Mexican Americans constitute one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. Within Mexican American families, women are the primary caretakers and are responsible for managing family health. Many activities of health work fall within the household and domestic spheres. These activities include, providing a clean, safe environment providing nutritious foods, teaching hygienic practices, diagnosing and treating illnesses, and deciding when to seek outside health care. Until recently, household health work was not recognized as a factor in health knowledge and had been excluded from the discourse of health and healing. The purpose of this study was to describe health perceptions and health production among Mexican American women. This research was a descriptive ethnographic study of the health perceptions and health production of a sample of 13 English speaking Mexican American women. Informants participated in three in-depth interviews conducted over a two to four month period. The Household Production of Health was the conceptual model that guided this research and the World Health Organization definition of health was used to frame questions about health perceptions. Data analysis was directed towards identifying themes and sub-themes that were organized into categories that answered the three research questions. The informants integrated physical and mental health into an overarching concept of being healthy. Health included maintenance of the physical body, the mind, and the spirit. The informants identified a variety of health producing and help-seeking activities that were contextualized throughout their lives and were consistent with their health perceptions. In addition to outside employment, the informants took primary responsibility for health creation. Their roles were predominantly domestic in nature and included parenting, providing for health care, and managing and maintaining the household. This research has significance for nursing in three areas: (a) it explicates the importance of routine activities in health maintenance; (b) it provides a framework for community health nurses to analyze the entirety of health activities that occur within the household; and, (c) it suggests the importance of focusing health education on wellness behaviors such as stress reduction and coping strategies.

Asthma has become one of the most commonly talked about and politically charged health topics in India. Yet, less than a decade ago, international studies reported that rates of the disease in the country were among the lowest in the world. This dissertation examines how asthma rapidly became a preeminent health concern in Tamil Nadu. I document and critically examine factors that have led to the phenomenon of asthma, from the multiple perspectives of its sufferers, the practitioners who diagnose and treat the disease, and the pharmaceutical companies that develop and market products for its management. I examine how popular representations of asthma and allergy--which view the disease as the result of an increasingly toxic environment, a more susceptible population, and new, modern ways of life--have influenced the social meaning and medical management of asthma. Using a variety of data, I describe patterns of health care seeking, the therapeutic regimens prescribed for asthma, and the important role played by factors such as the affordability of medications, and the perceptions of the activity and potential harm of medications, such as steroids. I look at increasing coverage of asthma in the Indian print media, and the efforts of the private health care industry and Indian environmental organizations, to draw further attention to the disease. Through detailed clinical observations and interviews with a wide range of allopathic and traditional Indian medical practitioners, I outline the variety of professional understandings and therapeutic approaches toward asthma, describe important differences in the interpretations of its symptoms, and examine the medical and social factors contributing to misdiagnoses, underdiagnosis, and undertreatment. In addition to medical knowledge about asthma, practice patterns are determined by a variety of practical logics, including economic competition in the pluralistic marketplace, the social relations of disease labels, and the pressures to forge a stable relationship between practitioner and patient. Finally, I describe the variety of techniques through which some of the leading drug companies in India have actively promoted asthma and allergy, and provide an ethnographic account of the introduction of new asthma drugs--the leukotriene receptor antagonists--to the Indian market.

The purpose of this descriptive ethnographic study was to explore the perceptions about, and the various factors that influence birth spacing decisions by rural Filipino husbands and wives. Short birth intervals of less than two years are a high risk factor for women in the Philippines. Attempts have been made to improve the women's health status and rights in various aspects however, a large number of women in developing countries such as the Philippines, still suffer to a great extent in regard to their health and reproductive health conditions. Fourteen Filipino husbands and wives participated in in-depth interviews over a six month period in rural Philippines. The Household Production of Health nested within the Ecological Model were the conceptual models that guided this research. Data analysis was directed towards identifying themes and sub-themes organized into categories and sub categories answered the four research questions. Eleven domains were identified from the data. Two major cultural themes emerged from the ethnographic data: (1) "Because life today is so difficult, it is important to space births"; and (2) "She's my wife...of course, I have to take care of her, we have to take care of each other." The participants integrated birth spacing and the internal and external factors influencing decision making into a complex process. The participants described their roles in maintaining and promoting health. In addition to their roles in health maintenance, participants also identified a variety of health producing and help seeking behaviors that were contextualized throughout their cultural lives and were consistent with their perceptions. This research has significance for nursing in four aspects: (a) it explicates the importance of having a broader and deeper understanding of how birth spacing and maternal health are perceived by people of different cultural background; (b) it provides a framework for community health nurses and transcultural nurses to analyze the entirety of birth spacing decision processes that do not only occur within the household but within the community and the whole country; (c) it suggests the importance of focusing health education of women's reproductive health such as spacing pregnancies; and (d) it encourages nurses around the world to empower men and women to create change in health policy regarding family planning.

