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Social and Cultural Anthropology

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The Role Of Forensic Anthropological Techniques In Identifying America's War Dead From Past Conflicts, William Belcher, Calvin Y. Shiroma, Lesley A. Chesson, Gregory E. Berg, Miranda Jans Jan 2021

The Role Of Forensic Anthropological Techniques In Identifying America's War Dead From Past Conflicts, William Belcher, Calvin Y. Shiroma, Lesley A. Chesson, Gregory E. Berg, Miranda Jans

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The Scientific Analysis Directorate of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is a unique entity within the U.S. Government. This agency currently houses the world's largest, accredited skeletal identification laboratory in the world, in terms of the size of the scientific staff, global mission, and number of annual identifications. Traditional forensic anthropology is used for the formation of a biological profile (biological sex, stature, population affinity/ancestry, and age) as well as trauma and pathologies that may be compared with historical records and personnel files. Since World War II, various scientists associated with DoD have conducted …

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Disrupted Identities And Forced Nomads: A Post-Disaster Legacy Of Neocolonialism In The Island Of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Edith Gonzalez, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Jennifer D. Adams Jan 2021

Disrupted Identities And Forced Nomads: A Post-Disaster Legacy Of Neocolonialism In The Island Of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles, Sophia Perdikaris, Rebecca Boger, Edith Gonzalez, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Jennifer D. Adams

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the forced evacuation of the island of Barbuda due to Hurricane Irma, the Barbudan people have experienced an exile and return to a ‘new’ geographical, political, and economic context, albeit on the same island. With the specter of climate change and the potential impacts on island communities and nations, we use Barbuda, sister island of Antigua in the Lesser Antilles, to examine the trajectory of nomadic identities as they navigate changes that threaten contemporary land relationships and culture. Since its first permanent settlement in the 17th Century, the island geography of Barbuda has been fundamental to …

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Who’S Doing The Dishes?: Reproductive Labor, Gender, And Middle-Class Subjectivities In Rabat, Morocco, Miriam Ruth Dike Jan 2021

Who’S Doing The Dishes?: Reproductive Labor, Gender, And Middle-Class Subjectivities In Rabat, Morocco, Miriam Ruth Dike

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

The dissertation uses reproductive labor as a lens to examine how gendered and classed subjectivities are continuously created, performed, and subtly transformed within and outside of urban middle-class Moroccan households. Reproductive labor is broadly defined as unpaid and paid labor associated with caregiving and domestic roles including but not limited to cleaning, cooking, and child care. Subjectivities are the perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and desires of subjects within uneven relations of power. This research is based on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Rabat-Sale, Morocco including fifty-seven semi-structured interviews with married working- and middle-class Moroccans, as well as extensive participant observation …

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Queer Arab American Experiences: Navigating Cross Cultural Expectations Of Gender And Sexuality, Gabriela Mansour Jan 2021

Queer Arab American Experiences: Navigating Cross Cultural Expectations Of Gender And Sexuality, Gabriela Mansour

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The understanding of the experiences of queer Arab Americans and the ways in which they navigate cross cultural expectations of gender and sexuality is limited in the anthropology or social sciences scholarship. The available scholarship focuses primarily on queerness in juxtaposition to Islam, which is not relatable to all Arab Americans as they are a religiously diverse group. Through an intersectional approach, this research, conducted from April 2020 to May 2021, explores the lived experiences of queer Arab Americans from across the United States (U.S.) while seeking to identify potential commonalities that could encompass a more general queer Arab American …

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A Fat Imposter: The Embodied Intersection Between Race, Body Type And Fatness In Margaret Cho’S Comedy, Julia Cox Jan 2021

A Fat Imposter: The Embodied Intersection Between Race, Body Type And Fatness In Margaret Cho’S Comedy, Julia Cox

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Margaret Cho is a comedic goddess who, in her mockery, serves flaming hot social commentary about race, body image, and fatness. Within this thesis, I used critical discourse analysis to understand how Margaret Cho embodies Asianness, whiteness, and the body types and images prescribed respectively. While working on data analysis, I came across a common media trope of fat women: the use of indexically Southern (United States), Appalachian, and Working class indexicals in speech and lexical items. I connected the ideologies surrounding Southern and Appalachian language to the inequalities that fat women face. This voicing had not previously been written …

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Identity-Making And Spatialization Among Colby College's International Students, John G.G. Shamgochian Jan 2021

