Anthropology Commons^™

Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may provide a template for the examination of constructed commons in the cultural environment. The approach promises to lead to a better understanding of how participants in commons and pooling arrangements structure their interactions in relation to the environment(s) within which they are embedded and with which they share interdependent relationships. Such an improved understanding is critical for obtaining a more complete …

Copyright’S Twilight Zone: Digital Copyright Lessons From The Vampire Blogosphere, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Web 2.0 technologies, characterized by user-generated content, raise new challenges for copyright law. Online interactions involving reproductions of copyrighted works in blogs, online fan fiction, and online social networks do not comfortably fit existing copyright paradigms. It is unclear whether participants in Web 2.0 forums are creating derivative works, making legitimate fair uses of copyright works, or engaging in acts of digital copyright piracy and plagiarism. As online conduct becomes more interactive, copyright laws are less effective in creating clear signals about proscribed conduct. This article examines the application of copyright law to Web 2.0 technologies. It suggests that social …

What Blogging Might Teach About Cybernorms, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Since the dawn of the information age, scholars have debated the viability of regulating cyberspace. Early on, Professor Lawrence Lessig suggested that “code is law” online. Lessig and others also examined the respective regulatory functions of laws, code, market forces, and social norms. In recent years, with the rise of Web 2.0 interactive technologies, norms have taken center-stage as a regulatory modality online. The advantages of norms are that they can develop quickly by the communities that seek to enforce them, and they are not bound by geography. However, to date there has been scant literature dealing in any detail …

Doma And The Happy Family: A Lesson In Irony, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

In enacting the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress chose to protect heterosexual marriage because of its “deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing. Simply put, government has an interest in marriage because it has an interest in children.” Ironically, DOMA may harm, rather than protect, the interests of some children – i.e., the children of gay and lesbian couples.

Both state and federal law reflect the belief that children are better off being raised by two parents in an intact family. This belief is reflected in the marital presumption of paternity, which presumes that a married woman’s …

The End Of Farming In The “Northern Periphery” Of The Southwest, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

Prehispanic farmers belonging to the Virgin and Fremont traditions once occupied most of Utah and adjacent parts of Arizona and Nevada. Through much of the twentieth century, these areas were called the "Northern Periphery'' of the Southwest, but in recent decades, both Fremont and Virgin have often been left out of syntheses of southwestern archaeology-even though they clearly had strong connections to the Southwest and represented, respectively, the northernmost and westernmost extensions of maize-based horticulture in western North America. This exclusion results from a combination of factors, the most important of which are geography and the territorial behavior of some …

Misrepresentation As Complicity: The Genocide Against Indigenous Americans In High School History Textbooks, Andrew C. (Andrew Charles) Holcom

WWU Graduate School Collection

Textbooks are the guiding documents for high school history courses in the United States, and states create their own education standards for their students. Washington State expects students to consider indigenous peoples' perspective on United States history to be one of genocide. Given this mandate, textbooks used in Washington State are responsible for presenting that perspective. That responsibility is primarily placed on textbooks because they represent a disproportionate amount of the curricular materials used in United States history classes across the country. A sample of six textbooks representing half of those currently used in Whatcom County, Washington, was analyzed for …

The Female Athlete Triad In A Subsample Of Female Wwu Athletes, Colby Langenberg

WWU Graduate School Collection

High performance female athletes can jeopardize their health if their energy requirements during preparations for competitions are excessive. The problems that result are called the Female Athlete Triad characterized by low energy availability with or without disordered eating, menstrual dysfunction/ amenorrhea, and osteoporosis and either alone or in combination can lead to more serious pathologies. The goal here is to determine whether intercollegiate female athletes exhibit elements of the triad at Western Washington University. Sixteen athletes from Western Washington University's soccer and cross-country program were recruited. Participant's average age was 19.24 years with an average height of 65.83 inches, average …

Identity Politics At Grand Ronde: Toward An Ethnohistory Of The Tribes Of The Willamette Valley, 1855-1901, Nora K. Pederson

WWU Graduate School Collection

In the 19th century the federal government and local Indian agents began a series of policies aimed at breaking down tribal distinctions at the Grand Ronde reservation in northwestern Oregon. The 'successes' of these assimilation policies were well documented by contemporary federal officials, missionaries and anthropologists. Today many ethnohistorians continue to write about the history of Grand Ronde as if tribes had dissolved by the end of the 19th century. Over the last 20 years most scholars who have written on 19th century identity at Grand Ronde view identity as a social phenomenon and try to incorporate indigenous perspectives, but …

"Introduction", Chris Hebdon

Chris Hebdon

The Energy Reader presents a series of readings that examine the energy problem from an anthropological perspective and look at energy holistically, including social and cultural components and long term implications for global and social environmental change.

