Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

The Progressives: Economics, Science, And Race, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a brief review of Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton Univ. Press 2016).

Los Problemas De Las Fronteras Humanitarias, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

Resumen:

Este texto plantea un análisis crítico del papel de los discursos y prácticas humanitaristas en nuestra concepción de la migración y en las políticas públicas desarrolladas en relación a la movilidad poblacional a través de las fronteras internacionales. Se parte de la premisa de que el humanitarismo, aunque fuera bien intencionado, puede tener efectos perniciosos sobre la situación que se vive en las fronteras, especialmente si acaba por sustituir a la justicia y a los derechos que tienen los emigrantes. Para estudiar esta paradoja, el texto analiza, sucesivamente, varios problemas asociados a la acción humanitaria: el problema con la …

Mexican Christmas, Gala Campos Oaxaca

Student Work

"Since we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, we usually bring a candle and light it in church to represent the light that the Lord brings with Him."

Posting about a traditional Christmas celebration in Mexico from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/a-mexican-christmas/

Christmas In Nigeria, Matthew Ojo

Student Work

"Christmas in Nigeria is a time of great joy when families get together and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. While some denominations still do not believe that Jesus was actually born on the 25th of December, all join in to participate in the Christmas celebration."

Posting about Nigerian Christmas traditions from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/christmas-in-nigeria/

Counter Culture: A Brief Oral/Visual History Of Independent Record Shops, Lee Ann Fullington

Publications and Research

Independent record shops have long been focal points of local music communities. As online music becomes the new normal, the role of these shops is changing. Though many shops have disappeared, others continue to flourish as they have evolved to meet the tastes and demands of collectors, crate diggers, producers, and fans who prefer LPs to MP3s.

Drawing on original ethnographic research conducted in the early 2000s in the US and the UK, this presentation discusses the role and significance of independent record shops in various music scenes. Based on interviews with owners, staff, and customers, this talk is a …

Sexual-Economic Entanglement: A Feminist Ethnography Of Migrant Sex Work Spaces In Kenya, Megan Lowthers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The recent anti-trafficking fervour as well as the moral panic surrounding prostitution has given rise to large gaps within migrant sex work research, especially in Africa. Despite this, sexual commerce remains a viable economic activity for many women in East Africa, a region where variable migration patterns are central to everyday social, cultural, and economic life. Framed by anthropology, feminist geography, and postcolonial theory, this research examines migrant female sex workers’ everyday experiences across time, space, place, and scale from one ethnographic location in Naivasha, Kenya. In order to explore how different migration patterns and types of sexual-economic exchange are …

Language, Culture And Spatial Cognition: Bringing Anthropology To The Table, Norbert Ross, Jeffrey T. Shenton, Werner Hertzog, Mike Kohut

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

Languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world. This has led to speculation that language might shape basic cognitive processes. Spatial cognition has been an area of research in which linguistic relativity – the effect of language on thought – has both been proposed and rejected. Prior studies have been inconclusive, lacking experimental rigor or appropriate research design. Lacking detailed ethnographic knowledge as well as failing to pay attention to intralanguage variations, these studies often fall short of defining an appropriate concept of language, culture, and cognition. Our study constitutes the first research exploring (1) individuals speaking different languages …

Psychology's Use Of Animals: Current Practices And Attitudes, Kenneth J. Shapiro

Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD

In this chapter, I present a psychology primer for the uninitiated, with special emphasis on psychology's uses of animals. After sketching the scope of the field generally, I review available data on present numbers and species of animals used in psychological research, level of suffering induced and current trends. I also provide several concrete examples of psychological research involving animals. Finally, the chapter concludes with a presentation of attitudes of psychologists toward animals and these practices.

