This dissertation explores the responses and engagement of the Pamunkey Indians with an expanding capitalist economy in nineteenth century Tidewater Virginia. Framed by theoretical discourses of political economy and landscape, I investigate the Pamunkey community’s Reservation subsistence economy, and the transitional effects the infiltration of industrial capitalism had on the economic life and experiences of Pamunkey people. Evidence uncovered from archaeological investigations on the Reservation, archival resources, and oral testimony from tribal members reveal how the Pamunkey community structured their engagement with the market. Pamunkey market engagement formed a mixed economy that followed an annual seasonal round grounded in the Reservation landscape. The annual round combined traditional subsistence practices of pottery making, fishing, hunting, trapping and horticulture with migratory wage labor. It is apparent these processes and the relationships that fueled them are still at work within the contemporary Reservation community. Thus, this dissertation and the questions that inform it are also shaped by the historical consciousness of the Pamunkey people. Pamunkey economic experiences throughout the nineteenth century highlight the persistence, creative agency, and ingenuity of an Indigenous community that was socially, economically, and politically marginalized. The Pamunkey community’s ability to strategically adapt these practices structured the community’s engagement in the capitalist economy to the Tribe’s advantage, while simultaneously ensuring these practices and the knowledge required to do them survived for future generations.

This thesis analyses the narratives of 33 parents in the United States concerning their decisions to circumcise or leave their children intact, and five key informants consisting of medical professionals involved in obstetric and gynecological care and trained childbirth companions. The United States differs from other nations in the Global North due to its comparatively high rates of neonatal male circumcision, a procedure that is performed as a preventative surgery, rather than for cultural or religious indications. However, in recent years, rates of circumcision have begun to decline. This study sought to gain a nuanced understanding of these trends by examining the factors that influenced the parents in my sample. The results show that parents' circumcision decisions were affected by their evaluations of the procedure's medical risks and benefits and their considerations of the relationship between being circumcised, hygiene, and health. Also relevant to their decisions were concerns and expectations regarding their child's future sexual functioning and pleasure, as well as cultural assumptions about bodily autonomy and integrity. Interviews with five key informants, including medical providers and trained childbirth assistants, provide further context to findings regarding the sometimes-unequal power dynamics between providers and parents. The results of this study raise questions about the extent of informed consent for this procedure and shed light on the ways that parents are sometimes "selective" with the information they use to make decisions. Overall, the findings in this research offer valuable insights into the complexities of parents' decision-making processes and contribute to scholarship on the social and medical dimensions of circumcision.

This thesis examines the use of Tarot cards as a means of healing among individuals in Western divination culture. This research examines how biopolitical discourses affect individual agency when engaging in healing as a form of self-care, it also addresses the ways in which subjects negotiate their own subjectivities in contexts of self-care. I analyze social media discourses about Tarot cards and healing to examine the motivations for using Tarot cards as an alternative route for healing. This research finds that practitioners use Tarot as a means of therapeutic healing similar to talk-therapy. Another finding suggests that, practitioners make use of Tarot in spiritual and secular worldviews. Research findings also provide that practitioners create and reinforce identity through the use of Tarot. Finally, research findings suggest that most participants were able to create a community through the use of Tarot that establishes their own definition of self-care. These findings illuminate the ways in which a divination practice supports self-care and must be reconsidered in contexts of emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. I argue for a reconsidering of what it means to be a Tarot practitioner in a Western biomedical context in which methods of care are not always accessible. A better understanding of how Tarot practitioners use Tarot cards as a method of self-care can contribute to a better understanding of alternative methods to healing in a Western biomedical context.

Music remains an important aspect of culture and society, proven by copious academic studies exploring how humans create, experience, and utilize it. The emergence of punk rock as a music genre and scene of interconnected individuals in the mid-to-late 1970s provides significant insight into social and political attitudes of the time. Punk rock's continued existence in the present day reflects similar themes to its first incarnation besides forging new directions for the genre and the scene. In this study I examine social factors within the current Central Florida punk rock scene that contribute to its evolution and longevity. I used participant observation and semi-structured interviews to obtain ethnographic data from punk rock scene members and understand their experiences in the scene. I found two prevailing themes in the Central Florida punk scene, community and networking, which serve to unite scene members and ensure punk rock as a DIY, underground scene remains relevant at present time. Based on this, I conclude that the current punk rock scene exists as a critique to contemporary societal norms around the world as well as an example of mixed-mode complex social networking and information sharing.

