Anthropology Commons^™

An Anthropological Case Study On The Impact Of The "No Zero" Homework Policy On Teacher Culture In Two Central Florida Middle Schools, Mary Bolger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are Federal educational policies that have evoked criticism from teachers and administrators. Both policies extended the federal government’s reach into local education by tying federal funds to a school’s student growth and teacher effectiveness. With an increasing emphasis on economic mechanisms such as choice and competition, teachers’ effectiveness is now determined by standardized and quantifiable measurements. These policies have created a data driven and high stakes accountability culture within each school. Teachers are finding themselves in a new balancing act of recording quantifiable yearly progress for all students while trying to …

Update On Mars Bluff Navy Yard/Css Pee Dee Cannon Investigations, James D. Spirek

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Quarterly Reporter - January 2013, South Carolina Institute Of Archaeology And Anthropology--University Of South Carolina

Sport Diver Newsletters

Contents:

Farewell to Intern Mike Slot..... p.1
January Quarterly Reports..... p.2
2nd Annual SDAMP Oyster Roast..... p.2
Upcoming Events..... p.3
SDAMP News..... p.3
Artifact Identification Workshop..... p.4
The Archaeology Society of South Carolina..... p.4
Hobby Diver of the Quarter..... p.4
Feature Hobby Diver Article..... p.5
Cooper River Diving with Best Friends..... p.5
Saved by the Bell...Well, Horn..... p.6
Update on Mars Bluff Navy Yard/CSS Pee Dee Cannon Investigations..... p.6
Diver Safety - Be Prepared..... p.8
Conservation Corner - Conserving a Unique Set of Binonculars from the H.L. Hunley Submarine (1864)..... p.9
Paleontologist’s Panel - Hobby Diver Winter 2012..... p.11
Letters …

Some Current Topics In Plant Domestication: An Overview With Particular Reference To Amazonia, Barbara Pickersgill

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Amazonia offers some striking contrasts to better-known regions of the world, notably the Middle East, in which plants were domesticated. These contrasts are pertinent to attempts to formulate general principles of evolution under domestication, particularly now that some of these are being critically reexamined. Topics covered in this paper include a generally applicable definition of plant domestication; how domestication may be recognised archaeobotanically; the relative roles of conscious and unconscious human selection; when and how rapidly domestication occurred; whether the same crop was domesticated more than once; and where a crop was domesticated. The archaeobotanical record for Amazonia and the …

Domestication Of Peach Palm In Southwestern Amazonia, Michelly De Cristo-Araújo, Vanessa Maciel Dos Reis, Doriane Picanço Rodrigues, Charles R. Clement

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The peach palm (Bactris gasipaes Kunth) is the only Neotropical palm domesticated by Native Americans. Its place of origin as a crop (B. gasipaes var. gasipaes) has been debated for more than a century, with three hypotheses currently in discussion: southwestern Amazonia; northwestern South America; or multiple origins in the distribution of the wild relatives (B. gasipaes var. chichagui). The small amount of archaeological data available supports the second hypothesis, but they contrast dramatically with the molecular-genetic analyses that support the first or the third, depending on how they are interpreted. On morphological grounds, two of the three types of …

Genetic Diversity And Differentiation Of Brazilian Bitter And Sweet Manioc Varieties (Manihot Esculenta Crantz, Euphorbiaceae) Based On Ssr Molecular Markers, Gilda Santos Mühlen, Alessandro Alves-Pereira, Charles R. Clement, Teresa Losada Valle

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Manioc (Manihot esculenta Crantz) originated in Amazonia and is the main staple for more than 800 million people worldwide; it also had a fundamental role as a source of calories for many pre-Columbian peoples, especially in Amazonia, where it was domesticated. There are two major groups of manioc varieties: sweet varieties have low amounts of toxic substances (cyanogenic glycosides) and may be consumed with minimum processing, while bitter varieties have a high degree of toxicity and must be detoxified to be safe before consumption. These groups are outcomes of divergent selective pressures. Natural selection probably maintains large amounts of cyanogenic …

Social Piracy In Colonial And Contemporary Southeast Asia, Miles T. Bird

CMC Senior Theses

According to the firsthand account of James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, it appears that piracy in the state of British Malaya in the mid-1800s was community-driven and egalitarian, led by the interests of heroic figures like the Malayan pirate Si Rahman. These heroic figures share traits with Eric Hobsbawm’s social bandit, and in this case may be ascribed as social pirates. In contrast, late 20^th-century and early 21^st-century pirates in the region operate in loosely structured, hierarchical groups beholden to transnational criminal syndicates. Evidence suggests that contemporary pirates do not form the egalitarian communities of their …

