Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Anthropology

In 2011, the World Health Organization added the drug misoprostol to its Essential Medicines List in order to treat postpartum hemorrhage, which is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the world. While global health agencies and planners have cited this as a revolution for maternal health, studies in Pakistan are beginning to highlight inconsistent use of the drug, paradoxically exacerbating issues of maternal health within the nation. In this thesis, I contextualize the misoprostol programs in Pakistan within the larger colonial context of global health to elucidate why it continues to be promoted despite these risks. Ultimately, we are shown how the power ascribed to Western-based global health agencies has allowed them to reshape local maternal health landscapes to reproduce their authority and expand the use of misoprostol, at the expense of the wellbeing and safety of women.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, Anthropology

Accentuated Striae (AS) are enamel growth disruptions visible as thick dark lines in histological slides of enamel, paralleling normal growth lines known as brown striae of Retzius. They have been used as indicators of stress in archaeological, forensic, and primate studies within the field of biological anthropology. This research investigates whether there is a relationship between the manifestation of AS and (1) socioeconomic status (SES) differences between two Ohio populations, and (2) several physiological attributes of the sample. Deciduous teeth were collected from 48 individuals representing two populations with known disparities in overall stress exposure (high-SES sample from affluent neighborhoods in Central Ohio; low-SES sample from primarily rural Appalachian Ohio). Histological slides of enamel were created, and the presence of AS was observed in each tooth using a Nikon polarizing transmitted light microscope with Cannon digital camera. AS prevalence was compared between samples and contrasted with several demographic and physiological health measures (gestation length, birth mode, sex of infant, gestational diabetes). AS were observed among the low-SES sample (31%), but not among the high-SES sample (0%) (chi-square test; p=0.007). There are no associations between AS and any other assessed measure (p>0.05 for all comparisons). These results support the hypothesis that AS and non-specific population stress are related, thereby reinforcing AS as a valid indicator for reconstructing past population health

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Anthropology

This dissertation analyzes how winegrowers in central Ohio and the eastern French region of Alsace respond to changes in their vineyards, wine cellars, and tasting rooms, as well as how changing ecological conditions influence changing social processes (and vice versa). I build upon the French notion of terroir to reconceptualize it as a theoretical model of social-ecological “sense-making” that helps people make sense of the various interactive components of the winegrowing system. Such a framework also provides individuals with a guide for understanding through their sensory faculties what an idealized system of winegrowing feels like. By analyzing how they define the taste of place, I argue that winegrowers and others are able to pinpoint not only changes in their respective landscapes, but also opportunities for adaptation and/or innovation. Amid discourses of global climate change, winegrowers are experiencing its differential effects. Central Ohio winegrowers tend to be more concerned with increased rainfall and freezing temperatures, while those in Alsace are concerned with periods of less rainfall and very high temperatures. These conditions appear to prompt winegrowers to (re)consider whether they can plant new varietals, how they may intervene in the fermentation process, and what wines are available for their clientele. In short, vitivinicultural practices are invariably linked to cultural behaviors that continue to change over time and space. Bringing together multisensory ethnography and multispecies perspectives, and based on my case studies and each new vintage, I characterized the extent to which changing landscapes influence the production and elaboration of place-based goods. Accordingly, I asked: (1) What changes do winegrowers perceive in their winegrowing landscapes? (2) How do they adapt to changes in winegrowing conditions? (3) How do these changes influence winegrowers' constructions of terroir and the “taste of place”? I interviewe (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the process by which the American Yazidi ethno-religious community of Lincoln, Nebraska preserves and transmits its culture and identity in a diasporic setting. This research seeks to contribute to new knowledge on how ethnic and religious immigrant communities negotiate questions of identity and cultural preservation, particularly in the context of historical or ongoing persecution in their native homelands. Utilizing ethnography, participant observation, and unstructured interviews, this research examines the mutually supporting individual and collective efforts to preserve Yazidi identity and cultural attributes, including heritage language instruction, civil society participation, artistic expression, trauma processing, and both local and transnational social relations. The research also canvasses the attitudes of Yazidis to better understand the centrality of inter-generational cultural transmission and the challenges of maintaining a distinct ethno-religious identity while integrating into a new society.

