Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Into The Red: A Look Into The Reasons Why Refugees Decide To Flee, Settle Or Migrate To And From Morocco, Fadeelah E. Holivay

Master's Theses

This research paper explores some of the main reasons why refugees and asylum seekers, particularly from sub-Saharan African countries, embark on a journey and decide to settle, flee or migrate to and from Morocco. Because of this phenomenon, Morocco has seen a 96% increase of refugees migrating to the borders of Morocco each year for the past three years. Many say that this astonishing increase of migrants choosing Morocco is due to such factors as: wars breaking out regionally across central African and Middle Eastern countries causing them to flee; Morocco being a culturaly diverse francophone country whose laws and …

Toward A Just Food Regime: Consumption, Ideology, And Democratic Strategy, Adam B. Lichtenberger

Journal of Food Law & Policy

United States agricultural policies incentivize the growth and consumption of industrial foods. Industrial foods are linked to a host of social and ecological ills. However, agricultural policies are insulated from political criticism, in part, by the myth that consumers freely and rationally choose industrial foods. This neoliberal myth is congruous with the American preferences for "stealth democracy." That is, the neoliberal myth is an elegant, but ultimately erroneous, reconciliation of conflicting political preferences: Americans do not want to be involved in politics, but they also do not want the political process to be used by special interests or politicians to …

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses features of citizen communication on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and its relationship to participatory democracy in China. Weibo is a complex social space due to the interplay of different forces and social actors. On the one hand, Weibo provides the space for bottom-up political participation: it expands the horizontal discursive space where plural discourses coexist and interact; provides a social sphere where counter-discourses are created; a space where the culture of resistance is formed; and serves as an alternative source for information. On the other hand, the vertical political control of the state, and the …

Dating In Dharamsala The Tibetan Exile Dating Experience, Ben Kingstone

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

By studying the younger generation’s dating culture in the Tibetan exile community of Dharamsala, I hoped to glean a deeper insight into how cultural values effected interpersonal relationships in an everyday context, and in doing so hoped to find a bit about the unique qualities of Tibetan culture. I came in with many ideas of different themes, from Buddhist values and their effect on the dating culture, to the effect of assimilation on imported Tibetan ideas about dating and relationships. What I ultimately found had very little to do with Buddhist ideas and had far larger implications about the effects …

Who Are You Wearing? A Study Of Moroccan Fashion Discourse, Identity Performance, And Social Change, Leah Michalove

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Clothes and their consumption become almost invisible in their very ubiquity, yet fashion acts as a sort of optical litmus test for the mood of society. Clothing can express cultural norms, serve as shorthand for social grouping, and provide a kind of corpus of visual allusion; in short, clothes and how we wear them constitute a system of signification, a visual language as dynamic, complex, and arbitrary as any spoken communication. I set out to investigate the grammar and syntax of Moroccan fashion, to explore what the diversity of observed choices meant to the people who made them and how …

Community Assistance For Refugees And Gender Roles: What Could Make This C.A.R. Run Better?, Nathan E. Meyer

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Community Assistance for Refugees is a non-profit service organization in downtown Mankato, Minnesota. Secondary migration to southern Minnesota has increased the refugee population as well as the need for research assessing the needs and concerns of refugees. The purpose of this project was two-fold: first to analyze how C.A.R. is able to meet the needs of its clients and second, to investigate ways in which C.A.R. could improve its services. Traditionally female refugees are less educated and less mainstreamed into American society. This research was designed to help all clients, but special attention was paid to the specific needs of …

Reflections On The Conduct Of Research With Human Subjects Across Two Cultures, Kimberly Maas

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study examined the potential benefits, challenges, and barriers faced by university students and research colleagues who were involved in international partnerships for cross-cultural research projects between the USA and Russia. In scholarly investigations in the USA, research subjects must be informed of the precautions that will be taken to protect their safety and their privacy (Amdur & Bankfert, 2002). Particularly in Russia, there are no corresponding policies for working with human subjects that compare to the procedures followed by American university Institutional Review Boards. Furthermore, international partnerships have faced new challenges as a result of the restructuring of American …

Australia’S Boatpeople Policy: Regional Cooperation Or Passing The Buck?, Christopher C. White

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

The Australian government implemented a new policy in July 2013 in an attempt to more effectively address the recent spike in irregular migrants trying to reach its shores. In this paper, I examine the panic over migration in Australia concerning asylum seekers arriving by boat. The discussion is divided into two main themes. First, I look at how the Australian government is attempting to manage irregular immigration with a specific focus on the regional arrangement with Papua New Guinea. I argue that instead of mutually beneficial efforts at regional cooperation, the Australian government is merely shifting its responsibilities to a …

