Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Calcaneal Quantitative Ultrasound Indicates Reduced Bone Status Among Physically Active Adult Forager-Horticulturalists, Jonathan Stieglitz, Felicia C. Madimenos, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Six months of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) is considered optimal for infant health, though globally most infants begin complementary feeding (CF) earlier—including among populations that practice prolonged breastfeeding. Two frameworks for understanding patterns of early CF emerge in the literature. In the first, maternal and infant needs trade-off, as “maternal-centric” factors—related to time and energy demands, reproductive investment, cultural influences, and structural barriers— favor supplanting breastfeeding with earlier and increased CF. A second framework considers that “infant-centric” factors—related to infant energetic needs—favor CF before six months to supplement breastfeeding.

We apply these two frameworks in examining early CF among the Tsimane—a …

Life Is Calling ... How Far Will You Go ... Back In The Closet? Identity Negotiation And Management Among Queer, Peace Corps Volunteers, Kate Elizabeth Slisz

Theses and Dissertations

There is little to no research surrounding the experiences of queer, foreign-aid workers. To address this gap, a study was conducted to explore how compulsory heterosexuality affects the social construction of sexuality in societies where queer, foreign-aid workers serve and how this influences their identity negotiation and management processes. Participants consisted of ten self-identified queer, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), as well as, the researcher herself who also identifies as queer. Data was gathered through both semi-structured interviews and autoethnographic research. Meaning structuring through narratives was used to analyze the data. Analysis revealed that strategies of silencing, counterfeiting, and lying …

Issue 67, Autumn 2015, Society Of Bead Researchers

The Bead Forum: Newsletter of the Society of Bead Researchers

The Bead that Gives Its Power to Priests in Dogon Country, by Tonia Marek • The Glass Bead Sequences at Mapela Hill, Zimbabwe: A Preliminary Report, by Rina Faria • Borneo International Beads Conference 2015, by Deborah Zinn • The Omphalos of Delphi, by Karlis Karklins.

The Art Of Passing: What Transgender People Can Teach Us About Gender, Jennifer Clark-Grainger

Anthropology Undergraduate Senior Theses

In this thesis I explore several published articles as well as the life-stories of five Caucasian, transgender informants from the Southeastern United States (specifically, long-term residents of Alabama). This research examines the role "passing" within the transgender community and contains information from interviewees who successfully passed as the opposite gender from the gender they were assigned at birth. These interviews helped me gain understanding, not only about the colorful lives of both those who are transgender and their partners, but also about patriarchy and the gender-binary system we, as Americans, are adhering to. It was my desire to learn from …

Casa De Los Ningunos: Un Estudio De Caso Sobre La Re-Imaginando De “Sumak Qamaña” En Un Contexto Urbano Y Contemporáneo, Vanessa Voller

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Una simple búsqueda en Google de "crisis globales del siglo XXI" dará una larga lista de crisis políticas, sociales, económicas y ambientales que enfrenta el siglo XXI. Teniendo en cuenta estas crisis, se ha hecho evidente que la gente del siglo XXI tendrá que encontrar formas alternativas de vivir, que pondrá a prueba el paradigma occidental dominante de la sociedad; un paradigma plagado por el consumismo, el individualismo, la destrucción del medio ambiente, la mentalidad extractivista y las fuerzas homogeneizadoras de la globalización (Choquehuanca 2010; Huanacuni Mamani-2010). En todo el mundo muchos diversos proyectos e iniciativas están surgiendo para desafiar …

An Expanding Financial Sector: Continuity And Change Among Dhikur Groups In Lower Mustang, Anna Misenti

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Thakali people of lower Mustang have a long history of economic success fostered through community systems that function due to cooperation, but are also characterized by competition. One of these traditional systems is dhikur , a system of rotating credit composed of approximately twenty members. This study examines the roles of traditional savings and credit institutions within communities in lower Mustang in the context of the emergence of private financial institutions in Jomsom over the last ten years. My research displayed the strength of these community based organizations in the face of a private financial sector where organizational requirements …