BS, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Anthropology

In a world of countless identities, people often face challenges when forming their own. These identities are enriched and influenced by many sources. When forming one's identity, some people face the challenge of belonging to several groups that overlap. One such example is the Latin@ communities and the LGBTQ+ communities. These intersecting identities are elaborately intertwined and require a lens that examines this overlap. The theory of intersectionality is the primary lens used in this thesis. The goal of this research is to answer the question: How do Latin@ people who belong within the LGBTQ+ community negotiate their intersecting identities?

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Comparative Studies

The concept of agency in Muslim women's lives is often approached in binary terms. On one side is the global liberatory paradigm that equates agency with resistance to restrictions and views it as incompatible with Islam. On the opposite side is the Islamic feminist argument that locates agency in women's deliberate acts of ethical self-formation and working within religious structures. Both these approaches come with certain limitations. First, they overlook the large group of "ordinary Muslim" women whose agency is not shaped either in opposition or conscious submission to religion. Second, they measure women's relation to larger structures by relying on a limited understanding of agency as autonomous will enacted through individual actions. To surpass these limitations, I apply a folkloristic approach to the study of Muslim women's social life. I present three ethnographic cases from my 2017-18 fieldwork with Iranian-American Muslim women in Southern California: a popular domestic Shia ritual, several Quran discussion sessions, and a women's charity club engaged in cultural programs. Using these cases and engaging the scholarship in anthropology of Islam, feminist folklore, and vernacular religion, my dissertation explores 1) how agency is formed, dispersed, and negotiated through social actions, shared performances, and sociability practices in everyday lives of Muslim women--rather than tied to individual acts of piety or resistance, and 2) how Muslim women's agency is formed in relation to external and internal sources of power that transcend the presumed force of religion and tradition in their lives. In other words, I argue for rethinking the very terms of the debate with regard to agency, Muslimness, and the assumption of women's unanimity. For example, I show that women who participate in Quranic sessions frequently argue--with different degrees of authority--over the true meaning and application of Quran in their lives as Muslim women in the US. Women (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Anthropology

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a holistic understanding of the uptake of telemedicine in Ghana. A year-long, in-depth ethnographic study where telemedicine projects had been occurring for nearly a decade provided an ideal setting to study the theoretical and practical applications of telemedicine. This research examines two systems of telemedicine: the Ghana Health Service's (GHS) national telemedicine program, and a parallel teleconsultation system occurring over WhatsApp. This dissertation has two overall aims. The first is to determine how telemedicine is being used for obstetric care provision in Ghana. Understanding how, when, and why telemedicine is used to handle obstetric cases can shed light on its usage for other, less common emergency cases. To situate the midwives' work and their interactions with telemedicine within theoretical perspectives, this dissertation draws from the anthropology of reproduction literature, particularly regarding conceptions and definitions of risk. It also draws from postcolonial science and technology studies (STS) literature that examines biomedicine in postcolonial contexts, as well as other STS literature that theorizes how technologies are adopted and adapted. The second aim of this research is to explore the complexities of technological and bureaucratic systems, like telemedicine programs and the GHS, which are both hierarchical and social in nature. This dissertation will discuss the intricacies that must be considered in order to successfully integrate a technological system such as telemedicine into a large health system. Ultimately, I argue that telemedicine is being integrated into a complex system with set hierarchies and it reinforces authoritative knowledge and power structures. Telemedicine appears deceivingly simple from the outside: everyone has cell phones, so why not use them for consultation in the health system? However, while implementing a technological solution may at the surface (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2019, Theology

