Anthropology Commons^™

Better News About Math: A Research Agenda, Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, John Voiklis, Laura Santhanam, Nsikan Akpan, Shivani Ishwar, Bennett Attaway, Patti Parson, John Fraser

Numeracy

Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the United States have lower numeracy than adults in most other developed nations. While formal statistical training is effective, few adults receive it – and schools are a major contributor to the inequity we see among U.S. adults. That leaves news well-poised as a source of informal learning, given that news is a domain where adults regularly encounter quantitative content. Our transdisciplinary team of journalists and social scientists propose a research agenda for thinking about math and the news. We engage here in a dialogue …

Save Water Drink Wine: Challenges Of Implementing The Ethnography Of The Temecula Valley Wine Industry Into Food-Energy-Water Nexus Decision-Making, Zaida E. Darley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study demonstrates the interrelationships of people, food, energy, and water associated with Temecula Valley’s wine industry and reveals contradictions and biases in how people view these resources, which ultimately shape management and policies. The FEW (Food, Energy, and Water) Nexus is an approach increasingly used by policy- and decision-makers to understand the interrelationship of several resources. However, a FEW Nexus approach often lacks in social aspects that influence environmentally and economically sustainable outcomes, especially in the wine and wine tourism industry. When quantitative and qualitative data are available, the other challenge is which assessment to use. Two assessments often …

On The Importance Of Context: Examining The Applicability Of Infertility Insurance Mandates In The United States Using A Mixed-Methods Study Design, Nathanael B. Stanley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accessibility of infertility services is disproportionately experienced in the United States. Although there exist state-based health insurance mandates for infertility services, these mandates contain language that disqualify people from using them. In order to better understand why these mandates are not able to reduce the financial burden and bridge the income disparity for using infertility services, the purpose of this study is to add context to the applicability of these insurance mandates through qualitative and quantitative inquiry. Using the Glass and McAtee model of risk regulators as an operational paradigm, this research explores the role of environmental context, or “place”, …

Re-Assessing The Genocide Of Kurdish Alevis In Dersim, 1937-38, Dilşa Deniz

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article discusses a century-long denial of historic genocide targeting Kurdish Alevis in Turkey. Firstly, I argue that the state-sponsored killings and forced displacements that occurred in Dersim in 1937-38 constitute genocide. Secondly, I use census numbers and other available documentation to suggest a possible figure for the causalities, while pointing out the methods by which the state has tried to cover up these numbers, indicating state planning and preparation. Finally, I show that as a part of the continued denial of such genocide, Turkish leftist organizations have been manipulated by the state, and thus have ended up supporting much …

Civic Engagement Amid Civil Unrest: Haitian Social Scientists Working At Home, Nadège Nau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unlike many of the autoethnographic accounts in world anthropologies discourse, this study employs critical educational ethnography to both address the geopolitics of Haitian anthropology while also spotlighting an understudied group: university faculty. This study addresses: What are the conditions of academic labor for anthropology professors working in Haiti? Moreover, what is the price of being an anthropology professor at the School of Ethnology at the State University of Haiti (UEH), and how do professors add meaningful value to their labor through sacrifice, ingenuity, and civic engagement? Despite professors’ work-related challenges and Haiti’s severe “brain drain” levels, for many professors, their …

Before The Storm: Water And Energy Utilities, Human Vulnerability And Disaster Risk, Cori D. Bender

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasingly communities are impacted by slow-onset and sudden hazards. With reports of disasters affecting millions of people and with severe impacts on lives and livelihoods, there is a focus on creating cities that make human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Within this focus are the mandates that safe drinking water, energy and wastewater sanitation are the right of all people living on the planet. This research addresses water and energy insecurity, highlights the gaps in community level perceptions of water and energy, and global-local dynamics that impact disaster vulnerability through a political-ecology lens.

This work examines how disaster resilience …

“Placing Our Breasts On A Hot Kerosene Lantern”: A Critical Study Of Microfinancialization In The Lives Of Women Entrepreneurs In The Informal Economic Sector In Ibadan, Nigeria, Olubukola Olayiwola

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study uses an anthropological perspective to investigate everyday lived experience of women borrowers and entrepreneurs (in the informal economic sector in Ibadan, Nigeria) relating to microfinancialization. Study such as this becomes important given the popular Yoruba metaphor “owo komulelanta” (“Placing our breasts on a hot kerosene lantern”) women borrowers use to express their experience particularly in their attempts to make repayments of MFB loans. Hence, there is a need to pay close attention and listen more carefully to operators of the informal sector and borrowers of MFB loans. This study employs ethnographic mixed methods to generate data in various …

A South Florida Ethnography Of Mobile Home Park Residents Organizing Against Neoliberal Crony Capitalist Displacement, Juan Guillermo Ruiz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The cyclical inflations of real estate values right before the 2008 housing crisis in the United States enticed mobile home park landowners, especially in California and Florida, to sell their land in the search for spectacular profits displacing many low-income residents. This thesis uses an engaged anthropological ethnographic approach to explore the struggle in organizing against neoliberal crony capitalist displacement in the South Florida metropolitan area. The study focuses on Davie, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, where at the time of fieldwork a third of residents lived in mobile homes. In 2007, the Davie town council attempted to soften the …

