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Ratting On The Coca Spirit Or Mastering Exchange? Andoque Negotiations Of Power And Commodification Between Forest And Market, Eliran Arazi

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

Asserting the importance of analyzing Indigenous involvement in the extraction and trade of nonhuman entities against the backdrop of Amazonian perceptions of personhood, this article investigates the risks and opportunities that coca commercialization by the Andoque of Northwest Amazonia, Colombia, holds for the Andoque’s relationships with the coca spirit, other nonhuman entities, and non-Indigenous agents. Considering the triangular relational dynamics between coca producers, urban consumers, and nonhumans as an inflection of Amazonian mastery dynamics within the context of market economic exchange, I analyze the Andoque’s statements and practices relating to this activity through the etic distinction between gifts and commodities …

Jean Langdon: Transformations And Perspectives From Half A Century Of Research About Shamanism, Isabel Santana De Rose

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

This text reviews some of Jean Langdon’s most important classical and contemporary writings about shamanism, highlighting her key contributions to the area, as well as her relevance to the anthropology of health and Indigenous health policies. The paper also reflects on Langdon’s influence in the discussions surrounding gender and female agency in ethnographies of lowland South America. Jean Langdon was one of the pioneers in the revival of the research on shamanism in the 1980s. During a period when male anthropologists largely dominated studies on this topic, she highlighted the complexity and diversity of Indigenous shamanisms, proposing that they should …

Arquetipos & Aventuras: La Identificación De Jugadores De Rol Con Personajes De Cultura De Masas, Miguel Á. Galindo Núñez, Víctor E. Quintana Villarreal

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

Este estudio explora la reiteración de figuras arquetípicas en la cultura de masas y su manifestación en los juegos de rol, particularmente en Dungeons and Dragons. Basado en la teoría de la mímesis de Aristóteles y los arquetipos de Jung, se analizará cómo roles estandarizados presentes en diversas culturas se replican en productos culturales contemporáneos. Desde la actancialidad de Barthes y la agencia de Giddens, se examinarán los arquetipos y su interpretación en narrativas de la cultura de masas.

Enfocándose en Dungeons and Dragons, el estudio destacará cómo las clases de personajes actúan como arquetipos y moldes predefinidos …

Beyond Climate In Placencia, Belize: Navigating Environmental Change In The Anthropocene, Rory E. Mckenna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Examining opportunities for climate resilience requires an evaluation of lived experiences of environmental change which benefits from transdisciplinary perspectives. This research examines those experiences through the lens of anthropogenic change which allows for a critical focus on local conditions of environmental change specific to Placencia Village, Belize, over time. An anthropology of the anthropocene framing shifts the focus from the results of the global phenomenon responsible for climate change to the implications of local human-caused environmental change on natural systems, human-environment relationships and dynamics, and the future trajectories of these relationships. Through the use of interviews, go-alongs, participatory mapping, transdisciplinary …

Narratives Of Resilience: The Power Of Creative Expression And Community Support During Familial Incarceration, Alana Alexander

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature stresses that the far-reaching effects of mass incarceration extend beyond prison walls, profoundly shaping familial experiences. Despite this, families remain consistently overlooked in criminal justice discourse, leading to heightened stress and diminished resilience. This thesis is a program review of a community-based program, referred to here as the Storytelling, Creativity, and Care (SCC) program, to protect the confidentiality of its participants and activities. The SCC program integrates neuroscience and narrative theory to explore how storytelling influences cultural perceptions, shapes lived experiences, and supports psychological and physiological healing. Additionally, this work investigates the socio-political narratives that perpetuate stigma and …

¡Viva Puerto Rico! How Puerto Rico's Political And Economic Status Has Affected Its Vulnerability To Natural Hazards, Mystique Quintana

University Honors Theses

Using Hurricane Maria as a case study, this thesis examines Puerto Rico's vulnerability to natural disasters and explores the intersections between colonial history, political status, and socioeconomic inequalities. Undertaking the island's susceptibility to environmental crises based on centuries of colonial exploitation and dependence, along with restrictive U.S. policies. It is argued that policies like the Jones Act, Operation Bootstrap, and PROMESA perpetuate systemic neglect and undermine disaster preparedness. Due to these structural vulnerabilities, intensified by climate change, Puerto Rico is ill-equipped to recover from hurricanes. During Hurricane Maria, systemic governance failures, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient federal aid exposed these deep-rooted …

The Meanings Of The Hospital De San Lázaro In Seventeenth-Century Manila, Francis Galasi