In pre-Hispanic Central Mexico, communities frequently practiced various forms of embodying social identity through the use of facial adornments. Ornaments were placed in the ears, nose, and lips to materialize aspects of both self and collective identity. Important characteristics, such as age, gender, status, kinship, and ethnicity can be better understood through analysis of facial ornaments recovered from archaeological sites. Recent research at the Late Postclassic (AD 1420-1521) city of Tlaxcallan has provided insight into how facial ornamentation varied within the central highlands of Mexico. Typological analysis of ornaments and figurines recovered at Tlaxcallan and comparative examinations between Tlaxcalteca and Aztec historical documents has provided evidence to support varying embodiment practices between these groups. Despite their shared Nahua identity and close proximity, the Tlaxcalteca and the Aztecs chose to emphasize significantly different aspects of identity within their own social hierarchies. The persistent conflict and varying political organization between these communities is reflected in their embodiment practices. Thus, these objects have the potential to reveal how larger sociopolitical interactions can affect local collective identities. Through this comparative analysis, I demonstrate how the Tlaxcalteca and the Aztecs identified aspects of social identity through analysis of facial ornamentation.

This thesis explores the complex relationship between making African Diaspora history and culture visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting that has historically been seen as "white". The four hundredth anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans in Virginia has created a fraught space to examine African American collective memories of shared history, community and commemoration. This thesis operationalizes Page and Thomas's (1994) "white public space" which describes the utilization of "locations, sites, patterns, configurations or devices that routinely discursively, and sometimes coercively privilege Euro-Americans over nonwhites" (1994: 111). When this concept is applied to the construction of heritage and production of history, it may this be reconceptualized as "white public heritage space". At Jamestown, Jim Crow-era Anglo-Protestant elites created white public heritage space through their interpretation of archaeological sites, objects, historical events, and spaces to reaffirm white supremacist hierarchical views on the past in an effort to naturalize white privilege and structural violence toward non-whites. These formulas of silences construct an uneven past which add to what Tillet describes as "civic estrangement," the feeling of alienation from the "rights and privileges of the contemporary public sphere" (2009:125). For African Americans, civic estrangement further complicates the always complex process of identity formation and negatively affects transnational diasporic relations. To confront early-20th-century misrepresentations, archaeologists and heritage professionals at Jamestown have begun engaging the local descendant African American community in collective knowledge production centered around Angela, one of the first African women that lived at Jamestown in the 1620s. This method draws upon critical praxis as it aims to reconstruct traditional power relationships in archaeological production of histories and identities. Here, the Angela Site is foregrounding the life and influences of one of the first "invisible" African women to have lived and labored in the colony. Connecting postcolonial theory and community-collaborative methods, this thesis explores the production of dominant histories, plausible alternative interpretations of the colonial past, and relationships between heritage sites and local descendant communities.

Sororities are social organizations on college campuses categorized by selective membership and exclusive social events for active members. This research focuses on how sorority members' ideas about beauty relate to their appearance management behaviors in order to gauge how sorority culture contributes to their understanding of physical beauty. Ethnographic data collection took place at a university in the southeastern United States. I conducted 17 semi- structured interviews with members of different sororities and participant observation at sorority recruitment events. There's a common thread that connects every interview: beauty and appearance carry importance. Sorority culture encourages women to put "effort" into their physical appearance to represent themselves and their chapters to their perceived beauty standard. There is clear connection between ideas about health, beauty, and aesthetics in this community. The positive association between health and beauty contributes to personal and societal beauty ideals that are felt by most sorority members. I argue that moralization occurs– where women consider physical health and beauty as synonymous, discouraging and excluding those who do not fit the sorority's beauty standard, who are thus perceived as "unhealthy" as well as unattractive. These ideals influence body modification behavior. By understanding how the social environment contributes to the perceptions of beauty and ideal bodies, this Thesis contributes to a greater awareness of the motivations of sorority members to engage in beauty enhancement.

