bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Transnational Religious Practices on Facebook
Authors: Hosseini Seyedehbehnaz 
Published: February 2021

AbstractAccess to cyberspace by Yezidi populations has given this group a platform for rebuilding their religious identity, which, in turn, has enabled them to challenge existing geographic, political and cultural constraints in Iraq. The Yezidi in Iraq have to live with the threat of discrimination and even violence. On the Internet, self-identification as Yezidi is done much more freely. The rise of the Yezidi in Iraqi media and in foreign media (via the diaspora) is closely interconnected. Experiences of persecution and of persistent libel and prejudice by the Muslim majority has forced the Yezidi to adopt distinctive religious practices due to forced migration to foreign countries. This article is an exploration of whether notions of sacred spaces and perceptions and practices of religious rituals are transformed in digital media, i.e. when moving from physical to virtual spaces. I will do this by applying visualization through visual imagery and virtual ethnography. This paper represents a theory on the Internet and religion: asking what implications the Internet holds for spiritual identities, worship and sense of ethno-religious community.
Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa region
Authors: Wessels Josepha 
Published: February 2021

AbstractAs an introduction to this special issue of CyberOrient, this text provides an insight into ongoing research in studies of digital layers of revolutions, digital communication, and dissidence in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Providing a short overview of the latest developments of uprisings and street demonstrations in the region, the text reflects on similarities and differences between the various revolts currently taking place. Digital dissidence is part and parcel of these revolts. Zooming in on the Syrian case, this article assesses how the Syrian revolution and its digital components developed into the humanitarian crisis it has become after nine years of violence. The article then shortly reflects on the Sudanese revolution of 2019, which is seemingly the most successful uprising in the Arab world thanks to a strong digital component, as noted in the words of its own revolutionaries. This text then introduces two contributions to this special issue focused on, respectively, Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories. The contest between what Layla Shereen Sakr calls “techies on the ground” and repressive regimes is compared to that of a race between a hare and a turtle, in which the techies continuously circumvent the attempts by the repressive regimes to curtail their means of digital communication and capacity for organizing collective action.
Slamming the “Continuing” Moroccan Revolution: Noussayba Lahlou's Bittersweet Verses
Authors: Tazi Maha 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn this article, I am interested in looking at women's current mobilization techniques in Post-Arab Spring North Africa. To do so, I draw from the existing literature on the case of Egypt which identifies women's contemporary resistance in creative disobedience patterns – that is women's art activism that advocates, concomitantly, for social justice and gender equality. In my attempt to fill an existing gap in the literature, I investigate the existence of such resistance patterns in Morocco, as well as their main characteristics and country specificities. Because (slam) poetry is a traditionally resistant genre in the Arab region, I take as a case study Noussayba Lahlou's slam poetry to explore the political potential of women's slams to advocate for women's rights and sociopolitical liberties in post-Arab Spring Morocco. To do so, I conducted a virtual interview with the artist by administering a structured online questionnaire, alongside a content analysis of eight of her most recent and salient slams. A 24-years-old slam poet from Morocco, Noussayba's revolutionary verses tackle widespread regime abuse and corruption, alongside women's rights and many other social woes in the country.
The Rise of Fourth‐Wave Feminism in the Arab region? Cyberfeminism and Women's Activism at the Crossroads of the Arab Spring
Authors: Tazi Maha , Oumlil Kenza 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article explores the emergence of fourth-wave feminism in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region in the context of the Arab Spring, which was a series of uprisings that followed the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010 and spread through several countries in the MENA region. The uprisings protested authoritarian regimes and called for democracy, freedom, and social justice. Fourth-wave feminism finds its origins in the new Web 2.0 technologies which give users the power to shape their own content, and is characterized by a mass of techsavvy and young feminists who harness the power of the Internet and the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to advocate for social justice and gender equality (Baumgardner 2011; Licudine 2015; Martin and Valentin 2013). Despite the enduring digital gap in the MENA region, feminists contributed significantly in the context of the Arab Spring to the public debates and discussions online to call for mass mobilization as well as raise awareness about gender issues and discrimination.Taking as objects of analysis three case studies of feminist interventions from Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon, the article examines the ways in which the selected activists in the region respond to their contemporary context by advocating for gender equality at the same time that they seek to promote a wider social justice agenda for their respective countries. The case studies were selected on the basis of the artists self-identifying as feminists who attempt to harness the power of ICTs to end authoritarian rule and promote human rights, with specific attention to achieving societal gender equality. In addition, the selected case studies are particularly relevant because their online platforms received significant media coverage and also benefit from a significant online following and fan-base (ranging from 2,400 fans to 12,660 followers for the Facebook pages). The analysis is based on conducted structured interviews with the three feminist activists, and is complemented with a textual analysis of their own online platforms, which include a feminist blog and Facebook pages, as well as relevant contextual information found in the public domain.
The Cosmopolite Indian: History, Geography, and Multiplicity
Authors: Nicholls Heidi 
Published: February 2021

