Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

‘I Went To The One Game In Town’: Obstetric And Maternity Unit Closures, Dwindling Birth Choices, And Resilience In Rural Appalachia, Sia Beasley

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Obstetric and maternity health services are being rapidly eliminated in the rural United States, making maternal care more difficult to access and causing negative birth outcomes. Service closures have a magnified impact in Appalachia due to histories of systemic regional and state policy practices which devalue the lives of people living rural areas, local economic marginalization, geographic barriers, and insufficient health infrastructures. This research investigates how women living in rural Appalachia navigate pregnancy and birth amidst constant care closures. The Sunflower Mountain Region is a seven-county area in rural Southern Appalachia. The region has experienced ongoing obstetric closures over the …

Wetland Construction, Restoration, And Integration: A Comparative Review, Douglas J. Spieles

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Place Of Small Canoes: An Archaeological Investigation Of Cayucos, California, Kaya E. Wiggins

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Located on the Central Coast, within the northern portion of Estero Bay, Cayucos remains an under-investigated area, and with over 8,000 years of human occupation there, it has the potential to inform about local and regional precontact history. Though relatively few archaeological investigations have occurred in Cayucos, by synthesizing studies in the area, a baseline of information emerges to build upon. This thesis reviews every recorded archaeological site with a precontact component, in the vicinity of Cayucos. These records, along with other relevant studies and theoretical framework, provide clues about the past associated with local settlement, technology, and the environment. …

Return To Wolf Country: Exploring Rancher Knowledge Of Gray Wolves In Wallowa County, Oregon, Theodore Masters

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

With the extirpation of gray wolves (Canis lupus) from the American West in the early 20^th Century, generations of ranchers have grazed livestock free from any threats by wolves. The absence of wolves from the western landscape has created an inter-generational gap in the experiential knowledge held by ranchers regarding how to manage livestock in wolf country. Using Wallowa County, Oregon, as a case study site, 18 cow-calf ranchers were interviewed to gain insights into the ways they generate and share knowledge of running livestock in landscapes shared with wolves. This study revealed the arrival of wolves …

Counter Archives: Unfolding Hidden Stories, Berlin Loa

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

We select what we value as history creating collective memory that can obfuscate or devalue other threads in the story intentionally or unintentionally. Through collections of material culture, curated and described by archivists, we receive information that constructs our collective memory of self. These cultural artifacts reflect and reconstruct the past. Material artifacts in the archives depend largely on the story that is told about their provenance to provide meaning. This paper takes photographic collections in archives as examples of material culture to demonstrate how archival presentation affects the stories of collections items, and examines modalities and subverted stories in …

A Language For The World: The Standardization Of Swahili, Morgan J. Robinson

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

This intellectual history of Standard Swahili explores the long-term, intertwined processes of standard making and community creation in the historical, political, and cultural contexts of East Africa and beyond.

Morgan J. Robinson argues that the portability of Standard Swahili has contributed to its wide use not only across the African continent but also around the globe. The book pivots on the question of whether standardized versions of African languages have empowered or oppressed. It is inevitable that the selection and promotion of one version of a language as standard—a move typically associated with missionaries and colonial regimes—negatively affected those …

Cargoes In Motion: Materiality And Connectivity Across The Indian Ocean, Burkhard Schnepel, Julia Verne

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

An innovative collection of essays that foregrounds specific cargoes as a means to understand connectivity and mobility across the Indian Ocean world.

Scholars have long appreciated the centrality of trade and commerce in understanding the connectivity and mobility that underpin human experience in the Indian Ocean region. But studies of merchant and commercial activities have paid little attention to the role that cargoes have played in connecting the disparate parts of this vast oceanic world. Drawing from the work of anthropologists, geographers, and historians, Cargoes in Motion tells the story of how material objects have informed and continue to shape …

Western Region Health & Wellness Programming Efforts: Qualitative Results From A Three-Part Listening Session, Cris L. Meier, Lily Ward, Anders Van Sandt, Sue Schneider, Riana Gayle

All Current Publications

The purpose of this project was to understand the programming efforts and experiences of Extension professionals in the Western Region of the United States. The Health and Wellness Working Group team held a series of listening sessions with a closed cohort of Extension professionals, hoping to learn from each other while also building the foundation for future collaborations and conversations about health and wellness programing in the western region.

The objectives were to understand: (1) the state of health and wellness work in the western region, including the gaps and challenges, (2) the programs that currently exist and ways that …

Rural Development In Papua New Guinea: Mining, Logging, Agriculture, And Alternatives, Tj Askew

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines multiple approaches to providing rural, indigenous Papuans with improved social services and economic opportunities. Rural Papuans, who make up 80 percent of the population, face below average rates of nutrition, education, disease, crime, and other quality of life indicators. Due to location, land use rights, lack of infrastructure, and minimal access to economic markets, the PNG government has struggled to provide rural communities with basic social services. Historically, the development of resource extraction projects such as mining, logging, and agriculture have been the main strategies used to improve the livelihood of rural Papuans, with limited success. This …