Identity-Making And Spatialization Among Colby College's International Students, John G.G. Shamgochian

Honors Theses

This thesis presents the research that I have done for the award of Honors in Anthropology. The following text begins with a vignette that highlights identity-making and spatialization among international students in a moment of precarity and visibility. The “Introduction” records the development of my research from its initial topics to its current form, my methodology, my positionality, and the ethics of my research. Following this, in the chapter titled “Internationality,” I lay out the interwoven social, institutional, and political processes which shape the experiences of academic migrants. Because the purpose of this chapter is to fully contextualize my argument, …

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Revitalization In The Alabama Black Belt: Cultivation Of A New Civic Hegemony In Rural Main Street America, Martha Grace Lowry Mize Jan 2021

Revitalization In The Alabama Black Belt: Cultivation Of A New Civic Hegemony In Rural Main Street America, Martha Grace Lowry Mize

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One Alabama Black Belt community has sought to re-imagine itself as a future affluent space for new families, tourists, and diasporic communities—despite regional challenges—by supplanting traditional discourses and centering a new civic hegemony within local revitalization efforts. This research and thesis draws upon qualitative ethnographic methods: participant observation and interviews conducted in Marion, Alabama. Located in Perry County, Marion has approximately 3,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom are African-American. Marion was designated as a Main Street Community (June 2017) and began a series of revitalization initiatives to increase community pride and project confidence about future growth. The National Main Street …

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Understanding Struggles And Triumphs Of Widows In Central Nigeria: A Path To Communication And Economic Empowerment, Meredith Annette Garrison Jan 2021

Understanding Struggles And Triumphs Of Widows In Central Nigeria: A Path To Communication And Economic Empowerment, Meredith Annette Garrison

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

One in ten African women age 15 or older are widows. Approximately 8 million widows live in Nigeria with many living in extreme poverty. Throughout the nation, widows are subjected to physical and psychological harm from their families and communities following the deaths of their husbands. Women are marginalized across Nigeria, but widowed women often experience ostracization and oppression that leads to poverty. Most widows rely on informal business and petty trading to survive but these ventures typically only bring in less than a $1 a day for a family. This dissertation critically examined the situation of widows in a …

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Explanations For Brazil’S Inequality Reduction From 1989 To 2015, José N. Cabrera-Schneider Jan 2021

Explanations For Brazil’S Inequality Reduction From 1989 To 2015, José N. Cabrera-Schneider

Nebraska Anthropologist

Latin America has been known for its persistent inequality, and the explanations of its origin vary greatly. However, in recent years (the 1990s to early 2010s) inequality in Latin America decreased significantly. In this paper, I focus on the inequality trends in Brazil to look for particular drivers that reduce inequality. Among the essential drivers are education; a reduction in the income gaps between gender, race, geography, and formality; and types of income, such as income from labor or income from conditional cash transfers. However, the effect of the drivers is not always the same, especially for education.

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Ua12/2/67 Alpha Kappa Alpha, Wku Archives Jan 2021

Ua12/2/67 Alpha Kappa Alpha, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

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Ua12/2/68 Sigma Nu, Wku Archives Jan 2021

Ua12/2/68 Sigma Nu, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Sigma Nu fraternity.

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Tick Bites And Blood Relations : Regional Relationships And Interpretations Of Lyme Disease Risk In New York's Hudson River Corridor, Jessica Somers Jan 2021

Tick Bites And Blood Relations : Regional Relationships And Interpretations Of Lyme Disease Risk In New York's Hudson River Corridor, Jessica Somers

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Lyme disease is a bacterial pathogen that spreads from animals to humans through bites from blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis). The disease is a public health problem causing both physical suffering and increased health care spending since the 1980s. A snapshot of Lyme disease coverage in the popular media shows that most people prioritize conversations about Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment over prevention concerns. Anthropology has recently examined peoples’ anxieties and debates regarding the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease in the United States. There has been less work within the discipline on Lyme and tick-borne disease risk perceptions. This dissertation …

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The Revival Of Reindeer Herding In The North Baikal Highlands, Republic Of Buryatia, John P. Ziker Jan 2021

The Revival Of Reindeer Herding In The North Baikal Highlands, Republic Of Buryatia, John P. Ziker