The purpose of this study was to develop a flexible multidisciplinary participatory development model for practical application. This design emphasized the indigenous information and communication systems for the duration of the project. The model was practically applied to three distinct rural Native American communities. Each community chose a separate development project. Technology, resource awareness and training emerged as the common goals. Project determination was made through multiple session focus groups and written surveys. The success of each of the model application processes and projects was determined by participant outcomes and follow-up surveys. It was found that project participants viewed their project as successful and the process which they had engaged in positively affected their attitudes regarding future projects.

The purpose of this study was to discover what modesty means to healthy, middle-aged Mexican-American women living in Tucson, Arizona. Accepted ethnographic methodology was used in this exploratory descriptive study. Three audio-taped interviews of one to two hours in length and field notes were used in data collection. A purposive, convenience sample of three Mexican-American women was used. Modesty emerged as a concept inextricably linked to culture. Women's roles were the domains of meaning through which the themes of protection, respect, servility and conflict were described. Modesty in Mexican-American women and the impact it has on health care situations was discussed. Implications for nursing practice were explored.

This paper explores the meaning of condoms for six sexually active, college-educated women. Analysis of ethnographic interviews addresses four facets of their experiences with condoms. This report discusses (1) the condom in relation to the (female) body, and (2) condom use as a conjunction of doing sex and gender identity. Informant-generated topics are (3) the learning and sharing of condom knowledge, and (4) the mention of condoms in life stories. To contextualize these highly individual experiences, the author initially presents popular and historical meanings of condoms. After a brief review of condoms in historical discourses of birth control and sexually-transmitted diseases, condom meanings in current AIDS-inspired research are presented. The conclusion suggests how this qualitative data could inform sexual health education and condom promotion campaigns.

La musique est un comportement humain incontestablement universel, elle demeure néanmoins peu abordée par l’anthropologie. Si les connaissances empiriques accumulées à ce jour ont permis de bien la caractériser à des niveaux proximaux d’analyse, la question de son origine évolutionniste est, en contrepartie, souvent délaissée. Or, toute tentative sérieuse de comprendre ce phénomène requiert une investigation de sa fonction adaptative et de sa phylogénèse. Le projet entrepris ici consiste en une tentative de définition du concept de musique en terme d’universaux, d’une comparaison interspécifique du phénomène et d’un résumé de l’histoire phylogénétique des comportements musicaux, ainsi que d’une analyse de deux modèles portant sur les origines de la musique (Miller, 2000; Mithen, 2006). De ces modèles sont extraites des prévisions qui sont confrontées à des données empiriques provenant de disciplines diverses afin d’évaluer leur valeur scientifique. L’analyse des données disponibles permet de produire un inventaire des universaux musicaux aux plans cognitif, structurel, émotionnel, fonctionnel et symbolique et d’identifier ainsi certaines des bases biologiques du phénomène. Plusieurs mécanismes évolutionnistes, dont la sélection naturelle, la sélection sexuelle, la sélection de groupe et la sélection parentale sont employés par les divers auteurs afin d’expliquer l’apparition du phénomène musical. Il appert que la musique a joué un rôle important dans la relation parent-enfant au cours de l’évolution humaine, de même que dans la cohésion sociale, la coordination des activités et la formation de l’identité de groupe. En ce qui a trait aux deux modèles analysés ici, chacun ne traite que d’une partie des invariants musicaux et leur comparaison permet d’établir qu’ils sont mutuellement exclusifs. En guise de conclusion, nous tentons de formuler un scénario évolutif qui concilie les différentes hypothèses abordées. / Music is a universal and ubiquitous human behaviour, but it is still largely ignored by anthropology. While music is well characterised at proximate levels of explanation, the question of their evolutionary origins remains relatively unexplored. Nevertheless, any attempts to explain this phenomena needs to investigate its potential adaptive significance and phylogeny This project consists of an attempt to define music in terms of universals, of a interspecific comparison of the phenomena and of a summary of the phylogenetic history of musical behaviour as well as an analysis of two theories on origins of music (Miller, 2000 ; Mithen, 2006). Their predictions will be confronted to empirical data from a large array of disciplines to evaluate their scientific value. The analysis of the data available allows to produce an inventory of cognitive, structural, emotional, functional and symbolic music universals and to identify certain biological bases of the phenomena. Several evolutionist mechanisms, including natural selection, sexual selection, group selection and kin selection, have been employed by several authors to explain the emergence of music. It seems that music played an important role in the parent-infant relationship throughout evolution, as well as in social cohesion, coordination of social activities and formation of group identity. Regarding the two models analysed in this research, their comparison allows us to conclude that they are mutually exclusive and only discuss part of the musical invariants. In the end, an evolutionary framework that synthesizes and reconciles these hypotheses is proposed.

