Anthropology Commons^™

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).

Incorporating Local Knowledge Into Population And Habitat Viability Assessments: Landowners And Tree Kangaroos In Papua New Guinea, Philip J. Nyhus, J Williams, J Borovansky, O Byers, P Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Social Justice: From Global Transformation To Local Resistance, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

The global transformations that enveloped Latin America over the past decade resulted in uneven consequences for diverse social groups. Scholars witness an increasing tension between a macroeconomic agenda concerned with profitability and local community access to employment and sustenance. As neoliberal reforms intensify Latin America's integration into the world economy, they may adversely impact local communities. Should local people lose their ability to obtain basic rights, will they be able to effectively challenge the neoliberal model? In the absence of more adequate attention to social justice, it is probable that occurrences of local resistance in defense of these rights will …

Bodies In Motion: Contemplating Work, Leisure, And Late Capitalism In Japanese Fitness Clubs, Elise M. Edwards

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Review article of:

Laura Spielvogel. 2003. Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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 …

The Evolution Of Human Life Expectancy And Intelligence In Hunter-Gatherer Economies, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

The economics of hunting and gathering must have driven the biological evolution of human characteristics, since hunter-gatherer societies prevailed for the two million years of human history. These societies feature huge intergenerational resource flows, suggesting that these resource flows should replace fertility as the key demographic consideration. It is then theoretically expected that life expectancy and brain size would increase simultaneously, as apparently occurred during our evolutionary history. The brain here is considered as a direct form of bodily investment, but also crucially as facilitating further indirect investment by means of learning-by-doing.

Hispanic Citizenship, Registration, And Voting Patterns In Comparative Perspective During The 2000 Presidential Elections, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines citizenship, registration, and voting patterns of Latinos during the 2000 presidential elections.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The participation rates among potential Hispanic voters who were citizens of the U.S. 18 years of age and older were the lowest of any of the major racial/ethnic groups in the nation during the 2000 presidential elections as well as …

Preliminary Report Of Animal Bones From Hrísheimur, Mývatn District, Northern Iceland, Sophia Perdikaris, Thomas H. Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

In 2000 and 2001 the FSl / NABO project Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland collected animal bones from the heavily eroded site of Hrísheimur south of lake Mývatn. The 2001 season produced a substantial archaeofauna from a 2 x 2 meter test excavation of a midden deposit that apparently fills a small sunken-feature structure. While further excavations are planned to collect more material and to better understand the deposit and site as a whole, it may be useful to provide an interim overview of the bone materials recovered from the largest context (003) of the midden deposit tested in …

Dancing For Land: Law-Making And Cultural Performance In Northeastern Brazil, Jan Hoffman French

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In Mocambo, cultural practices and performances are being reconfigured and retained in new forms and surrounded by new discourses, revealing modes of local self-fashioning and political action. However, our inquiry should not end there. Thomas Abercrombie (1991:99) argues that whatever meanings might adhere to a certain "traditional" cultural form "are today produced and interpreted, within the (semi-open) semiotic systems produced at locally or situationally specific intercultural loci..., which intersect with national and international systems as significantly as with neighboring town groups." In this essay, I suggest that the demands, interests, and desires of the larger society, as manifested in laws, …

Report Of Animal Bones From Tjarnargata 3c, Reykjavík, Iceland, Sophia Perdikaris, Colin Amundsen, Thomas H. Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Executive Summary

During rescue excavations in downtown Reykjavík in 1999 nearly 100 kg of well-preserved animal bone was recovered in investigations at Tjarnargata 3 C by Fornleifastofnun Islands (FSÍ) directed by Mjöll Snaesdóttir. This bone collection (or archaeofauna) was largely sieved (4 mm and 1 mm mesh wet screen) and represents one of the largest archaeofauna recovered from Iceland to date. Analysis was carried out at City University of New York’s Northern Science & Education Center’s two zooarchaeology laboratories at Brooklyn College and Hunter College in 2000-01. The analyzed bone materials were returned for long term curation at the National …

Perdebatan Kaum Tua Dan Kaum Muda Di Minangkabau Dalam Beberapa Masalah Pemikiran Islam, Saidul Amin

Student Works (2000-2009)

This dissertation studies the debate between "Kaum Tua" ( traditionalist moslem group) and "Kaum Muda" (modernist moslem movement) in Minangkabau, West Sumatera, Indonesia in the early decades of twentieth century. Some Islamic thought problems are discussed, such as tariqah, tawassul and wasilah, rabitah, ijtihad and modernization of Islamic thought. Kaum Tua was known to be very tolerant in practicing their Islamic beliefs and was able to combine it with original Minangkabau's culture and customs which were influenced by some teachings of animism, dynamism and hinduism. They also accepted and practiced sufism doctrines and rejected the ijtihad and modernization of Islamic …

Darkness In Anthropology, Peter Van Arsdale

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An essay covering Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon by Patrick Tierney. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. 417 pp. and related documents.