AbstractUsing the lens of the cosmopolitan, this paper looks to the legislative, economic, and political ideologies creating the notion of the u/Urban Indian who I argue to be a cosmopolite. While taking the reader through a brief history of the emergence of Indian centers as Indian space or structure, I use the example of one Indian Center, in particular located in the Midwest, as a site of the cosmopolitan, focusing on the center's annual powwow. The powwow sponsored by the center, serves as the structure that encompasses the individual circulating from differing nations, engaging in a mutual respect of Pan‐Indian‐ness, both converging and diverging, creating a home abroad and an abroad home for the cosmopolite Indian.
Kazakh‐Speaking University Students Proverbial Perspectives on Community: Circulation Studies and Frame Analysis in Tandem
Authors: Aasland Erik 
Published: February 2021

AbstractPast attempts at using proverbs for cultural analysis have provided questionable results. There has been an overreliance on comparable proverbs from other cultures (Mieder 1981) or the search for “underlying” static cultural traits (Bartlotti 2000). The current paper explores the potential of using frame analysis (Goffman 1974; Johnston 2002; Snow 1986) and circulation studies (Spitulnik 2001) as methods better suited to explicating societal change. The two methods are complementary: circulation studies aiding understanding of the process of proverb use; frame analysis allowing for insight on the meaning of familiar proverbs. Rather than explore perspectives of the culture in general, I selected college students in Almaty, Kazakhstan as the group to be investigated. The current generation of students in Kazakhstan is unique, since they have only known an independent and Post‐Soviet fatherland. As they have grown up, the country has been in the throes of redefining itself as a society. Part of this process has been reestablishing Kazakh as the national language. Field research was carried out among university students at the Kazakh National Technical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Surveys provided information about the most familiar proverbs out of the proverb set concerning “community”. Analysis of the survey results showed that the population functions using proverbs as a speech community, a group able to communicate with each other effectively. Surveys and proverb encounter reenactments will provide the type of data necessary for circulation studies and frame analysis to establish a baseline concerning proverbial perspectives concerning “community” among Kazakh‐speaking college students.
Beyond Artifacts: Bridecentrism, Meaning, and Market in Wedding Material Culture
Authors: Vélez-Gómez Lorna M. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis work aims at examining the “strangeness” of the familiar ritual of the wedding through an in‐depth look at how artifacts circulate in weddings. Carried out in the western part of Puerto Rico, this study makes a contribution by addressing a gap in the anthropological literature on Puerto Rico with the study of the wedding ritual and contributing to the broader anthropological study of how meaning is produced, communicated and negotiated. This research reveals that Puerto Rican weddings are a bride‐centric ritual, and that the meaning attributed to wedding artifacts is the result of negotiations between what are perceived by participants as structural, traditional, ritual constraints or guidelines and what are described as more personal or idiosyncratic preferences. This analysis of wedding artifacts also suggests an underlying logic of how people and things are classified in Puerto Rican culture. Artifacts are classified; much like people are classified‐ objects are incorporated into the ritual because they perpetuate notions of valuable characteristics in people (eg. uniqueness). The market then, targets brides, because the market understands women long to possess these values and also posses the knowledge necessary to produce the truth and the power needed to make decisions regarding wedding aesthetics.
The Effect of Masculinity on Sexual Health Practices among College‐Age Students in the United States
Authors: Graffy Peter 
Published: February 2021

AbstractMy study investigates the realm of masculinity and its effect on our health system, specifically contraception. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the range of effects which masculinity produces in our society by way of shaping American sexual health practices. I conducted my fieldwork research in the environment veritably deemed the most sexual and “genderized”: college campus. The college is located in a small Midwest town of 8000 where most of my research occurred outside a downtown bar, Roscoe';s. I distributed contraception in the form of condoms to gauge the responses of my peers when it came to sexual health. I argue that masculinity has a significant impact through the social power which it wields over the American system of sexual health.
We Are All Insider‐Outsiders: A Review of Debates Surrounding Native Anthropology
Authors: Forster Abby 
Published: February 2021

