International and Area Studies Commons^™

U.S. Human Rights Activism And Plan Colombia, Winifred L. Tate

Faculty Scholarship

Non-governmental organizations claim to play a central role in defining U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the field of human rights. Here, I will examine the role of human rights and humanitarian groups in the debates over U.S. foreign policy towards Colombia, focusing on the design and subsequent additional appropriations for Plan Colombia, a multi-billion dollar aid package beginning in 2000. I argue that NGOs were able to build on the legacy of prior human rights activism focusing on Latin America, but failed to achieve significant grassroots mobilization around this issue. I examine the structural issues limiting such mobilization, as well …

Soleil, Sexe Et Vidéo: La Comédie Populaire Aux Antilles, Françoise Naudillon

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The comedy of manners presented in the form of play or in the form of sketches or playlet by the medium of videos and DVDs is a phenomenon that develops in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana, but also in France. These productions are the link between communities in the Creole area (Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana) and the outside (metropolitan France and diaspora). They will be analyzed for their popular and scholarly features between erudite comedy and farce, between traditional and postcréolitaire cultural affirmation, between Creole and French, between Italian theatre and yardplay, between creole comedy and vaudeville, between negropolitan diaspora and …

From Sugar To Blackberries: Restructuring Agro-Export Production In Michoacán, Mexico, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

In recent years, economic crisis in the sugar industry and the closure of an important sugar mill in Michoacán, Mexico, have fostered the entry of transnational agribusinesses that contract with local growers for blackberry production. Land concentration is under way as wealthy growers rent ejido (agrarian-reform) land to grow berries and small-scale growers shift to less capitalized berry production or migrate out of the region. An analysis of the impact of this transition, part of the globalization of the agro-food system, on campesinos, workers, and their communities reveals that a general improvement in the economy has been accompanied by increased …

A Bioeconomic Approach To Marriage And The Sexual Division Of Labor, Michael Gurven, Jeffrey Winking, Hillard Kaplan, Christopher Von Rueden, Lisa Mcallister

ESI Publications

Children may be viewed as public goods whereby both parents receive equal genetic benefits yet one parent often invests more heavily than the other.We introduce a microeconomic framework for understanding household investment decisions to address questions concerning conflicts of interest over types and amount of work effort among married men and women. Although gains and costs of marriage may not be spread equally among marriage partners, marriage is still a favorable, efficient outcome under a wide range of conditions. This bioeconomic framework subsumes both cooperative and conflictive views on the sexual division of labor. We test hypotheses concerning marriage markets, …

Indomitable Patriarchy, Ambivalent Masculinities? Investigating Men's Gendered Relations In Egypt /, Katherine Pavljuk

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

H. M. Chauke Research Of African Hlengwe People, Happyson William Matsilele Chauke, Tillerman Houser

ATS Digital Resources

This is a collection of historical and cultural research works about the vaHlengwe people of Zimbabwe, created by Happyson Chauke before his untimely death by a hit and run driver in 2009. It was compiled by his friend Tillman Houser, who spent 35 years as a missionary to Zimbabwe under the Free Methodist Church. The bulk of the collection is comprised of the book entitled: "The miracle of Lundi Mission: lest we forget."

From Greed To Grievance: The Shifting Political Profile Of The Colombian Paramilitaries, Winifred Tate

Faculty Scholarship

On June 28, 2004, indicted drug trafficker and paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, wearing a fashionable Italian suit and tie, addressed the Colombian Congress from the podium. "The judgment of history will recognize the goodness and nobility of our cause," he told the assembled legislators and press. The day before, Mancuso, along with two other paramilitary leaders, had traveled in an official air force plane from the small northern Colombia hamlet where paramilitary leaders had assembled to begin talks with the Colombian government. After almost a decade of fighting outside the law, Mancuso was now addressing the heart of the state, …

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.

