Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Swahili Expressive Arts Digital Media Collection, Rebecca Gearhart

Rebecca Gearhart

The Swahili Expressive Arts collection represents the research and scholarship of Professor Rebecca Gearhart, Ph.D., Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Illinois Wesleyan University. Professor Gearhart has worked with members of the community of Lamu, Kenya for twenty years, and in this collection she has selected images that represent aspects of Swahili ceremonial life on the northern coast of Kenya. The Swahili Expressive Arts collection is meant to be a possible starting point for student and scholar research on some of the Sufi-inspired practices that contemporary Swahili communities in the Lamu archipelago and adjacent mainland carry on into the present.

Colombian State Human Rights Policies, Winifred Tate

Winifred L. Tate

No abstract provided.

Quarries, Caravans, And Routes To Complexity: Prehispanic Obsidian In The South-Central Andes (Ph.D. Dissertation, Uc Santa Barbara Anthropology), Nicholas Tripcevich

Nicholas Tripcevich, Ph.D.

Best Practices In Intercultural Health; Five Case Studies In Latin America, J. Mignone, J. Bartlett, J. O'Nwil, Treena Orchard

Dr. Treena Orchard

The practice of integrating western and traditional indigenous medicine is fast becoming an accepted and more widely used approach in health care systems throughout the world. However, debates about intercultural health approaches have raised significant concerns. This paper reports findings of five case studies on intercultural health in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Suriname. It presents summary information on each case study, comparatively analyzes the initiatives following four main analytical themes, and examines the case studies against a series of the best practice criteria.

Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender And Cultural Politics In Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry, Caitrin Lynch

Caitrin Lynch

When a government program brought garment factories to rural Sri Lanka, women workers found themselves caught between the pressures of a globalizing economy and societal expectations that villages are sanctuaries of tradition. These women learned quickly to resist the characterization of "Juki girls"—female garment workers already established in the urban sector—as vulgar and deracinated, instead asserting that they were "good girls" who could embody the nation's highest ideals of femininity.

In This Life: The Impact Of Gender And Tradition On Sexuality And Relationships For Devadasi Sex Workers In Rural India, Treena Orchard

Dr. Treena Orchard

In the popular imagination and certain academic fields, sex workers' experiences of sexuality and intimate relationships are often "naturalized," to the point where they are assumed to be deviant or completely different than those of women in mainstream society. Researchers and sex worker organizations are challenging these reified constructions by examining more diverse and representative models of sexuality and relationships. However, the experiences of women selling sex in the "third world" are consistently portrayed as violent, non-pleasurable, and oppressive, characteristics often applied universally to "third world women". Using data from ethnographic fieldwork with girls and women who belong to the …

Counting The Dead: The Politics And Culture Of Human Rights Activism In Colombia, Winifred Tate

Winifred L. Tate

At a time when a global consensus on human rights standards seems to be emerging, this rich study steps back to explore how the idea of human rights is actually employed by activists and human rights professionals. Winifred Tate, an anthropologist and activist with extensive experience in Colombia, finds that radically different ideas about human rights have shaped three groups of human rights professionals working there--nongovernmental activists, state representatives, and military officers. Drawing from the life stories of high-profile activists, pioneering interviews with military officials, and research at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Counting the Dead underscores …

Girl, Woman, Lover, Mother: Towards A New Understanding Of Child Prostitution Among Young Devadasi Sex Workers In Rural Karnataka, India, Treena Orchard

Dr. Treena Orchard

The emotive issue of child prostitution is at the heart of international debates over ‘trafficking’ in women and girls, the “new slave trade”, and how these phenomena are linked with globalization, sex tourism, and expanding transnational economies. However, young sex workers, particularly those in the ‘third world’, are often represented through tropes of victimization, poverty, and “backwards” cultural traditions, constructions that rarely capture the complexity of the girls’ experiences and the role that prostitution plays in their lives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with girls and young women who are part of the Devadasi (servant/slave of the God) system of sex …

Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist And Self-Making In Jamaica, Gina Ulysse

Gina Athena Ulysse

The Caribbean “market woman” is ingrained in the popular imagination as the archetype of black womanhood in countries throughout the region. Challenging this stereotype and other outdated images of black women, Downtown Ladies offers a more complex picture by documenting the history of independent international traders—known as informal commercial importers, or ICIs—who travel abroad to import and export a vast array of consumer goods sold in the public markets of Kingston, Jamaica. Both by-products of and participants in globalization, ICIs operate on multiple levels and, since their emergence in the 1970s, have made significant contributions to the regional, national, and …