Variation in Drug and Alcohol Use among Agricultural Laborers: Watermelon Men in the Rural South
Keith V. Bletzer and Norman L. Weatherby
Agricultural workers in general face the impact of daily structural and symbolic violence, which can lead to excessive use of drugs and alcohol. “Watermelon Men” who dedicate themselves to watermelon harvesting have high use levels owing to the way that accommodations and work are organized over a labor-intensive short season. This article combines data from a risk assessment of 681 individuals in a winter home-base community and multi-site ethnography that generated interviews with 140 individuals to discuss factors that lead to excessive drug and alcohol use during peak season in high-wage crops such as watermelon.
Key words: agricultural labor, home-base communities, work ethos, drug and alcohol use, southern United States
Homeless Women’s Personal Networks: Implications for Understanding Risk Behavior
Joan S. Tucker, David Kennedy, Gery Ryan, Suzanne L. Wenzel, Daniela Golinelli, and James Zazzali
The goal of this exploratory study was to examine the composition of homeless women’s personal networks in order to better understand the social context of risk behavior in this vulnerable population. Twenty-eight homeless women residing in temporary shelters in Los Angeles County provided detailed information about their extended personal networks. Women named 25 people with whom they had contact during the past year, and then were asked a series of questions about each one of these named network members. Results indicate that the personal networks of homeless women are larger and more diverse than suggested by previous research. About one-third of women’s relationships were with high-risk individuals (i.e., people perceived to drink heavily, use drugs, or engage in risky sex). However, most women also reported having relationships that could be characterized as both “low risk” (e.g., involving individuals perceived as not drinking heavily, using drugs, or engaging in risky sex) and “high quality” (e.g., long-term, emotionally close, or supportive), although these relationships tended to be rather tenuous. Our results suggest a need to assist homeless women in strengthening these existing low-risk/high-quality relationships, and extending the diversity of their networks, in order to increase women’s exposure to positive role models and access to tangible support and other needed resources.
Key words: personal networks, homeless women, sexual behavior, drug and alcohol use
Treatment Seeking for a Chronic Disorder: How Families in Coastal Kenya Make Epilepsy Treatment Decisions
Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor
A person-centered case-study approach was used to account for treatment choices made by families of children with epilepsy seizure disorders in Kilifi, Kenya. Observations of individual families and treatment providers suggest that the local cultural system of illness classification and the process of assessing treatment results are fundamental influences on family decisions to seek treatment for childhood seizure disorders. The findings also indicate that the dominance of these two factors shifts throughout the illness experience. Family classification of seizures and cultural perceptions of their causation are primary in initial treatment seeking, while the perception of results of the last treatment sought dominates subsequent treatment decisions. External factors, including pressure from individuals outside the family, and financial and time resources, are described as secondary constraining factors in the decision making process. A model is presented to summarize the decision making process. The model accounts for treatment seeking in families of children with seizure disorders in coastal Kenya but may also help explain how families manage other chronic conditions.
Key words: Family health, treatment-seeking, decision making, epilepsy, health utilization, treatment gap, chronic illness, East Africa, Kenya
Can Formal Education Reduce Risks for Drought-Prone Pastoralists?: A Case Study from Baringo District, Kenya
Peter D. Little, Abdillahi A. Aboud, and Clement Lenachuru
This article addresses an increasingly important but under-researched and controversial topic in anthropology, the role of formal education in pastoral societies. Only minimal research on the benefits and costs of education for pastoralists has been conducted, in part because, until recently, formal education has not been widespread among herding communities. It argues that education should figure prominently in discussions of contemporary pastoral risk management strategies since engagement in labor markets currently is a critical component of pastoral livelihoods, and this is facilitated by education. Through a case study of the Maasai-related Il Chamus people of Baringo District, Kenya, a group that has experienced rapid gains in education over the past 20 years, the paper assesses two related questions: (1) does formal education actually reduce risks for pastoralists; and (2) what social and economic conditions facilitate positive roles for herder education? By building on data from two different time periods, 1980-1981 and 2000-2004, the authors document local trends in education achievement, contributions of education to local livelihoods, and the effects of a tightening labor market and budget reductions on opportunities for education. The article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the study’s findings and points to areas that require further research.
Key words: risk management, pastoralism, education, development, drought, livelihood diversification
Demography, Territory, and Identity of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: The Xavante Indians and the 2000 Brazilian National Census
Nilza de Oliveira Martins Pereira, Ricardo Ventura Santos, James R. Welch, Luciene G. Souza, and Carlos E.A. Coimbra Jr.
Brazilian census data show a remarkable increase in the population self-reporting as “indigenous” between 1991 and 2000 but do not readily enable that increase to be analyzed in terms of the nearly 200 specific indigenous societies or ethnicities that exist in Brazil. In this article, we investigate some instances and implications of how the 2000 Brazilian National Census employed categories conceived for the national population to register one specific people—the Xavante of Mato Grosso, Central Brazil—with their own inherent social arrangements and morphologies. We do so by comparing census data corresponding to Xavante Indigenous Reserves with an independently collected set of demographic data for the same year. Although we found census data to adequately represent basic characteristics of the Xavante population (population size and age and sex distributions), we also found they reclassified and transformed Xavante households and thereby denatured Xavante sociality of its demographic and sociocultural complexity. The Xavante case is an example of how national demographic censuses not only capture data regarding indigenous peoples but also help shape those data by contributing to how indigenousness is perceived. Our findings suggest that the Brazilian National Census should seek to be more sensitive to indigenous realities and thereby to assess more accurately fundamental aspects of indigenous societies.
