Matching Items (13)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Cultural Anthropology
- All Subjects: Climate Change
- All Subjects: Social Research
- Creators: Bolin, Bob
- Creators: Hjorleifur Jonsson
Description
With the ongoing drought surpassing a decade in Arizona, scholars, water managers and decision-makers have heightened attention to the availability of water resources, especially in rapidly growing regions where demand may outgrow supplies or outpace the capacity of the community water systems. Community water system managing entities and the biophysical and social characteristics of a place mediate communities' vulnerability to hazards such as drought and long-term climate change. The arid southwestern Phoenix metropolitan area is illustrative of the challenges that developed urban areas in arid climates face globally as population growth and climate change stress already fragile human-environmental systems. This thesis reveals the factors abating and exacerbating differential community water system vulnerability to water scarcity in communities simultaneously facing drought and rapid peri-urban growth. Employing a grounded, qualitative comparative case study approach, this thesis explores the interaction of social, biophysical and institutional factors as they effect the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of community water systems in Cave Creek and Buckeye, Arizona. Buckeye, once a small agricultural town in the West Valley, is wholly dependent on groundwater and currently planning for massive development to accommodate 218,591 new residents by 2020. Amid desert hills and near Tonto National Forest in the North Valley, Cave Creek is an upscale residential community suffering frequent water outages due to aging infrastructure and lack of system redundancy. Analyzing interviews, media accounts and policy documents, a narrative was composed explaining how place based factors, nested within a regional institutional water management framework, impact short and long-term vulnerability. This research adds to the library of vulnerability assessments completed using Polsky et al.'s Vulnerability Scoping Diagram and serves a pragmatic need assisting in the development of decision making tools that better represent the drivers of placed based vulnerability in arid metropolitan regions.
ContributorsZautner, Lilah (Author) / Larson, Kelli (Thesis advisor) / Bolin, Bob (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Masculinity has been increasingly recognized as a critical and relatively unexplored area of inquiry in anthropological gender studies. This project seeks to expand anthropological research on masculinity to contemporary American society. Using the case study of a male-centered popular new sport, Mixed Martial Arts (also known as cagefighting) this project integrates theories of embodiment and feminist perspectives to explore how masculinity and masculine hegemony are shaped, contested, and perpetuated in the United States. Using a multi-level framework this project explores: 1) How is masculinity experienced and expressed by Mixed Martial Arts fighters as a form of self-identity? How do their bodies play a role in constructing masculinity? 2) What are the pervasive forms of masculinity associated with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)? Are they truly representative of the sport? 3) Can these pervasive forms of masculinity be seen as hegemonic? How would hegemony operate in relation to individual experience? Using multiple methods to capture multiple points of view was critical to thoroughly examining the complex notion of masculinity. This study employed participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, surveys, photo elicitation, and media content analysis, as each presented particular benefits and allowed for the development a more well-rounded understanding of masculinity within the realm of MMA. This study also situates the rise of MMA and its representations of masculinity within the greater perspective of contemporary American society. By doing so reveals how ideologies of prescribed masculinity do not arise out of a vacuum but in relation to particular economic, social and political contexts. An emphasis of this study was to examine the daily lives of MMA fighters to understand how their participation in what may be regarded as a hypermasculine activity affects their own perceptions of masculinity. In looking at how masculinity is embodied, the gaps and often contradictions between representation and individual experiences are revealed. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of masculinity as both an embodied and relational construct.
