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Exploring The Meaning Of Moshing: An Ethnographic Study Of The Relationship Between Hardcore/Punk Culture And Catharsis, Clayton Kempf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at “moshing,” an aggressive style of dancing that occurs primarily at hardcore/punk concerts. Moshing involves people at a concert throwing their bodies, swinging their limbs, running into people, and hitting one another. I aim to explore how mosh pits and hardcore/punk culture provide participants with an emotional release through catharsis. Catharsis looks at releasing emotion to help alleviate pent-up stress physically and emotionally. A cathartic release can temporarily offer peace of mind, clarity, and joy that overrides the feelings of negative emotions and stress. I will examine the process people go through to reach this cathartic release …

Compromising Consent: A Peer-Led Ethnographic Exploration Of Sexual Assault On A Small College Campus, Scott London, Mae Rohlk

Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society

This study explores the persistent issue of campus sexual assault through an ethnographic lens, utilizing peer-led interviews conducted at a small liberal arts college. By focusing on three key themes—the interplay of alcohol, sex, and consent; peer responses to sexual assault accusations; and technology-facilitated sexual violence—the study offers a nuanced understanding of the normalization of sexual violence. Findings reveal that alcohol is frequently cited as a mitigating factor in assault narratives, perpetuating gendered power imbalances and undermining the effectiveness of consent education. Peer responses often rely on enduring rape myths, which reinforce victim-blaming and discourage reporting. Technology, while providing opportunities …

Making The Macc: Communities Of Practice And Cultural Citizenship In Austin, Texas, Cassie Lynn Smith

Anthropology ETDs

Meaningful community engagement is a challenge for local governments without a thorough understanding of constituents’ histories and their relationship with City government. This dissertation investigates the City of Austin’s (COA) Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) in Austin, Texas, to understand how this culture and arts institution engages with and is influenced by its patrons. This study analyzes the role of the MACC’s community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991)—an evolving group of educators, activists, artists, and COA staff—in shaping public policy and educational programming as well as creating places of belonging for marginalized people in the city. …

Research Proposal: Complex Relationship Of Religious Community, Psychological Health, And Socioeconomic Status Of Spanish Speaking Residents Ages 18-50 In Lynchburg, Va, Faith Park

NEXUS: The Liberty Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Previous research has shown a clear quantitative correlation between socioeconomic status and religious gatherings as well as psychological health and religious gatherings. However, there have been few studies on the interconnectedness of mental health, socioeconomic stability, and religious identity and gathering. Research thus has not addressed the personal implications and the benefits of individual perspectives that can be offered through a qualitative methodology. Thus, this research proposes an ethnographic methodology which may provide insights that do not limit the subjectivity of mental health, religious experiences, and socioeconomic struggles.Through an integration of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, the proposed research hopes to …

Researcher Risks: A Typology For Qualitative Risks To Researchers In Communication Studies, Rebecca M. Rice, Kristie Mcallum

Communication Studies Faculty Research

Discussions of risk in qualitative research tend to focus on risks to research participants. However, qualitative researchers also face risks—or uncertainties with potential for harm—because they serve as the research instrument. Communication researchers are uniquely suited to problematize the meaning of risk and extend theory about what risk is by noting that risk is subjective and communicatively constructed, both in qualitative methods and in research contexts. We create a typology of five risk contexts that pose a danger to researchers: crisis, disruptive, vulnerable, emotionally risky, and ethically fraught contexts. For each context, we define the risk, propose representative examples, and …

Painting Stories And Filming Change, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Contributions to Books

Mithila Art has helped illuminate various aspects of the relationship between gendered Maithil social roles and Maithil women’s narratives in connection with a feminist participatory action research project conducted primarily in 2016-2017 in and around the northern Bihari town of Madhubani. While participatory action research philosophically and methodologically attends to process as much as product, Mithila Art played a role in the process and product of making a documentary film and in our capacity to understand and communicate with varied audiences about shifting Maithil gender norms. The research and filmic project provided insight into the complex relationship among the stories …

Taking Revolution Seriously, Zohra Ahmed

Michigan Law Review

A review of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. By Orisanmi Burton.

