Digital Commons Network^™

Cooperative Conservation: Increasing Capacity Through Community Partnerships: Cultural Site Stewardship Program: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending December 31, 2004, Margaret N. Rees

Cultural Site Stewardship Program

A list of cultural sites unique to each of the four agencies is in the process of being compiled by the project manager. The first round, currently numbering more than 300 sites, is being defined in general categories by location and urgency for attention. Additions, refinements, and corrections will be ongoing.

Trainers for Nevada Heritage Site Stewardship were questioned in order to begin tailoring operating procedures for CSSP recruitment and training.

Burial Practices In Southern Appalachia., Donna W. Stansberry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted in an attempt to determine whether certain burial practices are unique to the people of Southern Appalachia. Eight individuals were interviewed, including a minister and a funeral director. As a result of the research, it was found that, although a strong sense of community and religion still prevails, making certain burial rituals distinctive to the people of Southern Appalachia, they are slowly eroding due to the growing presence of the modern American funeral industry.

Qualitative research methods were used to analyze a segment of the Southern Appalachian population, with literature reviews of related material and in-depth …

A Reconstruction Of Moreau Chambers' 1937 Excavation Of A Chickasaw Village In Northeastern Mississippi, Ladonna F. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the archival data relating to the earliest professional investigation of a Chickasaw village site was done in order to reconstruct the excavation and place the artifacts in their appropriate context. A progress report written near the beginning of the project, excavation photographs with annotations and catalogue entries for the primary documentation were available to begin reconstruction. The original field notes have been lost but there were a limited amount of data that were abstracted from them by an earlier researcher. Although an overview of the excavations was derived, there was not sufficient data to allow the reconstruction …

Steps To A Political Ecology Of Amazonia, Steven L. Rubenstein

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Many recent studies of Amazonia have documented the ways in which agents of the state or capital seek to colonize not only indigenous land and labor, but indigenous desires as well.  This colonization of the third kind has disastrous consequences: recently, William Fisher asked, “Why ... did it seem that Xikrin would sell their grandchildren’s environmental birthright just at the moment when reservations were finally being demarcated and boundaries guaranteed for generations to come?”  Here I argue that this sort of question must become one of the central concerns of Amazonian ethnology.   Drawing on work by Fisher and others, I …

Life In Dis-Place: Re-Searching Processes Of Imagining With Enewetak-Ujelang People, Laurence Marshall Carucci

Pacific Studies

The current article attempts to outline the way in which ongoing research with the Enewetak-Ujelang community and with other Marshall Islanders over a period of nearly three decades has required the author to reformulate taken for granted ideas about "culture," "the field," and "field research" as well as presuppositions about self/other and about ethnographic writing. Not only has the shape of "the field" shifted substantially during this time period, becoming much more multifaceted and multilocational, so too, the identity of the author has been recontoured many times over by members of Enewetak-Ujelang communities. Therefore, neither "field" nor "fieldworker" are ever …

Property As Legal Knowledge: Means And Ends, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article takes anthropologists’ renewed interest in property theory as an opportunity to consider legal theory-making as an ethnographic subject in its own right. My focus is on one particular construct – the instrument, or relation of means to ends, that animates both legal and anthropological theories about property. An analysis of the workings of this construct leads to the conclusion that rather than critique the ends of legal knowledge, the anthropology of property should devote itself to articulating its own means.

Framing The Bride: Globalizing Beauty And Romance In Taiwan’S Bridal Industry, By Bonnie Adrian, Marc L. Moskowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Communalism To Consumerism: Consumer Culture In Samoa, Amelia Neptune

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Communalism is a system of living where the good of a total group is prioritized over individual wealth or wellbeing. Consumerism is a fascination with the act of purchasing and acquiring goods. This paper attempts to find out how consumer culture might clash or coincide with a tradition of communalism within the Pacific island nation of Samoa. It looks at the history of communalism within Samoa, and how communalism has been interpreted in Samoa’s modern society, manifesting in the form of remittances and formal gift exchanges.

