Category Archives: Paper

Izzy Pitman and a Soundscape about Atlanta

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Hi all,

I think all of us are aware of how challenging the Spring semester of 2020 was for students, faculty, and the entire campus community. For my students in SOAN 213: City and Society, our departure from campus midway through the semester meant a series of virtual lectures, the abandonment of my plans to pioneer the new Tacoma Neighborhoods longitudinal project I had designed, and a substantial reconfiguration of the semester-concluding Global Cities project.

Izzy 3While lots changed, the pandemic also shook up my expectations from students. Sophomore Izzy Pitman (pictured here, at home in Atlanta) convinced me to accept a recorded soundscape in lieu of the written PDF I typically require. And I’m so happy that she did! In this particular assignment, students are required to experientially explore the city, and to use their “drift” through the urban landscape to unpack and analyze some aspect of the theories, theorists, and/or ideas integral to urban planning and history — theories and ideas we’ve been discussing together as a class. This soundscape explores the impact of Frederick Law Olmstead‘s ideas of urban planning and the centrality of parks to the urban landscape through Izzy’s exploration of his legacy in Atlanta. Check it out:

Olmstead, Parks, and Greenspaces in Atlanta:

bye for now!

Andrew

New Article by Professor Andrew Gardner

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Hi folks,

Our very own Andrew Gardner has just published a thought-provoking, new article in Areo Magazine. It’s a piece of accessible, public scholarship focused on the ideological imperialism of U.S. higher education, and how our particular framings of difference have become exported around the world, to the detriment of diverse, alternative conceptualizations. I asked Andrew if he could summarize the piece, and his response is below, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Here’s Andrew’s message:

In this magazine article, I’m trying to think about the implications of the pressing conversations we’re having on campus and in America, and how those conversations are shaping (or reshaping) other cultures and other intellectual traditions in our world. In short, from what I’ve seen in Qatar and elsewhere, I’m concerned that we’re foisting a certain set of ideas on the rest of the world, and that we should at least be aware of that fact.

In a nutshell, here’s the argument I make: all of the ideas that congeal around our American concern with diversity, equity, inclusion, and the many other concepts in that orbit are very American ideas. One could argue about whether those ideas are good for American society — but those conversations are difficult, and currently unwelcome inside our collegiate bubble. Those arguments are also not a part of what I’m discussing in this article.

Instead, I’m trying to point out the fact that we Americans are pushing the rest of the world to think about themselves the way we think about each other in America — in terms of essential identities, grouped together in frictional combat over rights and limited resources. Exporting these ideas to other cultures and other intellectual traditions in our world happens via the last vestiges of American imperialism, I argue: our higher education system. Through that system and its ongoing global dominion, America is reshaping other societies. We’re telling them that they should also understand each other in terms of “identities,” in the same way we now think of ourselves. Imposing these understandings on the rest of the world, I contend, is antithetical to the social and cultural diversity that we anthropologists believe to be the greatest treasure in the human legacy. 

You can read the whole of the paper here. 

Congratulations on this compelling publication, Andrew, we look forward to many more in the future!

-Gareth

Conference on Environmental Issues in China: Coming Up!

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The University of Puget Sound Program in Asian Studies is pleased to announce an upcoming symposium on environment in China: Resilience, Response, and Reclamation in the Ecology and Environment of Greater China, to be held on April 5 (evening) and April 6 (all day), 2019.

Recent years have seen both extreme environmental degradation and diverse efforts at mitigation and adaptation all over the Sinophone world.  As air pollution dominates headlines, the Chinese government shuts down steel and cement mills and launches huge renewable-energy projects.  In a land that was severely deforested in mid-century, China has doubled its forest cover in the past three decades. Protests and local environmental movements put constant pressure on governments in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Green becomes fashionable among urbanites.

