Anthropology Commons^™

Trends In Median Household Income Among New York City Latinos In Comparative Perspective, 1990 - 2011, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines trends in median household incomes among New York City’s Latino population between 1990 and 2011, and considers these in comparative perspective with the City’s other major race/ethnic groups as well as with Latinos across the United States.

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: Between 1990 and 2011 median household incomes among the City’s entire population fell by -4.7%. …

El Estigma De La Depresión Y Cómo Está Influenciado Por La Percepción De La Enfermedad En Santiago, Chile, Elena Michaels

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Over the past century, as a greater understanding has been developed regarding the brain and mental health disorders, a stigma surrounding the field of mental health has emerged. The goal of this study was to analyze how the public perception of depression relates to the stigma surrounding mental illness and define the relationship between the two. This investigation took place at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago.

In Chile, one of the consequences of the stigma regarding mental health disorders is usage of the mental health services offered. Not uncommonly, a medic would give a mental health evaluation …

Livelihood Security Among Refugees In Uganda: Opportunities, Obstacles, And Physical Security Implications, Karen J. Norris

Student Publications

This research project was designed to investigate the challenges refugees face in securing a livelihood, to understand the extent to which the United Nations, the government of Uganda, and various aid groups are able to assist refugees in achieving self-reliance, and the capacity that refugees have to empower themselves. It also endeavors to expose any disparities between nationality groups, and the impact of these differences. Furthermore, this project aims to explore the impact of refugee livelihood security on regional physical security and community stability.

The study found that despite international and national policies, and efforts by both non-governmental organizations and …

Late Holocene Tsunami Deposits At Salt Creek, Washington, Usa, Ian Hutchinson, Curt D. Peterson, Sarah L. Sterling

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We interpret two thin sand layers in the estuarine marsh at Salt Creek, on the southern shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, as the products of tsunamis propagated by earthquakes at the Cascadia subduction zone. The sand layers extend for about 60 m along the left bank of the creek about 800 m from the mouth, and can be traced to the base of a nearby upland area. One layer is exposed in the creek bank about 400 m further upstream, but they are only patchily distributed in the rest of the central area of the marsh. Both …

Subsistence And Resistance On The British Columbia Coast: Kingcome Village’S Estuarine Gardens As Contested Space, Douglas Deur, Nancy J. Turner, Adam Dick, Daisy Sewid-Smith, Kim Recalma-Clutesi

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A case study is presented on the contested land ownership of the estuarine gardens in Kingcome Village, British Columbia (BC) between white settlers and the native Kwakwaka'wakw Indian Nation during the 19th century. The role that the natural resources of Kingcome Village's estuarine gardens played in white colonists' settlement of the Kingcome Village area is discussed.

Ordinary And Poor People In 18th-Century Delaware, John Bedell, Gerald P. Scharfenberger

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The authors and their colleagues have recently carried out excavations at three 18th-century farm sites in central Delaware. The Augustine Creek South and Thomas Dawson Sites were both occupied by ordinary property owners in the 1730 to 1770 period. The Augustine Creek North Site was occupied from about 1750 to 1810 by unknown but probably poor tenants, possibly in two chronologically separate occupations. At all three sites, architectural remains and artifact deposits were found. Analysis of these sites has focused on the question of how fully ordinary and poor people participated in the social, economic, and intellectural changes of the …

Telling Time For Archaeologists, George L. Miller, Patricia Samford, Ellen Shlasko, Andrew Madsen

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This essay presents an accumulation of data on the dates for common types of artifacts found on archaeological sites from the historical period. These dates come from a variety of sources and include a mix of types of dates. These dates are based on such things as patents, pattern registrations, dates when commercial production began, estimates of when production stopped, and the popularity ranges for various styles of wares based on makers' marks. The introductory essay discusses some of the problems in the sources of the dates presented.

Editor's Introduction, Mary C. Beaudry

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Editor's introduction to the volume.

