Anthropology Commons^™

Pluralism And Critique In A Renewed Environmental Anthropology, Helen Kopnina

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Environmental anthropology has evolved from early ethnographic traditions that emphasized the interplay between culture and ecology to a field increasingly influenced by ideological perspectives across the political spectrum. Traditionally, anthropologists examined how human societies adapted to their environments through cultural practices, laying the groundwork for ecological anthropology. However, in recent decades, the field has increasingly been shaped by political and theoretical shifts that prioritize critiques of capitalism, colonialism, and environmental injustice—sometimes at the cost of empirical diversity and democratic debate. There are critiques of the broader trend in academia where intellectual discourse becomes dominated by elite-driven ideological conformity. Critics warn …

“These They Cut In Pieces, Bones And All…”: An Examination Of Pequot Subsistence Practices During The Early 17th Century At The Calluna Hill Site, Groton, Connecticut, Megan V. Goldstein

Graduate Masters Theses

Beginning in the early 17th century, the arrival of Europeans in southern New England led to rapid changes and cultural transformation as Indigenous lifeways were impacted by the introduction of foreign materials, cultural structures, and the onset of colonialism. Archaeological research has helped to demonstrate how individuals and communities navigated the pressures of colonialism and developed ways to survive and persist in the centuries that followed. The early 17th century is an archaeologically underrepresented time period in southern New England, limiting an understanding of how Indigenous people initially interpreted foreign material culture, negotiated changes in their lifeways, and in particular, …

Introduction, "Getting Through": Anthropologies Of Crisis, Resistance, And Resilience, Alison Bell

Southern Anthropologist

No abstract provided.

Foodways And Community: Shellfish Consumption At Sitio Drago In Bocas Del Toro, Panamá, Megan E. Winnick

Graduate Masters Theses

Food-related practices provide marginalized groups with spaces for cultural exchange and asserting agency within colonial contexts, often leading to the formation of new communities and identities. Marine mollusks, due to their widespread accessibility, have a significant role in the cuisines of African Diaspora and Indigenous communities in Latin America. This thesis examines shellfish consumption at Sitio Drago in Bocas del Toro, Panamá, highlighting how shellfish harvesting and communal cooking fostered community expression through local food sources. The study includes analyses of spatial distribution of mollusk species, MNI counts across three temporal periods, and a size distribution of common gastropods. Findings …

From Chinese Folk Religion To Tridharma: The Trajectory Of Chinese Religion In Indonesia, Refan Aditya

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This article explores the trajectory of Chinese folk religion and the institution of klenteng (Chinese temple) within the broader discourse of Chinese religion in Indonesia, spanning from the colonial period to the post-reform era. Employing a historical and anthropological approach, this study examines Chinese religious discourse through Chinese-peranakan publications from the colonial era. It presents contemporary practices of Chinese folk religion and temple life as part of that evolving discourse. Historically and anthropologically, Chinese folk religion has been deeply embedded in the religious life of Chinese communities. However, its resonance has gradually degraded under the dominating religious narratives, particularly due …

Roblox As Open Text: Identity, Meaning, And Ideology Through Eco’S Semiotics, Yuyus Rustandi, Nanang Sutisna

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines Roblox as a digital cultural space that constructs and represents adolescent identity through Umberto Eco's semiotic approach. Roblox functions not only as a game platform but also as an open text comprising visual signs, social symbols, and complex narratives. This studi is based on a literature review from nine prior empirical studies, this research analyzes how avatars, virtual environments, Robux economy, and user communities shape diverse systems of meaning. Findings show that Roblox serves as a site for identity construction, simulation of social values, and reproduction of dominant discourses such as capitalism and gender performance. The study …

The Non-Reciprocity Of Cultural-Ecological Resilience In Eastern Sumba, B. Retang Wohangara

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Resilience is one key concept of culture and ecology. It highlights a particular system's adaptive and thriving capacities in facing various challenges. This research-based article investigates the reciprocity of cultural-ecological resilience in three traditional communities in Eastern Sumba. It starts with the examination of cultural resilience and ecological resilience using five and seven qualitative indicators, respectively. The last part of the discussion analyzes how culture and ecology reciprocate in the given communities. The research employs a descriptive qualitative method. Data are collected by conducting mini-ethnographic field research for interviews, documentation, and focus group discussions. Using the five and seven indicators …

Shaping The Landscape: Analyzing Enclosure Types, Farm Productivity, And Resource Use In Viking Age And Medieval Iceland, Chiara M. Torrini

Graduate Masters Theses

Enclosure walls, constructed during the Viking Age and Medieval periods, were a common feature of early Icelandic agropastoral farmstead infrastructure. These walls divided the landscape and created discrete areas, often protecting grass grown in homefields. Harvesting grass for fodder was essential to support livestock, especially cattle, through the winter. Enclosure walls were built with various combinations of turf, stone, and grass sod, which were generally cut, gathered, or excavated close to the wall’s location. Data was collected for this project and combined with substantial previous archaeological work, which all take advantage of common volcanic tephra layers (including Hekla AD 1104), …

From Editor, Rahayu Surtiati

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2026.

