Japanese high school girls assert enormous creativity in actively and strategically pursuing educational and personal goals. Girls disregard their teachers advice about academics because they rightly perceive that their schools in-class academics have little or no influence on their chances for success on university and junior college entrance exams. Girls argue that their high school education is tedious because it relies on rote memorization, and boring in-class lectures that bear no explicit relationship to the college entrance exams that determine their futures. Girls pursue educational opportunities outside of their school in the form of cram schools, self-study, one-on-one tutoring, and group study. The school reinforces the girls negative views of in-class education by offering after-school cram classes focused upon entrance exam materials, and by allowing seniors in-school time to prepare for university entrance exams. The schools economic survival is dependent on girls successes. Therefore their support of individual initiative is unsurprising. Japanese young people are often portrayed as either obsessed with academics and controlled by their parents, or as defiant rebels, engaged in anti-social behaviors such as teen prostitution. In contrast to these pathologizing depictions, this work argues that within the constraints of a seemingly inflexible educational system, girls eagerly pursue educational opportunities and ideas, are highly motivated and focused on academic objectives and are not perceived as rebellious by their elders. Studies of adolescence often rely on adult-centered views and thus stay comfortably within the confines of familiar negative images of the young. In contrast, by relying on the girls view of their world this work builds a more complex portrait of Japanese young people. It argues that Japanese adults anxieties about rapid socio-economic change often emerge as laments about the young. Relying on ethnographic data collected at a girls private school in Tokyo, especially the use of taped diaries, this work provides an in-depth examination of Japanese high school girls lives, culture and thinking. This approach allows for the opportunity to learn about the lives of girls from them as they teach us how they creatively pursue educational opportunities and manage their social lives in contemporary Japanese society.

Questions concerning the basis of power and processes which lead to social stratification have occupied anthropological research for decades, resulting in a number of competing schools of thought. This research examines two of these; factional competition and managerial models for the rise of social complexity. Factional competition models propose that individuals are in a constant state of competition for power and leadership positions and use a variety of arenas and methods by which to compete. Managerial models on the other hand suggest individuals are given power by the populace in exchange for managing subsistence goods and production for the overall benefit of the society. These models are evaluated in light of evidence from the Predynastic period cultures of Upper Egypt, where scholars have suggested that each of these models reflect the processes which led to the formation of the centralized Egyptian state. Data for this study was obtained through a program of systematic surface collections and new, large-scale excavations at the Predynastic settlement site of el-Mahâsna. Patterns of artifacts and activity areas revealed through these efforts are evaluated against implications for intrasite patterning derived from managerial and factional competition models specifically proposed for the Nile Valley. Results of this study suggest that elites during the later Naqada I and early-mid Naqada II periods were not heavily involved in the management of subsistence goods, nor do they appear to have been competing through large scale feasting or the production of luxury goods for use in the funerary industry, as suggested. Further, results from this study suggest that competition for power in the Nile Valley may already have progressed beyond the level of individual communities, and may have been taking place at a regional level between established leaders by the mid-Naqada I. Finally, the data from el-Mahâsna reveals a pattern of elite activities focused upon ritual and ceremony associated with a possible early cult structure.

