bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011
Authors: Shereen Sakr Laila 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article studies social media and popular social movements in the early 21st century in the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Egypt. Rather than ethnography or political theory exclusively, I employ a data analytics of analyzing tweets, posts, and blogs to describe the political culture of social media. And then I perform the results under the guise of the Arabic-speaking cyborg VJ Um Amel. The article argues that the Egyptian experience of revolution and counterrevolution reveals the indispensability, the promises, and the limits of digital communication across borders and languages.
Knowledge Disembodied: From Paper to Digital Media
Authors: Omran Abdullah Ibrahim 
Published: February 2021

AbstractPrint and digital media are believed to have shaken religious authority in the Muslim world, essentially because they popularize and pluralize Islamic knowledge. But how exactly did these novel technologies affect the nature of knowledge production and the behavior of scholars and the public? The pages that follow explore the historical relationship between technological developments and the production and transmission of knowledge over the course of Islamic history, commencing with the adoption of paper and concluding with the spread of digital media. A role-based approach is employed to reflect the gradual diminishment of the early methods of knowledge acquisition as “knowledge” came to be commodified according to the market logic of capitalism and subject to mass production and consumption via the technologies of print and electronic media. This approach reflects the interplay between knowledge producers, consumers, and communication mediums. The writer concludes that new media introduces new means of communication and contributes, along with other social, economic, and political factors, to the gradual disintegration of earlier forms of knowledge acquisitions.
Memory, Mediascapes, and Temporal Circulation in Urban Space; or How Landscapes Were Never as Linear as We Thought They Weren't
Authors: Peake Bryce 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis commentary critically reframes the concept of circulation in terms of time, defining the dislocation of space that occurs with media—defined as technology taken to be a social phenomenon—as an occurrence that creates, and is a result of, simultaneous streams of temporal flow. Counter to narratives that claim for technology and media's radical altering of subjectivity, I suggest that this notion of temporality was already present in cultural understandings of memory and monuments in the landscape.
The Responsibilities of Museums in the Representation of the Past and Present: The Need for Communication and Context
Authors: Allen Stephanie 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article investigates a range of case studies focusing on the display of Pre‐Columbian artifacts in Texas and Mexico City by visiting six museums housing permanent Pre‐Columbian collections. For each institution, I focused on two modes of communication. The first was the amount of information the museum provided to the public through the set‐up and organization of the galleries. This included the size of the exhibit, the number of cultures portrayed, and the types of visual tools utilized (videos, computers, dioramas, reconstructed buildings, etc). For the second part, I documented the textual information about the collections and the represented cultures. I conducted a content analysis on this text, looking in particular at the vocabulary used to describe each culture. I wanted to know how these institutions dealt with the flow of information between museum and visitor and how they functioned in representing the diversity of Pre‐Columbian groups and their cultural traditions. Here, in the interest of space, I focus on one institution, the San Antonio Museum of Art. Ultimately, I determined that the San Antonio Museum of Art, and museums in general, should incorporate anthropological outlooks in their portrayals of other cultures. They have a responsibility to communicate information that reflects a multiplicity of viewpoints because of their roles as sites of identity construction.
Circulation and Consumption: Transnational Mass Tourism in Cancun, Mexico
Authors: Preble Christine 
Published: February 2021

