Digital Commons Network^™

No. 12: Rural-Urban Transition And Food Security In India, Chetan Choithani, Abdul Jaleel Cp, S Irudaya Rajan

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

As a growing proportion of world’s population lives in cities and towns, food security is increasingly acquiring an urban character. The locus of food security research and policy agendas has correspondingly expanded from rural areas to include cities and towns in the past few years. However, the dominant discourse on urbanization-food security relationship appears to be shaped by perspectives from the Global North and large cities, and shows a lack of adequate understanding of the urbanization-food security nexus in the small towns of the Global South. This paper aims to correct this bias. With a focus on India where urban …

The State Of Homelessness In Nevada, 2020, Annie Vong, Mae Ling Catayong, Christine Guardian, Abigail Boron, Maria Jerinic, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet examines data on homelessness in Nevada between 2007 and 2020. The original report, “State of Homelessness,” by the National Alliance to End Homelessness includes the number of homeless individuals that slept outside on any given night, how many beds in shelters went empty, and the number of homeless individuals per 10,000 individuals in each continuum of care in Nevada.

The Bearing Earth: Colonization, Conservation, And Political Ecology In Costa Rica (Coto Brus 1948 - Present), Pablo Alonso Arias-Benavides

Latin American Studies ETDs

This thesis presents two questions: How are relationships between people in Coto Brus and the land – specifically, forest – mediated by social, political, and economic forces? How are personal and collective identities expressed through relationship with the landscape? I chose Coto Brus because it is a forested region of Costa Rica which was populated with state support in the 1950s, and because it is my father’s hometown. In order to understand the subjective experiences of Costa Ricans involved in deforestation and reforestation, I performed interviews in the canton, visited conservation sites, and analyzed historical sources. This study combines multiscale …

The Work Of Pioneering Amish Studies Scholar Walter Kollmorgen: Annontations Of His 1940s Amish Publications, Cory Anderson

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Walter Kollmorgen’s two seminal contributions to Amish studies scholarship include the 1942 report “Culture of a Contemporary Rural Community: The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania” published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics, and his 1943 article “The Agricultural Stability of the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania” published in the American Journal of Sociology. His 1942 report was one of six mixed-methods studies that analyzed the relative in/stability of rural American communities during the Great Depression. The six-part series concluded that the Amish of Lancaster County, PA, weathered the …

The Elements Of Access: Designing Equitable Public Transit To National Forests, Abigail L. Johnson

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper asks what factors make a transportation system to a national forest appealing and accessible for people of color, Hispanic and Latino people, and people of a lower socioeconomic status. I use a conjoint analysis survey experiment to measure the favorability of transit-system attributes and compare favorability between local parks and Coconino National Forest as well as between racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. The findings of the study indicate no significant difference between preferences for traveling to a local park versus Coconino National Forest. This study does find that potential transit users favor a no-cost transit option over having …

No. 10: Linking Food Security With Development, Inequality And South-South Migration, Jonathan Crush, Sujata Ramachandran

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

In this paper, we draw attention to the ignored linkages between food security, inequality, and development with respect to South-South migration. Building on core arguments reflecting on these ties and empirical studies from diverse sending and receiving contexts, we outline five distinctive ways in which these multidimensional relationships and interactions operate. The first aspect assesses how inequality of opportunities and outcomes affects food security to shape migration aspirations and movements. The second aspect discusses how food insecurity in a variety of conflict and crisis circumstances acts as the main determinant and precipitant of forced migration. The third aspect addresses migrant …

No. 11: An Exploratory Study Of The Food Security Of Displaced Venezuelans In Ecuadorian Cities During Covid-19, Taymi Milan, Cheryl Martens

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

The displacement of over 7 million Venezuelans is reconfiguring urban contexts in Latin America. Ecuador is the third largest receiving country for Venezuelan migrants. The absence of state migration policies combined with the worsening economic situation across the region has had a significant impact on migrant food security. Although food security and migration have been studied extensively in Latin America, their intersectional relationships remain under-researched. This paper draws on a systematic review and focus group research to analyze the food security conditions of displaced Venezuelans in urban con- texts in Ecuador and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the …