Journal of Global Catholicism

The Hospital de San Lázaro was a specialized health facility in the early modern Philippines, dedicated to the care of lepers and sufferers of other contagious diseases. While it was established for this specific purpose, its role in colonial society varied. This versatility reflected the distinct priorities and commitments of the groups pulled into its orbit, as each charged San Lázaro with a unique meaning. This article explores how and why these groups—the indigenous Filipinos, the Spanish residents and the Discalced Franciscans—understood San Lázaro in their own way. It highlights the ability of fixed institutions, such as a hospital, to …

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Life History Of Men Who Experienced Childhood Maternal Absence, Renice Obure

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project explored the impact of childhood maternal absence on the life history outcomes of adult men. An integrated theoretical model of developmental-evolutionary framework was developed to guide research design and conduct. This model combined sex-differentiated life history framework and fathering resource theory. The study consisted of three components: a scoping review of 29 relevant studies conducted in the United States between 1990-2023, a quantitative analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent and Adult Health (Add Health) waves I and IV (n=6932), and a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with a sample of 22 fathers who experienced childhood …

Navigating Change: Youth Civic Engagement At Tampa Heights Junior Civic Association, Alex R. Whitacre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the impact of gentrification on the Tampa Heights community in Florida, focusing on the role of Tampa Heights Junior Civic Association (THJCA) in fostering civic engagement and youth empowerment amidst urban transformation. Using a mixed-methods ethnographic approach, including participant observation, archival review, spatial analysis, surveys, and interviews, the research investigates how THJCA affiliates conceptualize and respond to gentrification, space, and community change. Employing urban place theories and social capital frameworks, the research challenges deficit-oriented narratives in examining the experiences of current and former residents, the effects of gentrification on youth educational services, and THJCA's strategies for maintaining …

Halfies, Half-Written Letters, And One-Eyed Gods: Connecting The Dots Of Communicative Cultures, Gregory Stephens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay distills the theory of communicative cultures as a tool for cultural analysis. Nadine Gordimer’s line about the difficulties of returning to “half-written letters” is used to frame anthropology’s critique of “bounded culture” or “container cultures,” predominat in Cultural Studies. Anthropologists Lila Abu-Lughod and Kirin Narayan have described “halfies” as in-between peoples who can help us understand fluid, processual cultures as normative. Building on this stance, and the work of rhetorical genre scholars, Stephens defines communicative cultures as “a set of shared commitments expressed through cultural means.” This approach to cultural analysis, in which literature is viewed as an …

Human Sacrifice And Propaganda In Popular Media: More Than Morbid Curiosity, Jason Tatlock

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Representations of human sacrifice, whether based upon real or fictitious events, powerfully demonstrate societal norms and fascinations related to the acceptability of slaying humans for religious or national interests, particularly given the divisive and bloody nature of the topic. Readers of eye-witness accounts, newspaper reports, and historical narratives, and viewers of cinematic productions, war posters, and political cartoons come face to face with the beliefs and agendas of the creators of popular media. Such sources represent the slaying of victims in sacred rituals, as individuals attempt to demarcate societal boundaries along the etic/ emic spectrum, be they commentaries on their …

Un Silence Assourdissant! Listening To What’S Not Being Said, Addressing The Silence Around And Impact Of Intersectionality For Leaving Certificate Applied Students In Irish Second Level Education., Vicki O'Reilly

Journal of Franco-Irish Studies

Intersectionality as a concept for diversity and discrimination helps us to put shape on the many layers and descriptors that label and often define us as individuals. The narrative we hear about how we discuss and describe each layer can shape how society places value on each layer or descriptor. Where we hear nothing, where there is gap in our narrative, we can find discourse lacking as a means to shape and overcome intersectionality. In looking at two specific descriptors, socio-economic status and educational attainment, we investigate how their intersection can impact individuals and the ensuant discourse that surrounds them. …

The Identity Of A Gymnast: How Health, Wellbeing, And Injury Become Embodied In The Identity Of Collegiate Gymnasts, Skyler M. Yakes

LSU Master's Theses

Gymnastics scholarship has traditionally focused on the physicality of the sport and what the body can and cannot do. This research expands upon gymnastics scholarship by exploring the individual experiences and histories of college gymnasts in the United States through a series of interviews. The goals of this research are to better understand the gymnastics experience and to explore health and wellbeing in gymnastics as it pertains to the formation of a gymnast’s identity. A combined approach using medical anthropology and anthropology of sport serves as a guiding framework for analyzing interview data. Definitions of health and wellbeing change between …

Subjective Well-Being Across The Life Course Among Non-Industrialized Populations, Michael Gurven, Yoann Buoro, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Katherine Sayre, Benjamin Trumble, Aili Pyhälä, Hillard Kaplan, Arild Angelsen, Jonathan Stieglitz, Victoria Reyes-Garcia