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper summarizes work with two Evenki reindeer herding collectives in the Severo-Baikal’skoe nagor’e in July, 2010. Ethnographic work with reindeer herder groups Oron and Uluki, both established in the early 1990s in the Kholodnoe community, highlighted two variations on the traditional Evenki approach to reindeer herding evincing numerous commonalities. Both groups relied on natural and human-made features of the landscape to habituate reindeer to areas where reindeer herding had been abandoned for close to 20 years. Reindeer herders and reindeer mutually determine seasonal and daily mobility patterns, and reindeer herding activities are leveraged to conduct big-game hunting and furbearer …

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The Reacculturation Of Veterans Post Transition Assistance Program, Kyle Alan Hanlan Jan 2021

The Reacculturation Of Veterans Post Transition Assistance Program, Kyle Alan Hanlan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As many as 61% of veterans have sought reintegration services after the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) to help them cope with culture shock. TAP is not designed to address cultural transition. However, culture shock has resulted in disassociating behavior, unemployment, and homelessness in the veteran community. The purpose of this study was to identify the unmet reacculturation needs of post-active duty veterans in Chester County, Pennsylvania, who have utilized the United States’ Department of Defense’s TAP. Using an ethnographic approach, this study identified the extent that the TAP helps 13 post-active duty veterans obtain the autonomy stage of culture shock …

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The Rainbow Nation Vision: (Re)Constructing & (Re)Imagining South Africanness, Riley Crouthamel Jan 2021

The Rainbow Nation Vision: (Re)Constructing & (Re)Imagining South Africanness, Riley Crouthamel

Capstone Showcase

“Rainbowism” or the new form of nationalism inspired by Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation vision” emphasizes unity, equality, and non-racialism, and has become the dominant myth and metaphor by which South Africa is recognized in the post-apartheid era. Through an application of a theoretical framework that emphasizes the mythological and imaginative aspects of constructive nationalism and an analysis of Rainbowism’s rise to mythical dominance and evolution in the South African imaginary over the span of the past three decades of democracy using ANC “Rainbowist” discourses in both explicit and inexplicit ways, this thesis argues that Rainbowism arose as a counter myth in …

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To Cut Or Not To Cut? Exploring Parental Decision-Making About Neonatal Male Circumcision, Karli Reeves Jan 2021

To Cut Or Not To Cut? Exploring Parental Decision-Making About Neonatal Male Circumcision, Karli Reeves

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis analyses the narratives of 33 parents in the United States concerning their decisions to circumcise or leave their children intact, and five key informants consisting of medical professionals involved in obstetric and gynecological care and trained childbirth companions. The United States differs from other nations in the Global North due to its comparatively high rates of neonatal male circumcision, a procedure that is performed as a preventative surgery, rather than for cultural or religious indications. However, in recent years, rates of circumcision have begun to decline. This study sought to gain a nuanced understanding of these trends by …

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Glass Beadmaking And Enamel Lampwork In Paris, 1547-1610: Archival And Archaeological Data, Élise Vanriest Jan 2021

Glass Beadmaking And Enamel Lampwork In Paris, 1547-1610: Archival And Archaeological Data, Élise Vanriest

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

This article presents beadmaking in Paris during the second half of the 16th century as seen through period documents and artifacts. Parisian archives document beadmaking by artisans called patenôtriers who made a wide range of glass buttons and jewelry, including beads. Records of the patenôtriers’ guild provide an idea of the number of artisans engaged in this activity, while notarial contracts and estate inventories reveal individual careers and the material dimension of beadmaking in Paris. Patenôtriers obtained their materials – soda glass and enamel supplied as tubes, rods, or ingots – from glassmakers in rural France, Altare in Italy, and …

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A Chemical Comparison Of Black Glass Seed Beads From North America And Europe, Danielle L. Dadiego Jan 2021

A Chemical Comparison Of Black Glass Seed Beads From North America And Europe, Danielle L. Dadiego

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Analysis of the elemental composition of glass has gained traction over the past few decades. The growing interest and utilization of non-destructive and micro-destructive analytical techniques has allowed for a more in-depth understanding of glass production, distribution, and consumption. The analysis of glass trade beads in particular has led to the development of a chronological sequencing for non-diagnostic seed beads opacified with metal oxides as well as ore sourcing for cobalt-blue and red beads. There is deficient research on 18th-century glass bead composition, including black manganese-colored beads. This article explores the elemental composition of 162 black seed beads from three …