Egypt, Farha Ghannam

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Ethnography On The Road: Infrastructural Vision And The Unruly Present In Contemporary Dakar, Caroline Melly

Anthropology: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Taboo Lexeme Conditioning And Obscenities In American English, Alexander Werny

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Taboo Lexeme Conditioning refers to the neurological, psychological, and sociological conditioning required during lexical acquisition for a native speaker to treat or experience certain lexemes as highly taboo. Taboo words differentiate both neurologically from non-emotional or non-taboo lexemes, and lexically person to person, in at least 4 ways: 1) they exhibit high activity in the emotional and moral processing structures of the limbic system, and can activate, or be uttered, independently of cortical structures involved in propositional language processing; 2) they generally receive a high amount of negative emotional response during lexical acquisition and subsequent usage, which affects how they …

Eat Until You're Full: The Pursuit Of Autonomy And Health Through The Adoption Of Organic Agriculture In Mae Ta, Thailand, Erin Jean Plews-Ogan

Senior Independent Study Theses

This research explores the role that farmers' concerns about health and community autonomy play in the emergence of an organic agriculture movement in the village of Mae Ta in northern Thailand. In the midst of the push for export-oriented and urban-centered development, many rural people have migrated to urban areas for work or adopted contract farming of chemical-intensive cash crops. Yet farmers in Mae Ta chose a unique alternative: sufficiency-based organic polyculture. Why take on such a risk without solid policy and market support for organic agriculture in Thailand? I investigated these questions through six weeks of participant observation and …

Genetic Diversity Of North American Captive-Born Gorillas (Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla), Noah D. Simmons, Ronald S. Wagner, Joseph G. Lorenz

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) are designated as critically endangered and wild populations are dramatically declining as a result of habitat destruction, fragmentation, diseases (e.g., Ebola) and the illegal bushmeat trade. As wild populations continue to decline, the genetic management of the North American captive western lowland gorilla population will be an important component of the long‐term conservation of the species. We genotyped 26 individuals from the North American captive gorilla collection at 11 autosomal microsatellite loci in order to compare levels of genetic diversity to wild populations, investigate genetic signatures of a population bottleneck and identify …

The Effects Of Migration On Gender Norms And Relations: The Post-Repatriation Experience In Bor, South Sudan, Marybeth Chrostowsky

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

My dissertation research was a 14-month ethnographic study of the post-repatriation experience of forced migrants in South Sudan. It was designed to determine if alterations to gender norms and relations that refugees experienced during asylum differed as a function of the asylum environments and if these modifications remained intact upon the refugees’ return. The forced migrants in my sample, the Dinka of Bor from South Sudan, encountered two different asylum environments and experiences: Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya and Khartoum, in northern Sudan. After 10-15 years in asylum, these forced Dinka Bor migrants returned to South Sudan. I compared …

From Mounds To Maps To Models: Visualizing Ancient Architecture Across Landscapes, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Since the onset of settlement pattern studies in the 1950s, landscape mapping projects have become an archaeological mainstay. Remote sensing technologies such as lidar, photogrammetry, and SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) steadily reveal new archaeological sites. For landscape archaeology, the detection and mapping of small architectural complexes and households offers important data to contextualize larger (often already known) sites and perform regional analyses. However, because the majority of sites remain unexcavated, analysis is limited, and yet Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D Visualization are expanding the possible uses for older and newly-acquired data on unexcavated mounds. This paper describes a GIS …

The Origins Of The Artists: A Lithic Analysis Of A Habitation Site Associated With The Jeffers Petroglyphs, Kevin W. Reider

Departmental Honors Projects

The Jeffers Petroglyphs is one of the most important ancient American Indian rock art sites in the Midwest. The site is unique with over 5,000 individual petroglyphs created over a 9,000-11,000 year span. There have been important studies and interpretations of the petroglyphs, but a large gap of information exists concerning the archaeological sites of those who helped create the petroglyphs. An analysis of the lithic (stone) raw materials found in a habitation site surrounding the Jeffers Petroglyphs was performed in order to help fill in this gap surrounding the origins of the petroglyph creators. The lithic assemblage analyzed was …

More Than Duffle Bag Medicine: An Ethnographic Analysis Of A Student Movement For Global Health, Julie A. Christensen

