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Matrilineal Ethnic Affiliation And Female Empowerment: Investigating Attitudes Towards Female Autonomy And Health In Ivorian Households, Martine Hind Stølan

Master's Theses

Kinship structure is a fundamental aspect of anthropology, however, there is still a gap in literature on its impact on economic research, particularly regarding female autonomy and health. This study aims to address this gap by examining the influence of matrilineal ethnic affiliation on attitudes towards female autonomy and health within Ivorian households. Using data from the 2011 IPUMS Demographic and Health Survey for the Ivory Coast, using female responses, this study investigates the complex dynamics shaping attitudes towards female autonomy and access to health care. Analysis on these aspects is done using ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic estimations. …

Book Review: The Shaming State: How The U.S. Treats Citizens In Need, Steve Matthewman

Critical Disaster Studies

Salman’s book centers two different constituencies, in two different locations, in the 2010s, who have been impacted by two different disasters. The first group are Iraqi refugees who have been resettled in Wayne County, Michigan. Trying to start again over half a world away, they are trapped in the transit lounge of life, never able to move on, never able to properly belong. They found a state in recession, the automobile industry collapsing, the city of Detroit bankrupt. Their particular county had higher unemployment than the state’s average and a poor median income as well. Economically speaking, ‘Michigan fared worse …

Moral Agency In Flux: Rohingya Refugees Envisioning And Establishing A “Good Life” In Dallas, Texas, Nusaiba Chowdhury

Anthropology Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic project explores how refugee-serving staff and Rohingya refugees navigate the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which focuses on refugees achieving self-sufficiency as its main metric of success. The goal of this research is to understand how refugee-serving staff perceive self-sufficiency, which is seen as synonymous with achieving a “good life,” and how Rohingya refugees envision and establish a “good life” in Dallas, Texas. This study is oriented around the historical and current experiences of securitization faced by Rohingya refugees, their experiences in the United States, the neoliberal design of the USRAP, the issues that refugee-serving staff have …

As Bonecas Babadeiras: Drag Subculture And Global Media In Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Logan Baggett

Honors Theses

21st century global queer culture is seeing a major boom. Drag queens are the most indicative symbols of this boom, traditional practitioners of gender-bending performances that blend music, dance, makeup, and fashion to create breathtaking performances. To this end, this thesis asks the following question: How is local drag performance culture generated in Rio de Janeiro in the context of this 21st century gay boom? In this global metropolis, drag queens confront challenges––racism, classism, sprawling urban geography, and scene competition––that color their interpersonal relationships and financial success. They also find community, creating family units in the absence of heteronormative power …

The Question Of Design In The Context Of The First Australian Nations: Designing Reparations Through Decolonial Architecture, Eli Abamonte

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Forget about tourist postcards and picture-perfect landscapes. Australia's true heart beats in the ancient stories of the Indigenous communities that tell them, their vibrant cultural tapestry woven beneath the surface. My research dives into this tapestry, not as an Architect with blueprints imposing my own vision, but as a student with an open ear and collaborative spirit. Australia’s vastness holds countless stories, but my research led me deep into the heart of East Arnhem Land, where ancient legends whisper in the wind and the Yolngu people dwell. Anthropologists like Bruno Descola shattered my singular view of the world, revealing a …

“Haiti Is My Heart”: Exploring Return Migration Experiences Among The Haitian American Diaspora, Semline Singleton

Dissertations

The dissertation explored the return migration experiences among first- and second-generation Haitian diaspora members in the United States. The study aimed to fill gaps in the existing literature and provide a deeper understanding of the individual experience of return migration through a social and cultural lens. While previous research has focused on the political and economic aspects of return migration, this study examined the personal narratives of return migrants. It explored the causes, impacts, and individual experiences of return migration. To achieve the study's objectives, in-depth interviews were conducted with identified Haitian diaspora members who had returned to Haiti. The …

Rebetiko In Nyc: New Ideas Of Greek Diaspora, Mihalis Alisandratos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores ideas of Greekness within the modern rebetiko space of New York City through the use of both ethnographic and reflexive techniques. Combining thick description, interview analysis, and extensive self reflection, this thesis endeavors to better understand how Greek American rebetiko musicians in NY today conceive of their experience in diaspora.

Human Experience In The Immersive Experience Economy, Beliz Yuksel Inal

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the growing trend of immersive experiences, examining how they are designed and experienced. It compares the artistic Machine Hallucination and the commercial Van Gogh Immersive Experience examples. Analyzing audience engagement and social contexts, the research aims to understand the impact of immersive experiences on individuals and society.

