conditions a person lived in. When and how bones warp and fail can also reflect upon the living conditions of a person. Fractures in bones prior to death can show the types of stressors the person had to put up with in life or if there was a particular type of stressor for a certain population. The number of individuals in the University of Iowa-Stanford Collection …

Education In The New Latino Diaspora, Edmund T. Hamann, Linda Harklau

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In 2002 Hamann, Wortham, and Murillo noted that many U.S. states were hosting significant and often rapidly growing Latino populations for the first time and that these changes had multiple implications for formal schooling as well as out-of-school learning processes. They speculated about whether Latinos were encountering the same, often disappointing, educational fates in communities where their presence was unprecedented as in areas with a longstanding Latino presence. Only tentative conclusions could be provided at that time since the dynamics referenced were frequently novel and in flux.

In this chapter we revisit their inquiry in light of six subsequent years …

The Literary Fictioning Of John Gregory Bourke's Imperial Nostalgia, Toni K. Mcnair

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nineteenth-century Army Captain and American ethnographer John Gregory Bourke (b. 1846 - d. 1896) meticulously described and documented a vast amount of information on military life, geography, ecology, and people on both sides of the Mexican-American border, offering observations and opinions of American, Mexican, Mexican-American, Apache, Pueblo, Zuni and Plains Indian cultures. Because of his ethnographic studies of Mexican-Americans along the Rio Grande, cultural studies scholars, José E. Limón and José David Saldí­var have identified John Gregory Bourke as complicit in the U.S. government's imperialist project. Referring to Renato Rosaldo's anthropological theory of imperialist nostalgia, These authors declare Bourke's work …

Courting And Consorting With The Global: The Local Politics Of An Emerging World Heritage Site In Sulawesi, Indonesia, Kathleen M. Adams

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I begin this chapter with a vignette concerning the events that led to the selection of a particular Toraja hamlet (known as Ke'te' Kesu') for tentative inclusion on UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites. In this portion of the chapter I also unpack some of the local reactions to this selection and contrast these reactions with an analysis of UNESCO conception~ and assumptions pertaining to World Heritage Sites, many of which are entwined with romantic assumptions about ancient life-ways under siege by the contemporary world. I then turn to trace the historyofKe'te' Kesu', from its colonial roots to the present, …

Understanding Gender-Based Violence: Evidence From Kilimanjaro Assessment Of Rombo And Moshi Rural, Jane L. Saffitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From Graceful Adaptations To Jarring Collisions: Oberlin Students’ Experiences Integrating Divergent Conceptions Of Gender, Rebecca Elizabeth Witheridge

Honors Papers

This thesis explores the ways in which straight, cisgender Oberlin College students conceive of gender, and is based upon ethnographic data collected from interviews the author conducted with fifteen informants. Oberlin College is known for its acceptance of gay and transgender students, and the ways in which Oberlin College students self-actively challenge gender norms is visible everywhere, from the gender identity oriented course offerings to the all-gender bathrooms common across campus. The overarching conception of gender at Oberlin College that is prevalent and dominant challenges traditional ideas of gender and gender identity as being fixed to the body, biological, and …

Citizenship In The Humanities And Social Sciences: A Selective Bibliography, 2000-2009, Wayne State University School Of Library And Information Science, Winter 2010 Lis 7160, James E. Van Loon, H.G.B. Anghelescu

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

Citizenship in the Humanities and Social Sciences is a selective bibliography consisting of citations to works published during the years 2000-2009 on citizenship-related topics in the humanities and social sciences. Primarily consisting of books/chapters and scholarly journal articles, the bibliography also includes other materials (case studies, reports, dissertations, and working papers) for which scholarship, authority and relevance have been established. Most cited works are published in the English language, although articles published in other languages using a Latin alphabet are also included. Citations were retrieved during January-March 2010 from a variety of aggregated databases accessed through the Wayne State University …

People Of Deir El-Medineh: A Preliminary Paleopathology Study, Lisa Sabbahy Dr.

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A History Of American Settlement At Camp Atterbury, Steven D. Smith, Chris J. Cochran, Engineer Research And Development Center Champaign Il Construction Engineering Research Lab

Faculty Publications

This report details the history of 19th and 20th century farm and community settlement within the Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center, IN. It also provides a historic context for the identification, evaluation, and preservation of significant historic properties within installation boundaries. This historic context defines property types, poses research questions, and provides evaluation criteria based on the Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center's settlement history, in an effort to develop a comprehensive program of multiple site evaluation.