The Tadpole Of Hypsiboas Atlanticus (Anura, Hylidae) From Northeastern Brazil, Filipe A. C. Do Nascimento, Marcelo G. De Lima, Gabriel O. Skuk, Rafael O. De Sá

Biology Faculty Publications

The tadpole of Hypsiboas atlanticus (Caramaschi & Velosa, 1996) is described from the municipality of Maceió, State of Alagoas, Brazil. At stage 36 the larvae have an overall elliptical body in lateral and dorsal views, oral disc anteroventral, spiracular tube sinistral, and labial tooth row formula 2(1,2)/3(1). The oral disc is surrounded, almost completely (anterior medial gap present) by a single row of marginal papillae. Described tadpoles of the H. punctatus species group can be differentiated by a combined disc oral features. Additional descriptions of H. punctatus (Schneider, 1799) tadpoles from populations throughout South America may be helpful in determining …

Theft As ‘Involuntary Gifting’ Among The Tacana Of Northern Bolivia, Laura A. Bathurst

School of International Studies Faculty Articles

It has been well established in the anthropological literature that reciprocity, in its various cultural forms, is simultaneously produced by and productive of social relationships; it both comments upon social relationships and plays a role in creating them. However, this has generally been demonstrated using positive forms of reciprocity. In this paper I examine how theft, as a form of negative reciprocity, fit with a wider set of positive reciprocal obligations among the Tacana in northeastern Bolivia in 2001-2002. Theft, I argue, was part of a coherent cultural system in which a material basis, social norms, and values and beliefs …

Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed By Jared Diamond (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), Kathleen Florita

Global Tides

Book review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (2005).

Im/Possible Lives: Gender, Class, Self-Fashioning, And Affinal Solidarity In Modern South Asia, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Drawing on ethnographic research and employing a micro-historical approach that recognizes not only the transnational but also the culturally specific manifestations of modernity, this article centers on the efforts of a young woman to negotiate shifting and conflicting discourses about what a good life might consist of for a highly educated and high caste Hindu woman living at the margins of a nonetheless globalized world. Newly imaginable worlds in contemporary Mithila,South Asia, structure feeling and action in particularly gendered and classed ways, even as the capacity of individuals to actualize those worlds and the “modern” selves envisioned within them are …

Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and …

Washington Heights/Inwood Demographic, Economic, And Social Transformations 1990 – 2005 With A Special Focus On The Dominican Population, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning New York City based Latinos in Washington Heights and Inwood – particularly Dominicans.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: Since the 1980s the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights/Inwood has been transformed by the immigration of a large Latino population of whom Dominicans have been the most prominent national group. Latinos made up …

Socio-Economic And Cost Of Living Indicators Among Foreign And Domestic-Born Latino Nationalities In The New York Metropolitan Area, 2005, Howard Caro-López

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report focuses on comparing socio-economic conditions between foreign born and domestic born populations among the major Latino national groups in the New York City metropolitan area as of 2005.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: New York City Latinos lag considerably behind all other groups in terms of total family income. While median family income for non-Hispanic white residents far …

Mexicans In New York City, 2007: An Update, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines the Mexican population of New York City in 2007.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The Mexican-origin population of New York City continued its extraordinary growth between 2005 and 2007 increasing by just over 27%, from 227,842 to 289,755 persons according to American Community Survey data for 2007 released by the U.S. Census Bureau. From 2000, the Mexican …

The Multiple Dimensions Of Male Social Status In An Amazonian Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

"In all human societies, individuals differ in social status depending upon their age and personal ability (Sahlins, 1958; Service, 1971). In laboratory-based small group studies, status hierarchies emerge spontaneously (Bass, 1954; Campbell et al., 2002; Kalma, 1991). Even among “egalitarian” foragers, who are characterized by widespread resource sharing (Kaplan & Gurven, 2005; Winterhalder, 1986) and some degree of status-leveling (Cashdan, 1980), certain individuals consume more resources, get the best pick of mates, and take a more central role in group decision-making (Boehm, 1999; Trigger, 1985; Wiessner, 1996). Whether implicit or overt, classification by social status is a human universal. While …

Aging And Inflammation In Two Epidemiological Worlds, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Jeffrey Winking, Caleb Finch, Eileen M. Crimmins

