Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Active Resistors: The Women Of Post-Revolution Iran, Sofia E. Mouritsen

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

In this paper, I challenge the notion that Muslim or Middle Eastern women are passive acceptors of discrimination. After examining how Iranian women resisted governmental discrimination following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, I consider a number of factors that may have led to the reversal of some of these discriminatory policies in the 1990’s. How much of an effect did women’s demands for equality have on the government’s decisions? This question of effectiveness introduces a longtime debate between Islamic feminists, who advocate for working with the theocratic government and using Islam to frame their demands for equality, and secular feminists, who …

Luchadoras: Resistencias Contra La Violencia De Género Por Las Mujeres En La Región De San Ramón, Olivia "Livey" Beha

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This qualitative study describes the dynamic resiliency-building process against gender-based violence in two rural coffee-producing communities in the region of San Ramon, Nicaragua. It examines the methods and efficacy of economic empowerment and educational interventions facilitated by the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives Augusto Cesar Sandino (UCA San Ramón) in addressing gender inequality, preventing gender-based violence, and increasing access to resources for women in the cooperatives of El Privilegio and Danilo Gonzales. This complex ecology, comprised of the interactions between women, their communities, available resources, and institutions, is assessed through the lens of women’s individual perspectives as they engage in three …

Assessing The Successes Of And Challenges Facing Civil Society Organizations In South Africa, In Influencing Gender-Based Violence Policy, Sarah Connolly

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this study is to explore how South African civil society organizations (CSOs) influence government policies that are put into place to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (GBV). The project seeks to determine what strategies for influencing these policies have been the most effective and had the greatest impact, what factors have contributed to the organizations’ successes in influencing these policies, what challenges have been experienced in attempting to influence these policies, and what best practice for civil society actors attempting to influence such policies might be. The research focuses on the experiences of seven women working …

“Don’T Talk Like A European”: An Autoethnography Exploring Past And Current Students’ Visions On How To Decolonize Higher Education In South Africa, Ajetha Nadanasabesan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Colonial structures persist in the South African higher education system, which perpetuates Eurocentric knowledge as a superior way of knowing. There has been a call to action by South African university students to decolonize the oppressive structures within the higher education system. This project examines how both former and current South African university students envision a decolonized higher education system. Furthermore, it gives insight into how a colonized education has impacted students personally. Additionally, the autoethnographic form of this project integrates the researcher’s relationship to colonized education systems as a way to connect self, other, and culture in a more …

The Latex Journey: A Narrative Approach To Exploring Condom Use, Stigma, And Education From The Perspective Of Women In Masxha, Kylie Yocum

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Although the South African National Department of Health (NDOH) is spending increasing amounts of money on improving their HIV programs (including the rollout of new, scented condoms for their condom distribution program), the rates of condom use at last sexual encounter are declining. This inquiry focused on young women in the neighborhood of Masxha, Cato Manor, and their opinions surrounding how condoms are being used or misused, as well as the gender norms that perpetrate this (mis)use. This inquiry demonstrated the narratives of these young women on factors such as condom acquisition, gendered stigma, and condom education, including the Life …

Women Of Leh Town, Ladakh: An Overview Of Perceptions Of Health, Health-Seeking Behaviors, And Access To Health Care, Sophia Marion

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The following study seeks to investigate access to health care services and perceptions of health care among women residing in traditional farming communities around the Ladakh region, and to analyze perspectives on health, health-seeking behavior, and access to health care. This project was prompted by the fact that health care in this region is understudied. This study also focuses on marginalized communities including local women and immigrant women. Methods used for the collection of data were qualitative interviews conducted with 24 women, as well as an amchi worker, doctors, and informal and formal conversations with people from different nongovernmental Organizations …

The Shifting Roles Of Dai Maas: An Intersection Of Healthcare And Female Empowerment In Rural Udaipur, Julie Morel

