Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Fire, Native Ecological Knowledge, And The Enduring Anthropogenic Landscapes Of Yosemite Valley, Douglas Deur, Rochelle Bloom

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Yosemite Valley is a place with rich and enduring traditions of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, manifesting in specific management practices that, in turn, leave discernible imprints upon the natural landscape. Historically, the Native American inhabitants of Yosemite Valley have employed a variety of techniques that materially enhance the availability of culturally preferred plant communities. This chapter identifies specific techniques that appear consistently in the oral traditions and written historical accounts of the valley. These methods included anthropogenic burning, pruning and coppicing, clearing underbrush beneath trees, hand eradication (“weeding”) of certain competing species, selective harvesting, smoking, “knocking” of dead wood from the …

Table Of Contents, Antonio Medina-Rivera, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

History And Memory In The Intersectionality Of Heritage Sites And Cultural Centers In The Pacific Northwest And Hawai'i, Leah Marie Rosenkranz

Dissertations and Theses

While working to maintain contemporary and future relationships with stakeholders, heritage sites and cultural centers across the United States attempt to tell the history and experiences of the land and people who were once there, are there in the present, and will be there in the future. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site is one of these heritage places. This study is a response to current management needs identified for the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Through an internship with the ongoing Fort Vancouver National Historic Site Traditional Use Study, my research examines how heritage sites and cultural centers fulfill the …

On The Importance Of Context: Examining The Applicability Of Infertility Insurance Mandates In The United States Using A Mixed-Methods Study Design, Nathanael B. Stanley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accessibility of infertility services is disproportionately experienced in the United States. Although there exist state-based health insurance mandates for infertility services, these mandates contain language that disqualify people from using them. In order to better understand why these mandates are not able to reduce the financial burden and bridge the income disparity for using infertility services, the purpose of this study is to add context to the applicability of these insurance mandates through qualitative and quantitative inquiry. Using the Glass and McAtee model of risk regulators as an operational paradigm, this research explores the role of environmental context, or “place”, …

Privacy And The Digital Divide: Investigating Strategies For Digital Safety By People Of Color, Denavious Hoover

Theses and Dissertations

People of color are becoming increasingly concerned with digital privacy. They are concerned about the obfuscated data collection and sharing practices of major social media plat- forms and the strong entitlement of other users in the online space to their content. This study examines how people of color conceptualize and behave to produce safety in the online space, or, in other words, digital privacy. This study challenges notions that people are not purposeful about privacy in the online space and highlights the voices of people of color, whom are not of- ten included in theorizing or decision making about the …

Translating Indigeneity, Wilbert Alik

Conspectus Borealis

This paper compares Columbus Day in the United States (US) and Kam̗m̗oolol (Gospel) Day in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Kam̗m̗oolol (Gospel) Day in the RMI celebrates the arrival of the western Missionaries. This paper also compares Indigenous People's Day in the US and M̗anit (Culture) Day in the RMI. Where in the RMI, M̗anit (Culture) Day celebrates Marshallese customs and traditions.

The Video Camera Spoiled My Ethnography: A Critical Approach, Katherine Gregory

Publications and Research

As videography and other media technologies are normalized in the field of qualitative methods for the purpose of data collection, there is a growing need to discuss the benefits and limitations of these data collection tools. This article chronicles an ethnographic video study focused on the experiences of Muslim adults living in the Netherlands, and why the author opted to end the project. Issues focus on reckoning with the imperial gaze of the camera, performative behavior of participants before the camera and interdisciplinary tensions the researcher faced from conflicting trainings as a qualitative methodologist and media practitioner.

“Healthy Country, Healthy People”: Aboriginal Embodied Knowledge Systems In Human/Nature Interrelationships, Liz Cameron

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

The relationships between humans and nature require interdisciplinary perspectives to develop expanded understandings at this crucial time for the planet and its inhabitants. A poignant step towards improving the global ecological situation--which includes human survival and flourishing--is to reconnect our human/nature relationships. From an Australian Aboriginal standpoint, human-nature connectedness is integrally embedded in the relationship to the natural world that is termed Country. This term not only illustrates geographical boundaries but encompasses the harmony and balance of all living things within a cultural and spiritual context. At the interface of this knowledge, ways of thinking, feeling and being …

تعزيز الثقافة الإسلامية لدى الطفل في ظل العولمة, Somaya Al Nakhale

Al Jinan الجنان

No abstract provided.

العيش السلمي بين المسلمين والمسيحيين: مدينة القدس نموذجاً, Thabet Abou Al Haj

Al Jinan الجنان

Peaceful coexistence between religions in this contemporary age is both an individual and social necessity. It is particularly important given the interconnectedness of today’s world in various areas such as politics, economics, society and culture, in this context, Demonstrate the importance of research in the field of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians. In this article, the city of Jerusalem is selected as a case study of coexistence between Muslims and Christians due to it constituting a living city that exemplifies such coexistence. In addition, its inhabitants have managed, despite all kinds of division and discrimination, and in spite of …

"The People's Commune Is Good": Precarious Labor, Migrant Masculinity, And Post-Socialist Nostalgia In Contemporary China, Xia Zhang

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Post-socialist China is characterized by the loss of social and economic safety nets for workers, particularly the most marginalized. Scholars and others have assumed that informal laborers lack the associational power needed to mitigate the precarity of their lives. Drawing on ethnographic data collected between 2004 and 2016 in Chongqing, this article examines the ways in which precariously employed rural migrant men create their own safety nets by drawing on their past experiences of agricultural collectivization in the socialist era to form cooperative associations. It further explores how these men leverage cultural resources from the socialist period to retain male …

