ROUNDTABLE AND WORKSHOP ABSTRACTS
[2-05] Roundtable: Role Models
Session Organizer: Alice Kehoe
Continuing Central States’ series of open forums to discuss racism within anthropology and the academy, we will consider particularly how persons are looked at as role models. Women and “persons of color” within departments are likely to be viewed, critically or inspirationally, as models for younger faculty and students who appear to share a distinguishing feature with them. How should the “role models” handle this role? How may departments, and individuals, defuse the expectation that persons who are “different” should represent classes of people characterized by that “difference”? How can anthropologists focus on the principles of anthropology instead of “cultural diversity”? Everyone in Central States is welcome to join in this forum.
[2-06] Teaching Ethnography: An Experiential Workshop
Session Organizers: Angela Glaros (Eastern Illinois University) and Amber Clifford-Napoleone (University of Central Missouri)
This workshop combines informal discussion with real-time collaboration related to teaching ethnography, particularly within—but not limited to—an undergraduate setting. Building on the workshop held at the 2016 Central States meetings, we encourage instructors at all levels to discuss experiences and share ideas about the day-to-day concerns of teaching our methodological “crown jewel.”
We orient the workshop around the following questions:
- What have been your most successful/unsuccessful teaching methods and projects?
- What tools do you use: software, audiovisual recording, old-school notebooks, etc.?
- How do you work with/conceptualize field notes?
- How do you approach the practice of coding and data analysis?
- How have you dealt with teaching ethnography as a way of writing?
- How do you present IRB guidelines and ethical research practices in a classroom setting?
- Bring your syllabi and assignments for discussion and troubleshooting.
[2-09] Open Roundtable: “Remember, Trump studied Anthropology, too!”: Where Did We Go Wrong?
Session Organizer: James Stanlaw (Illinois State)
Participants: Open to all
This is one of the things you see when you look up the credentials of last year’s presidential candidates: Donald Trump, University of Pennsylvania/Wharton School of Business – Graduated in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Anthropology. Whether we welcome him or not, the newly elected 45th Commander-in-Chief is a member of the Tribe. Whether through repression, denial, or ignorance, Donald Trump’s anthropological background has been something most professionals and students have dismissed or ignored. I propose that the ramifications of this have yet to be adequately examined, and should be—not only as predictor for policy changes to come, but also as a mirror for what anthropology has become. For example, Concordia University anthropologist and blogger Max Forte asks us to consider, among other things, the following questions:
- Why didn’t US anthropologists see the coming victory of Donald Trump?
- Why were US anthropologists not better positioned to understand, explain, or even predict the rise of the Trump movement, and then its eventual victory?
- What does the general failure of US anthropology in anticipating the Trump movement’s emergence and victory say about their discipline’s current theoretical fascination?
- How is the rehabilitation of the nature-culture debate anything other than the senile conservativism of what one can only conclude is a discipline at its wits’ end?
- What does this process reveal about US anthropologists’ remoteness, distance, detachment, and unfamiliarity with their own society and its dominant cultural and political forms? What does it say about their actual understanding of the local impacts of a globalized economy?
- How much did US anthropologists take for granted, and why?
It is these issues that I would like us to discuss at this open roundtable.
[2-11] Workshop: Writing Culture Visually: A Short Workshop on Multimedia Approaches for Making Ethnography
Session Organizer: David Syring (University of Minnesota Duluth)
Digital storytelling, ethnographic film shorts, multimodal articles—the digital tools now available to ethnographers represent an exciting (and daunting) set of opportunities for moving beyond representing our research in only textual terms. This two-hour workshop will introduce a variety of approaches and genres for “writing culture digitally and visually.” We will look at examples of visual writings created by the workshop facilitator and other ethnographers. We will discuss what is gained from adding the visual to our work. In addition, participants will get hands-on experience with an accessible on-line video editing platform (WeVideo), work on developing a conceptual approach for a visually engaged project, and connect with others interested in expanding our approaches to representing ethnographic research. Participants should bring laptop computers as well as video clips, photos, audio, etc. that they might like to try to develop into visual writing. If you don’t have such material, the facilitator will provide samples to use. This workshop is limited to 10 participants. No charge, but advance registration is required. Please let Nobuko Adachi nadachi@ilstu.edu knows if you would like to participate in advance; if there are still open spots we will accept registration on-site at the Registration Desk.
[2-16] Symposium: Conducting Fieldwork and Engaging in Advocacy and Development on Behalf of Indigenous People in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Richard Borshay Lee
Session Organizer: Wayne Babchuk (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
This symposium will look at fieldwork and advocacy in anthropology with particular reference to indigenous peoples. We begin with a broad overview of the history and implications of the anthropological work done among the Ju/’hoansi San of Namibia and Botswana by Richard Lee and the Harvard Kalahari Research Group (HKRG) and by other scholars and development workers such as Polly Wiessner and Arthur Albertson. We go on to assess anthropological fieldwork and advocacy and examine the involvement of local communities and individuals. We discuss research and applied and development work on the social systems, languages, identities, health, and actions of indigenous peoples more broadly. The participants consider the varied roles that social and natural scientists have played and the challenges they have faced both in terms of traditional academic research and in their efforts to do applied, development, and human rights work.
[3-03] Roundtable: Ethical Dilemmas in the Field: Whose Ethical Standards?
Session Organizer: Mary Hallin (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
This panel will explore complex ethical issues that researchers face when conducting fieldwork. An experiential approach will be used to examine ethical dilemmas ethnographers encounter in the field. Ethical systems vary across cultures – what may be ethical in one culture may not be ethical in another culture. Thus, what does a fieldworker do if his/her ethics contradict those of the local culture? As researchers, how do we deal with potentially unethical practices? What are the implications of helping others? Is it always best to help others? How do we deal with unintended consequences in the field? Utilizing personal experiences from the field, the panel will invite discussion on ethical issues/dilemmas faced by ethnographers and ethical standards in anthropology.
[3-09] Film: “La Vida Matizada: Visual Ethnographic Portraits of the Blended Life in a Culturally Creative Community in the Andes.”
Session Organizer: David Syring (University of Minnesota Duluth)
Indigenous culture in Saraguro, Ecuador, offers many modes of creative expression. During this session you’ll see short videos of traditional dance, beautiful beadwork, Andean folk music with modern twists, and more. Saraguro collaborators have worked with Dr. David Syring to create a variety of media forms sharing la vida matizada, “the blended life,” which represents a Saraguro ideal of what makes “the good life.”
ORGANIZED SESSION ABSTRACTS
[2-03] Ruda, Environmental Justice, Planned Parenthood and Racial Stress: Ethnographic Explorations in Reproductive Justice
Session Organizer: Marcia Good (DePaul University)
In the last decade, the Reproductive Justice framework has caught on – an intersectional and integrative (not solely additive space) for addressing the experiences, concerns and hopes of women of color for a more just and equitable experience of the entirety of life represented under the rubric of “reproductive health”. The movement seeks to address the multiple and overlapping oppressions that impact the way women do or do not bring the next generation into adulthood. In this way, the multiplicity of oppressions that impact the reproductive choices (and non choices) of women of color within a white supremacist environment go far beyond birth. This panel highlights four specific cases in which a reproductive justice perspective is enhanced by ethnographic explorations. Dobbs examines the lack of overlap in the public discourses of EJ and RJ and why this matters to Latinx organizers in Little Village, Chicago. Farley interviewed African American women about the impact of race-based stress on low birth weight. Hassan looks at a model of Lay Health Advisors to show how a Reproductive Justice framework is key to the shaping of educational program for Latinas, African immigrants and Native Americans in Minnesota. Labarthe analyzes overlapping and conflicting narratives around the controversial herb rue (ruda) through interviews conducting with a diverse spectrum of women in Little Village, Chicago. Panelists will be asked to limit their presentations to 10 minutes in order make space for dialogue with those who come to the session – how have others seen the Reproductive Justice framework applied within the discipline of Anthropology? What are some directions forward?
[2-12] Imaginings (III): Sneaking Up On Abduction: Confusion, Curiosity, Deutero-Learning, Evidence
Session Organizer: Myrdene Anderson (Purdue University)
This symposium tackles confusion, curiosity, whimsy, counterfactuals, musement, dissociation, performativity, deutero-learning, and assessment or suspension of evidence—in individual and collective systems involving language and/or culture. Consider the push of the past, cognized or not, and the pull of expectation, sometimes self-fulfilling prophecies. Consider also the open permissive states of evolutionarily immature systems that some renew continually through fanciful projects and addictive habits (art and science included, as well as crafts in their actual processing), and the more closed developmentally mature-unto-senescent systems that can render quotidian existence somewhat predictable, sometimes even boring. In any culture, individuals’ lived and embodied experience emerges in the seam between past and future, between the linguistically accessible and the realms beyond space and time, between the domesticated and digested that may be mined forever and the emerging future with forking paths—at least between attitudes welcoming of evolutionary surprise and those of developmental suspense (cf. Salthe 1993). Acknowledging lived and living experience in the human sciences mandates an empirical foregrounding of imaginings—beyond linguïculture, integrating sense, perception, and cognition with emotion, affect, and memory, for starters.
[2-14] Gender, Violence, and Memory in Ethnographic Perspective
Session Organizer: Brigittine French
This panel examines relationships among processes of violence, gendered experiences, and memories of them in broad analytic perspective. While each paper examines a distinct ethnographic context and historical moment, the inquiries are united in the ways that they seek to: 1) show how interpretations of the past are actively deployed by present concerns; 2) to examine the role of gender in silencing, refracting, and/or articulating memories of violent pasts; and 3) reveal how social silences around violent injustices may be brought to light through reflexive anthropological investigation.
[3-02] Sensing Body, Self and Culture: Putting Sensory Ethnography into Practice
Session Organizer: Angela Glaros (Eastern Illinois University)
This proposed session takes to heart the “sensorial turn” in anthropology (Howes 2003), as well as the assertion that ethnography is a process of creating and representing knowledge drawn from ethnographers’ own experiences (Pink 2007), in order to understand how the senses mediate our bodily experience of cultural worlds. In analyzing the role of sensory awareness in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder related anxiety, Tori Daniels argues that classical Western bodily hierarchies continue to dominate common treatment techniques. Samantha Orr argues that both tattooing in the United States and body painting among the Kayapo in Brazil can be understood as bodily rituals that engage the senses. Meagan Ramey uses Pink’s (2009) concept of “emplaced knowledge” to gain a new understanding of the spatial and social constraints on large women on a college campus.
[3-06] Touristic Imagery and the Shaping of Sensibilities about Self and Other
Session Organizer: Kathleen M. Adams (Loyola University Chicago)
This panel examines the interplay between destination imagery, traveller experiences and ideas about self and other. The first paper, by Claire Abell, offers a critical content analysis of elite tourist imagery of Oman, culled from high end travel magazines and brochures, and offers insights into the role of travel materials in the formation of contemporary neo-orientalist imagery of the Middle East. The second paper, by Kathleen Adams, examines attempts by the local government in the Toraja highlands of Indonesia to lure second and third generation migrants back to the homeland as tourists. Drawing on examinations of the imagery placed on Facebook and other social media oriented towards these migrants, as well as on interviews and fieldwork, Adams highlights the complex reassessments of self and other that occurs prior to and during these visits to the homeland. Finally, the third paper, by Elizabeth Bajjalieh, offers a critical content analysis of Peace Corps recruiting imagery to offer insights into the ways in which this imagery fuels expectations about longterm travel activities that can be classified as voluntourism. Taken together, the papers in this panel foster a richer understanding of the relationship between travel, imagery and ideas about self and other.
INDIVIDUAL PAPER ABSTRACTS
(by last name of first author)
Abell, Claire (Loyola University Chicago)
Sun, Sea, and the Romantic Other: American Travel Writing on Oman [3-06]
In recent years, Oman has become an attractive destination for an elite class of wealthy American tourists. How does the American perception of the Arab Gulf intersect with the travel writer’s presentations of Oman as an ideal vacation destination? Through a discourse analysis of magazine and newspaper travel articles, this paper draws on theories developed by Munt (1994), Urry (1990), and Said (1978) to argue that American travel writing creates a neo-Orientalist discourse in its presentation of Oman as a place where one can experience timeless Arabia and the romantic Other. A visit to Oman is presented as a way of achieving cultural capital, and the “otherness” of the destination only adds to its distinctive value.
Abing, Jaclyn (Grinnell Collage)
Understanding the Mexican Repatriation Act through Linguistic Anthropology [2-02]
If one searches the terms “Mexican Repatriation Act” on the Immigration and Naturalization Services database, only 389 agency records will be shown, despite the fact that between 400,000-1,000,000 Mexicans –many of whom had acquired U.S. citizenship or residency— were deported under the premise of repatriation between 1929-1939 (Hernandez 2010). In response to this paucity, the INS claims that “The majority returned to Mexico by their own decision or through officially voluntary – though often coercive – repatriation programs directed by state and local governments and charitable aid agencies” (INS 2016). Although the INS admits to coercive tactics used in repatriation programs, the language of “officially voluntary” has an ulterior implication: the arbitrary utterance of “consent” takes precedence over the context in which it is uttered. In thinking about the role that “consent” plays in maintaining institutional collective memory, we see that the legal claim of “consensual” return migration has obscured the realities of violent scare tactics that plagued Mexican Americans in the 1930s (Balderrama 1995). In this paper, I will demonstrate how “consent” has historically existed and been defined within immigration policy. I will conduct an analysis of discourse contained in the narratives of repatriated survivors from the California State University Fullerton’s (CSUF) Mexican American Oral History Project archives. In highlighting the significance of language in these oral histories, we can better understand the experiences of those repatriated. In particular, we will come to understand the way consent is and is not culturally-specific, historically-contingent, and connected to power (Ehrlich et al 2016).
