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Social change

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Choosing To Come Back: Second-Generation Egyptians Returning As Social Change Agents, Hajar Khalil Jun 2023

Choosing To Come Back: Second-Generation Egyptians Returning As Social Change Agents, Hajar Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

Research has found that upon visiting their parents’ homeland, second-generation immigrants were able to gain a better understanding of where they came from, allowing them to reflect upon their own lives in respect to their family history (Marschall, 2017). Some researchers call this journey the ‘self-awakening’ or ‘searching-self’ journey (Christou, 2003). The aim of this research is to understand the process of second-generation Egyptians return journey to their parent(s)’ homeland in order to create social change. The two main questions posed are: 1) How do second-generation Egyptians construct their narrative identity, and 2) How do they conceptualize themselves as social …


The Segregation Of Religion: How Othering Influences Society’S Narrative Understanding About The Symbiotic Relationship Among Racism, Sexism, And The Church, Ajanet Rountree Oct 2019

The Segregation Of Religion: How Othering Influences Society’S Narrative Understanding About The Symbiotic Relationship Among Racism, Sexism, And The Church, Ajanet Rountree

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The social dependence on the sociology of male spiritual leadership is substantial. This dependence accomplishes two ideas: neutralizes the feminine experience and obviates the anthropological implications of religion in the perpetuation of oppression and subjugation. When considering racism and sexism in religion, specifically as they relate to the Black Christian church, a dismissal of accusations and assertions occurs by yielding to the context of the social era. This paper seeks to further clarify the position of women, who pushed against the grain of the gendered and racialized spaces of their churches and communities, as they sought to establish human rights …


The Guthi System Of Nepal, Tucker Scott Apr 2019

The Guthi System Of Nepal, Tucker Scott

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this research is to understand the role of the guthi system in Nepali society, the relationship of the guthi land tenure system with Newari guthi, and the effect of modern society and technology on the ability of the guthi system to maintain and preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage in Nepal. This research took place in three different sections of Kathmandu. The methodology behind this research was a combination of historical analysis of the traditional role of the guthi system in Nepal along with three case studies of guthi organizations with different assigned functions. These case studies …


Banking For The Future: An Ethnographic Study On The Local Food Bank, Its Role On Food Justice, And Patron Perception, Edward Fernandez Jan 2018

Banking For The Future: An Ethnographic Study On The Local Food Bank, Its Role On Food Justice, And Patron Perception, Edward Fernandez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Food banks are antithetical to the food justice movement because they usually rely on government commodity surplus to alleviate need and promote notions of dependence through the charity model. This research examines Food for People, the only food bank in Humboldt County, within the context of local food security and patron perception using ethnographic observation, surveys, literature review, and interviews to generate data that would allow the food bank to fulfill its mission of ending hunger. Through ethnographic approaches, this thesis focuses on food security, what affects perception and actual food security in the context of food justice and food …


Making The Mark : Gender, Identity, And Genital Cutting, Miroslava Prazak Sep 2016

Making The Mark : Gender, Identity, And Genital Cutting, Miroslava Prazak

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Why do female genital cutting practices persist? How does circumcision affect the rights of girls in a culture where initiation forms the lynchpin of the ritual cycle at the core of defining gender, identity, and social and political status? In Making the Mark, Miroslava Prazak follows the practice of female circumcision through the lives and activities of community members in a rural Kenyan farming society as they decide whether or not to participate in the tradition.

In an ethnography twenty years in the making, Prazak weaves multiple Kuria perspectives—those of girls, boys, family members, circumcisers, political and religious leaders—into a …


Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li Dec 2014

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses features of citizen communication on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and its relationship to participatory democracy in China. Weibo is a complex social space due to the interplay of different forces and social actors. On the one hand, Weibo provides the space for bottom-up political participation: it expands the horizontal discursive space where plural discourses coexist and interact; provides a social sphere where counter-discourses are created; a space where the culture of resistance is formed; and serves as an alternative source for information. On the other hand, the vertical political control of the state, and the …


Peruvian Trajectories Of Sociocultural Transformation, Daniel Paracka, Ernesto Silva Dec 2013