AbstractCancun's packaged image of paradise is a dynamic and constantly flowing contestation of identity and livelihood for those involved in the service sector. Indigeneity is used as spectacle, prop, and entertainment in the tourism industry and is especially popular in mass tourism zones like Cancun. Circulation of not only bodies, but theory surrounding authenticity and indigeneity, are all represented in the hyper‐commodification that defines mass tourism. Cancun uses transnational connections for marketing of space, goods, and people that are in a constant state of circulation. Looking at the rise of the tourism industry in Cancun processually leads us to explore this moment of mistrust between movements between the United States and Mexico. Violence throughout the border between these countries leads to fear that mass media instills in its audiences. How are these emerging attitudes of fear affecting mass tourism in Mexico? What are the effects of mass tourism on its locality? Using a transnational framework helps to decode complex structures of circulation in Cancun's mass tourism industry.
The identities of ethnic communities in São Paulo: An investigation of the Armenian community in Bom Retiro
Authors: Shake Joshua 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article explores the geo‐spatial identity of the Armenian community in São Paulo. Beginning with a foundation in prominent theories of ethnic communities, it then presents the political contexts and historical diversity of both Brazil and the city. The article then discusses the history of Armenian immigration to São Paulo which sets the context for the field research. After presenting the research and results, conclusions are given for this and other ethnic districts, including those regarding the use of collective memory and the continued presence of important community organizations in preserving neighborhood identity
Research Articles: Welcome to “Pine Tree Hall”: An Ethnography of Caregiving for the Elderly in Beijing
Authors: Card Shika 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDrawing upon ethnographic observations from Songtang Guanhuai Hospital, the first institution to offer hospice care in Beijing, China, this paper is an anthropological examination of caregiving for the elderly within a contemporary, urban Chinese context from the perspectives of patients and both professional and familial caregivers. Taking a phenomenological approach to anthropology, this article explores how Chinese individuals approach the illness experience, the aging process, and the end of life of elderly family members and patients, and aims to understand the particular Chinese cultural ideologies of caregiving for the elderly. By focusing on the notion of “sensibility,” or that which allows each individual to experience in her own way the challenges and realities of moral experience, I argue that not only is the practice of caregiving a fundamentally intersubjective process, but moreover that the experience of giving care in a Chinese setting is intersubjective in culturally specific ways. Through ethnography it is possible to examine how subjectivities are shaped and how intersubjectivity is experienced within the Chinese context. This article demonstrates how the active commitment to and the moral presence of caregiving emerges in the lives of Chinese individuals amidst the confusion, messiness, and deep uncertainty of the aging process and the end of life in China.
Inside Occupy Ohio State University (OSU): Values, Media, and the Role of Public Universities in the Occupy Movement
Authors: Schueller Emily 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDuring 2011, a group of activists established an Occupy group at The Ohio State University in solidarity with the global movement. Although Occupy Wall Street has been analyzed by many social scientists, its influence on campuses has not been as critically examined. The purpose of this study is to examine how the ideals and tactics of the Occupy movement have impacted student activism. Methods include semi‐structured interviews with members of Occupy OSU and participant‐observation, which involved attending Occupy OSU events. Interlocutors include students, one faculty member, and community activists from Columbus, Ohio. By examining the impact of the Occupy movement on The Ohio State University's campus, this study provides an analysis of the effects of social movements on a university community. Observations during meetings, events, and in casual settings uncover a value system which governs Occupy OSU and illustrates how activists use resources and experiment in direct democracy. In this article, I argue that Occupy Wall Street empowered student activists by providing them with some of the tools, networking opportunities, and motivation for a new student movement.
“Why can't you pay if you can eat?”: Tales of How Women Encounter Unpleasant NGO Practices in Bangladesh
Authors: Ali H M Ashraf 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn Bangladesh and globally, microcredit has been recognized as a key development tool in the alleviation of poverty. Many international development agencies and donor countries prioritize microcredit to alleviate poverty because of reported success stories of microcredit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in mobilizing poor women to participate in incomegenerating activities. Microcredit NGOs construct success stories of alleviating poverty and gender equity in relation to the repayment rate, but little is known about how they deploy strategies to collect loan installments from borrowers. Using ethnographic data collected in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, I examine how microcredit NGOs create unequal power relations between fieldworkers and borrowers to facilitate secure loan recovery. Reflecting on the women's experiences with microcredit programs, I demonstrate how these microcredit NGOs impose the provision of group liabilities, a ‘forced choice,’ upon the borrowers and how they socialize the borrowers into a culture of shaming to enforce repayment obligations. Instead of contributing to the development of norms of cooperation and solidarity that socially and economically empower the entire community, I argue that NGOs instead empower a group of female borrowers, serving their capitalistic interests, which often stimulates social conflict and negatively affects social solidarity.
The Aesthetics of Deformity and the Construction of the “Freak”
Authors: Backe Emma Louise 
Published: February 2021