Adachi, Nobuko (Illinois State University)
“What did you just say?:” Gaijin, Nihon-jin, and Nihon no hito as Racial Markers in a Japanese Brazilian Commune [2-02]
Today over a million and half people of Japanese descent live in Brazil, some with ancestors arriving in the early 1900s. Upon coming to Brazil, these Japanese immigrants referred to themselves Nihon-jin (Japanese, or lit. “Japanese people”), and called local Brazilians and other non-Japanese as gai-jin (foreigners, or lit. “outside people”). After World War II social, economic, political, and cultural interactions between Japan and Brazil intensified, as Japanese investment in Brazil increased and many Japanese Brazilians “returned” to work in Japan temporarily for high wages. New post-war Japanese immigrants to Brazil, even those who stayed for long periods of time or eventually became permanent residents, were called Nihon no hito (lit. “persons from Japan”). These terms have been passed on to subsequent generations and today, Japanese Brazilians and children of Brazilian nationals see themselves Nihon-jin, but refer to newer immigrants and Japanese nationals as Nihon no hito. Brazilians who are not racially Japanese are called gai-jin or Burajiru-jin (lit. “Brazilian people”). Of course, these Japanese Brazilians are Burajiru-jin as well, being citizens of Brazil, and sometimes “back” in Japan they will refer to themselves in this way to distinguish themselves from Japanese nationals. However, they will be never call themselves gai-jin, even though vis à vis Japanese nationals they are as much “foreigner” as any Brazilian in Japan. And at home in Brazil, Japanese Brazilians are typically referred to as Japonês (Japanese) by “white” and “black” Brazilians alike.
These terms reflect linguistically subtle but socially important distinctions. These racial and ethnic categories were formed as immigrants and emigrants crossed and re-crossed boarders, both national and imaginary. I investigate the process of this naming, race-ing, and ethnic-izing by Japanese Brazilians using one community in the hinterlands of São Paul state as an ethnographic case study. I argue that these categories are hardly permanent or primordially fixed. However, they are not purely situational or negotiated, either, but instead are a very complex interaction of insider/outsider perceptions, linguistic labels, and shifting social contexts.
Adams, Kathleen (Loyola University Chicago)
Touring the Ancestral Homeland: Exploring Heritage and Revisiting Self and Other in the Hinterlands of Indonesia [3-06]
This paper focuses on migrant return tourism to highland Sulawesi, Indonesia. For over two generations growing numbers of Torajans have been migrating throughout Indonesia and beyond, seeking economic and educational opportunities not available in the homeland. Since the mid-2000s, following a slump in international tourist arrivals, the Toraja regional government has actively courted Toraja migrants to return to the homeland as tourists, organizing annual homecoming festivities and promoting new leisure activities and tourist sites on migrant-oriented Facebook pages and web-sites. This talk draws on long-term ethnographic research in the Toraja highlands of Indonesia, interviews with migrant Torajans about their touristic activities in their homeland, and content analysis of social media postings to examine the complex explorations of identity that are central to second and third generation migrants’ vacation visits to their ancestral homeland.
Anderson, Myrdene (Purdue University) and Katja Pettinen (Mount Royal University)
Doing Things Without Words [2-12]
Scholars including John L. Austin (1962[1955]), John R. Searle (1969), and Erving Goffman (1956) have foregrounded the almost magical transformativity inherent in performativity. However, performativity in this recent but already classical sense has primarily indexed phenomena institutionally, even ritually, brought forth in and through language. We will summarize approaches analyzing performativity carried by linguistic means—through thinking and speaking, even through writing—but we are equally intent on situating performativity on either side of language to include feeling and the emotions on the one hand and actualized extralinguistic behavior on the other. Performance and performativity permeate the life worlds of human and other living systems. At the most general level performance can be considered as an act whereby something is done, materially or immaterially, and something is changed, somehow and somewhere, within and/or beyond the actor(s). Such performative actions may be meaning-making in a Peircean semiosic sense, but performativity will not be limited to human agents, inasmuch as the process of semiosis is inherent to life itself.
Athanassopoulos, Effie (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
UNL Campus Archaeology: Building Digital Resources [1-02]
This presentation provides an overview of the “UNL Campus Archaeology” project, a team project led by faculty and students that is analyzing and re-assessing historic collections from excavations carried out on the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus. The case study is a cistern, filled with domestic debris, located below the Student Union and excavated in 1997. The archaeological collection is in excellent condition and includes a great variety of artifacts, such as glass bottles, metal, faunal remains, personal items, and ceramics. The artifacts are representative of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century homes, before the area became part of the university, and offer insight into the social structure and domestic life of early Lincoln.
Our team is building a digital resource, with many components: historic maps, archival research, photographs and 3D models of artifacts. The digital models and metadata will be integrated with historical research and shared with the public through the open-source interface, Scalar. This tool allows for multiple authors to collaborate and produce a non-lineal narrative that engages with a broad audience and features interactive resources within the context of the research. Scalar will serve as the host for the material but also will link to Omeka, the repository of metadata on select artifacts. This digital resource, built by students, will bring wider attention to this historic assemblage, and make archaeology an integral part of the history of nineteenth century Nebraska and the broader Great Plains region
Bajjalieh, Elizabeth (Loyola University Chicago)
The Real Experience: Online Brochure Analysis of Peace Corps Advertising [3-06]
The Peace Corps has sent over 220,000 volunteers abroad since its formation in 1961. With the goal of “promote[ing] world peace and friendship abroad,” Peace Corps has been nationally revered as a symbol of the United State’s commitment to service, diplomacy, and rendering the world a better place for everyone. This paper draws on previous voluntourism theories, and offers critical content analysis of Peace Corps’ recruitment materials. Focussing in particular on Peace Corps’s “online-brochures,” including their official website, photos posted on their official Facebook Page, as well as a 12-minute recruitment video found on Youtube, this paper raises questions about the gaps between imagery and actuality in long-term volunteer work abroad.
Bawa, Papia (Purdue University) and Sunnie Lee Watson (Purdue University)
The Other Side of the Looking Glass: Bridging Lewis Carroll’s World and the Realities of Chinese Graduate Students English Writing Challenges; A Phenomenological Study [2-12]
More students from China are looking to the United States for learning opportunities. However, such students have serious English writing deficiencies, due to significant differences between the two languages, and a correspondingly deficient English language instructional system. This Phenomenological study of five Chinese, graduate level students in the United States, informs us of these issues and explores viable instructional strategies to deal with such issues. The key findings suggest that the participants feel marginalized due to English language deficiencies. The findings are discussed through a novel analogy of the ‘Looking Glass Effect’, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s timeless classic “Through the Looking Glass”. Using the analogy enables readers to identify with these challenges in a more intuitive fashion as a central theme of the book pertains to language issues, including cross-cultural language problems as well as unique aspects of the English language that can be confusing for foreign users.
Beilfuss, Samantha (University of Wisconsin, La Crosse)
The Kayapo, Sting, and the Representation of Indigenous People [3-04]
Since humans are the natural drivers of climate change, one must look at the social structures that allows for humans to have such a devastating effect on their physical environment as well as their social environment. The stratification of non-renewable resources caused by the advancement of globalization from the past few decades has caused for certain groups to be more negatively effected than others. One of the many societies that are feeling the burden from the socially created climate change is the Kayapo of Brazil. The Kayapo call the Amazon Rainforest home and have done so for thousands of years. In efforts to save their depleting forest from deforestation done by major corporations, they have reached out to the musician Gordon Mathew Thomas Sumner, other wise known for is stage name Sting, to help represent their cause as well as being their face on a worldwide scale. This essay will look at how Sting’s relationship with the Kayapo has effect their worldwide representation and what it means to be an indigenous people of the region. What it means to conserve and protect brings forth the evidence of what society deems as needing to be protected and from whom. People are the natural drivers of climate change and if we wish to have a more positive impact we must understand who really is being “conserved” in terms of representation and how a claim to protect a forest may have more to do with people than the trees.
Benn, David (Bear Creek Archeology)
Holy Places on the Land: Geoglyphs and Other Signifiers of the H [1-02]
The Northern Prairies Spiritual tradition was a belief system shared by various ancestral Siouan speakers of the Chiwere group, the Dakota group, the Mandan group, and the Crow-Hidatsa group who lived and hunted throughout the northern half of the midwestern prairie-plains during the Woodland culture periods (ca. 150 B.C.–A.D. 1200+). Evidence for this tradition consists of legendary beings and animal and anthropomorphic spirit beings described in oral traditions and manifested as effigy mounds, intaglios, soil geoglyphs, petroglyphs/pictographs, tattooed images, and boulder figures. Evidence of ritual sites from Wisconsin to South Dakota is discussed.
Bickford, Josh (Kent State University)
A Structuralist Approach to the Myth of Rata, the Legendary Voyager of Polynesia [3-07]
Throughout the region of Polynesia the myth of Rata (or Lata), the legendary voyager, can be found in a variety of iterations. The myth is incredibly widespread and alongside other myths, links the cultures of the regions to this mythical character. While the myth can be identified as having several differences in its regional variations, including differences in characters, or geographical references in the myth, underlying these distinctions are a number of commonalities which can be identified. As a way of investigating this myth, this presentation will apply a structuralist framework to the underlying themes of the myth of Rata. To accomplish this, a sample of these myths will be selected and compared, with the intention of finding those underlying commonalities within the Rata myth. With this commonality identified, it will then be possible to examine the myth according to its structure in a Levi-Straussian fashion. This will include a description of the bundles of relationships that are present, as well as an arrangement of these bundles according to the progression of the myth. It is the intention of this presentation to provide a further understanding of a myth which can be seen across all of Polynesia.
Blatzheim, John (Rice University)
Encountering Hyperobjects in the Chthulucene [3-04]
This paper draws on ethnographic work with activists involved in environmental campaigns to examine the intersection at which individual subjects come into contact with global forces, and the changes which follow. By putting Timothy Morton’s work with Object Oriented Ontology into conversation with Donna Harraway’s conceptualization of our new geological epoch as the Cthulucene, I theorize the tentacular entanglements which have become so common place in our current world. The hyperobject in question in this paper is The Nuclear, that is all of the objects, practices and processes which have been bound up in both nuclear weapons and power. Barbara, the interlocutor whose experiences make up the ethnographic data upon which this paper draws, is a retired professor and environmental activist. As a child she grew up in California, just on the other side of the Sierra Nevada from the Nevada Nation Test Site where the earliest United States nuclear tests took place above ground. Despite an intervening mountain range separating her form the site, Barbara later in life learned that those uranium isotopes still circulated through her body, drawing her up into the hyperobject. Even at the birth of this nuclear hyperobject, it was – tentacle like – working its way through thousands of people as radioactive fallout poisoned entire towns. However, in turn they worked their way through it. Barbara’s encounter with this hyperobject spurred her later activism. Through this entanglement global forces both shape and are shaped by the subjects who encounter them.
Boyle, Eugene Charles McGregor (Purdue University)
Gods, Empires, and the Footnote: Meaning at the Bottom of the Page [2-12]
Dreaming as a human universal is just part of the phenomenon. Most mammals dream, some birds dream, even some reptiles and some marsupials dream. Accepted truisms include how dreams are neurologically connected to R.E.M. sleep, to long-term memory manipulations, to unconscious hidden truths, to evolutionary psychology, and even to just random brain activity. Despite glaring evidence, anthropological analyses often remain steeped in a Western rationalist mindset, usually regarding dreams first, as not real, and second, clearly bifurcating the “real” from the “imaginary”. This paper explores the cross-cultural and cross-species dimensions of dreams, focusing on Eduardo Kohn’s concept of “transpecies engagement” and his observation that a broader understanding of dreams can frame a fuller understanding of semiosis.
Branigan, Claire (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign)
Memory and the Ni Una Menos Movement in Argentina [2-14]
On October 19, 2016, hundreds of thousands of women around Argentina went on strike to demand ni una menos (not one less); a cry to end to violence against women. This massive strike and protest was part of a larger movement galvanized over the past several years in response to the pervasive amounts of feimicides (murders of women). Thus far, the movement has had unpresented levels of participation with over 500,000 people participating in the second annual march in June of 2016 and even more using the hashtag #NiUnaMenos, on social media platforms. Central to the Ni Una Menos movement has been the participation of family and kin who have lost their sisters, mothers, and friends to femicide. Like the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo before them, these kin demand justice by claiming and preserving the memory of their loved ones. In this paper I look at the saliency of the semiotics of memory, materialized in photos and images, and embodied in protest and performance, in shaping the Ni Una Menos movement. I argue that the success of the movement cannot be understood without an analysis of the major role that memory has played in Argentine social movements over the past forty years.
Brodersen, Aaron (University of Central Missouri)
Sexually Pure: Perception of Sexual Purity, Gender Roles, and the American Evangelical Church [2-13]
All systems and institutions are contextualized by and defined by the culture which hosts them, and all systems of inequality are therefore reinforced by both the culture and the culture’s institutions. This is applicable to the American Evangelical Church, within which gender roles are reinforced through a perception of purity. Through an analysis aided by the theory of the social utility of religion, this inequality is shown to be regularly reinforced both over the course of an individual practitioner’s life but in the overall development of Christianity up to this point. While there are well recognized and documented systems of gender inequality in both the Biblical Old and New Testament, this emphasis on female sexual abstinence, and its connection to sinless purity in the American Evangelical Church, is a more recent phenomenon. Over the course of their development, young people in the Church, especially young girls, are repeatedly told of the importance of maintaining sexual purity, with greater emphasis on this than other sins theologically considered equally dangerous. This emphasis, coupled with its direction at young women, creates an environment of gender inequality which is steeped in multiple layers of cultural gender norms and inequality, ranging from 2600 year old perceptions of sexual tenacity to the Industrial Revolution’s subjugation of women. Ultimately this research concludes that the emphasis placed on the worth, importance, and perception of purity by the American Evangelical Church is reinforcing the unequal gender roles of both today and a number of distinct cultures.
Buckner, Margaret (Missouri State University)
The Inquisitive Anthropologist: Questioning Questions in Ethnographic Fieldwork [3-08]
Over the course of several decades of fieldwork, I have learned—often the hard way—that asking questions can result in questionable answers. This paper, based on personal experience, will explore the role of questions in ethnographic research from practical, methodological, and ethical perspectives. It will discuss not only the consequences of how questions are asked, and to whom, about what, where, and when, but also why they’re asked, especially when the answers may be highly suspect.
Campbell, Benjamin (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
San Trance Dance [3-01]
The San of southern Africa are well known for their Great Dance. The healing dance has been the subject of much attention, including ethnographic descriptions by Richard Katz, Bradford Keeney, and Megan Biesele as well as David Lewis-Williams’ wide ranging speculations based primarily on the associated rock art. Here I draw on their work together with our understanding of the brain to propose a neuroanthropological model of the healing dance. I suggest that the rhythmic physical movement of the dance leads to prolonged activation of the insula, a hub for somatic sensation and emotion, explaining the fear described by the dancers. The insula acts as a switch between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, critical for attention to external stimuli and sequencing of information, and the parietal lobe, associated with integration of bodily senses, and the distinction between self and others. With sustained de-activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during trance, bodily signals in the parietal lobe lose temporal integration leading to distortions in body perception and a blurring of the distinction between one’s body and that of others. Imaging studies have shown that disruption of the temporal region of the parietal lobe can lead to an out of body experience, providing a neural basis for the experience of climbing to the heavens. Such a mental state is similar to that experienced by exhausted hunters at the moment of a kill, bringing the dying eland to their mind as a central cultural symbol displayed in the rock art.