Using a model derived from McAnanys (1995) study of ancient Mayan ancestor veneration, this study evaluated the patterns of treatment of the dead, and corresponding sociopolitical implications, at the Middle Horizon (A.D. 500-1000) site of Conchopata, a secondary center of the Wari Empire located in Ayacucho, Peru. In addition to residential zones, public plazas, ceramic workshops, and temples, Conchopata has yielded an abundant sample of tombs and burial contexts including two multi-roomed mortuary complexes. This study explores how burial practices and mortuary complexes within domestic contexts related to ancestor veneration by high-status households. Several types of analyses were conducted. First, 40 architectural spaces from five zones were analyzed to assess spatial variability in household status and wealth, activities, and function. Second, a multidimensional scaling analysis of 38 architectural spaces was undertaken to establish room function and identify special activities. Third, a multidimensional scaling analysis of 31 burial contexts was carried out to identify patterns within the burial population and distinguish status differences in burial treatments. Finally, architectural spaces and burial contexts were compared across zones in terms of artifact proportions and presence/absence of features and artifact types. The results suggest that all five zones investigated were residential zones composed of high-status households. These households contained at least one room where mortuary ceremonies and rituals were conducted. Both high-status and low-status tombs were identified within the domestic domain, including a special category of infant/child burials. The practice of ancestor veneration at Conchopata was confirmed by evidence for protracted burial rites, continued interaction with the dead, and other criteria of the McAnany model. High-status households engaged in a specific form of ancestor veneration involving continued interaction with the ancestors through offering holes and post-burial rituals. Although all high-status households engaged in similar types of deathways, two households placed considerably greater investment in activities surrounding the dead by constructing multi-roomed mortuary complexes within their residences. Overall, the type of ancestor veneration evidenced at Conchopata differs markedly from that of the Maya (in which important ancestors were flaunted) as well as from the late prehispanic chullpa and Inka practices.

The Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic of Nicaragua (RAAN) gained political autonomy in 1987 after indigenous Miskitu took up arms against the Nicaraguan government. As part of the autonomy process RAAN officials developed a policy document, The Health Model of the RAAN, that guides regional health system reform. The Health Model is guided by the concept of interculturalidad which is meant to simultaneously represent cultural difference, inter-connectedness and inequalities based on ethnic relations as historically constituted in society. Drawing on fourteen months of participant observation in health meetings and workshops, and interviews with national and RAAN health officials, indigenous leaders, indigenous community members and health providers, this study examines the role of discourses of the indigenous movement, interculturalidad and cultural difference in the development and implementation of health policy in the RAAN. Analysis of interview material, health policy documents and meeting transcripts shows that although both Nicaraguan and RAAN health officials agree that the health system of the region should be guided by the notion of interculturalidad, the concept and process it represents is interpreted differently by the actors involved. For national health officials interculturalidad is simply recognition that culture is an important variable in health and that indigenous medicine should be accepted. For RAAN health officials interculturalidad is a political concept that also refers to the transfer of decision making power to the region. These interpretations lead to different policy propositions and conflicts in the negotiations between the national government and the RAAN. The concept of interculturalidad is broad and vague which makes it open to multiple interpretations, manipulations and degrees of control. The Nicaraguan government can therefore co-opt the discourse of interculturalidad and promote the image of a Nicaragua that recognizes its multi-ethnic character and its inclusiveness without implementing concrete policy changes that deal with resource distribution and political power.

This dissertation examines participatory development in its cultural context: how people define it, the significance of their definitions, who participates in it, and how. Since the passage of the Law of Popular Participation in 1994, participation has become obligatory and emblematic of Bolivian citizenship. At the same time, identity based on culturally determined conceptualizations of gender, ethnicity, and class has become increasingly salient in questions of policy, politics, the law, education, and the Bolivian economy. In this social milieu, local people first and foremost must engage identity discourse in order to do development. My central argument is that local people are required to deliberately accommodate, resist, and/or construct their own particular development identities in different development contexts. They employ a variety of subject positionalities either forged themselves or imposed on them on instrumental grounds, so that they sell the community as a good risk for development in order to garner development funding, and for transformative reasons, to engender community social relations. The study is based on 13 months of anthropological fieldwork in the small, rural community of Huancarani near Cochabamba, Bolivia. I conducted participation observation in three development contexts: 1) the local governing body, 2) a grassroots food security organization, and 3) a local womens organization. Although many of the same community members participate in more than one of these contexts, they forge different development identities for each. Participation observation was also complemented with intensive, unstructured interviews with 10 key informants and semi-structured interview schedules with 30 community members and 20 community leaders. Identity politics has the potential to both limit community participation and empower local people. My study shows that participatory development work in Bolivia is squarely a matter of negotiating and reformulating collective community identities. Instead of leveling the playing field, participation in Bolivian development often means that not having the right development identity restricts people from competing for already very scarce development resources. Under these conditions, the current model of development in Bolivia is one in which external political processes attempt to regulate not only the direction of rural development, but the very identity of communities.