In this edition readers will find ten articles plus one book review proposing an idea of how culture survives modernization. The four articles (1, 2, 4, and 8 show how culture and ecology or culture and traditions can reshape collective memory and identity. Two articles: 6 and 7 discuss Japanese culture: first elderly people show learning a foreign language can keep their spirit of life; second Japanese urban culture in contemporary context. Last but not least three articles (3, 5, 9, and 10) describe three different situations: roads represent symbolic dimensions; priestly …

Third Place And Nostalgia In Postcolonial Jakarta: Adaptive Reuse Of Cikini Post Office, Ade Ariyani Sari Fajarwati, Mochamad Aviandy

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

The transformation of space in postcolonial cities extends beyond the restoration of old buildings; it involves cultural practices that reshape collective memory and identity. Through adaptive reuse, colonial-era heritage spaces are revitalised as social hubs. This study examines Post Kantoor cafe, a former colonial post office turned into a “third place” within urban spatial culture. Using qualitative methods—visual observation, spatial documentation, and a literature review—the study finds that nostalgic aesthetics, evident in antique artefacts, colonial atmospheres, and curated visuals, foster emotional connections across generations and social classes. More than a site of consumption, the cafe becomes a space for dialogue, …

Revitalizing The Application Of Pancasila Values Through Modeling The Lonto Leok Culture Of The Manggarai Community, Eastern Indonesia, Yulius R. Effendi

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study explores the potential for integrating Lonto Leok culture as a character education model based on Pancasila values in schools. This research employs a qualitative approach utilizing a case study methodology. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and document analysis in Manggarai communities and schools that have integrated the Lonto Leok cultural tradition into their learning processes. The data analysis confidently employed a triangulation approach to solidify the validity of the research outcomes, ensuring their credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. The research results indicate that the values espoused in Lonto Leok culture, including religiosity, deliberation, unity, peace, and justice, …

Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality And The Ethics Of Care In Tanzania (Adrienne E. Strong 2020), Luluk Oktavia, Megawati Sukarno

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

In recent decades, global efforts to reduce maternal mortality have become a primary focus in health development agendas. However, challenges in providing quality healthcare remain complex, especially in resource-limited countries. Adrienne E. Strong’s book, Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania, offers an ethnographic perspective on the relationship between bureaucratic structures, resource constraints, and healthcare practices in Tanzania. This review examines Strong’s key concepts, such as good enough care, documented care, and fierce care, which highlight the ethical dilemmas faced by healthcare workers in delivering care under administrative pressures and limited facilities. The critique of the …

Archaeology Of Roads: A Case Study Of The 18th-Century Surosowan–Tasikardi Old Road In Banten Lama As The Sultan’S Road, Destian Pandu Dwicahyo Santoso Putro, Ghilman Assilmi

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Archaeological studies on roads in Indonesia remain relatively limited, although international research indicates that roads are not merely transportation infrastructure, but also embody social, political, and symbolic dimensions. A significant example is the ancient road in Banten Lama, which connects the Surosowan Palace with the artificial lake of Tasikardi. This study aims to present archaeological data and identify the distinctive characteristics of royal roads compared to common roads, applying a landscape archaeology approach within a post-processual paradigm. The research stages include data collection, processing, and interpretation through qualitative methods, encompassing literature review and field observation. The analysis shows that the …

The Silent Witness: The Journey Of Celibacy In The Life Of Diocesan Clergy Of Pagadian, Jumar T. Lague, Enrique C. Tapanan, Raven M. Leyte, Jinggle C. Selgas

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Celibacy is a defining vow in the life of Catholic priests, requiring thorough preparation and ongoing commitment. While celibacy enables priests to devote themselves fully to ministry, it also presents challenges that can influence their fidelity to priesthood. This study aimed to explore how Catholic priests experience, sustain, and interpret their vow of celibacy within their ministry. Using a transcendental phenomenological design, ten diocesan priests from Pagadian, representing junior, middle, and senior clergy, were purposively selected and interviewed. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, validated with participant feedback, and analyzed thematically while bracketing researcher biases. The findings reveal that priests …

Book Review: Victim-Centred Peacemaking: Colombia’S Santos–Farc-Ep Peace Process, Patricia M. Rodriguez

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Arts & Literature: Impotent Witness: A Tale Of Two Genocides, And Counting, Lisa M. Simeone

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This essay draws on memory, ethnography, and theory to consider a scholar’s personal and political responsibility as witness.

