Anthropology Commons^™

Food As A Vector For Change: Lessons From The Third Sector On Improving Livelihoods With Nutritional Knowledge In Medellín And Bogotá, Solomon Treister

Honors Theses

In this thesis I argue that improving diet in communities depends on building nutritional knowledge. In examining the role of community level organizations, I look specifically at how knowledge is conveyed through agriculture and gastronomy. This project analyzes how civil society organizations work to reintegrate individuals into food systems, compelling consumers to take agency over their diets and pursue better livelihoods. The industrialization of food systems has fundamentally changed the way humans connect with food and diet. In Colombia, internal displacements and urban migration have accelerated a loss of connection with the land and food processes. At the same time, …

Complexities Of Community Consultation In Chile's Lithium Industry, Isabella R. Whelan

Honors Theses

Echoed by November’s COP27 in Egypt, the climate crisis has become an increasingly pressing and global issue, with the need to move away from fossil fuels more urgent than ever. In attempts to decarbonize the global economy, many countries and companies have turned to electrification –particularly within the transportation sector, one of today’s largest contributors of greenhouse gasses. A crucial component of energy storage and batteries is lithium, now considered a “critical mineral.” Demand for lithium has skyrocketed in recent years and is only expected to continue growing. More than fifty percent of the world’s lithium supply is found within …

Pendulums Of Personhood? Exploring The Multitudes Of Immigrant Womanhood In Spanish-Maghrebi Literature, Kaitlyn C. Sisco

Honors Theses

Often considered articulations of in-between-ness and bearers of fraught selfhoods, the work of Spanish-Maghrebi authors has been widely debated in literary fields, with academics arguing that it constitutes a largely homogenous set of texts about the standard immigrant experience. However, by placing these texts in a single category, such arguments end up erasing the immensely varied identities expressed and represented by Spanish-Maghrebi authors. This thesis seeks to address this issue by paying particular attention to how Spanish-Maghrebi authors negotiate different types of immigrant subjectivities in their writing. Specifically, I analyze the works of three contemporary Spanish-Maghrebi writers, Najat El Hachmi, …

“A History Of Heartache”: Korean Reunification Through The Eyes Of Giseong Sedae, Johanna Avalyn Cooper

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I analyze answers provided by middle-aged South Koreans (Giseong Sedae, ages 40 to 69) to determine what factors have influenced this generation’s perceptions of Korean reunification. Utilizing a survey and interviews, I first measure the general views of South Korean participants within this age range. The survey results show that the majority of respondents want Peaceful Coexistence reunification without foreign influence. In interviews, participants’ answers are divided into six main factors that affect their views of reunification which include hesitancies toward reunification, the tenacity of Han Minjok, familial ties to division, anti-communist education, political …

Ageism, Eldercare, And Healthcare: An Examination Of Growing Old In Costa Rica, Akshaya Vijayasankar

Honors Theses

The world’s aging population and the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed the high level of ageism against older adults around the globe, which has resulted in an overall decreased quality of life for elders. Societies are now faced with the challenge of creating a suitable and equitable model of care to support their aging population. Despite the recent publication of the World Health Organization's Global Report on Ageism, there is still a large gap in the literature regarding ageism. This paper addresses the issues of institutional ageism in the eldercare and healthcare sector. I argue that Costa Rica serves as a …

Climate Change Adaptation, Migration, And Promising Developments For Pacific Island States, Ashley Jonas

Honors Theses

The people of the Pacific Islands face an existential crisis due to climate change, despite the fact that they are the least responsible for contributing to carbon emissions. The effects of climate change, namely sea-level rise, pose a verified threat to low-lying islands, infiltrating water supplies, crops, and infrastructure. As a result, there is a need for improved solutions for adapting to the impacts of climate change and for easier access to legal migration pathways when the consequences are insurmountable. Through comparative discourse analysis of scholarly sources, intergovernmental policies, and non-governmental organizations, the thesis finds that Small Island Developing States …

Whose Right Is It Anyway? A Study Of Human Rights Language On Both Sides Of The Abortion Debate In Post-Dictatorial Argentina, Ysabella Carmen St. Amant

