Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Ua94/5/3 Student/Alumni Personal Papers Bowling Green Business University Charles Jeffries Papers, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Love letters written by Charles Jefferies to Wanda Adams. Also contains letters and pledge notes for Pi Tau Nu.

Emplacement And Displacement: Perceiving The Landscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic Painting, Fred Myers

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

Aboriginal Australian acrylic paintings have long been considered representations of mythologically invested landscape. This understanding has been made problematic by recent writings on ‘dwelling’. As common usage of the term ‘landscape’ seems to prioritize vision, to suggest that the acrylic paintings are landscapes only strengthens the suspicion that they are artifacts of displacement or distancing, rather than examples of the emplacement emphasized in this ‘dwelling perspective’. However, this paper will demonstrate that the relationship between acrylic painting and the land is more complex than such an interpretation. It will argue that the Aboriginal objectification of their relationship to the land …

It's A Birth Not A Procedure: An Ethnographic Study Of Intrauterine Fetal Death In A Labor And Delivery Unit Of An American Hospital Setting, Catherine Mcleod Griffin

Wayne State University Dissertations

Life transitions such as birth and death constitute a significant area within anthropological studies of ritual. It is important to investigate how individuals, groups, and communities organize around these events. Birth and death can be considered as rites of passage that mark key life transitions (van Gennep 1909/1960). Thus birth and death related rituals need to be investigated within the social and cultural context of American hospital settings to better understand the social organization of life, death, and personhood. In the American hospital setting, a reproductive loss at any gestational age receives the medical diagnostic label of an intrauterine fetal …

Exploring Sacred Objects And Their Meanings In Catholic Mexicano Households: Domestic Religious Practices In San Antonio, Mary E. Durocher

Wayne State University Dissertations

Anthropological literature in the study of material culture argues that person/object interactions are important to the construction and maintenance of social relations and personal identity both in the present and through time. It is through relationships and interactions with things that people come to "know who they are" (Tilley (2007). This line of thinking has led some Latino studies scholars to propose that the retention of traditional aspects of culture, such as religious practices, often serves as a way of negotiating personal or cultural identity in an ever changing social milieu (Sandoval 2006, Aponte and De La Torre 2006). This …

Zen Communication - A Cross Cultural Approach To Mindfulness, Appropriate Response, And Flow In Dyadic Interactions, Gregory Husak

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This study examined the question of how the qualities that arise from the practice of traditionally East Asian disciplines such as Zen and related martial arts might be effectively applied to dyadic interactions. Long-form interviews of about 40 minutes each were conducted with academics who have studied these topics and with expert practitioners who have extensive direct experience. Most subjects had significant cross-cultural experience, having studied and/or practiced in both the U.S. and in Japan. Detailed analysis of transcripts of these recorded interviews indicated that, in particular, the seated Zen meditation practice known as zazen generates personally transformational qualities that …

Preterm Birth And The Perception Of Risk Among African Americans, Gwendolyn Simpson Norman

Wayne State University Dissertations

Background: African American women deliver preterm at a rate that is two to three times that of their white counterparts, and after decades of research, this disparity in birth outcomes still remains unexplained. While factors including income, education, neighborhood conditions, infection and stress have all been associated with prematurity, no combination of these factors has explained why the disparity persists. Recently, however, racism-specific stress has emerged as a possible factor contributing to this disparity. This study was designed to learn how preterm birth was explained by African Americans directly impacted by prematurity. Methods: Interviews were conducted with African American women …

Dancing The Numinous: Sacred And Spiritual Techniques Of Contemporary American Belly Dancers, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In this paper, I explore how contemporary American practitioners of belly dance (as Middle Eastern dance and its many varieties are often called in the English-speaking world) conceptualize not only the spiritual dimensions of their dance, but also how the very notion of performance affects sacred and spiritual dance practices. Drawing on interviews with this community, I describe the techniques of sacred and spiritual belly dancers, how these dancers theorize performance, and how the conflicts inherent to patriarchal mind-body dualism are resolved in these practices. My purpose here is twofold: to document an emergent dance tradition and to analyze its …