AbstractMore and more anthropologists are doing “anthropology of home” by researching within their own communities. Major methodological and theoretical contributions for researchers working in their home communities come from debates surrounding “native” anthropology. Since anthropology has historically involved going outside one's community, the shift to research sites in an anthropologist's home community has fostered debates about the application of traditional anthropological methods to one's own community. This article outlines several important methodological issues that have been debated by native anthropologists including issues of distance, cultural competence, translation, and defining “native.” This article shows that native anthropology offers a critique of dominate anthropological practices by opposing the customary position of natives as objects and countering Eurocentrist domination in academia. At the same time, native anthropologists have been strong in voicing the fluidity of identity which shows that every researcher is both an insider and an outsider. These insights are important for every anthropologist of home.
Engaging Students as Critical Storytellers: Classroom Observations from a Boricua Anthropologists
Authors: Martinez Vanessa 
Published: February 2021

AbstractPublic and private higher education's need to recruit “the brightest and most accomplished students” has created social and economic barriers to college admissions and student retention. In contrast, community colleges, due to their open door policies, provide an academic home for students who might otherwise be unable to attend college. However, the community college classroom is a continuum of academic potential and problems requiring innovative teaching to bridge these divides. Storytelling is a teaching tool that I use to unmask social inequalities while helping students with different educational backgrounds understand and personalize the lessons that different anthropological writings strive to teach them. In this commentary, I share some of my own racialized and privileged experiences, the complexities of teaching and learning at a community college, and the experiences and voices of students engaging in their own knowledge building and storytelling.
The Veiled Periphery: Rural Kurdish Women in Turkey and the Taboo of Sexuality
Authors: Boston University Feyza Burak 
Published: February 2021

AbstractSexuality is the most salient taboo informing many practices in Cibo, a Kurdish village located in Erzurum, Turkey. In this article, I explore the manifestations, permutations, and ramifications of sexual shame through gendered practices. My analysis manifests the complex matrices of the deployment of the practices. That is, the modesty code based on sexual shame emerges at once as an index of traditional, ethnic (Turkish vs. Kurdish) and sectarian (Sunni vs. Alevi) identity, a religious observance, an instrument to attain honor and status, an assertion of morality and virtue, and lastly as resistance to Turkish hegemony and the perceived urban objectification of women. I explore the nuanced ways in which rural Kurdish women assert agency and resistance and in doing so I complicate stereotypic images of “subjugated” rural Kurdish women in Turkey. True to a feminist tradition, I locate the expressed problems of these women not in an abstract category of patriarchy, but in the intersectionality of class, ethnicity, state, and discursive Islamic tradition.
Reconstructing the Farm: Life Stories of Dutch Female Farmers
Authors: Turesky Marisa 
Published: February 2021

AbstractMy research asks: what are the lived experiences of female farmers in a Dutch agricultural community like the Netherlands? Although popular culture portrays most female farmers as uneducated individuals of lower socioeconomic status, the six women who I interviewed in the Netherlands over the course of a short ethnographic research study present life stories that complicate this stereotype. In my conversations with female farm owners in the Netherlands, it emerged that a patriarchal paradigm appears to persist in industrial, conventional agriculture, seeming to encourage larger numbers of women to own more small‐scale farms. While there is substantial existing research on rural women's historical roles in farming, I add additional layers to this work, through my analysis of the personal experiences of a small sample of women farmers in the contemporary Netherlands. These women, who consider farming their lifestyle, discuss their inspiration, challenges, successes, and passion for their chosen occupation. In attempting to balance traditional roles of labor versus domesticity, these women actively challenge the gender binary through experiences in motherhood and business ownership.
Maintenance of Individual Identity in Older Adulthood: Responses to Successful Aging in America
Authors: Rosenthal Staci 
Published: February 2021

