Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Slow Tourism: A Possible Solution To Indigenous Communities’ Invisibility In San Cristobal De Las Casas, Edurne M. L. Sosa El Fakih

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

Tourism is Mexico’s second largest service industry and makes up a significant amount of the country’s revenue. Scholars have considered and described the impact of Indigenous exploitation on the tourism industry; however, researchers have generally limited their investigation to the social conflict between Indigenous communities, mestizos, and tourists, instead of providing sustainable solutions to an issue that has worsened with time. Parallelly, even though recent studies have suggested Slow Tourism as a development tool to the economy, their proposal does not consider Indigenous communities as active agents. We report the results of descriptive research design, considered from a transactionalist …

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

Afro-Cubans, Incorporation, And Cubanidad In Miami, Fl, Elena M. Cruz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study is to investigate how Afro-Cubans as double diasporic subjects have been incorporated into the socio-cultural landscape of South Florida and the relationship between these methods of incorporation and the evolution of ethno-racial identification. The study examines the role of race and racism in shaping the socio-economic adjustment of Afro-Cubans in South Florida. Miami is the appropriate research site as home to half of all Cuban immigrants in the United States where cubanidad is most closely associated with whiteness. Miami also has a substantial population of other Afro-diasporic populations, including Afro-Caribbean immigrants as well as …

Human Rights And Professions Museums As Interlocutors Of Buraku Identity In Japan, Lisa Mueller

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Members of the Buraku minority group in contemporary Japan are traditionally perceived as descendants of outcaste communities who performed work deemed impure according to Shinto and Buddhist taboos in Japan’s caste system during the Tokugawa Era (1603-1867). After receiving emancipation in 1871, they continued to experience severe discrimination. Following successful activism culminating in government-issued affirmative action “special measures” funding beginning in 1969, Buraku people have now approached social and economic parity with mainstream Japanese. Partially due to these successes, the Buraku Liberation League, the largest Buraku rights organization in the country, has now embraced a new globalized, UN-centric Buraku identity …

Jewish Conversion During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Victoria Davide

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

March 2020 saw a stark change to daily life and religious practices for many individuals because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those converting to Judaism, or in the process of wanting to convert, found themselves physically isolated from their Jewish communities. This thesis dives into what aspects are important when creating a Jewish identity and how individuals circumnavigate these changes in crisis. Through the use of qualitative interviews this thesis illuminates the many different changes and experiences that individuals went through converting to Judaism during the COVID-19 pandemic. I bring many different groups for comparisons including different branches within Judaism and …

Actually-Existing Resilience: The Adaptive Actions Of Miami’S Redland Farmers And Potential Pathways For Transformation, Melissa Bernardo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The concept of resilience has been applied to questions surrounding agricultural production and food security in the face of global climate change, gripping the attention of policymakers and scholars alike. In South Florida, the Redland represents a unique, biodiverse farming community of national importance as Florida is second only to California in terms of vegetable production and Miami-Dade is the second highest producing county in the state. With Greater Miami recognized as one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to sea level rise, this vital U.S. agricultural community is placed in doubt. Yet, little research engages directly with …

The (Cuban-)American Dream Of Post-Soviet Era Cuban Émigrés: Perceptions Vs. Realities, Veronica Diaz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cuban émigrés are among the myriad of immigrants who arrive in the United States hoping to achieve the American Dream—defined as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement” (Adams 1931, 404). However, powerful tropes of the American Dream­ obscure the economic and social barriers that impede economic mobility and the sacrifices that individuals make in its pursuit. Unlike Cuban émigrés of the 1960s-70s, émigrés of the “Wet Foot/Dry Foot” wave (1995-2017) arrived in Miami during more precarious economic …

Mobile Passages: Unpacking The Seasonal Lifestyle From Quebec To Topeekeegee Yugnee (Ty) Rv Park, Broward County, Southeast Florida, Tara Kai

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to investigate the lived experiences of multi-locational actors and the production of unique forms of socialization and community using the seasonal movements and settlements of the Québécois population (also referred to as “Floribécois”) in Broward County, Florida during the winter months. This study employs interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is theoretically rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology. IPA recognizes that there are shared perspectives and lived experiences of a group of people about a concept or a phenomenon. This analysis comprises of collectively shared meanings, while being mindful of the unique experience of a single individual and/or subgroup. The …

Impacts Of U.S. Immigration Detention And Transfers On The Well-Being Of Those Detained Within A Punitive For-Profit System, Karina J. Livingston

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United States has the largest detention infrastructure in the world, with over 250 official detention centers and over 1,000 partner facilities. This research project aimed to analyze the U.S. immigration detention system to understand how the history of U.S. immigration and U.S. social structures like immigration law and detention practices, specifically transfers, affect immigrants. Woven into U.S. detention practices is a long history of exploitive and racist policies that have scapegoated new waves of immigrants since the late 1800s, which evolved toward the criminalization of immigrants in the mid-1990s.

