Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

The Co-Existing Of Religious And Secular Systems: An Ethnographical Study Of The Kalvária V Topoľčanoch And Religious Community In Topoľčany, Slovakia, Ruzena Zatko

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During the communist era in Slovakia from 1948 to 1989, religion was forced into the private sphere and then re-entered into the public sphere when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) collapsed in 1989. This research aims to answer how the communist state and religious community interacted during communism and how a democratic state and religious community interacted post-communism. This paper focuses on how people preserved their religion, how secularization was rejected, and how religion re-entered the public sphere after communism ended. To answer these questions, I conducted oral interviews, primarily with the townspeople of Topoľčany, Slovakia, and this includes …

Qualitative Analysis Of The Influence Of Military Culture On The Resocialization Of Combat Veterans, Kyle N. Rodgers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 25 combat-experienced Veterans of the Global War on Terror who fit an operational definition of successful resocialization. How do successfully resocialized combat Veterans compare with combat Veterans who became involved with the criminal justice system? Utilizing a snowball method to identify each participant, the most significant finding from these interviews was that two factors seem to differentiate the civilian and military group styles the most, which were the overwhelming importance of purpose and tribe in the lives of combat Veterans. This confirmed the hypothesis that the most significant difference between the civilian and military …

How Couples Navigate Interethnic Differences In Asian American Population: A Grounded Theory Approach, Michelle Nakaula

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Several studies have discussed the impact of cultural factors in Asian American families. Previous research has demonstrated useful strategies used in dealing with distress and relationship dissatisfaction regarding cultural differences. There is limited data or studies that explore additional challenges faced by interethnic couples, rather than interracial couples and the impact of family dynamics on these relationships. Each partner’s identity development process was influenced by their understanding of different cultural traditions and customs. These unique experiences shaped their understanding of roles and expectations within their relationship and parenting styles. Additionally, these family relationships and cultural backgrounds play a role in …

Mixed Methods Approach To Assess ‘Placental Opioid-Enhancing Factor’ Activity Within ‘Alternative’ Health Contexts Of Human Maternal Placentophagy, Jacob C. White

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Rats with elevated opioid levels experience an even greater increase in pain threshold after placenta or amniotic fluid consumption via placental opioid-enhancing factor (POEF) in the afterbirth. POEF only enhances opioid hypoalgesia; it cannot produce hypoalgesia alone. Although the POEF molecule remains unidentified and its efficacy in humans is unknown, it could be a safe, novel pain treatment. People who consume placenta as an alternative postpartum health practice are ideal for testing POEF bioactivity. Though rat models show that bioactive POEF is highly sensitive, some forms of the practice in humans may conserve POEF.

This project is the first attempt …

The Impact Of Alzheimer Disease On Semantic Knowledge, Maileen G. Ulep

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The research furthers the understanding of the impact of Alzheimer disease (AD) on cognition and the organization of semantic knowledge in the brain, which might contribute to the development of diagnostic and staging tools, and interventions to palliate cognitive deficits. The disruption of semantic knowledge in AD is well documented in the literature. Much of the existing research focuses on the general impact AD has on semantic knowledge. This study explores the impact of AD on specific domains of knowledge, chiefly, living kinds and artifacts, critical to ordinary functioning. The content, organization and structure of the investigated domains of knowledge …

Teaching Haitian Studies And Caribbean Digital Humanities: A Rasanblaj Of Critical Pedagogical Approaches And Black Feminist Theory In The Classroom, Crystal A. Felima

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

Digital humanities provide an opportunity for collaborators to connect with various people, disciplines, and resources to produce and share knowledge. It also allows creators and users to navigate research and scholarship through partnerships and online engagement. This article features an undergraduate digital humanities course taught in spring 2018 titled “Haitian Studies and Culture” at the University of Florida. In this course, students considered ways of speaking, writing, researching, and representing Haiti, while engaging in critical discussions related to issues and questions of access, authorship, interpretation, and representation. This essay serves as a reflection statement by highlighting how the author explored …

The Life History Of Learning Subsistence Skills Among Hadza And Bayaka Foragers From Tanzania And The Republic Of Congo, Sheina Lew-Levy, Erik J. Ringen, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Ibrahim A. Mabulla, Tanya Broesch, Michelle A. Kline

Anthropology Faculty Research

Aspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural variation in how and from whom learning occurred. Learning patterns and community perceptions of task difficulty were assessed through interviews. We found no relationship between task difficulty, age of acquisition, and oblique transmission, and a …

