Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

"Making God's Love Manifest": American Expressions And Productions Of Charisma In Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi's Global Following, Karen Margaret Esche-Eiff Dec 2021

"Making God's Love Manifest": American Expressions And Productions Of Charisma In Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi's Global Following, Karen Margaret Esche-Eiff

Theses and Dissertations

While situating it in a changing American religious landscape marked by increasing participation in metaphysical religion, this dissertation examines the appeal of contemporary Indian godperson, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma), to Americans. Although replete with portraits of individual Indian spiritual leaders’ charisma, the anthropology of religion literature seldom addresses the processes whereby such figures’ charisma gets produced. Drawing on thirteen months of multi-sited ethnographic research conducted between 2015-2016, this dissertation uses Max Weber’s theory of charisma to answer the following questions: what extraordinary capacity do American devotees attribute to Amma; what is the process whereby they and she co-produce this …


Geostatistical Perspectives On Recuay Mortuary Landscapes In Highland Peru, Dominic Greenlee Dec 2021

Geostatistical Perspectives On Recuay Mortuary Landscapes In Highland Peru, Dominic Greenlee

Theses and Dissertations

The Recuay lived in the highlands of Peru from AD 250-700. Their customs and traditions were divided into regionally distinct styles of material culture. As the Moche (AD 200-900) emerged along the coast of Peru, the Recuay engaged them in long distance trade, culture exchange, and likely conflict. Towards the end of the Recuay sequence, they were overshadowed by the Wari (AD 600-1000) beginning with the adoption of chullpa style tombs and ending with the full adoption and integration of the Wari cultural bundle in Ancash. This thesis uses published data from the Callejón de Huaylas, specifically from the Río …


Making Yourself At Al-Dar: On Islamic Education, Social Imaginations, And Affective Possibilities, Alia Amr Amin Shaddad Oct 2021

Making Yourself At Al-Dar: On Islamic Education, Social Imaginations, And Affective Possibilities, Alia Amr Amin Shaddad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the Dar as an alternative space of knowledge, and unravels how its different contexts and rhythms allow us to imagine what that alternative means in the everyday. In order to do so, this thesis unpacks questions of space, time, subjectivity, and potential. I look at the ways in which this Dar is constituted as a space through its relations with other spaces and by engaging questions of temporality. By doing so, this thesis maps this space to make clear what and how it is, and highlights the historical and geographical context it exists in. This also includes …


The Banality Of Corporate Evil, Amina Dessouki Sep 2021

The Banality Of Corporate Evil, Amina Dessouki

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critiques the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) through tracing the multiple dynamics between a multinational corporation and a development consultancy working on a recycling project in collaboration with the Zabaleen in Mansheyet Nasser, Egypt. The thesis looks at the ways in which actors negotiate their different positions, the harmonies and discordances that unfold through various agendas coming together, the silences produced, and the ways in which structural violence is intensified under the guise of development. The thesis contrasts the detached efforts of corporate workers and development consultants with the lives of the zabaleen, who live in a …


Oneota Lithic Economy And Tool Function At The Schmeling Site (47je833) In Southeastern Wisconsin, Megan Catherine Harding Aug 2021

Oneota Lithic Economy And Tool Function At The Schmeling Site (47je833) In Southeastern Wisconsin, Megan Catherine Harding

Theses and Dissertations

The perceived homogeneity of Oneota lithic assemblages has often provided a challenge for archaeologists to extrapolate broader conclusions about Oneota tool economies beyond their preference for speed and efficiency. Using standardized methods, lithic materials recovered from the 2006 and 2008 excavations at the Schmeling site (47JE833) are examined to determine if the lithic economy is indicative of day-to-day activity or reflects a particular cultural function like that of a mortuary precinct. The results of this analysis are then contrasted against the Crescent Bay Hunt Club site (47JE0904), Koshkonong Creek Village site (47JE0379), and the Carcajou Point site (47JE0002) to examine …


Politics Of Controlling Birth: C-Section, Use Of Contraception And Obstetrics Violence In Bangladesh, Sadia Sharmin Aug 2021

Politics Of Controlling Birth: C-Section, Use Of Contraception And Obstetrics Violence In Bangladesh, Sadia Sharmin

