Anthropology Commons^™

Putting It Gently: The Other Side Of A Peace Corps Volunteer Experience, Nicole Jacobson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Peace Corps is a transformative experience for many young Americans. The majority of volunteers have worthwhile services they remember fondly; however, these experiences are not always positive. The Peace Corps is a Cold War initiative that uses soft power techniques to further American exceptionalism, capitalism, and the modernization theory of development. The goal of this project was to understand what factors led to the negative experiences of Peace Corps Volunteers. I conducted an ethnography that focused on online communities, semi-structured interviews, Peace Corps memoirs, and news articles to understand Peace Corps Volunteers’ experiences and the organizational culture where they …

Pedagogy In Times Of Crisis, James Daria, Abigail Wightman, Shelly Yankovskyy, Amanda J. Reinke

Southern Anthropologist

Editors’ note: With this issue, we launch a new feature of the journal, drawing from a panel discussion or roundtable at SAS, which sparked important discussion for panelists and conference participants. This panel, which took place on April 9, 2022, in Raleigh, NC, was part of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society with the theme “Public Interest and Professional Anthropology in the South.” The roundtable was organized and moderated by Amanda J. Reinke. The transcript was created by Helen Regis and the conversation was lightly edited by the authors, who also had an opportunity to include references …

Author Exchange, Sushmita Pati, Mukulika Banerjee

Popular Media

Anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee and political scientist Sushmita Pati have a conversation about their recently published books set in rural Bengal and Delhi’s urban villages, respectively. They situate their analyses of the intersections between democracy, capitalism, urbanization, and globalization in events, relations, and cultures of the everyday. Their exchange offers important insights for how political subjectivities and social ties are differently constituted or, to use Banerjee’s term, “cultivated” in these two settings. The two books offer a fine-grained view of how active citizenship in rural and urban India is refracted through distinct social and institutional structures. India is home to some …

A Brief Comparison Of Two Early Neighborhoods- Consumerism And Social Class In 20th Century Lincoln Nebraska, Mariska Molnar

Anthropology Department: Theses

In the Fall of 2018, Matthew Hansen monitored the destruction of a parking lot two blocks north of the Capitol Building for the subsequent building of a geothermal system. During this period, and excavation was conducted with the aid of the UNL Campus Archaeology Project, and 12 features were identified. Five features produced artifacts, with Feature 11, a cistern, being the most fruitful. The collection was named the Capitol Wellfield, and a portion of the artifacts, which includes diagnostic glass and ceramic pieces, are housed on campus for studying.

Most research and publication have been focused on older excavations and …

Navigating Complexity Of Serving Displaced Communities: A Study Of Yemeni Community-Based Organizations In Egypt, Alya Mohammed Al-Mahdi

Theses and Dissertations

Forced displacement is a global crisis that poses challenges for nations like Egypt. Despite international NGO support, escalating displaced individuals have overwhelmed existing capacities. Refugee Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) have emerged as a natural response from the communities themselves to bridge the gap between the state and NGOs and the refugee community. However, CBOs in Egypt face challenges that impact their operation and continuity. Through qualitative research, this study aims to explore the experience of the Yemeni CBOs. Through interviews with seven people from six CBOs conducted through field visits and online calls, this research uncovers the dynamics of Yemeni CBOs …

First Approximation Of Population Distributions On The International Space Station, Justin St. P. Walsh, Rao Hamza Ali, Alice C. Gorman, Amir Kanan Kashefi

Art Faculty Articles and Research

This paper presents an analysis of data derived from thousands of publicly available photographs showing life on the International Space Station (ISS) between 2000 and 2020. Our analysis uses crew and locational information from the photographs’ metadata to identify the distribution of different population groups—by gender, nationality, and space agency affiliation—across modules of the ISS, for the first time. Given the significance of the ISS as the most intensively inhabited space habitat to date, an international cooperative initiative involving 26 countries and five space agencies, and one of the most expensive building projects ever undertaken by humans, developing an understanding …

Challenges Of Accessibility Of A Community Heritage Tourist Route: The Route Of The Caste War, Cecilia S. Medina Martín, David E. Tamayo Torres, Margarita De A Navarro Favela, Fredi R. Un Noh

Journal of Maya Heritage

This article presents the results of an accessibility analysis of The Caste War Route (RGC), prior to its commercialization as a community heritage product. The analysis consists of a diagnosis of the resource to establish destination-planning strategies. The accessibility diagnosis goes beyond adapting physical spaces for transit, considering that the resource is accessible to all types of people, including economic, spatial and temporal accessibility, criteria on which the research focuses.