İyo Luché!: Uncovering And Interrupting Silencing In An Indigenous And Afro-Descendant Community, Eileen Cecelia Deluca

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this applied project is to uncover and interrupt the silencing of memories through the production of public narratives, specifically, the documentation of heritage of members of an indigenous and Afro-descendant community in Waspán, Nicaragua. The project is informed by interviews with seven women ex-combatants in the Contra War (1980-1990). Oral histories, transcribed interviews, and field notes are the source for the content of a book of heritage stories that I produced as one output about the former combatants utilizing their own words. In this thesis, I argue that the values of the “conquering” group of Nicaragua (i.e. …

Nurses And Needlesticks: Perceptions Of Stigma And Hiv Risk, Bethany Sharon Moore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Health-care providers (HCPs) are vulnerable to occupational health hazards, including dirty needle-stick injuries (DNSIs), which increase the risk for infection with HIV and other blood-borne pathogens. This study examines the perceptions of nurses and nurse practitioners who work in various health care settings regarding HIV-risk and DNSIs, in order to ascertain how these perceptions inform their decision-making regarding their health and nursing practice. I utilize a phenomenological approach to analyze the lived reality and embodiment of the DNSI experience by HCPs. The study explores the personal and institutional level factors that may influence the timely reporting and treatment of DNSIs, …

Reimagining Bottom-Up Participatory Climate Change Adaptation In The Philippines, Emily Clark Nabong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While climate change trends indicate the progression towards more widespread and severe impacts across the world, current consequences of society’s climate inaction are already being felt by many vulnerable populations. Low-lying and coastal areas are particularly at risk from climate-related hazards such as sea level rise and increased intensity storms. In order to protect residents, countries and regional governments have begun to plan and implement adaptation strategies to minimize the impact of future climate change related disasters.

This thesis explores the current status of bottom-up participatory climate change adaptation planning in the Philippines and offers new insights into making this …

‘It’S Been A Huge Stress’: An In-Depth, Exploratory Study Of Vaccine Hesitant Parents In Southern California, Mika Kadono

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2015, the US experienced a widespread measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland, California and spread to six other states, Mexico, and Canada. That year, California passed Senate Bill 277 (SB 277), which eliminated the personal belief exemption for vaccinations required for school entry; California became the third state in the country to eliminate nonmedical exemptions. In 2019, Washington, Maine, and New York followed suit eliminating all nonmedical exemptions amid the largest measles outbreak in the US in 25 years. Many countries, including the US, are experiencing a rise in vaccine preventable diseases due, in part, to increasing vaccine hesitancy, …

“You Feel Like You Belong Nowhere”: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence And Social Identity In Post-Genocide Rwanda, Myriam Denov, Laura Eramian, Meaghan C. Shevell

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Globally, the systematic use of sexual violence in modern warfare has resulted in the birth of thousands of children. Research has begun to focus on this often invisible group and the obstacles they face, including stigma, discrimination and exclusion based on their birth origins. Although sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide has been documented on a massive scale, little research has focused on the relational dynamics between mothers who experienced genocide rape and the children they bore. This paper explores the post-genocide realities of these two under-explored populations, revealing two key tensions in relation to identity-building and belonging. Drawing upon …

“They Will Think We Are The Cancer Family”: Studying Patterns Of Cancer Disclosure And Communication Among Indian Immigrants In The United States, Kanan Mehta

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Studies of Indian immigrants in Western countries show that the rates of cancer increase significantly within a generation in the host country. The negative social perceptions associated with health outcomes of cancer often perpetuate limited disclosure regarding the diagnosis of cancer among patients and families. This can result in disrupted communication in clinical settings, while causing increased stress among patients and caregivers. These findings demonstrate the need for studying lived experiences of cancer-related illness and its impacts on social relationships in the domestic and public sphere.

This study explored cancer disclosure and communication among Indian immigrants in the United States …

Models Of Secure Software Enforcement And Development, Hernan M. Palombo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Computer Security has been a pressing issue that affects our society in multiple ways. Although a plethora of security solutions have been proposed and implemented throughout the years, security continues to be a problem for at least two important reasons, (1) implementations of runtime enforcement mechanisms have not been modeled rigorously and thus may not be enforcing the policies that are expected to enforce, and (2) there are conflicting tensions in the software development process that hinder the implementation and maintenance of secure software. To investigate these issues, this dissertation is divided into two parts.

The first part of this …

Governmentality, Biopower, And Sexual Citizenship: A Feminist Examination Of Sexual And Reproductive Healthcare Experiences Of 18-24 Year-Olds In The U.S. Southeast, Melina K. Taylor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sexual and reproductive healthcare in the U.S. is a contentious and often stigmatized topic. Conservative politics and Christian religious ideology guide laws and policies that inform narratives of sexual citizenship that promote white, heterosexual, procreative, cis-gendered relationships as the ideal. For young people, exposure to sexuality education greatly influences their self-identity as sexual citizens and guides how they form intimate relationships. While sexual and reproductive healthcare has been included marginally in the discipline of anthropology, almost no research has focused on young people’s sexual and reproductive healthcare within the U.S.