One of the contributions of this dissertation is its focus …

Living Precariously: The Cultural Politics Of Becoming Transgender In Postcolonial Jamaica, Kemar Mcintosh

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the cultural politics of stigma, discrimination, and gender-based violence encountered by persons becoming male-to-female (MtF) transgenders in postcolonial Jamaica. The issue of stigma, discrimination, and gender-based violence has been the subject of considerable research in the Global North but has failed to adequately address institutional structures and cultural practices that continue to produce postcolonial realities in the Global South. Transphobic violence in Jamaica is captured by a 2014 Human Rights Watch report detailing the murder of 16-year-old Dwayne Jones, who was engaging in processes of becoming a male-to-female transgender. While attending a dance party attired in women’s …

Cooking Up Inequality: An Ethnographic Study Of Racial Hierarchies In Miami's Restaurant Industry, Judith C. Williams

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Racial inequality is a significant problem in the US Restaurant Industry. In Miami, a tropical tourist destination with a majority Latinx population, restaurants serve as a site of multiculturalism, and are promoted by officials as a place where visitors can enjoy ethnic food and culture. However, these same locations of diversity are also spaces where whiteness is normalized as superior and racial hierarchies ensue. Previous studies have documented racism in the restaurant industry but fail to address the intersectional complexities that arise when race is layered with gender, class, nationality, language, and sexual orientation.

Drawing from a 13-month ethnographic study …

Entrepreneurial Intersections: An Ethnographic Study Of Entrepreneurial Strategies Amidst Crisis And Community In Havana, Cuba, John Vertovec

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation has two primary goals. First, to examine how structural conditions (e.g., state policies/regulations, resource scarcity, etc.) and intersecting inequities and inequalities shape opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurship. Second, to analyze how local experiences with, and interpretations of underlying social and economic narratives influence the ways that people conceptualize and draw upon local/global resources in order to act entrepreneurially in individual ways and with their communities in mind.

While scholars discuss how structural conditions impact entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurship can improve communities (social entrepreneurship), the consequences of intersecting inequalities on both areas remain understudied. Using ethnographic data gathered in …

The Governance Of Homelessness In Miami, Rebecca Lynn Young

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2019 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reported that 567,715 people experience homelessness in the United States on a single night (HUD 2019). This is the third year in a row that number has risen following a seven-year decline ending in 2016. Scholars have demonstrated that the causes of homelessness are primarily structural, including lack of affordable housing, living wage, and social safety net (Hopper et al 1985), issues which have been exacerbated since the expansion of neoliberalism in the late 1970s (Harvey 2005). While city strategies have varied from criminalization to medicalization (NCH and NLCHP 2006; …

Sephardi Identity & Legitimacy In The Age Of Direct-To-Consumer Dna Tests, Caitlyn Rose Campana

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, individuals may purchase genetic tests that promise to “reveal” one’s “true self” through ancestry composition reports, health reports, and lists of DNA relatives. Such tests add another dimension to the ongoing debate about what it means to be Jewish, but also what it means to be “legitimately” Sephardi. Through qualitative interviews, this thesis illuminates the experiences of Sephardim who received identity-affirming DNA test results and Sephardim who received identity non-affirming DNA test results. Findings suggest that contemporary Sephardim consider a link to the Iberian Peninsula as indicative of Sephardi identity, despite expanding definitions of the label. They also suggest …

Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics: An Ethnographic Study Of Transnational Chinese Corporate Culture In Southeast Asia, David A. Dayton

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Starting in 2001, China’s Going Out policy has encouraged Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and expats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to participate in the global economy at an unprecedented rate. Tens of thousands of Chinese businesses and millions of expats now span the globe. Despite the addition of this large, recent, and influential population to global capitalism there is little academic work on PRC corporate cultures or expats outside of China. Even in Thailand, home to the largest Chinese community outside of China/Taiwan, there is almost no corporate culture anthropology and no systemic study of recent Chinese business behaviors. …

Transformative Constitutionalism And The Adjudication Of Elections In Kenya, Carl Bevelhymer

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The judicialization of politics has been an ongoing and expanding global phenomenon for decades. In Kenya, the record number of cases brought before courts prior to and following the 2017 elections is evidence of the continued growth and spread of the judicialization of politics, and more specifically elections; it is also the result of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, which introduced a new form of governance, expanded the number of elective seats and mandated judicial and electoral reforms. One of the most remarkable events of the 2017 election period was the Supreme Court’s nullification of the presidential election due to electoral irregularities. …

