Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Stop Blaming My Users: Illumination Of The Technocentric Mythos Bias, Ervin H. Frenzel, Richard Lightcap

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

 Abstract -This conceptual essay addresses the need for systemic and systematic transdisciplinary analytical techniques within cybersecurity and technical security. This conceptual essay is contingent upon recognition that cybersecurity is not simply technical in nature, it does not need an adversary, and more importantly it is based upon systems engineering and systems thinking.  The essay contributes a socio-technical attribution chain and field-specific ontology/taxonomy which distinguish user-triggered events from root causes, latent conditions, technical debt, validation failures, governance failures, and attribution bias before assigning responsibility to end users. It systematically defines an ontology inclusive of developer technical debt, organizational debt arising from …

The Missing Void: Lack Of Pockets In Womenswear And Its Effect On Daily Life, Clare Bolon

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

Pockets give power to people who possess them. Yet, an estimated half of the U.S. population —women— frequently wear garments lacking useful pockets. Why? Womenswear is molded by beauty standards. This study brings an anthropological perspective on gender inequality in the U.S. by examining modern clothing and the differences in pocket access by gender. 127 participants were recruited for a mixed methods survey, most from a medium-sized university in the Mountain West region. Survey questions explored the attitudes and experiences of people who wear women’s clothing regarding pockets (or the lack thereof) and its impact on their daily lives. Open-ended …

More Than Just A Celebration: Gift Exchange In U.S. Culture, Macie Hazelton

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

My graduation party may seem like a simple celebration to some, but when viewed through an anthropological lens, it becomes a rich example of how gift exchange continues to shape relationships in U.S. culture. Drawing on Marcel Mauss’s theory of the obligations to give, receive, and return, as well as insights from Godbout, Benson, and Carter, I argue that cards, money, food, and even the thank-you notes exchanged at my party reveal a cultural system of reciprocity that strengthens social bonds during a major life transition. By examining how my community participated in this cycle of bringing gifts, supporting me, …

Indigenous Is More Than A Label: The Intersectionality Of Colonialism And Indigenous Cultural Practices, Rizal Agaton Howes

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Indigeneity is a multi-faceted identity and idea complicated by a multitude of racial, ethnic, political, historic, and legal contexts. The identity of an Indigenous person, which in this essay I use to refer to people native to the Canada and United States area pre-colonialism, goes beyond a look, a level of ancestry, or an enrollment status. Indigeneity is something lived, something intangible yet undeniably adaptive and oppressed. My understanding of my Indigeneity as an Ojibwe-Anishinaabe and Muscogee person fundamentally changed upon a particularly unique powwow experience with my mom. One powwow and significant conversation with her prompted my consideration of …

Illuminating Sanja Matsuri: Lived Religion And Festival Practice In Asakusa, Caleb R. Merckle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Sanja Matsuri, a major Shintō and Buddhist festival in Asakusa, Tokyo, through the lenses of lived religion, participant observation, autoethnography, and anthropology. Departing from institution-centered approaches, it foregrounds the experiential dimensions of festival participation, showing how physical devotion, collective movement, and festive intensity function as expressions of spiritual meaning. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2023 and 2025 included participant observation, informal interviews with local and foreign participants, and Reflexive Discourse Analysis of fieldnotes and bilingual transcripts. Analysis reveals a dynamic interplay between formal sacralization strategies — such as mitama-ire rituals and structured processions — and spontaneous, informal participant …

Notes From The Field - Conference Proceedings, Summer Fellows 2025, Center For Latin American, Caribbean, And Latino Studies (Clacls)

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

CLACLS presents proceedings papers from the third CLACLS Summer Fellows Showcase Conference, held on November 12, 2025.

The daylong event showcased the research endeavors of fourteen Summer Fellows, who offered succinct presentations on their projects funded by the CLACLS Summer fellowship. The included three panels: “Feminist and Queer Critical Perspectives”, “Language, Archive and Power”, “Social Movements and Political Imaginations.”

Jainism And Catholicism – Dialoguing Spiritually, Bryan Lobo

Journal of Global Catholicism

The inter-spiritual dialogue between Jainism and Catholicism lends itself towards discovering similarities and dissimilarities between the two spiritualities. Recognizing this discovery, this paper, without claiming to be exhaustive as regards the spiritual themes, discusses the chosen themes to facilitate greater reflection and potential to re-discover elements that can help the growth of understanding and practicing the preferred spirituality.