Taking Revolution Seriously, Zohra Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Every so often, a prison strike will make national news, as it did in 2014, 2016, and 2018. ¹ The media will focus on the atrocious conditions of confinement; the unchecked violence; the wages numerated in pennies; and the state’s indifference to the strikers’ modest demands for food, medical care, and human contact.

Orisanmi Burton’s² book, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, urges us to process such reporting with a healthy dose of skepticism. What if prison rebellions were telling us something else, something even more important? What if they were …

Shiny New Beginnings: Reaching For Celestial Bodies In Romance And Research, Alexandra C. H. Nowakowski

The Qualitative Report

This commentary explores a series of social fiction novels about relationships through the lens of ethnographic research. It amplifies the lessons about love and life from Dr. Patricia Leavy’s Celestial Bodies series focused around two people with complex trauma finding kinship and healing with one another after a chance meeting. In the process, it uplifts the rigor and uniqueness of Leavy’s methods in translating findings from many years of observational research with people in different kinds of relationships to the social fiction format whose name she coined herself. In journeying through a shared life with main protagonists Tess Lee and …

"The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love": Identity Creation, Compartmentalization, And Belonging Among Queer Peace Corps Volunteers, Laura N. Keeran

Theses and Dissertations

The Peace Corps advertises that it accepts anyone, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation; however, recruiters and staff ask volunteers to go back into the closet for their twenty-seven months of service due to the Peace Corps’ safety concerns about their volunteers being out in their host countries. Queer Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) answer the call to serve, accepting that it means they will need to keep their queer identities concealed for two years and three months. I conducted ethnographic interviews with ten people who have served or are currently serving in the Peace Corps and identify under …

Find My Friends: Location-Sharing Ideologies And Peer Surveillance Practices, Nayla Dayal

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the use of Find My Friends in the context of the Claremont Colleges. Students choose to location-share under initial rhetorical justifications of social reciprocity, and community-orientedness, and peer-safety. Drawing from ethnographic interviews conducted with users at the colleges, I argue that the infrastructure of Find My Friends in conjunction with the social and physical proximities of the Claremont environment creates a distinctive condition where users are subject to what I term as a “virtual, neoliberal, and participatory panopticon.” Here, users are seemingly empowered through the application’s neutralizing collapse of reciprocity and hierarchy that are seen in conventional …

"Magsama-Sama Tayong Panoorin": A Creative, Collaborative, And Ongoing Ethnography With Sama Banguingui Women Dancing In The City Of Manila, Regina Salvaña Bautista

Kritika Kultura

For the Sama-Bajau and Sama Banguingui women living in Manila, the traditional dance pansak (or igal) is a vital dimension of life. This paper focuses on Radzmina Tanjili, a Sama- Banguingui from Zamboanga, well-known in her barangay1 for her dancing. Her life as a dancer is filled with performance opportunities and cultural exchanges for her and the group of Sama- Bajau women and children who belong to the same NGO she volunteers for. She and the group perform for government, non-government organizations, and academic institutions. Apart from this, she also continues to dance pansak in its traditional improvised form at …

"Pedagogic Invasion": The Thomasites In Occupied Philippines, Dinah Roma-Sianturi

Kritika Kultura

The early education of the Philippines by American voluntary teachers (the Thomasites) is often hailed as a laudatory project. However, education can be a deceptive gift. The ethnographic writings of the Thomasite teachers, like Mary Fee’s A Woman’s Impressions of the Philippines, reveal that these well-meaning American teachers had their own colonial opinion of their Filipino students. Perhaps unwittingly, the Thomasite teachers were still part of the American colonial education policy. Most especially, the memoir writings reveal a perception of Filipino males as effeminate and childlike, an opinion that did much to legitimize the American colonial mandate.