Introduction: The New Arab Family, Nicholas S. Hopkins

Faculty Book Chapters

This volume represents revised versions of a collection of papers presented at Cairo Papers Ninth Annual Symposium on ''The New Arab Family,'' held in May 2000. Marriage, divorce, and related topics were center stage, particularly in the demographic papers. Another focus was to combine two very different approaches to the study of the family -- on the one hand demographic, and on the other broadly sociological or anthropological, or as some would say, psychodynamic, that is to say focusing on dyadic or multi-member networks of relationships within the family. Some of these papers in turn focused on ''agency,'' the ways …

The Deconstruction Of Refugees And The Reconstruction Of History, Peter W. Van Arsdale

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft, by Nevzat Soguk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Borderlines Series, No. 11) 1999. 328 pp.

I would characterize Nevzat Soguk as either a neo-liberal operating in the guise of a postmodern deconstructionist, or a post-modern deconstructionist operating in the guise of a neoliberal. This is not a trivial distinction, nor an attempt to play semantic games, but my attempt to classify a brilliant theorist (known for his work in political science) whose book has a great deal of merit—but whose writing at times seems aimed more at discursive analysis …

Universal Human Rights And Cultural Diversity, Hilde Hey

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities, edited by Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000. 259pp.

The debate as to whether human rights should be considered universal or culturally relative has come a long way. In 1947, when the Commission on Human Rights considered proposals for formulating a declaration on basic human rights, the American Anthropological Association submitted a statement expressing concern about the universality of the proposed declaration. The association’s main argument was that ideas about rights and wrongs and good and evil that exist in one society are incompatible with the ideas …

Home As A Place Of Exhibition And Performance: Mayan Household Transformations In Guatemala, Walter E. Little

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, has been incorporated into transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas through tourism, development, and religious evangelism. The Kaqchikel Mayas living there have long looked outward from their community as they embraced, ignored, or criticized these global flows. Contemporary Kaqchikel Mayas have incorporated these global flows into the organization and maintenance of their households, while giving them a local interpretation. Some families have made their homes a place to enact their culture through exhibitions and performances for tourists. Such performances are indicative of the strategies …

Transcending Cultural Definitions: A Sense Of Peace, Susan Sanae Sakayori

MA TESOL Collection

Who am I? What am I? This paper is an attempt to tell a personal story of my struggle to answer these questions about my racial and cultural identity. As a Japanese American who has lived the first half of my life in the U.S. and the latter half in Japan, I found it increasingly difficult to find my place in either culture. I was faced with issues of ethnicity, cultural background and personal values that I didn’t realize were so important in understanding who I was. I have traveled down a road of discovery where I was given a …

Naqshbandiyya In Damascus: Strategies To Establish And Strengthen The Order In A Changing Society, Leif Stenberg

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Global Competition And Community: The Struggle For Social Justice, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

The above two quotations embody disparate worldviews with regard to the neoliberal project that has enveloped much of Latin America in the past decade. Globalization intensifies the region's integration into the world economy through neoliberal reforms such as market opening, privatizations, and rationalization of production. These reforms are transforming rural societies, raising important questions concerning policies that selectively favor new strategies for capital investment and production oriented toward market expansion, as they marginalize surplus workers and "inefficient" forms of production. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the contradictions brought about by globalization and local people's struggles to …

From Chiefly Provisioning To Commercial Fishery: Long-Term Economic Change In Arctic Norway, Sophia Perdikaris

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Stratified farm mounds with excellent organic preservation in the Lofoten and Vesterålen islands in Arctic Norway provide a long-term record of changing human use of fish. In Arctic Norway, zooarchaeological signatures of intensive dried fish production extend back into the Iron Age, indicating a substantial role for cured cod prior to the beginning of the historical stockfish trade in c. AD 1200. North Norwegian chieftains of the late Iron Age and Viking periods clearly disposed of substantial staple surpluses of stockfish as well as the better documented prestige goods (furs and ivory). A comparative study of substantial collections spanning the …

Table Of Contents, Journal Staff

Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice

No abstract provided.