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs), known as dais in an Indian context, have historically served as women’s primary caregivers throughout their pregnancies and during childbirth in rural regions where access to formal healthcare institutions is nearly impossible. With a heavy reliance on traditional knowledge passed down through generations, dais have aided with home deliveries for millennia. Approximately 15 years ago, however, groups such as WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, and the UN began addressing India’s high maternal mortality rate (MMR), thereby instigating the discouragement of home deliveries in favor of the encouragement of institutional deliveries. Infrastructural changes were established to improve accessibility …

The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

For the Afro-Brazilian musicians of popular Catholicism, or Congadeiros, who live precariously on the urban and rural margins of Brazil, ritual undergirds their struggles for subsistence, spiritual fulfillment, and racial equality. When Congadeiros create ritual, they enter into a tradition begun in the seventeenth century in Brazil by their enslaved African and Afro-descendant ancestors who intoned songs of redemption. In keeping with their ancestors’ evocations of dignity during slavery, worshipers in the present day embed multiple kinds of vested interests within ritual festivity to achieve racial equality. This article explores Congado, the ceremonies of these disenfranchised musicians, to …

The Menstrual Taboo And Modern Indian Identity, Jessie Norris

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Throughout the 20th century India underwent several political and cultural changes, including their independence from Britain in the 1940s and their declaration as a secularized nation. However, even secular India has been unable to remove itself from a religious practice that functions within it, the menstrual taboo. The Hindu menstrual taboo has survived for thousands of years, which begs the question: Are Hindu beliefs and values fundamentally Indian? The practice and history of Hinduism in India has informed the mistreatment and negative stigmas associated with women and menstruation. Restrictions are placed on menstruating women in India, including exclusion from religious …

New Design Principles For Mobile History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Presentations and other scholarship

This study draws on design-based research on an ARIS–based mobile augmented reality game for teaching early 20th century history. New design principles derived from the study include the use of supra-reveals, and bias mirroring. Supra-reveals are a kind of foreshadowing event in order to ground historical happenings in the wider enduring historical understanding. Bias mirroring refers to a nonplayer character echoing back a player’s biased behavior, in order to open the player to listening to alternative perspectives. Supra-reveals engendered discussion of historical themes early in the game experience. The results showed that use of a cluster of NPC bias mirroring …

Beyond Vulnerability: Refugee Women’S Leadership In Jordan, Widad Hassan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While both men and women are affected by conflicts and humanitarian crises, 80 percent of the world’s refugees and internally displaced persons are women and children, indicating that women experience conflict and war differently. The emphasis on women’s vulnerability during conflicts and humanitarian crises leads to their exclusion from leadership roles and decision-making on humanitarian programs and issues that impact them. Though women experience numerous socio-cultural barriers to exercising leadership in humanitarian settings, they have taken on important roles in emergency response and in refugee camps. This paper traces the progress of UN and humanitarian agencies recognition and development of …

We Are One: Singing, Sisterhood, And Solidarity In Appleton-Area Women's Choirs, Lauren Vanderlinden

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Despite its relatively small population, the city of Appleton has a large and thriving women’s choir community. Between the Lawrence Academy of Music Girl Choir, which serves hundreds of girls every year, and Cantala, the women’s choir at Lawrence University, opportunities for involvement in nationally-recognized female-voice ensembles range from second grade all the way through to college graduation. Using the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, Butler, Green, and Bentham, this project explores the women’s choir culture of Appleton in an attempt to discover the core values of these two influential programs. I accomplished this by conducting ethnographic research in the form …

Is Restorative Justice Doing Enough To Address The Power Imbalances Caused By Systems Of Privilege And Oppression, Matthew Furnell

Capstone Collection

Restorative justice is an ever growing philosophy which is causing a paradigm shift in the way society understands and responds to crime, punishment and victimization. The State of Vermont has become a pioneer and an example of how to implement restorative practices into the official criminal justice system, developing an alternative process to traditional punitive approaches. However, it is now more important than ever to ensure that there is not a false sense of success or a level of complacency in the further development of restorative practices. It is time to critically analyse the current restorative process and explore the …