Honors Papers

Student activism around global health is occurring with visibility and fervor in the United States collegiate setting. Over the past two years, I have traveled across the US and Vietnam to immerse myself in the life of a nonprofit organization called GlobeMed. A largely student-led organization, GlobeMed partners each chapter with its own unique community health organization. My thesis is an ethnographic study that draws from narratives of young people, analyzes the organizational structure, and provides a broad contextualization of GlobeMed. First, I explore the history and development of GlobeMed. I then present life histories of young people involved in …

Reconsidering The Puebloan Languages In A Southwestern Areal Context, Michael Sklar Everdell

Honors Papers

Areal linguistics is the study of diffused linguistic features across different languages which are geographically contiguous and culturally connected. My research attempts to standardize definitions for the vocabulary surrounding linguistic diffusion which will apply cross-areally. I also examine these definitions within the case study of the Pueblo and Southwest regions of North America. These areas have been culturally linked, but no agreement has been made as to whether or not these make up a linguistic area with sub-areas or are both part of a much larger area including the Great Basin, southern Plains, and southern Californian languages.

No Peace In The House: Witchcraft Accusations As An "Old Woman's Problem" In Ghana, Alexandra Crampton

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

In Ghana, older women may be marginalized, abused, and even killed as witches. Media accounts imply this is common practice, mainly through stories of “witches camps” to which the accused may flee. Anthropological literature on aging and on witchcraft, however, suggests that this focus exaggerates and misinterprets the problem. This article presents a literature review and exploratory data on elder advocacy and rights intervention on behalf of accused witches in Ghana to help answer the question of how witchcraft accusations become an older woman’s problem in the context of aging and elder advocacy work. The ineffectiveness of rights based and …

Experiments To Measure The Effects Of Timber Harvesting Equipment On Surface Lithic Scatters, Douglas J. Baughman

All Master's Theses

The importance of cultural resource preservation cannot be overstated; however local economies are at least as important. Due to conservative archaeological site protection practices in Region 5 of the United States Forest Service, the economy of Northeastern California is being adversely affected. In an attempt to help the Forest Service make more informed management decisions and improve the Northeastern California economy, I undertook experiments on the effects of timber harvesting on lithic scatters on Modoc National Forest. The experiments involved placement of 225 glass tiles (proxy lithics) in each of three plots subject to vehicle traffic and log dragging by …

Conjuring The Close From Afar A Border-Crossing Tale Of Vieques’ Activism And Obama-Empire, Víctor M. Torres-Vélez, Sarah Molinari, Katharine Lawrence

Publications and Research

After more than 60 years of military occupation, 30 of these under violent military practices, a social movement forced the U.S. Navy from the island of Vieques. This victory would not have been possible without the highly effective organization of civil disobedience carried out on the island. But the sum total of the actions that eventually forced out the U.S. Navy, neither happened exclusively within the boundaries of Vieques, nor was carried out by Viequense residents alone. In this article we want to suggest that this amazing victory—a testament of people’s will in the face of globalization—is also a border- …

More Studies In Rio Grande Valley History, Milo Kearney, Anthony K. Knopp, Antonio Zavaleta

Studies in Rio Grande Valley Regional History Series

Matamoros' love song to Brownsville : a poem / Milo Kearney -- Con un pie en cada lado : origins of El Rancho San Lorenzo de las Minas / Mary Jo Galindo -- The rise of banking in Matamoros and Brownsville / Louis Benavides -- The daily Brownsville ranchero / Norman C. Delaney -- Maximilian's bed in Brownsville / Don Clifford -- The U.S. consulate in Matamoros and instability in Matamoros and Brownsville in 1870 / César García -- The Lightbournes of the Point Isabel lighthouse / Antonio N. Zavaleta -- Movie theaters for Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, …

Shifting Local Ecologies: Biocultural Interactions And Ecuadorian Public Health, Sabrina Bradford

Honors Theses

Though biology is considered universal, this thesis argues against the assumption of the universal applications of biomedicine in favor of a biocultural approach, emphasizing shifting local ecologies in an increasingly globalized world. This research investigated Ecuadorian health within an ecological context in coordination with an international public health internship that was completed through the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and the Ecuadorian Ministerio de Salud Pública. Throughout this thesis, examples are provided demonstrating that globalization, though appearing as a homogenous process on the international level, creates heterogeneous effects on the local scale. To explain the mechanisms and implications of these …

Community-Based Approaches To Mental Health And Conflict Resolution In Post-Conflict Libya, Amanda Lubit

Anthropology Theses

Post-conflict Libya faces the challenges of establishing a national health system that is capable of addressing mental health needs for a population traumatized by decades of repression and a recent war. In order to recover, traumatized populations require feelings of safety, calm, empowerment, connectedness, and hope. To help achieve this outcome, programs must focus on medical and social aspects at both the individual and community level.