Hindu Poetry And The Project Of An Inter-Spiritual Catholic Theology, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article engages the work of the Indian south Indian Tamil-language Vaiṣṇava poet saints known as the Alvārs. The article specifically focuses the First HundredHoly Linked verses of Poykai Ālvār to argue for inter-spiritual learning between Catholics and Hindus. The article concludes with personal reflections on this encounter within the context of the global Catholic Church

A Comparison Of Regional Food Systems And Food Security In Rural Mississippi And Italy, Reinhard M. Knerr, Athan M. Gregory, Anne Cafer

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

In the Mississippi (MS) Delta, more than 40% of residents are food-insecure despite predominantly agricultural land use. We hypothesized that limited social networks and non-navigable food market systems constrain MS producers, limit market viability, and hinder regional food sovereignty. This ethnography compared rural Italian and Mississippian food systems through semi-structured interviews of food producers, processors, and marketers. We described differences in social networks between groups that led to differential capacities to share capital and to overcome producer and labor constraints. We also described key differences in governmental and Extension support of local food systems. Finally, we provided suggestions for addressing …

Fundamental Uncertainties Invalidate The Precision Of Obsidian Hydration Dating: A Rapa Nui Case Study, Robert Dinapoli, Carl P. Lipo

Anthropology Datasets

Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) measures water absorption into volcanic glass to estimate artifact age. Recent studies using infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy (IR-PAS) claim ±30-year precision, comparable to radiocarbon dating. We tested these claims by applying Bayesian hierarchical models to 242 published IR-PAS measurements from Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Standard OHD practice treats burial temperature and humidity as known constants; we instead modeled them as uncertain variables and propagated that uncertainty through the rate equation. Realistic dating uncertainties are ±300 years, ten times larger than the claimed value. The 95% credible interval for any individual date (~600 years) exceeds Rapa Nui's entire …

The Sociologists And The Anthropologists: Intellectual Imaginations Of Mennonite Settlements In The Paraguayan Chaco, Samuel Boucher

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

The debates over Indigenous rights and missionary intervention in Paraguay’s Chaco were shaped not only by international declarations and local conditions but by the sociologists and anthropologists who interpreted—and contested—them. North American sociologists such as J. Winfield Fretz, Jacob Loewen, and Calvin Redekop studied the Mennonite colonies as agents of modern development, weighing the achievements and shortcomings of their mission efforts. The Paraguayan anthropologist Miguel Chase-Sardi cast those same colonists as foreign capitalists exploiting their Indigenous neighbors, drawing international scrutiny through his contribution to the 1971 Barbados Declaration and its charge of ethnocide. The ensuing clash with administrators such as …

Heritage Without Equity: Afro-Descendant Representation, State Governance, Museums And The Limits Of Cultural Policy In Belize, Sherilyne L. Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how heritage governance in Belize shapes the representation, recognition, and participation of Afro-descendant communities within national cultural institutions and policy frameworks. Focusing on Creole/Kriol and Garifuna communities, the study analyses how law, institutional designs, museum practises, tourism development, and community-based heritage work to produce uneven forms of cultural visibility. I argue that Afro-descendant communities are not absent from Belizean heritage. Rather, their cultural presence has not consistently translated into institutional authority, sustained investments, or meaningful participation in decisions about national representation. Drawing on critical heritage theory, critical museology, post-colonial scholarship, and the concept of authorised heritage discourse, …

“He’S Got The Whole World In His Hands”: Seed Sovereignty And Agricultural Decision Making In Southeastern Kenya, Caroline Stahley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasing corporate control of the global seed supply and restrictions to local exchange threaten the autonomy of smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities. This project contributes to agricultural sovereignty movements by examining the decisions farmers make to address climate uncertainty, market volatility, and development agendas. Specifically, how is seed saving practiced and understood in relation to sovereignty? It reimagines what global food systems might look like if investment were directed to producers rather than intermediaries, arguing that cultivators lack support, not knowledge or capacity. Across these domains, seeds act as a motif to describe the concerns, innovations, and visions of farmers.