The Plight Of Undocumented Female Migrants: Identifying Structural Factors That Contribute To The Proliferation Of Sex Trafficking And The Failings Of International Law, Hannah K. Valles

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the conditions at two specific border zones, the United States-Mexico border and the Mexico-Guatemalan border, that render undocumented female migrants vulnerable to abduction or recruitment into sexual exploitation. In addition to exploring the factors that expose women to trafficking networks, the study scrutinizes the legal failings of the international law-making community with regards to the safeguarding of women whose socio-economic conditions and environment of perpetual violence prompt their extralegal international movement. The paper provides an overview of the social, economic, and historical factors that underpin the flourishing of sex trafficking operations in …

Impacts Of Migration On Mosuo Cultural Identity: A Case Study Of The Mosuo People In Lijiang, Isabel Ullmann

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

China is currently in the midst of the largest labor migration in human history and yet we know very little about the cultural impact on the migrants themselves. For many ethnic minorities, like the Mosuo, who have been isolated from urban, if not Han, influence for much of their history, this migration is sure to result in some cultural disruption. As a matrilineal culture defined by large extended families traced by the matriline, a distinct, non-exclusive sexual-reproductive system, a housing layout that reflects religious beliefs and social structure, and a fluid interplay of the local ddaba religion and Tibetan Buddhism, …

Christians’ Cut: Popular Religion And The Global Health Campaign For Medical Male Circumcision In Swaziland, Casey Golomski, Sonene Nyawo

Anthropology

Swaziland faces one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world and is a site for the current global health campaign in sub-Saharan Africa to medically circumcise the majority of the male population. Given that Swaziland is also majority Christian, how does the most popular religion influence acceptance, rejection or understandings of medical male circumcision? This article considers interpretive differences by Christians across the Kingdom’s three ecumenical organisations, showing how a diverse group people singly glossed as ‘Christian’ in most public health acceptability studies critically rejected the procedure in unity, but not uniformly. Participants saw medical male circumcision’s promotion and …

Gëm Sa Bopp: A Case Study Of Peace Corps Senegal Girls’ Camps, Tesia A. Eisenberg

Capstone Collection

This research explores the design, curriculum, and monitoring & evaluation efforts of Peace Corps Senegal Girls’ Camps through the lens of Youth Program Leadership and Design theory. The literature review reveals a research gap in youth camp programming and hopes to draw attention to this fact to promote more literature on this subject in the future. Interviews were conducted to gain information on the design and monitoring & evaluation experiences of camp facilitators from the 2015 and 2016 PCS Girls’ Camps. This research draws upon data collected from literature, interviews, personal experience, and relevant documents from Peace Corps Senegal to …

Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Body Image And Sex: How Women's Body Image Influences And Impacts Sexual Experiences, Sarah E. Christian

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

Body image, the subjective view about one’s own body and how others perceive it, has been shown to have numerous impacts on women in multiple facets of their lives, including sexual experiences. This study seeks to examine the specific impact that body image has on women using sexual relationships for self-validation. Findings suggest that the more likely a woman is to perceive herself as overweight, the higher the chance that she seeks out sex in order to validate her feelings with regards to her body. Parental involvement and comments about the participant’s body were also shown with the woman seeking …

A Journey To New Narratives: How Sri Lankan Migrant Women Challenge Perceptions Through Resistance, Kimaya De Silva

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis draws on ethnographic research carried out with a group of returned Sri Lankan migrant women who migrated for employment to the Middle East. This retrospective ethnography, based on their time working abroad, brings forth ideas of silent resistance and hidden weapons of women from developing countries, and intends to work against dominant discourses like the human trafficking framework which deems migrant women ‘victims’ of the system of migration, largely ignoring the agency that they exercise throughout the process. The ethnography argues that resistance and resilience are better frameworks with which to characterise the experiences of migrant women. The …

