Anthropology Commons^™

The State Goes Home: Local Hyper-Vigilance Of Children And The Global Retreat From Social Reproduction, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In an early scene in The Terminator, the Cyborgian Arnold Schwarzenegger walks into an L.A. gun shop and asks to see the wares. The shopkeeper lays out Uzis, submachine guns, rocket launchers, and other sophisticated means of overkill, nervously understating, "Any one of these will suit you for home defense purposes." The situation is likewise in the growing child protection industry. In keeping with the shopkeeper's sly comment, these businesses feast on an all-pervasive culture of fear, while creating a mockery, alibi, and distraction out of what they are really about - to remake the home as a citadel through …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 7, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The accounts of wars recorded in history books tend to focus on the names and dates of battles, the decisions of political leaders and the heroics of charismatic military commanders. Those facts are important, of course, but they only tell part of the story.

The Maine Folklife Center at The University of Maine, in collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, is doing its part to make sure the rest of the story is recorded. The Maine Folklife Center has begun to organize an extensive oral history project that will preserve the war stories of veterans …

Environment As Master Narrative: Discourse And Identity In Environmental Conflicts (Special Issue Introduction), Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Although postmodern philosophers proclaimed the death of the master narrative of enlightenment (Lyotard 1984), the environment has become a quintessentially global narrative. Throughout the world, people are imagining the environment as an object threatened by human action. Environmentalism proposes to organize and mobilize human action in order to protect the endangered environment (Milton 1995). Sociologist Klaus Eder posits that ecology has become a “masterframe,” transforming the field of political debate (Eder 1996). The articles assembled in this special issue investigate the rise of the environment as a master narrative organizing political practices.

Chernobyl Stories And Anthropological Shock In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

The Budapest Chernobyl Day commemoration generated a creative outpouring of stories about parental responsibilities, scientific knowledge, environmental risks, and public participation. I examine the stories and performances elicited by the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1996. In these “Chernobyl stories,” activists criticized scientific and state paternalism while engaging in alternative practices of citizenship. The decade between the catastrophic explosion and its commemoration coincides with the development of the Hungarian environmental movement and the transformation from state socialism. Chernobyl Day 1996 consequently became an opportunity for activists to reflect upon how the meaning of citizenship and public …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 7, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The city of Bangor will be the next stop for the National Folk Festival! Sandy Ives and Pauleena MacDougall are serving on the local planning committee for the festival, and Pauleena will also chair the Material Culture committee and aid the Festival's Executive Director, Bob Libby. The National Folk Festival was brought to Bangor through the hard work of Donna Fitchner, Executive Director of the Bangor Convention & Visitors Bureau, in coordination with the city of Bangor and Eastern Maine Development Corporation. Senator Susan Collins and humorist Tim Sample will serve as Honorary Co-chairs for the event.

The city hopes …

The Nature Of Nature: South Floridian Children And Their "Environmental Experience", Kristina Baines

Publications and Research

To investigate how schoolchildren in south Florida think about their natural environment, children were observed participating in several school-organized environmental field trips. Their attitudes about, interactions with and knowledge concerning various aspects of their natural environment were observed. This study explores how these children interpret natural phenomena using their cultural tools and focuses on the interpretation of commonly-observed responses to nature. Responses discussed include: the blurring of lines between the natural and non-natural, separation and binary thinking, and fear and aggression. Reference is made throughout the study to various theoretical frameworks, including cultural-ecological perspectives, ideas from structural anthropology and other …

Confounding The Goals Of Management: Response Of The Maine Lobster Industry To A Trap Limit, James Acheson

Marine Sciences Faculty Scholarship

The behavior of fishermen is often far more complicated than assumed by fisheries managers. Those concerned with the Maine lobster (i.e., American lobster Homarus americanus, hereafter "lobster") fishery have long favored a cap on the number of traps each license holder can use. Fishermen favor trap limits primarily to cut costs and limit congestion, and managers believe such limits will help reduce fishing effort. Yet when trap limits were imposed by the legislature and the lobster zone councils between 1995 and 1998, the number of traps fished in Maine waters increased greatly. A survey of half the lobster license holders …

The Fort Clark Archeology Project, 2000-2001 Historical Archeological Investigations., William J. Hunt Jr.

