Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Sea-Level Rise And Settlement At Ta’Ab Nuk Na, Belize: Analyses Of Marine Sediment From The I-Line, 4m Transect, Conner B. Flynt

LSU Master's Theses

The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica created a culture with writing, religion, and vast trade networks. These trade networks are evident on the southern coast of Belize, where archaeologists have found sites dedicated to salt making. One of these sites, Ta’ab Nuk Na, was the subject of this thesis. Sediment and charcoal samples were collected from this site by the Underwater Maya Research Group led by Heather McKillop and E. Cory Sills. For my thesis research, I subjected these samples and components within them to loss-on ignition, radiometric dating, and microscopic analysis. Loss-on ignition was used to ascertain organic material percentage …

Catholics & Cultures As An Act Of Improvisation: A Response, Thomas M. Landy

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay responds to seven articles published in the same issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism on the use of Catholics & Cultures, a multimedia website, as a pedagogical resource for college classrooms. The site is deliberately presented in a fashion that undermines notions of center and periphery and presents Catholicism from a lay, lived-religion perspective as the multicultural faith that it is, minimizing reference to religious typologies. Particular attention is given to how to navigate tensions around theorizing, categorizing and sorting information for cross-cultural comparison. Given scholars’ current state of knowledge, writing about and teaching about global Catholicism …

Catholics & Cultures: A Panoramic View In Search Of Greater Understanding, Stephanie M. Wong

Journal of Global Catholicism

While internet-based technologies can open up greater awareness of the world or create self-perpetuating echo-chambers, the Catholics & Cultures project aspires to do the former. Aiming to ‘widen the lens’ on the variety of Catholic communities and practices, the site delivers on this goal by introducing viewers to a vast array of articles, pictures and videos from around the world. The organization of the site by country and by certain key features of lived Catholicism offers some interpretive guidance. However, the project could be strengthened as a pedagogical resource if it were more extensively thematized and hosted reflections on potential …

The Value Of Online Resources: Reflections On Teaching An Introduction To Global Christianity, Hillary Kaell

Journal of Global Catholicism

Reflecting on my experience teaching Introduction to Global Christianity, this essay ponders questions at the heart of undergraduate teaching: How can we encourage students to utilize online sources? How can we empower them to seek out answers to their questions? It offers practical examples of how I have used the Catholics & Cultures website in my classroom at a large public university. In particular, I reflect on my experience working with students who are mostly of Catholic heritage, but from many cultural and social contexts.

Teaching Sexuality On The Catholics & Cultures Website: A Refreshing Turn Toward The Longue Durée, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

I present a close reading of the Catholics & Cultures (C&C) website’s treatment of sexuality-related issues and discuss this material in relation to debates about how to teach sexuality in religious studies and theology classrooms. The C&C website occasionally and intermittently uses a typical “contemporary issues” approach that considers sexuality in relation to legal and legislative decisions and government policies. In contrast, country profiles consistently situate sexuality in relation processes like nation building, urbanization, and lay Catholics’ growing authority. My interpretation highlights the site’s decision to emphasize the longue durée, long-term and deep structural processes driving cultural and religious changes. …

Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck

Journal of Global Catholicism

More than six decades after its publication, Horace Miner’s 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” remains a reliable pedagogical tool, remarkably successful in helping students see their own ethnocentric biases. Catholics & Cultures has potential to do similar work. The site lacks some of what makes Miner’s text so effective, in particular its capacity to bring about a sudden shift in perception. The site also shares some of the article’s limitations, particularly in focusing on ritual to the relative exclusion of other aspects of religion. That said, the site can help students gain the religious literacy and develop the …

Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder

Journal of Global Catholicism

The dynamics of religious resurgence reveal the important ways that religious ritual and performance are meaning making spaces which are not self-contained or cut off from the rest of culture, but rather are a key locus of cultural change. A renewed emphasis on the busy intersections of meaning making – as rituals are connected, disconnected, and reconnected to other domains of social life – would improve the utility of the Catholics & Cultures website for understanding global cultural change. And a renewed emphasis on cultural change would also provide a better means for exploring reflexively by seeking to understand both …

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Aspiring To “Make It Work”: Defining Resilience And Agency Amongst Hispanic Youth Living In Low-Income Neighborhoods, Sara Arias-Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored how Hispanic youth (ages 13-21 years) living in low-income neighborhoods of Florida defined resiliency and expressed agency navigating personal challenges and neighborhood adversity in pursuit of success. From the standpoint of the participants, this study focused on how youths: 1) judge the quality of life in their neighborhoods and the opportunities available for them, 2) identify personal aspirations for themselves and 3) identify what resilient factors allowed them to face the challenges and barriers of their daily lives to pursue this aspiration. This study takes into account the structural barriers that create inequities to examine how personal …

Book Review Of Eating Nafta: Trade, Food Policies, And The Destruction Of Mexico By Alyshia Gálvez, Laura Kihlstrom

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

This is a book review of the book 'Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico' by Alyshia Gálvez.

Transmission And Erosion Of Local Knowledge Practices In A Fishing Village In South India, Dalibandhu Pukkalla Mr, Sharma Bv Prof

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Fishermen acquire knowledge through kin or other members of the community in an informal way, as well as through personal experience. The knowledge thus acquired is viewed as an asset, but the dangers of its erosion are well understood by the fisher communities. This study documents local knowledge based on the experience, observation, and experimentation of the Jalari fishing community in South India. We focus on wave/ocean colors, sea currents, reading the weather, and availability of fishes in different seasons. Cultural transmission and factors potentially influencing the sustenance and erosion of knowledge practices are briefly considered.