Casey, Anne (Grinnell College)
Exploring Northern Ireland’s Post-Conflict Landscape: Multigenerational Trauma [3-11]
Historical wounding is found to impact generations beyond the individuals who first experienced trauma. A recent study has compared the Irish experience of multigenerational trauma to that of the Lakota Sioux. For the Sioux, a reiteration of colonial violence is unfolding currently at oil pipeline construction at Standing Rock, ND, and the world is watching. The contemporary experience in Northern Ireland follows a similar parallel: current events reigniting an oscillating and embodied experience of the past. PTSD, ceremony and a sense of tribal identity contribute to the ongoing struggle of healing and reconciliation in both the Ulster and Lakota contexts.
Caulkins, Douglas (Grinnell College)
Collaborative Ethnography and the Sustainability of an Environmental Organization [3-04]
In an earlier paper on the topic of collaboration with a group of neighbors protesting the construction of several large hog confinements in a rural residential area. The protest group evolved into an organization with broader environmental concerns: CARES, Community Action to Restore Environmental Stewardship. The ethnographers played an increasing role in the organization, including testifying at government hearings, conducted surveys of the membership, participating in protests, serving on committees, walking in parades, distributing informational handouts, linking CARES to other environmental organizations, and most recently, funding legal defense when the hog producers sued CARES, marking an escalation in the conflict and a threat to the sustainability of this or similar 501(c)(4) organizations.
Chang, Shay (Fordham University)
State Rescaling as Structural Violence [2-08]
Max Weber’s description of the modern state and its ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory’ has shaped much of twentieth-century social theory; however, emerging scholarship problematizes Weber’s assumption of fixed territoriality (1946). Political geographer John Agnew terms this oversight the ‘territorial trap,’ criticizing its unquestioned, static construction of the nation-state (1994). Weberian analyses grow increasingly tenuous with globalization, and postmodern realities demand alternative conceptualizations of the state. The Westphalian model, as Neil Brenner observes, is almost obsolete in contemporary geopolitics. The state as ‘self-enclosed geographical container’ no longer—and perhaps never has—accurately represented the dynamism of state power. Critical geographers have thus reconstructed ‘space,’ in the broadest sense, as an arena of sociopolitical processes like capitalist production and political struggle. The destabilization of Weberian assumptions has turned attention to non-national geographies, or ‘spaces,’ of government. In particular, scholars of state rescaling observe the multilateral displacement of state activities: vertically, to supranational agencies or to regional and local institutions; and horizontally, to non-state organizations and quangos, or quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations. This refraction and delegation of state activities across geopolitical hierarchies complicate contemporary understandings of state authority and, as this paper explores, of state-sanctioned structural violence. Proceeding from the post-Weberian perspective, this conceptual paper aims to put discourses of state rescaling and nationalism in conversation with each other to generate alternative understandings of structural violence. I attempt to answer the following questions: (1) How does the post-Weberian state enable (and even obscure) uneven development under global capitalism; and (2) How does nationalism advance state-led projects of uneven development?
Cloete, Elene (University of Kansas)
Yearning for the Future: South Africa’s Born-Free Generation and Neoliberal Subjectivities [3-10]
Young South Africans are currently part of a specific historic moment: The first generation to come of age in a post-apartheid country. This moment also marks twenty years of neoliberal reform and subsequent neoliberal rationalities that extent beyond the market. These rationalities are prominent within the country’s public sphere, giving rise to narratives of self-reliance, individuality, and employment yearning. That said, with more than a third of the country’s population dependent on social assistance, many young people remain dependent on the state and its system of social grants. This paper concerns the socio-political landscapes of South Africa’s rural youth, particularly those living in the rural Eastern Cape, removed from urban resources, unemployed, and thus dependent on social welfare. I investigate how these young people describe their socio-economic landscape in terms of broader political and economic processes. Considering these narratives through a neoliberal lens and drawing from ethnographic data, I argue that rural South Africans’ interpretations of their social realities contain complicated yet continuous negotiations between dependence on and independence from the state. These negotiations are especially pronounced in their interpretation of unemployment and social welfare. I conclude that young South Africans’ descriptions of unemployment, social assistance, and national politics, mirror the contradictions in the country’s post-apartheid democracy, particularly political actors’ ambivalence toward social welfare and neoliberal economic reform.
Cox, Nicole (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Troubling Tradition: Dancers, Dupattas and the ‘Essence’ of Kathak [2-07]
Heritage, tradition and parameters of the ‘classical’ are debated concepts in today’s classical Indian dance world (Chakravorty 2000). In this paper I examine a set of conversations incited by a letter written by a respected Kathak dancer to India’s premier national dance academy. In the letter she protests the institution’s categorization of her work as “Creative and Experimental” rather than “Classical”. The debate that emerged out of this letter’s circulation centered on the significance of the dupatta, a long cloth drape that some consider essential to the ‘traditional’ Kathak costume. What is the embodied relationship between the dancer and this piece of cloth? In this paper, I also explore the contours of this debate and elaborate on its references to processes of traditionalism and contemporaneity, constructed histories, and policing the female body to suggest that the ‘dupatta’ debate is part of a larger and complex social framework embedded in the maintenance of a particular national identity. To do so, I draw from textual analysis of the published letters and commentaries by artists and scholars of Indian dance, as well as my own physical training in the Kathak dance form in India and the US. To this already robust debate I add the question: What are the implications to these conversations about women’s social positionality if the dupatta is not only worn, but embedded in the way a dancer represents the feminine through gestural movement that evokes the image of the dupatta even in its absence?
Coyle, Joe (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)
Precarity, Pentecostalism, and Social Media in Brazil [2-01]
Brazil’s recent economic recession and presidential impeachment, ongoing corruption investigations, and newly announced austerity measures have deepened conditions of Brazilian political, social, and economic precarity. At the same moment, Pentecostalism’s influence on Brazilian social and political life continues to spread, as is evident in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro mayoral election of Marcelo Crivella, a bishop of the neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. In this paper, I discuss how Pentecostal leaders seek to influence social and political life in a time of precarity through social media platforms. While anthropological literature on Pentecostalism has addressed Pentecostal appropriations of modern mass media, little has been written that specifically attends to the appropriation of social media in shaping social and political processes (Meyer 2012, Oosterbaan 2011). In this paper, I argue that the ostensible “directness” and immediacy of social media platforms like Twitter correspond with a similar Pentecostal emphasis on direct and immediate connection to the Holy Spirit. However, social media, and mediatization more generally, must also be understood as an integral part of secularization. My paper attempts to show how Pentecostal leaders navigate these conditions as they attempt to impact social, political, and religious life in Brazil in a time of precarity.
Dalbom, Alison (University of Central Missouri)
Gender Inculturation within a Rural Montessori Classroom [1-01]
Research for this study is going to be centered around the basic idea of gendering infants before they are born, and well into their primary stages of development. The goal of this research is to determine if implying gendered expectations are internalized, and thusly affecting the rest of the child’s life. Much research has already been done in this field, however I am specifically studying children between the ages of 3 and 5 who are attending traditional Montessori school. The research will be executed by literary research in combination with personal observation in a rural Montessori classroom. The outcomes can be varied, however it should provide solid evidence of subtle gender cues being internalized by children who are exposed to teachers who may unknowingly be promoting gendered norms within the Montessori classroom, and how they may alter or create different reactions other that how a child would naturally perform without physical expectations. Children within the United States are influenced by a plethora of outside forces starting from the time they are born. Children born within this society are oftentimes given a gender and expected to fulfill gender stereotypes from the time the biological sex of the fetus is determined in-utero. Within these strict gendered laws, there also comes a great amount of cultural implications on how the child should manage its interactions with others, and as a result can possibly form the path for the rest of the child’s life. This is an odd phenomenon because many other societies around the world have differing views on gender other than what is currently considered “normal” within the United States.
Daniels, Tori (Eastern Illinois University)
Sensing Trauma: Western Sense Hierarchies in PTSD Symptom Management [3-02]
In this paper, I use my own experience of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-related anxiety to understand the role of the senses in both experiencing and treating PTSD symptoms. Applying Pink’s (2009) principle of “participant sensing,” I took into account how and what I was feeling during episodes of PTSD anxiety. In particular I focused on taste, smell, feeling, and senses that contemporary American society tends not to notice, such as the passage of time, dreaming states, and the like. Not only did the practice of participant sensing reveal how my own senses were implicated in my anxiety, but it also revealed how treatment techniques developed to cope with PTSD anxiety often reflect a classic Western hierarchy of senses, privileging the visual and downplaying those other senses that were central to my own experience with the disorder. I argue that a more grounded understanding of the ways in which disorders such as PTSD are sensed could improve the treatment of its symptoms.
Delaney, Peter (Washington University in St. Louis)
Western versus Traditional Medical Treatment Alternatives in Rural Uganda: The Influence of Local Notions of Trauma [3-11]
I spent over two months (May-July 2016) in Iganga District within the Busoga Region of eastern Uganda, investigating local notions of trauma and the tension between traditional and western medicine. I attempted to investigate three questions: the local notions and understanding of the concept of trauma (and how the low-resource environment influences understanding), the trauma categories that are experienced most often and treatment pathways pursued, and ways in which trauma care could be improved day-to-day. I interviewed over 60 members of the community to gain a holistic interpretation and understand the perspectives of stakeholders in many political, social, and economic levels. I utilized a web-based analysis software to track patterns in word frequency between responses and identify thematic elements to responses. I found there are physical and psychological trauma spheres and evidence that the the Lusoga word for trauma, utisi watisi wa (a scar on the heart), profoundly influences the Ugandan interpretation and the treatment pathway pursued. I also found revealing trends in the ways traditional and western medicine are balanced and trends in the way patients seek care, uncovering new ways traditional and western medicine can be better balanced in other communities. I hope my research provides clarity into the tension between western and traditional medicine present in many native cultures experiencing globalization around the world. I believe residents of Iganga District are relevant cultural informants to provide perspective into the balance of treatment options found in a low-resource setting, providing a broader interpretation and application of my findings.
Désveaux, Emmanuel (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris)
Transformation of plastic forms in Native North America [3-07]
At first glance, Native North America presents four main distinct clusters for art or plastic forms: abstract design on the East and the Subarctic; an association of feminine abstraction and masculine crude figuration on the Plains; an elegantly stylized figuration in the Southwest, and proliferation of images based on principle of double-representation in combination with cartouched components on the Northwest Coast. However, this is not without counting with some minor clusters such as the zigzag pattern that prevails in Northern California. First, it might be demonstrated that there are continuities between these well-identified clusters that seem apparently incompatible. Second, it will be shown how these four different “artistic styles” are held together in a tranformational relationship, understood in the sense that Lévi-Strauss developed in Les Mythologiques. In other words, transformations proceed from inversions and are framed by signification; and we may conclude to the unity of North America on this level as on other levels of culture.
Dobbs, Tara (DePaul University)
Reproductive Justice and Environmental Justice Movements: Talking to Each Other? [2-03]
In the fall of 2016, our team for an Applied Practice courseanalyzed the rhetoric pertaining to the intersection of environmental justice (EJ) and reproductive justice (RJ) organizations, and how they include each other in their missions. This work was originally done for Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) in Chicago, who is interested in creating an organizational stance regarding this subject, and requested a thorough evaluation of the existing discourse. LVEJO’s experience is that while women are often at the forefront of Environmental Justice movements and are the majority of on the ground organizers, there is little awareness of how EJ affects RJ. One example they are currently exploring in their own community is the impact of diesel emissions on pregnancy outcomes. After analyzing over 40 RJ and EJ organizations by reviewing their websites, having conversations with available staff on the phone, and emailing, it was found that little to no professional information regarding this subject matter exists.Organizations separate themselves into distinct groups: EJ organizations do not emphasize the importance of the role of the environment on women’s health, while RJ organizations do not substantially consider the role of the environment in reproductive health, focusing instead on legislative barriers to women’s health. Our recommendation to LVEJO was that LVEJO was free to move forward in curating their own approach. This paper reviews those findings and contextualizes that information with interviews with the director and organizers on how they move forward in creating intersectional space between these two areas.
Earl, Lindsey (Illinois State University)
It’s for the Children: Child Sponsorship Development Successes and Role of Religion [1-03]
Child-sponsorship is a development scheme of massive scale. It has a cash flow estimated at three million dollars a year- fifty billion cumulatively (Wydick et al 2013; Watson & Clarke 2014), yet child sponsorship is relatively absent in development literature (Clarke & Watson 2014). In this research project, I will draw from personal experiences as a sponsor, review literature, compile information from the ten most popular child sponsorship organizations (CSOs), and interview CSO employees, to learn about the successes and drawbacks of child sponsorship. Ultimately, I will argue it is successful because of the advertising which appeals to pathos, personal correspondence, fiscal transparency, and a diversified, sustainable funding base. The child sponsorship scheme, however, is subject to a host of pitfalls. I will draw from world systems and dependency theory and the white savior industrial complex to discuss condescension, jealousy, obsession produced through child sponsorship. Specifically, I will focus on the evangelical roots of child sponsorship and its implications in loss of native cultures and religion.
Kehoe, Alice (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
“We Know It’s a Hoax”: The Doctrine of Discovery Paradigm in American Archaeology [2-05]
Columbus’ discovery of rich country unknown to his patrons prompted them to request the Pope grant them a mission to conquer and Christianize the heathen of those lands. In 1493, a papal bull did this, conferring such lands to Christian rulers “to all eternity”. Following this, international laws were developed to legitimate conquests by European powers, including all the Americas. North American Anglo schools continue to teach, from pre-kindergarten on through college history courses, that Columbus was the first Old World voyager to see the Americas, and North America was virtual wilderness whose peoples never achieved civilizations. Socialized into this ideology, American archaeologists declare a priori that any data indicating pre-Columbian voyages to the Americas are ipso facto “hoaxes,” and refuse to discuss the data. This presentation shows sound data supporting pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts, and explains the power of the Doctrine of Discovery.