Presentations in the symposium will capture the trajectory of environmental degradation and remediation, and assess just how resilient the varied environments of Greater China are. There will be a particular focus on the theories of Resilience in Social-Ecological systems, founded by C.S. Holling and developed by a large number of researchers, as embodied in the Resilience Alliance and its online journal, Ecology and Society.  How has whirlwind modernization and urbanization affected the ability of ecosystems to respond to disturbances and continue functioning?  What is recoverable and what is irrevocably lost in the land, air, and water of the Sinophone world?

List of presenters and titles can be found on the conference website:

https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/undergraduate/asian-studies/chinasymposium/

There will be an opening reception on the evening of Friday, April 5, open to all of the campus community. Saturday, April 6 will consist of morning presentations (open to the campus community), as well as afternoon workshops for presenters (and by invitation).

For further information please contact Professor Glover ([email protected])

Conference organizers:

Denise M. Glover, University of Puget Sound
Jack Patrick Hayes, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Stevan Harrell, University of Washington

China conference flyer FINALforREALrescheduled

February Conference on Environmental Issues in China

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china conference flyer finalforreal

The University of Puget Sound Program in Asian Studies is pleased to announce an upcoming symposium on environment in China: Resilience, Response, and Reclamation in the Ecology and Environment of Greater China, to be held on February 8 (evening) and February 9 (all day), 2019.

Recent years have seen both extreme environmental degradation and diverse efforts at mitigation and adaptation all over the Sinophone world.  As air pollution dominates headlines, the Chinese government shuts down steel and cement mills and launches huge renewable-energy projects.  In a land that was severely deforested in mid-century, China has doubled its forest cover in the past three decades. Protests and local environmental movements put constant pressure on governments in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Green becomes fashionable among urbanites.

Presentations in the symposium will capture the trajectory of environmental degradation and remediation, and assess just how resilient the varied environments of Greater China are. There will be a particular focus on the theories of Resilience in Social-Ecological systems, founded by C.S. Holling and developed by a large number of researchers, as embodied in the Resilience Alliance and its online journal, Ecology and Society.  How has whirlwind modernization and urbanization affected the ability of ecosystems to respond to disturbances and continue functioning?  What is recoverable and what is irrevocably lost in the land, air, and water of the Sinophone world?

List of presenters and titles can be found on the conference website:

https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/undergraduate/asian-studies/chinasymposium/

There will be an opening reception on the evening of Friday, Feb 8, open to all of the campus community. Saturday, Feb 9 will consist of morning presentations (open to the campus community), as well as afternoon workshops for presenters (and by invitation).

For further information please contact Professor Glover ([email protected])

Conference organizers:

Denise M. Glover, University of Puget Sound
Jack Patrick Hayes, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Stevan Harrell, University of Washington

Presentation at the London School of Economics

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lakatos-building-for-webHi all,

I’ve just returned from a trip to the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I was invited to present to a workshop entitled Tribe and State in the Middle East, hosted by the LSE’s Middle East Centre. It was a fascinating conference, substantively interdisciplinary, and bursting with contributions and assessments from around the Middle East and North Africa.

The central question guiding this small congregation of scholars concerned how tribe and tribalism — undeniably a social feature integral to the traditions of many peoples around the Middle East — fits with the modern state. Are tribes and states antithetical in nature? Or can (and do) they fit together in new, unforeseen ways?

Papers helped illuminate this issue. Haian Dukhan‘s fascinating paper, for example, explored how tribalism features in the social frictions and conflict that have embroiled Syria. Alice Wilson‘s paper examined how tribal forms of meeting have been a feature of the nascent democracy in Western Sahara, and the basis for political mobilization in some parts of Oman. Alnoud Alsharekh clarified that tribalism was, and remains, a stoutly patriarchal form, and one that remains an oppressive force in women’s lives around Arabia. Numerous other papers in the session explored equally interesting topics.

