Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Stop Blaming My Users: Illumination Of The Technocentric Mythos Bias, Ervin H. Frenzel, Richard Lightcap

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

 Abstract -This conceptual essay addresses the need for systemic and systematic transdisciplinary analytical techniques within cybersecurity and technical security. This conceptual essay is contingent upon recognition that cybersecurity is not simply technical in nature, it does not need an adversary, and more importantly it is based upon systems engineering and systems thinking.  The essay contributes a socio-technical attribution chain and field-specific ontology/taxonomy which distinguish user-triggered events from root causes, latent conditions, technical debt, validation failures, governance failures, and attribution bias before assigning responsibility to end users. It systematically defines an ontology inclusive of developer technical debt, organizational debt arising from …

Making Noise Through Law: Indigenous Legal Mobilisation Against A Power Plant In “French” Guiana, Pierre Auzerau

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

In so-called “French” Guiana, or Guyane, the Kali’na village of Atopo Wipi has fought for years against a hydrogen power plant being built on their land. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024 in Guyane and Western Europe, where I collaborated with various stakeholders to support Atopo Wipi’s resistance to the power plant, my research focuses on the legal dimensions of the Kali’na’s struggle to protect their land. Specifically, this article examines how the Kali’na navigated different normative frameworks, including international human rights standards and French law, to fight the project. Through this analysis, I show how the …

Queer Of Color Critique And The Politics Of Epistemic Agency: Rural Educators Desettling Curricular Expectations, C.A. Langerud, Madelaine Adelman, Daniel D. Liou

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

The purpose of this research is to use queer of color critique (QOCC) as an analytical framework to explore rural K-12 educators’ epistemic agency. The research focuses on educators’ engagement with a national initiative by an advocacy organization to distribute LGBTQ+ and racially diverse books to K-12 schools. The analysis centers on the educators’ praxis of epistemic agency against settled expectations associated with including queer and trans People of Color’s (QTPOC’s) stories in their schools. Our findings on educators’ epistemic agency center on three areas of knowledge and activity. First, educators demonstrate their ability to be aware of their local …

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 …

Reclaiming Bodily Autonomy Through Gullah Geechee Natural Healing, Tamaray Yvonne White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today’s sociopolitical climate, restrictive reproductive laws continue to disproportionately target Black women, reinforcing historic patterns of racialized and gendered oppression. This thesis argues that Black women will recommence their usage of traditional herbal healing as both a survival strategy and an act of reclaiming bodily autonomy in defiance of hostile legal, financial, and medical systems. The Gullah Geechee community serves as a blueprint for this transition, offering cultural continuity, intergenerational knowledge, and a model for community-based healthcare and resistance. By tracing the historical necessity of herbal medicine among Gullah Geechee women, this study situates ancestral natural healing within contemporary …

Embodied Overcrowding And Sensory Tensions: A Carceral Autoethnography Of Philippine Jails, Dwayne Antojado

Ateneo School of Government Publications

In this paper, I undertake a sensorially oriented autoethnography of two Philippine jails, illuminating the visceral textures of carceral life that conventional sociological or criminological discourses often overlook. Drawing inspiration from Jewkes and Young's (2021) examination of Kyoto Prison, I foreground the overlapping realms of sight, sound, smell, and touch, arguing that incarceration is inherently a profoundly embodied phenomenon. By weaving personal reflections, field observations, and broader scholarly insights, I reveal how overcrowded dormitories, suffocating heat, and lingering bodily odours converge to redefine detainees' spatial, temporal, and psychosocial realities in ways rarely captured by quantitative metrics. While mindful of Nelken's …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Adjudicating Atrocity: Reading Hitesh Verma V State Of Uttarakhand As A "Landmark" Case In The Judicial Discourse On Caste Violence, Tejaswi Chhatwal

Socio-Legal Review

This article critically examines the Supreme Court’s judgment in Hitesh Verma v State of Uttarakhand (2020) and argues for reading it as a “landmark trial” in the judicial undoing of reform—namely, the statutory changes introduced by the 2016 Amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989. Existing socio-legal scholarship on atrocity jurisprudence has shown that the judicial understanding of caste violence and doctrinally instituted evidentiary standards have historically operated to invisibilise caste from crime’s framework. As a result, most instances of caste-based discrimination and violence have not been named as offences of “atrocity” under the …

Prerogative In Common: On The Emancipatory Potential Of Radical Mutuality Amid Sovereign Decisionism, Matthew Builes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In times of crisis, liberal democracies resort to authoritarian measures that undermine core democratic values. Dominant thought in the study of emergency-era law and politics appeal to a dichotomy of normal and exceptional times, to critique or justify the turn to sovereign decisionism. While this strategy seems clear-cut, the persistence of exceptional spaces and the crises that supposedly generate them challenge existing frameworks by blurring the line between norm and exception. This project explores the prospect of radical mutual aid, as a transformative response to the enduring crisis of modernity.