Placing the theological anthropology set forth in the foundational addresses of John Paul II's Theology of the Body alongside feminist theological perspectives, this dissertation proposes a more adequate anthropology, proper to the human person as female and male. My objectives include engaging feminist criticism and related theological frameworks, such as feminist, Trinitarian, and embodiment theologies in order to advance a theological anthropology that assimilates a fuller human perspective. Based on a critical essentialist method, this dissertation accepts difference between sexes as an anthropological criterion by which to assess integrated female and male relationships to one another and to God, but does so in a way that defines terms, refines conclusions, and proposes lacunas in the discourse. The significance of this dissertation is twofold. First, it distinguishes the early discourses of the Theology of the Body as foundational to the entirety of John Paul II's audiences in contrast to a pervasive disregard for close attention to early texts in favor of later discourses on sexual ethics. Second, it advances both unique perspectives of the Theology of the Body and feminism towards a more adequate anthropology that thrives in mutuality and reciprocity, in which neither female nor male is diminished. Third, this dissertation contributes to a conversation about the bodily-person, including embodied difference, in which difference is encountered as a necessary principle for unity, particularly in the acts of self-gift and relationship. My conclusions incorporate John Paul II's claim that the body reveals the person with a feminist concern that marginalized persons, especially women, are created as imago Dei in the same measure as every other person. By considering topics of language and meaning, theology and embodiment, anthropology and feminism, and relationships and complementarity, this dissertation concludes that the Theology of the Body discourse (open full item for complete abstract)

MFA, Kent State University, 2018, College of Communication and Information / School of Visual Communication Design

Though there has been increased discourse on non-Latin type design practice within the type design community in recent years, there still exists a need for many more high-quality digital typefaces in most of the world's written languages—societies, who, without these resources, are less able to contribute to global discussions. As a result, this thesis uses a number of different methods to analyze the pathways in multi-script type design research, examine the expansive relationship between typography and culture, and investigate the relationship between anthropological methods and the type design process. The questions posed include: how does one become prepared to design an effective and well-researched typeface in a new script? How does one research a new script? Does the use of anthropological research methodologies increase a type designer's understanding of a script's cultural context, and therefore increase the success of their design practice? If so, to what extent, and in particular, which aspects of the contextual typographic culture should the designer investigate? How does an understanding of the relationship between type and design affect this research process? As a catalyst for further practice and discussion of these topics, a comprehensive research framework outlines best practices when pursuing type design research in a non-native script. By utilizing anthropological and human-centered design research methods in the process of creating multilingual type systems, as well as examining culture, a non-speaking designer can begin to gain a wider, more global sense of typography, as well as better understanding for the needs of the global community for whom they are designing.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2016, Theology

This dissertation examines the social magisterium of Pope Leo XIII as it is developed in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during the nationalizing process of the liberal Italian state. The thesis of the dissertation is that Leo XIII provides Catholic social teaching with a proper vision of human relationship as a mode of analogical participation in the Lord's goodness. In his own historical context, Leo's analogical vision of social relations is developed in tension with the nation-state's proposal of political citizenship as the social relation that relativizes every other relation – most especially one's ecclesial relation. In our own context, Leo's analogical vision of social relations stands in tension with the late-modern proposal of consumerism as the social reality that relativizes every other relation – including one's matrimonial, familial, social, and ecclesial relations.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2016, International Development Studies (International Studies)

As globalizations sweeps across the globe into places and communities that are tucked into hidden locations, like Sembalun - a rural village resting below Mt. Rinjani - development and change crash in. Rural poor communities and villages similar to Sembalun are caught up in a wave of dramatic change that comes in so quickly there is hardly any time to think and then respond. The exterior forces pressuring communities to change and to develop, which does not leave the community members with agency. Therefore, this thesis is introducing and explaining a new research method that will help both the researcher understand the communitys interest, concerns and needs, while providing the community members with a development tool that will aid communities with communication in regards to the concerns or interests of the community and the individuals in that community. Collaborative reflexive photography is a research tool for anthropologists to study an individual or a group of people and their culture, while being a tool for an individual or a group of people to use as a form of alternative communication regarding their concerns or interests related to development - particularly in regards to creating policies that will empower the individual or group of people.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Anthropology