Division Within The Boundaries, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the Part-European settlement of Kasavu, Fiji, land is divided in each generation into parallel plots of ever-decreasing width but identical form. Kinship as division, I argue, is knowledge which is not representative of social relations and which therefore does not effectuate 'change'. This is contrasted to an additive logic of of kinship relations among urban Part-Europeans, a logic in which information is potentially infinite and thus always incomplete, and in which knowledge attaches to persons and changes through techniques of collective discovery.

The Nation In The Village: War And Migration In Narratives Of Egyptian Peasants, Reem Saad

Faculty Book Chapters

The second of two issues, this volume covers aspects of Egyptian society. Contributors include: Donald Cole, Soraya Altorki, Asef Bayat, Eric Denis, Enid Hill, Ziad Bahaeddin, Malak Rouchdy, Linda Herrera, Jim Napoli, Hussein Amin, Mahmoud al-Lozy, Cynthia Nelson, and Shahnaz Rouse.

Water, Sugar, And Power: Irrigation In Southern Puerto Rico During The Late Nineteenth Century, Marisol Ramos

Published Works

The purpose of this thesis was to address an important element in the study of the sugar cane industry in Puerto Rico that has been neglected in its literature: water. By analyzing the failure of the Guayama Irrigation Project of 1864-1866, the thesis showcased the importance of water and the establishment of irrigation projects to local hacendados as an strategy to address the vulnerability that the sugar cane industry at the time was facing: falling prices, low capacity, and the ever present danger of droughts, which the colonial government was unable to solve for lack of liquid capital.

The Deculturation Of The Brunei Dusun, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Regional Zooarchaeology And Global Change: Problems And Potentials, Thomas Amorosi, James Woollett, Sophia Perdikaris, Thomas Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Zooarchaeology is a potentially critical tool for the reconstruction of past regional landscapes. The subfield is increasingly being asked to contribute to long-term studies of human interaction with the environment associated with national and international investigations of past and future global change. Intersite comparison of animal bone collections (archaeofaunas) is central to such regional approaches. However, zooarchaeologists have identified many factors of deposition, attrition, recovery, and analysis that might appear to make such comparisons problematic. Using selected examples drawn from the North Atlantic and Eastern Arctic, this paper suggests that, while intersite comparison is not a trivial problem, it may …

Culture, Ideology, And Community: The Dynamics Of Accommodation And Resistance To Restructuring Of The Mexican Sugar Sector, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

Neoliberalism has provoked profound and diverse consequences for rural Mexico, escalating the agricultural crisis for producers and workers in various sectors. Against this context, recent improvements in the sugar sector raise interesting questions about its relative economic success under the neoliberal paradigm. This article contrasts two cane zones--one that experienced economic recovery and another affected by abandonment of the sugar mill--to argue that in the interstices of modernizing neoliberalism, cane growers and mill workers who were subjected to politics of exclusion struggle to ensure the survival of their culture, community, and economic livelihood.

Reconstructing Development: Women At The Muqattam Zabbalin Settlement, Doaa Abdel Motaal

Faculty Book Chapters

Two studies of the informal garbage collectors' community at the base of the Muqattam Hills in Cairo explore and comment on the impact of an institution-building program on leadership and participation and the impact of development programs on the women of the settlement.

Community Organization And Development Among The Zabbalin Of Muqattam, Elena Volpi

Faculty Book Chapters

Two studies of the informal garbage collectors' community at the base of the Muqattam Hills in Cairo explore and comment on the impact of an institution-building program on leadership and participation and the impact of development programs on the women of the settlement.

Cattle, Co-Wives, Children, And Calabashes: Material Context For Symbol Use Among The Il Chamus Of West-Central Kenya, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines systemic contexts for symbol use among the Maa-speaking Il Chamus in the Lake Baringo region of west-central Kenya. The systemic context for symbols and material culture consists of the environmental constraints and behavioral responses that characterize pastoralist life in East Africa. The author's interest in this problem developed in response to Ian Hodder’s work among the Il Chamus, Pokot, and Tugen in the Baringo District. Unlike Hodder, however, the author argues that symbols and their use in East Africa can be more productively explained from a materialist perspective. Specifically, it is proposed that symbols affixed to certain …