The field site for this US-based ethnography is the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The overwhelming presence of murals in the urban landscape calls into question how these figurative wall-sized paintings improve the lives and neighborhoods in which these paintings are found. With Philadelphia suffering the consequences of deindustrialization and neoliberal globalization, characterized by high poverty and inequality, and consistently low rankings in quality of life indicators by the national media, what role do murals play in change? Do murals mask urban problems by literally painting over blight, and, therefore distract from vital issues? Alternately, are murals a beacon of hope in an aging post-industrialized city? How do these murals contribute to the city - socially, culturally, and economically? This research study employs the following in its methodology: archival research, participant observation, interviews, visual and audio documentation, web site analysis of the Mural Arts Program's public transcript, and documentation of contemporary media coverage of the MAP and tourism related economic strategies. Over the course of its almost thirty-year history, the MAP has seen its mission shift from dealing with erasing graffiti, to helping transform (i.e. empower and motivate) communities and individuals, as a way to deal with poverty and increasing political and economic inequality. As globalization placed pressures on cities to compete in a global economy, new urban branding practices changed the scale of operations from place-based local communities (that focused on rehabilitating "at-risk" populations) to the city as a whole (city-wide murals and related projects/events), that increased local media coverage and brought the MAP to the attention of national media outlets - the kind of publicity necessary to advertise Philadelphia as an "urban brand," "The City of Murals." The promotion of Philadelphia as "The City of Murals" is premised on art having a "social life" by virtue of human interaction, and therefore, has the capacity to engage, captivate, and transform - its "value" is in being commodified and consumed. At the same time, the consumption of particular art objects and experiences demonstrates "taste" and marks social difference and maintains social hierarchies. / Anthropology

<p> Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Native American ancestral lands in the western United States developed for tourism and recreation. The stewards of these lands seek to engage visitors and enrich their experience, and simultaneously to protect the lands&rsquo; natural and cultural resources. To achieve their mission, protected areas regularly use <i>interpretation </i>&mdash;materials and experiences that aim to educate visitors about resources and see them as personally meaningful. However, there is little literature on interpretive content in protected areas, few qualitative studies of interpretation as constructed by visitors and interpreters, and little literature on the representation of Native Americans in museums and protected areas. </p><p> I consider the public presentation of archaeology at exemplary protected areas in the U.S. Southwest and Great Basin within a theoretical framework of governmentality and representation. Within a mixed-method research design, this project used participant-observation at thirteen protected area locales to identify interpretive content and representational strategies, and semi-structured interviews with 31 individuals to elicit staff and visitors&rsquo; understandings of interpretation and display. This research found three types of narratives in the interpretation sampled&mdash;scientific narratives, cultural narratives, and management messages. In general, scientific narratives appeared more frequently than cultural narratives and both appeared more frequently than management messages. Archaeology dominated scientific narratives, cultural continuity dominated cultural narratives, and orientation dominated management messages. In general, archaeology appeared with greater relative frequency than any other component of interpretive content. This study also found that interpretation predominantly adopted a third-person omniscient point of view and represented people predominantly in the ancient past. </p><p> This study has both academic and applied outcomes. The work aims to contribute to the scant body of literature on interpretive content in protected areas stewarding natural and cultural resources, the few qualitative studies of interpretation as constructed by visitors and interpreters, and the existing literature on the representation of Native Americans in museums and protected areas as well as informing future interpretive practice. These findings inform a report on contemporary interpretive practice and recommendations for the public presentation of archaeology delivered to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2013.</p>

The goal of this research is to develop a socio-cultural approach to studying situations in marketing as an alternative to the previously explored methods. In marketing research the situation has been treated as a means of predicting product choice, attitude, preference, and satisfaction. The socio-cultural approach proposed and empirically tested in this research posits that the situation can be characterized by the people who are present, the place they are in, and the products that are nearby. When these situational elements are incongruous with one another, individuals experience a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral response. Empirical findings indicate that the tripartite definition of the situation is feasible for conducting situational research and that products can serve as stimuli to behavior. The personal care product category serves as the research venue and several implications concerning the marketing and advertising of personal care products are drawn from the research results.

Political discourse in contemporary Germany provides a window into issues of racism, nationality, and the overall question of German identity. The use of metaphor and racist semantic techniques in political speeches and articles addressing issues of increased neo-Nazi activity and changes in immigration policy point to an increasing struggle over the establishment of a common discursive framework within which such questions are discussed. Such a struggle itself points to a deeper crisis of the state and German identity. This paper offers an approach to understanding these struggles by first examining metaphorical conceptions of the nation and state that not only reflect and describe, but actually shape German experience of these phenomena, further impacting conceptions of race and national identity. The active role of racism in creating a common discursive framework and as it informs the process/state project of hegemony is examined. Questions concerning whether the racism detected is "new" and the consequences of establishing a racialized discourse will contribute, finally, to an exploration of possibilities for creating an anti-racist discourse in Germany.