Intergenerational Conflicts In Iran: Myth Or Reallity?, Mohammad Hossein Panahi

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

One of the important social issues attracting the attention of social thinkers in post WWII era has been the issue of intergenerational conflict. Presented by scholars such as Karl Manheim and Margaret Mead, it was thought that in post WWII era intergenerational conflicts or gap rose to a degree that it made the communication and understanding between pre and post WWII generations very difficult. It was theorized that this unbridgeable gap between the two generations was due to grave and rapid social changes that occurred in that era, so that these two generations experienced and lived in two totally different …

Immigrants, Roma And Sinti Unveil The “National” In Italian Identity, Francesco Melfi

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This essay picks up a few threads in the ongoing debate on national identity in Italy. Immigration and the intertwining of cultures locally have stretched the contours of the nation state to a breaking point. As a result, the social self has become a sharply contested terrain between those who want to install a symbolic electronic fence around an imagined fatherland and those who want a more inclusive nation at home in a global world. After discussing the views of Amin Maalouf (2000), Alessandro Dal Lago (2009), Abdelmalek Sayad (1999) and Patrick Manning (2005) on national identity and migration in …

More Than A Tribesman: The New African Diasporan Identity, Stephen M. Magu

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Current global levels of immigration stand at about 300 million persons; of these, IFAD estimates that 30 million Africans are in the Diaspora. The contributions of diasporic Africans to their communities and to the cultural experiences of the United States are multimodal. To their domiciles, they contribute economically, empowering their families to become more active and less dependent on the state, while transmitting ideas about democracy and better government. At the same time, they contribute to their adopted homelands through social and cultural activities, cultural festivals and other indicators of cultural connectedness to their motherlands. The African diaspora of necessity …

Daily Border Crossings: Negotiations Of Gender, Body And Subjectivity In The Lives Of Women Workers In Urban Malls., Rachana Johri Dr., Krishna Menon Dr.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

The last two decades have seen the emergence of not just new markets but new market spaces that provide a visual experience of products and persons that closely approximates the field set up by the global media. Malls represent the concrete representations of unabashed celebration and acknowledgment of desire. Malls are one of the spaces that shape everyday lives suggesting the rightfulness of fulfilling sexual, cultural, social and gastronomic desires. One ‘category’ of persons presumably shaped by these spaces are those who work in them. Our concern is particularly with the negotiation of body and subjectivity as women travel daily, …

The Body As Politic: Education And The Performance Art Of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Dana Cole

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Art has been used as a tool in many fields as a method to tap into different ways of knowing and learning. It promotes creativity and individual expression by encouraging innovation and by opening up possibilities to different ways of expressing and experiencing. My work looks at the performance art of Guillermo Gómez-Peña as a form of public pedagogy using a/r/tography, an arts-based methodology, to illuminate way art it can be used to enhance the learning experience. This article examine the in-between spaces created in Gómez-Peña’s work as epistemological borderzones underscoring how borders come together in heterogeneity, contradiction, and flux …

Table Of Contents

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Antonio Medina-Rivera, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This introduction precedes the initial issue of the journal Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions.

Toward A Biocommunicable Cartography Of Health Decision-Making In The Amazon Basin Of Ecuador, James Cartwright

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This paper comprises a critical, ethnographic study of health communication in a rural community of Amazonian Ecuador. By synthesizing approaches from anthropology, discourse studies, and public health, the study explores how conversations influence health decisions, how communities understand health systems, and how macrostructural discourse changes the political economy of healthcare in Ecuador. My work draws on the recent theoretical development of ‘biocommunicability’ in anthropology as well as earlier sociological research on knowledge construction. Most importantly, this paper offers a critique of current interventions by NGOs in the region.

Basic Human Health And Sustainable Community Development: A Case Study Of A Community In Monte Plata, Dominican Republic, Rachelle H. Arnoux

Capstone Collection

One of my objectives in conducting this research is to enhance my skills in data collection while simultaneously improving my writing skills. More substantively, I wanted to explore how access to healthcare in a developing country like the Dominican Republic can contribute to sustainable development. As good health is fundamental and vital for all human beings, it is important in the context of this study to understand how the healthcare system in a particular country gives the population access to quality healthcare. Referring myself specifically to the situation at Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) Dominicana medical center in the Dominican Republic …

Mode, Method, And Medium: The Affordance Of Online Tutorials In The Writing Center, Erik V. Holtz

Honors Scholar Theses

While the body of literature regarding online tutorials in the writing center is growing, researchers seem hesitant to fully endorse, or even commend, online writing tutorials. This seems appropriate for work in communication theory and human-computer interaction; working across a medium may be different, but this could create new and interesting ways of tutoring. This research reports on a comparative analysis of online and in-person tutoring at three different universities, focusing on tutor self-perceptions and on affordances, a concept drawn from systems engineering, human-computer interaction and ecological psychology. Unstructured interviewing is used to create a set of preliminary affordances of …