If we are what we eat, what might it mean if what we eat is not necessarily under our control? My research—motivated by the 2015 release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans—presents a qualitative analysis of 33 pictorial representations of food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) from around the world. FBDGs provide food intake recommendations to achieve adequate nutrition levels. These documents are typically summarized as single images that represent pages of dietary guidance. I ground my work in the theories and methodologies of Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Sherry Ortner, Roger Keesing, Pierre Bourdieu, Eric Wolf, Sidney Mintz, John and Jean Comaroff, and John and Malcolm Collier. Through analyses rooted in symbolic anthropology and political economy, I argue FBDG images convey more than just recommendations as to what and how to eat: they reflect socioeconomic and political realities, as well as what it means to be a healthy citizen. Furthermore, I claim the very selection and inclusion of specific imagery suggest a problematic negotiation of power (among branches of government, industry, and the marketplace) in the construction of culture.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, Anthropology

This dissertation examines and explores the popular health landscape, or lay health beliefs and models, held by Maasai people in the Siana Plains of Southern Narok. Specifically it is an investigation of the most common illnesses identified by community members and how these illnesses and the accompanying practices and beliefs reflect and illustrate the community's perspectives on hygiene, or the practice of being and staying healthy. Local hygienic ideas of illness prevention and avoidance, represented in the way Maasai talk about common and significant health problems, are found to be shaped by the cosmological underpinnings of Maasai society through superficially inchoate “common sense” perspectives that embody the foundational premises shared across much of Maasai society. This dissertation employs ethnographic methods of participant observation and semi-structured, open-ended questions, agreement surveys, and free listing in four series of interviews. These interviews were conducted with 107 people in 76 interviews. Response frequency tables were generated from the 27 interviews with Maasai in the series that employed free listing. Findings demonstrate that the relationship the Maasai have with Enkai, the creator god, is both represented and reified in the language of the popular health sector through the metonymic symbols of olari, the rainy season, enkijebe, the cold wind, and with the specific disavowal of metaphysical presumption, which I refer to as “etiological agnosticism”. The explanatory model that emerges from this analysis is not merely descriptive, but represents a significant re-presentation of Maasai understandings of health and illness. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the influence cosmological premises have on everyday perspectives that form a community's shared “common sense”, particularly in the sector of popular health. It contributes more broadly to development studies, African studies, and the ethnog (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2015, Anthropology

Typhoid fever is a disease that has plagued humans for centuries. As populations increased, the rates of infection and transmission rose as well. Historical studies researching specific regions largely have not been conducted; therefore; cultural explanations and the possible effects of familial ties have not been examined. This study aims to examine the effect of typhoid fever in Athens County, Ohio between 1867 and 1908. Industry and migration to the area brought waves of typhoid which swept through communities periodically. Individual rates of typhoid fever and possible causes of transmission will be explored. Specific age groups, occupations, sex and place of residence will be analyzed and used to determine those most at risk for contracting typhoid fever. This analysis will show the spread of disease as well as the environment typhoid fever existed in, and the age group most affected (very young, <5; prime 18-40; or old >50). With this information, individual vital records will be combined with mortality records in order to create a comprehensive analysis of the area. Specifically, we will look at an individual's place in their social or familial networks and how that position impacted survival. It is hypothesized that individuals with limited social networks or those in caretaker roles have higher rates of infection and mortality.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Comparative Studies