Picturing Consumer Culture, Cultural Hybridity, And Womanhood: Farah Al Qasimi’S Photographs From 2012 To 2020, Minji Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Farah Al Qasimi’s 2012-2020 color photographs, arguing that this work presents a distinctive and salient critique of domesticity, material culture, and womanhood in the UAE. Through her lens as a woman and a culturally hybrid subject, Al Qasimi explores the tensions of modernization, globalization, consumerism, and gender.

Evaluating The Integration Of Traditional And Western Medicine In Rural Ghana: The Role Of Healers And The Government, T. Nicole Lemon

Anthropology Undergraduate Senior Theses

A question of pressing importance for the healthcare system in Ghana is the integration between biomedical physicians, who are unreachable for many rural citizens, and traditional healers, who fill in the gaps in access for rural and non-rural citizens seeking care, and are oftentimes the preferred choice. The care offered by each system is derived from differing paradigms, with the biomedical related to Westernized practices and the healing related to holistic, traditional approaches. Integration of these systems would allow for more acknowledgment and communication between these two different kinds of providers, which in turn would improve the quality of care …

Constructing Trust Among Large-Scale Organizations: An Archaeological Case Of Collective Action From Tlaxcallan, Mexico, Marc Daniel Marino

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within nation-states, agencies, cooperatives, and other groups seeking to coordinate in the management of resources, conflicting interests can hinder cooperation and preclude joint action. Increasing transparency in resource management policies and facilitating communication among groups can reduce cooperative dilemmas by building trust. Developments in collective action research have demonstrated that increased communication and transparency among participants can build trust because future outcomes and behaviors can be predicted based on observations of past actions. Archaeology provides case studies to explore some of the earliest attempts by nation-states to reduce tensions caused by competing factions. This dissertation explores one such case study …

What's In A Name? Plant Naming As Cultural Artifact And Story In The Midwestern United States, Sophie Wesseler

Undergraduate Theses

This project sought to collect and contextualize the historical and contemporary names given to plants by inhabitants of the Midwestern United States, understanding plant names as cultural artifacts that can offer insight into the communities in which they were created and evolved. Formatted as a series of entries, this collection gathered these names and contextualized them within other artifacts of cultural significance, such as art or poetry, and alongside historical research on their origins and cultural environments. Examining plant names through the fields of linguistics, semiology, anthropology, cultural studies, taxonomy, and ethnobotany, this work traces the names of various plants …

Archaic Burials In The Necropolis Of Aigai And The Manufacturing Of Significance In Archaeology, Abigail Chapman

Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses

The excavation of Ancient Aigai, modern Vergina in Greece, has unearthed a wealth of archaeological treasures, including Macedonian tombs attributed to Philip II and Alexander the Great. However, the manufactured significance imposed on these excavations has shaped the contemporary understanding of Archaic burial practices in Aigai. This paper aims to understand how the constructed narratives surrounding these excavations influence current ideas on burial customs in Aigai during the Archaic period. By analyzing the layout of the city and its necropolis, scholarship can gain valuable insights into the social structure of Archaic Macedonia. This can help to develop a more complete …

Houses Built For Gods: Articulations Of Urban Hokora In Kyoto, Steele Engelmann

Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Amidst the urban landscape of Kyoto, Japan, there are thousands of hokora, small neighborhood shrines. This study uses social theories of pilgrimage and space to examine the articulation of hokora, community, and personal desire. As sites of local pilgrimage, hokora form networks of communal, but also individual, aspirations across the urban spiritual landscape of the city. This thesis argues that communities are connected to the larger social structures of Kyoto through hokora. As such, neighborhoods are reproduced and displayed through their hokora’s entanglements with the urban, social, and religious landscapes of Kyoto. Therefore, this study deploys an ethnographic approach to …

Evaluating The Integration Of Traditional And Western Medicine In Rural Ghana: The Role Of Healers And The Government, Teresa Nicole Lemon

Poster Presentations

A question of pressing importance for the healthcare system in Ghana is the integration between biomedicine, which is unreachable for many rural citizens, and traditional medicine, which fills in the gaps in access for rural and non-rural citizens seeking care and is utilized by 70% of the population. The WHO promotes integrated health systems and created strategies to assist governments in their efforts.