Farley, Taylor (The Ohio State University)
Demystifying the Health Disparity: Race-Based Stress among African American Women [2-03]
In the United States, African American women give birth to Low Birth Weight (LBW) babies more than twice as often as White women. Even when social economic status (SES) is factored in, black women with higher education are at greater risk of delivering a LBW baby than white women with high school diplomas. Identifying the cause of this health disparity remains elusive, yet it is likely complex with one factor being Race-Based Stress that pregnant African American women experience. The purpose of this study was to demystify African American women’s perspectives of stress during pregnancy. This paper is a compilation of a literature review and pilot ethnographic research regarding the topic of race-based stress among African American women. Through combining these two methods I have analyzed different articles and 7 African American mother’s perspectives on stress during pregnancy, in an attempt to understand the complex factors that are involved in the high rates of LBW in the African American community.
Feinberg, Rick (Kent State University)
Behaviorist Ethics in Polynesia: Anuta, Solomon Islands [3-08]
The Polynesians of Anuta, one of the Solomon Islands of the southwestern Pacific, conceive of ethics in a way which is, broadly speaking, utilitarian. Two aspects of the Anutan view of happiness are noteworthy: the openness with which Anutans laugh at others’ minor misfortunes, and their practice of evaluating the happiness of others on the basis of their appearance and actions. Here we will propose a context for understanding Anutan ethics as a mature ethical system. In Michael Lambek’s “Toward an Ethics of the Act,” he argues that the ethical is located in action, both in specific acts and in the ongoing judgments that underlie and support those acts. In a similar vein, Roy Rappaport draws on J. L. Austin’s theory of speech acts to give a behaviorist analysis of the significance of ritual. In Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Rappaport claims that the behaviors of participants in rituals demonstrate their understanding and acceptance of a meaning, and that their interior mental states are thus irrelevant in the analysis of their understanding of what has taken place. By applying Lambek’s “ethics of the act” and Rappaport’s conception of ritual to Anutan expressions of happiness, we argue that, despite the fact that external expressions are generally downplayed in Western ethics as mere reflections of inner mental states (either genuine or deceptive), in the context of “behaviorist” Anutan ethics they can and should be regarded as complete and sufficient expressions in and of themselves.
Field, Sean (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), LuAnn Wandsnider (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and Matt Waite (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
The Utility of UAV’s for Archaeological Surface Survey: A Comparative Study [1-02]
The utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in archaeology has increased significantly within the past few years, primarily as a platform for low altitude aerial imaging. We test if this technology has advanced to a quality that will allow the documentation of surface-level artifacts. We compare the success rates of artifact identification between two survey procedures executed in moderate vegetation context: 1) traditional pedestrian survey and 2) survey of a drone sourced orthoimage (DSO) with a resolution of 1.36 cm. The DSO parameters were constructed in accordance with data storage and processing capacities of agencies that would be utilized large scale orthoimages and are therefore not peak optimizations of drone imaging capacity. Artifacts, represented as washers (3cm) diameter painted white (n=20) and black (n=20) were seeded in the survey area (~ 3.25 ha) prior to each survey trial. Participants successfully identified 27.5% (n=11) of artifacts during the traditional pedestrian survey, and did not identify any artifact locations during their survey of the DSO. There is a clear and significant difference between the frequencies of successfully identified artifacts between the two survey types, suggesting that current drone-sourced imagery (directed under the parameters utilized here) is insufficient for surface level artifact identification in moderate vegetation contexts.
French, Brigittine (Grinnell College)
Remembering Tammy Zywicki: The Specter of Feminicide in the Americas [2-14]
This paper examines relationships between social memory and experiences of gendered violence through a comparative anthropological perspective. More specifically, it takes up legal definitions of feminicide, the murder of women based upon their gender in which the state becomes complicitous (Sanford 2003), and examines cases of the murder of young women in Latin America in conversation with an analysis of the unsolved murder of Grinnell College student Tammy Zywicki who died violently in 1992 on her way back to college. The paper shows that feminicide is a crime that is commonly conceptually, geographically, and discursively located outside of the United States in poor, developing, “violent” Latin American countries, but argues that feminicide is a systematic crime rendered visible in US legal and juridical practices and supported by patriarchal culture within national borders. This argument is borne out through the use of Nora’s (1989) idea of “sites of memory,” a concept used to show how the memory of violent deaths lives in the subjectivities of women who encounter them well after individual murders are discovered. Overall, the paper suggests that, in this way, the memory of violence in the past, anticipates it in the future.
Geer, Brianna (University of Toledo)
POSTER: Lithic Analysis of The Welles Site [2-17]
Anthropologists, in this particular cases Archeaologists, are able to use the identification of Raw Materials combined with the analysis of how the Raw Material was manipulated and used to hypothesis the time period, trade networks, and the group movements from a particular site. With the collection of artifacts brought in from the Welles Site, this poster will present the findings of the artifacts discovered by my team and I under the supervision of Dr. Melissa Baltus. Specifically looking at what the raw material is and how the group had access to it, and how the raw material was used. If there is enough evidence, there may be an accurate understanding of an aspect of these people’s lives.
Giles, Linda (Independent Scholar)
Spirit Possession and Male Gender on the Swahili Coast [2-13]
Spirit possession is often viewed as a predominantly female domain within Swahili society, but males are also involved in various ways. This paper explores how the act of spirit possession is conceptualized in relation to the body and gendered behavioral norms in Swahili society and how this affects male and female attitudes toward possession, expressions of possessive relationships, and the development of case histories and possessive careers. Data is drawn from three years of fieldwork from 1982 through 1984 in various field sites in coastal Kenya and Tanzania, supplemented by later brief periods of study. Similarities and differences between general male and female patterns are discussed, followed by an analysis of two especially interesting cases of male possession and initiation into spirit guilds that I encountered in the Tanga area of northern Tanzania and comparison to the female cases more commonly encountered throughout my field area.
Glubok, Brian (Beloit College)
The Neo-liberal Accident [3-10]
In this presentation, I will discuss college women’s sexual narratives, specifically how women use these sexual narratives as frames for asserting rational choice to allow for the performance of patriarchal sexualized images and a reflection of broader cultural trends. The narratives I analyze come from past research on many different populations, including lesbians on the Gulf Coast, high school students in Norway, and others. Using insights from both Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality (1980) and critiques of post-feminism and neo-liberal conceptions of the self, I will argue that these narratives become unproblematic because they are viewed as freely chosen by agentic and rational actors, and therefore renders invisible the effect of cultural institutions in shaping female sexuality. I will then extend this analysis to other facets of social inequity, including how racist actions become seen as exceptional and neo-colonialism becomes rationalized.
Gomez-Ramirez, Lizandra (Augustana College)
Are Mexicans Still Migrating?: The Reality of a Rural Village in Mexico [3-10]
This paper examines migration and transnationalism from the perspective of Mexicans who are in Mexico, in the U.S., and my own experience researching this phenomena as a “halfie”. I present findings from 20 interviews conducted in a village in Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico during the month of June 2016. I will explore migrants’ attitudes towards migration as an economic strategy to preserve the livelihood of the family and the current role of remittances in this village. This research was enhanced by interviews in Rock Island, Illinois to show a network of migration. This research is integral to understanding whether remittances have led to sustainable development, whether Mexican migration to the U.S. will continue as an economic strategy, and how it has created a transnational community in this village in Mexico.
Grady, Ruth (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
New Perspectives On the Piraino One Mummy [3-05]
The mummy, Piraino One from Sicily, has already revealed details of disease and medicine. He died of cancer combined with an unprecedented parasite burden. The dietary remains have been the focus of one paper which highlighted the pollen of milkwort which was a medicinal plant. Further dietary analysis was done to resolve two issues. Previously, one lab participating in the analysis identified the epidermis of plum. A second lab identified numerous fragments of grape but, no evidence of plum. As the first part of our analysis, we attempted to verify the purported plum in the Piraino One coprolite. A second focus of this study was on a section of animal tissue that appears to be an intestinal section used as a sausage casing. The conclusions of our analysis suggested that sausage could have been eaten by Piraino One immediately before death however, we found no evidence of plum.
Graese, Nadia (Grinnell College)
Finding a Voice: Speech and Voice Therapy for Female-to-Male Individuals [3-01]
Transgender women may find their gender identities questioned and dismissed when they fail to deliver the socially expected and idealized feminine voice. As a result, transgender women and their voices are increasingly highlighted in the United States media and in academic discussions. Yet, the same widespread interest does not appear to exist for the transgender man and his voice (Serano 2013; Kulick 1999). This paper identifies the different recommendations and priorities outlined for speakers identifying as men in contrast to those identifying as women. The data studied consist of three webpages, each of which discuss either the concept of the feminine or the masculine voice. Two of the webpages focus specifically on the trans voice, while one webpage addresses masculine speakers more generally. This paper argues that the discussion of the masculine voice is characterized by calm discourse, lack of concern about passing, and the prioritization of comfort and confidence over conformity, in contrast to the more emotionally-charged language directed at feminine speakers. These conclusions suggest that discursive differences may reflect an underlying societal preference for expressions of masculinity over femininity.
Hanschu, Jakob (Kansas State University)
Assessing Integrity of Burial Features: A Kansas Case Study [1-02]
Scattered through parts of northeastern and north-central Kansas are prehistoric burial sites in the form of low rock and earthen mounds located atop bluffs overlooking stream valleys. While these are far from scarce, few have been investigated using modern archaeological methods. As a result, they are poorly understood, including their integrity. Many of the mounds have been disturbed by non-systematic post-construction excavation (looting). The effects of these activities are unclear. In June 2016, the Kansas Archaeological Field School conducted limited test excavations of a low mound (14RY652) with a central depression, suggesting previous disturbance. Among the goals of the project was to confirm the human origin of this subtle mound and assess the extent of damage to its cultural deposits. The former was confirmed while disturbance was found to be minimal leaving much of the feature intact. Although most mounds in this region appear disturbed, our excavations at 14RY652 suggest some still hold valuable information about the people and cultures associated with them and deserve protection.
Hassan, Asha (University of Minnesota)
Reproductive Justice, Malcolm X, and The Pursuit of Health Equity: Evaluation of Adult Sexual Health Programming in Urban and Rural Minnesotan Communities of Color [2-03]
The Lay Health Advisor (LHA) Model conducted by Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota (PPMNS) offers culturally relevant sexual and reproductive health education to adults. The model is implemented in multiple culturally specific community-based programs such as Entre Amigas, with urban Latina women, Partnership Project, with urban African-immigrants, and ASKK, with rural Native Americans. All the programs have goals to provide medically accurate, culturally relevant knowledge, foster skills and confidence to make informed decisions, and create an identity of lay health advisors who can connect members of their communities with resources and services. When planning, implementing, and evaluating programs for communities historically impacted by eugenic reproductive health policies and lackluster public health initiatives, special considerations and reproductive justice frameworks should be at the forefront. Social scientists and public health planners must contemplate why reproductive justice is dependent on strong education and community-centered societies, what current approaches to reduce racial health disparities in STD incidence and morbidity look like, and why civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X objected to the term “birth control” in favor of “family planning”. In this presentation, The LHA model programs at PPMNS will serve as an example of these over-arching ideas and how this type of approach can and will bring us closer to health equity.
Hoffman, Austin (Independent Scholar)
Wolves at our Door: An Exploration of Wilderness and Humanity in the Anthropocene [3-04]
This paper analyzes the dialectic between the consumption of “nature” or “wilderness” and environmental destruction. Specifically, it centers on the relationship between modern civilization and wolves. The wolf is arguably the most unfairly demonized and persecuted animal in history, as government sponsored campaigns to extirpate wolves have been carried out across the globe. Yet ironically, as genuine experiences with “nature” become increasingly fleeting, humans now obsessively want to keep these wild canids as household pets. The recent proliferation of wolves in captivity is a new commodification of animals engendered by the simultaneous destruction of the environment and a deep yearning for humans to commune with nature in the 21st century or anthropocene age. This study aims to dissect this paradox, and draws largely from the work of naturalist Barry Lopez, who hypothesizes that “the central conflict between man’s good and evil natures is revealed in his twin images of the wolf as ravening killer and as nurturing mother.” This theoretical approach informs fieldwork conducted at Mission: Wolf, a remote sanctuary in Southern Colorado for wolves and wolf-dogs. The sanctuary was created out of the necessity to address the epidemic of wolves living in captivity. A longitudinal study was conducted over the course of a year, with data collected through interviews with volunteer staff, as well as observational accounts of interactions between wolves and humans. The contemporary state of the wolf in America points to larger discourses on conservation, which are increasingly urgent in the face of climate change and environmental degradation.
Horton, Zachary (University of Central Missouri)
Testing Diet Indicates for Paranthropus boisei Using a Model Organism [3-05]
Paranthropus boisei was long thought to consume tubers or other hard foods based on its large molars and chewing muscles attachments. This conclusion is supported by isotopic analysis of its teeth, showing consumption of plants that use the photosynthetic C4 pathway, mainly found in grasses and some sedges, such as tubers. However, microwear studies suggest P. boisei was neither eating hard foods, nor tough foods. This presents a problem, as tough and hard foods make up a majority of C4 plants. Whereas the consumption of animals that ate these foods might explain the isotopic analysis findings in P. boisei, this scenario is considered unlikely due to their reduced incisors, canines, and post-canine megadontia. A microwear analysis of extant grazers may shine new light on the results of these P. boisei studies. This exploratory research will investigate the possible use of model organisms to determine the nature of the above contradiction: evidence of C4 plant consumption without the matching microwear patterns. Model organisms under consideration are modern grazing animals, such as bison, Antilocapra americana (pronghorn), and various Gazella species, which should mirror the isotopic analysis results of P. boisei, as these animals are known to eat grasses and the above-ground portions of sedges. The goal is to perform staple isotope and microwear analysis to codify the relationship between these variables in a C4 plant-focused animal. By investigating modern animals with a known diet, the relationship between staple isotope analysis and microwear features will be more directly tested.
Huff, Amy (Missouri State University)
Intentions and Accountability: What NGO Intervention Looks Like on the Ground [1-03]
This paper seeks to add to the critique of foreign NGO interventions in international development using an ethnographic case study. This research is the product of a two-and-a-half month internship at a nonprofit NGO working with autonomous cooperatives composed of smallholder coffee farmers in various regions of Guatemala. Qualitative information was gathered through participant observation and interviews with the staff of the organization and the farmers with whom the organization works. The paper explores the relationship between the NGO and the co-ops that it works with. How do inequalities between NGO staff and their beneficiaries, as well as between separate populations of beneficiaries affect the efficacy of the organization? In terms of social capital, are horizontal relationships being replaced by vertical ones? Does the NGO have an exit strategy for after they meet their original goals? This case study is one example of how international NGOs around the world navigate the complex arenas of development intervention.