ContributorsHolthuysen, Jaime (Author) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Thesis advisor) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Ballestero-Salaverry, Andrea (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation examines incidents of conflict and violence amid communities of the Maya Tzotzil Chamula in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite ostensible homogeneity, or more social and cultural resemblances than differences, conflicts arise between many Chamula because of how they acquire desire according to others who mediate what is desirable. These conflicts relate well to Rene Girard's hypothesis that mimetic desire influences identity yet generates conflict as imitation fosters rivalry. Qualitative methods of participant observation, interviews, and document research depict how desire, identity, and conflict interrelate. Ethnographic cases show how conflict emerges "interdividually" as rivals compete to obtain objects imputed desirable. The study begins with how young Tzotzils today appropriate the desires of others, becoming lawyer, spiritual guide, rock and roll singer, or anthropologist. Complex examples exhibit groups struggling for power and privilege within or between members of communities as they vie over "objects of desire" such as status, land, water, or representations of power and pecuniary interests. For some Chamula, mimetic rivalry works to deny resemblances with others despite being alike as neighbor, relative, farmer, carpenter, or member of the same political or religious affiliation. The study also highlights mimetic interactions that have shaped Maya struggles in the past, such as the uprisings of 1712, 1867, and 1911. Interpretive analysis explores how identity formation (structures), imitative desire (motivated interaction), and practice (habitual agency) together galvanize material and psychosocial variables for conflict. Imitative desire is worth observing because of its long-term implications for human adaptation and social change. As a contribution to social conflict theory, this dissertation offers a critical perspective to current research on mimetic desire as a significant force in human relations.
ContributorsRolland, Michael (Author) / Chance, John K. (Thesis advisor) / Eder, James (Committee member) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Committee member) / Rus Iii, Jan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The dissertation is based on 15 months of ethnographically-informed qualitative research at a liberal arts college in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. It seeks to provide a sense of daily life and experience of schooling in general and for female students in particular. Access to literacy and the opportunities that formal education can provide are comparatively recent for most Bhutanese women. This dissertation will look at how state-sponsored schooling has shaped gender relations and experiences in Bhutan where non-monastic, co-educational institutions were unknown before the 1960s. While Bhutanese women continue to be under-represented in politics, upper level government positions and public life in general, it is frequently claimed at a variety of different levels (for instance in local media and government reports), that Bhutan, unlike it South Asian neighbors, has a high degree of gender equity. It is argued that any under-representation does not reflect access or opportunity but is instead the result of women's decision not to "come up" and participate. However this dissertation will dispute the claim that female students could choose to be more visible, vocal and mobile in classrooms and on campus without being challenged or discouraged. I will show that school is a gendered context, in which female students are consistently reminded of their "limitations" and their "appropriate place" through the use of familiar social practices such as teasing, gossip, and harassment. Schooling, particularly in developing nations like Bhutan, is usually implicitly and uncritically understood to be a neutral resource, often evaluated in relation to development aims such as creating a more educated and skilled workforce. While Bhutanese schools do seem to promote new kind of opportunity and new understandings of success, they also continue to recognize, maintain and reproduce conventional values around hierarchy, knowledge transmission, cooperation (or group identity) and gender norms. This dissertation will also show how emergent disparities in wealth and opportunity in the nation at large are beginning to be reflected and reproduced in both the experience of schooling and the job market in ways that Bhutanese development policy is not yet able to adequately address.
ContributorsRoder, Dolma Choden (Author) / Eder, James (Thesis advisor) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Committee member) / Mccarty, Teresa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In this study, the researcher develops a documentary-driven methodology to understand the ways four women in the United States use their involvement in the belly dance phenomenon to shape their ongoing individual identity development. The filmmaking process itself and its efficacy as a process to promote self-understanding and identity growth among the participating belly dancers, are also investigated phenomenologically. Methodological steps taken in the documentary-driven methodology include: initial filmed interviews, co-produced filmed dance performances, editorial interviews to review footage with each dancer, documentary film production, dancer-led focus groups to screen the film, and exit interviews with each dancer. The project generates new understandings about the ways women use belly dance to shape their individual identities to include: finding community with other women in private women's spaces, embodying the music through the dance movements, and finding liberation from their everyday "selves" through costume and performance.