"Still Here, Trying To Find My Way": Understanding The Experiences Of Hiv Disruption And Reorganization Among Older African Americans In Detroit, Andrea Nevedal

Wayne State University Dissertations

Adults aged fifty and older are the fastest growing age group with HIV/AIDS. Research on older adults with HIV has focused primarily on health status and physiological changes that occur as people age with HIV. However, little is known about the socio-cultural consequences that occur when older adults are diagnosed with HIV and as they age with HIV. Drawing from an anthropological approach to the life course and Becker's (1997) framework of life disruption, this dissertation research explored to what extent people experienced disruption from living with HIV and reorganized their lives after experiencing disruption.

The specific aims included identifying …

Crossing The Valley Of Death: A Multi-Sited, Multi-Level Ethnographic Study Of Growth Startups And Entrepreneurial Communities In Post-Industrial Detroit, Marlo Rencher

Wayne State University Dissertations

The intention of this research is to reveal the humanity of the startup experience for American growth companies. What is it about the growth entrepreneurship experience that has been hidden from view? Can we begin to articulate a holistic view of entrepreneurship--including those human universals and culture-bound particulars that must be successfully navigated?

This study is an ethnographic account of three Detroit-based entrepreneurial communities and the people within them. This research examines the sociocultural features of entrepreneurship on three levels. The first level of context for growth businesses to be studied is that of their entrepreneurial community. These communities have …

Protection Of The Natural And Cultural Heritage Of The Mongolian Altai, Ulikpan Beket, Hans D. Knapp

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

The Altai-Sayan Ecoregion is known as a hotspot of biodiversity with large wilderness landscapes and a high rate of endemism in Central Asia and Siberia. There are many large and important protected areas of different categories. Parts of the Russian Altai, the “Golden Mountains of Altai”, are inscribed as World Natural Heritage. Also the neighbouring countries contain pristine landscapes, which could be a potential for an extension to a transnational serial World Heritage Site.

The Mongolian part of the ecoregion is characterized by very diverse landscapes and vegetation complexes: Deserts, semi-deserts and desert steppes in arid basins, river floodplains, salt …

Binford, Lewis R., Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Binford challenged anthropologists and archaeologists to expand the scope of their research, to develop more rigorous methodologies for data collection and analysis, and to think more critically. Science is a marathon without a finish line. Our understanding of past and present human behavior and cultural systems does not come easily. Social scientists can produce reliable knowledge by means of an iterative process that involves generating, testing, and refining (or rejecting) explanatory models. These models are, then, combined to construct scientific theories. The robust consequences of these theories are then continually scrutinized and evaluated. Binford continually made use of the complex …

Classroom Atmosphere: Does It Reflect One’S Culture?, Sojung Kim

Student Scholarship

This article is written in order to find out whether the classroom atmosphere would reflect one’s certain culture and how cultural values would be reflected on student’s attitude in a class setting through observing and comparing the classroom atmosphere in two different countries, South Korea and the U.S.

Ua94/5/5 Student / Alumni Personal Papers Bowling Green Business University Rex Toothman, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Scrapbooks and correspondence created by Rex Toothman during his time at Bowling Green Business University and while in the Navy.