Ishi And The California Indian Genocide As Developmental Mass Violence, Robert K. Hitchcock, Charles A. Flowerday

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Ishi represents a form of sentimental folk reductionism. But he can be a teaching tool for the California Indian Genocide, John Sutter also. His mill was where gold was discovered – setting off a frenzied settlement in which Indians were legally enslaved and slaughtered, finally ending a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation. They had already experienced wholesale devastation under Spanish and Mexican colonization. The mission system itself was inhumane and genocidal. It codified enslavement and trafficking of Indians as economically useful and morally purposeful. Mexican administration paid lip service to Indian emancipation but exploited them ruthlessly as peons. The California …

The Enlightenment: Still Burning Bright, Fernando N. Zialcita

Magisterial Lectures

In this lecture, Doc Zialcita talks about the European Age of Enlightenment, how it came to the Philippines, and how it is still relevant today.

Speaker:

Fernando Nakpil-Zialcita has a M.A. in Philosophy from the Ateneo de Manila University, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii. He teaches at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University and heads the Cultural Heritage Studies Program at the same. Though from Manila, much of his field research took place among farming communities in the Ilocos, Northern Luzon.

Lately, however, he has …

Dance And Know You Are A Part: The Instrumentality Of Performative Politics And Dance In The Configuration Of Local Social Memory And Afro-Brazilian Identity And Agency In Pelotas, Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil, Triston R. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The arts have been a refuge from perpetual repression and omission, and, a platform for social activism for Afro-descendants in the Americas. In Brazil this is very much the case. With performance serving as a social barometer or a looking glass, dance becomes a source of cultural knowledge, acts as preservative, and negotiates individual mobility within a given context. The Afro-Brazilian dance company, Cia de Dança Daniel Amaro in Pelotas, Brazil grants its members a means of activism and agency to challenge entrenched national narratives and reinterpret local social memory.

Most academic writings about dance or performance in Brazil, focus …

Identifying The Universals Of Death: An Interpretive Analysis Of Mortuary Ritual In Ancient Egypt And Modern America, Sarah Snare

Senior Theses

This project compares mortuary practices in ancient Egypt and modern America in an effort to identify cross-cultural consistencies in the treatment of the dead. An analysis of the meaning and motivations behind these rituals reveals that they serve similar functions in both societies. Death provokes intense emotions of grief and long periods of mourning, which can debilitate the people who knew the deceased and even the society itself. Therefore, to promote survival of individuals and the community, mortuary rituals must address these disturbances. Focusing on ancient Egypt and modern America, this study finds that mortuary practices function to restabilize society …

Analyzing The Social Impact Of Gacaca Courts In The Reconciliation Process In Rwanda, Mary Thibodeau

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Restorative justice is often misunderstood by Western academia in the context of community-based justice systems in African nations. The Gacaca courts used in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi are frequently criticized for their procedures and outcomes. However, a majority of these criticisms come from Western authors without having engaged in conversations with Rwandans and observing the effects of the trials within the nation. The only people who know and understand the impact of the Gacaca courts are Rwandans. I have been researching how the Gacaca trials contributed to homegrown solutions and their impact within communities in Rwanda …

Gender-Based Violence During The 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic: New Challenges And Adaptations At Haguruka, Asia Korkmaz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Haguruka is a Rwandan NGO founded in 1991 that works to ensure Rwandan women and youth’s access to their legal rights. In addition to providing free legal aid, Haguruka runs educational and capacity building programs across the country to combat gender-based violence (GBV).1 When the Rwandan government instituted lockdown measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in January of 2020, many of Haguruka’s programs were no longer feasible under the new guidelines. Additionally, emerging research has shown that incidents of GBV have increased globally due to policies to combat COVID-19.2 Rwanda is no exception. Through a desk review, …

A New Twist On The “Un-African” Script: Representing Gay And Lesbian African Weddings In Democratic South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This essay examines the media coverage surrounding two African weddings of lesbian and gay couples in South Africa, as a lens onto the evolving cultural politics of black queerness in that country. Two decades after South Africa launched a world-leading legal framework for LGBTI protections, I argue that these media representations depict the growing inclusion of black LGBTIQ people as a process of bridging the supposed “gap” between homosexuality and African culture. This new “bridging the gap” script seemingly rejects the older, dominant script portraying homosexuality as intrinsically “un-African.” But I argue that it instead reproduces the “un-African” script in …

Antigone The Bride Of Death, Bailey Gomes

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

In Memoriam: Ed Bruner, Michael A. Di Giovine

Anthropology & Sociology Faculty Publications

Edward M. Bruner
September 28, 1924 – August 7, 2020

Last month, our community—and indeed the world—lost a shining light in contemporary anthropology. On August 7, 2020, the humanistic anthropologist Edward Bruner passed away peacefully at his home. He would have been 96 today. This is a significant loss for the ATIG community, as Bruner made important contributions to the study of tourism and heritage—problematizing authenticity and host-guest interactions in the touristic “borderzone;” introducing post-modern constructivism to tourism analysis, and emphasizing narrative, experience, and interpretation in ethnographic research. The compilation of his tourism-focused essays, Culture on Tour, is a …