With the introduction of a cash economy from the West, the paper looks at …

Cooperative Conservation: Increasing Capacity Through Community Partnerships: Cultural Site Stewardship Program: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending September 30, 2004, Margaret N. Rees

Cultural Site Stewardship Program

Although the task agreement formally commenced June 30, 2004, the agreement was not fully executed by both parties until July 22, 2004. Since that date, UNLV met with the Interagency Cultural Resources Team on July 23, 2004. Bobbie Antonich, Government Technical Representative for the National Park Service, and Nancy Flagg, Director of the UNLV Public Lands Initiative, brought the team up-to-date on the status of the task agreement, UNLV’s role in fulfilling the agreement.

Prickly Pear Cactus And Pastoralism In Southwest Madagascar, Jeffrey C. Kaufmann

Faculty Publications

Madagascar's Mahafale cattle raisers have adopted several species of the prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) into their subsistence patterns. Their use of Opuntia has had the economic effects of both sedentary and transhumant intensification. It lengthens the stay of pastoralists at their villages and structures the timing of their seasonal migration to distant pastures.

Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic And Anthropological Knowledge, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

“The Bank of Japan is our mother,” bankers in Tokyo sometimes said of Japan's central bank. Drawing on this metaphor as an ethnographic resource, and on the example of central bankers who sought to unwind their own technocratic knowledge by replacing it with a real-time machine, I retrace the ethnographic task of unwinding technocratic knowledge from those anthropological knowledge practices that critique technocracy. In so doing, I draw attention to special methodological problems—involving the relationship between ethnography, analysis, and reception—in the representation and critique of contemporary knowledge practices.

The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule In The Río De La Plata, Bret Gustafson

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Barbara Ganson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. xii + 290pp., maps, illustrations, appendices, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8047-3602-2.

History, Ethnography, And Politics In Amazonia: Implications Of Diachronic And Synchronic Variability In Marubo Politics, Javier Ruedas

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The idea that indigenous Amazonian societies have been and are essentially egalitarian has been criticized in recent years. This essay critiques frameworks for the study of power in lowland South America by examining diachronic and synchronic variation in Marubo political organization.  First, I analyze change over time in Marubo politics and how it relates to population fluctuations linked to contact situations.  Based on this analysis, I argue that the small, atomized villages that twentieth-century anthropologists perceived as typifying indigenous Amazonia were products of the historical processes of political organization. Next, I show that leaders of different Marubo villages range from …

Perspectival Anthropology And The Method Of Controlled Equivocation, Eduardo Viveiros De Castro

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article argues that doing anthropology means comparing anthropologies. Comparison is not just our primary analytic tool, it is also our raw material and our ultimate grounding, since what we compare are always and necessarily, in one form or other, comparisons. If, as Marilyn Strathern suggests, culture consists in the way people draw analogies between different domains of their worlds, then every culture is a multidimensional process of comparison. Likewise, if anthropology studies culture through culture, then, following Roy Wagner, whatever operations characterize our investigations must also be general properties of culture. Intracultural relations, or internal comparisons, and intercultural relations, …

The Fight For Political Representation In A Southern Suburb: The Use Of The Voting Rights Act And The Federal Court System By Black Plaintiffs In Henrico County, Virginia, Thomas J. Shields

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

There has been an abundance of written work on the historic fight for black political equality in southern urban areas. However, almost no scholarly work exists on the fight for black political equality in the rapidly expanding southern suburbs. This article analyzes the rise of the black population and its fight for political representation on the local governing board in Henrico County, a large suburb of Richmond, Virginia. The article details the increase in the black population in Henrico County from 1950 to 2000 and provides a descriptive analysis how black plaintiffs used the Voting Rights Act in a redistricting …

Living With Family And Foreigners: Egypt Female Tourist Guides' Narratives On Their Family, Work, And Identity, Junko Toriyama