The guiding questions of this essay are: What is meant by dwelling? And, how is it that people dwell? In the process of approaching these questions, several key terms are employed. These terms are: dwelling; making; technique; modern technology; and the Gestell of modern technology. Gestell, a term borrowed from the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger, describes an orientation to the physical world unique to the apparatus of modern technology and anathema to dwelling. Dwelling is understood through notions of gathering and relationality: how practices of dwelling weave together a multiplicity of things and experiences. Making, here, refers to that aspect of dwelling which constructs regions and transforms space into made place. Yet, the essay is also attuned to how dwelling takes care, that is, how it makes meaning and thus makes sense. Modern technology represents the process whereby the centrality of technique is made peripheral to production, externalized. It suggests the erosion of meaningful technique in modernity and how this erosion effects the characteristically modern experience of alienation. Four textual sites frame the investigation: First, are selections from the later writings of Heidegger on technology and the plight of dwelling. Second, is an engagement with the writing of anthropologist Tim Ingold. In Ingold, both the dwelling perspective and technique are given a more complex ethnological and environmental elaboration. The other two sites provide the actual sociographic settings in which these terms are enacted and tested: Bronislaw Malinowski's classic, early twentieth-century ethnographic account of Melanesian garden making, Coral Gardens and Their Magic: Soil-tilling and Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands; with particular attention to the process of new garden construction. And Henry David Thoreau's Walden, an experiment in construction and cultivation made in explicit tension with, if not resistance to, the categories and expectations (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2014, Anthropology

In recent years, an increasing number of foreign students have been engaging in language and cultural immersion programs in Japan, raising issues of cross-cultural contact and exchange. Japan's enduring cultural nationalism produces an ethnocentric valuation of homogeneity, thereby affecting the ways in which Japanese natives engage with and respond to these students. This paper draws on two months of ethnographic research at two Japanese universities to examine how everyday, culturally embedded nationalism affects the experience, identity, and language instruction of western nonnative learners of Japanese with regards to the institution, the instructors, and the community around them. This discourse on issues surrounding the presence of foreign youth in a nationalistic society has application for discrimination reforms on the international level.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Anthropology

In the estimation of age of the human skeleton, it is possible to form a reasonably accurate estimate for individuals younger than twenty years. The older the individual, the more difficult it becomes to determine age. Current methods of age estimation are biased toward data collected from considerable numbers of younger adults and small numbers of older adults. Additionally, adult age indicators are often limited in range and application. The result is consistent underestimation of adult age and uncomfortably large age ranges for adult materials. This study consists of two interconnected analyses: (1) examination of three-dimensional patterns of age-related skeletal deterioration of the pubic symphysis to identify proportional shifts in physical topography corresponding to age-at-death estimates, and (2) application of a Bayesian approach to formulation of a multifactorial standard aimed at increasing accuracy of estimating adult age from the skeleton. This study included skeletal remains of 135 white males and 70 white females of known age. The principal focus within this sample was on individuals between 45-70 years, subdivided into five-year intervals. The author scored individual remains based on fusion of the medial clavicle and sternum. The author also scored remains on key aspects of the physical appearance of the pubic symphysis and assigned each to an appropriate Suchey-Brooks phase. The first, fourth, and seventh ribs were examined and assigned to phases corresponding to comparison casts and methods developed by Yþcan and colleagues. The results of this study indicate that while general population trends in aging are found among individual skeletal characteristics, reducing the aging process to its principal components in five-year intervals does not generally result in more accurate estimation of age. Instead, the limited time intervals and key traits observed tend to reflect the enormous variability of the aging process at the level of the individual. W (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Anthropology