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 …

A Comparative Study Of Weavings Of Two Disparate Cultures: Finding The Similarities In Handcrafts, Monica Lowe

Theses

This thesis is a study of the similarities between the traditional weavings of two indigenous cultures who appear to be culturally unrelated, the West African Ewe and the Peruvian Quechua located in the Cusco Province. Its purview includes the purpose it serves, who does the craft, and meanings woven into the textiles. The focus of this thesis is based on a theory that across human cultures, iconographies and archetypes are demonstratively the same, with similar collective, unconscious meanings. The overall theory is that handcrafts are an important consideration when demonstrating a reflection of human cultural similarities in beliefs, community, and …

Mitochondrial Memory: Transgenerational Trauma, Functional Medicine, And Quantum Physics, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Building from Karen Barad’s “diffractive methodological approach” (2007, 71), this article combines Mariella Pandolfi’s notion of the female body as a transgenerational “physiological memoir” (1990, 255) with functional medicine perspectives on mitochondria and advances in quantum physics around “entanglement” to explore a new concept—“mitochondrial memory.” Recent findings in biological research depict a communicating collective of mitochondria distributed across different “human” organs and describe how this collective controls many aspects of human health through epigenetic mechanisms. Since exact copies of mitochondria are inherited through the maternal line, I draw from anthropological theory, functional medicine research, and recent discoveries in physics to …

Standing Still, Go Along, And Zooming In: Complementary Strategies Of Participant-Observations In Urban Ethnography, Lene Granzau Juel-Jacobsen

The Qualitative Report

This paper seeks to complement conventional ethnographic participant observation methods, proposing the integration of three distinct strategies. Motivated by own ethnographic studies, conducted in an urban supermarket and a food festival site, the paper contends that traditional long-term immersion may not always suffice for investigating transient urban phenomena. The paper advocates for the integration of complementary methodological strategies for participant observation adaptable to evolving contexts and research questions. Firstly, the "standing still" approach involves minimal engagement while observing a specific scene or interaction, offering a detached yet insightful perspective on fleeting moments or events. Secondly, the "go along" strategy entails …

History & Evolution Of Plastic Mulching Technology: An Ethnography Of California Strawberry Plasticulture, Kalea Conrad

Master's Theses

This ethnography draws on key informant interviews and participant observation to produce a case study about plastic mulching as an important industry standard in specialty crop production. It documents the historic adoption and present role of plastic mulching technology in California strawberry production and addresses the characteristics of commercial standard management that inhibit the adoption of alternative mulching practices. It complements extensive research on strawberry pathology and fumigation, breeding innovations, fertilizer and pesticide treatments, and maximization of yields to incorporate participants’ lived experiences and knowledge of mulch origins, the technology adoption process, mulch benefits and drawbacks, the state of agricultural …

The Qualitative Ethnographic Research Of The Relationship Related To Parental Involvement, Community Support, And School Administrative Substructure Amid To Inner-City Title-I High School Band Programs In Memphis, Tennessee, Thomas Akil Perry

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative ethnographic research investigated the fundamental unsubstantiated relationship related to parental involvement, community support, and school administrative substructure amid two inner-city Title-I high school band programs. This qualitative research embraced an ethnographic process managed by anthropology and sociology approached framework geared to study cultural responses over some time based on similar analytical cultural statistics. This study depicts the socioeconomic domain of a high school band community, highlighting key factors that add to the success and decline of the inner-city and Title-I high school band programs. It was conducted within Memphis, TN, within the North Memphis region, outlining the Raleigh, …

Risk Management In Human Resource Development And Talent Management, Kumba Bayoh

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Risk Management in human resource development and Talent Management enables organizations to identify, evaluate, analyze, monitor, and mitigate the risks that threaten their mission and strategic objectives. This research study examines the effect of risk management in human resources development and talent management in organizations including the Department of Finance and Administration. The development of this work encompassed a robust research effort that involved deep study, interview sessions, surveys, questionnaires, data analysis, and key conclusions. This is a transformative resource that enables entities to advance in their risk management visions and objectives.

Interviews In Global Catholic Studies: Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Mathew Schmalz, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Nothing About Us Without Us: A Folkloristic Approach To Creating Neurodivergent-Friendly Pedagogies For Secondary Classrooms, Brittney Hatchett

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines how utilizing an applied folkloristic approach of studying the communities of ADHD and autistic people allows us to conduct research that actively involves the voices of ADHD and autistic adults. I have collected personal experience narratives from ADHD and autistic college-aged students about their experiences with different teaching strategies in junior high and high school. Through analysis of these narratives, I examine how the narratives of ADHD and autistic individuals can help guide educational pedagogies towards models that more equitably consider cultures of disabled individuals and better meet the educational needs of future neurodivergent students while simultaneously …