Hunter, Gina (Illinois State University)
From Yuck to Yum: Are Insects the New Sushi? [2-15]
Ethnographic and archaeological records attest to the widespread consumption of insects around the world. Yet, insect foods provoke disgust in most Europeans and North Americans. In 1885, Vincent M. Holt presented his English compatriots with nutritional, environmental, and culinary arguments for eating insects in his 1885 essay “Why not eat insects?” And the arguments have changed little from those times to today. However, renewed attention to insect foods followed the FAO’s 2010 report Insects as Food and Feed. And, despite the historical aversion to insects, several start-up companies have begun developing and marketing insect foods for the North American food market. Noting that many Americans overcame a historic aversion to raw fish and now delight in sushi, proponents argue that insects could be the next food trend in America. In this paper, I use cross-cultural and historical data on food, to discuss whether insects will be the next “sushi.”
Ingram, Ethan (Illinois State University)
“A Certain Level of ‘Into It’”: Boundary Play in Professional Wrestling [2-04]
Within the anthropology of performance, scholars have traditionally considered theatrical, artistic, and ritual performance events in terms of their separation from the everyday performances of social life. These events, broadly labeled as “cultural performances,” are explicitly defined by the discrete boundaries of space and time that mark their performance and the disparate roles for performers and audience members that are established within these divisions. In this paper, I consider live professional wrestling as a cultural performance genre which challenges the importance of these boundaries in its collaborative construction by performers and audience members. Drawing on long-term fieldwork at local wrestling matches, I argue that professional wrestling producers engage in “boundary play,” a deliberate delineation and subsequent transgression of rules and boundaries that are assumed to characterize the performer-audience relationship. By breaking these rules, wrestling produces a performative frame characterized by an ambiguous definition of what is “real” and what is dramatic fiction. The (mostly simulated) violence displayed in wrestling matches is not only the primary mode of dramatic interaction between performers, but also serves as the means through which boundary play is attempted. Successful boundary play, and thus “true” professional wrestling, requires a great deal of trust and consent between wrestlers and spectators, which is communicated in situ through contextually understood audience behaviors. Ultimately, I propose that boundary play allows cultural performances to express powerful social meanings that may operate in service to hegemonic power structures or as a form of subversive cultural critique.
Johnson, Noah (University of Iowa)
“Karate is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical”: Using Cognitive Methods to Study the Diffusion of a Cultural Practice [3-12]
This paper presents the initial findings from a 12-month, mixed-methods, multi-sited, ethnographic project carried out among karate practitioners in several sites in the U.S. and one site in Okinawa. Like many cultural practices circulated in global flows or transnational linkages, karate – a martial art from Okinawa, Japan – represents the appropriation, modification, and redeployment of ostensibly “Eastern” knowledge and practices in “Western” settings of late capitalism and precarious modernity, such as the United States. In examining this instance of cultural transmission through these transnational or global circuits we find that the specific contours of the practice of karate – as it is advertised and enacted in the United States – illuminate the anxieties and aspirations of foreign adherents in the West as the art is appropriated by, exported to, and marketed in their home societies. Whereas “globalization” can tacitly be understood as something that influences individual psychologies more than the other way around, I contend that the use of cognitive methodologies in examining the adoption and maintenance of a cultural practice far from its culture of origin can help us see how the psychologies of people – here read from a practice theory perspective as the motivations and projects pursued by agentive actors – can shape the particulars of how an item upon the flows of globalization takes shape when instantiated within a specific locale.
Kapila, Shuchi (Grinnell College)
Postmemory and Historical Trauma in the Indian Partition of 1947 [2-14]
The enormity of the Indian partition of 1947 that created India and Pakistan—about a million dead, 10 million dislocated from their homes and moving across newly formed borders, an estimated 75,000 women from Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim communities abducted across the Punjab border in North India alone—meant that it was a historical trauma not easily spoken about or shared for decades. Moving away from the focus on excavating stories and recording testimony that has dominated partition studies, I propose to study postmemory of the partition from the point of view of the second generation who have become investigators of this memory. The primary source for the perpetuation of this memory are family stories handed down within families often not by parents, but uncles, aunts, grandparents to second and third generations. I argue that ethnography provides a particularly appropriate model for studying ‘postmemory’ of the partition as it situates the investigator in a generational and familial relationship with the subjects that is structural rather than personal and makes her a witness of a repressed memory. Using Marianne Hirsch’s insights about postmemory, I seek to establish ‘filiative’ relationships with partition survivors as a way of co-creating a narrative about this founding historical trauma of the subcontinent. I consider whether for women in North India, ‘protection,’ patriarchal control, and seclusion from the public sphere have all emerged from the afterlife of partition.
Kehoe, Alice (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
“We Know It’s a Hoax”: The Doctrine of Discovery Paradigm in American Archaeology [2-05]
Columbus’ discovery of rich country unknown to his patrons prompted them to request the Pope grant them a mission to conquer and Christianize the heathen of those lands. In 1493, a papal bull did this, conferring such lands to Christian rulers “to all eternity”. Following this, international laws were developed to legitimate conquests by European powers, including all the Americas. North American Anglo schools continue to teach, from pre-kindergarten on through college history courses, that Columbus was the first Old World voyager to see the Americas, and North America was virtual wilderness whose peoples never achieved civilizations. Socialized into this ideology, American archaeologists declare a priori that any data indicating pre-Columbian voyages to the Americas are ipso facto “hoaxes,” and refuse to discuss the data. This presentation shows sound data supporting pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts, and explains the power of the Doctrine of Discovery.
Labarthe del Solar, Marina (DePaul University)
Ruda, Environmental Justice, Planned Parenthood and Racial Stress: Reproductive Justice and Women of Color [2-03]
Ruda is the most stolen plant from home and community gardens in Little Village. The disagreeable scent, acrid taste, and the fact that it’s perceived as illegal does not stop women in the Mexican neighborhood of Little Village in Chicago from using it for medicinal purposes. Although known to be controversial, it is a common household medicinal with various uses, one of which has been traditionally known as “menstrual cleansing”. It is often taken as a tea and sometimes mixed with chocolate, acting as an emmenagogue (a catalyst for bleeding and cleaning out the uterus). In the sociopolitical context of our current debates about reproductive rights, ruda is increasingly perceived as an abortifacient and narratives about such use are exchanged and debated. Preliminary ethnographic work among Botánica owners shows awareness of the controversy among all the owners, but a wide range of information about sources and availability. This paper, with a focus on reproductive justice examines the use of ruda as a way that women seek control of their reproductive health. A variety of discourse overlaps – young Latinx perspectives, and older women who lived many years in Mexico have different ways of talking about ruda. My work is ethnographically informed about the overlapping narratives of what ruda means to women in Little Village.
Lamb, Mira (Grinnell College)
An Epistemological Comparison Between Two Paradigms of Medical Cannabis Use [2-08]
The United States federal government prevents a good deal of medical cannabis research from being performed due to its regulations, limited number of strains, and “paradigm of prohibition” (Harris 2010). The federal paradigm emphasizes the abuse potential and crudeness of the substances of the botanical plant, rendering it unfit for serious medical usage (Chapkis and Webb 2008). Therefore, medical cannabis advocates in the US must resort to scientific and extra-scientific means (outside of realm of evidence-based medicine) to reframe the consumption of cannabis as a necessary medical act. This discourse analysis compares the epistemologies of the federal government’s paradigm with advocates’ relative privileging of anecdotal evidence in the form of individual testimonies and personal narratives. While researchers using well-established and widely accepted methods become increasingly frustrated by federal restrictions (University of New Mexico), advocates invent new avenues for evidence to reframe medical cannabis for public policy and perception. In their narratives, advocates deemphasize the psychoactive features of the drug (Chapkis 2007) while emphasizing their own various positions of “respectability” (veteran status, motherhood, childhood, etc.) to distance themselves from stereotypical “potheads.” The history of cannabis in the United States, methodological problems arising from federal restrictions, and the impacts this problem has on cannabis policy are also discussed.
Le, Jeffrey (Beloit College)
Korean Beauty: Whiteness in Transnational Asia [3-12]
Emerging from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, a newly invigorated neo-liberal nation state, Post-IMF Korea has become the capital of Asian Cool, a powerful arbiter of regional soft power. In the increasingly interconnected Asia-Pacific, the Hallyu Wave, or the transnational spread of Korean popular cultural products has introduced Korea to the globe as a modern, cosmopolitan place. In particular, the proliferation of Korean celebrity idols has contributed to the image of Korea as a pinnacle of bodily beauty, and Korean women (and men) as what feminist scholar L Ayu Saraswati calls models of cosmopolitan whiteness, that is a whiteness beyond white people. This project traces the ways in which transnational beauty companies commodify ‘Koreanness’ to sell makeup and skincare products and the entanglements of koreanness, whiteness, cosmopolitanism, and modernity in the contemporary Asia-Pacific. In addressing conditions of transnational whiteness emerging in global neo-liberal capitalism, it represents a critical intervention to decenter the West in the study of Asia.
Lemus Sergio (City Colleges of Chicago)
Los Morenos and the Mexicans: Ethnography and Race Making Processes in South Chicago [3-10]
Relational studies of race posit that racialization happens dynamically; group-based racial constructions are formed not only in relation to whiteness, but also in relation to other devalued and marginalized groups (e.g. African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Pacific Islanders), whose own racialization is itself constantly in play. By studying race relationally, scholars are able to examine the logic that underpins the particular forms of inclusion and subordination they face. While we often write about racialization process in relation to whiteness, we are less interested in considering racism un/making social formations in everyday life within other groups. Using ethnography in the City of Chicago, in this paper I set to trace the relational nature of racial formation between African Americans and Mexicans immigrants. I draw of stories of everyday life of, first, African American folks that hire Mexican gardeners to mow the lawn and, second Mexican immigrants about their experience performing the work for these clients. These stories in all document a discourse of criminality, illegality and work ethic that saturates this relational, racial relation which then gives concrete shape to their subjective understanding of how they believe are as individuals and as a group.
Leung, Jerik (Washington University in St. Louis)
POSTER: Experiencing Lupus and Ambiguity: An Illness Narrative [2-17]
The aim of this research project is to foreground individuals’ experiences with Lupus including encounters with diagnosis, treatment, and disease course in order to highlight how social misunderstandings and stigma about this condition affect the delivery of care. An overarching theme of ambiguity plays a prominent role in numerous facets of the individual illness experience. From a biomedical perspective, Lupus is a notoriously ambiguous disease without a concrete method of diagnosis or stable course of disease. While there is a wealth of literature that aims to explore Lupus in the context of its ambiguity, it primarily represents the positions of health care providers who typically lack experiential evidence of living with Lupus. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, I sought to understand how people with Lupus themselves understand and find meaning in the ambiguity of their illness. In viewing Lupus from these differing perspectives of health care providers and individual suffers, tension between these two parties caused by Lupus’ inherent ambiguity becomes clear. Health care providers experience pressure to deliver clinically certain models to an illness in which uncertainty is one of the primary facets of the illness experience. In exploring this tension, I primarily draw on anthropological work surrounding models of chronic illness and social dimensions of immunology in order to contextualize how individuals with Lupus situate themselves in these frameworks. I will also provide a discussion of potential practical implications of integrating ethnographic findings as a means of improving existing treatment for individuals with Lupus.
Luechtefeld, Emma (University of Central Missouri)
Neanderthal Personal Adornment: How They Learned Their Art and What it Meant for Their Culture [3-05]
Although there is a significant amount of evidence for Neanderthal personal adornment, it is still shrugged off by some anthropologists as copying Anatomically Modern Humans without comprehending what they were doing, some anthropologists have gone to great lengths to try to prove that the artifacts found in Neanderthal layers of sites such as Fumane Cave, were not Neanderthal made at all. However, there is much evidence to suggest that Neanderthals invented jewelry making long before Humans ventured out of Africa. In Krapina, Croatia, Eagle Talons with cut marks that suggest the severing of the tendons which attach the talon to the rest of the foot were discovered dating to approximately 130 ka. These Talons also show smoothing and use wear that hints at being wrapped in an abrasive cord on which they rubbed against other objects such as they would on a necklace. An ochered shell found in Fumane cave in Croatia shows signs of Hominin alteration and pre-dates Anatomically Modern Humans in that area of Europe, A great amount of bird wing bones were found also in Fumane cave with cut marks that are associated with feather collecting, dating to 67 ka, long before Humans braved the formidable temperatures of Europe during the Pleistocene. Did Neanderthals collect feathers for special occasions? Did the display of feathers on the body involve social status? I will explore the theories of these findings and what they could mean for Neanderthal culture as well as the uses Neanderthals could have had for personal adornment.
Magnuson, Ian (Augustana College)
Anarchy, Death, and Transition: A Christian Community’s Path to Revolution [2-01]
This paper investigates the historical relationship between anarchy and Christianity through the ethnographic study of the members of a small Christo-anarchist intentional community in Minneapolis, Minnesota called the Mennonite Worker. This community finds itself in a country widely controlled by a misinterpretation of the Gospels which propagate empiric rhetoric and dominance over its people. In contrast of this Church-Empire union, I propose that anarchism offers Christians a more radical way of viewing power structures and challenges them to live to address issues of dominance in the United States. Through descriptions of rituals concerning death and transition as well as interviews conducted with community members, I focus on a community in flux.
Marina, Livija (Wayne State University)
Creating Kumstvo: from a Zadruga to an American Suburb [2-07]
This paper explores the practice of kumstvo. The word kumstvo is often translated as “godparenthood” or “sponsorship”; however, these terms fail to convey its complexity. The paper examines the significance and the roles of kumstvo by analyzing how this intimate practice of relatedness, grounded in the rites of baptism and marriage, has been employed and transformed to expand its principles and assume new forms and roles through folk practices in the Balkans. Starting with the analysis of the origins and the basic characteristics of kumstvo, the study follows the transformation of this institution: from its traditional form as a relationship between two extended family households organized on the principles of what is known in the anthropological literature as zadruga, to the relationship between individuals connected through vocational and workplace ties, and finally to the relationship between the members of the present-day ethnic community of Serbian Americans. This study argues that, adapted to the new context, kumstvo serves two roles in this community: one of providing the social capital for the new immigrants, and the other of providing a source of ethnic identity by creating a link to one’s cultural heritage.
