Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Jean E. Jackson: A Pioneering Ethnographer In The Colombian Amazon, Patience Epps, Danilo Paiva Ramos, Flora Dias Cabalzar

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This essay celebrates the work of Jean E. Jackson, a pioneering female ethnographer who devoted most of her fifty-year career to the Indigenous peoples of Colombia. Her research, represented in an extensive set of publications from the early 1970s to the present, engages with themes of identity, stigma, and social inequality, manifested across a range of contexts. Jackson’s ethnographic contributions include her ground-breaking early work on Indigenous Tukanoan society in the Colombian Vaupés, focusing on the practice of linguistic exogamy (obligatory marriage across language groups) among the Bará people. Later, she expanded her focus to address Indigenous experiences in the …

Interrogating Households In Anticipation Of Disasters: The Feminization Of Preparedness, Chika Watanabe, Celie Hanson

Critical Disaster Studies

It is now a maxim among scholars and policy-makers alike that disaster preparedness needs to involve community-based approaches in order to be effective. These include preparedness strategies in the household. But how do disaster preparedness policies and public discourses define “the household” in the first place? In this article, we explore how particular gendered notions of the household are reproduced in disaster preparedness policies and activities in Japan and the UK. Drawing on historical and cross-cultural analyses, we suggest that household preparedness efforts place the burden of labor on people coded as women—a phenomenon we call “the feminization of preparedness.” …

Redrawing The Contours Of Care: Ethical Commitments And Gendered Politics In The Work Of Government Psychological Counsellors In Sri Lanka, Nadia Augustyniak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the last three decades, Sri Lanka has seen a growing popular interest in psychology as a field of professional practice as well as a steady expansion of mental health services. Historically, this shift has been linked to the impacts of political violence (1971, 1987-1989), civil war (1983-2009) as well as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, with local and international trauma and humanitarian interventions shaping recovery and the country’s mental health and psychosocial care infrastructure. More recently, however, psychology and mental health have been increasingly decoupled from the discourse of trauma, entering into everyday life and popular culture through the …

Anth201: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Fall 2023), James Tolleson

Open Educational Resources

Cultural anthropology emerged to study the differences among human beings (and between human and non-human beings). This course will cover the foundations of the discipline, including a critical perspective on anthropology’s ties to European colonialism and the rise of global capitalism. Students will come away with an understanding of how cultural anthropologists study culture, defined as “a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways” (Brown, McIlwraith & Tubelle de González 2020, 6). We will also pay close attention to …

“I’M Still Suffering”: Mental Health Care Among Central African Refugee Populations In The Tampa Bay Area, C. Danee Ruszczyk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An estimated 500 Central African refugee families have been resettled in the Tampa Bay Area since 2002 (RPC, 2022). The cycles of trauma that they have endured place them in vulnerable positions regarding their mental health. Struggling to exist within underfunded social programs that are rigid in their expectations and with the current system of reactive care vs preventative care, the refugees in Tampa are put in a difficult situation of navigating their own health and wellbeing in lieu of having the full support of the United States government and their community. I will discuss how these refugees experience and …

Desire, Difference, And Productivity: Reflections On “The Perverse Child” And Its Continued Relevance, Christopher Hewlett

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article is concerned with the relationships through which children have been born, raised, and made into Amahuaca people over the past 75 years, and within contemporary Native Communities on the Inuya River since their formation beginning in the 1980s. The process of making children into kin among Amahuaca people is similar to that described throughout much of lowland South America. The production, preparation, and sharing of proper food (manioc, plantains, fish, and game) as well as manioc beer are central aspects of sociality and the formation of specific kinds of bodies. While the processes of sharing substances, demonstrating care, …

“Nails Done, Hair Done, Everything Did!”: Consumption And The Creation Of Black Feminine Selves, Simone Reid

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how race and gender shape the meaning that Black women associate with their beauty consumption practices and spending. Much of the existing feminist scholarship on beauty has been postfeminist, privileging the concept of agency and empowerment over structural realities. However, the materialist feminist frame has more utility to address how beauty operates within the lives of Black women as a form of distinct gendered racial oppression. The concept of aesthetic capital emerges from the materialist feminist perspective and suggests that beauty demands the investment of considerable economic resources and can deliver economic returns. Despite this, aesthetic capital …

Identificación De La División Del Trabajo Entre Los Géneros A Través Del Análisis Iconográfico, Sarah Kauffmann

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

El presente trabajo se enfoca en la metodología para identificar los roles y actividades realizadas por determinado género en la sociedad maya prehispánica. Códigos especiales en la iconografía son utilizados para representar y diferenciar los dos géneros. Varios medios se explorarán como las estelas, dinteles, cerámicas y figurillas. A través de la iconografía se identificará las actividades, vestimenta y postura para interpretar la división del trabajo.