ContributorsWatkins, Ramsi Kathryn (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
On May 12, 2009, hundreds of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) raided Agriprocessors, a meat packing plant in the sleepy town of Postville, Iowa, and arrested 389 workers. These workers, primarily Spanish speaking immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico, were charged with felony aggravated identity theft. This criminalization of immigration is a critical point in immigration policy in the United States, representing a ritual performance of the exclusion of immigrants from American society. In stark juxtaposition to the raid itself, the community of Postville was working to welcome the very immigrants that were targeted by ICE. In attempts at inclusion, Postville had created an adult soccer league that provided a sense of community and identity for immigrants. Using the classic anthropological method of ethnography, this research draws on extensive time immersed in the community of Postville to conduct a qualitative case study of the day-to-day meanings of immigration in the United States. This dissertation examines the adult soccer league and the ICE raid as examples of cultural performances of inclusion and exclusion by using anthropological concepts of nation, sport, and performance. Performance is used to mark national identity in both instances--a shifting, hybrid `transnational' identity in the case of the immigrants playing in the soccer league--and a clearly delineated `American' identity in the case of the ICE raid. Moreover, national identity is tied to other aspects of identity, such as gender. As the performances create national `imagined communities,' they also gender their participants and nations themselves. Ultimately this reveals the way that immigration itself is gendered, and the way in which American immigration policy is designed to promote an American national identity. These efforts are not only to the detriment of immigrants in the United States as laborers but also to the communities with jobs that draw these workers. The case study of Postville provides a lens to examine the meanings of immigration policy from the ground up and in the lives of those it impacts most--immigrants and the communities in which they reside.
ContributorsWhite, Douglas Gerald (Author) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Thesis advisor) / Eder Jr, James (Committee member) / Chance, John K. (Committee member) / Alvarez, Robert R. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
This dissertation explores vulnerability to extreme heat hazards in the Maricopa County, Arizona metropolitan region. By engaging an interdisciplinary approach, I uncover the epidemiological, historical-geographical, and mitigation dimensions of human vulnerability to extreme heat in a rapidly urbanizing region characterized by an intense urban heat island and summertime heat waves. I first frame the overall research within global climate change and hazards vulnerability research literature, and then present three case studies. I conclude with a synthesis of the findings and lessons learned from my interdisciplinary approach using an urban political ecology framework. In the first case study I construct and map a predictive index of sensitivity to heat health risks for neighborhoods, compare predicted neighborhood sensitivity to heat-related hospitalization rates, and estimate relative risk of hospitalizations for neighborhoods. In the second case study, I unpack the history and geography of land use/land cover change, urban development and marginalization of minorities that created the metropolitan region's urban heat island and consequently, the present conditions of extreme heat exposure and vulnerability in the urban core. The third study uses computational microclimate modeling to evaluate the potential of a vegetation-based intervention for mitigating extreme heat in an urban core neighborhood. Several findings relevant to extreme heat vulnerability emerge from the case studies. First, two main socio-demographic groups are found to be at higher risk for heat illness: low-income minorities in sparsely-vegetated neighborhoods in the urban core, and the elderly and socially-isolated in the expansive suburban fringe of Maricopa County. The second case study reveals that current conditions of heat exposure in the region's urban heat island are the legacy of historical marginalization of minorities and large-scale land-use/land cover transformations of natural desert land covers into heat-retaining urban surfaces of the built environment. Third, summertime air temperature reductions in the range 0.9-1.9 °C and of up to 8.4 °C in surface temperatures in the urban core can be achieved through desert-adapted canopied vegetation, suggesting that, at the microscale, the urban heat island can be mitigated by creating vegetated park cool islands. A synthesis of the three case studies using the urban political ecology framework argues that climate changed-induced heat hazards in cities must be problematized within the socio-ecological transformations that produce and reproduce urban landscapes of risk. The interdisciplinary approach to heat hazards in this dissertation advances understanding of the social and ecological drivers of extreme heat by drawing on multiple theories and methods from sociology, urban and Marxist geography, microclimatology, spatial epidemiology, environmental history, political economy and urban political ecology.