Economic Influence On Pediatric Health Care In A Medically Pluralistic Society: An Ethnographic Study Among The Asante People Of Ghana, Kevin Gamett, Dr. Randy Val Johnson, Dr. William Carl

Journal of Undergraduate Research

There are many factors that influence decisions regarding medical care, including financial, situational, and ideological issues. Families may choose to avoid modern health care facilities because of the costs associated with hospital stays, treatment regimes, transportation, and lost time. Long waiting times, disrespectful treatment from doctors and nurses, and family obligations are also qualitative issues that contribute to the eschewing of modern medicine. Other families choose to go to hospitals and health clinics because they believe that medicines are the ultimate source of healing, following the western paradigms set by principles of physiology, anatomy, chemistry, and internal medicine. In questions …

New Matriarchs: Louisville, Kentucky (Fa 768), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and representative photographs for Folklife Archives Project 768. The collection details the lives of seven women from around the globe (India, Syria, Mexico, Uganda, Russia, Argentina, and Somalia),all recent immigrants to Louisville, Kentucky.

Motivation And Peer Relations In A Second Grade Spanish-English Dual-Immersion Program, Melinda Clement Hardman

Journal of Undergraduate Research

While there are many different models for how motivation works and what it is in second language acquisition, Gardner’s model dominated the research for over 30 years and continues to be the most well-known (Oxford 1996). Gardner explained motivation in second language acquisition with what he called the Socio-Educational Model (Gardner 1998). This model distinguished between three levels of motivation which move upward toward a broader and broader degree of motivation. At the first level is integrative orientation (An orientation, according to Gardner and Tremblay 1994, is a group of reasons for studying a language). Integrative orientation deals with having …

Western Kentucky University Libraries Oral History Project (Fa 756), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 756. Collection includes 39 interviews with Western Kentucky University Libraries faculty, staff, and administrators about their work in the university’s libraries from the 1950s to 2015. Each interview includes information about the individual’s particular role in the library’s function, the evolution of the libraries, and significant projects in which they were involved.

Snapshot Of A Nabataean Tomb, Jean Marie Vance, Dr. David Johnson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Nabataean kingdom existed as an independent entity from about 3rd century BC to 1st century AD and continued to exist through the 3rd century AD as a province of the Roman Empire. The Nabataeans flourished as traders and they were able to establish their capital city at Petra. With the development of trade among the Nabataeans came an influx of ideas and technologies among those ideas was stylistic considerations involved with art – in particular frescos.

Cultural Components Of Infant Mortality In Asante, Ghana, Adriana Matos, Dr. William Olsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Among the Asante people of central Ghana, health and healing are conceptualized quite differently than the western biomedical model. Religious cosmology has special significance in relation to healing. Health is thought of holistically; every illness is a product of physical, spiritual, emotional, and cosmological forces. Illnesses manifest themselves in the body, but unlike the biomedical view of health, it is not the bodily affliction that is the root of the problem. In order to cure a disease, the true cause must be discovered and resolved. Although many of the traditional beliefs have been pushed out or reduced by the growing …

K’Iche’ Kinship Terms And Social Identity, Kristine Kinship Whipple, Dr. John Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During the summer of 2005, I lived and worked among the indigenous Maya-K’iche’ of the Guatemalan highlands. Prior to leaving, I had anticipated examining kinship terms in a bilingual country and whether the use of K’iche’ terms vs. Spanish terms would indicate a difference in the type of kinship relationship created. Upon arrival, I learned that I would spend the season in a rural, monolingual K’iche’ hamlet. Without my informants knowing any Spanish, I abandoned my bilingual project altogether and studied, instead, the native conceptions of communication and how these conceptions interplayed with their models of kinship and family. Having …

