Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Detangling Black Hair: Hair Journeys, Discrimination, And Reconciliations Of Cultural Appropriation Among Claremont College Students, Amalia Raquel Barrett

Scripps Senior Theses

This ethnography details the experiences of discrimination and reconciliations of cultural appropriation among Black women and those perceived as Black women at the Claremont Colleges. 26 semi-structured ethnographic interviews were conducted over Zoom video conferencing to collect responses to questions including: How do my participants wear and describe their hair, and what experiences in their life do they relate to their hair? What challenges related to hair do my interviewees perceive in life outside college? How do my participants actively reconcile and critically rationalize the dynamic between Black hair being worn by Black women and by non-Black women? What patterns …

Challenging Narratives: Kurdish Young Adults In Istanbul And Chicago, Lydia Shanklin Roll

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

In this dissertation, I explore the interplay between youthful agency and state imposition. Specifically, drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul, Turkey and Chicago, Illinois, I investigate how young adults who have migrated within one state and to another are navigating the states and bureaucratic systems in which they live. My interlocutors hail from a state that is quintessentially twentieth century, by which I mean the state was established as a nation-state, promoted as existing for members of a particular ethno-linguistic identity, with a charismatic leader who inspired a cult of personality. This narrative of the state has …

Captivating State: Youthful Dreams And Uncertain Futures In Kurdistan, Diana Hatchett

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation examines how Kurdistani young people experience contests of values in a state shaped by sectarian political cultures during a time of trial and transition for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The dissertation is based on approximately 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork (September 2015 - June 2017) spent among Kurdistani youth, broadly defined as 12 to 30 years old, in secondary schools and fitness centers. The ethnography presents interlocutors as co-theorists in conceptualizing the society and state in which they live, incorporating descriptive vignettes, transcripts of discussions, and lengthy interview quotes. Kurdistani interlocutors describe the push and pull …

Ant-3700 - Introduction To Anthropology, Igor Pashkovskiy

Open Educational Resources

Movement away from the textbook model has potential to foster equitable access to course materials as well as reduce textbook costs for students. As such, transition to a zero cost/OER classroom included the curation of open access scholarly literature to cover the four-field approach presently taught in introductory anthropology courses.

The Ambivalence Of Participation In Transitional Justice: The Promises And Failures Of Peace In Colombia, Alejandro Urruzmendi

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation inquires into participation in transitional justice in Colombia. Through an examination of Peace Councils and Mesas de Participación, it offers readers concrete examples of such mechanisms for participation, discussing their legal and bureaucratic structures. Weaving in ethnographic research, the author allows the participants themselves, victimized-survivors of the armed conflict and community leaders, to discuss the limits and possibilities of their work. Placing these voices and archival research in historic and theoretical context, the dissertation leaves readers with questions regarding the ambivalence of state, institutional, and participant’s stances towards participation in transitional justice.

Gaming And Culture: How Videogames Can Affect Global Players' Preception And Understanding Of Japan's History And Culture, Garrett Davies

Capstone Showcase

Video game developers have the ability to create synthetic worlds. These are places where players have the ability to immerse themselves within a culture presented to them by the creators. This allows a global audience to participate in the expression and learning of culture but that may come at a cost. Focusing on Japan, I want to dive into how culture is presenting within video games, why it is presented in such ways, and what that means for players' perception of the country through play.

Summer Treatment Programs: Counselors And Care Practices, Christina X. You

Scripps Senior Theses

Employing a mixed psychosocial and pharmacological approach, STPs offer six to nine weeks of intensive treatment for children deemed to have social and behavioral difficulties. One major asset STPs claim is their natural, fun setting—a true summer camp space for activities and open peer interaction—in which children learn positive behaviors that they can generalize into external social settings. Yet STPs are also highly structured. Staff, who are often undergraduate and graduate students, are trained in operant learning strategies to promote “positive” and suppress “maladaptive” behaviors, strict activity guidelines, and evaluations for procedural adherence. The program was developed based on the …

Ancient Maya Rural Settlement Patterns, Household Cooperation, And Regional Subsistence Interdependency In The Río Bec Area: Contributions From G-Liht, Scott R. Hutson, Nicholas P. Dunning, Bruce Cook, Thomas Ruhl, Nicolas C. Barth, Daniel Conley