The diagnosis was prepared through a multidisciplinary investigation that collected information from different sectors with qualitative and quantitative tools that combined the recording of data and the opinion of the …

Expanding The Orbit Of Maya Culture: Creating A Non-Profit In The United States, Apollo Liu, Callie Passwater, Skyler Steckler, Ryan Rowberry

Journal of Maya Heritage

Archaeologists Without Borders of the Maya World (AWBMW) is a Mexican non-profit organization focused on promoting and preserving Mayan history, particularly archaeological sites and tangible culture. To assist its mission, AWBMW wants to be able to solicit donations from U.S. entities to assist in spreading awareness of Maya culture worldwide. Using the U.S. tax code and laws from state of Georgia, this article outlines the legal steps and strategies a foreign non-profit organization must consider when desiring to start a non-profit organization in the United States. Strategies on opening a U.S. branch of an existing foreign non-profit, linking a new …

Global Health Interventions: The Military, The Magic Bullet, The Deterministic Model-And Intervention Otherwise, Emily Yates-Doerr, Lauren Carruth, Gideon Lasco, Rosario García-Meza

Development Studies Faculty Publications

"Intervention" is central to global health, but the significance and effects of how intervention is practiced are often taken for granted. This review takes interventions into health and medicine as subjects for ethnographic inquiry. We highlight three lines of anthropological contributions: studies of global health interventions that serve imperial and military objectives, studies of "magic bullet" interventions arising from laboratory science, and studies of interventions based on deterministic modeling techniques. We then outline examples of "intervention otherwise," in which people build relations of solidarity and care through global health programming, design interventions to be interactive and adaptable, and use data …

Clinically Applied Anthropology: A Syndemic Intervention., Jason W. Wilson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates that a critical, clinically applied anthropology is possible by testing a hypothesis that a syndemic intervention, and use of a structural vulnerability assessment tool, can achieve improved healthcare outcomes. A critical, clinically applied anthropology integrates social scientists into healthcare delivery, alongside biomedical providers, through the co-creation of new diagnostic and patient care pathways that utilize anthropological methods (ethnographically informed care, syndemics, thematic/mixed methods data analysis) and advance anthropological theory (biomedicine and culture, structural violence, structural competency/vulnerability, ontology, assemblage theory, and entanglements) to decrease healthcare inequities.

Medical anthropology has previously engaged biomedicine and other attempts at a clinical …

The Embodied Rhetoric Of Cognitive Labour, Shubhayan Chakrabarti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation traces the roots of neoliberal selfhood to the rationalist ontology of modernity in the 1600s. The historical tension between materialism and immaterialism is expressed in the historicisation of work into Fordism and post-Fordism where embodied factory toil is apparently replaced by immaterial work, recalling Descartes’ mind-body split. If post-Fordist work addresses the Marxist critique of alienation in its emphasis on entrepreneurial inner selves, it does not explain the post-Fordist preoccupation to efficiently “Taylorise” the body through obsessive productivity. I argue that the factory prevails in the entrepreneur’s adoption of factory efficiency as a learnt behaviour from the Fordist …

Agensi Dan Performativitas Gender Transpuan Pekerja Seni: Merespons Diskriminasi Atas Identitas Gender Pada Dua Ranah Kehidupan Dalam Komunitas Topeng Betawi, Adhalina Maria, Yunita Triwardhani Winarto, Mia Siscawati

Antropologi Indonesia

This paper describes the experiences of transwoman artists who navigate two realms of life: their daily life and their life as performance artists. They face the challenge of dealing with gender construction within a community that adheres to heteronormative beliefs. The focus of this study is on gender performativity and agency, specifically examining how a transwoman artist respond to gender discrimination and violence in ways that differ from their cisgender counterparts. The research employed ethnographic methods, including participant observation, to gain an immersive understanding of the informants' day-to-day activities. The findings of this study contribute to the existing understanding of …

Book Review Misreading The Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, And Livelihoods In Coastal Bangladesh, Indrawan Prasetyo

Antropologi Indonesia

With more and more funds directed to change-related projects, climate change adaptation has since emerged as one of the most powerful development buzzwords, shaping the landscape of development funding and international donors' priority. Against this backdrop, Camelia Dewan’s book “Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh” poses a fundamental argument that the "reductive climate translation" perpetuated by international donors and development projects marginalizes local voices and exacerbates environmental and societal problems in the Bengal Delta.