Violence And Masculinity In Small-Scale Societies, Debra L. Martin

Anthropology Faculty Research

© 2021 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. Archaeological and ethnographic accounts of violence in small-scale societies represent a baseline for thinking about the ways that violence and masculinity originated and evolved, becoming entwined social processes. Male violence (lethal and nonlethal) is expressed in diverse and complex ways because it is associated with social spheres of power and influence, and it is embedded within ideologies, histories, and collective memories. Applying anthropological research on violence as a generative and transformational social process demonstrates how violence plays a key role in creating, maintaining, and transforming social structures in …

Gendered Movement Ecology And Landscape Use In Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, Brian M. Wood, Jacob A. Harris, David A. Raichlen, Herman Pontzer, Katherine Sayre, Amelia Sancilio, Colette Berbesque, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Audax Mabulla, Richard Mcelreath, Elizabeth Cashdan, James Holland Jones

Anthropology Faculty Research

Understanding how gendered economic roles structure space use is critical to evolutionary models of foraging behaviour, social organization and cognition. Here, we examine hunter-gatherer spatial behaviour on a very large scale, using GPS devices worn by Hadza foragers to record 2,078 person-days of movement. Theory in movement ecology suggests that the density and mobility of targeted foods should predict spatial behaviour and that strong gender differences should arise in a hunter-gatherer context. As predicted, we find that men walked further per day, explored more land, followed more sinuous paths and were more likely to be alone. These data are consistent …

Sports Under Quarantine: A Case Study Of Major League Baseball In 2020, Kari L.J. Goold, Reynafe N. Aniga, Peter B. Gray

Anthropology Faculty Research

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This case study entailed a Twitter content analysis to address the pandemic-delayed start to Major League Baseball (MLB) in the shortened 2020 season. This case study helps address the overarching objective to investigate how the sports world, especially fans, responded to MLB played during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The methods investigated the common themes and determined who used predetermined Twitter hashtags. We recorded how many times external links, photos, emojis, and the 30 MLB teams were mentioned in the 779 tweets obtained during 39 days of data retrieval. Results showed that …

Navigating Cross-Cultural Research: Methodological And Ethical Considerations, Tanya Broesch, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Bret A. Beheim, Aaron D. Blackwell, John A. Bunce, Heidi Colleran, Kristin Hagel, Michelle Kline, Richard Mcelreath, Robin G. Nelson, Anne C. Pisor, Sean Prall, Ilaria Pretelli, Benjamin Purzycki, Elizabeth A. Quinn, Cody Ross, Brooke Scelza, Kathrine Starkweather, Jonathan Stieglitz, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

Anthropology Faculty Research

The intensifying pace of research based on cross-cultural studies in the social sciences necessitates a discussion of the unique challenges of multi-sited research. Given an increasing demand for social scientists to expand their data collection beyond WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) populations, there is an urgent need for transdisciplinary conversations on the logistical, scientific and ethical considerations inherent to this type of scholarship. As a group of social scientists engaged in cross-cultural research in psychology and anthropology, we hope to guide prospective cross-cultural researchers through some of the complex scientific and ethical challenges involved in such work: (a) …

Love In South Korea: Transformations Of Intimacy And Gender Relations In Korean Romantic Relationships, Alex Joseph Nelson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Romantic love holds a central place in South Korean imaginaries, animating television dramas and pop ballads, but has been largely overlooked in Korea's ethnographic record. Drawing on data collected through 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, survey research, interviews, and analysis of folklore, the present study investigates how South Koreans conceptualize romantic love, how those conceptions have changed over time, and the ways they are transforming with the Korean field of gender relations.

This study documents love's entwinement with marriage in South Korea. Koreans are developing companionate ideals of marriage that shift the focus of kinship from the parent-child relationship to …

Emotion Perception In Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, Maria Gendron, Katie Hoemann, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Shani Msafiri Mangola, Gregory A. Ruark, Lisa Feldman Barrett

Anthropology Faculty Research

It has long been claimed that certain configurations of facial movements are universally recognized as emotional expressions because they evolved to signal emotional information in situations that posed fitness challenges for our hunting and gathering hominin ancestors. Experiments from the last decade have called this particular evolutionary hypothesis into doubt by studying emotion perception in a wider sample of small-scale societies with discovery-based research methods. We replicate these newer findings in the Hadza of Northern Tanzania; the Hadza are semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers who live in tight-knit social units and collect wild foods for a large portion of their diet, …

Living On The Move: The Digital Nomad Mobile Phenomenon Identity And Practice, Virginia Rachele Smercina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following exploratory project used a qualitative mixed method approach by means of a preliminary blog analysis of thirty-seven blogs and twenty-five semi-structured interviews for data collection on individuals known as digital nomads. The theoretical foundations of this study are centered on practice theory, structuration theory, as well as discussions surrounding cultural identity. The project’s aim is to increase our understanding of the digital nomad phenomenon by asking four research questions: Who are the digital nomads? How is digital nomadism practiced? Why choose to live on the move? Is digital nomadism sustainable? The discussion includes how the digital nomad identity …

New Findings From The Far Western Puebloan Region: Papers In Honor Of Margaret Lyneis, Karen G. Harry, James R. Allison, Sachiko Sakai

Anthropology Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Religion, History, And Place In The Origin Of Settled Life, Alan Simmons

Anthropology Faculty Research

This is a book review of "Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life" by Ian Hodder.

