Abstracts
Panel 1. Transforming BodiesClare McBee-Wise (Wellesley)
Policing Gender: Experiences of Violence in the Transgender, Genderqueer, and Transexual Community
On October 3, 2002, 17-year-old Gwen Araujo was beaten to death by four ex-classmates, who then dumped her body in a deserted area in California. Minutes before the attack, the four perpetrators found out that Gwen had been born male and was transgendered. The discovery of this fact resulted in a violent retaliation that cost Gwen her life. My research seeks to answer why violence and hate is repeatedly aimed at transgendered, genderqueer, and transexual Americans. By sharing the stories of Boston-area trans/genderqueer people who have experienced verbal and physical violence, in tandem with literature on gender violence, I hope to demonstrate that anti-transgender violence is part of a more general social hate pattern. These events are extreme manifestations of the gender policing/enforcement that touches all of our lives, everyday.
Denise Ho (Tufts)
Baby Faces and Sexy Bodies: How Cartoons Preach an Impossible Ideal of Beauty to our Children
Looking at the evolution of American ideals of female beauty over time, much research focused on changes in the physiques of children’s dolls, particularly Barbie and her companions. Surprisingly, scant attention has been paid to characters in animated cartoons, including Saturday morning cartoon shows aimed at prepubescent children, more traditional Disney animations and more recent computer-animated films. Collectively, these are a major part of many children’s lives.
This paper analyzes the physique of female cartoon characters from Betty Boop and Olive Oyl of the 1930s, through the Disney “princesses” between the 1950s to the 1990s to female creations in recent computer animated films such as The Incredibles. Physical measurements include leg-to-height ratios, waist-to-hip ratios, and arm width-to-arm length. Qualitative assessments are taken of relative body composition and athleticism. I show that while competing cartoon ideals can coexist – the stick-like Olive Oyl and the curvaceous Betty Boop; the “softer” Disney princesses and the more athletic fantasy and science fiction heroines – there are also shared features that evolve slowly through time.
Female cartoon figures thus are not simply agents or reflections of society. They represent complex messages, sometimes in conflict, about those ideals of attractiveness. Today, youth, slimness, and in particular, athleticism can be seen in both cartoon and real representations of desirability. At the same time, neotenous, yet sexualized and athleticized portrayals of young women set up contradictory notions of attractiveness that children internalize from a very early age. The resulting tensions are carried through to adulthood and reflect both ever varying and ever increasing numbers of criteria to be met before a woman can be considered “perfectly attractive.”
Panel 2: Crossing Borders/Remaking Selves
Alison Warren (Brandeis)
"With as much ease as if she were going to her own room at home:" Constructions of Identity in American Women Abroad
In light of gender studies and an increasing scrutiny of the normative values that seem to dominate American life, the identities of American women offer rich studies in respect to how their identities may both conform to and subtly subvert normative cultural expectations. In the liminal area of travel, identity is culturally constructed through narrative productions that reflect self-transformations. This paper explores the ways in which Victorian women constructed identity in terms of traveling abroad in Europe. Through an exploration of writing as narrative production in a liminal state, I will discuss some of the ways in which Victorian women perceived the self as well as the structures of society that are reflected in the writings. The analysis of the way Victorian women culturally constructed their identities adds to the study of female selfhood and also sets the stage for an examination of the discrepancies between traditional views of Victorian women and their specific actions.
Aduei Riak (Brandeis)
The Navigation of Culture: Finding Your Way in Nilotic and American Societies
This paper hopes to build on Emile Durkheim’s approach to space as a social construct by focusing on giving directions in Nilotic and American society. In order to identify these cultural distinctions, I will explore my first encounter with finding my own way in America. I contrast two cultural models of space, time, and direction-finding. The first model is Americans’ way of navigating directions (abstract form of pointing directions), and the second model is the Dinka way of giving directions (taking someone by hand to their final destination and referring to concrete natural landmarks). These two models might help us explain broader differences in the two cultures such as the rhythm of social life, the importance of social reciprocity, and ideas about the person.
Initially I was shocked. As a foreigner I found this American idea of “personal space” “independence” and finding direction with mathematical demonstration strange. In order to understand Americans’ ideas about space and time I had to reflect on my own practices as a Dinka. The paper therefore, ends reflecting on the anthropological approach. We use other cultural views to critique and understand our own.
Sebastián Chaskel (Tufts)
From Yucuaiquín to Somerville: Religious Beliefs and Traditions of a Transnational Community
On a cold October night in Somerville, Massachusetts, a group of immigrants originally from Yucuaiquín, El Salvador, congregate to celebrate the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, Yucuaiquín's patronal saint. Many of these immigrants have prayed to San Francisco for safe passage to the United States or to cure them of an illness, and in return promised to dance the "baile de los negritos" on his day. The patronal feast organized in Somerville allows them to fulfill their religious responsibilities and to preserve their culture as Yucuaiquinenses in a foreign land. Members of the community also send remittances, form philanthropic organizations, and ask their relatives in Yucuaiquín to hold "velorios" in their name in order to fulfill their promises. As they see the differences between their own traditions and those of their new neighbors, they identify themselves as clearly incompatible with North American culture and have a strong sense of Yucuaiquinense identity. Based on oral histories with Yucuaiquenenses, this paper explores the transnational ties the Yucuaiquinenses have formed with their home communities, their sense of identity in a new land, and the role that religion plays in their lives.
Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray (Tufts)
Creating heritage in el Barrio Chino: Gender, Chinese Identities, and the Cuban Revolution
Havana’s Chinatown, el Barrio Chino, is filled with Chinese restaurants, kung-fu and wu-shu martial art centers, and prolific numbers of Chinese associations. Most of its residents, however, are of mixed Cuban and Chinese descent. Because most first-generation Chinese immigrants to Cuba were men, these immigrants married Cuban women. Family and clan associations (dominated by men) have thus been the primary vehicles of Chinese cultural transmission, and have defined Chinese heritage in terms of ethnically exclusive cultural purity. In the early 1990s, however, a Revitalization Project arose out of the recognition that the “preservation” of a Chinese cultural heritage depends on the inclusion of those of mixed Chinese and Cuban descent. In this paper, I examine these struggles over the meaning, transmission, and boundaries of Chinese heritage among Chinese-Cuban descendants since the socialist revolution of 1959.
Bekka Saks (Brandeis)
Reading the Writing on the Wall: A Partnership Between Ethno-archaeologists and the Tepeleme Community in the Reclamation of the Ancient Past
Nations often employ their archaeological legacy to aid in the construction of a national identity. Simultaneously, indigenous groups have also applied these tactics to strengthen or make visible their own sense of identity within the larger nation. This is especially useful for people who have settled in a region in the more recent past and have a lack of connection with the ancestral past. For some, by looking to the past, they can reaffirm or even create contemporary notions of self and culture and root themselves into the landscape where they are currently living. Ethno-archaeologists, the indigenous people and the ancestral past exist in a delicate triaxial balance.
Based on fieldwork completed in the summer of 2004 in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, I will examine the way people from the community of Tepelmeme and its hinterland have been reclaiming the past to reaffirm their identity. The increased interest in pre-Hispanic material culture of the region and regaining political control over the land is very apparent. Considering the positive and negative reactions to our presence at the site, a significant sense of ownership and desire to establish connections with the pre-Hispanic past is very visible. Some members of the community commended us as “teachers” of the past and others condemned us as the “others” on “their territory,” yet they all have begun to make stronger claims to the ancestral history of the region. In this paper, I will explore the re-rooting of some of the members of the Tepelmeme community in an attempt to strengthen their contemporary identity and the pivotal role of the archaeologist in this endeavor.
Keridwen Luis (Brandeis)
A World of Women: The Creation of Culture and Gender in Women’s Intentional Communities
My preliminary research in women's intentional communities suggests that their cultures are shaped deliberately by intentional action, by community, and by ideas/ideals of gender. This last concept is proving to be extremely important. The reflections of individual women on what it is like to live in all-women communities reveal not only ideas about gender itself, but also ideas about gendered space, gendered culture, and gendered community. Exploring these concepts in women's intentional communities affords the opportunity to examine a population that not only articulates the concepts of culture, community, and sociality (through putting them into practice), but who also engage in a similar active creation of gender.
Kath Weston suggests (1993) that women can be gendered in ways that do not necessarily reference men, and that moreover, these genders are not binary. My preliminary studies suggest that gender is an important concept in how these communities-- these cultures-- are organized, and this in turn leads to new possibilities for investigation.
Christina Leoutsakos (Brandeis)
A Saint Turned Upside-Down: Saint Joseph, Detachment and the Real Estate Market
It seems relevant at the juncture of a 'renewed' political regime to critique the conceived of modernist and rationalist boundaries of the religious and secular spheres, and in turn the sacred and profane. I will investigate here the contemporary practice in the United States of utilizing statuettes (small plastic figurines) of Saint Joseph by homeowners in real estate transactions as a ‘meaning making enactment’, or ritual, that defies traditional ‘modern’ secular/religious boundaries.
This practice typically involves the interment of a Saint Joseph statuette at the time the practitioner’s home is placed on the real estate market, and subsequently the disinterment of the figurine upon the successful sale of the home. The ritual may be seen as transformative and is accepted as being efficacious by those who participate in the practice. It may be interpreted as a way of gaining control over an ambiguous event and as a way of structuring an uncertain transitional process. It can also be recognized as a way of establishing continuity in a reputedly transient society.
This paper will include an analysis of how this practice and its respective meaning are contextual according to the actor. I will not only delve into the subtleties of religious practice via the phenomenon of the ritual desecration of the Saint Joseph statuettes in an ambiguous sphere, but how such practices transcend modern notions of the dichotomy between magic-religion and reason-science.