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The Trade Beads Of Fort Rivière Tremblante, A North West Company Post On The Upper Assiniboine, Saskatchewan, Karlis Karklins Jan 2021

The Trade Beads Of Fort Rivière Tremblante, A North West Company Post On The Upper Assiniboine, Saskatchewan, Karlis Karklins

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

The archaeological investigation of Fort Rivière Tremblante, a North West Company post that operated from 1791 to 1798 in what is now southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada, yielded 20,119 glass beads representing 63 varieties, as well as seven wampum. While the bulk of the collection is composed of drawn seed beads, it also contains an exceptional variety of fancy wound beads. A comparison with bead assemblages recovered from other contemporary fur trade sites in western Canada reveals that both the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company carried much the same bead inventory in the region around the turn of the …

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"The Lady From North Carolina": The Perils And Limitations Of External Expertise, Aprille J. Phillips, Edmund T. Hamann Jan 2021

"The Lady From North Carolina": The Perils And Limitations Of External Expertise, Aprille J. Phillips, Edmund T. Hamann

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

This paper examines a state department of education’s (SDE) decision to contract a consultant to “turnaround” schools, per a logic of outsourcing for external expertise. Our ethnographically informed case study explores whose knowledge had the most worth in diagnosing areas for improvement and identifies this case as part of a trend to rent competencies, under a neoliberal guise of efficiency, but at the expense of system capacity or learning.

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(Im)Mutable Race?, Deepa Das Acevedo Jan 2021

(Im)Mutable Race?, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Courts rarely question the racial identity claims made by parties litigating employment discrimination disputes. But what if this kind of identity claim is itself at the core of a dispute? A recent cluster of “reverse passing” scandals featured individuals—Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug among them—who were born white, yet who were revealed to have lived as members of Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color (BIPOC) communities. These incidents suggest that courts will soon have to make determinations of racial identity as a threshold matter in disputes over employment discrimination and contract termination. More specifically, courts will have to decide whether …

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The History Of Spokane Falls W.T. 1871-1891, An Example Of A Colonial Built Environment, Jacob Adamson Jan 2021

The History Of Spokane Falls W.T. 1871-1891, An Example Of A Colonial Built Environment, Jacob Adamson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

The history of Spokane Falls's built environment within Washington Territory exemplifies the Pacific Northwest's resettlement and reconstruction in the nineteenth century. The initial benefit of Spokane Falls' geography existed within the primary natural advantage of the waterpower of the falls on the Spokane River. The secondary natural advantage in human-induced transportation networks allowed the settlement center-place status. Spokane Falls W.T. developed as center-places for the periphery's agricultural and mining commodities under a theoretical and structuralized [urban] model. An interpretation of the physical and geographical history of Spokane Falls's built environment from 1871 to 1891 occurred where the city's layout existed …

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The Art Of Ethnography In Troubled Times, Paul Stoller Jan 2021

The Art Of Ethnography In Troubled Times, Paul Stoller

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

Many of our longstanding set of methods and denotative conventions of representation are no longer in harmony with the state of contemporary social, political, environmental and economic dysfunction. How can we create a representation that goes beyond the academic communication in a troubled world? How can we create "stories", which work as the glue that holds people together, in order to connect with them? This is the basic question in the Art of Ethnography, an idea that begins with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's, in his essay Eye and Mind. This piece suggests that the work of art is a pathway to an …

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Traditional Healing Beyond The Homeland: Yezidi Shamanic Healing In The Diaspora, Sophia G. Griemert Jan 2021

Traditional Healing Beyond The Homeland: Yezidi Shamanic Healing In The Diaspora, Sophia G. Griemert

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The goal of this qualitative study is to evaluate whether shamanism, practiced by koçeks and faqrya (the Yezidi terms for traditional shamanic practitioners), continues as a practice among diasporic Yezidis, and, if so, in what manner. I accomplish this through a series of oral, remote interviews with Yezidis living in Germany. The interview subjects comprise a cross-sectional sample that includes men and women from the three Yezidi castes (Sheikh, Pir, Murid). Through the multiple testimonies these interviews garnered regarding shamanic praxis in the context of Germany, I determine that, in spite of the disruptions of forced migration and geographical distance, …

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A Qualitative Examination Of The Agency Of Women In Their 30s And 40s Who Use Dating Applications, Tera Buerkle Jan 2021