ContributorsDeclet-Barreto, Juan (Author) / Harlan, Sharon L (Thesis advisor) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Hirt, Paul (Committee member) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Sexual harassment has emerged as a widespread problem facing women in public space in Egypt. Activism to combat sexual harassment began in 2005. However, just prior to and in the years following the January 25, 2011 Egyptian Revolution, which witnessed an increase in the collective sexual harassment, assault and rape of women, this activism has increased. Subsequently, scholarly attention to sexual harassment and public sexual violence has also expanded. Much of the attention in scholarly analyses has been directed toward politically motivated sexual violence, focused on understanding the state commissioning of sexual violence against female protestors to drive them from protest participation. There is an emerging critique of activist approaches that seems to ignore the politicalized nature of sexual harassment to focus instead on “cultural” targets. The early work of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) and current work of HarassMap have been criticized for depoliticizing sexual harassment by failing to include an analysis of state-commissioned sexual violence in their work. Similarly, both have been accused of expanding the scope of the security state by calling for increased policing of public space to protect women from “culturally-bad” men.
With data collected through one year of participant observation with HarassMap, interviews with activists from eleven anti-sexual harassment initiatives and advocacy NGOs, and community-level surveys with non-activist individuals, this dissertation argues that “cultural” work undertaken through the community-based approaches by entities like ECWR and HarassMap is, in fact, an inherently political process, in which political engagement represents both an attempt to change political culture and state practice and a negotiative process involving changing patriarchal gender norms that underpin sexual harassment at a society-wide level. New conceptualizations of sexual harassment promoted by anti-sexual harassment initiatives and NGOs in Egypt frame it as a form of violence against women, and attempt to make sexual harassment an offense that may be criminalized. Yet, this dissertation contends there is a tension between activist and widespread public understandings of sexual harassment, predicated on the incomplete framing of sexual harassment as a form of violence.
With data collected through one year of participant observation with HarassMap, interviews with activists from eleven anti-sexual harassment initiatives and advocacy NGOs, and community-level surveys with non-activist individuals, this dissertation argues that “cultural” work undertaken through the community-based approaches by entities like ECWR and HarassMap is, in fact, an inherently political process, in which political engagement represents both an attempt to change political culture and state practice and a negotiative process involving changing patriarchal gender norms that underpin sexual harassment at a society-wide level. New conceptualizations of sexual harassment promoted by anti-sexual harassment initiatives and NGOs in Egypt frame it as a form of violence against women, and attempt to make sexual harassment an offense that may be criminalized. Yet, this dissertation contends there is a tension between activist and widespread public understandings of sexual harassment, predicated on the incomplete framing of sexual harassment as a form of violence.
ContributorsAbdelmonem, Angie (Author) / Eder, James (Thesis advisor) / Adelman, Madelaine (Thesis advisor) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Committee member) / Rizzo, Helen (Committee member) / El-Meehy, Asya (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Drawing from the fields of coastal geography, political ecology, and institutions, this dissertation uses Cape Cod, MA, as a case study, to investigate how chronic and acute climate-related coastal hazards, socio-economic characteristics, and governance and decision-making interact to produce more resilient or at-risk coastal communities. GIS was used to model the impacts of sea level rise (SLR) and hurricane storm surge scenarios on natural and built infrastructure. Social, gentrification, and tourism indices were used to identify communities differentially vulnerable to coastal hazards. Semi-structured interviews with planners and decision-makers were analyzed to examine hazard mitigation planning.
The results of these assessments demonstrate there is considerable variation in coastal hazard impacts across Cape Cod towns. First, biophysical vulnerability is highly variable with the Outer Cape (e.g., Provincetown) at risk for being temporarily and/or permanently isolated from the rest of the county. In most towns, a Category 1 accounts for the majority of inundation with impacts that will be intensified by SLR. Second, gentrification in coastal communities can create new social vulnerabilities by changing economic bases and disrupting communities’ social networks making it harder to cope. Moreover, higher economic dependence on tourism can amplify towns’ vulnerability with reduced capacities to recover. Lastly, low political will is an important barrier to effective coastal hazard mitigation planning and implementation particularly given the power and independence of town government on Cape Cod. Despite this independence, collaboration will be essential for addressing the trans-boundary effects of coastal hazards and provide an opportunity for communities to leverage their limited resources for long-term hazard mitigation planning.