“I Exist To Resist”: Navigating The Gender Non-Conforming Identity At Humboldt State University, Lizbeth E. Olmedo

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

While transgender research is educating and reforming schools, politics and wider society, there is little work on a gender spectrum that disrupts the gender binary of (trans) men/women. This research is an attempt to fill in the gaps of people, significantly students who do not fit under the “transgender umbrella,” as this term has tended to clump an array of gender and sexual identities together. This qualitative research explores students who go beyond the gender binary and how they navigate non-binary, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming identities within Humboldt State University (HSU). With this present qualitative study, I examined the lived …

Gender And Sexuality (First Edition), Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Tami Blumenfield, Susan Harper, Abby Gondak

Anthropology Publications

Learning Objectives:

• Identify ways in which culture shapes sex/gender and sexuality.
• Describe ways in which gender and sexuality organize and structure the societies in which we live.
• Assess the range of possible ways of constructing gender and sexuality by sharing examples from different cultures, including small-scale societies.
• Analyze how anthropology as a discipline is affected by gender ideology and gender norms.
• Evaluate cultural “origin” stories that are not supported by anthropological data.

Individual Thought Patterns: Women In New York's Extreme Metal Music Scene, Joan M. Jocson-Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Extreme metal music (EMM) is both an umbrella term and a sub-category of heavy metal. Although women have a small but steady presence in heavy metal, this number shrinks when applied to the EMM scene. Using ethnographic research, participant-observation and interviews, this study surveys women in New York's EMM scene to address participation, gender performativity and feminist musicology.

Sexual Violence As The Language Of Border Control: Protecting Exceptional Difference, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

When I first arrived in the Paris region in 1999 to do research on the struggle by undocumented immigrants (les sans papiers) for basic human rights, discussions of violence against women were remarkably absent from the public arena. Nongovernmental organizations and researchers had begun to broach the topic, but with little public visibility. However, this changed in late 2000, with a media explosion on the issue of les tournantes, or the gang rapes committed in the banlieues of Paris. Such tournantes involve boys »taking turns« with their friends’ girlfriends, both parties usually being of Maghrebian or North …

Research And Study Of Fashion And Costume History Spanning From Ancient Egypt To Modern Day, Kaitlyn E. Dennis Miss

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Through a generous donation to Morehead State University, research has been conducted on thousands of slides containing images of artwork and artifacts of historical significance. These images span from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the inaugural dress of every first lady of the United States. The slides are in the process of being recorded and catalogued for future use by students in hopes of furthering academic comprehension and awareness of the influence of fashion and costume history through the ages. Special thanks to the family of Gretel Geist Rutledge, faculty mentor Denise Watkins, as well as the Department of Music, Theatre, and …

Women In The Shadows : Gender, Puppets, And The Power Of Tradition In Bali, Jennifer Goodlander

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Wayang kulit, or shadow puppetry, connects a mythic past to the present through public ritual performance and is one of most important performance traditions in Bali. The dalang, or puppeteer, is revered in Balinese society as a teacher and spiritual leader. Recently, women have begun to study and perform in this traditionally male role, an innovation that has triggered resistance and controversy.
In Women in the Shadows, Jennifer Goodlander draws on her own experience training as a dalang as well as interviews with early women dalang and leading artists to upend the usual assessments of such gender role shifts. She …

Positionality And Feminisms Of Women Within Sufi Brotherhoods Of Senegal, Georgia Collins

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

Authority, Representation, And Offense: Dalit Catholics, Foot Washing, And The Study Of Global Catholicism, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In reflecting on a sharp scholarly exchange at a conference, this article explores issues of authority, representation, and offense in global Catholic and South Asian Studies. Focusing on the act of foot washing by Dalit Catholics, the article examines how scholarly offense is linked to particular claims of representational authority. The article also puts this discussion within the context of contemporary debates about Western portrayals of Indian culture and society.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.