Alice Chen (Wellesley)
The Mo’olelo of History: Understanding Land and Peoplehood in the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement
Over a century after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and the Islands’ subsequent forced annexation to the United States in 1898, Native Hawaiians are rallying together in an ever expanding move for cultural recognition and political sovereignty. Central to this movement is the question of Hawaiian identity: Who and what is Hawaiian”? To answer this question, Native and non-Native scholars, activists, artisans, agriculturists, and laypeople have examined and re-examined the course of Hawaiian history in an attempt to extract from the past some semblance of present and future identity. Of particular relevance to the concept of Hawaiian identity is the relationship between the Native and the Land.
My thesis examines the varied understandings of Land and Peoplehood that play into the notion of Hawaiian identity and consequently shape the move for Hawaiian sovereignty. I juxtapose the legal maneuverings of the political organization Ka Lahui Hawai’i with the agricultural restoration of independent taro farmers. Both factions mobilize history to invoke very specific understandings of the so-called “traditional” People-Land relationship in order to propel and sustain the sovereignty movement. While Ka Lahui Hawai'i centers its bid for sovereignty around a revisionist reading of political events and their role in the transformation of society, agriculturists worry less about contestation within an academic framework; instead their calls for sovereignty are based on metaphors of cultivation and fertility passed down from generation to generation.
Panel 4: Under Development: Challenges of Youth
Avantika Taneja (Tufts)
Coming of Age in Somerville: Youth Programs and the Negotiation of Space for Latino Teens
In this public anthropology paper, I hope to provide a constructive lens through which to examine the relatively recent incorporation of Latinos into Somerville, Massachusetts. I will focus on Latino teens who, in the context of increased attention to gang activity in Somerville, tend to be viewed on the one hand as unruly and destructive and on the other as “victims of circumstance.” These contradictory positions are also manifest in after-school programs and policies for Latino youth. The qualitative nature of a public anthropology interview-based community research project lends itself to a more culturally insightful and nuanced analysis of this issue. I will explore the levels of institutionalized outreach in city-wide and community-based programs, the issue of culturally-specific aspects of youth programming, and lesser-known initiatives of the Latino community in meetings the needs of its youth. In both my methodology and the content of my research, I attempt to be an advocate for Latino youth, and to illuminate the process of integration of Latinos into Somerville.
Darnisa Amante (Brandeis)
Voyages of Discovery: “Re-voicing” of Black South African Youth Through Art and Oral Histories
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the youth communities of South Africa have been living under a realm of silence enforced by both the former regime and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC). As a result, black youth have had to embark upon a process of suppressing their voices in order to maintain societal expectations of docility and ancestral respect. However, organizations have arisen over the past ten years to combat this youth silencing. Artist Proof Studio (APS), a local art studio in Johannesburg, was created with the intent of not only providing, through the median of art, a chance for youth to regain their voices but also economic opportunity. Through research done over the summer at APS, I intend to show in this paper how workshops, the creation of art, and the collection of oral histories have begun the healing process, or re-voicing of black artists. I will also highlight how this re-voicing involves a shift from independence to a sense of interdependence and shared consciousness within the community, creating, as Victor Turner would suggest a liminal stage for the artist.
Júlia Kirst (Brandeis)
Suicide in Our Words: Voices from a Teen Internet Forum
Adolescent suicide has recently been identified as a public health concern. Efforts to prevent youth suicide have focused on identifying external warning signs, as well as encouraging adolescents to reveal their drama to an adult. These strategies alone have unfortunately not been effective deterrents. This paper is an ethnographic account of adolescents’ experiences of suicidality as described by adolescents themselves. As sociologist David Karp has argued, academic and clinical data often misses “how it actually feels”. Based on 237 Internet posts in a forum dedicated to youth and suicide, this paper begins to unravel the complexity of how it actually feels, in the words of 55 adolescents on line. The 237 posts reveal ten different areas of common experience. Among the most striking are: a. the difficulty in negotiating the need for help with the need for keeping their personal drama secret; b. the development of “extreme strategies” which might show youth’s suffering to others without them “having to tell”; c. the intense desire to know that one is normal; and d. the tense relationship between wanting to be dead without actually wanting to die.
The data from this study suggests that the youth represented here are not passive victims of their own minds. Instead, they are actively engaged in naming, understanding, and searching for relief. The data suggests that we should consider replacing suicide prevention approaches which view youth as helpless victims of their own psyches with strategies which invite and value youth’s agency in tackling this problem.
Andrea Fox (Brandeis)
The Role of Language within a Group Home Setting, and the Possibility of Changing Outcomes through the Use of Alternative Perspectives
This paper examines the role of language in the setting of a group home for adolescent girls who had remanded into state’s custody, based on a year and four months’ experience working in such a home in Knoxville, Tennessee. I focus especially on the use of terms related to blame, behavior modification, treatment and crisis management within this particular setting. Terms such as these were constantly used in our vocabulary when we met once a week as a ‘Treatment Team’ to discuss each individual client’s progress. I argue that such affected our relationships with the clients and their families, as well as relationships among staff members. The paper proposes a critical perspective on some of the psychologizing and medicalizing techniques inherent in the ideologies of the facility and addresses the possible use of ethnographic techniques to bring about a different perspective and possibly different outcomes for the clients and their families.