This present study focuses on the methodology for identifying the roles and activities realized by both genders in the pre-Hispanic Mayan society. Special iconographical codes are used to represent and differentiate men and women. …

Sexually Selected Preferences For Human Altruism Across Sexual Orientation, Gender, Age, And Reproductive Status, Katherine Valinske Kappelman

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Prior studies have attempted to establish how human altruism has evolved, including theories of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and costly signaling. Recent investigations have explored the evolution of altruism as the result of sexual selection, where individuals may exhibit altruistic behavior because it is preferred by potential mates. In this study, I examine how altruistic behavior toward different people (family, friends, strangers, or general altruistic acts) is preferred when considering potential short-term and long-term mates. While previous research has examined this question using college-aged heterosexual participants, this study uses a more diverse sample, including individuals who identify as LGBTQ, those …

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising A Generation Outside The Gender Binary, Toni Noelle Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, the social and cultural reality remains organized around the gender binary. The binary legitimizes itself on the widely held belief that gender is determined by biology and, therefore, is “natural.” By exploring and firmly placing gender as a cultural construct, this thesis looks at the possibilities of fracturing the binary. Borrowing from Stephan Hirschauer (1994) and Judith Butler’s (2004), this thesis theorizes what a gender neutral world could look like and examines how Gender Neutral Parents contribute toward a gender revolution. Gender Neutral Parents, a community that is mostly found online, represent a small group that …

“Even If You Have Food In Your House, It Will Not Taste Sweet”: Central African Refugees’ Experiences Of Cultural Food Insecurity And Other Overlapping Insecurities In Tampa, Florida, Shaye Soifoine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, resettled African refugee populations experience food insecurity at rates up to seven times higher than those of the general population. In Tampa, Florida, anthropologists have documented high levels of food insecurity among Central African refugee households since members of this population began to be resettled in the area in 2016. Utilizing an intersectional lens and drawing upon theoretical concepts such as cultural food security, navigational capital, and social reproduction, this thesis examines how Central African refugees, particularly women, experience food (in)security and other overlapping forms of (in)security as they integrate into US systems of structural inequality …

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Is The Ivory Tower Made Of Glass?: Examining Work Experiences Of Women Faculty At Butler University, Erin Elizabeth Mahan

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The guiding research question for this study is: “What are the structural, cultural, and situational factors that affect women faculty’s experience at Butler University?” While this project focuses broadly on women as an identifying group, it also requires attention to the intersectionality of individuals’ experience as issues such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disabilities are also factors shaping women’s experiences. The information from this study draws attention to the experiences that women faculty have related to their gender and potentially facilitate change starting at Butler University. This paper will discuss the experiences of women faculty at Butler University regarding …

Otavalan Women Weavers: Rethinking Gendered Labor And Crafts In Ecuador, Kaitlin Marie Zapel

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This research focuses on the gendered labor of craft production and distribution of Otavaleños, an indigenous group in the Imbabura Valley in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. Otavalans are often described as a society of weavers with strong gender divisions. Households typically function as units of production, with tasks ideally broken down along gender lines. Women are generally depicted as secondary workers who do not weave the textiles that make Otavalans famous; however, they are generally perceived as being responsible for selling these textiles in the market. This research argues that current gendered labor relations in Otavalan textile production can …

Improving Networking Supports For Women In The Workplace, Karen E. Pennesi, Javier Alvarez Vandeputte, Zsofia Agoston, Rawand Amsdr

Anthropology Publications

This report describes findings from research on networking activities and strategies among women in executive and leadership positions in Canadian organizations. The project was carried out by graduate student researchers in collaboration with the Women's Executive Network. Networking is defined as the creation and maintenance of a community of diverse interests, through in-person and online engagements, that can be mobilized for the benefit of oneself or other members of one’s network. We found that the shift to primarily online networking activities due to COVID-19 removed some existing barriers related to age, gender and location, while introducing others related to family …

Reimagining Recovery: Debt, Mutual Aid, And Disaster Governance In Puerto Rico, Sarah Molinari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the politics and lived experiences of debt and climate disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. It examines mutual aid and debt resistance in relation to governance techniques and overlapping crises marked by the U.S. territory’s bankruptcy, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (2017), and culminating with popular mobilizations in the summer of 2019 that propelled the governor’s resignation. Tracing the ways that the post-hurricane social disaster and debt crisis are mutually constitutive, I investigate a case of women-led grassroots mutual aid organizing in the east-central municipality of Caguas, Puerto Rico and a political movement calling for a citizen audit …

Feminist Readings Of Evangelicalism: Views On Gender And Sexuality From Evangelical Perspectives, Rubi Elizabeth Cibrian Llamas

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

There are approximately over 10,000 distinct religious practices in the world, some of these religions are either a variation of each other or very different. Historically and presently, certain religions are positioned in popular discourse as not fit for our times or too conservative for example, evangelicalism and Islam have often been two religions that are viewed as ‘too traditional’ and in need of modernization of their ‘extreme’ beliefs.