Brings a unique critical approach to the problem of energy and its complexity

Presents the topic as both a human and a technological problem, differentiating long-term perspectives from short term fixes

Includes coverage of the politics of energy, the protection of future generations, the avoidance of dangerous waste products, efficiency, resilience, and democratic relevance

Features selections drawn from the work of physicists, economists, …

Consultation And Collaboration With Descendant Communities, Stephen Silliman, T.J. Ferguson

Stephen W. Silliman

No abstract provided.

Culture And Co-Morbidity In East And West Berliners, Mary Fechner

Mary Fechner

Following the collapse of socialism, fluctuations in cardiac mortality rates in East Germany and a West-to-East cardiac health gradient became topics of interest. Researchers suggested possible causes for these phenomena, including stress from postsocialism. I proposed that a cultural investigation of heart disease comorbid with depression could inform our understanding of the potential health effects of the postsocialist transition. I conducted ethnographic and survey research. In the study described here, I administered a depression scale (CES-D) and an ethnographically derived measure of cultural stress (Good Life Survey) to over 200 East and West Berliners with cardiovascular disease. Comparison of the …

Mala's Dream: Economic Policies, National Debates, And Sri Lankan Garment Workers, Caitrin Lynch

Caitrin Lynch

This anthology provides a lively and stimulating view of the lives of ordinary citizens in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. For the second edition of this popular textbook, readings have been updated and new essays added. The result is a timely collection that explores key themes in understanding the region, including gender, caste, class, religion, globalization, economic liberalization, nationalism, and emerging modernities. New readings focus attention on the experiences of the middle classes, migrant workers, and IT professionals, and on media, consumerism, and youth culture. Clear and engaged writing makes this text particularly valuable for general and student …

Letter From The Visual Anthropology Review Editor: Seeing China (American Anthropologist), Marc Moskowitz

Marc L. Moskowitz

No abstract provided.

Considerations For Culturally Appropriate Hiv/Aids Education Strategies In Belize: An Analytical Study Exploring The Relationship Between Knowledge And Stigma, C. Mcinnes, Treena Orchard, E. Druyts, R. Baird, W. Zhang, R. Hogg, P. Vandeusen

Dr. Treena Orchard

No abstract provided.

Courting And Consorting With The Global: The Local Politics Of An Emerging World Heritage Site In Sulawesi, Indonesia, Kathleen Adams

Kathleen M. Adams

No abstract provided.

Unrwa: Through The Eyes Of Its Refugee Employees, Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

The article argues that the absence of Palestinian political leadership and institutions following al-Nakba in 1948, led the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to take on an exaggerated role that mirrored those of a welfare government-in-exile. The Agency created the matrix that organized daily life in refugee camps, a process facilitated by its Palestinian and refugee employees.1 Local staff holds a paradoxical position: (i) as Palestinians who share with their beneficiaries a collective history, and (ii) as UNRWA employees who exercise less power and authority compared to international staff. The latter …

“Knowledge In The Service Of The Cause”:Education And The Sahrawi Struggle For Self-Determination, Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

This article examines the education strategy of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the state-in-exile with partial sovereignty on “borrowed territory” in Algeria. The article, which opens with a historical glance at the conflict, argues that SADR’s education program not only succeeded in fostering self-reliance by developing skilled human resources, but was forward looking, using education as a vehicle to instill “new traditions of citizenship” and a new imagined national community, in preparation for future repatriation. In managing refugee camps as provinces of a state, the boundaries between the “refugee” as status and the “citizen” as a political identity were …

Using Historic Mutinies To Understand Defiance In Modern Organizations., Ray Coye, Patrick Murphy, Patricia Spencer

Patrick J. Murphy

Purpose: Guided by voice and leadership theory, we articulate the underpinnings of upward defiance (competence deficiency; ignorance of concerns; structural gaps between echelons) and describe the managerial actions that help depose those underpinnings. Design / Methodology / Approach: We analyze 30 historic narrative accounts of actual mutinies. The journalistic accounts from bygone eras provide unparalleled insight into the basic dynamics of mutiny and provide novel insights into organizational defiance. Findings: Our principal findings show that the underpinnings of mutiny in organizations derive from three foundations: disconnections between authority echelons, modes of addressing member disgruntlement, and the need for management to …

Migration, Membership, And The Modern Nation-State: Internal And External Dimensions Of The Politics Of Belonging Migration And Membership, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.

Accounting For Absence: The Colombian Paramilitaries In U.S. Policy Debates, Winifred Tate

Winifred L. Tate

Big, attention-grabbing numbers are frequently used in policy debates and media reporting: "At least 200,000-250,000 people died in the war in Bosnia." "There are three million child soldiers in Africa." "More than 650,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." "Between 600,000 and 800,000 women are trafficked across borders every year." "Money laundering represents as much as 10 percent of global GDP." "Internet child porn is a $20 billion-a-year industry."

Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger …