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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Climate-Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience For Women Farmers In Kalchebeshi, Nepal, Annika Ruben
Climate-Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience For Women Farmers In Kalchebeshi, Nepal, Annika Ruben
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
This case study outlines women’s involvement in climate-smart agriculture and key climate adaptation strategies which are being implemented in the town of Kalchebeshi, Nepal. Kalchebeshi is considered a Resilient Mountain Village because of the town’s integrated approach to addressing climate change and building resilience for farmers. Key findings examined gender differences in farming responsibilities and the significance of farmers’ groups in women’s overall decision making and community involvement. Additionally, changes in water management and pesticide use have been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of women farmers in Kalchebeshi. This paper reinforces the importance of involving vulnerable …
Mind Over (What Doesn’T) Matter: De-Stigmatizing Mental Health From Senegalese Women’S Perspectives, Jenna Marks
Mind Over (What Doesn’T) Matter: De-Stigmatizing Mental Health From Senegalese Women’S Perspectives, Jenna Marks
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
As a matrilocal and collectivist society, Dakar is an urban space where the woman is at the center. With this in mind, it is possible to understand all the pressures women in urban Senegalese society face. Women are the center of the household, thus being responsible for the family, finances, and the social aspect of welcoming visitors. In addition to these factors, women in Senegal also deal with community expectations and responsibilities since there is larger emphasis on the community, rather than the nuclear family in Senegalese society. This paper examines how these two aspects of Senegalese society (matrilocality and …
Centuries Of Navigating Resistance And Change: Exploring The Persistence Of Mongolian Women Leaders, Holly D. Diaz
Centuries Of Navigating Resistance And Change: Exploring The Persistence Of Mongolian Women Leaders, Holly D. Diaz
Antioch University Dissertations & Theses
The country of Mongolia has an ancient culture with a 28-year-old democracy that emerged out of communism. Over the course of several centuries, the Mongolian people have adapted to severe climates and brutal occupations but have managed to preserve cultural practices and the Mongolian way of life. Women leaders have made significant historical and contemporary contributions in Mongolia, from holding important leadership positions as heirs of Chinggis Khan, to ensuring the future of the country by sending their children abroad for graduate education. The impact of their leadership is evident with high percentages of women in leadership positions across several …
What All Americans Should Know About Women In The Muslim World: An Introduction, Amy Y. Evrard
What All Americans Should Know About Women In The Muslim World: An Introduction, Amy Y. Evrard
What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World
This brief introduction to the “What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World” series provides information about women in the Muslim world, why they are important for Americans to understand, some challenges that arise in the study of Muslim women, and what these particular papers bring to bear on the topic.
Gender Roots: Conceptualizing "Honor" Killing And Interpretations Of Women's Gender In Muslim Society, Brittany N. Barry
Gender Roots: Conceptualizing "Honor" Killing And Interpretations Of Women's Gender In Muslim Society, Brittany N. Barry
What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World
The phenomenon of “honor” killing is one that has formed out of deeply rooted concepts of sexuality and gender roles in Muslim societies. These conceptions have been implemented into everyday life and social infrastructure and have created, in some places, a generally accepted power dynamic that subjugates women and generates conceptualizations about women’s sexuality and their assumed obedience. In recent decades the gender constructions of, predominantly, the Middle East and of other Muslim populations have captured the attention of Western thinkers, especially with regards to feminist thought. The Western gaze has produced a number of responses, some of which have …
Ms. Marvel: Changing Muslim Representation In The Comic World, Casey L. Trattner
Ms. Marvel: Changing Muslim Representation In The Comic World, Casey L. Trattner
What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World
Examines the representation of Muslim women in the comic book world, and how Kamala Khan (the titular Ms. Marvel) along with some other characters usher in a new wave of how Muslim women are depicted in comics.