This typically gets reduced to specific ideologies and viewpoints revolving around feminism and LGBTQIA+ identity. Ideologies regarding the treatment and place of women have been backed up by ‘evidence’ presented in …

Unusual Subjects: Finding Model Communities Among Marginalized Populations, Babette Faehmel Ph.D., Tiombe Farley, Vashti Ma'at

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

Unusual subjects:

Finding model communities among marginalized populations

This paper is inspired by the questions that we have asked ourselves since we first met at Schenectady County Community College. What is it, we wondered, that keeps so many of our fellow Americans seemingly wedded to a political economy that is sustainable only at great cost? Could we use our academic work to help spread awareness about people who dared to demand different lives? And might our studies suggest strategies to work for change?

We currently all pursue different projects, but we share a belief that one obstacle to progressive change …

Head Strong: Gendered Analysis Of Human Representations In Western And Central Continental European Iron Age Iconography, Christopher R. Allen

Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology

This preliminary study examines potential links between gender and sex representations in Iron Age Continental European iconography. Drawing from multiple examples such as the Glauberg statue, the statue of Bourey, and the Gundestrup Cauldron, this article reviews the different anthropomorphic images in Western European Iron Age contexts to create a method for understanding the role of gender and the human head in anthropomorphic representations. This article will form a foundation for future studies.

Flexible Lives On Engineering's 'Bleeding Edge' : Gender, Migration And Belonging In The Semiconductor Industry, Sarah E. Appelhans

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores gender, flexibilization, and belonging within professional high tech employment, particularly amongst women and migrant engineers. Prior studies of women in the “integrated circuit” focused on low-skilled factory labor (Nakamura 2014, Grossman 1980); however, women are increasingly choosing careers in the male-dominated engineering workforce, which designs and manufactures semiconductor technology. Fieldwork for this dissertation took place between May 2018 – Aug 2019 in the Northeastern US, a regional hub for semiconductor manufacturing companies. Thirty-eight life history interviews were conducted with participants from several companies in the area, along with frequent follow ups and participant observation with seventeen engineering …

Cooking Up Inequality: An Ethnographic Study Of Racial Hierarchies In Miami's Restaurant Industry, Judith C. Williams

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Racial inequality is a significant problem in the US Restaurant Industry. In Miami, a tropical tourist destination with a majority Latinx population, restaurants serve as a site of multiculturalism, and are promoted by officials as a place where visitors can enjoy ethnic food and culture. However, these same locations of diversity are also spaces where whiteness is normalized as superior and racial hierarchies ensue. Previous studies have documented racism in the restaurant industry but fail to address the intersectional complexities that arise when race is layered with gender, class, nationality, language, and sexual orientation.

Drawing from a 13-month ethnographic study …

"Roses Remind Me Of Aleppo": Ironic Home, Beckoning States, And Memories Of Syrian Armenian Women In Yerevan, Armenia, Anahid Matossian

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This project contributes to anthropologies of the state, (diasporic return) migration, belonging, home, and conflict, including genocide and war. It intervenes in the anthropology of home by focusing on both the social and physical aspects of home, its pain, joys, and ironies, and it speaks to the anthropology of genocide by showing how a population a century removed from a genocide uses it to interpret their experience. This dissertation also deals with state constructions of ideal citizen formation--one of obligation and devotion to the socially constructed ancestral homeland, where descendants who share an ethnic identity have a role to play …

[Introduction To] Paradoxes Of Care: Children And Global Medical Aid In Egypt., Rania Kassab Sweis

Bookshelf

Each year, billions of dollars are spent on global humanitarian health initiatives. These efforts are intended to care for suffering bodies, especially those of distressed children living in poverty. But as global medical aid can often overlook the local economic and political systems that cause bodily suffering, it can also unintentionally prolong the very conditions that hurt children and undermine local aid givers. Investigating medical humanitarian encounters in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care illustrates how child aid recipients and local aid experts grapple with global aid's shortcomings and its paradoxical outcomes.