Honors Theses

In August of 2018, thousands of protestors waited to hear results of the vote on the Voluntary Termination of the Pregnancy bill in the Argentinian Senate. Though the bill failed by seven votes, the near passage of the bill and the outpouring of protestors indicated that the issue of abortion had gained an increasing foothold in the legislature and in public discourse. This project seeks to explore in greater detail the emergence of activism on abortion legislation in the decades following the re-democratization of Argentina in 1983. Particularly throughout the 2000s and 2010s, advocates for both the expansion and repression …

Feminism And Low Breastfeeding Rates In France, Megan Wadsworth

Honors Theses

Breastfeeding rates in France are among the lowest in high-income countries, indicating that French mothers do not breastfeed for nearly as long as is recommended by healthcare professionals and international health organizations. French government, society and conflicting feminist perspectives all influence the likelihood that mothers will breastfeed. The French government has regulations in place to protect women’s right to breastfeed in public and in the workplace, but it is unclear if these are truly beneficial for French women. French society is a seemingly inhospitable environment in which mothers do not feel safe and secure to breastfeed publicly. Motherhood and feminism …

How Misinformation And Mistrust Compound The Threat Of Epidemics, William Boyd

Honors Theses

This thesis was conducted to study the effects of misinformation and medical mistrust on the public health field. I use the events of the Chapare Virus outbreak in Bolivia in the summer of 2019 and the public dialogue during that time period to discuss these themes. I used data from market survey's in La Paz, newspaper articles from Página Siete, and Tweets from the time period of the outbreak. My findings suggest that misinformation and medical mistrust affected public health measures, which has major implications for the way the public health field should address future public health events.

Acoso Visual: Staring Back At The State And Gender Conformity, Juan Luna

Honors Theses

A semi-autoethnographic piece that uses a radical transfeminist lens to interrogate hegemonic systems of gender and race in the Dominican Republic through the violence that Trans and Gender Nonconforming people face. While focusing on trans violence, this thesis explicitly turns its gaze away from Trans/Gender Nonconforming people and interrogates the state, cisnormativity, and gender conformity. This thesis explores how acoso visual (visual accosting) is a historically informed process that works to border trans/gender nonconformity out of the idea of Dominicanidad. Ultimately, this text reminds Trans/Gender Nonconforming individuals that they are not the reason for the transphobia that they experience, and …

What The Walls Say: Finding Meaning And Value In Tel Aviv’S Street Art, Rachel R. Bird

Honors Theses

This thesis explores street art in Tel Aviv, Israel through anthropological concepts of value. By defining street art as an interstitial practice—one that exists between permeable, socially defined boundaries and is characterized differently by different power structures—I attempt to define some of the different regimes of value that apply to street art. Using the emerging market of “street art tours” as a fieldwork site, I look at how street art is presented and re-presented to both tourists and locals. By situating my research in a historical and geographic context, I hope to understand the ways different value schema, from economic …

The Voluntourism Encounter: Affect, Discomfort, And Transformation In Yaxunah, Caroline Tegeler

Honors Theses

Within the massive tourism and travel industry, the niche market of volunteer tourism has risen recently in both notoriety and popularity with its promises of a more conscious form of experiencing the world and its people. I explore in this thesis project the encounter between volunteer tourist and host community by examining the motivations, expectations, and imagined roles and identities of each side of the voluntourism encounter. The volunteer tourism industry frames voluntourism as a path towards a more personal, ethical and responsible tourism, but has created experiences filled with discomfort for tourists in their encounter with the communities in …

Who Really Benefit From The One Child Policy: An Analysis Of The Impact The One Child Policy Has On Marital Prospects Of Han Chinese And Ethnic Minorities In China, Zhu Chen

Honors Theses

Over the past 35 years, the One Child Policy (OCP) has had enormous influences on almost every aspect of Chinese society. The exacerbated unbalanced sex ratio and the unequal implementation of the OCP between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities have brought some interesting changes to China’s marriage market. This paper explores the differences between the marital prospects of Han Chinese and ethnic minorities under the influence of the OCP. Using 2007 China Household Income Project (Data) and 2010 Chinese Population Census Data, this paper finds that under the circumstances of the OCP, Han Chinese, especially Han women, enjoy more advantages …

Examining Acculturative Stressors Of The International Student: Following Study Abroad Students In South Korea And Morocco, Chin Yi Chen