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Research on intensive agricultural features contributes to the social relations of farming, including the means by which farmers mobilize labor and the possible destination of surplus. Lidar provides high-resolution data on ancient houses and agricultural features at a regional scale. This paper uses lidar data from NASA’s G-LiHT airborne imager to derive insights about rural demography, interhousehold cooperation, and subsistence interdependency among the ancient Maya. We assess the differences in intensity of agricultural investment in rural and urban areas of the Río Bec region of southern Campeche and Quintana Roo, Mexico, leading to inferences about regional food exchange and complex …

Korean Fusion: Consuming A Globalized Korea Through Food And Music, Ashley Hong

Honors Theses

In Koreatown, Los Angeles, one of the largest centers of Korean immigrants in the Western hemisphere, restaurant owners are constantly creating new forms of Korean cuisine that both challenge and preserve traditional methods of Korean culinary methods. Based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in Koreatown, Los Angeles in December 2020, I examine how Korean restaurant owners are navigating the current food scene while also maintaining their ethnic identity in a globalized landscape such as Los Angeles. I conceptualize the idea of a “twist” which can be understood as components of fusion food that allow Korean restaurant owners to …

Transitioning To Legalization Of Cannabis In Washington State: Regulations’ Impacts On Commodification, Metabolism, & Labor Practices, Rob Loewen

All Master's Theses

This thesis provides an ethnographically grounded analysis of how existing regulations shape the legal recreational cannabis industry in Washington State. I examine the processes involved from seed to sale, including cultivation, processing, quality-control testing, and distribution of recreational cannabis. The goal of this research is to provide a greater understanding of how existing regulations were formed and how they shape social relations within the industry. This study seeks to answer the question: “How are the processes of production within the recreational cannabis industry, along with its labor force and its consumers, impacted by societal perceptions about cannabis, encapsulated within state …

The House Of Love And The Mental Hospital: Zones Of Care And Recovery In South India, Murphy Halliburton

Publications and Research

The Movement for Global Mental Health has defined the person suffering psychopathology in low-income countries as an abused and suffering subject in need of saving by biomedical psychiatry. Based on fieldwork in Kerala, South India, carried out at psychiatric clinics and a psychosocial rehabilitation centre, this paper examines patients’ experiences of illness, the degree and quality of family support, and attributions made to the role of ‘sneham’, or love, in recovery. The role of love and family involvement may help explain the provocative finding by WHO epidemiological studies that ‘developing’ countries – and India in particular – showed better rates …

College Students "Coupling Up" With Reality Dating Shows: The Interpersonal Relationships Fostered By Reality Dating Show Viewership, Juliana Romeo

Scripps Senior Theses

On college campuses across the US on Monday evenings, groups of college students cluster around laptops and dorm lounge TVs to watch The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. Viewership of reality dating shows is clearly a popular social activity among students, but why? What needs are college students fulfilling with their viewership of this genre? This thesis explores college students’ relationship with reality dating shows and specifically how college students connect the realities of the contestants, the media space, and their everyday lives. Over nine months, I conducted ethnographic interviews and focus groups with twenty-one college students at residential colleges …

Nonsovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, And Disaster Are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities, Isar Godreau, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

Using the concept of “racecraft” to describe the state production of racial subjectivities, we argue that this process has been increasingly compromised in Puerto Rico by a lack of sovereignty and by the current socioeconomic crisis. We argue that the state-sponsored idea that Puerto Rican white and mixed-race identities operate separately from the US racial framework is receding. Based on the unconventional use of an open-ended question for racial identification in a survey administered to over one thousand Puerto Ricans, we found: a reluctance to identify racially, an awareness of a normative “whiteness” that excludes Puerto Ricans, and a tendency …

Civility And Its Discontents: Subway Etiquette, Civic Values, And Political Subjectivity In Global Taiwan, Anru Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Anth 101: Introduction To Cultural Anthropology, Tomomi Emoto

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

[Introduction To] Paradoxes Of Care: Children And Global Medical Aid In Egypt., Rania Kassab Sweis

Bookshelf

Each year, billions of dollars are spent on global humanitarian health initiatives. These efforts are intended to care for suffering bodies, especially those of distressed children living in poverty. But as global medical aid can often overlook the local economic and political systems that cause bodily suffering, it can also unintentionally prolong the very conditions that hurt children and undermine local aid givers. Investigating medical humanitarian encounters in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care illustrates how child aid recipients and local aid experts grapple with global aid's shortcomings and its paradoxical outcomes.