Fossils As Votive Offerings In The Greco-Roman World, Holly A. Raymond, Dr. David Johnson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Often archaeologists fail to recognize objects of veneration and cult worship in religious contexts. These objects may at first glance be difficult to identify as votive offerings. Consequently, they are often overlooked because of their seemingly ordinary appearance and functional purpose. Robin Osborne says of votive offerings “… it may be an object made for everyday use and ‘converted’ into an item that might be employed in an exchange with supernatural powers, as a cup or piece of jewelry may be” (Osborne 2004: 2). This type of votive offering may have been more widely employed among those of a non-elite …

A Hairy Tale Analysis Of Adobe-Embedded Hair From Arrowhead Hill, Escalante, Utah, Bradley A. Newbold, Dr. Joel Janetski

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During the Spring Term of 2004, the BYU Archaeological Field School excavated a portion of Arrowhead Hill, a Formative (or early agricultural) Period site a few miles west of Escalante, Utah. Two intriguing finds were made during that field season: two pit-house structures of varying style situated within a few meters of each other and multiple large, deep, spherical underground pits. Diagnostic characteristics of Formative Period pit-houses are, among others, the style of structure construction and the style and type of ceramic vessels recovered on or near the original floor of the structure. From this, it was concluded that one …

Determining The Value Of Subsistence And Cash Crop Farming In Tamil Nadu, Indian Family’S Subsistence Strategies, Joseph Neil Ransom, Dr. Charles Nuckolls

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It is nearly impossible to asses the true conditions of a community from older books or research papers about neighboring areas. That said my background reading leading up to this research project had left me with the impression a large percentage of Indian farmers completely subsisted from their land. While other farmers spent their time cultivating crops for the market, these subsistence farmers planted their favorite foods for future consumption. Reading about subsistence farmers in Africa had lead me to believe these farmers lived a better quality of life than cash crop farmers because they were able to grow a …

“They Are All My Children:” Grandparenting And Globalization In The K’Iche’ Eldercare System, Melarie Wheat, Dr. John Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

“Tojo papi, tojo amor,” Juana playfully beckoned her young grandson from across the kitchen. The child glanced over at her, but instead toddled towards the plancha, the ceramic stove, aiming directly for the fire. Once there he proceeded to play with the ash emerging from the front of the plancha. The family, however, looked on unconcerned and continued their conversation about how many cows to buy in the market the next day. Suddenly Miguel, the grandfather, lunged forward shouting “no, no, no!” as he confiscated a flaming stick from his young grandchild. “Ai hombre!” the child’s exasperated mother exclaimed as …

Field Study Impact Assessment In Highland Guatemala, Adriana Smith, Dr. John Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

I felt at home walking down the cement block street through Nahualá’s town center. It was good to be back in the small highland community in Guatemala where I had spent nearly every summer of my undergraduate career. It had been 10 years since the first group of anthropology students had come to study in these communities and since then, BYU students have been visiting every year for several months at a time. My interaction in years past with the K’iche’ has always left me wondering what they thought of me living in their homes, eating their food, and asking …

Rise Up From Fragments: The Life And Arts Of The Virgin Anasazi, Cynthia Lee Killian Young, Dr. Marti L. Allen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The adventure of planning and creating a museum exhibition began September 2003. While other museums may take a year or more to install a series of exhibits, we at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures (MPC) were able to create a professional exhibition in eight months. My whole project centers on a collection of Virgin or Western Anasazi artifacts that Mr. Lanny Talbot retrieved from his lands. The Talbot collection is one of the largest collections of Western Anasazi pottery allegedly found from one site.