AbstractWith the inception of the “freak show” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, deformity, physical abnormality and unusual facial features were sensationalized into entertainment spectacle, covertly managed, constructed and displayed for the macabre amusement of sideshow visitors and audience members. Due to the historical manipulation and fabrication of freaks’ bodies by sideshow and Odditorium managers to heighten or diminish their “freakish” qualities, the freak show can be conceptualized as an aesthetic space. By framing these social events as an aesthetic space, it is possible to analyze and deconstruct these bodies in the same way a work of art is appraised and valued. A freak is made, rather than born, and the physical elements that constitute freakishness are entirely dependent on the cultural norms and values of the time. Thus the cultural category of a freak is both historically and socially contingent. Through this aesthetic lens, I examine the visual culture of freak shows in order to interrogate the methods of representation employed by sideshow managers. These methods neither disrupted nor subverted the culturally coded conceptions of normality or deformity but, rather, reinforced them. Managers utilized exoticism or aggrandizement, falsified life‐story pamphlets and visual chicanery to deliberately separate the audience from the freaks as objects of amusement and maintain social hierarchy. As the nineteenth century wore on, however, freak shows lost their cultural currency, which can be seen as the result of developing anthropological theory and medicine where spectators began to pathologize the deformed body.
“Nobody Came Down”: The Effect of the Financial Crisis on Tourism in Two Roatán Communities
Authors: Brown Racine 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article examines the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on the tourism sector in the communities of West End and Punta Gorda on the island of Roatán, Islas de La Bahia (Bay Islands), Honduras. This article is based on ethnographic field research conducted in these two communities from April 2011 to April 2012 for a dissertation project. This project is both biocultural and political ecological in nature and utilizes a mixed methods approach incorporating participant observation, semi‐structured interviews that delve into household livelihoods and foodways, and surveys that assess dietary diversity. Overall, the tourism sector on Roatán suffered a drastic setback from June of 2009 until 2010 and has recovered at different rates depending on the particular type of tourism work practiced by the household. Among other things, occupational group has a significant relationship with dietary diversity. From this research I make recommendations to improve income and dietary diversity for households engaged in sectors that have not recovered. This includes adjustments to cruise ship schedules to enable more souvenir and food sales, courses to improve local residents’ marketability in higher paying tourism jobs such as scuba diving instruction, and community gardens to improve access to food and dietary diversity. The primary goal of this article is to spark discussion of the differential effects of the financial crisis on tourist receiving locations through the detailed presentation of one empirical example of these effects.
Face‐to‐face Legwork and Facebook Ethnography: Finding Informants and Delineating Field Sites in a Zuckerbergian World
Authors: Juliana Friend 
Published: February 2021

AbstractBy both indigenous and anthropological accounts, Facebook has brought into interaction diverse peoples and cultures like few other digital platforms have. This perceived global all‐inclusiveness provides a promising opportunity to anthropologists of ethnicity. However, given media anthropologists’ call for studies to examine the interplay between online and offline sociality ‐‐ and problematize the dichotomy between the two ‐‐ it also poses a methodological challenge. Facebook's geographic reach makes studying its everyday embeddedness difficult. This paper describes my response to this methodological challenge. Through anecdotal tales from the field, I aim to contribute to the nascent dialogue about methodological approaches in the anthropology of Facebook. Inspired by Matei Candea's defense of the bounded field site (Candea 2007), I launched my research about the role of Facebook in ethnic identity formation within the Senegalese diaspora from a highly localized, face‐to‐face entry point. I made Facebook friends through face‐to‐face contacts, rather than the other way around. This strategy presented several benefits. First, it was easier to build a network of participants and gain their trust. Second, immersion in the everyday, material circumstances of participants’ lives proved pivotal to understanding their attraction to Facebook in the first place. Third, I witnessed Facebook friendships turn face‐to‐face, and purportedly limitless networks get “cut” along ethnic lines. For even as informants idealized Facebook as encompassing the world and its diverse peoples, Facebook often reinscribed the parochialism and isolation of immigrants “sans papiers.” Methodological roadblocks to digital friendships thus foreshadowed boundaries in social interactions, just as face‐to‐face fieldwork provided the best window into Facebook worlds.
Fostering Community Among African Migrant Christians in Massachusetts
Authors: Beryl Louise 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article examines how social relationships and the feeling of “community” are fostered among African migrant Christians. It draws on data generated from participant observation, direct observation, and semi‐structured interviews as part of a larger ethnographic study of families predominantly from the African Great Lakes Region who attend two born‐again churches located northeast of Boston. Departing from classic assimilation theories of immigrants in the U.S. (e.g., Gordon 1964; Park 1930; Portes and Zhou 1993; Warner and Srole 1945), I contend that psycho‐social well‐being of immigrants is an integral part of integration. Moreover, religion as an institution and as a system of meaning (Alba et al. 2008) serves to promote that well‐being, particularly for the African diaspora, which is a smaller, heterogeneous immigrant group in the U.S. who often have strong religious affiliations. In order to understand this better, I present the characteristics and practices through which intimacy is cultivated (Bielo 2009) to engender the feeling of community and build bonding and bridging social relationships (Dryden‐Peterson 2009) among a more or less heterogeneous group of African migrants. Particularly in the case of bridging social ties, I show how cert,ain distinguishing characteristics that suggest difference are minimized (e.g. country of origin, ethnicity, maternal language, and/or immigrant status), whereas others that suggest similarity (e.g., “African” and “believer”) are maximized. This study demonstrates that religion is crucial in the study of immigration, an intersection that was once an important area of scholarly interest (e.g., Herberg 1955) and has only recently reemerged (Alba et al. 2008).
Self, Lwa and Haitianness: The Adherence Process and Reinvention of the Self by Haitian Vodou in Montreal.
Authors: Munier Hadrien 
Published: February 2021