Rania Kassab Sweis examines how some of the world's largest …

Networks Knowledge Brokers And The Public Policy, Rosalyn Negrón, Linda Sprague-Martinez, Carlos Eduardo Siqueira, Cristina Brinkerhoff

Gastón Institute Publications

This chapter presents a three-year, community-based health study of Boston Brazilian and Dominican transnational immigrants. A multi-level framework is used to understand the network factors that may impact how social, cultural, and health knowledge is shared between immigrants and immigrants and host society members. Results show that Brazilians in this study tended to have more heterogeneous networks, reported more close relationships with non-Brazilians, and more contact with non-Brazilians around health-seeking, as compared to Dominicans. Differences are discussed and framed in relation to macro-level structures, including racial hierarchies, transnationalism, and immigration laws. As such, we conclude with a discussion of how …

Mortalidad Por Diabetes En Guatemala 2018: Patrones E Inequidades, Alejandro Cerón, Gila Goldstein

Anthropology: Faculty Scholarship

El presente estudio busca analizar la mortalidad por diabetes en Guatemala con el propósito de identificar posibles criterios epidemiológicos que orienten la priorización de acciones de salud pública. El riesgo de morir de diabetes en Guatemala muestra marcadas desigualdades por departamento, las que son aún más marcadas al comparar por municipio. El riesgo de morir es también más alto en mujeres, en personas mestizas o ladinas, en niveles educativos bajos, y en personas que se dedican a ocupaciones elementales. Deberían implementarse medidas de salud pública orientadas a los municipios y grupos en mayor riesgo de morir de diabetes. Este estudio …

Overcoming Loneliness: First-Generation Slavic Immigrants' Experience With Loneliness In The Inland Northwest, Charles C. Crook

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

The plight of loneliness has caused devastation to many social and cultural groups’ well-being. Scholars have analyzed and documented its adverse health such as suicide (Stravynski and Boyer 2001), Alzheimer’s disease (Wilson et al. 2007), depression (Erzen and Çikrikci 2018), immune system complications (Hawkley and Cacioppo 2003), and cardiovascular complications (Hawley and Cacioppo 2003). Some compare its health impacts to smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Health Resources and Services Administration 2019), while others emphasize how loneliness compels people to internet addiction (Ayas and Horzum 2013) and alcohol abuse (Åkerlind and Hörnquist 1992). Among the most susceptible populations to loneliness are …

Devastation And Displacement: The Destruction Of Native Communities As A Result Of Specifically The Garrison Dam On The Missouri River In North Dakota And The Dalles Dams On The Columbia River In Oregon, Farryl Elisa Hunt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

ABSTRACT MASTER’S THESIS

Devastation and Displacement: The Destruction of Native Communities as a Result of the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River in North Dakota and the Dams on the Columbia River in Oregon

By Farryl Elisa "Lisa" Hunt

This master's thesis in anthropology is a cross-cultural analysis that explores two intersecting yet distinct discourses of destruction and displacement for two groups of Native people in Oregon and North Dakota. The building of The Dalles Dam in Oregon and The Garrison Dam in North Dakota damaged thriving livelihoods due to the loss of irreplaceable flooded areas.

This thesis will utilize …

The Reacculturation Of Veterans Post Transition Assistance Program, Kyle Alan Hanlan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As many as 61% of veterans have sought reintegration services after the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) to help them cope with culture shock. TAP is not designed to address cultural transition. However, culture shock has resulted in disassociating behavior, unemployment, and homelessness in the veteran community. The purpose of this study was to identify the unmet reacculturation needs of post-active duty veterans in Chester County, Pennsylvania, who have utilized the United States’ Department of Defense’s TAP. Using an ethnographic approach, this study identified the extent that the TAP helps 13 post-active duty veterans obtain the autonomy stage of culture shock …

For The Children? A Mixed Methods Analysis Of World Bank Structural Adjustment Loans, Health Projects, And Infant Mortality In Latin America, Shiri Noy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Physical Intimate Partner Violence, Childhood Physical Abuse And Mental Health Of U.S. Caribbean Women: The Interrelationship Of Social, Contextual, And Migratory Influences, Krims K. Lacey, Regina Parnell, Sasha R. Drummond-Lewis, Maxine Wood, Karen Powell Sears

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Antithesis Of ‘Business As Usual’: Youth, Class, And Volunteer Organizations In Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Chelsea Cutright