Participatory Mapping With High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: A Mixed Method Assessment Of Land Degradation And Rehabilitation In Northern Burkina Faso, Colin Thor West, Elisabeth Kago Ilboudo Nébié, Aaron J. Moody

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Sahelian West Africa is a region that has high population densities and that has frequent severe droughts and enormous pressure on natural resources. Because of these challenges, it is the place where the term desertification was originally coined. Recently, however, experts have identified large zones of greening where the amount of vegetation exceeds what one would expect based on rainfall alone. This pattern is well documented, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. This research employs participatory mapping linked with high-resolution satellite imagery to better understand the human role behind regional vegetation trends. Through a case study of three communities in …

Should The State Of Israel Pursue Krav Maga As An Intangible Cultural Heritage Of The Jewish People? History And Politics Say Yes., Guy Mor, Andrea Molle

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Krav Maga (‘contact combat’) is an Israeli combat discipline arguably one of the many intangible cultural heritages of Israel and the Jewish people. It has played a unique role in the (re)creation and preservation of the Jewish identity and the formation of the state of Israel.

Recently we observe a growing academic literature debating the role of martial arts in international affairs and domestic political processes. It is the scope of this paper to contribute to this proposing a framework for understanding Krav-Maga as a means of cultural diplomacy as seen in other nations.

Making Change In The Nickel City: Food Banking And Food Insecurity In Buffalo, Ny During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sarah E. Bradley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In March 2020, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began to spread across the United States. The pandemic disrupted the food system in an unprecedented fashion, exacerbating existing inequalities and contributing to increased rates of food insecurity and charitable food use. This research project considers the food system of Buffalo, New York and seeks to capture the way in which both food insecure households and the food pantries that serve them adapted to the pandemic. Using data from 75 client surveys, 52 qualitative semi-structured interviews with food pantry staff and clients, and 15 participatory GIS mapping interviews, this mixed-methods project describes …

Mystical Experience And The Evolution Of Consciousness: A Twenty-First Century Gnosis, Gary Lachman

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article addresses three ideas: mystical experience, the evolution of consciousness, and gnosis. There are different interpretations of these ideas, so I begin by saying how I intend to understand them. Mystical experience I see as a wider, broader, deeper perception of things and their relations than our usual limited view allows. It provides an ‘unitive’ and ‘participatory’ form of consciousness, in which the usual ‘subject/object’ divide has dissolved. The evolution of consciousness is the notion that our present consciousness is not consciousness per se, but has been arrived at over time. This suggests that there have been other forms …

Lawrence Leshan’S Clairvoyant Reality As William James’ Revelation Of Veridical Reality, Jonathan Bricklin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The “Clairvoyant Reality” of pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan and medium Eileen Garrett, reprinted here in honor of LeShan’s recent passing at age 100, may well be the understanding of “veridical reality” that James proclaimed would not be found “in this generation or the next”.

The Journey Back To Wholeness That Already Is, Jenna Dishy Wes

Journal of Conscious Evolution

If we are born into this world with in an already heightened state of consciousness, at what point in human development do we begin to disconnect? Is the human experience innately traumatic? Through the exploration of Piaget’s stages of development, and in coherence with the concept of transgenerational trauma, I explore moments and modes of intervention, with the intention of building on what is already whole instead of waiting until it is broken. Rather than spending another generation spending our lives trying to heal, reaching for enlightenment and soul connection, what if our end point was actually our beginning one?

Decomorose: The Somatic Flowering Of The Living Quality, Shaun J. Martin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This essay is an exploration of the human maturation process from a transpersonal point of view. The main premise of the essay is the notion that our maturation on the level of consciousness (the living quality) is not synonymous with our bodily maturation or the ongoing construction of our social personality (the identity project). It suggests that transpersonality is a fundamental component in human development, but has been overlooked and left out in most areas of modern culture. The recent rise of mental illnesses and the overall frustration or discontent within our society is a direct result of infrastructures that …

Identity Construction In The Yoruba Group Project Abroad: Discourse Analysis Of Language Use, Tawakalitu Odunayo Lasisi

LSU Master's Theses

This research examines the experiences of five Nigerian Americans who participated in the Yoruba Group Project Abroad in the year 2018. After taking classes on Yoruba language at the basic, intermediate and advanced levels in their various universities here in the US, the students traveled to Nigeria in the summer of 2018 to immerse themselves in the native speakers’ environment in Ibadan, Nigeria. While in Ibadan, they were paired with Nigerian host families (Yoruba speakers) in order to have an overarching immersive experience. These students constitute the population of this research. Using a qualitative research method and an in-depth online …

Understanding Technology Fit Among People With Hiv Based On Intersections Of Race, Sex, And Sexual Behavior: An Equitable Approach To Analyzing Differences Across Multiple Social Identities, Elizabeth Lockhart, Deanne Turner, Joseph Ficek, Taylor A. Livingston, Rachel G. Logan, Stephanie L. Marhefka

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

HIV disproportionately impacts individuals based on intersecting categories (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, behavior), with groups most at-risk deemed priority populations. Using weighted effects coding to account for differential group sizes, this study used multilevel mixed logistic models to investigate differences in eHealth use and willingness to use eHealth for HIVrelated information among priority populations. Compared to the sample average, Black men who had sex with women were less likely to use all technologies except cellphones with text-messaging and less likely to be willing to use computers and tablets. White and Hispanic men who had sex with men were more likely to …