Anthropology Commons^™

Heirloom And Hybrid Corn In The American Corn Belt: An Ethnography Of Seed Saving Practices, Rachelle Halaska

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study examines the practices and context of contemporary heirloom corn seed saving practices and projects in the American Corn Belt. It examines heirloom corn conservation and hand pollination practices at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa in 2015. From there the study extends to interviews with heirloom farmers, breeders and gardeners in Wisconsin and Illinois. The findings indicate that the lines between the mainstream and the margins of corn production are highly blurred, and that there is a considerable amount of cross-pollination of ideas and practices between alternative corn farming and dominant industrial hybrid production in the American …

Looking For Group: Sociality, Embodiment, And Institutions In World Of Warcraft, Christopher J. Cooley

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography examines the varying degrees of conflict between multiple stakeholders involved in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The game’s designers, like many software developers in the contemporary world, tend to be guided by an ideology influenced by classical liberalism, but also inspired by a utopian view of technology in general. That ideological position has directly affected many aspects of the game, from the largely unregulated in-game economy, to the strong emphasis on individual mastery of the game’s systems to progress through the complete content of the game world. World of Warcraft advertises itself not …

Everyday Perseverance & Meaningful Toil: Mapping The (In)Distinguishable Process Of Recovery Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Monique Hassman

Theses and Dissertations

For nearly a century, anthropological scholarship on disaster has contributed to advancing emergency preparation and management, however examination focusing on survivors’ return and responses in the aftermath of catastrophe, specifically the ways in which residents work to recover—if at all—remains far from comprehensive, especially in urban, post-industrial settings.

Following calamity, what remains? What is disturbed? What becomes reconstructed? Who repairs the tattered social fabric or restores the built environment? And how do these processes transpire? These questions summarize the research interests of this dissertation, which examines the place-making practices not of experts or administrators, but, rather, those enacted by (extra) …

Foodways And A Violent Landscape: A Comparative Study Of Oneota And Langford Human-Animal-Environmental Relationships, Rachel Mctavish

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT:

FOODWAYS AND A VIOLENT LANDSCAPE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ONEOTA AND LANGFORD HUMAN-ANIMAL-ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONSHIPS

by

Rachel C. McTavish

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2019

Under the Supervision of Robert Jeske

The goal of this research is to investigate the nature of Upper Mississippian human-animal-environmental relationships (circa AD 1050-1450), to evaluate the role of resource management, the role of sustainability, and the multi-faceted nature of human-animal relationships, to understand how these choices are related to adaptations to structural violence. The research uses the Koshkonong Locality of southeastern Wisconsin and the Fox/Des Plaines Locality as case studies to compare divergent Upper Mississippian …

The Waiting Room: Re-Making Adulthood Among America’S Underemployed, Susan Hill

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation takes as its starting point the problem of underemployment among young adults in the post-recession United States. Recent studies have shown that the number of college-educated Americans employed in positions not requiring a degree has reached historic highs. Such analyses are limited, however, in that they do not capture the lived effects of such trends—how underemployment insinuates itself into a person's worldview and identity. This ethnographic study delves into the intimate correlates of macroeconomic change by investigating the impact of underemployment on notions of adulthood among recent college graduates working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul restaurant industry. For the …

"Buried...Like A Human Being" At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery: A Bioarchaeological Approach To Defining Fetal And Infant Personhood Through Biological Development, Historical Discourse, And Diapering, Brianne Charles

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguity of life is visible in the complex sets of beliefs that cultures develop around abortion, stillbirth, and neonatal death. This research grew out of ambiguities surrounding bioarchaeological methods of age estimation among fetal and infant remains and the need for additional lines of evidence to define what a prenatal or postnatal age contextually means, how these definitions were upheld or challenged, and what impact these definitions had on the mortuary treatment of these bodies.

Discernment between fetal and infant skeletal remains is important to forensic investigations and bioarchaeological questions of personhood, infant mortality, and maternal health. However, skeletal …