This research contributes to the political ecology of hazards and vulnerability research by drawing from the field of institutions, by examining how decision-making processes shape vulnerabilities and capacities to plan and implement mitigation strategies. While results from this research are specific to Cape Cod, it demonstrates a broader applicability of the “Hazards, Vulnerabilities, and Governance” framework for assessing other hazards (e.g., floods, fires, etc.). Since there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to mitigating coastal hazards, examining vulnerabilities and decision-making at local scales is necessary to make resiliency and mitigation efforts specific to communities’ needs.
The results of these assessments demonstrate there is considerable variation in coastal hazard impacts across Cape Cod towns. First, biophysical vulnerability is highly variable with the Outer Cape (e.g., Provincetown) at risk for being temporarily and/or permanently isolated from the rest of the county. In most towns, a Category 1 accounts for the majority of inundation with impacts that will be intensified by SLR. Second, gentrification in coastal communities can create new social vulnerabilities by changing economic bases and disrupting communities’ social networks making it harder to cope. Moreover, higher economic dependence on tourism can amplify towns’ vulnerability with reduced capacities to recover. Lastly, low political will is an important barrier to effective coastal hazard mitigation planning and implementation particularly given the power and independence of town government on Cape Cod. Despite this independence, collaboration will be essential for addressing the trans-boundary effects of coastal hazards and provide an opportunity for communities to leverage their limited resources for long-term hazard mitigation planning.
This research contributes to the political ecology of hazards and vulnerability research by drawing from the field of institutions, by examining how decision-making processes shape vulnerabilities and capacities to plan and implement mitigation strategies. While results from this research are specific to Cape Cod, it demonstrates a broader applicability of the “Hazards, Vulnerabilities, and Governance” framework for assessing other hazards (e.g., floods, fires, etc.). Since there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to mitigating coastal hazards, examining vulnerabilities and decision-making at local scales is necessary to make resiliency and mitigation efforts specific to communities’ needs.
ContributorsGentile, Lauren Elyse (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Wentz, Elizabeth (Committee member) / White, Dave (Committee member) / York, Abigail (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This study explores the potential risks associated with the 65 U.S.-based commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs) and the distribution of those risks among the populations of both their respective host communities and of the communities located in outlying areas. First, I examine the relevant environmental justice issues. I start by examining the racial/ethnic composition of the host community populations, as well as the disparities in socio-economic status that exist, if any, between the host communities and communities located in outlying areas. Second, I estimate the statistical associations that exist, if any, between a population's distance from a NPP and several independent variables. I conduct multivariate ordinary least square (OLS) regression analyses and spatial autocorrelation regression (SAR) analyses at the national, regional and individual-NPP levels. Third, I construct a NPP potential risk index (NPP PRI) that defines four discrete risk categories--namely, very high risk, high risk, moderate risk, and low risk. The NPP PRI allows me then to estimate the demographic characteristics of the populations exposed to each so-defined level of risk. Fourth, using the Palo Verde NPP as the subject, I simulate a scenario in which a NPP experiences a core-damage accident. I use the RASCAL 4.3 software to simulate the path of dispersion of the resultant radioactive plume, and to investigate the statistical associations that exist, if any, between the dispersed radioactive plume and the demographic characteristics of the populations located within the plume's footprint. This study utilizes distributive justice theories to understand the distribution of the potential risks associated with NPPs, many of which are unpredictable, irreversible and inescapable. I employ an approach that takes into account multiple stakeholders in order to provide avenues for all parties to express concerns, and to ensure the relevance and actionability of any resulting policy recommendations.
ContributorsKyne, Dean (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Pijawka, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014