In my own paper (which I retitled On Tribalism in Arabia), I provided an overview of anthropology’s long concern with the tribal form of social organization. While anthropology’s perspective on tribalism has evolved fairly dramatically over the last century, it remains a meaningful social form to many anthropologists, foremost, I think, because it remains a meaningful social form to the peoples we study. I further suggested that while researchers have pointed to the resurgence of tribalism in places where the state is weak or absent (such as post-war Iraq), the resurgence of tribalism in Qatar and the other Arabian Gulf States — places where the state is neither weak nor absent — suggests other conditions and circumstances also foster the value of this tribal form.

The Middle East Centre at the LSE intends to publish these papers on its blog, and I’ll post a brief follow up here with those links once they’re available.

Andrew

SOAN Students and Faculty Win Major Research Awards at PSA’s 2017 Conference

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SOAN students and faculty have for many years presented their research at the Pacific Sociological Association’s (PSA) Annual Meeting. This year’s meeting, held in Portland, April 6-9, 2017, was no exception. Besides four SOAN faculty participating in the conference, five SOAN students presented their original senior thesis research, including Kylie Young, Lizzy Chao, Annie Krepack, Leonard Henderson, and Allison Nasson, with each receiving in-depth feedback from faculty discussants and participants at their roundtables. We are proud of each of our SOAN students, who presented fascinating research on topics as diverse as “farmwives” and changing gender identities in rural communities, parental control over school lunches, hip-hop in global and local settings, and more.

This year we are also pleased to share the exciting news that SOAN major Allison Nasson and SOAN Associate Professor of Sociology Jennifer Utrata won two major research awards announced at PSA. These awards are significant given that the PSA, the oldest of sociology’s regional associations, includes sociology departments from the entire Pacific region of North America, including California, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alberta in Canada, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, Wyoming, and more, with only one recipient in each award category.

At the Presidential Address and Awards Ceremony on Friday evening, Allison Nasson, a senior SOAN student, won the 2017 Distinguished Undergraduate Student Paper Award for her paper entitled “Donor-Friendly Victimhood: Narrative Construction as a Fundraising Strategy.” The paper, lauded for its high professional quality, and building on her summer research award work, examines how personal narratives have become a key fundraising tool for nonprofits as they compete for attention and funding. It argues that studying the selection, manipulation, and circulation of these stories provides insight into which identities are being privileged, whose stories are going untold, and the potential ramifications of these trends.

Allison&AwardChair

SOAN senior Allison Nasson receiving the 2017 PSA Undergraduate Student Paper Award from Dr. Kposowa, Awards Committee Chair and Professor of Sociology, UC-Riverside.

We are impressed by Allison’s achievement, and cannot help but feel some SOAN pride more generally given that this is the second consecutive year and the fifth time in the past decade that a Puget Sound SOAN student has won one of these highly competitive undergraduate student paper awards.

At the same awards ceremony, Jennifer Utrata, Associate Professor of Sociology in the SOAN Department, was awarded the 2017 PSA Distinguished Scholarship Award for her book, Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New Russia (Cornell, 2015). The award recognizes major intellectual contributions embodied in a recently published book or a series of at least three articles on a common theme.

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Prof. Jennifer Utrata receiving the PSA Distinguished Scholarship Award from Dr. Judith Hennessy, Central Washington University.

Utrata’s book illuminates Russia’s “quiet revolution” in family life through examining the puzzle of how single motherhood, frequently seen as a social problem in other contexts, became taken for granted in Russia. The ambitious book uses the Russian case of growing single motherhood during the transition to capitalism to think theoretically and critically about assumptions in U.S.-focused scholarship on family change, poverty, and gender relations. Last year her book won the other coast’s major award, the Eastern Sociological Society’s Mirra Komarovsky Book Award.

Traditionally SOAN faculty presenting research, organizing sessions, or serving as discussants on panels gather together with student presenters over dinner. This year we had plenty of celebratory toasts and discussions, and we look forward to gathering together in future years with students presenting their original research.