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the increasing rate of cesarean birth in Bangladesh through the lens of the population control program. Based on three months of data collection, the study explores various politics of the government’s population control program, leading me to argue that cesarean birth is an implicit way of controlling overpopulation in Bangladesh since it limits women’s reproductive choices and thus contributes to population control. Using ethnographic vignettes, I discuss how my research findings point to the government’s disparate population control politics and how this has given rise to various forms of obstetric violence against women. The study also addresses …


Care In Crisis: The Ethical, Affective, And Subjective Worlds Of Homeless Service Providers In A Us City, Todd Jonathan Ebling Aug 2021

Care In Crisis: The Ethical, Affective, And Subjective Worlds Of Homeless Service Providers In A Us City, Todd Jonathan Ebling

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ethical, affective, and subjective worlds of homeless service providers in a US city. While ample studies have been conducted that focus on homeless populations in the United States, very little ethnographic research has been undertaken that focuses on those who interact most with homeless populations—workers in the homeless service sector. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic research and forty interviews with staff conducted in 2017 and 2018, I examine the work of care and the complex experiences that workers faced in their attempts to provide care for homeless clients at a nonprofit homeless shelter for men …


Poetry And Possibilities In Contemporary Egypt, Reem Badr Jun 2021

Poetry And Possibilities In Contemporary Egypt, Reem Badr

Theses and Dissertations

Egyptian colloquial poetry has historically been conceived of, by practitioners and onlookers alike, as a politically committed, subversive, resistant practice. In this thesis I explore how this poetry, with its complex inheritance, inhabits the realities of post-revolutionary Egypt. Throughout the chapters of this work I trace colloquial poetry in its more traditional forms, as well as in its more novel ones like Egyptian rap/trap, as it grapples with the reduced possibilities in the present. As it reflects and spawns a wider disillusionment with and refusal of politics and claims a reinvention of itself as a private practice, the poetry cannot …


Meanings Of Mindfulness And Spiritual Awakening: Affliction And Holistic Healing In Contemporary Cairo, Sohayla El Fakahany May 2021

Meanings Of Mindfulness And Spiritual Awakening: Affliction And Holistic Healing In Contemporary Cairo, Sohayla El Fakahany

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary Cairo, people turn to various modes of spiritual, alternative, and complementary healing. Some are rooted in formal religious traditions, and others are inspired by a new globalized form of holistic healing such as yoga or meditation. What makes these practices more controversial than spiritual healing practices like el-Zar or el-Hadra is the exchange of money for the promise of healing or foreknowledge. Spiritual healing is often deemed “charlatanistic” by religious exclusivists. This entanglement of the practices with religion creates a threat because it provides an alternative to the modes of religiosity supplied by the main hegemonic Egyptian religious …


Facing The Past: Engendering The Study Of Iron Age Celtic Human Imagery In Continental Europe, Christopher Ray Allen May 2021

Facing The Past: Engendering The Study Of Iron Age Celtic Human Imagery In Continental Europe, Christopher Ray Allen

Theses and Dissertations

Iconography is an important tool in understanding the past because it may express apeople’s understanding of the world through representations of stories or figures, including human beings. The continental early Iron Age Celts left behind no written sources but did leave iconographic representations of humans in the form of full bodies as well as heads. How the Celts saw their world and how they perceived and gendered other humans or anthropomorphic beings can be partially accessed via these representations. This thesis examines a representative sample of statues and figures from Iberia, Gaul, and Central Europe from an intersectional perspective focused …


Impacts Of Politicization And Conflict On Archaeological Resources: An Analysis Of Trends In Iraq, Andrew N. Vang-Roberts May 2021

Impacts Of Politicization And Conflict On Archaeological Resources: An Analysis Of Trends In Iraq, Andrew N. Vang-Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

Archeological resources have been used by political regimes to further their own interests since the discipline was established in the late 19th century. Regime-backed 20th century dictators in Iraq, Iran and Egypt understood that whoever controls a nation’s archeological resources controls its memory and its people. However, power changes hands and archeological resources are not immune to the shifting of power, be it through external conflict such as an invasion or internal conflict such as a revolution. In situations where the ruling party is overthrown and a power vacuum forms, destructive activities such as looting and land development increase and …


