This dissertation explores understandings of food and hunger in the United States within the sociocultural context of neoliberalism. Using fieldwork conducting in Norristown, Pennsylvania, I critically explore understandings of the diet and link these understandings to the large-scale economic restructuring that has played out since 1980. To provide a backdrop for this analysis, I first detail the history of Norristown and situate the space in present times and a deindustrialized urban center where low-income residents face limited access to affordable healthy foods. Previous to the election of Ronald Reagan, a relatively robust social safety net was in place to assist people living in these situations, but this safety net has shrunk during the era of neoliberalism. Neoliberal policy shifts in food assistance programs serve as a launching point for my analysis of understandings of food. I first consider the remnants of the food assistance bureaucracy and how food programs play out from federal to local levels. I then shift my attention to the increased emphasis on nutrition education programs as a strategy to alleviate the poor dietary status of many who live on fixed incomes. Here, I am concerned with how these programs shift the responsibility for the diet onto the individuals themselves while doing little to ensure proper access to healthy foods. Ideas of individual responsibility also play out among the many volunteers involved in private food charities, and in the food advertisements that can be seen all over the urban space of Norristown. Taken together a complex picture of the diet emerges that is very much reflective of neoliberal ideology. / Anthropology

The effects of neoliberal practices on social policy decisions continues to favor a form of privatization in which corporatized marketplace practices are the guide for social institutional operations. One effect of this has been an increase of marketplace organizations as operators of social services programs, including welfare-to-work programs. These organizations adhere to the prevailing trends in business community for profit making, while ostensibly following the principles of welfare-to-work regulations for service delivery. However, the practices introduced by pursuing profit can conflict with the recognizing all the goals of workfare as outlined in the federal policy of TANF or the Temporary Aid for Needy Families. Under these regulations, providers are charged with assisting welfare recipients receiving cash support in addressing personal barriers to economic stability and in gaining employment intended to provide a catalyst to economic stability. This research examines a corporate social services provider, the practices instituted by its leaders, and the effects that those practices have on the staff of the welfare-to-work center and their clients. Specifically, this examines how the links between profit making and the statistical performance assessments of state funding agencies influenced an operational model, analogous to the manufacturing center for cheap labor. The emphasis on quick workforce attachment strategies exceeded the state's performance measures and allowed the maximization of profit; however, this research determines that these strategies denied workfare clients the services that they and the state expected them to receive. / Anthropology

As Marquesans in French Polynesia face a warming Pacific Ocean, coral decline, and an increased likelihood of cyclones and tsunamis (Gillie 1997; Sylvat and Wilkinson 2011; United Nations 2005), discourses and narratives related to anthropogenic climate change have rapidly become a part of contemporary social life on the islands, challenging and remolding Marquesans’ senses of identity. Moreover, the Marquesas Islands have become an increasingly popular tourist destination, which contributes to 80% of the local economy. The economic significance of tourism combined with the ecological changes have rapidly shifted Marquesans’ sense of self, particularly as demonstrated through indigenous material culture. While Marquesan “material culture” (Lévi-Strauss 1963) has been reclaimed and revalued by Marquesans and tourists alike, material production processes have tended to contribute to the destruction of the ecological environment and depletion of local resources. Simultaneously, anthropogenic climate change has resulted in reduced yields for locally-sourced raw materials integral to the continuation of these industries (Gornall et al. 2010; McMillan et al. 2014; Thaman and Clarke 1993). The tourist market is thus a complex and contradictory site at which local identity and material practices converge with the stark realities of global environmental and economic change. This research asks: how is the very nature of collective identity, in “traditional” societies or others, being challenged by swift ecological and climate change? How might models of tourism, economic viability, and agricultural exploitation need to be revised and reorganized in ways that take into account new kinds of identities and imaginaries, new forms of collective action, or the re-mobilization of “older” forms of collectivity and economic activity? In the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, I examine how Marquesans draw upon their history, sense of self, sense of culture, sense of stability, and sense of precocity to remake both who they are and/through the objects that reflect who they are. / Anthropology

This dissertation examines how globalized biomedical definitions of reproduction are being adopted by the Chinese state and interpreted at the local level in Yunnan. It provides an anthropological perspective on how to provide affordable health care for the mass population, a question that most nation states have to contend with in the current neoliberal economy. In the dissertation, I present a critical view of the state through a medical lens (Kleinman 1995) so as to reengage anthropological theory and social theory. The following chapters of the dissertation investigate how the local people articulate their understanding of medicine, science, the body, and ethnicity in relation with the state and in the everyday life of medical practice and consumption. In particular, this dissertation examines the relationship between different narratives of modernity and ethnicity as embodied in the transformation of the public health system in Weixi Lisu Autonomous County in Southwest China, the so-called "margin of the state" (Das and Poole 2004). As a historical ethnography, I contextualize the transformation of public health policy in this area within the nexus of shifting political and economic policies from 1) the Maoist period from 1958 to 1981, during which "cooperative medicine" backed by the commune provided basic health care for the peasants; 2) 1981 to 2006, the transitional period from the command economy to the post-Mao market economy, during which most rural peasants had been left out of post-decollectivization health care; and 3) 2007 until now, the period in which the New Cooperative Medicine has been implemented in rural China. By historicizing the transformation of public health policy in the ethnic minority area, this dissertation not only intends to illuminate how the changing public health policy has been embedded in the state's pursuit of modernity, development agenda, and nation-building strategy in the borderland, it also attempts to portray how its multi-ethnic residents maneuver their ethnic minority identity within the changing historical periods by taking on, reconfiguring, or resisting public health policies in their daily life so as to achieve the maximum benefit of state policies and their citizenship status. In this way, this dissertation will shed light on how the ethnic minority residents articulate different narratives of modernity and how their articulation contests and reconfigures the contours and constitution of modernity. / Anthropology