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This is an ethnographic research project on Egyptian female tourist guides. Based on over forty semi-structured interviews, the study attempted to gain an insight into Egyptian female tourist guide's everyday life, especially focusing on her gender relations from two different angles; discourses and practices. Tourist guiding in Egypt is a relatively new occupation, as it was created to serve the demands of a growing international tourism industry. In one respect, it is an occupation to buff er two different cultures. The occupation offers a gender neutral criteria and gender neutral responsibility, and many women as well as men are working …

Wife Battering In Contemporary Cairo: An Exploratory Study In Rights And Perceptions, Iman Mohamed Eissa

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The universal phenomenon of wife battering has calamitous consequences on the battered woman, usurping her security, human agency and autonomy, thus relegating her to a secondary status citizen, incapable of contributing to the community's development. Research on wife battering in Egypt is very limited. The goal of this thesis is to explore battered women's lives in contemporary Cairo, focusing on battered wives' perceptions of abuse in relation to discrimination against women in Egypt and women's citizenship rights within the Egyptian state. This study was conducted using a qualitative research methodology. Ten in depth, semi-structured interviews were carried out with battered …

Roadside Memorial Practices: An Examination Of Landscapes Of Commemoration In Warren County, Kentucky, Michael Briggs

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Roadside memorials commemorating the death of automobile crash victims are scattered throughout the Kentucky landscape. This persistent cultural practice contains symbolic elements oftentimes indicative of religious connotations. Because there is a constitutional separation of church and government in the United States, these memorials can prelude controversy if located on state-maintained rights-of-way. This study examines Warren County, Kentucky, and analyzes the spatial distribution of these memorials on the landscape and the cultural implications to society because of their ties to death and dying. Scientific research in various fields of psychology, sociology, folk studies, geoscience, and religious studies was analyzed, including religious …

Chocolate Plantation: A Geophysical And Archaeological Examination Of A Sea Island Cotton Plantation On Sapelo Island, Georgia, Christopher William Simmons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chocolate Field, the area containing the ruins of Chocolate Plantation, was occupied from the Late Archaic through the antebellum period into the 20th century. A complex overlay of architectural remains generated during the operation of the plantation by everyone from French nobles to 20^th century millionaires is buried at the site. A four- instrument geophysical survey in conjunction with test excavations provides data which make it possible to delineate the extent of the site, determine structure function, and separate the plantation into occupational phases. These results will ultimately serve to help link the Geechee/Gullah community presently living on Sapelo …

The Corporate Culture Of Nevada Hospitals, Sherese Marie Warren

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The initial focus of this study is to identify the dominant culture of Nevada hospitals and to determine whether hospital organizations in Nevada share similar corporate values and beliefs. If differences exist, what are the distinctions in those organizations that make them different? The competing values framework was used to diagnose four corporate culture types of each hospital. The clan culture possesses high affiliation and concern with teamwork and participation. The developmental culture is based on risk taking, innovation, and change. The hierarchical culture reflects values and norms associated with bureaucracy. The rational culture emphasizes efficiency and achievement (Quinn & …

From Colombia To Japan: Anthropology In The Real World, Leandra Naranjo, Reimi Takeuchi, Peter Savastano, Cherubim Quizon

Petersheim Academic Exposition

2004 Petersheim Academic Exposition

Cross Burning, Cockfighting, And Symbolic Meaning: Toward A First Amendment Ethnography, Timothy Zick

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crowd Scenes: Pacific Collectivity And European Encounter, Vanessa Smith

Pacific Studies

This essay looks at the phenomenon of the Pacific crowd as registered within eighteenth-century voyage accounts. The experience of the crowd on the beach-an experience of being overwhelmed-was integral to European encounters with Pacific islanders. However, the impact of the crowd has been neglected within Pacific scholarship, which has not accessed the insights of crowd theory within analyses of contact. Concomitantly, crowd theory ignores the peripheral crowd scene. The crowd has been theorized as a predominantly metropolitan phenomenon and historicized in the context of (primarily industrial) urbanization. Through close textual analysis of a number of European voyage texts, particularly Bligh's …

Research Notes: Empty Nests And Parental Well-Being In An Asian-Pacific Population: An Exploratory Test, Thomas K. Pinhey