Matzas, Tiffany (Grinnell College)
Changing Channels: A Case Study of Subversive Masculinities in Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe [1-01]
As Americans of all ages spend more and more time in front of screens, the impact of gendered messages in children’s cartoons has become increasingly salient. Though an unfortunate majority of contemporary children’s cartoons conform to the cultural script of hegemonic masculinity— that is, a patriarchal masculinity characterized by dominance, violence, and toughness— children’s television has incredible potential to subvert these norms. This project examines the progressive cartoon Steven Universe using a methodology that follows the framework popularized by Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place, which flags certain discursive elements (such as the deployment of empty adjectives, hedges, tag questions, and hyperpolite forms) as “woman’s speech.” By discursively and thematically analyzing the gendered performances of characters in the Steven Universe world, this project argues that by subverting the commonly held perceptions of gendered discursive elements, such as the use of certain speech forms, access to emotional expression, and the semiotics of weaponry, Steven Universe is able to construct subversive models of non-hegemonic masculinity and present these models as viable performative options. This case study shows the potential of children’s television in helping to shift popular understandings of “ideal” masculinities.
Meyer, Brianna (Augustana College)
Riding in Circles: Horse(wo)manship in the American Saddlebred Community [2-04]
This paper outlines the historical changes and personal stories of female equestrians since the advent of American Saddlebred horse showing, focusing on the beginning of the amateur division. This small community remains largely unexamined. Over nine months, I gathered stories and memories from trainers, exhibitors, and archives to examine how gender has been an important but overlooked factor within the community. considering the currently overwhelming number of female riders, many participants today do not know the historical narratives of female participation. But because the widespread participation of women began within only the past 50 years, gender has powerfully shaped aspects of the Saddlebred community as it functions today. Through a feminist lens, this paper explores stories about how being an equestrienne has changed over time, and how women who grew up in the horse industry reversed its gender profile for those today.
Miller, Maranda (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
POSTER: Understanding Cigarette Butt Littering Behavior on Public Beaches: A Case Study of Jekyll Island, GA [2-17]
The world’s natural environment is being degraded, and human behavior is a leading cause. Cigarette butt littering behavior is of specific concern due to the large number of cigarette butts found in the environment, and the compounded effects the toxic chemicals and plastic filters found inside them have on environmental and human health. This mixed methods study investigated factors that may affect cigarette butt littering behavior on public beaches. The quantitative phase tested the affect that habits, place attachment, environmental awareness, and environmental attitudes have on cigarette butt littering through a paper questionnaire of smokers who improperly disposed of their cigarette butts on a public beach. The follow-up qualitative phase explored smokers experience with cigarette butt disposal on a public beach. Results will have implications for policy changes, educational opportunities, and potential ways to alter the environmentally destructive behavior of discarding a cigarette butt on public beaches. This poster will discuss preliminary results of the study.
Morillo, Laura (University of Toledo)
Urban Agriculture and Community Gardens [3-04]
Nature and culture are often seen as separate and distinct. Recently however, there has been a movement to grow foods and plants in urban areas and as communities. This movement is driven by the romanticized desire to be connected to the land as humans were throughout our evolution. This paper aims to explain the history of community gardens and farms, as well as the effects on the community and the environment. The bulk of the research was done through literary means, as well as visits and interviews with individuals working in community gardens and farms.
Murfree, Lauren (Purdue University)
Old “Traditions” and New Directions: Reproductive Justice, Collective Action and the Catholic Church [3-01]
Historically, the traditions of the Catholic church have been rife with issues related to female reproductive health and sexuality. Building upon the current anthropological literature on Catholicism and Collective action theory I will examine the benefits of using this theory in examining how young adult Catholics mediate issues such as abortion and sex within the Church and applications for outreach. It is possible “traditional” church positions on social issues related to reproductive health and justice have created discord between generations of the faith, contributing to the decline in U.S. Catholic Church youth attendance. By examining the perspectives of young adult Catholics on reproductive health and justice a new direction in outreach can be generated using collective action theory to reach this population.
Neems, Sophie (Grinnell College)
Towards a New Definition of ‘Farmer:’ The Complex Identities of Women Alternative Farmers in Iowa [2-13]
This study explored the lives of ten women alternative farmers in Iowa: their identities, motivations and knowledge sharing practices within the traditionally male-centric system of American agriculture. The age of the women interviewed ranged from 27-75 years and their farms ranged in size from 1.5 to 410 acres. They cultivated some combination of vegetables, livestock and/or grains. Only two of the operations were certified organic, though many practiced organic methods. This presentation will focus on identity, an issue that has proven to be important as the role of some women on farms is changing from that of “farmer’s wife” to that of full-time farmer. The data for this project were gathered through ten semi-structured, face-to-face interviews in which the women were asked to respond to whether or not they identified with the following terms and why: “Farmer,” “Farmer’s Wife,” “Caretaker,” “Business person,” “Mother,” and “Activist.” In contrast to earlier findings (Sachs 1983 and Pearson 1979), the women whom I interviewed complicate the previously accepted notion that women have but one simple identity: farmer’s wife. Instead, they describe their multifaceted identities within the agricultural system and, in so doing, redefine what it means to be a farmer. This new conceptualization of “farmer” encompasses qualities usually attributed to males on the farm, those of businessperson and primary laborer, and also the roles traditionally assigned to women, those of caregiver and nurturer. Thus, by claiming these many identities these women establish themselves as everyday activists (Sachs 1996) by simply being farmers.
Neumann, Amy (University of Nebraska Lincoln), Sara Anderson (University of Nebraska Lincoln), Catherine Elliott (University of Nebraska Lincoln), Abhi Shome (University of Nebraska Lincoln), and Effie Athanassopoulos (University of Nebraska Lincoln)
POSTER: Campus Archaeology: Historic Ceramics from an Early Lincoln Neighborhood [2-17]
In May 1997 a cistern filled with household debris was exposed during the expansion of the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s City Campus Student Union. The top of the cistern had been removed by prior construction, leaving approximately half of the feature untouched. After 1890, the cistern stopped functioning as a residential water storage system and became a refuse pit.
The recovered artifacts consist of glass bottles, metal artifacts, faunal remains, personal items, and a wide variety of ceramics. In 2016, UNL students began reassessing the assemblage to produce a complete artifact catalog and create a digital exhibit. Here, we are presenting a summary of the diagnostic tableware ceramics. The majority of the ceramics in this assemblage are white-bodied stonewares or whitewares with minimal or no decoration. Many of the undecorated ceramics share common design features, but come from different manufacturers as indicated by varying trademarks from England, New Jersey, and Ohio. In addition, there are several transfer printed whitewares with various floral designs. Other decorative techniques include hand painting and gilding. Some of the ceramics indicate at least one of the neighborhood households had moderate wealth e.g. porcelains and a Chinese teapot. The diversity of ceramics suggests that consumers in the area had many choices available to them. The cistern provides a glimpse at daily life in an early Lincoln neighborhood prior to the expansion of the University.
Nicholas, Claire (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
The Color of Tradition: Craft, Community, and Textile Expertise in Morocco [2-07]
This paper explores discrepant knowledge claims converging on one particular Moroccan craft community and its cloth. The argument draws on ethnographic fieldwork with a rural, state-sponsored women’s weaving cooperative and focuses on governmental strategies to “rationalize” cloth production in the form of technical training and product development workshops. Conflict over the authority to determine the present and future of craft practice in Zaouiya emerges in part as a debate between weavers and a textile expert about the appropriate color of the local cloth. The textile expert proclaims a need for the weavers to re-learn their craft “from the beginning,” including modern ways of bleaching and treating fabric. For their part, the local weavers dismiss or ignore training programs as both menacing the “beldi” (local, of the land) status of their cloth and misunderstanding its nature and technical affordances. The qualities of the cloth, in the weavers’ eyes, cannot be disentangled from the identity of its makers. Discussions about desired degrees of “whiteness” are simultaneously ways of making claims for local understandings of tradition, craft versus machine production, and forms of corporate belonging. To “know,” and “know what’s best” for the Zaouiya cloth turns out to be a distinction difficult to maintain. In other words, supposedly neutral technical-material interventions always entail political and social effects. The weavers’ reactions can be understood as a partial response to this dynamic, wherein the Moroccan state seeks to extend its authority over local craft through various attempts at heritage “rationalization.”
Olson, Scott (University of Iowa)
Configuring Brotherhood: Leather, AIDS, and Memories of Kinship [2-14]
“Brotherhood” has become a touchstone for gay leather communities and organizations. It appears in the emotionally charged speeches of leather pageant contestants, in the mission statements of leather organizations and clubs, and in the reflections of leatherfolk on loss from the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s. Following Nora’s (1985) concept of memory sites, this paper analyzes the use of “brotherhood” by Chicago leatherfolk to make connections between memories of the heightened significance of nonbiological kin in the face of intense persecution and an epidemic on the one hand, and dynamic social relations in contemporary leather spaces on the other. In so doing, I argue that, through “brotherhood” and its entailing performances of gay masculinity, contemporary leatherfolk construct community, kinship, and identity with specific reference to collective memories of death and structural marginalization in the past. Collective memory, however, is contested, and articulates representations and recollections of the past with present structural hierarchies (French 2012). “Brotherhood,” then, is a strategic deployment, drawing and redrawing lines of kinship and community to suit multiple sides of contentious debates within leather circles. Therefore, when “brotherhood” is invoked alongside discussions of sex segregation in leather spaces, or the merits of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) as an acceptable alternative to condoms, the past becomes a medium for reconfiguring the inclusions and exclusions of a gendered kinship in the present. Finally, I suggest that leather “brotherhood” may deepen our understanding of how nonbiological kinship is constructed through the negotiation of collective memories with present politics.
Orr, Samantha (Eastern Illinois University)
Marking the Body as Sensory Ritual: American Tattoo Versus Kayapo Body Painting [3-02]
My research is centered on body modification, primarily American tattooing, and Kayapo body painting. The research focuses centered on my own participation in tattooing and Kayapo body painting, I discuss how such forms of body modification engage the senses. For example [the body painting is a weekly ritual, that links people through touch. Likewise, I argue that the American practice of tattooing is a sensory ritual whose symbolic significance is heightened by the pain and blood shed during the tattoo session, as well as the money, time, and thought put into preparation. Furthermore, the temporary loss of control in allowing another person to mark one’s body, adds to the impact of the ritual. In addition to my own participation in these sensory rituals, I also present audiovisual material that depicts both Kayapo body painting and American tattooing. Finally, I discuss the personal meanings and reasons that a sample of American respondents gave for pursuing their own tattoo experiences. From the smell of the disinfectant to the buzz of the tattoo gun, these responses underscore the importance of the entire sensorium in intensifying ritualistic experiences.
Ortiz, Cristina (University of Minnesota, Morris)
Teachers’ and Community Leaders’ Perceptions of Ethnic Identity Labels [2-02]
These findings emerge from a small sample of 20 semi-structured interviews with mostly white, English-speaking rural Minnesota community members. Qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts demonstrates some emerging themes related to participants’ use of ethnic identity labels. These themes include both explicit and implicit indications of uncertainty about which labels are “right,” desire for equality or inclusion across labels, and a focus on (Spanish-English) language proficiency as a primary barrier for greater interactions across ethnic groups. This presentation examines these themes in the context of a greater national discussion about the perspectives of rural, middle-class, white residents in relation to immigrant newcomers. These findings provide a nuanced view of quotidian issues around racial identity and immigration. This project also proposes to demonstrate the potential for anthropological intervention in local community building and inclusion efforts that disrupt a more polarized national or social media discourse.
Passariello, Phyllis (Centre College)
How Do Dreams, Imagination, Memory, and Culture Collide and/or Merge with “Reality”? [2-12]
Dreaming as a human universal is just part of the phenomenon. Most mammals dream, some birds dream, even some reptiles and some marsupials dream. Accepted truisms include how dreams are neurologically connected to R.E.M. sleep, to long-term memory manipulations, to unconscious hidden truths, to evolutionary psychology, and even to just random brain activity. Despite glaring evidence, anthropological analyses often remain steeped in a Western rationalist mindset, usually regarding dreams first, as not real, and second, clearly bifurcating the “real” from the “imaginary”. This paper explores the cross-cultural and cross-species dimensions of dreams, focusing on Eduardo Kohn’s concept of “transpecies engagement” and his observation that a broader understanding of dreams can frame a fuller understanding of semiosis.
Phillips, Robert (Ball State University)
An Ambivalent Jewishness: Half Shabbos, the Shabbos App, and Modern Orthodoxy [2-01]
Using a smartphone on Shabbos (the Sabbath) is prohibited for observant Jews because it violates the prohibition of using electricity in non-emergency situations. However, much has been written in recent years describing how a large percentage of Modern Orthodox teens use their smartphones to text on Shabbos – a phenomenon that has come to be known as “half Shabbos.” As a response, in late 2014, a group of smartphone app developers proposed the “Shabbos app” that would, at least in theory, enable teens to text on Shabbos without violating Jewish law. The very idea of using smartphones on Shabbos created a great deal of discussion, sometimes heated, within the Jewish blogosphere. While the app never made it to production, I use the discourse around the Shabbos app as a way of thinking about the larger and more complicated relationships between contemporary Orthodox communities and new technologies. I look at online debates among Orthodox Jews in the United States and Israel, focusing on how the prohibition against using technology on Shabbos and the proposed solutions bring to light bigger issues of disconnection and apathy among Modern Orthodox youth. Reading these conversations thorough a theoretical lens shaped by the work of media theorists Sherry Turkle and Alaya Fader as well as work by Yoel Finkelman on ambivalence, this paper sheds light on the effects of digital technology on what it means to be Jewish in the contemporary world.