This study investigates tasks in which international graduate students who are non-native speakers of English must use a second or foreign language (L2) in simulated conflict and stressful situations with native speakers. In particular, the study examines conflicts where the non-native speaker (NNS) must issue a directive to a native speaker (NS) in order to achieve an important outcome or avoid unwanted or even dangerous consequences. Unlike previous studies which place equal or no emphasis on the consequences of the directive under investigation, this study focuses on the perlocutionary effect that the speaker anticipates as a result of the utterance of a directive. Although this is an empirical study, it also critically examines the directive as a macro or discursive speech act colored by the relationships Power, Distance and perceived Consequences of the speaker based on the context of the situation in which it is uttered. The analysis of the data reveals that most advanced NNS have difficulty in high stakes situations based on a comparison of their directives to NS directives, supporting the hypothesis that the encoding of power in a directive is essential to the NNS as well as to the NS in attaining or avoiding some important result. The qualitative evidence further suggests that an important source of this difficulty is the constant awareness that even the advanced NNS is still a NNS and this produces a diminished sense of power relative to NSs.

Education is and always has been an important component of American Indian life. Contrary to popular understanding, American Indians have always had a system of education which imparted understanding and cultural genetics to the rising generation. With European contact, this viable system of education was discredited; consequently, American Indians were viewed as "uncivilized" and in need of a Euro-American education. As the egregious five hundredth anniversary of European discovery of the new World approaches, educational policy makers still view the indigenous Americans as void of a culture worth perpetuating and therefore in need of a prescribed education. While Native Americans today are not adverse to Western education, they view it in a perfunctory manner because it is still designed to acculturate rather than educate. This constitutes miseducation and therefore is a foe against whom many American Indians battle for survival, both as a people and as individuals.

Mexico was formerly an important breeding ground for six marine turtle species. Over the last several decades, overexploitation of turtles for their meat, eggs, and hides, as well as habitat destruction, has led to alarming rates of decline in all species. The problem of sea turtle conservation is a promising area for questions of anthropology and sustainable human systems because decline of these species is related to unsustainable development and subsistence practices that have disenfranchised small coastal fishing cooperatives. Common property resource theory aids the analysis of the context in which overexploitation takes place. Conserving sea turtles will depend on the development of localized institutions for managing natural resources in perpetuity and for negotiating the array of regional, national, and global factors relevant to sea turtle endangerment and preservation. Anthropology can play a vital role in this process of developing sustainable interactions between human subsistence needs and natural resource conservation.

Ethnographic interviews with pregnant Mexican-American and Native-American adolescents and young adults from low-income households explored their knowledge about conception and contraception as well as their contraceptive and sexual behavior. The findings suggest that their unwanted pregnancies are not due to a lack of knowledge but rather are due to their heteronomous sexual behavior which results in infrequent contraceptive usage and thereby a risk of unwanted pregnancy.

I argue for the importance of 3 marginalized works by women anthropologists: Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston; Return to Laughter by Laura Bohannan; and Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist by Hortense Powdermaker. It is not generally recognized that these works prefigured recent experimental anthropology and provided innovative possibilities for the discipline. Their marginalization was the result of many factors: I focus mainly on the refusal of anthropology (until very recently) to give due credit to its non-scientific side, and the consistent devaluation of women's work within anthropology. I analyze and compare the texts, concentrating on narrative style, use of dialogue, use of authoritative voice, treatment of racism, the author's view of herself and her text, and the text's placement in or between the genres of autobiography, anthropology and fiction. I conclude the anthropological canon should be redefined to include works such as these.

The Women's National Indian Association (WNIA) organized in 1879 to advocate fair treatment of Native Americans. By manipulating the Victorian ideology of domesticity, the organization was able to send women missionaries to the reservations. Because women could only work "at home," the WNIA redefined the Indian reservation as the missionaries' home. This redefinition ideologically enabled women missionaries to engage in non-traditional work. Conversely, the WNIA believed Indians would only become "civilized" if they moved from traditional dwellings into frame houses. In addition, native houses could only become "homes" if Indian women became ardent housekeepers and converted to Christianity. Accordingly, the WNIA provided financial support to Indians who wished to build houses, and taught the domestic arts to native women and children. In so doing, and by supporting the government's allotment policy, the WNIA participated in the subjugation of Native Americans and in the westward expansion of the United States.