ESI Publications

Subjective well-being (SWB) is often described as being U-shaped over adulthood, declining to a midlife slump and then improving thereafter. Improved SWB in later adulthood has been considered a paradox given age-related declines in health and social losses. While SWB has mostly been studied in high-income countries, it remains largely unexplored in rural subsistence populations lacking formal institutions that reliably promote social welfare. Here, we evaluate the age profile of SWB among three small-scale subsistence societies (n = 468; study 1), forest users from 23 low-income countries (n = 6987; study 2), and Tsimane’ horticulturalists (n = …

Credentialing Care: Covid-19 And The Bureaucratization Of Doulas, Ellen Block, Julie Johnson Searcy, Angela N. Castañeda

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty publications

Doulas in the United States offer embodied, informational, and continuous one-on-one care to birthing people. Doulas have historically sought certification to gain knowledge through training and to gain legitimacy for healthcare providers and clients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals required doulas to provide proof of certification. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the proliferation of state-sponsored doula programs, has sparked a shift in how doulas are viewed and regulated, enabling new forms of bureaucratic oversight and control. Based on participant observation, surveys, and semi-structured interviews, we examine the connection between certification and care including motivations doulas have for certification, the perceived value …

“Forget The Rest ...”: Notes On Magnetic Tape And Other Antiquated Media As Archives Of Afro-Atlantic Liturgy, David Font-Navarrete

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The virtuosic complexity of Afro-Cuban orisha music has led scholars and artists to enshrine it as a “classical” tradition, and it has become one of most iconic and closely-studied sacred music traditions of the historical Afro-Atlantic. This essay traces the legacies of several analog-era multimedia technologies in orisha music traditions: reel-to-reel and cassette tapes; limited edition and out-of-print books and phonograph discs; ephemeral texts such as album liner notes; and photographic negatives, prints, and slides. The tapes and photos — along with a vast body of informal, unpublished, and out-of-print documents of Afro-Cuban orisha liturgy — are seldom archived by …

Reporting On Racial Violence: A Content Analysis Of Local & National Coverage Of Jacksonville, Florida’S Dollar General Shooting, Carter Mudgett

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This study investigates how local and national news media outlets — particularly the Associated Press, CNN, the Florida Times-Union, and News4Jax — presented the “Dollar General Shooting” in Jacksonville, Florida on and after August 26, 2023. Far-reaching expectations for journalists call for “objective” observation and reporting, an ideal that is nearly impossible given that collective and individual experience inform perceptions and understandings. Nonetheless, the original definition of objectivity — as described by Kovach and Rosenstiel (2014, p. 10) — outlined a transparent approach to evidence, a process to remove personal bias from reporting, with the goal of a stronger journalistic …

Subterranean Medicinal Bottles Are Treasures That Reveal The Growth Of Lincoln's Early Drug Stores, Mark Griep, June Weber, Erik Schulz, Effie Athanassopoulos

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archeologists unearthed medicine bottles embossed with the names of nine early Lincoln (Nebraska) drug stores, giving insight into the rapid growth of pharmacies and health care from the 1880s up to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

A Magical Symbiosis: The Advent Of Witchcraft In The Age Of Social Technology, James Dryden

University Honors Theses

This paper investigates the relationship between social media and witchcraft practitioners in online communities. After providing a landscape of how other researchers have studied similar phenomenon, interviews with anonymous witches who utilize online platforms such as TikTok and Instagram were conducted by the author. Using these testimonies in conjunction with the research of others, the author identifies trends and similar stories between American witches regarding Wicca, the commodification of the craft, and how witchcraft practice continues in the modern day.

Food Insecurity At The University Of Denver: A Qualitative Exploratory Study To Identify Challenges And Opportunities For Improvements Around Food Insecurity On Du’S Campus, Alejandro Cerón, Amanda Cali, Clayton Kempf, Siena Balzer, Karina Becerra-Lozano, Sophie Bergan, Charlie Bond, Jack Brooks, Lukas Carmona, Maya Crouvi, Caroline Daley, Luke Dunn, Camryn Evans, Katie Flagel, Kelli Guedry, Kaila Hendershot, Sophia Herrera, Tommy Hoffman, Haydon Jamison, Titus Ramsey, Cecelia Jones, Molly Madden, Sophie Robertson, Amanda Modernel, Sofia Ortega, Raffaello Papajcik, Greyson Vorgang, Maren Lynch, Harper Nelson, Amrit Samra, Logan Meyers, Alexander Lowham Ruzzo

Anthropology: Undergraduate Student Scholarship

The purpose of this course-based research project was to understand students’ perceptions and opinions about student food insecurity on the University of Denver campus, identifying challenges and opportunities for improvement, with the hope that the results will support the DU community’s efforts to prevent and address food insecurity on DU’s campus.