AbstractOver recent decades, Haitian immigrants who settled in Montreal have introduced the practice of Vodou to the city, both as a religion and a spiritual healing practice. During nine months of fieldwork in Montreal, I examined the manner in which the therapeutic use of Vodou plays a role in the “indigenization” of this religion; that is, how believers utilize it as they adapt to new circumstances and become involved in transnational networks. An analysis of believers' narratives highlights the key position of the therapeutic use of Vodou in the process of adapting to life in Montreal. As patients search for ways to solve their problems, using Vodou therapeutically to heal, cure, prevent, or remediate becomes a common way to enter the religion. Vodou healing rituals are based on a relationship with spiritual entities, called lwa in Haitian Creole. As such, the therapeutic use of Vodou requires learning about the role and powers of these spirits. The patient's participation in a ritual process of healing positions them to become more and more involved in religious belief and practice. Vodou offers a system of interpretation for illnesses, issues, and personal problems that leads the client to a “reinvention of self,” which has the characteristics of a conversion phenomenon. As the migrant defines himself or herself within this socio‐cultural construction of belonging, two dimensions are important to this process. The first establishes Haiti as a reference point for identity that is constructed and shared in the diasporic community. Secondly, adherents develop a “dividual” self through the practice of Vodou.
Dangerous Waters: Security threats and their role in community formation among itinerant boat‐dwellers on the waterways of southern England
Authors: Bowles Benjamin 
Published: February 2021

AbstractWhen living aboard a narrowboat on the waterways of southern England with the itinerant boat‐dwellers who term themselves “Boaters,” one has to be cautious and vigilant in the face of a number of potential threats to the safety and security of one's self and one's vessel. Moorings in certain areas are attacked and burgled frequently and most Boaters have stories of unwarranted violent attacks or, at least, heated confrontations with locals residents. The following paper discusses how Boaters bind together and create a sense of being a vigilant community as a reaction to these threats and challenges. It argues that Boaters make their community against a boundary formed by personal security threats from the outside and that an examination of these threats can shed light upon processes of Boater's identity formation and the emergence of intra‐community tensions.
Exemplary Agriculture: The Origins of Independent Organic Farming in China
Authors: Cody Sacha 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDrawing on evidence collected in Shanghai and the surrounding countryside, this article argues that exemplary models and norms—used to engineer public and private morality appropriate for the upheavals of modernization—are not the sole creation of the Chinese state or media. Instead, self‐appointed exemplary models, amongst ordinary citizens, are present in China. The self‐appointed exemplary models I investigate practice organic farming, and by providing safe, quality foods, they aim to mitigate some of the risk perceived to be inherent in Chinese modernity. Through 18 months of ethnographic investigation amongst a group of independent organic farmers (university educated with successful urban careers who are new to farming) in and around Shanghai, this article discusses the role of self‐appointed exemplary models in fostering alternative moralities and parallel visions for Chinese modernity. Their missionary zeal to ‘do good’ is analyzed through Børge Bakken's (2000) concept of the exemplary society.
Swaying Mountains: Moving into Stillness in a Hot Yoga Community
Authors: Cossette Julien 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article contributes to a growing body of anthropological work on the senses and on yoga as an experiential, embodied practice. It began as an inquiry into the oxymoronic lumping of movement and stillness in yoga teachers’ suggestion to “move into stillness.” Through an autoethnographic description of my sweaty participation in a hot yoga community of the Greater Toronto Area, my aim is to explore this particular relation between movement and stillness. I first discuss my contention that hot yoga is a “kinaesthetic culture” (Samudra 2008:666)—a culture mediated by movement that highly values a sense of motion as a way of knowing—that considers body, mind, and breath as interconnected. I then elaborate on a sensory model specific to its practice, and further argue that yoga cannot be adequately represented by the limits of a Western five‐sense model, based on binary oppositions of movement/stillness and mind/body, which problematically excludes kinaesthesia from its sensorium. Finally, I return to my initial inquiry to discuss how the embodied mutual constitution of movement and stillness actually constitutes, in my view, the epitome of a larger biosocial configuration of a yogic way of moving and sensing.
Authenticity and the Native Cultural Experience at Tillicum Village
Authors: Parrish Sabine 
Published: February 2021

AbstractTillicum Village, a Seattle‐area dinner theatre attraction, purports to present an authentic version of Native tradition for visitors. I argue that the cultural elements presented at Tillicum Village represent only a superficial authenticity, one that mixes from several cultures yet claims to be a cohesive whole. Tillicum Village's claims to authenticity are undermined by the commodification of the self experienced by its theater performers, as well as the site's deliberately heterotopic construction. The discrepancies between the promotion and the reality of Tillicum Village reflect the recent conversion to a corporate enterprise, and ultimately undermine the site's educational potential.