Muslim Women And United States Healthcare: Challenges To Access And Navigation, Dayna M. Seeger
Muslim Women And United States Healthcare: Challenges To Access And Navigation, Dayna M. Seeger
What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World
This paper offers an analysis of the interactions of Muslim women in the US healthcare system in order to unpack challenges and propose potential accommodations. Islam may inform values or considerations in the context of other cultural factors or present Muslim women with specific challenges in seeking healthcare based on Islamic teachings or social constructs. This paper examines these factors by elaborating on an overview of Muslim interpretations of healthcare using religious authorities, text from the Qur’an, and social norms. It then delves into challenges faced by Muslim women in the US healthcare system and the implications of those challenges …
Muslim Women Political Leaders And Electoral Participation In Muslim-Majority Countries, Abby M. Rolland
Muslim Women Political Leaders And Electoral Participation In Muslim-Majority Countries, Abby M. Rolland
What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World
This paper focuses on Muslim women political leaders and their agency in the modern world. While some Muslim women have a difficult time participating politically, others actively act in policy and government. Culture, identity, location, and political parties are some of the factors leading to different levels of participation from Muslim women in various countries.
Kittens And Nutella: Why Women Join Isis, Samantha K. Smith
Kittens And Nutella: Why Women Join Isis, Samantha K. Smith
What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World
On February 18, 2015 CNN published a reported stating that Western women were leaving their homes to join ISIS because of a social media campaign featuring pictures of kittens and Nutella. This reported propagated the notion that women who join jihadist organizations are brainwashed or feeble minded. The reality is not so simple. This paper explores the motives women may have for joining ISIS through comparison to the motivations that drove women to partake in other violent jihadist organizations' activities.
Strategic Deployments Of "Sisterhood" And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women's Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Strategic Deployments Of "Sisterhood" And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women's Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
The House In The Market: How Q’Eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money And Commodities Into Persons And Personhood, Sarah Ashley Kistler
The House In The Market: How Q’Eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money And Commodities Into Persons And Personhood, Sarah Ashley Kistler
Faculty Publications
Recent research argues that globalization in Latin America sometimes results in the homogenization of culture and loss of indigenous identity. This paper, however, explores how Q’eqchi’-Maya market women in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, generate Q’eqchi’ personhood by embracing the conflicts of value introduced by the confrontation of globalization with longstanding Q’eqchi’ values. I argue that in Chamelco, market women are mediators of value who participate in global capitalism to reinforce the categories that structure indigenous life. Q’eqchi’ women engage in marketing activities not only to accrue capital resources, but also to maintain local values, centered on the junkab’al or “house,” …
Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis
Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and …
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women there. I argue that in Maithil women's folktales, as in their paintings, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into interpretive conversation …
Beyond Confronting The Myth Of Racial Democracy: The Role Of Afro-Brazilian Women Scholars And Activists, Nathalie Lebon
Beyond Confronting The Myth Of Racial Democracy: The Role Of Afro-Brazilian Women Scholars And Activists, Nathalie Lebon
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications
This paper offers a synopsis of the current scholarship mapping the social and economic exclusion of women of African descent in Brazil. It highlights the work of and role played by Afro-Brazilian women scholars and activists in redressing the paucity, until recently, of basic data and research on the life conditions of women of African descent. Finally, it provides some initial thoughts on the national and transnational dynamics of knowledge production underlying this state of affairs.
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …
'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis
'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal …
Performing Tourism: Maya Women's Strategies, Walter E. Little
Performing Tourism: Maya Women's Strategies, Walter E. Little
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Walter Little is assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany and codirector of Oxlajuj Aj, Tulane University’s Kaqchikel Language and Culture class in Guatemala. He has conducted fieldwork among Maya handicrafts producers and vendors since 1992 on issues related to tourism, gender roles, and identity performance, and this research is the subject of his book, Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity (Austin: University of Texas, 2004).
Feminist Tigers And Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies And Instrument Effects In The Struggle For Definition And Control Over Development In Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Feminist Tigers And Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies And Instrument Effects In The Struggle For Definition And Control Over Development In Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
This article offers an analysis of a struggle for control of a women’s development project in Nepal. The story of this struggle is worth telling, for it is rife with the gender politics and neo-colonial context that underscore much of what goes on in contemporary Nepal. In particular, my analysis helps to unravel some of the powerful discourses, threads of interest, and yet unintended effects inevitable under a regime of development aid. The analysis demonstrates that the employment of already available discursive figures of the imperialist feminist and the patriarchal third world man are central to the rhetorical strategies taken …