Engaging Stakeholders To Build, Sustain, And Grow Responsible Business: Some Frameworks, Meena Raghunathan, Kara Li Liu

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This is a follow-up Dialogue commentary to the MGDR publication:

Raghunathan, Meena and Liu, Kara Li (2024) "Moving from ‘Managing Stakeholders’ to ‘Managing for Stakeholders’: The Imperative for Responsible Business," Markets, Globalization & Development Review: Vol. 9: No. 3, Article 4.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2024-09-03-04
Available at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/mgdr/vol9/iss3/4.

In this commentary, the concepts of stakeholder approach to management is expanded and deepened.

Ethics, Social Responsibility, Sustainable Developmental Goals, Economic Development Strategies: Need Is Stronger Than Ever, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Zeynep Ozdamar Ertekin, Delphine Godefroit-Winkel

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Marooned: A Western Frontier Dismal Swamp Narrative, Professor Meya E. Hargett

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Marooned: A Western Frontier Dismal Swamp Narrative centers the erased figure of Samuel Mars, a lost Black station master whose movements through the Great Dismal Swamp have been excluded from dominant Underground Railroad cartographies. Here, the term “Marooned” refers not to abandonment, but to the maroon geographies of Black and Indigenous resistance encoded in land, lineage, and fugitive infrastructure.

Guided by Diasporic Maroon Memory Theory, Lineage as Method, and the Maroon Geographies Framework, this research reconstructs Mars’s trajectory through oral testimony, spatial patterning, and ancestral land memory. Rather than casting the Dismal Swamp merely as a site of refuge, this …

The Eastern Frontier: Border Forts Of The Nile Delta And Sinai During The New Kingdom Period In Egypt, Andrew Cahill

Student Scholar Symposium

Throughout history, nations have always sought to secure their borders in order to control the flow of people and commerce so that the interests of that particular state are served. Ancient Egypt was no exception, with a string of border forts established going back at least as far as the 12^th Dynasty. During the New Kingdom Period (Dynasties 18-20), Egypt wielded great political power in the Near East, and there were two primary lines of access into Egypt from that direction. This paper will give an overview of the major issues related to the archaeology of the forts along …

Gamergate And The Woke Mind Virus, Gavin Graves

Undergraduate Research Symposium

This text concerns the formation of beliefs that would shape the 2014 harassment campaign of GamerGate. Specifically, how GamerGate was perpetuated by stereotypes and ideas in Geekdom that spanned from the 60’s Disco Demolition to the Internet’s Wild West that ended in 2013. These include ideas like simulated ethnicity, geek melodrama, nerd determinism, and nerd fatalism. It also discusses the views and beliefs on anonymity, critique, and social capitals of the Wild West Internet and how the changing views of these led to resentment that started the movement. Drawing from historical research, I studied the history of moral panics like …

A Play-Based Stoic Intervention: Preventive Pedagogy For Childhood Resilience, Ross William Podyma Mr

International Journal of Playwork Practice

Rates of reported childhood mental health difficulties have risen markedly in recent years, prompting a policy emphasis on early identification and rapid referral to clinical services. While such responses are vital for acute and complex presentations, there is growing concern that they may contribute to an over-pathologising of normative developmental experiences. Everyday challenges that once functioned as opportunities to build resilience are increasingly framed as early symptoms of mental disorder. This risks undermining children’s ability to cope adaptively with adversity, inadvertently fostering reliance on external intervention.

Since its inception in 2012, Sporting Communities CIC has been embedded in schools and …

Music And Sustainable Development Goals: Telling The Story, Mark Reimer

Journal of Global Awareness

Now, 10 years after the United Nations adopted its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the music profession continues to work toward being a responsible partner in the health and preservation of the planet and its inhabitants. By transcending social barriers, music promotes cultural awareness and mutual understanding, encourages creativity, and enhances emotional well-being, outcomes vital to the global goals of health, freedom, peace, education, equality, prosperity, and environmental sustainability. The article includes various examples of how music performers, educators, composers, and scholars are creating or adopting new practices that are mindful of reducing the carbon footprint, yet financially feasible in their …

Life In The Cracks: Law, Violence, And Resistance In Haiti, Marco Motta

Anthropology

A rich account of what it means to live with law amid its failures.