Poyer, Samantha (Beloit College)
“Do not be like the hypocrites”: Fasting, Piety, and Community Membership among Catholics in Dakar [3-12]
In Dakar, Senegal, an ideal Catholic is expected to fast for forty days, abstaining completely from food and water from sunup to sundown during the season of Lent. Although this far exceeds global Lenten recommendations set by the Roman Catholic Church, many in Dakar choose to abide by these standards of practice. In this presentation, I will argue that Sengalese Catholics, as a minority religious group, use practices of asceticism and displays of piety to express a globalized, cosmopolitan identity. They simultaneously create narratives of nationalistic and religious community belonging in order to assert agency and power in the midst of a majority Muslim population. I will demonstrate the roles of control over the body, appeal to authority, and community-specific language in these discourses of belonging using interview data from my four months of fieldwork in a residential Catholic neighborhood in the city of Dakar. In particular, I will discuss the ways that the season of Lent becomes a focal point for the development of these collaboratively constructed narratives between Muslims and Christians. I argue that this case study challenges automatic classification of African religious communities as syncretic, particularly when the implication is that they are further from church teaching than parallel European or American communities. Furthermore, I show that, as a minority religious community, Dakar Catholics must develop strategies to gain the acceptance of the surrounding Muslim majority, a process that has ramifications for the religiously pluralistic societies that have accompanied the spread of globalism.
Rainey, Eugenia (Tulane University)
Regla de Ochá and Health: Place in the Making of Selfhood in a South Florida Hospital [2-01]
In the wake of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, numerous Cubans fled the island to seek a new life in the United States, bringing along a number of African Diaspora religions, among them la regla de ochá, often referred to as Santería by outsiders. I approach this research as both scholar and practitioner. As a Lukumí priestess for close to two decades, my research is informed by both my ontological knowledge of this religious practice and my graduate training in cultural anthropology. A great deal of scholarly attention has brought the complexities and nuances of this non-institutionalized religion to the fore. This paper examines how the quotidian practice of regla de ochá in south Florida has an ontological effect on practitioners and how that effect articulates within the preeminent institution of Western modernity, the hospital. Through regla de ochá Cuban Americans are able to establish personhood within the biomedical institution and maintain a largely marginalized religious practice, while at the same time supporting the clinical structure. This study illustrates the importance of place-making in times of crisis on the part of practitioners. The place-making made possible through this religious practice positions individuals within an institution which represents the society that has marginalized both them and their religious practice.
Ramey, Meagan (Eastern Illinois University)
Being Fat on Campus: Emplaced Knowledge of Constraints on Large Women in College [3-02]
In this paper, I bring Pink’s (2009) concept of “emplaced knowledge” to bear on my experience of everyday life as a large woman, and thereby to understand the spatial and social constraints on large women, and the boundaries of size acceptance, on a college campus. Through sensory encounters with bathroom stalls, classroom desks, and rubber waders for biology field trips, I demonstrate that many spaces of academic knowledge production are clearly not made for large bodies. Colleges are not the only sector of westernized societies to view fat as unacceptable. Nevertheless, spatial constraints on college campuses suggest that academia has yet to reject mind-body dualism, lending force to the notion that large bodies are somehow incompatible with intellectual pursuits. In a time when colleges strive to celebrate diversity and embrace all students, it is especially crucial to consider what the embodied experiences of large people reveal about the success of those efforts to quite literally make space for all.
Randall, Theodore (Indiana University South Bend)
Linguistic Continuity and Change among the Lelna of Northwestern Nigeria [2-07]
The Lelna reside in Nigeria one of the most populous and ethnically diverse countries in the world. Issues concerning cultural continuity and change among the Lelna come to realization given that they number about 100,000 while one their nearest neighbors, the Hausa-Fulani number over 50 million. The paper discusses Lelna responses to Hausafication, regionalism, and Nigeria’s efforts to maintain the national integrity given its population of 150 million people and 250 ethnic groups. Discussions of Lelna cultural continuity focus on the status of the Lelna language in the context of linguistic hegemony in Nigeria. Discussions of Lelna cultural change focus on the potential ramifications current establishment national administrative/state boundaries on Lelna identity politics and Lelna local, regional, national, and international economic integration. The paper concludes by providing a discussion on multilingualism and multiculturalism in a highly ethnolinguistically diverse country striving to maintain its national cohesiveness.
Ravishankar, Meghna Usharani (Grinnell Collage)
The Globlisation of Food [2-15]
This project examines the diffusion of Western foods into the rest of the world, with Western convenience foods as the main focus. Following Lynne Phillips argument, this study challenges the idea that globalization is solely an economic phenomenon. Data were collected through an online survey of the international students at Grinnell College, representing 45 countries. Questions dealt with daily food habits of the respondents and the cultural context of their choices. The idea of cultural imperialism in the context of food is critically examined, as well as the impact of gender, socio-economic class, geography, migration, and the slow food movements.
Reed, Casey (University of Central Missouri)
Hegemonic Masculinity: Producing, Perpetuating, and Rewarding Self-harm in American Football Players [3-01]
The aim of this research is to illuminate cultural constructions created within the habitus of American football players that over time may lead to self-inflicted harm. Football serves as one of the largest social institutions, of all organized sports, in which Americans are acculturated into gender performance norms. Hegemonic masculinity works at every level of American football to reinforce culturally derived normative behaviors that are interpreted as valued aspects of gender performance in American society. Football media is one of the largest perpetuators of hegemonic masculine standards, and from childhood America’s youth consume it in enormous quantities. Simultaneously children in football programs experience pressure to display those masculine norms from friends and family. This social pressure is increased further when children enter High School level football programs. Pressure comes in part from peers, and mentors increasing the level of ascribed status students would be able to achieve if they saw success on the football field. As well as increased pressure to meet academic standards in the class room, and to potentially earn thousands of dollars in athletic scholarships. At the college level all of the same pressures the students faced in High School football programs apply, however they are magnified by the corresponding increase in social status ascribed to them by society. The product of these stages of masculine acculturation is exemplified in the professional football player. At this level cases of self-harm are not only prevalent, but also heavily rewarded in a multitude of ways.
Richards-Rissetto, Heather (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Are all Memories Place-based? Evoking Memories of a 2200 Mile Thru-hike Along the Appalachian Trail [2-10]
This paper explores the role of place(s) in creating and evoking memories that have the potential to influence human experience in landscapes. In his book “Remembering”, Edward Casey contends that everything in our daily lives is affected by remembering. He takes a phenomenological stance that intertwines memory and place—places do not come into existence until they are invested with meaning and memories are place-specific. To investigate the contention that all memories are place-based, I use a first-person approach to retrace some of the steps I took many years ago when I thru-hiked the 2200 mile Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia. First, I recorded the memories evoked by various representations of the Appalachian Trail including journal entries, photographs, Appalachian Trail Data Book, and videos. “Free-flow” memories without the use of representational mnemonics were also recorded. Second, I analyzed these memories in relation to Casey’s typology of remembering, which describes the varieties of human memory. In particular, I focus on Casey’s notion of inter-places and the role movement plays in constructing memory and experience. Finally, I situate the analysis within semiotics—a theoretical framework asserting that people’s “surroundings” contain signs that convey culturally-constructed meanings that affect experience. Within this semiotic perspective, remembering is viewed as simultaneously diphasic; that is, how we remember and what we remember are intricately intertwined. The objective is to investigate the interrelationships of memory, place, and movement to enrich anthropological studies of landscapes.
Roarty, Moya (Grinnell College)
Infant Technology Consumption: Who Supports It, and Why? [1-01]
This paper examines the implications of infant technology consumption and exposure in the twenty first century, based on 67 interviews of U.S. parents with children under two. Family income shows the strongest relationship with infant parenting practices and attitudes related to technology. There is a negative relationship between infant technology consumption and family income, and a corresponding positive relationship between parental concern over infant technology consumption and family income. Existing research tends to recommend that parents monitor the content and amount of infant technology consumption to promote better health and development. However, it is important to consider the socioeconomic status of families to understand the parenting practices that may work best them.
Roberts, Clare (Northwest Missouri University)
Plastic and Planted Flowers: Activation of Collective Memory at Irish Burial Sites [1-02]
By examining two case studies of Irish Burial sites, Glasnevin Cemetery and Glendalough Monastery, certain aspects of how an individual’s memory is maintained was shown to determine how likely the location will become part of a nation’s collective memory, as defined by theorist Paul Connerton. Data was collected from a large variety of sources including primary documentation of indexed individuals buried, archeological evidence of burial practices, secondary historical literature of the sites well known events, and modern day information of visitor habits and behaviors. An in-depth analysis of these Irish sites of memory found that the establishment of lasting collective memory is dependent on how the burials are preserved and visited as an institution. Additionally social demographics such as age, income, and fame of the person in each plot influences how frequently these performative activities will occur. The mechanisms by which these two sites have transitioned between realms of individual memory to ones of collective memory, demonstrate that more official or national narratives of commemoration significantly affect how these places operate as a site of memory. This material points to future methods of investigation for other cross-cultural contexts to find out how the mechanisms of initiating and maintaining a nation’s official historical narrative.
Rohr, Jessica (Purdue University)
An Enthnography on Safety: Issues of Students and Non-Student Neighborhood Residents [2-10]
Within this ethnography, the safety in a neighborhood composed primarily of students and non-student residents, near a university campus, is assessed. Research shows that crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) is achieved through managing the construction of the environment with the goal of minimizing crime (Cozens, 2014; Cozens & Love 2015; Crowe, 2000); Taylor & Gottfredson, 1986). The aspect of the CPTED model that is most focused on in this ethnography is that of the “image and milieu”. This refers to the design and management of an area, to foster clean, well-maintained, and well-ordered spaces (Cozens & Love, 2015). While the idea of the ‘image and milieu’ is usually applied to crime prevention, the ethnography seeks to show that these aspects are applicable to safety. The research questions assess the important safety issues for students and non-student residents, and how the idea of environmental design is applicable to the neighborhood assessed within the research. An ethnographic approach was taken, through partial immersion in the field. Field notes, interviews, and context based observations were coded using NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software, which generated themes on safety within the neighborhood. The significant issues that arose related to street-safety, such as side-walks and lighting. These issues are analyzed in accordance with the CPTED model, which leads to suggestions in improvement of the environmental design of the neighborhood.
Rose, Isis (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
The Legacy of Informed Refusal in African American Midwifery in the South [3-11]
This paper re-frames Gertrude Fraser’s (1998) ethnography African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, and Memory through the lens of Ruha Benjamin’s (2016) theory of “informed refusal.” Fraser’s ethnography explores reproductive transformation in Green River County, Virginia and the role of local memory in denaturalizing the transition between midwifery and scientific obstetrics. Traditional midwives, descendants of enslaved African midwives, have historically challenged biomedical practices through deliberate acts of resistance including the assertion and continuation of their own practice and expertise. What Benjamin (2016) calls a “necessary corollary to informed consent,” informed refusal is a timely critique of the power of authoritative systems of knowledge production and the ways in which hegemonic and technoscientific medicine suppresses alternative relationships to the body and patient care. Through the lens of informed refusal, Black midwives appear as arbiters of refusal from whom contemporary birth workers draw inspiration as they create new strategies for resistance. Drawing from Fraser, Benjamin, and personal experiences among birth workers and women’s health advocates in New Orleans, Louisiana in summer 2016, this paper articulates how informed refusal is necessary to ensure justice and collaboration between contemporary Black birthing women and reproductive health caregivers.
Ruvalcaba, Denise (Grinnell College)
Parental Gendering Practices for Infants Under Two Years [1-01]
Societal pressures encourage parents to gender children even before birth, especially boys who are expected to be masculine and refrain from anything associated with femininity. Sixty-seven parents with infants two-years or younger were interviewed to investigate current gendering practices in the United States. The parents were asked a series of questions about parenting practices at home. This analysis focuses on the parents’ gendering beliefs and practices as observed in their children’s toys, clothing, and sleep/play areas. The research reveals that masculine items are perceived as gender neutral, while feminine items are only associated with girls. Over generations, gendering practices have changed dramatically, from 19th century infants in the United States who were all dressed in white dresses to infants in the 20th century who were primarily clothed according to their gender. The ideology behind gendering has again changed in the 21st century with most parents claiming gender-neutral ideas. However, the findings demonstrate that parents view feminine associations as a marker of gender, which boys should avoid, and masculine associations as basic for both boys and girls.
Sadraee, Fatemeh (University of Kansas)
“Water Fairy in the Hand of Drought Devil”: Gender Roles from the Ecofeminism Lens in the Iranian ‘Ab-Paria’ TV Show [3-07]
Female fairies and male humans come together to fight against the devil of drought in the Iranian ‘Ab-Paria’ TV show (2013). This series draws attention to a message of a concern about environmental issues and climate change in Iran. Through the symbolic stories of the fairies, derived from Iranian traditional folklore and Persian mythology, some of the real anthropogenic environmental crises in Iran are represented and possible solutions for them are introduced. This paper analyzes the Iranian TV show ‘Ab-Paria’ (2013) to identify the ecofeminist perspective reflected in the show. I will examine how the gendered roles of characters and their activities toward protecting the environment and dealing with anthropogenic issues are structured in ecofeminism themes and how they are influenced by that school of thought. I will argue that even in a male-dominant society, and although women are more vulnerable to climate change consequences, their role is significant in creating and developing public awareness about environmental issues.
Saucedo, Keila Anali (Augustana College)
The Art of Placemaking – “The Work” of Art and Landscape [2-10]
In narratives of gentrification, art studios or installations are often signs of more white, more affluent residents moving into a neighborhood. After having the opportunity to intern at Pangea World Theater, I decided to collect ethnographic data to uncover the tensions, questions, or cultural clashes that exist between the current landscape of the Twin Cities and local arts based organizations. Pangea World Theater’s Lake Street Arts program, and similar organizations, use art as a tool for placemaking and against gentrification. According to the Project for Public Spaces, placemaking is the art of creating public ‘places of the soul,’ that uplift and help us connect to each other. The project serves to challenge the narratives that art, in general, is brought in by wealthy white people and explore the world that artists of varying identities are creating for themselves within the greater Minneapolis area.
Schlobohm, Gina (University of Central Missouri)
POSTER: Inuit Language Revitalization [2-17]
With the increasing rate of language extinction, the amount of revitalization efforts has also grown. This research focuses on Inuit languages and the causes of language extinction, revitalization efforts as well as the problems being faced during revitalization attempts. It will also show the importance of languages and their preservation. The method of research will be literature review drawing on information from the books Saving Languages: An introduction to Language Revitalization by Lenore Grenoble and Lindsay Whaley and New Perspectives on Endangered Languages: Bridging Gaps between Sociolinguistics, Documentation and Language Revitalization edited by José Antonio Flores Farfán and Fernando F. Ramallo. Language Revitalization is important so that we can preserve aspects of culture that would be lost if the language became extinct. Preserving language is essential to an anthropologist because language is one of the defining characteristics that separates humans from other animals as well as giving insight into culture. Revitalization efforts draw attention as well as give a voice to indigenous people that are being pressured to abandon their native language.