PSA2017-SOANdinnerphoto

SOAN Sociology Professors and students gathered for dinner at PSA: Jason Struna (and adorable son!), Kylie Young, Lizzy Chao, Annie Krepack, Jennifer Utrata, Ben Lewin, John Parker (Arizona State), and Leonard Henderson.

Would you like to join us at next year’s PSA? Are you interested in learning more about the SOAN major and its opportunities for conducting, and presenting, independent research? Then be sure to drop by the SOAN Research Symposium, to be held this Friday, April 21st from 3:30-5:30 in the Tahoma Room…all are welcome, refreshments provided.

Congratulations to Allison Nasson, Prof. Utrata, and all of the students and faculty who participated in this year’s PSA!

Puget Sound SOAN Students at the Society for Applied Anthropology meeting in Santa Fe

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Hi all,

Over the past decade, SOAN students have been a regular feature at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA). The SfAA uniquely convenes academic anthropologists with a constellation of ‘practitioners’ — anthropologists who use their degree(s) to work in international development, public health, international development, the non-profit sector, and a variety of other areas. This year, the annual meeting was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Seven students participated in the poster session, which provided them the opportunity to present their research and receive feedback from numerous conference attendees. And as usual, our students’ research widely impressed the anthropologists at the conference. Here’s a quick list of the Puget Sound students’ poster titles.

ImageElena Augustine’s project, Pro-Life Direct Activists’ Affect on Planned Parenthood Patients and Employees, explored how pro-life activism shapes clinic dynamics and defense tactics in the greater Tacoma area.

ImageElena Becker’s project, Impacts of Development Discourse on Appropriate Technology “Solutions,” distilled her fieldwork in Madagascar and her subsequent senior thesis work into a critique of the contemporary development paradigm.

ImageMaria Birrell presented her senior thesis project, entitled Applying Feminist Theory to Indigenous Archaeology, which explores how feminist archaeological theory has reshaped the practice of archaeological fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest.

ImageSam Carp’s summer research exploring agricultural practices in Ghana, further extrapolated for his senior thesis, was distilled in his project poster, entitled, Understanding the Role of Subsistence Farming in a Developing Nation. In that project, Sam emphasizes the food security role of local markets and subsistence farming.

ImageEmma Erler’s project, A Forged Dichotomy between Biomedicine and Traditional Healing Practices: An Ethnographic Study of Sikkim Dichotomy, builds on her ethnographic research during her semester abroad in India, exploring the dialectic between the biomedical paradigm and traditional, historic healing practices in India.

ImageKathryn Stutz’s project, Transnational Museum Networks Passing Through Qatar: The Balance of Communication, Curation, and Culture, distilled her AHSS summer research project in Qatar amidst the astonishing bloom of new museums there. This project examines some o the complex processes and relations discernible in the the process of establishing these museums, their exhibit, and their content.

ImageAriel Ziegler’s senior project, entitled National Parks for All?: Exploration of African American Accessibility of US National Parks, uses an ethnographic methodology to explore differential access to America’s archipelago of national parks.

As noted, Puget Sound has established a perennial footprint at the Society for Applied Anthropology, and these students’ work set the pace for the annual poster session. Congrats to all involved for another successful conference.

Andrew

Danya Axelrad-Hausman Wins Major Award

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Danya

Danya receiving the Distinguished Undergraduate Student Paper award at the Pacific Sociological Association annual conference in Oakland, California.

Senior Danya Axelrad-Hausman has won the 2016 Pacific Sociological Association’s Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Student Paper for her senior thesis essay titled “Responses to Environmentalism and Environmental Policy as Mechanisms of Exclusion.” The PSA represents the entire U.S. West Coast and this award is given to only one student per year, so it represents a significant honor. Danya told us that she is very honored to have received the award, and had a great experience presenting her research at the PSA meetings.