Gettin' Weird Together: The Performance Of Identity And Community Through Cultural Artifacts Of Electronic Dance Music Culture, Andrew Matthew Wagner

Theses and Dissertations

The growing popularity of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) on nearly every continent has given rise to the transition of EDM music from underground raves to large scale, multiple-day music festivals. Attendance at EDM events, whether at concerts or festivals, is primarily dominated by today's youth generation. The number of youth attending these events continues to grow as elements of EDM are being mixed into other mainstream music genres. This increase in the popularity of EDM has been an area of research interest in the past decades for a variety of disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, marketing, and tourism. The present …

Peacemaking Embodied: Dance As A Connecting Thread Weaving Senegalese Ethnicities, Rachel Ulrich

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Senegal remains one of the more peaceful, stable countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with little to no ethnic conflict or racial tension. Numerous social factors are credited with promoting this peace, ranging from political decisions to friendly jokes between different ethnic groups. Some artists claim that dance promotes positive relations between ethnicities; however, little to no academic literature reflects this social dynamic. Thus I have used formal interviews, informal interviews, observation, and participant observation to explore if Senegalese dance serves to promote peace between ethnic groups and, if so, why it has the power to serve this purpose. Through connecting the …

Hip Hop Highways: Mapping Complex Identities Through Moroccan Rap, Anisha Bhat

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

During the post-colonial period, Moroccan visual artists belonging to the “School of the Sign” reformulated traditional symbols of Moroccan heritage in new and innovative ways in order to directly challenge orientalist conceptions of Moroccan identity. Today, media outlets have heralded the rise of the musical genre of Moroccan hip-hop as a potential new medium for the transmission of Moroccan youth identity and revolutionary ideals. As a result, the purpose of this study was to investigate how Moroccan rappers assert their personal conceptions of cultural identity in a larger framework of resistance against societal expectations. What, if any, are the “signs” …

Death Stares, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Reports of a general “death taboo” have been greatly exaggerated. But there remains a disconnect between the shiny and seemingly disembodied memorials on social media platforms and the presence of the corpse.

Tiaras, Queen Bees, Imposters And The Board Room: Lean In & Women In Corporate Governance, Christyne J. Vachon

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Ua68/1/2 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Dean, Assistant Deans, Committees Events, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by the Potter College of Arts & Letters Dean's Office regarding events, performances, series, conferences, and lectures sponsored or produced by Potter College for faculty, staff, students and general public.

Includes records related to the Cultural Enhancement Committee, Fine Arts Festival, Faculty Lecture Series, Visual & Performing Arts and Kentucky Heritage Project.

Let’S Play: Understanding The Role And Significance Of Digital Gaming In Old Age, Julie A. Skalsky Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Despite a marked increase in the use of digital games among older persons, there is insufficient research that provides insight into the gaming experiences of this population. A major demographic shift within the senior gaming market has ushered in a new perspective on the use of digital games as a tool for physical and cognitive health, and improved socialization. It is proposed that individual notions of play, which are developed over the life course, influence digital game play engagement and interaction preferences, and contribute to well-being. This study explored how self-perceptions of play over the course of the senior gamer’s …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

Indigenous Engagement And Resistance In The 21st Century: Empowering Indigenous Identity With Indigenous Film, Heather A. Hafer Cole

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Indigenous people of the United States have historically been and continue to be objectified and misrepresented in art, history, science, literature, and mass media. This continued colonization contributes to loss of respect for culture, identity crisis among indigenous youth, health disparities of epidemic proportions, poor performance in education, substance abuse, violence and poverty. This qualitative study expands upon existing scholarship in media anthropology (Dilworth, 1996; Ginsberg, 1991 & 2008; and Prins, 2002) and indigenous studies (Rader, 2011; Singer, 2001; and Tuhiwai Smith, 2012) by analyzing the indigenous voice expressed through media practice, storytelling as a tool for empowering indigenous identity …

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 …

I'M A Patient, Not A Problem: An Exploration Into The Roles Assigned In The Doctor-Patient Relationship, Monica C. Stewart

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Language Shift And Development: A Case Study Of Zhongdian Southern Khams Language Vitality, Simon Peters

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The fields of language endangerment and maintenance address language shift overwhelmingly in the context of a local language being replaced by that of a surrounding oppositional dominant cultural group. There are, though, situations in which a local language is competing with the dominant variety of the wider cultural group to which it belongs. How a situation like this is dealt with by linguists and language planners depends largely on the recognition of participant tongues as their own languages or one as a dialect of another. Reversing language shift for a “dialect” is difficult to garnish institutional and financial support for …