Peruvian Trajectories Of Sociocultural Transformation, Daniel Paracka, Ernesto Silva

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The story of Peru presents a continuous trajectory of sociocultural transformation where one civilization appropriates, borrows, and builds on the accomplishments of the previous often creating something new and unique. During the Year of Peru program KSU's faculty and students had the opportunity to learn in depth about Peru's rich history, culture, and modern society. They learned about a country rich in archeological discovery and human history, a story that does not simply begin with the Inca Empire, as the Inca were just one in a long line of powerful ancient civilizations (Chavin, Wari, Nazca, Moche, etc.) that previously ruled …


Salva La Iglesia: Intercultural Capital And The Struggle For Community In A Small Town Congregation, Maria E. Schwarz May 2013

Salva La Iglesia: Intercultural Capital And The Struggle For Community In A Small Town Congregation, Maria E. Schwarz

Senior Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine community response to crisis and the impact of intercultural interactions on the outcome of ethnic and religious group conflict. I seek to expand the traditional theoretical lens of forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986) to include a new way of examining group interactions as they relate to intercultural capital. I use a case study focusing on the San Martín Catholic Mission in western Oregon and the ways this particular community responded to the crisis of the Catholic diocese threatening to sell their property in 2010. I gathered data from a year of ethnographic …


Menarche Ceremonies & Social Change In Fiji, Anna Clauson Mar 2012

Menarche Ceremonies & Social Change In Fiji, Anna Clauson

Social Sciences

Fiji is undergoing rapid urbanization. Over fifty percent of Fiji’s population has moved from traditional villages to the city. Changes in lifestyle associated with urbanization bring challenges to traditional Fijian values and ways of life. The occurrence of menarche ceremonies in Fiji is a lens by which to explore the implications of these social changes on Fijian women. Inductive interviews with sixteen Fijian women reveal that birth order, proximity to home villages, and maternal agency are three general factors that determine the occurrence of menarche ceremonies. Education is also identified as an impacting force on first menstruation events in Fiji, …


Negotiating New Roles, New Moralities : Ukrainian Women Physicians At A Post-Socialist Crossroad, Maryna Yevgenivna Bazylevych Jan 2010

Negotiating New Roles, New Moralities : Ukrainian Women Physicians At A Post-Socialist Crossroad, Maryna Yevgenivna Bazylevych

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My dissertation discusses concepts of professionalism and morality as seen by women physicians in post-socialist Ukraine. As in many other post-socialist societies, Ukrainian women constitute the majority of the medical profession (over 70% of practicing physicians and 80% of medical students). Most of the existing literature explains this narrowly in materialist terms whereby low salary is viewed as determinant of low prestige and thus unattractiveness to men. I suggest that prestige is defined much broader in the local context. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Central and Western Ukraine (2007-2008), I argue that the meanings of prestige carry both socialist and …


Re-Imagining The Nature Of Development: Biodiversity Conservation And Pastoral Visions In The Northern Areas, Pakistan, Nosheen Ali Jan 2010

Re-Imagining The Nature Of Development: Biodiversity Conservation And Pastoral Visions In The Northern Areas, Pakistan, Nosheen Ali

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

Examines how, in the mountainous village of Shimshal, national parks and “community-based” conservation projects such as trophy hunting are deeply problematic, promoting exploitive ideologies of nature and development while delegitimizing the values and rights of pastoralists. The Shimshalis have creatively resisted the appropriations of their land by creating a Shimshal Nature Trust, implementing a model of ecological sovereignty instead of “community participation”—challenging the very logic of protected areas in international conservation.


Beyond Corporatism And Liberalism: State And Civil Society In Cooperation In Nicaragua, Hannah Pallmeyer Jan 2009

Beyond Corporatism And Liberalism: State And Civil Society In Cooperation In Nicaragua, Hannah Pallmeyer

Hispanic Studies Honors Projects

The Nicaraguan state has historically attempted to control Nicaraguan civil society using corporatist and liberal-democratic frameworks. This has created a difficult organizing environment for civil society organizations to struggle for social change. In this thesis, I argue that civil society organizations, operating in 2008 in a corporatist or liberal framework, were less effective in achieving national social change than organizations that worked cooperatively with the state, yet maintained some autonomy. This hypothesis is developed using the case study of three water rights organizations, and is further tested using the case of corporatist-structured Citizen Power Councils, created in 2007.