ESI Publications

Humans evolved in a world with high levels of infection resulting in high mortality across the life span and few survivors to advanced ages. Under such conditions, a strong acute-phase inflammatory response was required for survival; however, inflammatory responses can also promote chronic diseases of aging. We hypothesize that global historical increases in life span at older ages are partly explained by reduced lifetime exposure to infection and subsequent inflammation. To begin a test of this hypothesis, we compare C-reactive protein (CRP); levels in two populations with different epidemiological environments: the Tsimane of Bolivia and persons in the United States. …

The Farthest Place: The Making And Remaking Of Social Boundaries In Abu Minqar, Joseph John Viscomi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Alumnos Transnacionales: Las Escuelas Mexicanas Frente A La Globalización, Víctor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann, Juan Sánchez García

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Counter to the expectations that Mexico-U.S. migration is one-way, adult, and from Mexico to the United States, this Spanish-language book includes nine chapters describing various facets of the lives and educational circumstances of students encountered in Mexican schools who have previously attended U.S. schools. Data were derived from written questionnaires from a sample of more than 24,000 students in the Mexican states of Zacatecas and Nuevo León, of whom 632 had U.S. school experience and/or a U.S. birthplace and thereby American citizenship, and from more than 125 interviews with transnational students and their teachers. This study variously considers transnational students' …

Science Fiction And Postmemory Han In Contemporary Korean American Literature, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In this essay, Seo-Young Chu explores representations of a specifically Korean American type of postmemory that she calls "postmemory han."

Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women there. I argue that in Maithil women's folktales, as in their paintings, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into interpretive conversation …

Demographic, Economic, And Social Transformations In The South Bronx: Changes In The Nyc Community Districts Comprising Mott Haven, Port Morris, Melrose, Longwood, And Hunts Point, 1990 - 2005, Astrid S. Rodríguez

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report analyzes demographic and socioeconomic characteristics among the five largest Latino nationality groups during 1990-2005 in South Bronx, specifically the neighborhoods of Mott Haven, Port Morris, Melrose, Longwood, and Hunts Point.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino subgroup in the South Bronx, accounting for over half of the total population by 2005 although their …

Invoking The Sacred: Journeys Into 'Ashura As Ritual And Art Across Time And Space, Dena Al-Adeeb

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Beyond Confronting The Myth Of Racial Democracy: The Role Of Afro-Brazilian Women Scholars And Activists, Nathalie Lebon

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

This paper offers a synopsis of the current scholarship mapping the social and economic exclusion of women of African descent in Brazil. It highlights the work of and role played by Afro-Brazilian women scholars and activists in redressing the paucity, until recently, of basic data and research on the life conditions of women of African descent. Finally, it provides some initial thoughts on the national and transnational dynamics of knowledge production underlying this state of affairs.

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 83, No. 8, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …

Synthesizing Gauguin: A Comparative Look At Cultural Contexts And Gauguin’S Tahitian Paintings, Joanna Miller

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

When a plethora of primary sources exist from an artist, a tendency persists for the art historian to focus on an artist’s personality when analyzing or interpreting that artist’s work. In the case of Paul Gauguin and his Tahitian works, his personality faults, extreme character, and uncouth notions and motivations become the concentration of much scholarship and can lead to a misjudgment of the artist’s depiction of the Tahitian natives and culture. This paper examines how Gauguin represented a foreign peoples and met the goals he pursued under Primitivism, Symbolism, and Synthetism by analyzing the cultural contexts of Fin-de-siecle France …

The Attitudes Of Finnish Tourists And Egyptians Towards Tourism In Hurghada, Laila El-Mahgary

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Cod Fish, Walrus, And Chieftains: Economic Intensification In The Norse North Atlantic, Sophia Perdikaris, Thomas H. Mcgovern

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Introduction

Just over a thousand years ago, Scandinavian voyagers crossed the grey waters of the North Atlantic to briefly explore the coast of North America. These now well publicized transatlantic trips were part of larger economic, environmental, and social developments of the Viking Age, and were the product of an Iron Age chiefly society with a complex economy incorporating both classic “prestige goods” and “staple goods” components. The Viking Age expansion was the result of linked factors of economic intensification, military and technological advances, climate change, and intense com-petition among chiefly elites and between elites and commoners. The period saw …