Challenges To Cultural Heritage Interpretation And Preservation At The Falemata’Aga, The Museum Of Samoa, Elizabeth Bennett

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this study is to ascertain and analyze the challenges the Museum of Samoa faces in its efforts to preserve and interpret aspects of Samoan history and culture. The Museum strives to interpret and preserve Samoan culture. Samoan culture is still practiced today, but is impacted by globalization, climate change, and loss of skills such as oratory and knowledge of genealogies. Participant-observation was conducted at the Museum of Samoa, as were interviews with relevant personnel. The challenges the Museum faces stem from Samoa’s status as a developing nation: education, healthcare, and infrastructure receive priority funding. Many people question …

Historical Perspectives On A National Heroine: R.A. Kartini And The Politics Of Memory, Amber Woodward

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

R.A. Kartini is an Indonesian national heroine, considered Indonesia’s founding feminist. Because of her inherently political status as a woman, a Javanese subject of Dutch colonialism, and an aristocrat, her memory has been used in diverse ways throughout history. In this paper I examine four main periods in which Kartini’s image has been dictated due to current political and social climates: Dutch imperialism, Indonesian independence, the New Order, and the present day. This paper is based on three weeks of research and fieldwork, including eight interviews with eleven informants, who had a diverse range of educational backgrounds and knowledge of …

Waste And Waste Management, Joshua Reno

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Discard studies have demonstrated that waste is more than just a symptom of an all-too-human demand for meaning or a merely technical problem for sanitary engineers and public health officials. The afterlife of waste materials and processes of waste management reveal the centrality of transient and discarded things for questions of materiality and ontology and marginal and polluting labor and environmental justice movements, as well as for critiques of the exploitation and deferred promises of modernity and imperial formations. There is yet more waste will tell us, especially as more studies continue to document the many ways that our wastes …

The Archaeology Of Hassanamesit Woods: The Sarah Burnee/Sarah Boston Farmstead, Stephen Mrozowski, Heather Law Pezzarossi, Dennis Piechota, Heather Trigg, John M. Steinberg, Guido Pezzarossi, Joseph Bagley, Jessica Rymer, Jerry Warner

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

Between 2003 and 2013 the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston conducted an intensive investigation of the Sarah Burnee/Sarah Boston Farmstead on Keith Hill in Grafton, Massachusetts. The project employed a collaborative method that involved working closely with the Town of Grafton, through the Hassanmesit Woods Management Committee, and the Nipmuc Nation, the state recognized government of the Nipmuc people. Yearly excavation and research plans were decided through consultation with both the Nipmuc Tribal Council, their designated representative, Dr. D. Rae Gould, and the Hassanamesit Woods Management Committee. Dr. Gould also played a continuous and …

Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey, Report On The 2014 Field Season, Burial Hill Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Justin A. Warrenfeltz, Richie Roy, David B. Landon, Alexandra Crowder, Katie Wagner

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In May and June of 2014, a field school from the University of Massachusetts Boston, in partnership with Plimoth Plantation, undertook a second season of work in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as part of Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey, a site survey and excavation program leading up to the 400th anniversary of New England’s first permanent English settlement in 1620, the founding of Plymouth Colony. This work was conducted under permit #3384 from the State Archaeologist’s office at the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The 2014 work focused on the eastern edge of Burial Hill along School Street in downtown Plymouth and …

Contested Landscapes: An Analysis Of Using The National Historic Preservation Act (Nhpa) For Traditional Cultural Properties (Tcps) In The Western United States, Kate Monti Barcalow

Anthropology Theses

In this paper, I predominately use a political ecology lens to evaluate the use of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in facilitating American Indians' engagement with ancestral lands now federally governed. I look at how agencies can implement effective consultation that lessens the power imbalance between tribes and the federal government that is inherent in the NHPA, as well as help alleviate conflict between tribes, agencies, and various public interest groups regarding proper land management and use. From July 2014 through December 2014, I conducted eleven semi-structured interviews of participants involved with five Traditional Cultural Places or Properties (TCPs) …

The Lives Of Soldiers In World War Ii, Caroline M. Bosworth

Student Publications

An examination of soldiers' quality of life during World War II. This is done through comparing and contrasting the letters of two different soldiers.