This dissertation examines the viewpoints and experiences of 18-24 year-old …

Fields Brook Superfund Site: Race, Class, And Environmental Justice In A Blasted Landscape, Richard C. Bargielski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1980, the United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This federal law provided the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the legal tools necessary to pursue polluters who had improperly stored or disposed hazardous wastes. Since its passage, more than a thousand sites have been added to the National Priorities List (NPL), but only a fraction have been cleaned up. Proponents of neoliberalism argue that aggressive environmental policies such as CERCLA harm workers by making it impossible for businesses to operate profitably. This coincides with a drop of nearly 50% in the U.S. …

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy For Elemental Analysis In Bioarchaeology And Forensic Anthropology, Kelsi N. Kuehn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, the current processes of differentiating between individual human skeletal remains are imprecise, costly, and inefficient. A novel analytical technique within anthropology, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) can aid in the identification of human remains using rapid laser ablation occurring at the micro-scale, making the technique virtually non-destructive to the sample. Considering this, LIBS could offer a superior method for materials discrimination and human identification. This research sought to examine whether LIBS can be used to obtain elemental signatures within bones to distinguish individuals from one another in a rapid, non-destructive manner. Seven human skeletal donors and …

A Multidisciplinary Approach To Trauma Analysis In Cases Of Child Fatality, Jaime D. Sykes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Child fatality is an issue of social and forensic significance. Due to the complex nature of these cases, it can be difficult to determine the cause and manner of death (referred to as equivocal death), particularly when differentiating between accidental and inflicted traumatic fatalities. Finite Element Modeling is a tool typically used to elucidate the etiology of fractures. This thesis utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to research the frequency of equivocal deaths among juveniles and the usefulness of FEM as a solution to diagnosing skeletal trauma. The first component examines the problem of misdiagnosed manner of death through retrospective case examinations …

Museum Kura Hulanda: Representations Of Transatlantic Slavery And African And Dutch Heritage In Post-Colonial Curaçao, April Min

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Presenting a history of slavery that resonates with multiple audiences and serves necessary educational goals, while still creating sufficient appeal to attract visitors and remain sustainable is an enormous task faced by museums in post-colonial spaces across the world. The Museum Kura Hulanda in Curaçao finds itself in an unenviable position of maintaining a vast collection compiled by its founder, navigating the complexities of the 400-year legacy of Dutch involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and sustaining its position within the local business and tourist economy of Curaçao.

Focusing on the exhibitions at the Museum Kura Hulanda as a site …

Archaeology And The Philosopher's Stance: An Advance In Ethics And Information Accessibility, Dina Rivera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ancient Greek scholars have scaffolded ethical examination for several fields beyond philosophy, providing essential guidance for management and practicum within professions. From the Society of Antiquaries of London (1718) to the Society of American Archaeology (1934), the professional study has continued to evolve as new translations of the past and new models for predicting human behavior in the future would underpin the development of ethics in academic archaeology. Database enabled study creates opportunities for open research, expanding data pools and scientific perspectives and becomes essential for providing inclusivity, respect, and cooperation in order to build and rebuild paradigms.

The Role Of Financial Insecurity And Expectations On Perspectives Of Mental Health Services Among Refugees, Jacqueline M. Siven

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how perspectives of mental health among refugees are situated within the realities of the refugee resettlement system, a population for which information on this issue is quite limited. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation with Congolese refugees and non-Congolese refugee-serving professionals in a major Florida city, this dissertation examines how perceptions of mental health and mental health services among refugees were affected by financial insecurity and disparities in expectations. Local Congolese refugees expected the American Dream; they believed that once they arrived they would find prosperity through hard work. Instead they experienced frustration and distress because the …

Roots In Antiquity: A Comparative Study Of Two Cultures, Lara Younes Freajah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted with the goal to provide an in-depth analysis of the analogous qualities of two very distinct yet similar cultures: the Arab and Sarakatsan cultures, with a particular focus on personal matters that deal with family and kinship. Despite the difference in religions, both groups demonstrate a substantive set of similar traits especially in terms of the interactions, dynamics, and functionality of family relations in addition to the highly-esteemed values that dictate everyday conduct. As a first-generation Arab Muslim who immigrated to the United States, I use the culture in which I am entrenched as a basis …

Impacts Of Invasive Rats On Hawaiian Cave Resources, Francis G. Howarth, Fred D. Stone

International Journal of Speleology

Although there are no published studies and limited data documenting damage by rodents in Hawaiian caves, our incidental observations during more than 40 years of surveying caves indicate that introduced rodents, especially the roof rat, Rattus rattus, pose significant threats to vulnerable cave resources. Caves, with their nearly constant and predictable physical environment often house important natural and cultural features including biological, paleontological, geological, climatic, mineralogical, cultural, and archaeological resources. All four invasive rodents in Hawai‘i commonly nest in cave entrances and rock shelters, but only the roof rat (Rattus rattus) habitually enters caves and utilizes areas …