Intimate Alterities: Shifting Indigenous Masculinities And Sexualities Within Amazonian Ecotourism In Napo, Ecuador, Ernesto Javier Benitez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an ethnographic account of how indigenous Kichwa tour guides in Napo, Ecuador, the vast majority of whom are young men, negotiate the demands and expectations of the ecotourism industry and how, in the process, they produce and enact new understandings of their ethnic, gendered, and sexual identities. These new understandings are reproductive of outsiders’ expectations and fantasies about indigenous Amazonians, as well as personally and culturally meaningful. I engage with a variety of anthropological literatures, including the anthropology of race and gender, the anthropology of indigenous Amazonia, the anthropology of tourism and sex tourism, and the more …

Religion, Place, And Identity At The Intersection Of Cultural Bricolage: The Miami Santo Daime Church Revisited, Alfonso Matas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of the Santo Daime Church in Miami, focusing on the challenges of balancing institutional stability with continual growth and innovation. Santo Daime—whose central ritual entails the consumption of the mind-altering ayahuasca brew—is a new religious movement that amalgamates indigenous Amazonian, Afro-Brazilian, and popular Catholic traditions. Between June 2016 and December 2018, I employed participant observation, semi-structured interviews, exegesis of sacred songs, and document analysis to investigate the meanings and lived experiences of church leaders and adherents as they relate to their religious identity and agency. Specifically, this study asks three research questions: What global processes …

Indigenous Water Governance In The Anthropocene: Non-Conventional Hydrosocial Relations Among The Wayuu Of The Guajira Peninsula In Northern Colombia, David A. Robles

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation problematizes the supremacy of a global water management regime while discerning and defending local Wayuu hydrosocial relations. The Wayuu relationship with water—considered non-conventional, unsanitary or insecure according to hegemonic Western standards—can also be characterized positively as alternative, resilient, sustainable, adaptive and exceptional. Contemporary water governance presents challenges yet also opportunities for the Wayuu and other Indigenous peoples to (re)assert and (re)establish contextualized and culturally specific practices, traditions and ways of knowing that have been historically silenced by conventional water management.

The Wayuu territory, located on the semi-arid Guajira Peninsula in northern Colombia, is widely considered a region suffering …

Reggaeir@ Sou Eu: Race, Nation And The Politics Of Identity In Roots Reggae Culture In Sao Luis Do Maranhao, Brazil, Gloria Angebelle Yawson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the performative space of roots reggae music and dance performancescape in São Luis do Maranhão, Brazil. It examines the ways in which Caribbean sounds are employed by Afro-Maranhese to create performative spaces that contest representations of blackness in Brazil. In this examination, I address how Afro-Maranheses engage in the process of transformation by appropriating Caribbean Sounds in the performative spaces of blackness. The dissertation also examines the ways in which these performative spaces, as spaces of struggle are objects of legal forms of surveillance, discipline and punishments that are targeted by the policia militar (military police) because …

A Genealogy Of Neoliberal And Anti-Neoliberal Resilience In The Ecuadorian Pacific Coast, Vanessa Leon Leon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Resilience appears to be everywhere, morphing and seducing global discourses, national governmental practices, and scholarship. Inasmuch as hegemonic discourses and national governments promote resilience through both disaster reduction and sustainable development policies, critical resilience scholars have emphasized resilience as a neoliberal security technique. By reinforcing resilience as a governmental practice embedded in neoliberal rationale, theory and practice are neglecting other areas to contextualize resilience. My dissertation traces a genealogy of neoliberal and anti-neoliberal State interventions underpinned by resilience thinking, organizing coastal rural lives in Ecuador. My dissertation shows, no matter the Ecuadorian governments’ rationale, both genuflected to global hegemonic discourses …

Love From The Machine: Technosexualities And The Desire For Machinic Bodies, Ann-Renee Clark

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the dimensions and practices of "technosexualities" - human desires for machinic bodies. For the purposes of this project, technosexualities are defined as sexual and/or other intimate desires for technologically enhanced or constructed humanoid bodies ("machinic bodies") or the desire to be such a machinic body. A machinic body may be mechanical (robotic) and/or digital, techno-biological (as per biological computing and/or a laboratory-“grown” or built body), or “cyborg” (cybernetic organism, a partially technologically-modified, partially biological body.) Rather than interpreting technosexuals as troubled or disturbed “fetishists” who are attracted to the unnatural, or imposing suppositions of feelings of impotence …

Commemorative Bodies: (Un)Making Racial Order And Cuban White Supremacy In Little Havana's Heritage District, Corinna Jeanne Moebius

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation unearths memory- and place-making practices, processes and “racializing regimes of representation” in Little Havana’s heritage district, now a major tourism destination in Miami, Florida. It draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and consultations of various archives that span decades back to the 1960s and trace the origins of the district in plans for a “Latin Quarter.”