The Ghanaian government did create policies to aid in integration, but their attempt to integrate was unsuccessful. This, along with other factors, has led some scholars to consider the government’s efforts as “tokenistic”; however, they do not …

Lived Experiences, Migration Journey, Religiosity, And Spirituality Depicted In Drawings By Latino Children And Youth Crossing The U.S. Mexican Border: A Qualitative Study., Doroty Magalhaes Sato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Widespread violence forces thousands of Central American children to endure a hazardous journey toward the U.S. Border seeking refuge. In the Latino community, faith serves as a social movement of resistance against oppression, playing a vital role in migration. There is a paucity of research documenting this experience and children's overall journey. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the lived experience of crossing international borders, religiosity, and spirituality depicted in Latino children's drawings used as coping methods to endure the journey toward the U.S. southern border. This investigation employed Art-based approaches to give voices to children's experiences by analyzing 63 …

Mixed Methods Approach To Assess ‘Placental Opioid-Enhancing Factor’ Activity Within ‘Alternative’ Health Contexts Of Human Maternal Placentophagy, Jacob C. White

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Rats with elevated opioid levels experience an even greater increase in pain threshold after placenta or amniotic fluid consumption via placental opioid-enhancing factor (POEF) in the afterbirth. POEF only enhances opioid hypoalgesia; it cannot produce hypoalgesia alone. Although the POEF molecule remains unidentified and its efficacy in humans is unknown, it could be a safe, novel pain treatment. People who consume placenta as an alternative postpartum health practice are ideal for testing POEF bioactivity. Though rat models show that bioactive POEF is highly sensitive, some forms of the practice in humans may conserve POEF.

This project is the first attempt …

Cultivating Atmosphere In Independent Coffee Shops: Reflections On How Atmospheres Are Created Through Sensory Experiences, Brooke Bierhaus Sutton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Affective atmosphere is a fundamental component to the allure of coffee shops that is cultivated through sensory experience. In this thesis I examine how the sensory experience of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, create atmospheres in coffee shops. I ask, “how do coffee shops cultivate an affective atmosphere?” Through an exploration of material culture, design, affect, and the intentional production of third places, I illustrate the ways in which independent coffee shops have their own unique identities and atmospheres. By using memoir and reflexive analysis of my decade in global coffee culture, as well as an extensive literary review, …

Flood Waters Rise: Hurricanes, Disaster Response, And Race Relations In Coastal Alabama, 1906 – 2006, Danielle Leonardi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This thesis examines the changes in social relations after natural disasters, specifically hurricanes. The Hurricane of 1906 caused massive damage to Mobile due to the limited warnings. Tensions before the hurricane were already heightened from the Atlanta Race Riot and boiled over after the storm, resulting in a double lynching. Mobile received very little federal aid after the 1906 hurricane and relief heavily on their own communities and the Alabama National Guard. Hurricane Frederic in 1979 was much different because of its position in the Civil Rights Movement. The government relief was slow due to the overwhelming amount needed, and …

A Manual On The Planning And Integration Of Archaeological Methods In To Outdoor Forensic Search Investigations, Jonathan Robert Garcia

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

As archaeology and its applications into forensic contexts develop into the growing discipline of forensic archaeology, an increasing amount of literature has resulted stemming from research on the integration of common archaeological methods. However, much of this literature is intended for professional archaeologists or forensic anthropologists who are well experienced in their respective disciplines. Emerging literature generally does not consider those who leads efforts at forensic scenes in the outdoors such as law enforcement officers who often lack a background in archaeology or forensic anthropology. This thesis seeks to resolve this dilemma by creating a new and accessible manual. The …

Museum Dan Sekolah: Sinergi Kebijakan Demokratisasi Kebudayaan Melalui Program Pembelajaran Seni Dan Budaya Di Kota La Rochelle - Prancis, Agung Wibowo, Dwi Winarsih, Atik Catur Budiati

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Our article describes the relationship between museums and schools as a policy of democratisation of French culture, a policy that has encouraged the ministry of education and the ministry of culture to work together in designing arts and culture learning programmes in museums and in schools. The case study of the implementation of the national policy of democratisation of culture by the municipality of La Rochelle is an important consideration that can help us to understand how the locality of public policy implementation in France can contribute specific characteristics to the cultural development and management of museums and schools. Arts …

Racing The Tides: Three Virginia Islands Threatened By Climate Change And The Challenge Of Preserving Their Stories, Sean M. Restivo

History Honors Projects

Among the tidal marshes of Virginia’s York River, there are three relatively obscure groups of uninhabited islands, all with fascinating stories, and all rapidly disappearing: the Goodwin Islands, the Catlett Islands, and Poropotank Island. These islands have been almost entirely overlooked by existing historical and archaeological research, and they are all imminently threatened by climate change-induced sea level rise and erosion. In the summer of 2023, I embarked on an interdisciplinary research project to study cultural heritage sites scattered across the islands. Drawing on my experience of studying these islands, as well as other related case studies, I demonstrate that …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

Understandings Of Vulnerability And Social Determinants Of Health In Forensic And Expert Social Anthropology: A Scoping Review, James W. W. Rose, David M. Tran