"Last On The Warpath": The Spirit And Intent Of Action Anthropology, Joshua J. Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Led by anthropologist Sol Tax, action anthropologists endeavoured, between the 1940s and 1970s, to challenge the liberal imperialist and settler colonial paradigm of Post-WWII applied anthropology, the termination policy of the 1950s, and the neo-evolutionary theories, such as Julian Steward’s multilinear evolution, that bolstered racist-colonial myths of assimilation. Several projects of emphasis include The Fort Berthold Removal Project, The American Indian Chicago Centre, A mapping project called The North American Indians: 1950 Distribution of Descendants of the Aboriginal Population of Alaska, Canada and the United States, and the American Indian Chicago Conference . In addition to Sol Tax, …

Introduction: Foreign Films And Higher Education, Heba A.N. El Attar Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Teaching About The Muxes In The United States: Cultural Construct Gender Identity, And Transgression In The 21st Century, Nohora V. Cardona Núñez Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This study focuses on the manner in which gender identities challenge heteronormativity and are understood as a way to interpret the sexed body through culture in the documentary Muxes: auténticas, intrépidas, buscadoras del peligro (2005), directed by Mexican filmmaker Alejandra Islas Caro. In the context of a Gender Issues in Latin America course taught in a North American university, we explored how certain theories by thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler, among others, contend that sexual preference, gender orientation, and sexuality, can be built as a cultural constructs, contrary to popular beliefs on the subject. …

Approaches To Teaching Latin American Culture Through Film: Children’S Plight In Poverty- And Violence-Ridden Countries, Delia V. Galvan Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Students at the beginning levels of foreign language study have many borders to cross and many challenges to negotiate. This paper reports the results of a preliminary study involving the use of full-length films to engender intercultural sensitivity and understanding among two groups of first-year students of Spanish. Both films depict hardships of children in Spanish-speaking countries—as a result of conscription or as a result of child labor. The paper discusses the contextualization of the films for the students, the students’ responses to questionnaires, portions of classroom discussion that indicate growth in the areas of focus, and implications of the …

Note On Special Issue, Antonio Medina-Rivera Ph.D., Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D., Heba A.N. El Attar Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Intercultural Communicative Competence: Literature Review, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is a cluster of capabilities that will become even more essential, not only to negotiate borders of many dimensions as globalization proceeds, but also to enhance the ability to maneuver one’s way in a world that changes by the minute. The process of developing ICC prepares the learner to manage and appreciate border crossings on many levels. This brief review of the literature offers a summary of the components of ICC, how it is similar to and different from other competences, and recommendations on how to assess it. This overview may be helpful when considering the …

El Paseo By Harold Trompetero: Approaching Popular Film From Colombia In A North American Classroom, Matias Martinez Abeijon Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This article explores the manner in which popular films from Colombia—

specifically comedies, such as the movie El paseo, directed by Harold Trompetero in 2010, which has been the highest grossing movie to date in the history of movies produced in Colombia–may be used in the classroom in the context of a World Language, Literature, and Culture department in the United States. It is the contention of this study that such a choice is far from common due to diverse issues, which include the limited access to international distribution of the majority of the so-called “national film” or, in …

Can Films Speak The Truth? Mathieu Kassovitz’S La Haine (1995) And Philippe Faucon’S La Désintégration (2011), Annie Jouan-Westlund Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

La Haine, (Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) and La Désintégration (Dir. Philippe Faucon, 2011), set in France’s urban periphery, depict the struggle of second and third-generation immigrants growing up in the housing projects and their desire to live like ‘other’ French young people. The analysis offers a comparative study of the films’ reception with a community of viewers made of American students in a Contemporary French Culture course. Following the three paradigms of exclusion (social, racial, and cultural); gender representation; and aestheticism and realism, this study demonstrates that, within certain limits, these cinematic propositions, of similar prophetic nature but different …

Understanding Arab Culture Through Cinema, Abed El-Rahman Tayyara Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