A Qualitative Examination Of The Agency Of Women In Their 30s And 40s Who Use Dating Applications, Tera Buerkle

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

The use of dating applications (apps) to find romantic and sexual partners is widespread across age groups, however, there is a paucity of research on dating apps with those in middle adulthood. Sexual script theory suggests that women’s agency (i.e. the ability to act in one’s own best interest) may be impacted by expectations from an inherently sexualized context, such as dating apps. Feminist theory contends that women’s agency is complicated by gender socialization due to the imbalance of power in society that greatly favors men. In this study seventeen women aged 30 to 49 completed in-depth semi-structured interviews, and …

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America's Best Idea: Settler Colonialism And Recognition In The United States National Park Service Website, Madison Gates Jan 2021

America's Best Idea: Settler Colonialism And Recognition In The United States National Park Service Website, Madison Gates

Scripps Senior Theses

By examining closely how the National Park Service misrepresents their history and current relationships with Indigenous communities I work to demonstrate the depths of this misrepresentation and the impacts it has on various Indigenous communities and nations. In the first chapter, I explain how the history of national parks is founded on fundamentally opposed conceptions of land between Indigenous people and settlers and how this difference was used as justification for settler violence. In chapter two I explore the ways in which the National Park Service uses cultural collaboration to further tourist experience at the expense of respecting and properly …

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Nonsovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, And Disaster Are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities, Isar Godreau, Yarimar Bonilla Jan 2021

Nonsovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, And Disaster Are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities, Isar Godreau, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

Using the concept of “racecraft” to describe the state production of racial subjectivities, we argue that this process has been increasingly compromised in Puerto Rico by a lack of sovereignty and by the current socioeconomic crisis. We argue that the state-sponsored idea that Puerto Rican white and mixed-race identities operate separately from the US racial framework is receding. Based on the unconventional use of an open-ended question for racial identification in a survey administered to over one thousand Puerto Ricans, we found: a reluctance to identify racially, an awareness of a normative “whiteness” that excludes Puerto Ricans, and a tendency …

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Detangling Black Hair: Hair Journeys, Discrimination, And Reconciliations Of Cultural Appropriation Among Claremont College Students, Amalia Raquel Barrett Jan 2021

Detangling Black Hair: Hair Journeys, Discrimination, And Reconciliations Of Cultural Appropriation Among Claremont College Students, Amalia Raquel Barrett

Scripps Senior Theses

This ethnography details the experiences of discrimination and reconciliations of cultural appropriation among Black women and those perceived as Black women at the Claremont Colleges. 26 semi-structured ethnographic interviews were conducted over Zoom video conferencing to collect responses to questions including: How do my participants wear and describe their hair, and what experiences in their life do they relate to their hair? What challenges related to hair do my interviewees perceive in life outside college? How do my participants actively reconcile and critically rationalize the dynamic between Black hair being worn by Black women and by non-Black women? What patterns …

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Challenging Narratives: Kurdish Young Adults In Istanbul And Chicago, Lydia Shanklin Roll Jan 2021

Challenging Narratives: Kurdish Young Adults In Istanbul And Chicago, Lydia Shanklin Roll

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

In this dissertation, I explore the interplay between youthful agency and state imposition. Specifically, drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul, Turkey and Chicago, Illinois, I investigate how young adults who have migrated within one state and to another are navigating the states and bureaucratic systems in which they live. My interlocutors hail from a state that is quintessentially twentieth century, by which I mean the state was established as a nation-state, promoted as existing for members of a particular ethno-linguistic identity, with a charismatic leader who inspired a cult of personality. This narrative of the state has …

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Captivating State: Youthful Dreams And Uncertain Futures In Kurdistan, Diana Hatchett Jan 2021

Captivating State: Youthful Dreams And Uncertain Futures In Kurdistan, Diana Hatchett

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation examines how Kurdistani young people experience contests of values in a state shaped by sectarian political cultures during a time of trial and transition for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The dissertation is based on approximately 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork (September 2015 - June 2017) spent among Kurdistani youth, broadly defined as 12 to 30 years old, in secondary schools and fitness centers. The ethnography presents interlocutors as co-theorists in conceptualizing the society and state in which they live, incorporating descriptive vignettes, transcripts of discussions, and lengthy interview quotes. Kurdistani interlocutors describe the push and pull …

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