The 1990s witnessed a sudden, dramatic increase in the number of adoptions of Chinese children, 95% of whom are girls, by U.S. parents. Currently, more foreign born children are adopted from China than any other country. These adoptions, the resulting gendered migration from China to the United States and the children who remain in Chinese social welfare institutes, serve as the basis for this research. This dissertation is based on nearly three years of multi-sited ethnographic research. Initially, I conducted fieldwork with parents and staff in adoption agencies and support groups in Pittsburgh. I subsequently accompanied a group of parents on their adoption trip to China. The final phase of research was conducted in China. This phase involved extensive participant observation with volunteer groups, local hospitals, and international aid organizations who are working with Chinese social welfare institutes and providing supplemental funding and medical care to resident children. As a volunteer for these groups, I was able to work in a variety of sites (Beijing, Tianjin, Henan Province, and Guangzhou) in both Northern and Southern China which illustrated important regional differences. In China, red thread, in the form of wall-hangings and ornaments, has a distinctly auspicious meaning and is quite literally woven throughout the fabric of Chinese daily life and rituals. This imagery has also become central to the U.S. community of families with children from China. However, the complex and shifting meanings associated with this imagery as it migrates from China to the United States through the process of adoption are not readily apparent and key questions arise. How did U.S. adopting parents come to know this story? How do meanings of the thread change with the community? How is this sample of Chinese folklore used to promote and encourage adoption? And how does it reflect ideals of bonds not only between adopting parent and child but also between adoption communities in the U.S. and China? In answering these questions, I explore three key aspects of the transnational adoption process: 1) adoptive families and cultural identity; 2) gender, race and citizenship; and 3) adoption and labor in China.

Numerous studies have described altered patterns of craniofacial form in the unaffected relatives of individuals with nonsyndromic oral clefts. Unfortunately, results from these studies have been highly variable and have failed to provide a reliable method for discriminating at-risk relatives from controls. In the present study, we compared craniofacial shape between a sample of unaffected relatives (33 females; 14 males) from CL/P multiplex families and an equal number of age/sex/ethnicity-matched controls. A total of 16 x,y,z facial landmark coordinates derived from 3D photogrammetry were analyzed via Euclidean Distance Matrix Analysis (EDMA), while 14 additional linear distances from direct anthropometry were analyzed via t-tests. Variables identified as significantly different (p ≤ 0.10 from EDMA; 0.05 from t-tests) were then entered into a two-group discriminant function analysis. All analyses were carried out for each sex separately. Compared to controls, female unaffected relatives demonstrated increased upper facial width, midface reduction and lateral displacement of the alar cartilage. A single discriminant function was derived (canonical correlation = 0.43; p = 0.01) which correctly classified 70% of female unaffected relatives and 73% of female controls. Male unaffected relatives demonstrated increased upper facial and cranial base width, increased lower facial height and decreased upper facial height. Again, a single discriminant function was derived (canonical correlation = 0.79; p < 0.001) which correctly classified 86% of male unaffected relatives and 93% of male controls. In both males and females, upper facial width contributed most to group discrimination. Based on the discriminant function results, unaffected relatives were classified into risk/liability classes (high risk or low risk) based on the degree of phenotypic divergence from controls. Results suggest that the craniofacial shape differences characterizing unaffected relatives are partly sex-specific and perhaps more pronounced in males. The pattern of relative-control differences observed in both sexes is in broad agreement with previous findings from both humans and animal models. Although preliminary, these results suggest that a quantitative assessment of the craniofacial phenotype may allow for the identification of at-risk individuals within CL/P multiplex families. Importantly, the identification of such individuals could lead to improvements in recurrence risk estimation and gene mapping.