Surviving And Thriving: The Indigenous Migrant, Danna Guzman-Rodriguez

Honors Theses

This literature and cultural study highlights the generation of children of indigenous immigrants and the relationship with their indigenous identity and culture. This unique experience is complex and encapsulates issues such as indigenous cultural survival, homogeneity, globalization, and lack of cultural identity. Exploring the Totonac community in La Chaca, Veracruz in Mexico, allows for a deeper explanation of this experience. Speakers of Totonac and other indigenous languages often migrate to countries such as the United States and carry such cultural ties with them. What happens to these ties after moving to a Western-dominated country where globalization favors English and Western …

Reframing Kabyle Resistance In Marc Garanger's Femmes Algériennes 1960, Lea Wong

Journal of Amazigh Studies

This article examines the identity photographs taken by Marc Garanger as a site of Kabyle women’s resistance in the Algerian War. Over the course of 1960, Garanger moved between various wartime displacement camps across Kabylia, photographing indigenous people for the production of identity cards––a crucial from of colonial population control. Since its publication, Garanger’s Femmes algériennes has become an ambiguous symbol of resistance in the Algerian War, largely due to the subjects’ perceived antagonistic posture and gaze. This article takes a forensic approach to analyzing Kabyle women’s wartime adornment, uncovering a new framework for conceptualizing Algerian women’s agency grounded in …

Representations Of Women Safeguarding Living Cultural Heritage For The Future In 21st Century Kabyle Cinema, Sheila Petty

Journal of Amazigh Studies

This article examines cinematic representations of how some Kabyle women relate to and shape claims to Amazigh (Kabyle) land, language, tangible and intangible cultural heritage; how they navigate and safeguard cultural memory; and how this is depicted in three Kabyle films: La Langue de Zahra/ Zahra’s Mother Tongue (Fatima Sissani, France/Algeria, 2011); Nnuba (Sonia At Qasi-Kessi, Algeria, 2019; and Azar/Racine/Root (Malik Bourkache Daoud, Algeria, 2023). The article also probes how the filmmakers use tangible cultural heritage (documentary film) to document, transpose, and transmit intangible cultural heritage (memories, poetry, song, stories). Through an analysis of the narrative form and cinematic style …

Listening To Taos Amrouche, A Kabyle Woman’S Singing Voice In A Context Of Exile And Immigration : Between A Search For Intimacy And Independence, Melek Chekili

Journal of Amazigh Studies

This article analyzes the vocal, musical and literary strategies Algerian Kabyle singer and writer Taos Amrouche employs to determine the place voicing holds for her in contexts of colonization, exile and migration. I demonstrate through her singing career and her 1975 autobiographical novel l’Amant Imaginaire, that within the ambivalences stemming from her birth in Tunisia to exiled Kabyle Christian converts and her emigration to France, Taos Amrouche’s singing voice provides a space where those ambivalences can co-exist. By being adamant about keeping her artistic activity close to her body and explicitly referring to sex in her writing, she exerts …

Open Materials For Ant-Psy 210, Sex And Culture, Melissa Zavala

Open Educational Resources

Sex and Culture explores the cultural construction of human sexuality from the framework of the individual in society. Students will examine the social learning of sexual behaviors, beliefs and practices. Analytic focus will include how culturally prescribed gender roles for men and women inform notions of right and wrong. Specific topics may include institutionalized gender inequality, marriage and the family, homophobia and other issues involved in the relationship between sex and culture. All topics will be considered from a historical and cross-cultural perspectives.

Ka Here Tāngata:1 Mātauranga And Te Ao Māori In Biocultural Kākāpō (Strigops Habroptilus) Conservation Approaches, Sophie Perfetto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis examines conservation as a form of living cultural heritage practice through the co-management of kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), a critically endangered parrot and taonga species in Aotearoa New Zealand. Situated within ongoing histories of colonial dispossession and Western frameworks of land and species management, contemporary kākāpō conservation is shaped through the partnership between the Department of Conservation’s Kākāpō Recovery Programme and Ngāi Tahu. Drawing on semi-structured interviews collected during fieldwork from July to August 2025, this study examines how institutional partnerships structure decision-making, authority, and responsibility in contemporary conservation governance. Findings demonstrate that Māori knowledge systems …

Reseeding Relations: Comparing Museum And Indigenous Seed Sharing & Rematriation Protocols In The Midwestern United States, Madeline G. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) paved the way for the repatriation of ancestors and certain cultural objects to Indigenous communities, museums still struggle to address other forms of cultural returns. Heritage seeds, those which hold cultural significance to Indigenous peoples, held within museum collections perpetuates the colonization of Indigenous lifeways. This research examines rematriation as an Indigenous form of cultural return better suited to address these needs than limited repatriation models. I analyze how museums are working to create rematriation processes for their collections which reflect diverse Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies through a three-tiered approach: …