Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Trends In Midwifery In The United States, Alexandra P. Alvarez

Social Sciences

Midwives have become more popular in recent years, and a rising percentage of women have been choosing midwives over doctors. Originally midwives were mostly used by minority women, but now more caucasian women are finding midwives to be a natural and preferable way to give birth. Due to this change in trend, midwives are becoming more accepted in society. This paper examines and defines the reasons behind the changing trends of midwifery in the United States. Specifically, if this changing trend has to deal with interventions, such as pitocin or cesarean sections, by doctors to speed up the delivery process. …

The Association Of The Nutrition Transition And The Development Of Eating Disorders, Amy Kelly

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

We Work, We Eat Together: Anti-Authoritarian Mutual Aid Politics In New York City, 2004-2013, David Spataro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City's neoliberal restructuring has fundamentally transformed the city's labor market and privatized many important aspects of a once robust municipal welfare system. In this research I examine one radical response to these changes: anti-authoritarian mutual aid groups that blend Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture with direct action politics. These are projects where activists attempt to build strong communities of resistance by organizing collective forms of social reproduction. I find that these projects are a threat to neoliberal urbanization because they reorganize reproduction beyond the household scale while simultaneously criticizing the social relations of capitalism as the root of household insecurity. …

The Music And Multiple Identities Of Kurdish Alevis From Turkey In Germany, Ozan Aksoy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the experiences of Kurdish Alevis, currently living in Germany, who trace their background to locations within the boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. I argue that music has been a particularly important mode through which Kurdish Alevis in Germany have articulated collective histories and have fashioned narratives of belonging and multiple and sometimes contradictory identities. The subjects of my research are immigrants and refugees who are ethnically Kurdish and whose religion is Alevi, an Anatolian religion whose relations to both Sunni and Shi'a Islam are historically controversial. They speak Turkish along with Kurdish, in most cases are …

"A New Way Of Doing Politics": The Movement Against Cafta In Costa Rica, Jeremy Rayner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In October of 2007, Costa Ricans voted in a referendum to ratify a Free Trade Agreement with the United States (DR-CAFTA, or CAFTA). The first referendum in their nation's history--and the first referendum ever held on a Free Trade Agreement--marked the culmination of a cycle of contention over liberalization that transformed practices and expectations of politics in a country often considered an exemplar of representative democracy. In this dissertation I provide an account of the opposition to CAFTA (the NO), based on two years of ethnographic research with the Patriotic Committees (Comites Patrioticos), the decentralized, grassroots network at the heart …

Report On My Fall 2013 Sabbatical Leave, Haiwang Yuan

DLPS Faculty Publications

Haiwang Yuan, Professor of Department of Library Public Services of WKU, received his 2012-2013 Research & Creative Activities Program (RCAP) grant from WKU Research Office and a book contract from a U.S. publisher ABC-CLIO to write a book on Tibetan folktales. He then applied for and was awarded the fall 2013 sabbatical leave. With the grant and the leave, he made his research field trip to Tibet and some other Tibetan communities in China. This is the report he has given to his dean and WKU Academic Affairs Office as required. He has now submitted the manuscripts of his book.

Religion, Partisanship, And Attitudes Towards Science Policy, Ted G. Jelen, Linda A. Lockett

Political Science Faculty Research

We examine issues involving science which have been contested in recent public debate. These “contested science” issues include human evolution, stem-cell research, and climate change. We find that few respondents evince consistently skeptical attitudes toward science issues, and that religious variables are generally strong predictors of attitudes toward individual issues. Furthermore, and contrary to analyses of elite discourse, partisan identification is not generally predictive of attitudes toward contested scientific issues.

Unintended Consequences: Reverberations Of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Lauren Heidbrink

Faculty Publications

This paper details the socio-legal factors that shape the relationship between the child, the family, and the state, and the ways unaccompanied migrant children’s lives have come to be defined and contested. The legal identity of migrant children is socially situated within a history that intertwines social movements of helping professionals, legal jurisdictions characterized by increasingly intolerant approaches to juveniles, and shifts in the treatment of unauthorized migrant youth under immigration law over time. In a globalized world, this triangular relationship between children, families, and the state becomes increasingly complex and dynamic. Social policies and legal norms often lag far …

Ecotourism In The Galápagos Islands: A Case Study In The Anthropology Of Tourism, Claire Wellbeloved-Stone

Anthropology Department Honors Papers

This project originated my sophomore year as my application to the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (CISLA). In my search for a project that would relate to anthropology and the Galápagos Islands I discovered the potential to study the tourism industry and its effects on society. Over the course of three years the project developed from a proposal as part of my application to CISLA to an internship and an honors thesis.

The focus of this thesis is the study of ecotourism in the Galápagos Islands, with a concentration on the interaction between tourists and …

‘The Hole’ Exposed: Voices On Solitary Confinement In The American Prison System, Sarah Schnitman

Anthropology Department Honors Papers

Solitary confinement, as practiced within the United States penal system, is a form of imprisonment that is rarely studied within the field of anthropology due to the nature of isolated prisoners as highly inaccessible subjects. Details about the physical appearance of such isolation units and the range of effects reported over the years by inmates and activist organizations have been largely veiled to the general public. However, scholars, political bodies, and the press began to pick up conditions of solitary confinement as an issue of inhumane treatment and torture. Although forms of isolated imprisonment have been used in the United …

"Manufacturing” Community: Solidarity, Profit, And The Bar Owner, Timothy Hartshorn

Anthropology Department Honors Papers

The following study examines the potential of eight independently run bars in New London, Connecticut to “manufacture” community. This process is examined with particular focus on the tension felt by bar owners, who must continually attract new patrons while still keeping their current “regulars” content. Inherent to this study is the reexamination of “community” as an analytically useful term in anthropological scholarship, with particular emphasis on disproportionate feelings of belonging and commitment as manifested by individual interpretation of collectively rendered symbols.