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Youth in Tanzania make up the majority of the current growing population and therefore are increasingly a focus of local and international development concern, specifically as the rates of urban growth and unemployment are also increasing. This research builds upon existing anthropological literature, which largely addresses contemporary and urban African youths as “problems” in dire need of governmental intervention and international solutions. Through explorations of the ways in which Tanzanian youth are actively and creatively working to improve their own futures, utilizing their own agency to create opportunities, and solving their own problems in the absence of successful external intercessions, …

Producing Possibilities: Envisioning And Mediating Youth, Identities, And Futures In Central Appalachia, Tammy Lynn Clemons

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation, based on anthropological research between 2015 and 2020, focuses on young people in different yet interconnected social contexts in Central Appalachia and how they envision, construct, and act upon possibilities for themselves and the region through multimodal cultural production processes like visual art, performance, and multisensory media. The research question focusing this project was: How do the social contexts of young Appalachians’ engagement in media consumption and production practices shape the possibilities they envision for themselves, others, and their region? I found that the specific contexts were less important than the interconnected mentoring conversations across sites and generations …

"It's About More Than Just Animals": Environmental Politics Of Zoo-Adjacent Conservation(Ists) In The U.S., Dayton D. Starnes Ii

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This research explores the influences of diverse environmental politics in shaping zoo-adjacent conservation activities in the United States. Based upon 13 months of multi-sited ethnographic research, conducted with conservation actors across six states, the researcher investigates and documents how conservation professionals—operating in contexts adjacent to zoological institutions—experience and respond to the socio-environmental implications associated with the cascading effects of global environmental change. In the face of current challenges and uncertain environmental futures—shaped by habitat alterations, ecological transitions, and species declines/extinctions—conservationists are undergoing their own processes of reassessment and reconfiguration of their underpinning philosophies and body of practices that inform their …

"Roses Remind Me Of Aleppo": Ironic Home, Beckoning States, And Memories Of Syrian Armenian Women In Yerevan, Armenia, Anahid Matossian

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This project contributes to anthropologies of the state, (diasporic return) migration, belonging, home, and conflict, including genocide and war. It intervenes in the anthropology of home by focusing on both the social and physical aspects of home, its pain, joys, and ironies, and it speaks to the anthropology of genocide by showing how a population a century removed from a genocide uses it to interpret their experience. This dissertation also deals with state constructions of ideal citizen formation--one of obligation and devotion to the socially constructed ancestral homeland, where descendants who share an ethnic identity have a role to play …

Reimagining Care: Surviving And Thriving Among Lgbtq African Americans In Birmingham, Alabama, Stacie Lynn Hatfield

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation draws on fieldwork with Black LGBTQ identifying individuals and communities in Birmingham, Alabama conducted from 2015-2019 as part of a project that reimagines theories of care. Informed by scholars of Black and feminist studies, I conceive of forms of care as negotiations of survival and tactics of thriving that are worked out in everyday practices and discourses among LGBTQ African Americans. I show how histories of racial inequality and centuries of resistance, surviving, and thriving among communities of African descent intersect with LGBTQ politics, space, and identity to create strategies and places of individual and community care. My …

The History Of Spokane Falls W.T. 1871-1891, An Example Of A Colonial Built Environment, Jacob Adamson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

The history of Spokane Falls's built environment within Washington Territory exemplifies the Pacific Northwest's resettlement and reconstruction in the nineteenth century. The initial benefit of Spokane Falls' geography existed within the primary natural advantage of the waterpower of the falls on the Spokane River. The secondary natural advantage in human-induced transportation networks allowed the settlement center-place status. Spokane Falls W.T. developed as center-places for the periphery's agricultural and mining commodities under a theoretical and structuralized [urban] model. An interpretation of the physical and geographical history of Spokane Falls's built environment from 1871 to 1891 occurred where the city's layout existed …

“Just Like Breathing”: A Portrait Of An 85-Year-Old Veteran Teacher, Christina C. Gray, Geoffrey M. Lowe Dr, Peter F. Prout, Sarah Jefferson

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Through a phenomenological lens of portraiture methodology, this article explores the career experiences of a veteran acting teacher who, at the age of 85 years, remains highly passionate and dedicated to his work with younger aspiring actors. The article reveals how for this veteran teacher, his strong teacher identity characterised by a quest for challenge and a commitment to career-long professional development are significant to maintaining relevance and passion for teaching. As many countries grapple with issues surrounding the retention of veteran teachers, understanding the ways in which he maintains his passion and commitment over succumbing to stress and burn …