Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Anthropology With Human Waste Management: Non-Humans, The State, And Matters Of Care On The Placencia Peninsula, Belize, William Alex Webb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The management of human waste is a seldom studied phenomenon in anthropology. Yet across the globe, in countries both rich and poor, it presents pervasive and difficult to tame problems. This dissertation draws on complimentary theories of management and entanglements to explore the practices and processes of organizing human waste on the Placencia Peninsula, Belize. The results illustrate how problems are conditioned and defined by messy relations between institutions, people, technologies, materials, and ecological life.

Fieldwork and analysis for this work was a culmination of years of interdisciplinary collaboration between other anthropologists and engineers at the University of South Florida. …

Traversing Paradigms: An Environmental Journey To Body And Mind, Martin Ceja Mejia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Traumatic life experiences altered the way I perceive the world. As a result, I embark on a journey to reshape my relationship to self, the built and natural world; to environment. In this thesis I ask: How do I want to relate to the environment? Considering I am a doubly colonized agent, I also aim to decolonize my relationship to environment along the process. Therefore, this work aims to formulate a new, personal, relationship to environment through academic literature, history, psychology, Indigenous knowledge and science, and literary studies, among other fields of knowledge. This work is interdisciplinary in nature; life …

Climate Change And The Ancestors: Rain, Gender And Politics In An African Water Catchment, Jessie Fredlund

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Uluguru, a small mountain range in eastern Tanzania and one of the rainiest places in East Africa, serves as the principal water catchment for Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, and for commercial farms along the country’s central coast. Home to smallholder farmers who cultivate a variety of crops on mostly rain-fed farms, the catchment has been a site of struggle over water and nature since the nineteenth century. Today, climate change has rendered rainfall increasingly unpredictable, and a wave of “sustainable development” interventions has pressured farmers to change their practices and to engage in unpaid forms of ecological labor …

"It's About More Than Just Animals": Environmental Politics Of Zoo-Adjacent Conservation(Ists) In The U.S., Dayton D. Starnes Ii

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This research explores the influences of diverse environmental politics in shaping zoo-adjacent conservation activities in the United States. Based upon 13 months of multi-sited ethnographic research, conducted with conservation actors across six states, the researcher investigates and documents how conservation professionals—operating in contexts adjacent to zoological institutions—experience and respond to the socio-environmental implications associated with the cascading effects of global environmental change. In the face of current challenges and uncertain environmental futures—shaped by habitat alterations, ecological transitions, and species declines/extinctions—conservationists are undergoing their own processes of reassessment and reconfiguration of their underpinning philosophies and body of practices that inform their …

Neshnabé Futurisms: Indigenous Science And Eco-Politics In The Great Lakes, Blaire K. Topash-Caldwell

Anthropology ETDs

In the wake of global climate change anthropological work in Indigenous contexts has focused on crisis intervention. Well-intentioned scholarship has emphasized how climate change disproportionately affects Indigenous communities but in the process has also erased Native voice and agency—deleting them from the future all together. In this dissertation I argue that ecological revitalization projects by tribes, Women’s Water Walks from the ceremonial Midéwiwin Lodge, and Indigenous science fiction media together constitute “Neshnabé futurisms” that challenge or disrupt these dominant narratives. Neshnabé futurisms guide Native American ecologists, theorists, and activists in the Great Lakes region in mitigating and surviving ecological destruction …

Migration And Women’S Relationships To The Land And Food In Myanmar, Allison Joseph

Scripps Senior Theses

Abstract

In the 21st century, Myanmar has become the largest migration source country in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. To achieve its economic and political goals, the government has conducted extensive confiscation and reallocation of communal lands, which has resulted in a growing class of landless and dispossessed citizens. Under the new laws, rural women are disproportionately impacted and more vulnerable to the processes of dispossession, often lacking the rights or resources of their male counterparts to fight for the land of their ancestors. This has resulted in the wide-scale disinheritance of Myanmar’s rural women from their land and food, as …

Beyond Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learned Information In Forodhani Park, Jaimie Lynn Mulligan

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This ethnographic study examines Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Mji Mkongwe (Stone Town), Zanzibar, and how ecological knowledge shared by locals on the island is formed and is shared among locals in a park setting. Using a framework of political ecology, this study specifically highlights ecological pressures of local population growth, global climate change on a local scale, and local economic changes as the key drivers for the creation and cultural importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. To discover both the ecological pressures and the examples of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, I conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews in Forodhani Park, a public park on …

Environmental Conservation As An Instrument Of National Political Economy: Culture, Livelihoods, And Territorial Rights Of The Emberá Of Panama, Sara M. Taylor

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

This paper argues that areas of environmental conservation in the Panama Canal Watershed Zone were originally designed to fit an economic utility rather than to protect habitat. As a result there was an exclusion of forest-based communities in policy design and implementation, creating lasting impacts on indigenous Emberá territorial rights, livelihood opportunities, and traditional cultural practices. Based on recent fieldwork and a review of relevant secondary literature, this paper discusses how Emberá communities in in Chagres National Park have adapted their culture and livelihoods to accommodate environmental regulation and explores what prospects the Emberá see for future generations if they …

Human-Nature Relationship And Faery Faith In The American Pagan Subculture, Sarah Goodrich

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Within American religious culture, there is a small but significant and growing movement that overlaps and interacts with the environmental movement. It's known by many names, including Contemporary Paganism, Neo-Paganism, Earth Religion, and Nature Religion. A few years of observation at Starwood Festival, the largest annual Pagan gathering in North America, revealed that many individuals who identify as Pagan (or Wiccan, Druid, animist, or another of the identities that fall under the Pagan umbrella) include in their spiritual practice engagement with faeries or other nature spirits. My research employed qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews to examine the extent …

Afro-Colombians And The Encroachment Of Paramilitaries On The African Palm Oil Sector, Stacie Hecht

Anthropology ETDs

The African palm oil industry in Colombia has burgeoned in the last decade, with state-sanctioned promotions and new developmental productions for the expansion of these plantations seeking to provide economic stability for the country. In addition, with the passing of the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia in 2011, as well as deals with several European countries for the exportation of the product, comes an even greater demand than previously known for the industry. However, the continuation of this endeavor will lead to the devastation of the bio-diverse lands being used for economic gains. Furthermore, palm oil …

The Consciousness Of Water: Narrative Flows, Environmental Change, And The Voice Of Yemen, Tricia Nellessen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Icebergs are melting in the Arctic. The Gulf of Mexico is warming and producing hurricanes such as Katrina. The delta of the southern United States is drying. And, Yemen will be the first country in modern history to experience a lack of accessible ground water, as soon as 2017 possibly. Yemen's situation has been tracked by scholars and governments since the 1960s. Despite this fact, cities have expanded in Yemen and the population has increased its use of water while little has been invested in desalination or infrastructure to offset growth. Climate change has affected humans for thousands of years; …

Green In A Sea Of Pink: Environmental Reframing Of Mainstream Breast Cancer, Amy Elizabeth Scanzillo

Masters Theses

As a contested illness, breast cancer has mainstream and alternate narratives that vie to shape related scientific research and legislative policy. The mainstream breast cancer movement (MBCM) shapes the dominant discourse of breast cancer risk, prevention, and cure through the utilization of the conventional biomedical model of knowledge. The environmental breast cancer movement (EBCM) contests the mainstream breast cancer narrative because EBCM activists argue that it supports an unequal power dynamic and does not adequately reflect breast cancer risk and prevention. Through the incorporation of citizen science and the precautionary principle into breast cancer research and policy, EBCM activists reframe …