Matching Items (13)
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- All Subjects: Cultural Anthropology
- All Subjects: sociolinguistics
- Creators: Hjorleifur Jonsson
- Creators: Prior, Matthew
- Status: Published
Description
Museums are gaining increasing attention throughout the world for their ability to foster social inclusion, intercultural dialogue, and collaboration in practices of heritage management, exhibition, and interpretation. This dissertation aims to contribute a critical perspective on museums as agents of social change through an exploration of new museological practices in contemporary China. Through an ethnography of the ecomuseum, I unravel the assumptions and expectations of implementing a Western concept based on notions of community participation, empowerment, and the democratization of heritage in the context of a transforming China.
In my ethnographic account of the multifaceted politics faced by ecomuseums, I question how power and authority are mediated through these civic institutions and how central aspects of museum and heritage practices are being redressed in Chinese society. This study exposes how ecomuseums in China are a result of global processes and positioned as part of a heritage protection movement and museum development boom to promote cultural nationalism, a "civilized" China, and state edicts of rural development in impoverished ethnic minority regions. Detailing the implications of government-led ecomuseum development in ethnic villages in southwest China, and the specific case of Huaili ecomuseum, in Guangxi, I interrogate the institutionalization of heritage and cultural landscapes through processes of exhibition, museumification, and the revaluing of culture. I explore the ecomuseum as a social space of cross-cultural encounter and friction through which local actors grapple with conditions of cultural governance and the entanglements cultural difference and a national heritage discourse. In my critical analysis of collected ethnographic narratives over 15 months of fieldwork from state-directed interest groups, Chinese technocrats, and villager informants involved in the institutionalization of heritage, I present the complex arrangements and interactions that take place through the ecomuseum context and how subject positionalities shift and claims to heritage, identity, and voice are negotiated, regulated, and contested. This study contributes to the anthropology of China and museum and heritage studies, and aims to push new directions in the study of community heritage and museums, in offering a critical perspective of the political nature of ecomuseums in non-Western contexts, such as China.
In my ethnographic account of the multifaceted politics faced by ecomuseums, I question how power and authority are mediated through these civic institutions and how central aspects of museum and heritage practices are being redressed in Chinese society. This study exposes how ecomuseums in China are a result of global processes and positioned as part of a heritage protection movement and museum development boom to promote cultural nationalism, a "civilized" China, and state edicts of rural development in impoverished ethnic minority regions. Detailing the implications of government-led ecomuseum development in ethnic villages in southwest China, and the specific case of Huaili ecomuseum, in Guangxi, I interrogate the institutionalization of heritage and cultural landscapes through processes of exhibition, museumification, and the revaluing of culture. I explore the ecomuseum as a social space of cross-cultural encounter and friction through which local actors grapple with conditions of cultural governance and the entanglements cultural difference and a national heritage discourse. In my critical analysis of collected ethnographic narratives over 15 months of fieldwork from state-directed interest groups, Chinese technocrats, and villager informants involved in the institutionalization of heritage, I present the complex arrangements and interactions that take place through the ecomuseum context and how subject positionalities shift and claims to heritage, identity, and voice are negotiated, regulated, and contested. This study contributes to the anthropology of China and museum and heritage studies, and aims to push new directions in the study of community heritage and museums, in offering a critical perspective of the political nature of ecomuseums in non-Western contexts, such as China.
ContributorsNitzky, William (Author) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Thesis advisor) / Isaac, Gwyneira (Thesis advisor) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Eder, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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
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
A bilingual, bicultural interpreter and researcher navigates blurry boundaries and intersectionality
Description
A researcher reflects using a close reading of interview transcripts and description to share what happened while participating in multiple roles in a larger ethnographic study of the acculturation process of deaf students in kindergarten classrooms in three countries. The course of this paper will focus on three instances that took place in Japan and America. The analysis of these examples will bring to light the concept of taking on multiple roles, including graduate research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant within a research project serving to uncover challenging personal and professional dilemmas and crossing boundaries; the dual roles, interpreter and researcher being the primary focus. This analysis results in a brief look at a thought provoking, yet evolving task of the researcher/interpreter. Maintaining multiple roles in the study the researcher is able to potentially identify and contribute "hidden" knowledge that may have been overlooked by other members of the research team. Balancing these different roles become key implications when interpreting practice, ethical boundaries, and participant research at times the lines of separation are blurred.