Living Heritage, Resilience And Ethically Informed Infrastructures In Malawi, Martha B. Lerski, Frank Puluputu Mwale

Publications and Research

Rooted in a rural community’s needs, this paper explores how historically, and ethically informed infrastructures can support community engagement towards identification, documentation, and dissemination of local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge relating to climate change. The paper examines climate adaptation and sustainability issues through the lenses of community organizing and Library & Information Science best practices. It draws on a growing body of literature identifying a role for expanded epistemological and subject discipline perspectives. While the impacts of climate on material culture are increasingly recognized, intangible, and biocultural heritage have not received as much attention. Living heritage traditions and knowledge systems …

Arts-Based Sustainability: From New York To Malawi, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Recognizing that libraries serve multiple constituencies and subject areas, this chapter documents and advocates for development of transdisciplinary arts-based research (ABR) and culture-related projects linked to environmental challenges. Libraries contribute collections and spaces, as well as the research of library and information scientists. Libraries are currently among invisible contributors to sustainability planning and services. The chapter will link this invisibility to the value of what visual arts refer to as negative space elements in subjects ranging from traditional ecological knowledge to environmental science. Library collections, projects, and research contribute to education for sustainable development (ESD) as required to achieve the …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

The Curious Case Of Japanese Denim, Aaron Francis Ward

Japanese Society and Culture

From its humble beginnings as wholly utilitarian workwear in the 19^th century, to its modern rise to high-fashion, the ubiquity of denim, particularly in the form of jeans, has had a fascinating journey in its little-over-150-year history (Beazley, 2015). Of note has been the recent rise in popularity of Japanese denim. Since the end of the Second World War, Japan seems to have had an insatiable demand for Americana (Marx, 2023). Yet, if considered in the sociohistorical context of Japanese-American relations, this ought to be highly improbable. The current paper examines the sociological nature of Japanese denim from semiotic …

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

Space For The Departed: Burial, Land Scarcity, And Bone-Ash Apartments In China, Xinyi Wu

Pitzer Senior Theses

The rise of bone ash apartments in China reflects a layered response to urban land scarcity, shifting funeral policies, and real estate speculation. As the state mandates cremation and restricts private cemetery development, traditional burial customs are increasingly reshaped by spatial limitations, economic pressures, and political regulation.

For some families, bone ash apartments function as modern ancestral halls—domestic spaces for remembrance and ritual continuity. For others, they represent a pragmatic investment strategy, offering long-term storage of ashes within assets that retain market value.

This thesis examines how urban planning, state funeral policy, real estate dynamics, and the disintegration of neighborhood …

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …

Yoga Sūtra Book Four And The Yogabindu, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Four themes from the fourth pāda of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra are examined here: karma (IV:2-13), individuality (IV:16), humility (IV:20-22), and freedom (IV:29-34). Affirmations and variant interpretations of these four are provided from Haribhadra Virahāṅka’s Yogabindu, most likely composed a century or two later.

Collective Karma: From The Yogasūtra To Taylor Swift, Zoë Slatoff

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Indian knowledge traditions speak at length about karma, which is divided into three categories—accumulated (saṃcita), ripe (prārabdha), and future (kriyamāṇa). While much is said about our individual karma and how it affects our repeated reincarnation in cyclic existence, how does this affect others and how do others affect us? In other words, as this paper explores, what is our reciprocal and collective karma?

Painting Liberation: A Visual Ontology Of The Interplay Of Mind And Consciousness In Book Four Of The Yoga Sūtras, Melissa Townsend

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This presentation explores how artistic practice can illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, and liberation as articulated in Book Four of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Through a series of paintings that visually translate these sūtras, I propose that art offers a unique, experiential means of engaging with the complex relationship between citta (mind) and puruṣa (consciousness).