"Oh, Those Horsemen!" Regulatory Change And Cultural Peculiarity In Finland, Pauliina Raento

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Abstract

Finland's three gambling monopoly operators merged into one state-owned entity in 2017. A particular challenge to the process came from its smallest constituent, the tote company Fintoto, its owner, the national Trotting and Horse Breeding Association, and the equine industry’s cultural peculiarity.

The process is examined from the perspective of the equine industry, which had to choose between joining or not joining the merger. The exchanges between 'horse people' and state regulators, the equine industry’s resistance and decision to participate in the merger, and concerns about impact are traced from Finland's leading equine newspaper, in 2015–2017. The articles are …

Globalization And Cultural Flows: A Three-Article Dissertation Exploring Implications For Education And Culture In India, Dwight Edward Boucher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation follows a three-article format to examine ways in which distinct manifestations of globalization have engaged and manipulated education in India as colonizing initiatives. The articles are interrelated and examine historical, societal, and individual stories related to colonial and global impositions of Western epistemological, economic, and educational forms in India. The introductory chapter outlines the broad implications of globalization and globalizing narratives, and it is intended to demonstrate that while globalization has the capacity to improve the quality and equitability of lives around the world, it also has the potential to serve as a hegemonic conduit for the continuation …

Supranational Identity Politics: Sovereignism In The Eu, Emilio Jacintho

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The implementation of identity politics policies conceived at a supranational level appears to motivate the coordination of populist movements, the radicalization of their discourses, and an increasing resentment towards minority groups. I investigate the reaction of populist sovereignist political movements, among recently admitted EU member states, to the implementation of European Union policies that involve the positive discrimination of minority groups and mandated refugee relocations. The implementation of such policies seems to have contributed to the resentment toward policy-favored minorities, the increase of anti-immigration values, the success of extremist political expressions, and the mistrust of political institutions and traditional parties. …

Justice Served Fresh: Associations Between Food Insecurity, Community Gardening, And Property Value, Micajah Daniels, Courtney Coughenour Ph.D

McNair Poster Presentations

Numerous stakeholders in Nevada have used a variety of efforts to combat the growth of food insecurity facing Nevadans. The purpose of this research project is to understand the association between food insecurity, community gardens, and property value. Following the wealth of scholarship on these topics and data collected from community garden agencies in Southern Nevada, the research questions for this project include: (1) Where are community gardens located in SNV? (2) What efforts community gardens agencies are doing to address food insecurity (most interested in their efforts using community gardens)? (3) What are the perceptions of supports and barriers …

Keep Calm And Carry On: Infant Carrying Practices And Motor Development, Mariah Clanton, Alyssa Crittenden

AANAPISI Poster Presentations

Increasingly, infants in the post-industrialized west are being diagnosed with conditions such as plagiocephaly or torticollis – which are postural deformities that can be corrected with positioning behavior. While a handful of studies have cursorily explored infant carrying practices, here I provide the first comprehensive cross-cultural literature review that aims to make connections between infant transport style and the timing of infant development in the emergence of sitting, crawling, and walking .Such a synthesis is important, not only in terms of contributing to cross-cultural research, but also for parents in the cultural west to aid in the better understanding of …

Working With Constraints: The Merit Of Prudence, Matthew Martinez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Families are essential building blocks of human social organization. For most of human history, families were fundamental economic and social elementary units (Chapais, 2009). Past research has identified a relationship between family structure and political regimes, such that specific types of kin organization seem to be typically associated with particular forms of political regimes. Such systematic macro-level associations have held up to significant scientific scrutiny. However, little research has attempted to provide detailed mechanistic accounts of those associations. Notably absent from the literature are empirical studies into the possible association between specific features of families and political orientations has been …

Situating Food Insecurity In A Historic Albuquerque Community: The Whorled Relationship Between Food Insecurity And Place, Janet Page-Reeves, Maurice Moffett, Molly Bleecker, Katharine Linder, Jeannie Romero, Carol Krause