Migration And Terrorism In Europe: A Nexus Of Two Crises, Shreya Sinha

International Journal on Responsibility

The migration surge into the borders of the European Union has become a major problem in Europe as it has led to several challenges to societal integration and political legitimacy. It is also a danger to cultural identity, domestic and labour market stability as well as internal security, such that a migrant is often perceived as a threat to European society. The first part of the paper attempts to throw light on this migration-security nexus in Europe and how migration has developed into a security issue. The second part discusses how the two crises of migration and terrorism have come …

Concrete July: Forging A Critical Peace In Korea From Fragments Of The Past, Sheen Kim

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality In Canada's 'Caregiver Program': The Impact Of Race, Class, And Gender On Filipina Women In The 'Global Care Chain', Taylor Simsovic

Culture, Society, and Praxis

This paper explores the experiences of migrant Filipina caregivers in Canada under the Live-in Caregiver's Program (LCP) and the subsequent Caregivers Program (CP), focusing on the intersecting factors of race, class, and gender. Through a literature review, the study investigates the distinct and precarious position occupied by Filipina migrant caregivers, who face marginalization by the Canadian government. The framework of the 'global care chain' proposed by Aggarwal and Das Gupta (2013) and the concept of the 'international transfer of caretaking' presented by Parreñas (2000) are employed to illuminate the devaluation of 'women's work,' particularly that performed by migrant Filipina and …

Reintegration Of Return Migrants In Northern Ghana And Their Remigration Decisions: A Qualitative Study, Benzies Isaac Adu-Okoree Rev. Dr., Daniella Delali Sedegah Dr., Philippa Jilly Joel Premkumar Dr., Prize Fourthson Mcapreko Dr.

The Qualitative Report

A political discussion has recently erupted over the return of migrant kayayei (head porters) from Northern Ghana. Return migrants were studied meagrely with regard to their reintegration process, skills acquired at their destinations, and chances for productive engagement. These chances allow the return migrants to pursue socially desirable goals. This study attempts to answer the questions pertaining to why migrants remain at home in terms of their experiences in the reintegration process and the reasons for re-migration. The purpose of this study was to explore how the socioeconomic environment of home communities aids the reintegration of return migrants from Ghana's …

The Association Between Criminal Defendants And Health In Kalamazoo County (2012-2016), Ernest Baffour Tweneboa

Masters Theses

Addressing exposure to criminal defendants as a public health issue is crucial to achieving health equity. The presence of criminal defendants has been linked to adverse health behaviors or outcomes that might be associated with anxiety, depression, and negative coping mechanisms. However, crime as a social variable has been understudied. This study therefore seeks to find the association between crime-related stressors and adverse health effects within Kalamazoo County (a mid-sized county with a population of about 250,000) between 2012 and 2016. The methods employed include geocoding of defendant addresses and mapping of defendant rates aggregated at the tract level using …

Squeezed Out By The Market, Seeking Strength In The Network: Makeshift Temples And The Spatio-Affective Logics Of Survival In Singapore, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper offers an understanding of the spatio-affective workings of religious organisations – and the marketplaces they operate in and through – that go beyond capitalist logics. We do so by examining how makeshift temples representing various forms of ‘Chinese religion’ survive in Singapore. Capitalist logics fail to explain how such marginal and precarious religious organisations, which might be ‘squeezed out’ by the market, nonetheless manage to survive amid competition. Moreover, scarce attention has been paid to how religion as a social-affective system might mediate the functioning of a religious market. This paper fills the lacuna by bringing an understanding …

Marginal To Whom? Reflections On Gow’S "Purús Song", Magnus Course

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

This paper constitutes a personal exploration of the impact of the work of Peter Gow on my own attempts to think through specific ethnographic problems, both in the Mapuche communities of Southern Chile and the Gaelic communities of Western Scotland. I focus in particular on how Gow’s lesser-known essay “Purús Song” inverts received wisdom about the relationships between center and periphery, and between nation-state and Indigenous people. I see this as one iteration of Gow’s broader aim of letting ethnographic realities transform theoretical complacencies.