Humanitarianism's History Of The Singular, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

In “The New Universalism” Daniel Bertrand Monk and Andrew Herscher bring together global history and global humanitarianism to argue the emergence of a new (perverse) universal singular—a monadological refugee and form of refuge that threaten to efface both. By putting shelter and displacement side by side, they insightfully point us to different global patterns, such as the turn to the principle of the particular. Monk and Herscher read these patterns against the grain, offering us—almost in passing—a new history of humanitarianism.

‘Reclamation Road’: A Microhistory Of Massacre Memory In Clear Lake, California, Jeremiah J. Garsha

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article is a microhistory of not only the massacre of the indigenous Pomo people in Clear Lake, California, but also the memorialization of this event. It is an examination of two plaques marking the site of the Bloody Island massacre, exploring how memorial representations produce and silence historical memory of genocide under emerging and shifting historical narratives. A 1942 plaque is contextualized to show the co-option of the Pomo and massacre memory by an Anglo-American organization dedicated to settler memory. A 2005 plaque is read as a decentering of this narrative, guiding the viewer through a new hierarchy of …

Percepciones De La Muerte Y La Espiritualidad Cristiana-Aymara Entre Los Proveedores Del Cuidado A Los Adultos Mayores En Putre, Emma Wright

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Research Question: How does Cristian-Aymaran spirituality influence medical decisions and perceptions of death during the end of life care of Aymaran elders?

Objective: To describe the perceptions of spirituality and death among the providers of end of life care in the commune of Putre in order to determine the role of such beliefs in the medical decisions of Aymaran elders with the goal of improving the methods of care.

Background: Statistically the population of Chile is getting older creating a greater need for end of life care programs. In Putre, specifically, the need for end of life care is particularly …

The Making And Re-Making Of Dolpo Identity: A Case Study Of Do-Tarap, Lin Zhu

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The unbelievably harsh environment in Dolpo forces people to be self-sufficient based on agriculture and husbandry, two sectors that complement each other very well. The condition also requires plentiful communal works for survival. Dolpo’s geographical isolation on the one hand, limits Dolpo-pas from encountering others, and on the other hand, prevents the presence of the central government. Before the 1960’s, Dolpo still remained as a politically autonomous region under the Kingdom of Nepal. However, based on interviews conduced with both local villagers and outsiders such as governmental officials and Nepalese, the paper argues that, starting from the 1960’s, Dolpo-pas began …

Conservation For Whom?: The Struggle For Indigenous Rights In Sagarmatha National Park, Jake Sivinski

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since its creation in 1976 Sagarmatha National Park has been the subject of a great deal of internal scrutiny by the regions indigenous Sherpa Inhabitants. Since their arrival in the Khumbu valley some four centuries ago, the Sherpa people have held a deep respect for their land and have practiced a highly organized and effective form of environmental stewardship which they refer to as Yul-Tim. At its core Yul-Tim relies on the authority of certain village members to make and enforce rules within the community: a practice that has been greatly undermined by creation of SNP. While SNP has had …

Wearing Memories: Clothing And The Global Lives Of Mourning In Swaziland, Casey Golomski

Anthropology

This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global …

Inference Of Cultural Transmission Modes Based On Incomplete Information, Bryan Wilder, Anne Kandler

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

In this paper we explore the theoretical limits of the inference of cultural transmission modes based on sparse population-level data. We approach this problem by investigating whether different transmission modes produce different temporal dynamics of cultural change. In particular we explore whether the distributions of the average time a variant stays the most common variant in the population, denoted by t_max, conditioned on the considered transmission modes are sufficiently different to allow for inference of underlying transmission modes. We assume time series data detailing the frequencies of different variants of a cultural trait in a population at different …