As part of an internship experience, I worked with Dr. Omar Reda, a Libyan psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) who helps communities, organizations and mental health professionals throughout Libya to address …

Turning Water Into Wine: The Political Economy Of The Environment In Southern California's Wine Country, Jason Simms

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines questions of water sustainability in contexts of wine production and state-led neoliberal development in the Temecula Valley, southern California, where wine tourism is at present being harnessed as an engine of economic growth. Natural and anthropogenic forces, such as global climate change, desertification, urban development, and the marketization and commodification of natural resources, affect the distribution and availability of water throughout the globe. As a result, the use of water, and associated political and environmental processes and consequences, in the production of global commodities, including wheat, citrus, and coffee, recently have come under increased scrutiny. Given wine's …

Fertile Ground For A Social Movement: Social Capital In Direct Agriculture Marketing, Elizabeth A. Murray

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Building from existing literature on anthropology of food, political economy of food and consumption, and social movement theory, I examine the direct agriculture network of Tampa Bay Florida through a mixed-method ethnography. The research consisted of one year of field-work, with 6 months and over 100 hours of active participant observation, open-ended interviews with eight local producers, and short surveys with 100 market patrons. This thesis is an analysis of the results of this rigorous qualitative and quantitative work and, perhaps more importantly, an account of my own personal struggles in joining the direct agriculture network and my ultimate commitment …

Cultivating Local: Building A Local Food System In Western North Carolina, Allison S. Perrett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines a movement in Western North Carolina to build a local food system, one grounded in the conditions and relationships of place. In 2000, Mountain Family Farms launched the Local Food Campaign to raise public awareness about the region's farms and farming heritage, to educate consumers about the benefits of buying food grown by local farms, and, ultimately, to build markets for locally grown food to sustain the region's farms. The campaign sparked a social movement and over a decade later local farms and locally grown food are a palpable feature of life in the mountains of Western …

The Elimination Of Blindness: An Ethnographic Exploration Of The Fight Against Trachoma In Niger, Kelley Cosby Sams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to explore specialized and popular cultural models of trachoma, and the interaction between the trachoma elimination program and its target audience in one trachoma hyper-endemic intervention community. Eighty four million people worldwide, mainly children, are infected with active bacterial trachoma. For some, this will lead to painful and progressive corneal opacity and eventual blindness. The disease is most commonly spread by person-to-person contact or by flies, and affects very specific populations living in resource-poor areas such as rural Niger, which has one of the highest prevalence rates worldwide.

The World Health Organization formed an …

The Political Economy Of Maternal Health In A Medically Pluralistic Environment: A Case Study In The Callejón De Huaylas, Isabella Chan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines maternal decision-making regarding prenatal care and childbirth in the rural, north-central Andes in the province of Carhuaz. Semi-structured interviews (n=30) and participatory action research workshops (n=7) were conducted with local women to elucidate how they conceptualize, experience, and negotiate the shifting landscape of prenatal care and childbirth practices and providers. Semi-structured interviews with obstetricians, midwives, and social workers (n=9) were also conducted to compare perspectives and identify disconnects in knowledge and practices existing between these two groups in order to facilitate an open conversation on how to jointly improve the maternal experience and reduce maternal mortality and …

Survivorship, Infertility And Parenthood: Experiencing Life After Cancer In Puerto Rico, Karen Elizabeth Dyer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While incidence rates are increasing for many cancers in Puerto Rico, mortality rates are declining (Torres-Cintron, et al. 2010), resulting in growing numbers of survivors and creating a situation in which long-term survivorship concerns are beginning to emerge as priorities. The importance of quality-of-life among survivors of cancer is increasingly being recognized among healthcare providers, although there remains a gap in knowledge of how young adult survivors cope with long-term treatment-related physical effects, such as infertility, and of the impact of cancer on survivors' social relationships and future goals.

Because understandings of "cancer survivorship," as well as of reproduction, vary …

The Professionalization And Practice Of Lactation Consulting: Medicalized Knowledge, Humanistic Care, Aimee R. Eden

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breastfeeding support for mothers and their babies historically was the informal work of family and community members. In the United States today, breastfeeding support is embedded in the biomedical system, and is provided by a new allied health professional: the International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). This dissertation explores this professionalization of breastfeeding support and the origins of this new profession. It studies how IBCLCs working in the U.S. cultural context perceive and practice the profession and examines the relationship between the profession of lactation consulting and the medicalization of breastfeeding. Oral history interviews with 17 founders of the profession, …