Introduction: The New Arab Family, Nicholas S. Hopkins Jan 2001

Introduction: The New Arab Family, Nicholas S. Hopkins

Faculty Book Chapters

This volume represents revised versions of a collection of papers presented at Cairo Papers Ninth Annual Symposium on ''The New Arab Family,'' held in May 2000. Marriage, divorce, and related topics were center stage, particularly in the demographic papers. Another focus was to combine two very different approaches to the study of the family -- on the one hand demographic, and on the other broadly sociological or anthropological, or as some would say, psychodynamic, that is to say focusing on dyadic or multi-member networks of relationships within the family. Some of these papers in turn focused on ''agency,'' the ways …


The Sustainable, The Expendable, And The Obsolete, Michael D. Lieber Dec 1999

The Sustainable, The Expendable, And The Obsolete, Michael D. Lieber

Pacific Studies

This is a preliminary exploration of the concept of sustainability and its potential usefulness to anthropologists. “Sustainable” is distinguished from “stable” and “viable” in terms of its implications of directionality of time, pointing both backward and forward. Given the time implications, the contexts of “sustainable Xs” (technology, activity, development, etc.) are crucial to explaining what happened to X in the past and prognosticating its future. The argument is illustrated by analyzing data on obsolete fishing practices on Kapingamarangi Atoll (Federated States of Micronesia), focusing on the contexts of change in political /religious organization in the twentieth century. Changing access to …


Marta Rohatynskyj's Review Of Advertising Missionaries And Pacific Passages, Marta Rohatynskyj Jun 1999

Marta Rohatynskyj's Review Of Advertising Missionaries And Pacific Passages, Marta Rohatynskyj

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Pamela J. Stewart And Andrew Strathern's Review Of David Lipset's Curing And Healing: Medical Anthropology In Global Perspective, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern Jun 1999

Pamela J. Stewart And Andrew Strathern's Review Of David Lipset's Curing And Healing: Medical Anthropology In Global Perspective, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Nicholas J. Goetzfridt's Review Of Richard Feinberg's Seafaring In The Contemporary Pacific Islands: Studies In Continuity And Change, Nicholas J. Goetzfridt Jun 1999

Nicholas J. Goetzfridt's Review Of Richard Feinberg's Seafaring In The Contemporary Pacific Islands: Studies In Continuity And Change, Nicholas J. Goetzfridt

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Toward Historizing Gender In Polynesia: On Vilsoni Hereniko’S Woven Gods And Regional Patterns, Jeannette Marie Mageo Mar 1999

Toward Historizing Gender In Polynesia: On Vilsoni Hereniko’S Woven Gods And Regional Patterns, Jeannette Marie Mageo

Pacific Studies

This article considers possible parallels between Rotuman and Samoan gender history through Vilsoni Hereniko’s book Woven Gods. Hereniko draws upon the work of Victor Turner to analyze his Rotuman data, arguing that wedding clowns reverse normative social structures. Wedding clowns are expert female practitioners of Rotuman joking discourse. This discourse is not only ritualized on special occasions but is also an everyday informal discourse and, I argue, is in this sense normative; it counterbalances respect discourse, which is likewise practiced in ritual (ceremonial) contexts but also in everyday polite contexts. In the Samoan precolonial sex-gender system, males and females had …


Andrew Strathern And Pamela J. Stewart's Review Of Donald Tuzin's The Cassowary’S Revenge: The Life And Death Of Masculinity In A New Guinea Society, Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart Mar 1999

Andrew Strathern And Pamela J. Stewart's Review Of Donald Tuzin's The Cassowary’S Revenge: The Life And Death Of Masculinity In A New Guinea Society, Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Jason Carter And Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi's Review Of Charlie Nairn's A Death To Pay For: Individual Voices, Jason Carter, Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi Dec 1998