My analyses borrow from and combine various bodies of scholarly work to examine and deconstruct the use of always multi-vocal “commemorative bodies” for the production of racial narratives that are embedded in--and give shape to--acts of memorialization and commemoration.

By examining the …

Transnational Sex-Positive Play Parties: The Sexual Politics Of Care For Community-Making At A Kinky Salon, Christina Bazzaroni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To date, feminist geographers and geographers of sexualities have yet to fully interrogate post sexual revolution society. In this dissertation I examine the politics of sex-positive play parties, through the case study of Kinky Salon (KS) – a global organization that claims to catalyze a contemporary sex culture revolution. This project expands on previous feminist geography and geographies of sexualities scholarship centering queer, kinky sex, demonstrating that non-normative sexual practices are informed by and contribute to sexual revolution legacies. I extend feminist geographies’ theorizing of affect and emotion to show how sexual intimacies are care-work, with the emotional power to …

Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a …

Plant Pedagogies, Salmon Nation, And Fire: Settler Colonial Food Utopias And The (Un)Making Of Human-Land Relationships In Coast Salish Territories, Janna L. Lafferty

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As knowledge about the constellating set of environmental and social crises stemming from the neoliberal global food regime becomes more pressing and popularized among US consumers, it has brought Indigenous actors asserting their political sovereignty and treaty rights with regards to their homelands into new collaborations, contestations, and negotiations with settlers in emerging food politics domains. In this dissertation, I examine solidarities and affinities being forged between Coast Salish and settler food actors in Puget Sound, attending specifically to how contested sovereignties are submerged but at play in these relations and how settler desires for belonging on and to stolen …

An Alternative Narrative Of Integration In Germany Through An Ethnographic Exploration Of Cuban Immigration, Ana M. Rusch

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study on Cuban immigrants conducted in Germany explored the dynamics of integration through an understudied immigrant population. Most of the research conducted on integration in Germany has overwhelmingly been on Turkish immigrants, which is Germany’s majority immigrant group. To contribute to Integration Studies, this research focused on a minority and lesser studied immigrant group, Cuban immigrants. Cuban immigrants in Germany not only have a different historical and geopolitical relationship with Germany than its majority group but they also subscribe to different cultural and ethnoreligious categories. Because of these varying circumstances, Cubans act as a counter example to the …

Religion And Ethnicity Among Afro-Colombian Muslims In Buenaventura (Colombia), Diego Giovanni Castellanos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the way in which religious beliefs and practices are instrumentalized by a Muslim community in order to strengthen Afro-Colombian ethnic identity, in an urban context of social exclusion. The study aims to examine the relationship between ethnicity and religion, and the role they play in the process of identity construction, particularly the way in which religious concepts and behaviors can be used to fortify ethnic identity. Another aim of this research is to describe and understand the processes of social change in an ethnic-religious minority and, as a final goal, to analyze …

Cultural Politics Of Community-Based Conservation In The Buffer Zone Of Chitwan National Park, Nepal, Yogesh Dongol

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation research examines the socio-economic and political effects of community-based conservation initiatives within the Bagmara buffer zone community forests of Chitwan National Park, Nepal. In particular, the study investigates the role of buffer zones creation in structuring the way rural property rights have been defined, negotiated, and contested, in reinforcing or reducing patterns of ethnic dominance and exclusion, and in influencing how cultural identities are constituted and renegotiated. Using a political ecology framework with a specific focus on theoretical concepts of environmentality and territorialization, I conducted 12 months ethnographic and quantitative survey field research in the buffer zone communities …

Inheriting Illegality: Race, Statelessness, And Dominico-Haitian Activism In The Dominican Republic, Jacqueline Lyon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2013, the Dominican Republic’s highest court ruled to revoke birthright citizenship for over 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent. Ruling TC 168-13 prompted dialogue about race and racism in the country, breaking the racial silence that accompanies mestizaje (racial mixture). Scholars viewed this ruling through the lens of “Black denial” whereby Dominicans’ failure to adopt Black identities, despite being largely afrodescendant, fuels the racialization of Haitians as Black. Less evident in examinations of Dominican racial politics are anti-racist and anti-xenophobic organizing. Addressing the gap in scholarship on Dominican blackness, this dissertation project adopts an ethnographic approach to examine how Domicans …