AbstractWith social, political, and economic conditions in the United States emphasizing individual productivity and self maintenance, there is a new concern for how American elders take care of themselves. In contemporary American culture, optimal models of the aging process–often labeled “Successful Aging” or “Healthy Aging”–emphasize independence, the importance of evading disease and disability, the maintenance of physical and mental facilities, and sustained engagement in social relationships. In this article I argue that my financially‐comfortable, welleducated older American informants from Boston and West Palm beach communities respond to notions of Successful Aging by creating and constructing identities as “successful aging persons” that acknowledge a need to accept and adapt to change in later life. My informants creatively and resourcefully strove to create health, activity, and productivity in their own lives; in this way, they remained deeply invested in the American ideals of independence and autonomy. At the same time, many informants emphasized the need to not simply retain health, activity, and a youthful independence, but also to resourcefully adapt to the very real changes of age. In other words, the experiences offered by my informants tended to reflect ways they have appropriated culturally inflected notions of success into their own aging routines. Successful Aging for them became about passing through later life's stages with poise, intelligence, resourcefulness, and self‐sufficiency. Data collection began in the Spring of 2012 when I conducted preliminary interviews and gathered observation notes in a Jewish retirement community in Wellington, Florida; collection continued in Boston through the Spring of 2013. Individual phone interviews, home visits, group discussions, and participation in and observance of older‐adult education classes all contributed to the collection of this research data.
Neoliberalism Illustrated: Privatization in the Republic of Macedonia's Tikveš Wine Region
Authors: Otten Justin 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis paper draws upon anthropological fieldwork carried out in 2010–11 in the Tikveš wine region of the Republic of Macedonia. Unlike most other countries of the former Eastern Bloc, Macedonia's post‐socialist transition was held off due to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The result is that a slower, more subtle shift has occurred there. But it has been one guided by neoliberal principles, thus significantly altering the livelihoods of the country's inhabitants. My research in Tikveš illustrates the role privatization is playing in the region's transition from government to private ownership and production, specifically in the wine growing business. Although the quality and selection of wine in Tikveš has improved, the lives of the independent grape growers and their families have not. Instead, the growers have been subject to the leverage of the winery owners—who have reduced and delayed payments to them—while a neoliberal government has taken a laissez‐faire approach to market regulation. This photographic essay therefore focuses on how individuals in the region are both protesting and adapting to the change at hand, by staging protests and blocking main roads, and more so through rearranging their livelihoods and work. Indeed, grape growers have been left with a surplus of grapes and a dearth of income and certainty, inciting some to produce vast quantities of homemade rakija (brandy) while others replace, abandon, or sell their vineyards. New ways of bringing in income, such as selling one's brandy, produce, or homemade goods, are also modes of survival. Yet many claim that is all they are doing, and “not living, just surviving.”
From the Mouths of Babes: An Examination of Elderspeak in An Intergenerational Daycare Facility
Authors: Portney Allison E 
Published: February 2021

AbstractAs the population in the United States ages, it becomes increasingly important to understand how a new generation is learning to interact with older adults. This study examines the way that children and staff at an intergenerational daycare facility speak to older Americans. Kristine Williams observed the pervasive phenomenon of “elderspeak,” a linguistic register similar to baby talk used to speak to older adults in many settings, including a long‐term care facility (Williams 2011: 4). Elderspeak was found to have extremely negative consequences on older individuals’ health outcomes. I analyzed twenty hours of audio data from naturalistic interactions I observed at my research site. This study found that using 1) age‐avoidance terms, 2) a patronizing tone, 3) lack of honorifics, and 4) scolding by staff, older adults, and children linguistically separated older adults into a different and lower social status from staff members and children. This communicative practice impacted the social and linguistic environment of the intergenerational care facility. As elderspeak is socialized, it spreads across generations. The simplified register with a tone and structure of condescension is a reflection of local ideologies about aging.
Europe's Erased: Rethinking European Migration and Citizenship Policies Based on the Example of the Erased Residents of Slovenia
Authors: Protner Beja 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThe erasure of more than 25,000 people from the population registry of the Republic of Slovenia in 1992 left these people who had been living there for several years, some for all their lives, without any legal status. As such, these previously ordinary citizens became the legal equivalent of undocumented migrants. They were the first in Slovenia to experience European migration policies with their classification order of legal statuses and citizenships, which organizes populations into hierarchies both within and among the states. Their struggle to gain legal status is proof of the absurdity of these policies where desubjectivated migrants are trapped in an administrative circle that prevents their inclusion in society. Citizenship, a status that promises full participation in the community, is very hard to acquire because the community is defined as a national community. Behind the curtain of the “home security” discourse, the real goal of selective and partial inclusion of migrants seems to be protection of capital, since undocumented workers (among them also the erased residents) are unprotected from exploitation and as such are a benefit to the economy. The main argument of the article, supported by the ethnographic data, is that migration restrictions not only cause a great deal of suffering to migrants but also (re)produce their illegality. Due to the migration policies, these migrants stay in a specific territory illegally and as a consequence they cannot work in the legal sector. In order to break this vicious cycle, the official concept of citizenship has to be changed and the foundations upon which migration policies rest have to be reconstructed in the spirit of inclusiveness.