Indigenous Transformations In The Comunidad Nativa: Rethinking Kinship And Its Limitations In An Expanding Resource Frontier, Evan Killick, Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti

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

In Of Mixed Blood, Peter Gow sets out an account of the transformations of kinship and the construction of social relations among Indigenous, mainly Yine (Piro), people of the Bajo Urubamba valley in the early 1980s, when Peru’s “Comunidades Nativas” (“Native Communities”) were receiving their new official titles. We revisit Peter’s proposition by comparing it our more recent ethnographic engagements with Indigenous Asháninka/Ashéninka communities in the region. While tracing continuities from his observations, we also show how social relations now play out in different ways, as certain important resources have become scarcer and the need for …

An Amazonianist And His History, Victor Cova, Juan Pablo Sarmiento

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

No abstract provided.

‘One Piro Man I Knew Well’: A Brief Commentary On An Amazonian Myth And Its History, Leif Grunewald

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

This is a book review for An Amazonian myth and History, to the special volume to honor Peter Gow.

Civilized Elders And Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories Of Contemporary Amazonia, Casey High

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

In this article I consider the impact of Peter Gow’s writing on indigenous histories as a key area of research on Amazonia. Building on his study of kinship as history on the Bajo Urubamba (1991) he presented a regional perspective on the dynamic social categories by which Amazonian people understand their relations with various “others.” Focusing on indigenous agency and modes of thought, Gow challenged certain lines of historical thinking that dominated anthropology at the time. I explore how his ethnographic approach to history has influenced a generation of regional scholarship, including my own work on memory and social transformation …

Desire, Difference, And Productivity: Reflections On “The Perverse Child” And Its Continued Relevance, Christopher Hewlett

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

This article is concerned with the relationships through which children have been born, raised, and made into Amahuaca people over the past 75 years, and within contemporary Native Communities on the Inuya River since their formation beginning in the 1980s. The process of making children into kin among Amahuaca people is similar to that described throughout much of lowland South America. The production, preparation, and sharing of proper food (manioc, plantains, fish, and game) as well as manioc beer are central aspects of sociality and the formation of specific kinds of bodies. While the processes of sharing substances, demonstrating care, …

Review: Of Mixed Blood, Luis Felipe Torres

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

The review revises the most inportant concepts of the book Of Mixed Blood.

Between Cocama And Modernity In The Ucamara (Peruvian Amazon), Marta Krokoszyńska

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

Combining a contemporary ethnographic perspective with a review of historical records, the article extends Peter Gow’s re-reading of the ex-Cocama phenomenon in the Western Amazon. It argues that the foundation of the Amazonian Peruvian town of Requena at the beginning of the 20th century took place during an important historical moment in the region. Within the post-rubber boom context, schools became a particularly important idiom that enabled Requena’s growth as the centre of education and modernity. The paper investigates relations between the widespread desire for education in the Ucamara region, and Cocama descendants’ and other “ribereño” ex-Mainas peoples’ specific notions …

Demographic And Population Change In Mountain West Cities And Suburbs, 2020 Census, Zachary Billot, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet examines the five metro areas with populations exceeding one million in the Mountain West, drawing from the Brookings Institution report, “Today’s Suburbs are Symbolic of America’s Rising Diversity: A 2020 Census Portrait” by William Frey. Demographic data are included for both primary city and suburban portions for the major metros in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah.

To Open A Clearing: Cultivating Spaces Of Endurance In The Upper Amazon, Brunno De Melo Meirelles Douat

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

To effectively challenge the policies of extraction implemented by late liberal regimes, the Waorani communities from Upper Amazon have devised spatial strategies to defend their traditional territory. By re-examining the concept of the contact zone and unfolding settler and Indigenous literature, spatialities, and worldviews, this thesis suggests the concept of forest Clearings as a means to explore spatial forms of endurance.