Jason Carter And Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi's Review Of Charlie Nairn's A Death To Pay For: Individual Voices, Jason Carter, Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Jane C. Goodale's Review Of Eric Venbrux's A Death In The Tiwi Islands: Conflict, Ritual, And Social Life In An Australian Aboriginal Community, Jane C. Goodale Sep 1998

Jane C. Goodale's Review Of Eric Venbrux's A Death In The Tiwi Islands: Conflict, Ritual, And Social Life In An Australian Aboriginal Community, Jane C. Goodale

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


History, Opposition, And Salvation In Agarabi Adventism, George Westermark Sep 1998

History, Opposition, And Salvation In Agarabi Adventism, George Westermark

Pacific Studies

Growth of the Seventh-day Adventist Church was particularly strong in the Papua New Guinea Eastern Highlands in the last decade. This article discusses a variety of reasons for this change, emphasizing Adventist beliefs that create a distinct historical consciousness among church members. In the face of a rapidly changing society, it is argued, these beliefs structure an appealing ideological framework that facilitates both individual and collective transformation. Significant for Eastern Highland Adventists is a doctrine of opposition toward other Christian groups and a sense of their own unique role in the prophetic events that make up their historical model.


Dorothy Ayers Counts's Review Of Richard Feinberg And Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo's Leadership And Change In The Western Pacific: Essays Presented To Sir Raymond Firth On The Occasion Of His Ninetieth Birthday, Dorothy Ayers Counts Sep 1998

Dorothy Ayers Counts's Review Of Richard Feinberg And Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo's Leadership And Change In The Western Pacific: Essays Presented To Sir Raymond Firth On The Occasion Of His Ninetieth Birthday, Dorothy Ayers Counts

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


William C. Clarke's Review Of R. Gerard Ward And Elizabeth Kingdon's Land, Custom, And Practice In The South Pacific, William C. Clarke Sep 1998

William C. Clarke's Review Of R. Gerard Ward And Elizabeth Kingdon's Land, Custom, And Practice In The South Pacific, William C. Clarke

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


John Barker's Review Of John Garrett's Where Nets Were Cast: Christianity In Oceania Since World War Ii, John Barker Sep 1998

John Barker's Review Of John Garrett's Where Nets Were Cast: Christianity In Oceania Since World War Ii, John Barker

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Netbags Revisited: Cultural Narratives From Papua New Guinea, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew J. Strathern Jun 1997

Netbags Revisited: Cultural Narratives From Papua New Guinea, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew J. Strathern

Pacific Studies

In this article we reconsider materials on netbags from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya, as well as other parts of Melanesia, arguing that understanding of them is best set into a framework of ideas regarding embodiment and processes of trope expansion. Starting from the equation of netbag and womb, we trace the ramifications of this object of material culture and its contemporary significance in a commodifying context. Main emphasis is placed on materials from the Melpa or Mount Hagen area of the Western Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea, with comparisons to the cultures of the …


Dan Jorgensen's Review Of John Davis's Mountains Of Gold: The People Of Porgera, Dan Jorgensen Jun 1997

Dan Jorgensen's Review Of John Davis's Mountains Of Gold: The People Of Porgera, Dan Jorgensen

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Stuart Kirsch's Review Of Judith Hallet's Lords Of The Garden, Stuart Kirsch Jun 1997

Stuart Kirsch's Review Of Judith Hallet's Lords Of The Garden, Stuart Kirsch

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Reading The Leaves: The Role Of Tongan Women’S Traditional Wealth And Other “Contraflows” In The Processes Of Modern Migration And Remittance, Kerry James Mar 1997

Reading The Leaves: The Role Of Tongan Women’S Traditional Wealth And Other “Contraflows” In The Processes Of Modern Migration And Remittance, Kerry James

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.


Taramaguti Today: Changing Roles Of Senior Tiwi Wives As Household Managers, Jane C. Goodale Dec 1996

Taramaguti Today: Changing Roles Of Senior Tiwi Wives As Household Managers, Jane C. Goodale

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.