Orca, Erin Huff

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My ORCA project changed considerably from the time I applied for the grant, to when I stepped off of the airplane back in the U.S. after researching in Ghana. I initially wanted to study elder care in Ghana, but after reviewing the resources I had available to me in Ghana, I decided to study the experiences of Ghanaian diabetics. My research – which I reported in a paper entitled “Knowledge, Pain, and Poverty: Insights from Sixteen Ghanaian Diabetics” – sought to chronicle the daily experiences diabetics face in Ghana. Specifically, I was looking to see what kind of health care …

Discussing Gender Equality In An Unequal Environment: Misrepresentations Of Life By Tamilian Women, Evan Carpenter, Dr. Julie Hartley

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In May through September of 2005 I shot a documentary film about social progress for women in a village just outside the city of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India. The original purpose was to learn how the social and domestic roles of a family are affected by a specific development program aimed at helping women become financially independent through microlending and vocational training. What I ended up with instead was an experiment in visual anthropology and an unusual story about the day to day lives of Tamil women and the other stories they tell to misrepresent their experiences.

Relatedness And The Symbolic Substance Of Kinship Among The K’Iche’, Stephen Brady, Dr. Janis Nuckolls

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Kinship studies was a central concern of socio-cultural anthropology for decades. The centrality of kinship within the discipline was due to the traditional anthropological practice of studying social structure among small-scale societies. Social anthropologists found that kinship provides people with an effective form of organization in the absence of a state. In many small-scale societies, descent determines the economic, political, religious, and social position of individuals. By the second half of the twentieth century kinship studies faced a rapid decline within social anthropology, in part because some anthropologists found that kinship studies were based on Western presuppositions about the biogenetic …

Facilitating Effective Training Programs For Traditional Medical Practitioners In Ghana: Guidelines Based On Prior Successes And Current Attitudes, Amy Lamprecht, Dr. William C. Olsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The medical system extant in Ghana today is a complex one made up of many different health care delivery sectors. As is often the case wherever competing systems of medicine exist, the traditional and Western medical systems that participate in health care in Ghana are not effectively integrated and do not cooperate at a level where efficacious communication between the two groups can be facilitated. In a nation where most of the government focus and funding for health care is directed towards Western medicine but where seventy percent of the population relies on traditional medicine, the need for an effective …

Foushee, Kathryn R. (Fa 759), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 759. Paper titled “The Chocolate Festival: A Bowling Green Tradition” written by Kathryn R. Foushee for a folk studies class at Western Kentucky University. Paper includes information about the history of the festival and an interview from a festival judge.

Hawkins, Hope Brianne (Fa 760), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 760. Paper titled “Flowers, Knick-Knacks, and Patriotism: Assemblage Patterns in Rural Baptist Cemeteries of South Central Kentucky” written by Hope BriAnne Hawkins for a folk studies class at Western Kentucky University. Paper includes information about memorial decorations and grave décor in south central Kentucky. Includes illustrations.

Cox, Brittany (Fa 763), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 763. Paper titled “Haunted Places in Brandenburg, Kentucky” written by Brittany Cox for a folk studies class at Western Kentucky University. Paper includes information about haunted locations in Brandenburg, Meade County, Kentucky.

Sanders, Eric B. (Fa 758), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Foklife Archives Project 758. Paper titled “An Investigation of Meaning: The Internet Meme Cycle Grumpy Cat and Appropriate Incongruity” written by Eric B. Sanders for a folk studies class at Western Kentucky University. Paper includes information internet genres of “lolcats” and “rage comics” and how it relates to humor.

The Resurgence Of Tuberculosis: Its Alliance With Hiv/Aids And The Challenges Faced By Health Care Practitioners And Governments As They Strive To Combat The Effects Of This Deadly Duo, Sheila Bibb, Dr. William C. Olsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Tuberculosis has long been a scourge throughout the world but in the 1950’s medical developments enabled most countries to bring this insidious air-borne disease under control and it was firmly believed that by the end of the century tuberculosis would be eliminated worldwide. The reality is that since the 1990’s tuberculosis rates have increased dramatically and seem set to continue this upward trend. It has been noted that this upsurge often coincides with an increasing rate of HIV/AIDS. Most of the affected areas occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and I choose to investigate the situation in the Mampong-Ashanti area of Ghana.