Clearings emerge within the Amazon in sites where encounters between divergent worldviews embody otherwise modes of existence. Through a series of fieldwork reflections, these Clearings are perceived as spaces where ontological negotiations are more likely to occur, strategies of …

Operation Summer Care: Territories Of The Stewardship-Hospitality Complex, George Papamattheakis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Operation Summer Care studies the expanding interest that the hospitality industry takes in the biogeophysical environment. Natural surroundings have long been an essential operational precondition of tourism in the global sunbelt, but contemporary environmental anxieties increasingly motivate different strata of hosts to take a more active role in environmental management. Usually the domain of the state, biogeophysical entities and their spaces—plants and animals, sand formations, wetlands, entire ecosystems and protected areas—are measured, ordered, and managed by actors adjacent to the tourism industry. At the same time, the socio-technical mechanisms of environmental intervention and calculation are conveniently framed as practices of …

Bone Flute:Exploring Voices From The Margins Of Entrepreneurship With Expressive Therapies, Cherith A. Pedersen

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

The problem under investigation is the lived experiences of marginalized entrepreneurs in Barbados. The group of entrepreneurs being explored have been marginalized culturally, institutionally, and resourcefully. The research questions were: How do marginalized entrepreneurs experience business-related encounters due to their identity? How does their identity and use of their “voice” in business situations, position them as businesspersons? Can photography illustrate how they see themselves as businesspersons? There were eight participants in the study, who ranged in age from 18 to 69 years. They were three females and five males who belonged to diverse marginalized identities such as a single mother, …

Abolition Ecologies And The Making Of Freedom As A Place In Bayview-Hunters Point, Spencer Daniel O'Hara

Master's Theses

In this paper, I critically explore the subjectivities of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), part of the largest redevelopment project in San Francisco since 1906. Applying an abolition ecologies framework, I ask what explains the duplicity of the Shipyard as a site of radioactive contamination and capital accumulation, and in the same time-space one that creates the conditions for radical place-making. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is a former commercial and military shipyard located on a peninsula in southeastern San Francisco. Motivated by its desire for a major shipbuilding and repair facility to project maritime power in the Pacific, the Navy …

No. 09: Emerging Digital Technologies And Cross-Border Food Remittances Of Zimbabwean Migrants In Cape Town, South Africa, During The Early Covid-19 Pandemic, Sean Sithole, Daniel Tevera, Mulugeta F. Dinbabo

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

This paper examines the emerging unexplored synergies between digital-mobile technologies and cross-border food remittances in Southern Africa. Cell phones and apps or applications for smart mobile devices offer migrants new formal ways of sending food remittances. With large volumes of cash and non-cash items flowing through it, the South Africa-Zimbabwe remittance corridor is a priority market for these new fintech companies. However, recent discussions on digital remittances have focused largely on cash transfers. Similarly, limited attention has been paid to food remittances in the broad discussion on remittances, even though cross-border food transfers are crucial for food and nutrition security …

The Affective Landscapes Of Herbalism In New Mexico, Samantha Angelou Stroud

Geography ETDs

Herbalism, or practices which use plants for medicinal purposes, is tied to traditions in several cultures of the American Southwest, including Indigenous herbal medicine, Mexican-American curanderismo, and Western herbal traditions. Herbalism has been steadily gaining mainstream popularity since the late 1960s, alongside counterculture, holistic health, and back-to-nature movements, introducing many newcomers to the practice. This study asks: How does herbalism create and attach meaning to plants, cultures, and place in New Mexico? What are the affective landscapes produced by herbalism in New Mexico? And, to what extent do meaningful attachments manifest in ethics and actions of care? I argue that …

L’Économie Solidaire De Kabylie : Une Perspective Critique, Mohamed-Amokrane Zoreli

Journal of Amazigh Studies

Résumé :

Dans cet article, l’auteur réalise, pour le contexte de la Kabylie, une étude d’ensemble de l’évolution des pratiques d’économie sociale, du modèle originel jusqu’à la période actuelle, en passant par les différentes phases de colonisation puis d’indépendance. L’objectif est triple. Voir d’abord quels sont les ressorts, les mécanismes et les finalités des solidarités locales originelles et comment elles se mobilisent pour répondre à des besoins socio-économiques et politiques. Voir ensuite comment l’Etat-nation et la mondialisation ont impacté dans le temps long ces solidarités locales, en les démobilisant et immobilisant par différents moyens, juridiques, économiques et politiques. Voir enfin …

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.