A Ritual Investigation Of Sudden Death Events In An Urban United States Emergency Department, Mary Eleanor Mitsch

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study investigated sudden death as a social act and a ritual process (Hertz, 1960) in an urban hospital emergency department (ED) in the United States. An analytical auto ethnographic approach was utilized by the author who is a nurse-anthropologist and a bereaved parent. In sudden and a more "prepared for" death, the dying person goes through a rite of passage van Gennep (1960[1909]) and enters into an area of liminality Turner (1967). A key transition from life to death occurs and crossing a threshold where the dying person cannot cross back. The aims of the study were to: 1) …

"Treating The Whole Person:" An Ethnographic Study Of An Integrative Medicine Pain Clinic, Lindsey Ann Martin

Wayne State University Dissertations

Although chronic pain has been increasingly recognized as a critical health issue in the U.S., solely biomedical approaches to pain management are often less effective than comprehensive ones in addressing this condition (Crowley-Matoka, et al. 2009; Good 1994; Greenhalgh 2001; Institute of Medicine 2011; Kleinman 1988; National Center for Health Statistics-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2006). This ethnographic study describes in-depth how a Detroit metropolitan area multidisciplinary pain clinic specifically applies an integrative medicine (IM) approach to the treatment and management of chronic pain. The aims of this study included: 1) identifying the history of this IM clinic and …

People Of Snowy Mountain, People Of The River: A Multi-Agency Ethnographic Overview And Compendium Relating To Tribes Associated With Clark County, Nevada, Douglas Deur, Deborah Confer

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The current document has been undertaken to assist agencies in meeting their obligations for federally mandated compliance and consultation with Indian tribes that have historical associations with Clark County. The document has been designed in part to provide an overview of the territorial associations of various tribes with ties to this area. This is accomplished using ethnohistorical documentation as well key legal documents, such as treaty language and Indian Claims Commission findings, that establish parameters for agency consultation responsibilities. Managers of Clark County’s federal lands have been eager to identify those tribes that are tied to the area in various …

The Produced And The Perceived : Transnationalism, The Production Of Space, And The Role Of Media In Constructing Popular Perceptions Of Mexican (Im)Migrant Communities, Rachel Marie Forbes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

There were approximately 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States in 2011 according to the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, approximately 59 percent were of Mexican origin. These men and women likely risked their lives--many crossing through the least guarded but most dangerous part of the nearly two thousand mile long border--with the hope, not of starting a new life in America, but of creating a better life in Mexico. Migrants, most typically agricultural workers, once travelled seasonally to work as needed and returned home at seasons end with the earnings that would help sustain their families and …

Grains, Greenbacks And Governance : The Political Economy Of Rural Microfinance In Nicaragua, Courtney B. Kurlanska

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research examines the livelihood strategies of rural agriculturalists in Nicaragua in relation to the availability of microcredit and microfinance. Since its emergence as a tool for development in the 1970 microlending has become a key tactic for many developing countries in their attempt to reduce poverty and improve the lives of the poor. With the arrival of the global recession, however, the weaknesses of this strategy were highlighted as growing numbers of individuals around the globe struggled to make payments on their microloans. Faced with shame, loss of land and property, or jail, debtors around the globe responded to …

Stewards Of The Land : Demonstrations Of Agricultural Authenticity In Columbia County, Ny, Jaclyn Rose Bruntfield

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The origins of food in the U.S. have come under close public scrutiny in recent years. An increasing number of farmers markets, certified organic products, and Community Supported Agriculture programs indicate that Americans are seeking out alternatives to the mainstream food system. The industrialization of food production in the post-World War II era, while providing larger amounts of inexpensive food than ever before, has arguably compromised people's relationships with food. While farming was once a common way of life in the U.S., today only one percent of Americans identify farming as their primary occupation.

Maya Cosmopolitans : Everyday Life At The Interface Of Archaeology, Heritage, And Tourism Development, Sarah Ruth Taylor

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The village of Ek'Balam is located approximately 300 meters from the ceremonial center of the archaeological zone by the same name. The ruins at Ek'Balam are some of the most impressive pre-Columbian stuccoes found in the Maya World. In 1994, the archaeological zone opened to the public, and since then this village of around 350 residents has experienced numerous changes. While residents have always had ties to the regional economy, the opening of the archaeological zone represented their first extended engagement with the tourism industry. A major agent of change in Ek'Balam is a community-based tourism project, funded primarily by …