Danya’s research focuses on how racial identity, gender, and other sociocultural factors influence environmental activism, and unpacks racialized constructs surrounding environmental purity. Danya shared her paper’s abstract with us:

Taking into account the unique sociocultural and sociopolitical climate that shapes the contemporary environmental justice discourse, this paper provides an account of the processes of identity formation that individuals and communities undergo when participating in environmental justice movements. Specifically, this research examines how socioeconomic status, race and gender influence participation in environmental justice advocacy. Through this approach I address the following questions: How are individuals and groups harnessing social and cultural factors, such as gender, socioeconomic status and racial identity, to drive activism? How does identity shape environmental activism and social movements, and how is environmental activism ultimately shaped by identity? Finally, I examine the policies and discourses that are shaped by racialized notions of environmental purity and ultimately reinforce systems of exclusion and marginalization. Through the examination of these driving questions I find that individual identity influences conceptions of the environment, environmentalism and structures of power. The construction of collective identity by environmental justice organization and activists connects the physical and social realities of environmental injustice. Finally, a perceived disconnect between the environmental movement and the environmental justice movement perpetuates a tangible disconnect and barrier to the environmental justice movement meeting its goals on an institutional level.

Elena Becker wins the SfAA Peter New Prize

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Hi all,

IMG_9179

Elena receiving her award at the Vancouver meeting, 2016.

I’m extremely proud to announce that Elena Becker was recently awarded the second place prize in the Society for Applied Anthropology‘s annual Peter K. New Award. The research/paper competition is named after applied anthropologist Peter Kong-ming New, formerly the president of the Society for Applied Anthropology, as well as chairman of the Medical Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. Elena’s prize includes a $1500 stipend and an invitation to submit her paper to the society’s flagship journal, Human Organization. In competition with numerous graduate students with dissertation-focused social scientists, it’s particularly noteworthy that an undergraduate received this award. She joins a list of previous winners that includes anthropologists and sociologists now on faculty at Harvard, CUNY, UMass, and many other excellent universities. That list of winners also includes anthropologist Brian Burke, who recently visited Puget Sound for a research talk with students.

Elena’s winning paper, Malagasy Cookstove Use and the Potential for Alternative Models: A Case Study in Madagascar’s Vakinankaratra Region, exemplified applied anthropology. Using an ethnographic methodology honed in coursework at Puget Sound, Elena deployed those skills to explore how the adoption of new cooking technology might fit with the cultural and practical norms of rural Madagascar. Notably, research for this project was conducted as part of her semester abroad with the School of International Training.

We’re very proud of you, Elena!

Andrew

 

 

Elena Becker, presentation and award!

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Junior Elena Becker will be deliver a afternoon lecture about her research in Borneo. The project, entitled Cultural Authenticity and the Impacts of Cultural Tourism in Malaysian Borneo, was the result of an AHSS summer research grant from the University of Puget Sound. Come check it out!

What: Elena Becker’s Summer Research Presentation
When: Wednesday, February 17, 4:00 – 5:00 PM
Where: MC309

And there’s more! Elena recently received IMG_6174confirmation that her paper had been awarded second place in the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Peter K. New Award. Research for her paper, entitled Malagasy Cookstove Use and the Potential for Alternative Models: A Case Study in Madagascar’s Vakinankaratra Region, was conducted during her semester abroad with the School of International Training (SIT), and built on the ethnographic fieldwork skills she developed in the department. The competition pitted her paper against a slew of excellent, PhD-level submissions, which marks her award as particularly impressive.

The award honors the late Peter Kong-ming New, a distinguished medical sociologist-anthropologist and former president of the SfAA. The prize is awarded to papers which exemplify applied research in the social/behavioral sciences. Second place in the SfAA’s competition comes with a substantial, $1500 stipend, travel monies to help facilitate attendance the conference in Vancouver this March, and an invitation to submit the paper to the society’s flagship journal, Human Organization, for potential publication.

Congratulations, Elena. We’re so proud of you!

Andrew