<p>In September of 2011 protestors filled the streets of New York City&rsquo;s Wall Street Financial District as part of the social movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Prior to their protests in the streets, Occupy Wall Street was a movement that originated and spread online through various social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and interactive webpages. The strategy of using Internet communication as a tool for activism is not new. Social movements since the 1990s have utilized the Internet. </p><p> The growing use of Web 2.0 technologies in our everyday lives is a topic that is not yet fully understood or researched by anthropologists, nor is its potential for ethnographic research fully realized. This thesis addresses both of these points by presenting a case study of how, as anthropologists, we can collect data from both the online and in-person presences of a group. </p><p> This thesis focuses on the social movement, Occupy Wall Street, because of its beginnings and continuing activity online. In-person data of the Occupy Wall Street movement were collected at Occupy movements in Flint, Michigan and New York City, New York using traditional ethnographic methods such as interviews and participant observation. Online data were collected using computer scripts (programs that automate computer tasks), that recursively downloaded websites onto my personal, locally owned hard drive. Once the online data was collected, I also used computer scripts to filter through data and locate phenomena on the websites that I had chosen to focus. By analyzing both online and in-person data I am able to gain a more holistic view and new ways of understanding social movements. </p>

<p> Using a memory archaeology paradigm, this dissertation explored from 2010 to 2012 the ways people used place-based narratives to create and maintain the sacredness of four historic battlefields in Montana: Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument; Nez Perce National Historical Park- Bear Paw Battlefield; Nez Perce National Historical Park- Big Hole National Battlefield; and Rosebud Battlefield State Park. This research implemented a mixed-methods approach of four data sources: historical research about on-site interpretation and land management of the battlefields; participant observations conducted during height of tourism season for each battlefield; 1,056 questionnaires administered to park visitors; and 32 semi-structured interviews with park personnel. Before formulating hypotheses to test, a preliminary literature review was conducted on three battlefields (Culloden, Fallen Timbers, and Isandlwana) for any observable patterns concerning the research domain. </p><p> This dissertation tested two hypotheses to explain potential patterns at the four battlefields in Montana related to on-site interpretation of primary sources, the sacred perception of battlefields, and the maintenance and expression of place-based cultural heritages and historical knowledge. The first hypothesis examined whether park visitors and personnel perceived these American Indian battlefields as nationally significant or if other heritage values associated with the place-based interpretation of the sacred landscapes were more important. Although park visitors and personnel overall perceived the battlefields as nationally important, they also strongly expressed other heritage values. The second hypothesis examined whether battlefield visitors who made pilgrimages to attend or participate in official on-site commemorations had stronger place-based connections for cultural heritage or historical knowledge reasons than other visitors. Overall, these commemoration pilgrims had stronger connections to the battlefields than other park visitors. </p><p> Closer comparisons of the four battlefields demonstrated that they had both similar patterns and unique aspects of why people maintained these landscapes as sacred places.</p>

Midwifery has re-emerged as a birthing system and women are again seeking midwives as their birth attendants. This pluralization of the U.S. medical system and its birthing system is on one level of interpretation is attributable to some primarily middle class women's and couples' dissatisfaction with hospital maternity care and with physicians' activist attitude and interventionist approach to child birth. The practice of lay or independent midwifery began to emerge in the late 1960's, in conjunction with, and as a response to, these women's demands for unmedicated birth experiences. It is argued that these women's dissatisfactions with medicalized birth and the lay midwife's alternative definition of and approach to birth are expressions of the more generalized dissatisfaction with the institutions of modernity, the materialistic explanation of science, and the rational solutions of technology. Consciously or unconsciously, the women who choose and the lay midwives who attend their alternative births are, by their decisions and actions, joining a larger social discourse which involves not only a rethinking of the efficacy of obstetrics as a total system for doing birth and the deconstruction of the institutions and practice of technological birth but a rethinking of the mechanistic worldview and of the Enlightenment enterprise of reconstructing society to conform with the principles of natural law and social relationships to conform with the theory of complementary gender relationships. The practice of midwifery was progressively taken over by men as the occupations were professionalized; but it was the elimination of the dualism in this society's social roles and interpersonal relationships, that disqualified the midwife as a birth attendant. The re-emergence of the midwife is not only associated with the deconstruction of the mechanistic worldview but the emergence of alternatives to the complementary gender relationships of modernity. The lay midwife's solution is to return to the dualistic roles characteristic of colonial America's traditional medical relationships. The nurse-midwife, by education and experience, works and thinks in such a way that the categories which characterize the particular genders and their respective realm of the caring and curing are harmonized rather than dichotomized.