The article examines the use of cinema as a tool for teaching about Arab culture and assesses the process in which learners acquire a higher level of intercultural communicative competence. The essay draws primarily on multilayered class activities and students’ responses to pre- and post- screening surveys related to eight Arab films. The article reveals that the evaluation of the learners’ intercultural competence and their familiarity with Arab culture in particular is a long process that filled with misunderstandings, gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions on the part of the learners. To successfully conduct this type of teaching, the article also points …

Table Of Contents, Antonio Medina-Rivera Ph.D, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D., Heba A.N. El Attar Ph.D

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Conflicted Tourism : Heritage Narratives, Sectarian Schism, And Economic Growth In Northern Ireland., Ashleigh Larissa Bixby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines tourism as a politically charged facet of the economic process in Northern Ireland. While violence has abated in the region, sectarian conflict continues to affect Northern Irish society. Tourism has helped develop the economy by opening the market to visitors through the marketing of the region as unique and different. As conflict in the region is ongoing, the rise of tourism as a viable economic strategy raises the question: how does the Northern Irish tourist industry reconcile the past and ongoing conflict in order to present the region as a desirable tourist destination? The answer lies in …

Patterns In Faunal Remains At Fort St. Joseph, A French Fur Trade Post In The Western Great Lakes, Joseph Hearns

Masters Theses

Faunal studies have the potential to detect a variety of patterns in animal processing activities at an archaeological site. The spatial relationships of taphonomic mechanisms observed within the animal bone assemblage illuminate the use of space on a site as well as the patterns of waste discard. Patterns within the formation processes influencing the distribution of faunal remains serve as the basis for interpretation of animal processing behaviors. This study analyzes a sample of animal bones from Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), an eighteenth-century French fur trade post in the western Great Lakes region. This post was a hub of exchange …

“Men Of Good Timber”: An Archaeological Investigation Of Labor In Michigan’S Upper Peninsula, Aaron Howe

Masters Theses

This study approaches the material assemblage of Coalwood, a cordwood camp that operated from 1900-1912 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a dialectal method and a theory of internal relations in order to understand how daily life was produced and reproduced. Common sense notions often see home and work as separate entities that only relate to one another externally. My archaeological and historical research abstracts domestic labor as a set of social relations that are dialectically and internally connected to the processes of capital accumulation. My archaeological analysis concludes that both productive and reproductive labor was conducted within the home and …

The Taphonomic Factors On Human Remains Inside Chullpas: Marcajirca, Peru, Samantha Lauren Lininger

Masters Theses

This study explored the taphonomic factors that contributed to the preservation of human skeletal remains inside ancient above-ground tomb in Marcajirca, Peru. This study incorporated one hundred and eighteen bones from three chullpas. Five taphonomic factors were examined: bone type, plant activity, root presence, weathering, and cultural factors. Surface layers inside each chullpa were analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Chi-square tests were employed to investigate preservation and taphonomic factors. The results from the statistical tests indicated that there was a significant difference in the taphonomic factors on different bone types. Chullpa 6 was significant because it was unique …

Islands In The Making: National Investment And The Cultural Imagination In Taiwan, Krista-Lee Meghan Malone

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography looks closely at the Taiwanese company UrIsland, makers of Talking Island (TI) - an MMORPG to teach children English - in order to illuminate the increasingly important meeting point between technology, education, and games. At the level of national economic policy, companies like UrIsland have been at the focal point of the Taiwanese government’s hopes for their tech industry. With TI, UrIsland intended to create a revolution in ESL education. Despite compulsory ESL classes many Taiwanese struggle with English, and educational experts claim that the classes stress reading and writing too much, leaving many people’s listening and speaking …

Bioarchaeological Analysis Of Oak View Landing (40dr1): An Archaic Population In The Kentucky Lake Reservior, Katy D. Grant-Mclemore

Master's Theses

The biocultural examination of the Archaic population recovered at Oak View Landing (40DR1) investigates the lifeways and adaptations of prehistoric people as they reflect sociopolitical and subsistence strategies.