Life in the Cracks is a rich ethnographic portrait of law, violence, and resistance in Haiti. In a contemporary context marked by international interference, global capitalism, and state collapse, Haitians face complex challenges that are largely ignored and misunderstood. By examining the most unexpected inflections of ordinary life, Life in the Cracks offers a well-grounded account of people’s experience of law in their lives. The book describes what it means to endure violence partly engendered by the law, and thus to live up to one’s disappointment …

Oxytocin Varies Across The Life Course In A Sex-Specific Way In A Human Subsistence Population, Abigail E. Colby, Dominik C. Jud, Valerie Baettig, Jordan S. Martin, Camila Scaff, Michael D. Gurven, Benjamin C. Trumble, Bret A. Beheim, Paul L. Hooper, Daniel K. Cummings, Hillard Kaplan, Jonathan Stieglitz, Arnulfo Cary Ista, Adrian V. Jaeggi

ESI Publications

Oxytocin, a hormone linked to reproduction and health, may mediate life-history trade-offs across the human life course. Yet, how oxytocin naturally varies with age remains poorly understood. Here, working with the Tsimane, forager-horticulturalists of lowland Bolivia, we collected the largest sample of oxytocin measurements to date (n = 1,242 samples, n = 405 individuals, age = 2 to 84 y, 51% female), and i) examined how oxytocin varies throughout the life course in females and males, and ii) investigated potential drivers of age- and sex-specific variation. Our sample provides rare insight into the relationship between oxytocin and age in a …

An Axe To The Funny Bone: Curated Instability And Horror-Comedy Intersections In American Storytelling, Samantha Box

Masters Theses

Funny. Terrifying. Subversive.

Horror-Comedy twists and bites at the intersection of two incredibly reactive genres— with both Horror and Comedy being well known for the political and social discourses they embody and reinvent through story. While prevalent in American popular culture, scholarly analysis of this hybrid space barely exists beyond a small number of Film Studies investigations. Despite this lack, Horror-Comedy works continue to be successfully produced. This thesis unpacks the vibrant relationship between fear and laughter in contemporary American storytelling through Horror-Comedy, maintaining a focus on structural dynamics and the audience-disarming results of simultaneously applying horror and humor to …

Yao Shaman Priest Robe, Zoe Smith

Department of Anthropology

This report examines a “Yao Shaman Priest Robe” from the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection. It is attributed to the Yao Mien group, people who live in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, or China. Based on other robes (found in appendix), it dates from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. This piece studies the attribution, function, material, provenance, date, and iconography of this specific robe.

Guest Editors’ Introduction, Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk, Nicolo Paolo P. Ludovice

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

This introduction examines the historical evolution of health messaging in the Philippines, tracing its roots from early twentieth-century colonial public health campaigns to contemporary pandemic responses. It argues that health messaging, initially termed “medical propaganda,” has consistently served as a tool for persuasion and governance, intertwining communication, politics, and medicine. The introduction highlights how visual technologies and simplified narratives have been used to normalize biomedical authority, often obscuring complex realities. It concludes by emphasizing the need for a broader epistemic repertoire to navigate health knowledge in an era of misinformation.

The Unspoken Whiteness Of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Gracies Versus Luta Livre, Benjamin Penglase

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article explores why the relationship between race and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and the ways that Brazilian jiu-jitsu has been racialized as white, have often been invisible, particularly for non-Brazilians. It argues that both non-Brazilians who practice the martial art, and the scholarly analysis of jiu-jitsu, have often ignored how the marital art has been positioned as ‘white’ within Brazil’s complex and highly unequal structures of racial dominance.  Focusing on challenge matches that the Gracie family fought against practitioners of luta livre (a Brazilian style of catch-wrestling), the article shows how these matches located jiu-jitsu within Brazil’s racial hierarchy, though often …

Trading Posts And "Old Pawn": Diné Navajo Trade And The Native Art Industry, Dustin Roberto

Native American Studies Student Publications

"Old pawn" is widely used to describe antique Native American jewelry and goods once pawned for credit at trading posts in the Four Corners region. This article traces how the trading post pawn system influenced Diné Navajo economic life from 1868 through the 1970s, when federal regulators documented exploitative practices such as inflated interest, withheld mail, and items sold without notice. Weavers and individuals pawning jewelry typically received store credit or overvalued commodities instead of cash, a result of the power dynamics of the setting. Today, "old pawn" functions as a marketing label for vintage goods, often without documentation. The …