Settlers of the Midwestern United States brought with them perceptions and attitudes towards natural resources, farming, and land tenure that influenced settlement patterns and the development of rural communities. Additionally, land is a necessity in farming and access to land allows for the reproduction of the social unit, the agrifamily household system, and the spatial and temporal continuity of ethnic communities built on aggregates of these smaller systems. These cultural forms persist in the Sugar Creek Watershed in the forms of community involvement and organization, land tenure and farm enterprise type and succession, and management styles. As such, local social organization and land tenure play important roles in farm management strategies that affect land tenure and adoption of conservation measures. Conservation adoption research and community watershed initiatives are difficult endeavors for which anthropologists have called for the inclusion of ethnographic methods, local indicators, and perspectives from ecological anthropology in the development and implementation of such projects in developing and post-industrial capitalist states. Rural Sociologists recently expressed the need for ethnographic investigations in answering questions related to rural community relationships. In this dissertation research, three research objectives were tested to assess magnitude and intensity of the relationships between these variables in the Sugar Creek Watershed. The first question asks how ethnicity, social relationships, and attitudes toward farming condition contemporary land tenure arrangements. The second question was posed in order to ascertain if ethnicity and level of socio-cultural integration of the farm household can be used as independent variables in understanding relationships among farm size, land use and tenure, and use and preference for conservation. The third research question was posited in order to understand the degree to which farm size, farm (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Anthropology

The reproductive process is characteristically biocultural and evolutionary. A woman concurrently manages her own biosocial needs and the needs of those dependent on her while pregnant. This negotiation process takes place in a specific social and ecological context which is the source of constraints and buffering mechanisms. The birth of a child creates an atmosphere of social change for a mother, her most recently weaned child, and the newborn. This study was carried out from September 2001 to November 2002 among the Iraqw, a group of Southern Cushitic speakers residing in northern Tanzania. A sample 45 women were selected to assess the impact of increasing fertility on young family development in the contest of social change. This longitudinal study examined biological, social, economic and demographic variation in relation to pregnancy, birth, child growth, and health. The primary objectives of this research were: 1) to identify if there are changes in child growth rates or morbidity throughout the birth transition; 2) to identify if changes in maternal body composition are reflected in the body composition of her children; and 3) to determine whether a mother's social environment is associated with outcomes of pregnancy and child growth and morbidity. Results from this initial study have raised many questions. There is no clear finding that the birth of a sibling creates a vulnerable period of time for the index child. However, there are protective behaviors that indicate that mothers (and newborns) are nutritionally buffered during this time and that mothers nutritionally buffer some children under certain circumstances. There is ample evidence to suggest that social networks are critical to health and well being and that shifts in gender ideology in this younger generation may confound negative effects. Future research will focus on the details of social networks and the effects of shifting gender ideology in the context of reproduction and child caretaking.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Anthropology

Economic success for the Amish is due, in part, to labor exchange practices and other similar communal sharing practices. While the topic of labor exchange has been given a fair amount of attention by social scientists in many settings, there have been no labor exchange studies on the Old Order Amish from an anthropological perspective. Specifically, this research project considers aspects of labor exchange and its relationship to farm production from an empirical analysis of two Old Order Amish church districts in Clark Township in the southeast portion of Holmes County, Ohio. The unit of analysis is the Amish farm household consisting of a family of three or four generations engaging in an intensive type of agriculture as defined by Netting (1993:28-29). Although the data collected represents farm labor inputs of individual households within the two separate church districts, the focus of this dissertation is both an examination of how Amish farm families share labor at the household level and an examination of how labor is shared among member households of the community. The latter includes organized and seasonal labor exchange, such as grain threshing or silo-filling; informal and occasional labor exchange, such as frolics or work gatherings by collateral family and neighbors; mutual aid, multi-community labor exchange, such as a barn raising; and labor exchange outside of agriculture yet vital to the farming community, such as schoolhouse cleaning by family members in a parochial district. The main hypothesis of this dissertation proposes that Amish farmers engage in labor exchange activity in order to pool human capital so that the combined work output is greater than the amount of labor that each farmer could accomplish individually. The second hypothesis contends that the traditional dichotomy between labor sharing and commodification of labor in Amish society is moving toward greater commodification of labor along with farm intensification, population press (open full item for complete abstract)