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

This article examines conceptualizations of the relationship between food insecurity and place. We use an ethnographically inspired and community-engaged approach to situate our analysis of fluid dynamics at work in a community with high levels of food insecurity. We propose that the relationship between place and people’s experience of food insecurity is recursive, dialectical, and “whorled.” This relationship reflects complex, interconnected, and multidimensional processes with consequences for the health of residents. Our research demonstrates the key nature of the health-place nexus by exploring how food insecurity articulates with place in unexpected ways that go beyond discussions of food, …

Setting The Childless Free: An Ethnographic Study Of The Practice Of The Childfree Identity, Shelly Volsche

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Heeding Sherry Ortner’s call to turn anthropological analysis inward, toward one’s own culture, the following dissertation seeks to understand the identity and practice of the voluntarily childless (hereafter “childfree”) movement in the United States. How do these individuals practice their identity, and how does the identity of “childfree” interact with other roles in their lives? How do they build meaning in a society that emphasizes children as a hallmark of adulthood? What other outlets do childfree individuals have for the “nurturing” tendencies of our species?

Combining sociohistoric analysis with identity and feminist theories, I embarked on nearly two years of …

All In - And More! Gambling In The James Bond Films, Pauliina Raento

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Scholarly analysis of gambling in the James Bond films is rare, despite the multitude of topics in Bondology and the fictional agent’s global fame. The odd commentary in gambling scholarship criticizes the franchise from the perspective of harm prevention. This article counters both groups of scholars with a qualitative interpretation of Bond’s gambling habits and the role of gambling and risk taking in the film series. A basic toolkit of visual methodologies is applied to the 24 EON-produced Bond films released in 1962–2015. The examination shows the critical importance of gambling to character identity, power hierarchies and communication, atmosphere, and …

Aging And Fermentation As Adaptive Food Management Strategies In The Arctic, Celeste Giordano

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation is composed of three papers: one published article, one article under review for publication, and one published commentary. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the dissertation as a whole – a work that investigates food aging and fermentation techniques in an indigenous Yup’ik Alaskan community, proposes an adaptive explanation for these strategies in the circumpolar north, and explores the potential importance of them cross-culturally and evolutionarily. Chapter 2 is a paper that describes the seal poke storage system – an indigenous food preservation and storage technique that Yup’ik Alaskans used to manage food security up until approximately one …

Identifying Corners Stores As The Future Of Healthy Food Access In African American Communities, Victor Romano, Jennifer Lee, Elliott Royal, Katherine Metzo, William Ruth, Theodore Hartsook

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

For many people, the corner store remains the main grocer, or the only source of sustenance in minority communities. This study examined the distribution of corner stores as a future reference point to provide healthy food access to predominantly African American communities that lack full service grocery stores. Business data was obtained from respective county by use of Standard Industrial Codes. Each corner store was then categorized by either being Full Service (Stores that sell fresh produce, fresh meat, fresh dairy, and processed foods) or Non-Full Service (stores that do not sell all four categories of foods included in the …

Chinese American Immigrant Breast Cancer Survivors And Their Experiences With Post-Treatment Care, Tara Eaton Phd, Kristin Bright Phd, Xin Zeng Mph, Hayley S. Thompson Phd

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

This study examined the experiences of Chinese American immigrant breast cancer survivors with post-treatment breast cancer care and surveillance in New York City. As part of a mixed methods approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 Chinese American immigrant breast cancer survivors treated in a public hospital setting regarding their final breast cancer treatment visit, perceived risk of breast cancer recurrence, and experiences with social and family networks following the completion of treatment. Several salient and shared themes emerged from the interviews including two areas of particular concern regarding the transition from the treatment to post-treatment setting: survivors’ lack of …

Polyandry Around The World, Laura A. Benedict

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Polyandry is the umbrella term for one woman maintaining sexual access to more than one man. This work is a comparison of forty-three societies as examples of the six types of polyandry practiced around the world. In some types, the sexual acts are part of a marriage contract involving three or more people. In some types, the marriage involves only two people, but the sexual access of the wife extends beyond the marriage. In one type, the extra-marital sexual activity is expected, and not entirely voluntary by all parties. This survey is the first to describe all six types with …

Native American Identity: A Review Of Twenty-First Century Research, Bridgett G. Giordmaina, Carolee Dodge Francis

McNair Poster Presentations

The purpose of this literature review is to exam research on Native American identity within the social sciences in the twenty-first century in order to identify trends in research topics, various perspectives, and potential future studies, through the review of a sample of 86 publications relating to the topic of Native American identity. The sample was retrieved utilizing three scholarly databases across a wide range of fields of study. Publications are examined by area of focus and publication year.