Archaeological Representation In Speculative Fiction: The Image Of The Archaeologist In Star Wars, Karissa A. Annis May 2021

Archaeological Representation In Speculative Fiction: The Image Of The Archaeologist In Star Wars, Karissa A. Annis

Theses and Dissertations

The public presentation of archaeology in various media, especially fictional representations in print, film, TV, and video games, is a complex and slippery subject that has been an issue since the field’s inception. This thesis compares analyses of popular representations of archaeology in conventional media such as feature films to new examples of such representations that have not yet been studied. The focus of the analysis is how archaeology and archaeologists are represented in the Star Wars franchise in products that were published or released on or after 2014. These texts and images are analyzed through the multiple lenses of …


Bodily Memory In Digital Space: Personalized Bioarchaeological Research And Musculoskeletal Modeling At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Jessica L. Skinner May 2021

Bodily Memory In Digital Space: Personalized Bioarchaeological Research And Musculoskeletal Modeling At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Jessica L. Skinner

Theses and Dissertations

A well-contextualized account of personal experience and identity is essential to any study of social dynamics and is crucial to the enactment of critical and socially active bioarchaeology. New technology, including digital bioarchaeology, can enhance the growing body of work that examines embodiment, agency, and identity, particularly when used with a holistic and ethical approach. This dissertation utilizes three-dimensional (3D) scanning, a method that creates digital representations of human skeletal remains, to bolster identifications of individuals once interred at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) whose identities were erased by construction in the 1900s. Embodied life experience is also …


Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis Apr 2021

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.


The Inescapable Effects Of Discourse As Knowledge And Power: Refugee Youth’S Resistance To “The System” In Pursuit Of Higher Education, Fallon Puckett Apr 2021

The Inescapable Effects Of Discourse As Knowledge And Power: Refugee Youth’S Resistance To “The System” In Pursuit Of Higher Education, Fallon Puckett

Theses and Dissertations

Employing a Foucauldian inflected analytic framework, I examine how youth resettled in and around Unity, NC, ambivalently managed racializing discourses associated with being ‘refugee’ as they pursued access to higher education (HE). Like many scholars who are drawn to post-structuralist concepts, I understand ‘discourse’ to be a form of knowledge and power, which operates through institutions implicated in advancing forms of self-government. In my video-conferenced interviews with youth they revealed cogent interpretations of the many ways these different U.S. governmental (and some non-governmental) institutions operated in their lives as “the System.” In the particular case of refugee youth, they used …


Fictive Daughters And Sons, Celibate Priests And Nuns: How Religious Tongzhi And Clergy In Taiwan Navigate Familial Obligations, Gavin Fisher Apr 2021

Fictive Daughters And Sons, Celibate Priests And Nuns: How Religious Tongzhi And Clergy In Taiwan Navigate Familial Obligations, Gavin Fisher

Theses and Dissertations

Great progress for the rights of tongzhi(sexually and gender-nonconforming people) has occurred in Taiwan in the past two decades, culminating in the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019. However, it is still not uncommon for parents to take their tongzhi son or daughter to see a spirit medium or psychiatrist in an attempt to ‘cure’ them of their same-sex attraction. In Confucian ideology, which is central to the culture of Taiwan, a filial son or daughter is one who marries heterosexually and produces progeny to continue the family line. Tongzhi who do not do so are therefore violating this …


Journeys Of Middle-Class Syrian Women To And In Berlin: Modes Of Subjectivity, Possibilities And Becoming, Randa Adnan Bashlah Jan 2021

Journeys Of Middle-Class Syrian Women To And In Berlin: Modes Of Subjectivity, Possibilities And Becoming, Randa Adnan Bashlah

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an invitation to dive into the possibilities that emerge in the multiple stages of displacement journeys of a group of diverse Syrian women from a middle-class background, who happen to live in Berlin today, and learn about the displaced bodies' experiences from a personal scale. By capturing the journeys' nuances and trajectories, this study demonstrates how the mobile subjects interact differently and create different attachments with different power structures in the various modes which emerge through the journeys' different spatial and chronological stages. Looking at how displacement adds layers of complexity to the social's messiness and diversity, …