This dissertation provides a better understanding of how journalists attain their personal and occupational identities. In particular, I examine the origins and meanings of journalistic objectivity as well as the professional autonomy that is specific to journalism. Journalists understand objectivity as a worldview, value, ideal, and impossibility. A central question that remains is why the term objectivity has become highly devalued in journalistic discourse in the past 30 years, a puzzling development considered in light of evidence that "objectivity" remains important in American journalism. I use Bourdieu's notion of field to explore anthropological ways of looking at objectivity, for instance, viewing it as a practice that distinguishes journalists from other professionals as knowledge workers. Applying notions of field to the journalistic field through anthropological methods and perspective permits the linkage of microlevel perspectives to macrolevel social phenomena. The dissertation demonstrates how qualitative research on individuals and newsroom organizations can be connected to the field of journalism in the United States. Additionally, it offers insight into why journalists continue to embrace objectivity, even as they acknowledge its deficiencies as a journalistic goal. / Anthropology

In this dissertation, I examine the impact of globalizing processes upon the contemporary Argentine tango scene in Buenos Aires. Focusing on a contested trend referred to as tango nuevo, I engage debates surrounding: authenticity and cultural ownership; the performance of gender and sexuality; generational conflict in human movement practice; the enduring significance of place in an era of heightened globalization; the role of place and global economics in shaping transnational cultural formations; community as a site of anxiety, hierarchy and conflict; the tension between preservation and evolution in the survival of cultural phenomena; and conflicting narratives of dance as drug, therapy and pain. The result of a five-year pursuit of Argentine tango, both as an anthropologist and a dancer, this dissertation is informed by two years of fieldwork in Buenos Aires, three years of preliminary research in Philadelphia, a preliminary fieldsite investigation in Buenos Aires, and participant observation in a handful of U.S. tango communities preceding fieldwork. This dissertation will add to the literature on Argentine tango by challenging popular and scholarly notions of what may be encompassed under this term. With community as the key concept underlying my study, I hope to expand upon the application of semiotic analysis in dance studies through an emphasis on practice and phenomenology, framing community through the performance of shared bodily vocabularies that are open to renewal and transformation. Building upon recent anthropological investigations of globalization and modernity, I suggest that human movement practices present a rich area for further research into the enduring significance of place. In approaching a fluid, global community via local-level fieldwork that is oriented towards the passage of media, ideas and dancers across borders, my project suggests a solution to the quandaries of doing ethnography and microanalysis in complex, transnational macro-contexts. With the growth of new sites, new codes, and a new community of practitioners, I argue that the study of tango in anthropological perspective offers a unique view into the ways in which individuals carve out notions of personhood, identity and culture in a globalized world. / Anthropology

Since the 1970s, Colombia’s indigenous communities have been the beneficiaries of state-sanctioned cultural and territorial rights. They have also been extensively impacted by the drug trade in their territories. This dissertation examines how drug crop cultivation in indigenous territories has impacted the struggle for indigenous rights in Colombia. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out primarily with the Nasa indigenous community in the southwestern department of Cauca, Colombia. I argue that the drug trade has contributed to the accelerated transition of indigenous agricultural communities from a primarily subsistence-based economy to a cash-based economy that is dependent on the circulation of global commodities. I also argue that drug control policies have contributed to neoliberal multiculturalism in that they have helped to undermine the political autonomy of indigenous communities. Finally, state-regulated institutions such as schools and child welfare circulate moral narratives that emphasize family structure as a cause for social problems rather than political and historical conditions. I conclude with an assessment of how identity may be used for indigenous communities who continue to struggle for cultural and territorial rights in Colombia’s post-conflict era. / Anthropology

Climate change is a growing problem for those living in the Himalayas, threatening water availability and livelihoods. This research seeks to explore the various factors contributing to water shortage and the factors leading to perceptions of water shortage in Himachal Pradesh, India. This thesis explores data collected from 50 interviews conducted in summer 2019 and seeks to understand why participants of these interviews indicated that they do not experience water shortage. The research highlights the importance of further research and needed action in terms of addressing and mitigating the impacts of climate change in the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh.

Anthropological research conducted in a local Texas hospital provides data to analyze cultural competency. Increasing health equity is a key aspect of cultural competency literature, hospital, and national goals. Examining the local context allows for the analysis of how one hospital can affect public health in the area by using patient-centered care. Using observational and interview data to create the ideal of the patient journey shows how patient families experience cultural competency. Overall, the patient families felt they experienced culturally competent healthcare, however from the hospital structure perspective there could more goals to attain.

As a nonprofit located in a nonprofit-dense region in Roanoke, Virginia, Blue Ridge Literacy is among many other organizations competing for similar funding. This qualitative research project explores the reasons why donors give, why they support Blue Ridge Literacy, and what they think their future priorities for giving might be. By examining data from 15 qualitative interviews, this research is able to examine what BRL donors care about and offer suggestions for donor engagement strategies.