Future Land, Futures Lost: Planning The Crisis On The Louisiana Coast, Sheehan Moore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

South Louisiana is rapidly losing coastal land to the combined forces of subsidence, sea-level rise, and worsening storms, accelerated by the effects of flood control engineering and extractive industrial development. With erosion threatening homes and industry alike, the state has marshaled a response on a massive economic and geographic scale: its Coastal Master Plan recommends $50 billion in river sediment diversions, barrier island restoration, and other projects over fifty years. This dissertation is about the emergence of Louisiana’s coast as a place from this knot of human and environmental relations, as an object for governance and a container for political …

Prurient Nature: Sex Work And Ethics At The Margins Of Finance, Esra S. Padgett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an ethnographic and semiotic examination of the relationship between payment processing, transactional technologies, and the US adult industry. Based on twenty-four months of fieldwork in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, and Washington D.C., the dissertation demonstrates that transactional infrastructures, including payment processors, credit card systems, financial institutions like banks, as well as novel technologies like cryptocurrency, have become a key site for an ongoing ethical war around the politics of sex and sex work in the United States. On one hand, ethical fears around sex work have become qualifications for economic exclusion by financial institutions and private …

Supporting Social Equity Through Informal Spaces On An Urban Campus, Eve B. Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on applying research to design in the setting of higher education. Specifically, it explores the informal spaces outside the classroom at a predominantly Black college in an urban setting. The existing structural challenges facing college students are many, including issues related to financial resources, mental health/wellness, family responsibilities, psychosocial identity formation, and structural racism. These challenges were compounded by the events of the spring of 2020, when a heightened awareness of anti-Black racism, combined with the hardships of COVID-19, brought college campuses to a close and masses of people to the streets to protest the unjust killings …

Mandatory Anti-Bias Cle: A Serious Problem Deserves More Meaningful Response, Rima Sirota

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Barriers To And Solutions For Fuel Treatments In The Central California Coast Ranges, Sierra Dawn Lyman

Master's Theses

In recent years, the Western United States has experienced an increase in fire activity due to multiple factors, including anthropogenic climate change, historical forest management focused on suppression, and the expanding wildland urban interface (WUI). In response, California is working to accelerate the pace and scale of forest management and fire hazard reduction efforts. Although fuel treatment projects are being implemented, they often encounter various barriers. While existing literature highlights these barriers, it tends to overlook the solutions being applied in practice to overcome them. Using an ethnographic approach that includes key informant interviews and participant observation in four sites …

Ordinary Care: Affective Politics Of Migration And The Everyday Lives Of Syrian Refugees In Istanbul, Yasemin Ozer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation makes two significant interventions into the literature on Syrian refugees in Turkey and the anthropology of migration and refugee studies more broadly. First, it focuses on the everyday lives of working-class urban refugees and argues that “ordinary care” is a crucial means by which they build sustainable and dignified lives while living in precarity in an often hostile environment in the aftermath of war and displacement. Ordinary care, as I theorize in this ethnography, includes sharing of resources, information, and advice as well as the formation of mutual relationships between kin, neighbors, and friends. Compared to the more …

Bodies For Catastrophe: A Montage Study Of Palestinian Digital Labor, Francisco Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates Palestinian digital labor through the method of montage. Digital labor, understood as bodily activity transfigured by digital machines into exploitable information, is examined within the context of Israeli surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. The study critically explores the dual political functions of these technologies: as tools of settler-colonial domination aiming to dispossess Palestinians, and as neoliberal mechanisms seeking to profit from the surveillance of Palestinian bodies. The second half of the thesis turns to the ways Palestinians engage with such technologies and unsettle the economic and colonial logics embedded in them.

The research is structured nonlinearly using …

Living Color: Aesthetic Surfaces And Political Life In Brazil, Samuel E. Novacich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about the manipulation of appearances – of both the human body and the built environment – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Focused on Afro-aesthetic makeup and tanning practices as well as urban renewal projects, this ethnographic study reveals how the making over of both the skin and the urban landscape shape social inequalities and contribute to productions of race, gender, and national belonging. While some of the aesthetic technologies examined herein may be characterized as “bottom up” – or as the self-fashioning tactics of marginalized Afro-Brazilians – others constitute “top down” infrastructural interventions led by the state …

Outbidding With Ontology: Routine, Rebel Justice, And The Competition For Legitimacy, Patrick A. Schmidt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Civil wars upset the everyday routines and relationships of ordinary people. Though recent research into civil wars has significantly increased the degree of study into non-conflict activities of rebel groups, particularly in rebel governance, rebel groups have not yet been seen as ontological security providers, capable of developing and reinstating some form of normalcy for civilian populations. This thesis seeks to promote this view of rebel groups, theorizing that rebel justice systems serve as a distinct space for insurgents to routinize interactions with civilians and signal their desire and ability to serve as capable providers of ontological security. Further, I …