Erik Schulz (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), Mark Griep (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), and Effie Athanassopoulos (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
POSTER: Campus Archaeology: Medicinal Historic Bottles [2-17]
In May of 1997, during the building expansion of the University of Nebraska Lincoln City Campus Student Union, a cistern filled with household debris was exposed and excavated. The artifacts date from the late 19th-early 20th century and include a large number of glass bottles, many of them medicinal. Here, we are reporting on the ongoing research with this material. The bottles can provide dates, and inform us about the consumption patterns of the people who purchased them and used them. Several bottles contained popular medicines, such as Lydia Estes Pinkham’s, manufactured in Massachusetts, and specifically intended for women. There are at least twelve different brands representing a variety of medicinal products, which include: Warner’s Safe Cure for Liver and Kidney problems, the Mother’s friend, Chamberlain’s cough remedy, and a few bottles from local pharmacies. We are also working with archival sources in order to find recipes for these medicinal products, lists of ingredients, advertisements and price. The archives of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln City Directories and collections of newspapers from that time period are the main source for this information. This is a collaborative effort of students and faculty from Anthropology and Chemistry that provides a historical perspective on the development of medicine and health related research of early Nebraska. Through this research we can bring awareness to health issues and medicines used in late 19th century Lincoln and set the foundations for broadening this study to adjacent areas of the historic Midwest.
Sheedy, Crystal (SUNY, Albany)
‘Lying Roads’: Maya Women’s Work and Cultural Realities in a Changing World [2-13]
Tusbèel, or, with the direct translation of, ‘lying road.’ The direct translation of this term yields minimal ethnolinguistic knowledge tied behind the use of the term, but within a place where someone’s bèel, or ‘road,’ can translate as their life, the term begins to shed some light into a shared cultural reality that is rooted to a cultural ideology surrounding past gender roles. Based within a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, residents’ tusbèel are changing. In the past, the majority of Mayas were subsistence farmers, where men worked their kòolo’ob, or ‘cornfields’ and women tended to household duties. However, today, as the economy transitions to accommodate to a money dependent lifestyle, this has affected men and women’s gender roles. Men’s roads are no longer within the kòolo’ob of their forefathers. Instead, they are commonly found within wage positions in tourist epicenters. Yet, the most revealing of this economic transition is how it has affected women’s gender roles. While some women’s roads are found, like the men, in wage positions, others’ roads are still within their homes. But why is this? How does this connect to the discourse encompassing both a woman’s tusbèel and her decision to pursue wage work? This paper tries to answer these questions. This paper investigates the concept of tusbèel through the deconstruction of the term that reveals its cultural significance of its practitioners, then explores how this term is used within the daily lives and discourse patterns of Maya women within a village.
Sparr, Brian (Eastern Illinois University)
Facts, Not Fads: What Should We Be Eating? [3-05]
If the old adage “you are what you eat” is true, then our species, Homo sapiens, displays an extreme dietary diversity simply not present in other organisms. Through evolutionary adaptation (both biological and cultural), humans have created for themselves a niche wherein they specialize in being generalists. Our morphology, microbiome, and preparation techniques have allowed us to successfully utilize foods from around the globe that vary widely in accessibility, nutrition, safety, and palatability. Despite our ability to not only live but thrive on myriad diets, the question “what should we eat?” remains prevalent in public discourse. Through an examination of human ancestral dietary traits, popular pseudoscience, nutrition research, psychology, and government policy, I demonstrate the sizeable knowledge/communication gap between experts and laypeople, as well as the one existing between experts operating within linked yet differently focused fields. I argue that these gaps can be addressed and rectified, with an eye toward informed food choice and increased health, through better cooperation between experts and governmental agencies responsible for dietary recommendations and public education, as well as decreased corporate/industrial influence. Facts, not fads, must be the informative force on our food.
Stanlaw, James (Illinois State University)
From Maki(zushi) to Mac(Donalds) and Back: The Development, Expansion, and Globalization of Japanese Sushi [2-15]
In the West today, Japanese sushi dishes are considered exotic haute cuisine, often commanding high prices. Indeed, even today in Japan, sushi is not necessarily cheap, nor is it everyday fare. But in the mid-19th century in Tokyo, haya zushi (“fast sushi”)—a combination of finger-sized rectangles of vinegared rice topped with fish or vegetables—was a street corner stable sold by local stall vendors to workers and the new consumer class. Sushi was cheap, and could be eaten standing or on the go, with chopsticks or fingers, and could even be eaten in kabuki theaters or other venues, or after a visit to a public bath. Sushi became the Big Mac of its day, outselling the ubiquitous and ever-popular udon or soba noodle shops. Sushi appeared in North America in the 1960s through local “Japan Towns,” and the 1970 Osaka Expo introduced it to the rest of world. Though Japan always had upscale sushi restaurants ever since its inception, when brought overseas sushi was seen as an exotic specialized delicacy, and priced accordingly. Today, however, we see two trends in globalized sushi: sushi becoming a food for the masses, and new “fusion” sushi of various kinds. This paper explores the various ways this has occurred, and examines the symbolic and semiotic roles sushi has played in both Japan and the West.
Thern, Emalie (Beloit College)
Body Basics: Building Capital in a College Gym [2-04]
Since 2015, I have been conducting ethnographic fieldwork at a weight room located in the gym of a midwestern college campus. Specifically, I collected narratives from female-identifying students explaining their encounters in this small campus gym in order to better understand females’ experiences in the weight room. Among the most common themes that emerged from their stories were feelings of being watched. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital (1986), I argue that cultural capital presents itself in the weight room as the ability to properly obtain and use the socially accepted rules of the weight room. Examples of such rules include proper manipulation the equipment, or wearing the appropriate work-out clothes, among other things. I will then discuss the recurring theme of self-imposed “gatekeeping” or “disciplining,” which my informants say results from their own lacking appearance in comparison to the toned bodies of others that occupy the gym, or “body capital”, defined as the ability to possess the idealized body type within the space. If the individual feels that their body capital does not compare to the other attendants, the person retreats to the periphery to avoid perceived watching eyes. This notion of body capital, furthermore, connects to Foucault’s panopticon (1975) as an example of a way in which females may experience discomfort in the gym. This paper aims to show the importance of body capital in addition to cultural capital when applied to female interactions in the weight room space.
Timilsina, Srijan (St. Xavier’s College)
Anthropology: A New Change [3-05]
Cranial Capacity of we modern humans since our ancestors had been increasing but the present study of Biological Anthropology describes almost 10% decrease in the cranial capacity of ours from about 1500 c.c. – 1359 c.c. which might be a cause of dependency of machines and the theory of H.L. Shapiro regarding Homo futuris (Future man) might not be reliable. Bipedalism, what we have acquired by far, might come into light when we take center of gravity and semicircular canals of our modern human ear into account when compared to that of other organisms. Homo naledi can unlock pathways for the origin of human culture and its mysterious disappearance until Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
Unkel, Bradley (University of Central Missouri)
Gender Division of Labor among the Amish of Benton, Pettis and Henry County, Missouri [2-13]
In the Amish community there is a system of labor which has been culturally divided based on gender. Often times it goes unnoticed but upon investigation it is clear that most, if not all jobs in the Amish community are ascribed to people of the gender in which that task has been deemed appropriate for them. My research has brought me to a community of Old Order Amish in rural, central Missouri where men and women work in unison to keep their community survivable in the modern world, while keeping to traditional values of “men and women’s” work alive. I have interviewed several men in the community about their roles as family and community leaders and what they have seen change in recent years as the community has become more open to outside influence. There is divide between what should be kept as it was before to what is happening today, especially with younger Amish entering the workforce. Women, who have traditionally been of the home are becoming active in the community as shop owners and community consultants, helping to gain interest from the outside community. Men, who have traditionally been hard working laborers have taken steps to help their wives raise children and help in the home as well as outside of the community. The binary between the traditional and modern viewpoints on labor in the community are changing at a rapid pace and I believe it needs to be fully studied.
Vazquez, Roland (Upper Iowa University)
The Art of the Victim: A Basque Example [2-08]
This paper is an examination of recent Basque political culture and institutional politics through the prism of sculpture commissioned by the government of the Basque Autonomous Community, a territory juridically in Spain. The artwork explicitly commemorates the mortal victims of the violence of ETA (a pro-independence organization active until 2011), both those in the autonomous community and those beyond its borders. The paper traces the trajectory of the artists chosen prior to the commission. It also examines recent legislation and the overall institutional reality. And, it explores the confluence of forces that enabled the promotion of such art, how that art has been represented in the media, and linkages both to other, local level artistic initiatives and to other forms of expressive culture and commemorative activity. My project recognizes a unique political and cultural nexus, permeated by the new post-ETA reality but also influenced by a variety of other factors, including but not limited to: a globally-informed idea about the meaning of terrorism, the evolution of the figure of the victim in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the growing perceived need for emotion to play a role in governance, the power of art to express even amidst its frequently increasing commodification, and the cache of personal reputation from within the international art scene.
Walsh, Joselyn (Washington University in St. Louis)
A Grassroots Revolution? Imagining Change in St. Louis Food Landscapes [1-03]
This paper engages with the formation of a burgeoning alternative food movement in St. Louis, MO by examining the conditions under which it arises as a response to dissatisfaction with conventional food. Through situating ethnographic interviews with St. Louis residents into a broader context of the problematization of U.S. food and eating outlined by Julie Guthman in Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism and Susan Greenhalgh in Fat-Talk Nation I discuss how people come to internalize dominant cultural narratives of food system problematization as their own. I draw on arguments from Guthman and Greenhalgh as well as from my own research with individuals and organizations in St. Louis to discuss points where the explanatory power of dominant cultural narratives of personal responsibility for health and nutrition and a focus on the consumer as a locus of intervention fall short. I provide evidence that the strength of these flawed narratives is pervasive enough to change the agendas of local organizations which would typically challenge the environmental and health effects of industrial agriculture to ones which seek to promote health and sustainability without challenging powerful economic interests. I argue that we need to be attentive of the power of reproducing these narratives, as a move to emphasize these types of initiatives may result in managing rather than addressing harm caused by powerful industries.
Waters, Emily (Illinois State University)
Roll for Roles: Gender Performativity in Tabletop Role-playing Games [2-04]
The effects of gender identity on the portrayal of fictional characters is an under-studied area of research. Much of the existing literature on tabletop role-playing games focuses on a general description of the player and the activity, but very little focus on the identity politics of these participants. Tabletop role-playing games, such as the popular Dungeons and Dragons are games in which players interact with each other as fantasy characters to solve problems created by a Dungeon Master. Using the history of the tabletop role-playing game, as well as concepts in gender theory, I aim to discover how the extent that gender performance influences the creation of tabletop characters, as well as how the performance of these characters illustrates the players’ own ideas about their gender identity. This allows people to “play” with identities that may or may not explicitly be part of their real-world identity. My methods for this research include a combination of survey data (primarily for recruitment purposes,) participant observation, and semi-structured interviews. I am doing these things by attending regularly scheduled tabletop game meetings, as well as a research trip to GenCon, the largest tabletop RPG convention in the United States, in August 2017. Beyond the boundaries of role-playing games, this research will contribute to the literature on gender performance, as well as how different dynamics allow for experimentation with various gender identities and expressions.
Weier, Jacklyn (Illinois State University)
We’re Not in the Binary Anymore: Bisexual Experiences and Encounters Contesting Binary Space and Passing [2-10]
Bisexual lives have often been erased in academic fields. In the geographies of sexualities and anthropology, bisexuals and space are often disconnected because of the sexual coding of space and the disagreement of what defines or creates space. This proposed research will be looking at the lived experiences, encounters, and displays of bisexuals as a way of analyzing how space is constructed and negotiated by non-monosexuals outside of the traditional binary, as well as critiquing the common theory of passing. As an identity that exists outside the binary, bisexuality can offer the geographies of sexualities insight into how individuals navigate and construct space. It can also offer anthropologists access to ethnographic means to understand bisexual experiences. This proposed research will be using ethnography and participant observation with bisexuals and other non-monosexuals to fully understand their daily lives and encounters.
West, Donna E. (SUNY, Cortland)
Binding Event Memories into Episodes [2-12]
This inquiry considers how event-memories become framed as episodes energized by logical relations. Imaging events relies not merely upon consolidating object features, but upon constructing moving experiential pictures. This process is founded upon both retrospective memories of experienced events, and prospective imaging—predicting the likelihood/success of subsequent outcomes for self and others. Binding foregrounds to backgrounds in working/long-term memory, constitutes a precursor for episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness (Tulving 2005). Binding is measured via the encoding and retrieval of visual stimuli, especially within spatially contextualized arrays, e.g., recognizing a depiction of a cat on a screen with a red square background (shape of foreground and color of background are targets for binding). Episodic imaging requires encoding visual stimuli (Sluzenski, Newcombe, and Kovacs 2006), and image retrieval (Lloyd, Doydum, and Newcombe 2009). Simple episodic memories emerge at 3;0 (Hayne and Imuta, 2011), advancing in spatial specificity and temporal acumen, from 4;0 to 6;0 ( Russell, Alexis, and Clayton 2010). Episodic memories become increasingly complex when vivid event memories are reconstructed in cause-effect scenarios, such that spatial relations suggest a logic for event scenes, in line with Schacter and Addis’ 2007 Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis. Changes in binding (e.g., different objects in distinct backgrounds, are not mastered until 12;0 (Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb, and Saults 2006). This more advanced binding extends over a lengthy developmental interval, given reliance upon more allocentric deictic perspective-shifting skills – seeing events as others see them.
Wieser, Anna (University of Kansas)
Archaeological Ethics and Studies of War-Torn Landscapes [3-08]
Anthropologists in the 21st century face increasing difficulty navigating the ethical issues of working in and studying warzones. This paper discusses a history of anthropological ethics for studying warzones and working with, or with data provided by, the U.S. military. New and continuing conflict forces projects to go on hiatus, often without potential to resume work in the near future. While on-the-ground fieldwork is fraught with ethical concerns, there is potential for compromise in methods of study using remotely-sensed imagery. Remote sensing data is an increasingly affordable, accessible resource that researchers can use to continue study of areas that are otherwise inaccessible due to war. As a case study, I briefly discuss my dissertation research, which uses a combination of military and civilian remote sensing resources to study natural resource use during the Bronze Age in southern Afghanistan.