This data for this study was collected by virtue of semi-structured interviews as well as ethnographic field observation. The …

From The Past (1854): A Chapter On Necklaces, Old And New, Mrs. White

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Originally published in Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book in 1854 (pp. 213-216), this article presents a brief history of necklaces among the classic Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as the British, from the perspective of an educated English lady. It is an instructive early study of strung adornments based on antiquarian, historical, and literary sources.

Archaeometrical Analysis Of Glass Beads: Potential, Limitations, And Results, Adelphine Bonneau, Jean-François Moreau, Ron G.V. Hancock

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Over the past few decades, several new analytical techniques have been used to determine the composition and the likely production centers of glass beads found at archaeological sites around the world. Made since antiquity, glass beads are important artifacts which can provide much more information than their small size suggests. This article reviews the most common analytical techniques used to study glass beads - optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray fluorescence (XRF), instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), and Raman spectroscopy - and discusses their potential, limitations, and what results may be …

Historical Descriptions Of Malay "Beadwork", Hwei-Fe'n Cheah

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers

Little has been published in English about Malay ceremonial textiles. This article relates early-20th-century beaded examples to historical descriptions and court literature to illustrate the link between beaded and bejeweled hangings.

Returning Urbanite, Matthew H. Amster

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Christian is not a typical returning urban-rural migrant. Unlike most men who come back to the Kelabit Highlands after living in town, he did not return having struggled to make a decent living, nor did he return expecting to get married and start a family. Christian had already done both, leaving behind a good job and returning with his wife and children. What he did not anticipate is how out of place and misunderstood he would be once back home. [excerpt]

East Vs. West: South Korean Student Acculturation, Jeremy Grabiner

Capstone Research Projects

This paper is an ethnography that explores the acculturation of South Korean exchange students at Southern Adventist university through a triangulation of information from theory, interviews, and field observation. The paper relies on Young Yun Kim’s theory of acculturation, which closely looks at the push and pull of one’s home and host culture in the process of acculturation. In my ethnography, I observed approximately 60-100 South Korean students, ages 18-23, in different social settings such as church, social dining, and study. Full participant, participant observer, and full observer were the three methods of observation used in the various social settings. …

The Changes In Mainland Chinese Families During The Social Transition: A Critical Analysis, Anqi Xu, Yan Ruth Xia

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Modernization theory offers possible explanations for family changes related to advances in science and technology, and socio-economic development in industrial societies. Modernization impacts family structure, relationship, values and beliefs. Families become nuclear while people become mobile and the society becomes urban. Economic development provides employment opportunities outside the birthplace. Away from kinship network, a nuclear family is less influenced and controlled by elder members in the extended family in fulfilling its traditional roles and obligations (Parsons, 1943). The changes occur in all societies although they may vary in pace across societies (Goode, 1982). Modernization theory is criticized for valuing Western …

The Cultural Contexts Of Children’S Prosocial Behaviors, Maria Rosario De Guzman, Kieu-Anh Do, Car Mun Kok

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

In 1976 Beatrice Whiting famously urged researchers to “unpackage” the concept of culture and related constructs. She highlighted the need in social and behavioral research to tease out the complex and often interwoven factors that might underlie superficial culture group differences in child outcomes and suggested looking more closely at the child’s learning environment, the details within which could provide important insight regarding children’s behaviors that could better explain how culture might be manifested in the developmental landscape (Whiting, 1976). Almost 40 years later, the importance of culture in children’s development is widely recognized, nonetheless researchers continue to wrestle with …

Language And Museums: Supporting Alaska Native Languages Through Collaborative Networking, Heather J. Mcclain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the ever-increasing risk of language loss and possible extinction of the world's Indigenous languages, museums are quickly becoming active supporters and valuable resources for communities engaged in revitalization initiatives. Although working with language material is inherently difficult for museums because of their traditionally object based nature, it is imperative for museums to focus on the documentation and preservation of language as intangible cultural heritage (ICH) because of the vital connection between language and culture. This thesis examines how museums in Alaska, particularly the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, Alaska Office, are supporting Alaska Native language and cultural revitalization through collaborative …

Resource Sovereignty: The Indigenous Value Of Mount Rainier Within Activities Of Traditional Resource Harvesting, Samantha Joan Nemecek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Nisqually, Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Cowlitz, and Yakama Indian Tribes historically utilized the plant resources of Mount Rainier until the National Park Service established Mount Rainier National Park in 1899. Since 1992 there have been formal, written requests by these Tribes to revitalize the harvest of these culturally significant plant resources in their original collection location. Through archival analysis, participant observation, and interviews with Indigenous consultants, I investigated the impetus for these requests and furthermore the role of Mount Rainier in tribally relevant plant harvesting. Data indicates a lack of plant resource monitoring in the United States Forest Service has resulted …