A comprehensive bioarchaeological analysis was conducted on the adult individuals (18 males, 16 females, 16 of indeterminate sex) excavated from a multiple occupation site located along the Tennessee River in Decatur County, Tennessee. Skeletal indicators used to understand biocultural phenomena were assessed macroscopically on cranial and postcranial elements. Furthermore, mortuary data, for adults and subadults, were used to determine any patterns of preferential treatment at death.

Results from this study indicate that …

The Legends Of Bigfoot: Or How I Regained My Manhood, Blaine Mccarty

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Masculinity is a culturally defined identity that exists with no single way to express it. However, the cultural politics police masculinity to appear natural and non-changing, but masculinity changes over history influenced by events and the culture from which it gets its definition. Because of this twofold influence on the identity, there is a constant struggle of the appropriate ways to express masculinity in its attempt to normalize itself by defining what is and is not masculine. This work examines how Bigfoot, the hairy fabled monster, embodies conversations about masculinity during a shift in the masculine identity in a constantly …

Racial Experience As An Alternative Operationalization Of Race, Jada Benn Torres, Gabriel A. Torres Colón

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The study of human variation is central to both social and biomedical sciences; however, despite agreeing that variation is integral to the human experience, social and biomedical scientists diverge in how variation is theorized and operationalized. Race becomes especially problematic because it is a cultural concept that contains implicit and explicit understandings of how collective bodies differ. In this paper, we propose an operationalization of race that is attentive to both racial experience and human biological diversity—placing them within the same ontological sphere. Furthermore, we argue that this approach can more effectively advance antiracist pedagogy and politics.

We argue that …

Rebuilding Houses, Rebuilding Ukraine: Peacebuilding Through Youth Service-Learning, Katherine Tremont

Capstone Collection

In order to successfully transform conflict in a complex situation such as Ukraine, it is critical to examine projects designed by Ukrainians themselves that support and reflect Ukrainian attitudes towards conflict and peace. Lviv Education Foundation is one such Ukrainian-run organization developing and implementing peacebuilding projects between the east and west of Ukraine. From interviews with Lviv Education Foundation personnel, this paper examines the feasibility of two important peacebuilding interventions through the lenses of positive and negative peace, basic human needs, and conflict transformation through ritual. This project finds that Lviv Education Foundation’s programs encourage peacebuilding in all three of …

Hands On My Hips: Politics Of A Subversive Fish, Eric D. Teman J.D., Ph.D.

Eric D Teman, J.D., Ph.D.

Helminth Infection, Fecundity, And Age Of First Pregnancy In Women, Aaron D. Blackwell, Marilyne D. Tamayo, Bret Beheim, Benjamin C. Trumble, Jonathan Stieglitz, Paul L. Hooper, Melanie Martin, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Infection with intestinal helminths results in immunological changes that influence the odds of comorbid infections, and might also affect fecundity by inducing immunological states supportive of conception and pregnancy. Here we investigate associations between intestinal helminths and fertility in human females, utilizing nine years of longitudinal data from 986 Bolivian forger-horticulturalists, experiencing natural fertility and a 70% helminth prevalence. We find that different species of helminth are associated with opposing effects on fecundity. Infection with roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) is associated with earlier first births and shortened interbirth intervals, while infection with hookworm is associated with delayed first pregnancy and extended …

The Relationship Between Social Networks, Exchange And Kids’ Food In Children’S Peer Culture, Stephanie Tillman Melton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates children’s peer culture, social networks and the role that kids’ food plays in peer exchanges during middle childhood. During this stage children develop social competencies as they join peer groups with other children and become socialized into children’s peer culture. In order to immerse myself within children’s culture, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at two afterschool programs providing care for elementary school children. I investigated friendships, social networks and exchanges among third through fifth grade children at the programs. The study included participant observation and participatory group interviews with a sample of the children at both sites. The …