The paintings function as a form of “visual ontology,” inviting viewers to engage with abstract philosophical concepts in a sensory, tangible way. By depicting the interplay between the mutable processes of the mind and the unchanging awareness of consciousness, these …

(Un)Worlding With Karipuna’S Shadowy Alliances: The Mirangã And The Isolados, Hanmin Kin

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

This ethnographically inspired article investigates the ways in which the Karipuna Indigenous people in Rondônia defend their land in the Western Brazilian Amazon against forces of deforestation and dispossession. I focus on the Karipuna’s plurivalent and collective forest spirits called the mirangã, through life experience accounts of two survivors from the “pre-contact” era who embody the Karipuna-mirangã connection. Through an analysis of the onto-epistemological entanglements in which the mirangã and my interlocutors are situated, I articulate another front of the Karipuna’s multi-faceted resistance: the struggle of worlding vis-à-vis the non-indigenous world. This process also reveals the association (from …

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques Of Citizenship Politics In Northeast India, Samarth Vachhrajani

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques of Citizenship Politics in Northeast India studies the spatial and legal instruments through which Hindu Nationalism and its political front, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), operates in Northeast India. I document the means through which authoritarian power has been introduced into a democratic structure of governance. Emphasizing the role of architecture and spatial knowledge, I attend to how the violence of disenfranchisement and dispossession is legitimized under the force of law.

For this, Chapter 1, entitled 'Legislating Containment,' turns to the legal instrument of citizenship and studies the Goalpara detention center and multi-purpose criminal …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

Understandings Of Vulnerability And Social Determinants Of Health In Forensic And Expert Social Anthropology: A Scoping Review, James W. W. Rose, David M. Tran

The Qualitative Report

Forensic and expert social anthropology (FESA) is a branch of social anthropology that specialises in the provision of evidence to legal-administrative processes, which are overseen by courts and other legally empowered bodies, and which give regard to the social cultures of legally and administratively involved individuals and communities (LAIICs). Despite a preoccupation with political advocacy in the broader philosophy of social anthropology, FESA literature does not typically give regard to LAIIC vulnerability defined qualitatively in terms of social determinants of health, including physical, mental, and social well-being. This paper presents findings from a JBI/PRISMA-ScR scoping review of n=1,674 texts, identifying …

Protecting The Beanstalk: Folklore As Traditional Cultural Expressions, Ainsley E. Marlette

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

No abstract provided.

From Canonical Law To Offshore Finance: Confessing To Priests And Bankers In Luxembourg, Samuel Weeks

Journal of Global Catholicism

In this article, I address two recurring tendencies that I heard during a recent period of research on banking secrecy in Luxembourg. First, my banker interviewees frequently mentioned personal transgressions for why many of their clients hide assets “offshore.” The wrongdoings my interlocutors cited included not only clients’ tax evasion, bankruptcy, and avoidance of liability – but also divorce, adultery, and the existence of out-of-wedlock children. Second, with a similar frequency, my interviewees drew parallels between the secrecy laws covering bankers and those afforded to other professionals in the country. Article 458 of Luxembourg’s Penal Code, dating from the nineteenth …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Examining The Examiner: An Amicus Brief On Conflicts Between Forensic Technology And Indigenous Religious Freedoms In Favor Of Virtual Autopsies, Peyton James

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Attentiveness To Law In India Through Legal Anthropology, Deepa Das Acevedo, Jahnavi Chamarthi

Faculty Articles

This Article reviews and analyses scholarship at the intersection of anthropology and law. The first half of the Article provides context for understanding the boundaries, animating concerns, and tensions that have characterised the anthropology of law as an area of interdisciplinary inquiry. We focus especially on the subdiscipline’s Anglo-American history and show how a promising early period of engagement dissipated as both anthropologists and legal scholars lost enthusiasm for each others’ insights and methods. Then, we expand our analysis outward. Because legal anthropology belongs within, and is increasingly attentive to, the broader field of law and society scholarship, we explore …

The Fairness Model Of Legal Institutions, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Books and Chapters

If any group is to endure over time, individual frustrations, while inevitable, must be usually experienced as acceptable, or at least tolerable. Failing that, little would prevent the losers in these conflicts from leaving or revolting, which would be cumulatively debilitating to the group. As opposed to holding law’s job to impose order and police infringers, the second approach suggests that finding the balance between group and individual desires is the ‘major difficulty of all law—the problem of really getting a fresh start in relations between litigants after disposition of a trouble-case. This is the problem not only of keeping …

Cultivating Legalism From Paper Proofs: Analysing Everyday Forms Of Claim Making By Van Gujjar Pastoralists In Uttarakhand, Mohammad Meer Hamja, Pranav Menon

Socio-Legal Review

Scholarship from South Asia has often highlighted how subaltern peoples partake in social movements as figures of resistance but rarely analyse their techniques of working the law in their favour to negotiate citizenship with the state. Such modes of articulating claims through affective gestures and vernacular legalese foster plural meanings to otherwise rigid legal categories and dogmatic bureaucratic interpretation. This paper draws upon socio-historical and ethnographic accounts of Van Gujjars to highlight how these pastoralists utilise myriad forms of paper proofs and documentary evidence to engage in claim making across the forests of Uttarakhand. Through an articulation of everyday tactics …