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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Producing Possibilities: Envisioning And Mediating Youth, Identities, And Futures In Central Appalachia, Tammy Lynn Clemons
Producing Possibilities: Envisioning And Mediating Youth, Identities, And Futures In Central Appalachia, Tammy Lynn Clemons
Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology
This dissertation, based on anthropological research between 2015 and 2020, focuses on young people in different yet interconnected social contexts in Central Appalachia and how they envision, construct, and act upon possibilities for themselves and the region through multimodal cultural production processes like visual art, performance, and multisensory media. The research question focusing this project was: How do the social contexts of young Appalachians’ engagement in media consumption and production practices shape the possibilities they envision for themselves, others, and their region? I found that the specific contexts were less important than the interconnected mentoring conversations across sites and generations …
Consuming Appalachia: An Archaeology Of Company Coal Towns, Zada Komara
Consuming Appalachia: An Archaeology Of Company Coal Towns, Zada Komara
Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology
Material culture is an understudied aspect of social life in Appalachian Studies, the multi- disciplinary investigation of social life in the Appalachian region. Historically, material culture in the region has been largely studied for its semiotic properties, decoded as a tangible symbol of “a region apart,” lagging behind the rest of America in terms of moral, mental, economic, and social development. Critical material studies from archaeology and other disciplines paint a different picture, however, and construct a region as American as any other. This study utilizes discourse analysis of material rhetoric about Appalachia and archaeological and oral historical data from …
Finding The Singing Spruce: Craft Labor, Global Forests, And Musical Instrument Makers In Appalachia, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth
Finding The Singing Spruce: Craft Labor, Global Forests, And Musical Instrument Makers In Appalachia, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth
Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology
Musical instrument makers in the state of West Virginia in the United States pursue “singing,” lively instruments that capture ideals of musical tone and “re-enchant” their work and lives through relationships with craft materials and the forest landscape. Suitable tonewoods that grow in the region, such as red spruce (Picea rubens), intersect with makers’ desires to craft instruments in the style of famed makers such as the C.F. Martin Company and the Gibson Company as well as provide instruments imbued with a sense of place. While the demand for and symbolic import of instruments made with local wood …
Unending Mazes: Gendered Inequalities, Drug Use, And State Interventions In Rural Appalachia, Lesly-Marie Buer
Unending Mazes: Gendered Inequalities, Drug Use, And State Interventions In Rural Appalachia, Lesly-Marie Buer
Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology
Prescription opioids are associated with rising rates of overdose deaths and hepatitis C and HIV infection in the US, including in rural Central Appalachia. Yet there is a dearth of published ethnographic research examining rural opioid use. The aim of this dissertation is to document the gendered inequalities that situate women’s encounters with substance abuse treatment as well as additional state interventions targeted at women who use drugs. These results are based on ethnographic fieldwork completed from 2013 to 2016 and centered around one county seat in rural Central Appalachia. Data are ascertained through semi-structured interviews with women who have …