Magkita Tayo Doon, Let’S Meet Up There: An Ethnography On “Little Manila Avenue” In Woodside, Queens, New York City, Alexandra Tamsi

Senior Theses

How are ethnic diasporic identities formed in host countries? How does a multiethnic setting impact diasporic identity formation? Through an analysis of “Little Manila Avenue” in Woodside, Queens, this ethnography explores how Filipinos on Little Manila Avenue manifest and enable transnational connections to the Philippines and to other members of the Filipino diaspora. It contextualizes the material culture, intangible culture, and Filipino language use that are specific to the avenue within the practices of the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora by drawing from fieldwork conducted in October 2023 and the author’s personal visits to Woodside as a Filipina-American. Guided by …

“4, 24”, And 4c”: The Shared Knowledge Of Hair Terminology And Cultural Pride Among Black Women., Aliya J. Claiborne

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper aims to explain the significance of hairstyles and terms used by black women and seeks to explore how these choices can sway the negative perceptions about black womanhood. Past research has shown that what is “just hair” to others serves as a statement piece and an overall representation of black women. By observing and recording naturally occurring conversations in black hair salons and conducting interviews with black women, I investigated the following question: How do black women use specific terminology to discuss their hair while also constructing identity and reflecting on societal views? I conclude that black women’s …

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.

Repatriation In The Modern Museum World: Practical Problems Surrounding Decolonization Of Collections, Rachel M. Sudbeck

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Museums are home to many artifacts that allow us to learn about and understand people from around the world. However, many artifacts kept in Western (primarily North American and European) museums have origins steeped in colonial ideas of cultural superiority and collections acquired through ethically questionable means. Many institutions have been working to decolonize their collections by evaluating their objects' cultural origins and repatriating some pieces when possible. By repatriating (returning) objects of cultural patrimony as specified by laws such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), museums uphold their ethical duties and improve the quality of …

Small Moments: Anthropological Poetry, Lee Davis

Undergraduate Theses

Have you ever perhaps overheard a conversation and thought it reminded you of your own life, or someone you knew? You most likely moved on, and you most likely completely forgot about who you overheard. This collection of poetry was written to urge thought on these secret moments of connection which most people experience every day. Every poem in the collection was written from something I overheard in public, as though I were reading prompts. The pieces are fictional in the sense that I really know so little of the full context, but real in the sense that when I …

An Ethnography Of Permaculture In Southwest Michigan, Lily Burke

Honors Theses

Permaculture is a holistic design system for meeting human and environmental needs in a sustainable way, using local conditions and circumstances to shape land use and food production practices. My project questions what it means to practice permaculture in southwest Michigan, and how environmental ideological commitments can translate into action and practice. Ethnographically investigating these questions through semi-structured interviews and participant observation with individuals in the permaculture community, along with extensive reading of permaculture materials, my study adds to research on applications and adoptions of permaculture in suburban contexts, and sheds light on how ecological ideological commitments can translate into …

Popular Music And Sociocultural Empathy In The Elementary Classroom, Kelsey M. Packman

Masters Theses

This qualitative ethnographic study explores the undocumented effects of popular music on elementary students’ social and cultural empathy. Previous studies have explored the effects of popular music on adolescent and college-age students, but no study has researched these effects in the elementary classroom. This study aims to show that learning about socially-relevant popular music in a social setting advances students’ sociocultural and musical development. The researcher recruited eighty elementary-aged students from a private school in the Las Virgines School District in Los Angeles to participate in this study. The participants were sorted into subgroups by grade, and each subgroup was …

Moving Through The Violence: Yemeni Migrants And The Reconstruction Of Lifeworlds In Cairo, Jonathan Hearn

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is based on an ethnographic study, following the lives of a small number of Yemeni people rebuilding their lives in Cairo. Their displacement is the consequence of many factors not least the outbreak of war in 2014. In response to this, I ask: In the midst of ongoing conflict, how do Yemeni migrants go about reconstructing their lifeworlds in Cairo? That is, to ask how are Yemeni migrants in Cairo responding to the violent disruption of their social realities and what sense are they making of the consequences. The reorganisation of social realities disrupted by conflict means …