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Historical archeological work during the summers of 2000 and 2001 has been directed toward development and installation of a series of interpretive panels relating to the history, archeology, and peoples living at Fort Clark. In anticipation of this, investigations in 2000 included small scale testing and large scale geophysical surveys at the village and both trading posts. Fieldwork in 2001 was more focused and utilized geophysical survey data from both years to guide a multi-university field school excavation at Fort Clark. Excavation goals were to clarify the structural history and evolution of the post, discern functional change in one portion …

The Political Economy Of 'Gambling On Gambling' By States And Tribes: A Critical Comparative Perspective, Sandra Faiman-Silva

Anthropology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Play Patterns And Gender, Carolyn P. Edwards, Lisa Knoche, Asiye Kumru

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This cross-cultural analysis examines the gendered patterns of play seen in children worldwide. Play is a culturally universal activity through which children explore themselves and their environment, test out and practice different social roles, and learn to interact with other children and adults. Early in life, children identify themselves as a “girl” or a “boy,” and this basic self-categorization lays a foundation for their developing beliefs about with whom, what, how, and where they will play. Children play an active role in their own and their peers’ “gender socialization” (the process by which they come to acquire the knowledge, values, …

Bone Cutting, Placement, And Cannibalism? Middle Preceramic Mortuary Patterns Of Nanchoc, Northern Peru, Jack Rossen, Tom D. Dillehay

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Mortuary practices of the Middle Preceramic period (ca. 8500-4000 B.P.) are discussed for the Nanchoc region of the upper Zaña Valley, northern Peru. Careful breaking, cutting, and placement of human bones from adult males during the Las Pircas Phase (8500-6000 B.P. ) gave way to more haphazard breakage and discard during the subsequent Tierra Blanca Phase (6000-5000 B.P.). The evidence of cannibalism is considered. Bone breakage, cutting, and possibly cannibalism is believed to have been part of a broader process of ritualization that mitigated the spiritual danger of the transition from hunting-gathering to horticulture.

Este trabajo discute las prácticas mortuorias …

The Role Of Culture In Appraisal, Batja Mesquita, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries travelers to the South Seas brought back stories of a Malaysian emotional syndrom called amok, in which a person rushes around in a state of frenzy, recklessly attacking anyone who gets in the way, and impervious to all attempts at restraint. No Western language had a word that meant the same thing as amok, and Westerners were fascinated by this bizarre phenomenon. Fascinated, but not mystified. Amok was strange, but it was not unrecognizable, and the term "running amok" was quickly incorporated into Western speech to refer to a kind of violent …

School Liability For Peer Sexual Harassment After Davis: Shifting From Intent To Causation In Discrimination Law, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

This essay seeks to explain the Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education case as an interpretation of discrimination that notably and correctly focuses on how institutions cause sex-based harm, rather than on whether officials within chose institutions act with a discriminatory intent. In the process, I discuss what appears to be the implicit theory of discrimination underlying the Davis decision: that schools cause the discrimination by exacerbating the harm that results from sexual harassment by students. I then explore the significance of the deliberate indifference requirement in this context, concluding that the standard, for all its flaws, is distinct …

What's My Copy Right?, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This piece consists of an early 21st century whimsy, a dialogue that borrows and blends history and humor to illustrate some puzzles of copyright law in the context of digital technology (with references to Folsom v. Marsh and Abbott & Costello).

Law And The "Other": Karl N. Llewellyn, Cultural Anthropology, And The Legacy Of The Cheyenne Way, Ajay K. Mehrotra

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.