Where New Meanings Spring: The Relationship Between Indigenous Cultural Meanings For Freshwater Springs And Management Practices: Analysis Of Stories From Kalbarri, Western Australia, Tamara Lee Murdock

Theses : Honours

While Indigenous peoples' practices have been acknowledged to change and evolve, whether Indigenous cultural meanings invested in a specific place also change and/or evolve over time, and the affect these changes may have on land and water practices has generally been ignored. This study explores the relationship between Indigenous cultural meanings and land and water stewardship practices, and whether these change over time. A qualitative research design was employed in this study to emphasise the complex and dynamic nature of language and the relationship between people, culture and nature. This study utilised interviews collected from traditional Indigenous people concerning stories …

An Archaeological Model Of Northern Warren County Prehistory With Survey Data, Whitney Alina Mark

Honors Program Theses

The following paper is an outline of prehistoric cultures within Central Iowa and more specifically northern Warren County. The purpose of this study was the evaluation of the archaeological evidence near Middle River and the creation of a model to explain the location of this evidence. The model was created in order to predict what types of sites are common as well as what topographical locations they are located on. The number and location of known sites, as well as their cultural identification was analyzed in order to determine the probability that cultural remains could be found on the survey …

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’S Decolonizing Ritual De Conocimiento, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s work makes up one of the many Chican@ works that contribute another history, a history repressed by the national discourses on both sides of the border. Influenced by antecedents of U.S. Hispanic Literature who superposed “official” history with another history, Chicano activists had already enacted a retrieval of pre-conquest histories to revive their people’s historical consciousness. As Saldívar-Hull states in “Mestiza Consciousness and Politics: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/ La frontera,” the publication of Borderlands/ La Frontera distinguished itself from the Chicano movement’s as it unveiled the curtain that hid the Aztec goddesses and kept aspects of pre-conquest history …

Policing: A Sociologist’S Response To An Anthropological Account, Peter Moskos

Publications and Research

Social science writing should not ape quantitative science in format, structure, or style. If we can’t explain ourselves to others in a style both illuminating and interesting, we won’t and don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Too many in the Ivory Tower cling to the belief that research and academic writing must conform to a “scientific” format. Quality writing is more art than science. To be relevant, writing need not be – indeed should not be – rooted in a limited model of “hypothesis, replicable experiment, findings, discussion.” The more jargon and sociobabble we anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnographers spew out, …

“We Went To The Hills": Four Afghan Life Stories, James M. Weir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines four Afghan life stories for prevalent micro-historical perspectives on shared Afghan macro-historical experiences. The introduction explains my background, motivations and objectives for conducting life history research in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005. The first chapter outlines an approach applied to examining life stories that addresses three interrelated questions: first, how the narrator's presentation is related to the memory of the actual events narrated (biographical chronology), second, how a narrative image/s of a person's past is established in relationships to individually significant audience/s (narrative self / audience), and third, how interrelationships between the individual …

Tales Of The Tribe Of Ishmael, Brian Siegel

Anthropology Publications

This is a history of the Tribe of Ishmael, a famous and the only urban cacogenic family in the American eugenics movement.

Domestication Alone Does Not Lead To Inequality: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission Among Horticulturalists, Michael Gurven, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L. Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric Schniter, Christopher Von Rueden, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital, including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and household wealth, and relational capital in the form of coalitional support and field labor. Wealth inequality is moderate for most forms of wealth, and intergenerational wealth transmission is low for material resources and moderate for embodied and relational wealth. Our analysis suggests that domestication alone does not transform social structure; rather, the presence of scarce, defensible resources may be required before inequality …

Social Categories And Health Care Outcomes: African American Women And Hiv Survival In The Urban South, Alyson J. O'Daniel

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This ethnographic research examines the daily life and institutional conditions under which low-income Black women in urban North Carolina perceived and attended to HIV health-related needs. I focus specifically on the interplay among women’s living conditions, programmatic service needs, and their strategies for navigating the local system of care to explore and refine the categorical label “low income.” I found that there were significant differences among study participants in terms of their monthly incomes and financial resources, housing quality and status, and personal experiences with incarceration and substance abuse. The economic differences among women translated into social differences within the …

“Everyday Symbols For Mediation” Conflict And Cooperation Over The Management Of Cultural And Natural Resources Within The Big South Fork National River And Recreation Area, Carol Jo Evans

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods, this in-depth ethnographic study of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area (BSFNRRA) examines social conflict and resistance stemming from competing values, definitions, and concerns over the management of cultural and natural resources within the region. The timing of this project is fortuitous for the National Park Service (NPS) has completed the creation of a ten year General Management Plan. Thus, we are provided with an opportunity to study and analyze the policy and methodology that park officials are required to follow in creating a management plan and eliciting public participation.

The first …