Queering Ecology: Three Investigations From Indigenous Women In Post-Conflict North Sumatra, Perdana Roswaldy

Antropologi Indonesia

Feminists and environmental scholars draw connections between gender inequality, heterosexism, and the devastating impact of environmental catastrophes on the livelihoods of women and gender minorities, exacerbating their precarity. This body of scholarship has begun to imagine alternatives to patriarchal gender and heterosexual norms for reconciling the relationship between humans and nature by calling for "queer(ing) ecology." I investigate the possibility of queering ecology by posing three theoretical concerns in opposition to anthropocentric and gendered preconceptions about nature: its idleness, naturality, and rightfulness. Respectively, I will dissect such presumptions by questioning nature as metaphors, investigating "the natural" attribute in nature, and …

Inside The Treehouse: Ethnographic Musings On An Architectural Research In Korowai, Southern Papua, Irfan Nugraha

Antropologi Indonesia

This paper explores the role of narratives in (re)shaping human-environment relations as well as development agenda. This work is inspired by my research in 2017 on the traditions and daily life of the Korowai communities residing in neglected development areas in Southern Papua, Indonesia. My reflection during an architectural research tells that the Indonesian government efforts of on cultural conservation there overlap with tales of hopes and betrayals brought by development. In response to their historical disappointment, Korowai people developed a different narratives on the government, the settlement construction, tourism, and other “modern” interventions imposed on them. I argue the …

Negotiating Environmental Crisis Within Forest Ecosystem Restoration Projects In Puncak And Lombok, Indonesia, Sundjaya -, Syarifudin -

Antropologi Indonesia

The Forest Ecosystem Restoration (FER) project is a technological-science attempt to restore the damaged landscape as part of the environmental crisis mitigation. To some extent, the adoption of FER has also altered forest land use practices adopted by rural farmers as part of their livelihood. In rural-urban perspective, FER projects might be considered as a process of transferring environmental burdens from urban-downstream to rural-upstream communities living in the watershed areas. Our qualitative research in two FER project Puncak and Lombok, however, demonstrates how multiple actors, including local communities, actively influence the crisis defining process throughout problematization, mediation, apprehension stages. Such …

The Fantasy Of National Rice Barn And Reality Of Farmers In Indramayu, Rhino Ariefiansyah, Rivaldo Herman

Antropologi Indonesia

This paper centers on Indramayu's designation as the "national rice barn" (Daerah Lumbung Padi Nasional). Contrary to the believed narrative, our findings show that Indramayu’s agricultural dreams have been subsidized by other income generating activities, particularly from migrant remittance. We argue that the extensive environmental degradation and ecological vulnerabilities experienced in Indramayu have compelled small-scale farmers to pursue opportunities as migrant workers to sustain and expand their agricultural endeavors. Considering the inherent risk of fraud, robbery, blackmailing, human trafficking, physical and mental torture experienced by migrant workers, we suggest this agrarian imagination as "cruel optimism" that Indramayu farmers endure while …

The Green Encounters: “Common Good” Narrative And Community Struggle In Halimun Salak Coridor, West Java, Sulastri Sardjo

Antropologi Indonesia

Since the colonial era of the East Indies, multiple ruling regimes have promoted a certain narrative to utilize the forests on Mount Halimun Salak for nature preservation and profit accumulation. Existing studies of the designation of Halimun Salak as a conservation area have shown that such an establishment led to conflicts over land and livelihoods with the surrounding communities and local farmers. Complementing these studies, my qualitative research in the Halimun Salak Corridor (HSC) highlights that the “common good” narrative promoted by conservation programs has not benefited people’s livelihoods. Conversely, the expansion of conservation area through HSC has further restricted …

Retelling Environmental Narratives In Indonesia: A Prologue, Sofyan Ansori

Antropologi Indonesia

Indonesians have been familiarized to environmental narratives such as “ibu bumi” (mother Earth), “tanah surga” (heaven soils), “hutan untuk kesejahteraan” (forests for prosperity), “lahan tidur” (idle lands), “bencana alam'' (natural disaster), “net sink,” among many others. While the propagation of such jargons, histories, or myths might not necessarily be ill-intended, the impacts of some of these shared narratives have been lethal to Indonesian lifescapes. Accordingly, the selected articles in this special issue do not take narratives for granted. Rather, they discuss various mechanisms through which state institutions, conservation NGOs, local populations, corporations, experts, and intermediaries proliferate particular environmental explanations to …

Press Freedom Under Threat In Europe: Slapps And Democracy, Maya Oleary-Cyr

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper critically examines the legal systems of European countries and their relationship to press freedom, particularly the vexatious legal threats used by government officials and corporations to silence journalists. These legal threats are known as SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) and their use has increased exponentially in the last decade. Although the issue is global, this research analyzes the issue through the lens of Greece, Italy, and Hungary. As member states, each one of these countries has an obligation to uphold the democratic standards put forth by the EU. Journalists are a vital aspect of the democratic process …