Key words: Brazil, South American Indians, census methods, cultural anthropology
Introduction: Blurring Boundaries: The “Real” and the “Virtual” in Hybrid Spaces
Brigitte Jordan
This chapter introduces a sequence of four papers that focus on the theme of knowledge and information flow in hybrid and virtual sites of interaction. As the Internet and the World Wide Web proliferate, people live increasingly hybrid lives where the physical and the digital, the real and the virtual, interact. In this world, online and offline identities may overlap and interdigitate, erasing prior boundaries in social, cultural, linguistic, political, and economic domains. My central argument proposes that we are witnessing an underlying process of technology-spurred blurring, resulting in major shifts in the cultural landscape of the 21st century. Providing context for the papers, I argue that the blurring of boundaries and the fusion of the real and the virtual in hybrid settings may require rethinking conventional ethnographic methods in the future, and beyond that, the actual problem space for anthropology. To frame the papers methodologically, I suggest that we are in a process of experimentation during which conventional ethnographic methods are being adjusted, or will need to be adjusted, to the requirements of a truly hybrid ethnography, i.e., one that combines research in virtual and real-world spaces. I specifically examine some of the issues that arise in and for online and offline research, gauging the impact on core concepts in anthropological ethnography such as “fieldsite” and “participant observation.”
Key words: knowledge flows, blurring, hybrid spaces, lifescapes, hybrid ethnography
Wading and Jumping into a New Job—Exploring Dynamics of Knowledge Flow for Systems Engineers
Shawn T. Collins
Engineering companies are growing increasingly concerned with identifying ways to effectively transfer knowledge, both to new employees and between employees who collaborate to develop new products. Effective knowledge capture is difficult in research and development contexts where design knowledge is rapidly changing and often poorly documented. This paper uses a case study at a small engineering company to suggest that effective knowledge transfer must be both relational (asking intelligent questions of mentors who are taxed for time) and procedural (using documentation to record how decisions are made). Cultural consensus analysis identifies two distinct cultural domains regarding effective socialization for new systems engineers. Waders advocate guided introduction, while Jumpers advocate immediate responsibility. These common themes for companies dealing with rapidly changing knowledge offer insights to scholars interested in studying the broader domain of anthropology of work.
Key words: business anthropology, systems engineering, knowledge transfer, new employee training, cultural consensus analysis
Space: The Effect of a Digital Bulletin Board on Social Encounters
Elizabeth F. Churchill and Les Nelson
Digital media displays are increasingly common in public spaces. Typically, these are minimally interactive and predominantly function as signage or advertisements. However, in our work we have been exploring how digital media public displays can be designed to facilitate community content sharing in civic buildings, in organizations, and at social gatherings like conferences. While most of our installations have been within fairly formal, professional settings, in this paper we address the impact of a digital community display on interactions between the inhabitants of a neighborhood art gallery and café. We describe the location, the display itself, and the underlying content distribution and publication infrastructure. Findings from qualitative and quantitative analyses before and after the installation demonstrate that patrons easily adopted use of the display, which was used frequently to find out more about café/gallery events and for playful exchanges. However, despite the enthusiasm of patrons and café staff, the café owners were wary of maintaining or extending the technology. We speculate on this reticence in terms of potential for services and technologies in public space technology design.
Key words: community, social networking, café, interactive, electronic display, public space
Conversational Morality and Information Circulation: How Tacit Notions about Good and Evil Influence Online Knowledge Exchange
Patricia G. Lange
Technologists often support the idea that knowledge exchange is best achieved by engaging in debate that does not involve moral considerations. Such a position is difficult to achieve given that technical choices are often morally laden. Indeed, many supporters of the Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) movement use specific technologies because of the moral benefits of F/OSS and the ethical concerns about using alternative proprietary technologies and products. F/OSS supporters wish to promote a free exchange of ideas that is not censored by governments or corporations. Ironically, conversations about F/OSS and competing technologies in informal learning environments online can often foreclose wider debate if the participants unreflectively perform their moral affiliation to particular technologies. Participants in online technical communities often show their moral support of technologies and display alignment to certain values associated with the technologies in order to negotiate a favorable identity among peers who espouse similar ideas and goals. However, some interactive identity performances of technical affiliation may complicate online participants’ ability to circulate wider knowledge and encourage broader, morally-neutral discussion of user needs and concerns.
Key words: information exchange, Free and Open Source Software movement, online conversation, flaming, morality, politeness
From 3D Space to Third Place: The Social Life of Small Virtual Spaces
Robert J. Moore, E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman, and Nicolas Ducheneaut
Massively multiplayer online (MMO) environments are an emerging computer technology that makes possible new kinds of distributed communities and online sociability. What distinguishes MMOs from other Internet media is that they take face-to-face conversation as their primary metaphor for user interaction, rather than, say, the page or the bulletin board. Because they simulate 3D spaces and contain thousands of people who do not know each other, MMOs constitute public spaces, although virtual ones. As such, they can be studied in ways analogous to those of public places in the physical world. Inspired by the work of William H. Whyte and Ray Oldenburg on sociability in real-life public places, we take a similar approach toward the study of MMOs. We ask the question: what makes some virtual public spaces in MMOs successful “third places” while other similar places fail? Through our virtual ethnography of dance clubs and corner bars in three MMO environments, we find four features of virtual public spaces that appear critical for their success: accessibility, social density, activity resources, and hosts. We further argue that MMO sociability is just as authentic as that in “real-life” contexts while highlighting ways in which it is distinctly different.
Key words: sociability, third place, virtual world