ContributorsHensley, Jennifer Scarboro (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Horejes, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The steady influx of Venezuelan immigrants to the United States has resulted in the creation of a close-knit community of these immigrants in the city of Doral, Florida, now nicknamed Doralzuela given the strong imprint Venezuelan have left in this city. This study aimed at gaining understanding on how the process of immigration and settlement in the context has affected Venezuelan immigrants’ identity, their perception and use of English and Spanish in daily interactions, and how, or if, their bonds with the home country has affected their incorporation to the host society. The study followed a qualitative design. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed following Riessman’s (2008) notion of dialogic narrative analysis. Six themes emerged from the data; (re)configuration of the self, the role of social networks, negotiating identity through language, issues of assimilation, transnational identity, and Doralzuela, the new Venezuela. These themes were discussed, and multiple and distinct views on each theme were identified.
ContributorsRomero Pino, Blanca Esther (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Warriner, Doris (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The aim in this sociopragmatic study was to identify the linguistic and nonlinguistic types of responses used by Saudi Facebook users in the comments of congratulations on the events of happy news status updates on Facebook. People usually express their feelings and emotions positively to others when they have happy occasions. However, the ways of expressing congratulation may vary because the expressive speech act “congratulations” is not the only way to express happiness and share others their happy news, especially on the new social media such as Facebook. The ways of expressing congratulation have been investigated widely in face-to-face communication in many languages. However, this has not yet been studied on Facebook, which lacks prosodic strategies and facial expressions that help to convey feelings, despite a few contributions on studying various expressive speech acts such as compliment, condolences, and wishing, among others. Therefore, a total of 1,721 comments of congratulation were collected from 61 different occasions and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by using the frame-based approach to understand the construction of politeness of congratulation on Facebook. The results showed 23 verbal types of responses used by the users; however, the use of “congratulations,” “offer of good wishes,” “praise,” and “statements indicating the situation was warranted” were the most frequently used strategies. The results also showed 100 patterns of verbal compound strategies, but the use of “congratulations” with “offer of good wishes” was the most frequently used compound strategy. In addition, 42 types of emojis were found in the comments and categorized into seven different functions. However, the function of expressing endearment was the most frequently used one. Finally, the results showed that the posts received 31 sharings and 3 types of emoji reactions, such as “like” (Thumbs up), “love” (Beating heart), and “wow” (Surprised face), but the use of “like” was the most frequent emoji reaction to the posts. The explored different ways of expressing congratulation and sharing with others their happy news indicated that the linguistic strategies are not the only way to express happiness on Facebook. Therefore, users employed nonlinguistic strategies to express happiness and intensify their congratulations.
ContributorsMahzari, Mohammad (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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
Nonlinguists’ attitudes towards language are a major factor in the process of language change. Therefore, linguists are interested in examining how language varieties are perceived. Several studies around the world have demonstrated that ideologies play a major role in shaping how people perceive certain dialects, how social meanings are associated with these varieties, and how linguistic communities are shaped in part by these beliefs. However, little attention has been given to language attitude in the Arab region, and in the Saudi context particularly. Moreover, none of the attitudinal studies in the region have tried to investigate Najdis’ attitudes towards their own dialects. Using a conceptually presented attitudinal approach, this study bridges the literature gap by examining 1041 Najdis’ language attitudes towards two of the main dialects there: The Najdi Urban and Najdi Bedouin varieties. The study answers the following questions: How do Najdis perceive the Najdi Urban and Bedouin dialects, and what are the frequently associated characteristics with these varieties? The results of the quantitative analysis show that Najdis’ language attitudes can be discussed with and reduced to two themes: modernity and traditionality. The Urban Najdi dialect was perceived as modern. Contrarily, the Bedouin Najdi dialect was considered traditional. Each social group tended to rate their dialect higher than the other group did in both factors, indicating in-group loyalty. Also, both groups showed high levels of linguistic security.
ContributorsAlothman, Ayoub (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This dissertation study examined the language ideologies about the different languages used in Sri Lanka to understand how they may reflect and align with ideologies about ethnicity and national belonging and structures of power operating in Sri Lankan society. It was a qualitative study which gathered data by interviewing twelve participants from the four main ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. Through the analysis of data comprising observations about language evaluations and practices, three main themes were generated. First, the study showed that Sri Lanka is a complex multilingual context in which the status of different languages changes according to context, audience as well as the participants of an interaction and that therefore it is difficult to describe languages by static labels such as “first”, “second” or “link” language. Secondly, the study found the situation of English in Sri Lanka is still largely influenced by cultural practices introduced during colonial rule which has caused it to function as a basis for social division. The study also found that the situation of Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka is shaped by ideologies about ethnicity and the social power that the two ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and Tamils, who speak the two languages, hold in society. Taken together these three main findings of the study showed that language ideologies in circulation in Sri Lanka as observed by the study participants were closely linked to and align with and sometimes even reinforce ideologies about ethnicity, national belonging and power in Sri Lankan society.
ContributorsRajapakse, Agra (Author) / Warriner, Doris (Thesis advisor) / Matsuda, Aya (Thesis advisor) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022