Rania Kassab Sweis examines how some of the world's largest …

The Ghost Town: An Autoethnographic Study On The Effects Of Loss And Trauma On A Saudi Arabian International Student’S Well-Being, Salman J. Alzowibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We all have fought on grief’s battleground; some of us started at early ages, while others during their developmental age, teen’s years, or later in their adulthood. All of them are valuable resources and sites of knowledge that need to be explored. Yet, recent studies reduced grief into clinical psychological well-being. However, as I lived these experiences, trauma, loss, and grief impact all well-being dimensions. Grief intersects with large structures (e.g., social, economic, cultural, locations, etc.); all these components impact our way of grief how socially displayed (mourning). This dissertation encapsulates my personal experience elevating it to an academic work …

Beyond Choice: An Intersectional Analysis Of Identity And Labor In Online Sex Work, Shawna F. Felkins

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

This intersectional project seeks to understand the complex labor, social lives, and community building of online sex workers. Building on the work of foundational sex work researchers, this project utilizes in-depth interviews, a survey, social media posts, and published writing and research from online sex workers to understand how marginalization and identity impacts participation and success in online sex work. Providing analysis on how race, gender, class, and ability intersect in the digital sexual marketplace, this project critiques the rise of neoliberal feminism in sex work spaces that stems from the centering of white and otherwise privileged sex workers using …

Blackness, Gender And The State: Afro Women's Organizations In Contemporary Ecuador, Beatriz A. Juarez-Rodriguez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation presents an ethnographic analysis of the Afro women’s social organization CONAMUNE (Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras del Ecuador), the political thought and praxis of its members and their entanglement with myriad ethno-racial political spaces in contemporary Ecuador. CONAMUNE is an umbrella organization comprised of Afro women’s grassroots organizations from different provinces of Ecuador. In addition to their activities within CONAMUNE, many of the women with whom I worked have sought out positions of government employment or political representation (as teachers and principals, as employees of government ministries or programs, as local municipal councillors, etc.), through which they bring …

Revisiting Juchitán: Witnessing An Indigenous Mexico Within The Latin American Archive, Michelle G. De La Cruz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout archives of photographic collections, as one discovers the focused, artistic selective process of images that become part of a photographer’s collection, one must venture further and ask: will these choices be decisively remembered by an individual or collective audience or actively be dismissed, misunderstood, and denied presence? For my master’s thesis, I will be analyzing Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s photobook, Juchitán de las Mujeres, a photo-collection of the women-empowered indigenous society in Oaxaca, Mexico which erupted during Latin American photography’s prime in the 20th century, turning away from a deeply exoticized past and towards a celebration of Hispanism as …

‘It’S Been A Huge Stress’: An In-Depth, Exploratory Study Of Vaccine Hesitant Parents In Southern California, Mika Kadono

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2015, the US experienced a widespread measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland, California and spread to six other states, Mexico, and Canada. That year, California passed Senate Bill 277 (SB 277), which eliminated the personal belief exemption for vaccinations required for school entry; California became the third state in the country to eliminate nonmedical exemptions. In 2019, Washington, Maine, and New York followed suit eliminating all nonmedical exemptions amid the largest measles outbreak in the US in 25 years. Many countries, including the US, are experiencing a rise in vaccine preventable diseases due, in part, to increasing vaccine hesitancy, …

Love In South Korea: Transformations Of Intimacy And Gender Relations In Korean Romantic Relationships, Alex Joseph Nelson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Romantic love holds a central place in South Korean imaginaries, animating television dramas and pop ballads, but has been largely overlooked in Korea's ethnographic record. Drawing on data collected through 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, survey research, interviews, and analysis of folklore, the present study investigates how South Koreans conceptualize romantic love, how those conceptions have changed over time, and the ways they are transforming with the Korean field of gender relations.

This study documents love's entwinement with marriage in South Korea. Koreans are developing companionate ideals of marriage that shift the focus of kinship from the parent-child relationship to …

Gendered Conflict Resolution: The Role Of Women In Amani Mashinani’S Peacebuiding Processes In Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, Susan Kilonzo, Kennedy Onkware

The Journal of Social Encounters

The role of women in peacebuilding is acknowledged by many stakeholders central in peace work. While this is so, there are still concerns about what we know about women’s involvement in peacebuilding structures established by non-state actors. Drawing from Amani Mashinani (Peace at Grassroots) peacebuilding model initiated by the Catholic Church in Kenya’s North Rift region, we examine the role of women in processes of conflict resolution in Uasin Gishu County. Suggestions to support women’s participation will be discussed.