Pacific Studies

Guided by theories of role loss and role stress, this study explores mental health outcomes for parents in Guam's Asian-Pacific community whose last offspring has left the family "nest." In contrast with findings reported in studies of U.S. mainland populations, the results of analyses of data from Guam's 1991 Behavioral Risk Factor Survey (N = 398) indicate that the launching of the last offspring from family homes results in role loss and significantly greater emotional trauma for Asian-Pacific women, thus suggesting that parenting may be less stressful for women in Guam. I present a discussion of the implications of the …

A Model Of Animal Selfhood: Expanding Interactionist Possibilities, Leslie Irvine

Human and Animal Bonding Collection

Interaction between people and companion animals provides the basis for a model of the self that does not depend on spoken language. Drawing on ethnographic research in an animal shelter as well as interviews and autoethnography, this article argues that interaction between people and animals contributes to human selfhood. In order for animals to contribute to selfhood in the ways that they do, they must be subjective others and not just the objects of anthropomorphic projection. Several dimensions of subjectivity appear among dogs and cats, constituting a “core” self consisting of agency, coherence, affectivity, and history. Conceptualizing selfhood in this …

The Search For A New Islamic Identity: Middle Aged Elite Women, Noha Ali Abou Gazia

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the construction of a new Islamic identity by middle aged elite women in Egypt. I argue that the search for a new Islamic identity by elite women should be viewed as a redefinition of identity fully autonomous from the current codes imposed by the media. For them, the search for meaning takes place in the reconstruction of defensive identities informed by Islamic notions. The construction of a new Islamic identity by elite women should be viewed in terms the conflicts they face in society. The conflict arises from the society's endeavor to impose certain codes and the …

Gender, Forced Migration And Paid Domestic Work: Case Studies On Refugee Women Domestic Workers In Cairo, Amira Abderahman Ahmed

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The main aim of this thesis is to be able to fill a research gap with regard to women and their survival strategies with emphasis on refugee women, mostly from the Hom of Africa, who have fled to Cairo during the 1990s. The presence of refugee women in the domestic labor sector in Egypt is a relatively recent phenomenon. Cairo, as a large urban setting in the developing world, provides an interesting site where all of these distinct actors play the same role and share at least two structural factors: being migrant women and domestics. The basic argument of this …

Importation Of Obsidian At Cerro Palenque, Honduras: Results Of An Analysis By Edxrf, Julia A. Hendon

Anthropology Faculty Publications

The results of source analysis by EDXRF of obsidian artifacts from the Mesoamerican site of Cerro Palenque in Honduras are reported and changes over time discussed. Sources of obsidian include Ixtepeque, El Chayal, Jalapa, San Martin Jilotepeque, and San Barolome in Guatemala. Some Pachuca obsidian from Mexico was also found. Honduran sources include La Esperanza and La Union. The implications of the obsidian sources are discussed in the context of changes at Cerro Palenque over time as it becomes the largest settlement in the lower Ulua Valley (Sula Valley) in the ninth century AD.

Models Of Cosmic Order: Physical Expression Of Sacred Space Among The Ancient Maya, Jennifer P. Mathews, J. F. Garber

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Research

The archaeological record, as well as written texts, oral traditions, and iconographic representations, express the Maya perception of cosmic order, including the concepts of quadripartite division and layered cosmos. The ritual act of portioning and layering created spatial order and was used to organize everything from the heavens to the layout of altars. These acts were also metaphors for world creation, world order, and establishing the center as a position of power and authority. This article examines the articulations of these concepts from the level of caches to the level of regions from the past and present in an attempt …

Reviews And End Matter (V. 16, 2004)

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Gem and Ornamental Materials of Organic Origin, by Maggie Campbell Pedersen (2004), reviewed by Stefany Tomalin

World on a String: Parts One, Two, and Three, by Diana Friedberg and Lionel Friedberg (2004-2005), reviewed by Lois Rose Rose

Beads of Life: Eastern and Southern African Beadwork from Canadian Collections, by Marie-Louise Labelle (2005), reviewed by Margret Carey.