Honors Theses

International students, particularly students studying abroad for a limited period of time, face certain challenges in entering and adjusting to a new cultural environment. This research focuses on different acculturative stressors including language, differences in nonverbal communication, discrimination, and academic pressure. By comparing and contrasting the perspectives of various students with the researcher’s experience, this qualitative study provides insight into the lived experience of international students and the research through on-site fieldwork conducted over a year on university campuses in South Korea and Morocco. It discusses the results of the undertaken research and offers suggestions for resolving or minimizing these …

Remapping Nature: Motherhood, Autonomy, And Anti-Mining Activism In Íntag, Ecuador, Ellicott K. Dandy

Honors Theses

This honors thesis explores the social changes that women engaged in anti-mining activism bring to a region in rural Ecuador. I discuss the ways in which they incorporate their activist techniques into everyday life, using their status as mothers to access public discourses of environmentalism, and ultimately rewrite gender roles locally. Framing the mining conflict as a catalyst for social change, I draw parallels between this movement and indigenous politics in Ecuador, propose new interpretations of the mestizo ethnic identity and assimilation in the Spanish Empire, and finally, make the case for a nature-centric cultural analysis in anthropology.

Transnationalism And Identity: The Concept Of Community In Ghanaian Literature And Contemporary Ghanaian Culture, Devin M. Geary

Honors Theses

In my thesis, I use anthropology, literature, and adinkra, an indigenous art, to study Ghanaian concepts of community from an interactive standpoint. While each of these disciplines has individually been used to study the concept of community, the three have not previously been discussed in relation to one another. I explore the major findings of each field—mainly that in anthropology, transnational informants find communities upheld; in literature, transnational characters find the opposite; and in adinkra, there are elements of both continuity and dissolution—to discuss Ghanaian constructs of community in the transnational world. Throughout time, there have always been transnational individuals …

Corruption In The Indian Political System, Khusboo J. Desai

Honors Theses

Currently, India and China are both competing to be the hegemonic power in Asia as well as a superpower internationally. Both are growing at double-digit rates, while other nations are dealing with the current recession. However, while China is reducing corruption which ultimately translates into money lost by the government, corruption in India is increasing at a rapid pace. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2010, India ranked 87 out of 180 nations. Though, India ranked better than half the other nations, India fell from 72nd (2007) to 84th in two years. In my thesis, I explore the relationship …

From Victims And Villains To Protagonists: Immigration And Citizenship In Modern Italy, Rachel Gleicher

Honors Theses

The Italian media, political parties, and immigrant-related social service organizations on all sides of the spectrum have contributed to the creation of various one-dimensional perceptions of Italy’s immigrant communities which have functioned to deny immigrants’ formal citizenship status and consequently, attempted to impede their access to the basic rights and privileges national membership guarantees. While left-leaning media outlets, organizations, and individuals tend to portray immigrants as victims draining Italy of its social, economic, and material resources, the Italian right often characterizes Italy’s immigrant population as villainous intruders incapable of integration due to cultural difference and in some cases, a natural …

Migration, Food And Cultural Production Across Changing Afro-Ecuadorian Geographies, Amelia J. Swinton

Honors Theses

The human geography of Ecuador is changing. Urban Afro-Ecuadorians now outnumber those living in the two rural regions that have been the ancestral homelands of the population. This physical transformation assaults Ecuador's historically racialized geography, which conflated cities, modernity and white-mestizo identity. Though Afro-Ecuadorians living in the rural north had previously been physically and figuratively located outside of the national project, Ecuador’s new constitution has sought to reverse this institutionalized exclusion. National belonging has been reframed through the concept of interculturality, which recognizes diversity and equality at the same time. I conducted two periods of fieldwork in the north-central Chota …

The Empire Strikes Out? A Look At The Nationalities Crisis In The Soviet Union, Catherine E. Breen

Honors Theses

My thesis rests on the notion that, because of the increase of freedoms in the Soviet Union today, many republics are demanding that their autonomy be restored and that this nationality crisis, an unforeseen and unwanted byproduct of recent reforms, has grown into such a disaster that it is now actually impairing the whole reform movement in the Soviet Union as civil unrest and strife are beginning to threaten the stability of this huge empire.

Ethnic identity is not something that can be hidden, changed, forced, or converted, nor will national and cultural roots simply disappear over time. Thus, the …