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, and its aftermath significantly changed the local cultural industry's funding infrastructure. Philanthropic foundations in the United States (US) have provided financial support to local artists, educators, cultural managers, and institutions after the storm for over four years. Based on semi-structured interviews with eight participants and fieldwork, this study provides insight into the colonial and neoliberal policies that progressively stripped the cultural industry's public funding infrastructure and ushered in a US-led "impromptu Institute of Culture." This study proposes that Puerto Rico's cultural industry was founded on a vulnerable system shaped by colonialism, resulting in a financial deterioration mitigated by autonomous organizing. Furthermore, I explore how artists, educators, cultural managers, and museum professionals experience the post-Hurricane Maria cultural industry to inform a critical evaluation of US foundations' roles within a Puerto Rican context. Through an application of disaster anthropologists' vulnerability framework and critical philanthropy literature, I provide an analysis of Puerto Rico's cultural industry, its historical and post-Hurricane Maria development, and a view into an alternative future.

This thesis examines how a Patient-Centered Medical Home addresses, implements, and provides medical and social resources and services within the Florida U.S. safety-net system, and how patients and providers perceive health care interactions between each other. The safety-net clinics seek to fill the care gap for millions of uninsured low-income U.S. residents who cannot afford private insurance, are unemployed, self-employed, undocumented, or their low income exceeds the qualification threshold, and they face barriers in accessing expensive medical care in the U.S. I have conducted ethnographic research at Grace Medical Home, a safety-net clinic in Central Florida, which included five months of primary data collection via participant observation, informal interviews, and 22 semi-structured interviews with healthcare providers, volunteers, and patients. My secondary data analysis focused on health policies and guidelines. Based on the study findings, I argue that safety-net clinics are vital in addressing health care gaps for the uninsured, and are in the position to provide comprehensive services by integrating social care (e.g., transportation, housing, food) together with medical services, including mental healthcare. The generative labor approaches evident at my research site are valuable in mitigating structural vulnerabilities and remaining barriers in the delivery of social care. An example of generative labor of healthcare providers is assisting a patient that is applying for the prescription application program (PAP) which provides free medications to patients for a year. This can be a complicated process but the assistance from a healthcare provider mitigates these complexities by utilizing the provider's expertise of the PAP process. However, the safety-net clinics must navigate complicated and challenging state and government policies. The interview narratives also show that care is conceptualized beyond medical and social needs, with the goal of restoring dignity in care, fostering relationships, and offering Christ-centered, non-judgmental care. In my discussion, I apply critical medical anthropology approaches through an analysis of the health care structures, health inequalities, and the political economy of health care for vulnerable people. This study is significant to anthropology and public health because it demonstrates the implementation of integrative, comprehensive medical and social care in addressing social determinants of health within the Florida safety-net system. It also advances our understanding of the way care is conceptualized at a faith-based safety-net clinic. As patient-centered care is becoming the gold standard in recent decades, this study also contributes an ethnographic analysis of how a safety net clinic achieves the goal of providing this form of care.

In the last few decades, narratives of diversity and international declarations have directed higher education to become more inclusive. In Mexico, new intercultural universities incorporate indigenous knowledges, skills, languages, and values into Western-style curriculum or create new curriculum that centers local elders and community needs in degree completion requirements. As a public university located in Valladolid, Yucatan, Mexico, Universidad de Oriente's objective is to stimulate regional development, yet their mission is to protect and preserve Yucatec Maya language and culture. These opposing priorities generate tensions: is Universidad de Oriente really a school "for the Mayas" or is it yet another iteration of exclusion in the colonial project of the Americas? This tension mirrors the experiences of its students; those who have greater difficulty are also those situated on the colonized side of history geographically, financially, linguistically, and racially/ethnically. In this project, I investigate how students navigate barriers and overcome challenges that stand between them and completing their bachelor's degrees at Universidad de Oriente. The first half of this dissertation introduces problems of dropout and situates Universidad de Oriente within international, national, and regional historical contexts, diversity and interculturality narratives, and educational policy. The second half is an analysis of ethnographic data describing students' experiences during and after COVID-19 lockdowns. I examine tensions inherent in the dual identities of university as driver of regional economic development and as preserver of Maya language and culture, and how these are reflected in the Tourism Development and Maya Language and Culture degree programs. I demonstrate geography and distance are critical factors and situate these within coloniality of power and world systems theory. I argue locating coloniality of distance within terrains of access is indispensable for understanding student challenges and a useful framework for identifying factors leading to student attrition during and after COVID-19 lockdowns.