The emergence of sedentary village lifeways occurred in many regions of the world, and was one of the most significant landmarks in prehistory. Traditionally, archaeological research has concentrated on understanding the origins of village life and its evolution into politically ranked chiefdoms and states. Relatively less attention has been paid to the many regions of the world where village society did not lead to the formation of more complex political organization. The current research is a diachronic study of some very long-lived village settlements known as the Wankarani Complex in the Oruro Department of Bolivia. It is focused on change and continuity within a persistently small-scale village settlement system over the course of more than a millennium. Rather than studying one of the early prehistoric village societies that gave rise to complex societies and asking why?, this study centers on a very resilient early village society that did not give rise to ranked polities and asks why not?. Excavations at two Wankarani sites that were occupied for more than a millennium during the southern Andean Formative Period (1800 BC 200 AD) were directed toward obtaining sizeable samples of artifacts from all phases of occupation in order to detect changes in subsistence, economy, and socio-economic and political organization. Results suggest considerable changes in subsistence and economy, including a trajectory of increasing importance of herding and agriculture and the development of long-distance trade networks in which these early villages participated. Despite these changes, growth of the political economy was minimal, and did not result in the emergence of marked social ranking or economic inequality. The Wankarani trajectory provides an excellent comparative perspective on Formative Period social evolution in the Lake Titicaca Basin, where early village society led to the rise of larger settlements, politico-religious centers, and eventually centralized polities. The different trajectory followed by the Wankarani Complex may be a function of an extremely risk-minimizing agro-pastoral system that inhibited the growth of both the regional population and the political economy.

The primary intention of this research has been to establish how the specialized Tairona community of Chengue was formed and how social inequality plays a role in socio-economic change from 200BC to 1650AD. The main questions are organized around two opposing scenarios designed to test top-down and bottom-up processes for community formation. In the top-down scenario the community would be the result of an external agent that had sufficient authority to create a community with the intention to extract a highly concentrated resource, marine salt. In the alternative scenario, the bottom-up process, the community would become specialized as a result of a slower process in which the changes that led to specialization are the product of decisions of the individuals who resided in Chengue and natural environmental changes. Consequently specialization would have been the role of individual agents (individuals and households) at a very small scale. Although the observed sequence had components from both scenarios, the bottom-up process appears to be the primary force in the formation of a specialized community and the production of surplus that led to social inequality. Study of soils, lagoon and coastal sediments, flora and fauna allowed the climatic reconstruction the last 2500 years. During this long span of time communal units larger than households but smaller than villages had great stability and appear to have been the motors of socio-economic change. The evidence from Chengue suggests that progressive specialization in the context of environmental limitations produced a group of people less well-off than others. Elites do not; however, appear to have had much range of political action during most of the sequence.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of small business entrepreneurship and developing capitalism in the Russian Republic of Karelia. The entrepreneurial-minded individuals at the heart of my research began organizing labor and production in the mid 1990s to create businesses that are now thriving within a spirit of capitalism that is emerging locally as a part of their efforts. Their energy and imagination unite Western-inspired ideas with Soviet-era structural continuities to accumulate capital at impressive rates. I examine the inner workings of their enterprises and the business networks within which they operate, focusing both on labor control and on how the entrepreneurs effectively socialize and retain workforces that can withstand the demands of a new market economy. This dissertation is based upon 15 months of field work in 2001-2002, which included months of participant-observation as a production worker in commercial cake and bread bakeries and also extended interactions with entrepreneurs and their managers. I use the language and concepts from the French Regulation School, which focuses on how regimes of capital accumulation operate and the regulating forces and institutions necessary to sustain them, to explore the relationship between structural continuities from the Soviet mode of regulating the economy and the emerging capitalist regime of accumulation. In this way, I focus on the underpinnings of capitalist circulation in Kareliathe ways in which individuals, institutions, and sectors are coordinating a process that at its essence seeks to reproduce social life through commodity production. I draw two fundamental conclusions from my research. First, Russia's shift to a capitalist system of accumulation, especially within the small business sector of the economy, has been less problematic than many scholars have understood or acknowledged. Second, anthropological investigations of capitalism must focus on the general logic of the underlying structures that control, promulgate and replicate the conditions necessary for capital to effectively accumulate, in addition to the unique characteristics associated with particular capitalist economies.