The Qualitative Report

Forensic and expert social anthropology (FESA) is a branch of social anthropology that specialises in the provision of evidence to legal-administrative processes, which are overseen by courts and other legally empowered bodies, and which give regard to the social cultures of legally and administratively involved individuals and communities (LAIICs). Despite a preoccupation with political advocacy in the broader philosophy of social anthropology, FESA literature does not typically give regard to LAIIC vulnerability defined qualitatively in terms of social determinants of health, including physical, mental, and social well-being. This paper presents findings from a JBI/PRISMA-ScR scoping review of n=1,674 texts, identifying …

Despertando Del Sueño Americano: U.S. Policies Influencing Cartel Profitability From Undocumented Border Crossing, Gisela Martinez Acosta

Undergraduate Theses

Due to U.S. border policies limiting safe and lawful passage, cartels have developed an industry in the U.S.-Mexico border that supplies crossing services to migrants, utilizing coercive means to regulate the market and profiting from migrant’s desperation to enter the country. This study combines economic and ethnographic research to describe the human smuggling industry and the impact it has in the migrant journey. Scarcity, inelastic demand, black markets, and monopolies are economic concepts used to understand the operations of these services. Observational research and interviews conducted in the Sonoran Desert are also included to present this topic humanely. Background on …

Latu Mae Rissa: Leader Come To War! An Autoethnography Of Colonialization And Post-Colonization, Leah Latumaerissa

Honors Theses

Latu Mae Rissa: Leader Come to War! An Autoethnography of Colonialization and Post-colonization is an undergraduate honors thesis that examines the effects and aftermath of Dutch colonialism regarding the Moluccan community through oral history, and unique narratives from four generations in the family Latumaerissa in the Netherlands. The generational narratives capture the indigenous Moluccan experience during the Dutch colonial and postcolonial eras. The findings in this thesis indicate that the Dutch colonial past and the historical events that occurred during and after Dutch decolonization function as significant Moluccan identity markers as they influenced the Moluccan being through intergenerational trauma which …

Transatlantic Traditions: The History Of Welsh Quarrying And Its Connections To Newfoundland Slate, Alexa D. Spiwak, Johanna Cole

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Previous archaeological investigations have conclusively shown that the presence of Welshmen has co-occurred with the practice of local slate quarrying in Newfoundland since the early colonial ventures of the 17th century. The island experienced a resurgence in Welsh culture in the 19th century when a number of small slate quarries were established overlooking both the Bay of Islands on the west coast and Smith Sound in Trinity Bay. The following article outlines the history of these 19th-century Newfoundland quarries, as well as the social, political and economic factors which encouraged the migration of Welsh quarrymen across the Atlantic to remote …

Slot Machine Addiction: The Untold Story Of Contradictions Between Self And America's Neoliberal Risk Society, Melanie C. Falconer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The ability to take risks is nothing short of heroism in the modern United States which thrives on a diet of hyper mobility, technological progress, and globalized, deregulated “free” markets. Such relentless instability affirms scholarly contentions that the U.S. is now a “risk society.” Indeed, in Gambling with the Myth of the American Dream: The Pokerization of America, rhetoric scholar Aaron Duncan suggests that media stories of modern poker tournaments signify a collective desire to grapple with this heightened modern “chanciness” within our established gambling lore and make it cohere with our deeply cherished notions of American individualism. While Duncan …

Water Awareness In The Irung-Irung Tradition As Implementation Of Water And Sanitation Management For The Community Of Cihideung Village, West Bandung Regency, Anindyta Fitriyani, Siti Nurhalizah, Salma G. Felisa, Retno A. Hardiyanti

CSID Journal of Infrastructure Development

The local wisdom that exists within a community plays a crucial role in influencing the thinking and conduct of the community. One local wisdom that contains a hydrological educational message that impacts community awareness in maintaining water hygiene and proper sanitation is the Irung-Irung Tradition by the people of Cihideung Village, West Bandung Regency. The objective of this study is to comprehensively examine and assess the components of water awareness within the Irung-Irung Tradition practiced by the people of Cihideung Village in the West Bandung Regency. This study involves a descriptive qualitative research design, including data collection methods such as …

Serving The Voiceless: Analyzing Local Organizations For Immigrant Empowerment, Daniel Kabithe, Acia Diallo, Kiya Demps, Chance Brown, Aliyah Whitfield

Undergraduate Research Events

This research project delves into the landscape of community organizations that serve the immigrant population in Louisville, Kentucky, focusing on 6 key entities: La Casita Center, Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Catholic Charities of Louisville, English Conversation Club, Backside Learning Center, and American Community Center. Through a combination of interviews, phone calls and research, we discovered the roles, missions, and offered services by each organization. Through these methods, we identified some of the critical needs within the immigrant community and examined how these organizations address them. Additionally, we discovered that not only did our research highlight the importance of the services provided, …