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In this paper, I draw on two childhood ethnographies to ask basic questions about the foundation of child writing. The first question is, where does writing come from in young children's lives? Answering this question will lead us to childhood play as the foundation of writing. The second question is, how do educators negotiate an inclusive, playful classroom culture in racially divisive and neoliberal times? This question will lead to a critical consideration of forming an inclusive culture in a racially and culturally diverse classroom. In this time of uniform, mandated curricula, rampant in the United States and elsewhere, and of the dismissive attitude towards play and towards childhood diversity (e.g., in race, culture and socioeconomic class), it is worth revisiting basic questions about the beginnings of writing in childhoods. The questions are relevant whether a child is writing on paper, screen, slate, or sand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applied communication interventions call for detailed knowledge of the scene and the cultural assumptions that inform the communication taking place. This paper shows how Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) was used to study the practice of 'conversation' in English language learners (ELLs) groups at a public library in the Western United States. The analysis demonstrated that 'conversation' is a culturally specific practice requiring elucidation. This led to the design of storytelling workshops that helped participants improve their language skills and cultural knowledge. Data were collected in a three-phase project: (1) a preliminary ethnography(2) a design phase to create a strategic plan for addressing concerns, and (3) an applied communication intervention consisting of storytelling workshops for ELLs. The paper provides a model for conducting applied communication research using an ethnographic, culture-centered approach, and demonstrates the value of storytelling as a practice for improving English language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents qualitative field research conducted at a radiology department in the USA. It examines 'the radiologist at work' and analyses the intersubjective ground for her individual diagnostic intentions and personalized strategies for enacting diagnostically-relevant experiences via imaging technology. The paper incorporates the radiologists' use of 'enactive proofs'—observations and professional memories made explicit through their interaction with medical imaging technology and other practitioners in the field. The observations strongly support the development of enactive phenomenology and provide a critique of representationalism and of the primacy of inference in cognition. The results demonstrate the crucial role of shared intentions, providing insight into expert performance in the form of concrete dealings with imaging technology, habituality, the origin of mistakes, multilayered communication, and discovering new ways for improving professional praxis. The findings have much to offer to philosophy, anthropology and radiological practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disgusted by political institutions, many activists around the world are rejecting normal politics in favor of hands-on, tangible local action. This looks similar all over the world, including in the two countries on which the paper focuses, Russia and the United States. Is it? Scholars and activists alike compare one society's activism to another; this paper suggests ways of asking useful questions in cross-national ethnographic research. Controlling the variables of cultural, political/legal, social, and spatial conditions is impossible. With so many "out of control variables", can comparison make any sense? Activists have varied "styles" (Lichterman & Eliasoph The American Journal of Sociology, 120(4): 798–863, 2014) of coordinating local activism in any country. Each style encounters different frictions, depending on a nation's specific cultural, political, social, and spatial conditions. Local, interest-based, grassroot activism is a typical American "style" and is also venerated in American cultural narratives that celebrate local democracy. American activists encounter friction when trying to enact this style, when, for example, they realize that money brings power. For Russian activists, the very same style is a "surprising discovery". Russians encounter different frictions when trying to enact this style. Examining continual, recursive pragmatic tests shows how activists move towards more, towards less, or towards different kinds of politicization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While research on trans People of Color's experiences has been increasing in recent years, this intersectional work has often not included a focus on the specificities of multiracial and multiethnic trans experiences. Aims: This study explores shifts in racial identity by multiracial/multiethnic trans people as they transition gender and the ways Whiteness and nationalist ideology shape their racialized gender experiences. Methods: This paper is based on six in-depth, semi-structured interviewswith self-identifiedmultiracial, multiethnic, andmulti-heritage trans people in the USA. Data collection centered participants' experiences of self-identification and interactionswith others (e.g., family, acquaintances, and strangers). Results: As participants transitioned gender and were acknowledged by others in their gender identity, shifts in their embodiment were used by others to ascribe a new racialized gender. This often resulted in participants reflecting on their sense of self and racialized gender identities in new ways. Discussion: Multiracial and multiethnic transgender people's experiences in transitioning race confirm the importance of intersectional analysis, reveal the intersectional fluidity of social categories, explicate how social understandings of one category (e.g., race) influence another category (e.g., gender), demonstrate that the meanings associated with racialized gender are based in relations of power, and show that, in transgender studies particularly, we must attend to the ways that the concept of transition implicates not only gender, but also other categories such as race and nationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resistance to simple narratives in education research comes from the stance that they render findings useless for the political work of understanding contexts of education as they exist today. This paper interrogates three stories of masking choices from a four year postcritical ethnographic study in the rural rustbelt Midwestern United States. These stories make visible how masking operates as both process and product within and part of white supremacist and colonizing systems. The author calls critical qualitative and postcritical researchers to interrogate the role of protection, answerability, and specificity in their work towards justice in terms of masking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for a critical reframing of masculinity as an intersectional construct in the HIV epidemic and in public health. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 56 Black men who have sex with men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area. Men described their sexual identities and practices via complex narratives of masculinity that drew on subordinated and resourceful adaptations to the structural effects of racism, economic marginalisation and homophobia. By focusing on men whose experience of masculinity operates outside fixed identity categories, the paper draws attention to the intersectionality that is, by necessity, constitutive of men's lived experiences. Findings suggest the value of an integrative framework for understanding Black masculinities as processes and practices simultaneously informed by structural inequalities (racism, economic marginalisation and/or homophobia, in particular) and cultural meanings of gender. By utilising an intersectional approach, public health and sociology can better understand the concurrent resilience and vulnerability of masculinities, while building an interdisciplinary understanding of the symbolic role of Black masculinities in the USA, as well as a means by which to promote health and well-being in and through these gendered contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • This paper mobilizes primary material evidence and analyzes spatiotemporal trends to explore the role of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in enforcing the contemporary border, particularly in terms of the trend known as the migration funnel effect. • Enabling a comparative view of migration and border security, the variables considered include the left behind belongings of undocumented migrants, migrant death records, and the physical infrastructure of border security. • Three distinct periods associated with the increased walling and shifting migration patterns are proposed. • This paper utilizes an intertwined theoretical framing building on theories of sovereignty and materiality. • This innovative analysis combines ethnography, document analysis, archaeological survey, and GIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic studies inside prisons are especially difficult to execute. In addition to facing amplified challenges in gaining site access, earning subjects' trust, and tolerating the exhaustion of fieldwork, researchers who collect participant observation and in-depth interview data behind bars must confront an explicit asymmetrical power relation. Prison ethnographers penetrate, to varying levels of depth, a social universe where staff dominate prisoners and where prisoners, largely in response to the pains of their imprisonment, carve paths to dignity. This paper considers how and where non-staff and non-incarcerated ethnographers can awkwardly fit into (or fail out of) this space. Drawing on insights from two ethnographic studies in the United States, the authors detail their particular and common experiences across three phases: access, collection, and exit. These experiences motivate a description of prison ethnography as "punishing fieldwork." Such research is not only exacting, it is also significantly contained and directed by penal power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: Minoritized youth from historically marginalized backgrounds continue to face systemic inequities in STEM. Existing strategies aimed at increasing diversity in STEM, which are guided by the STEM "pipeline" metaphor and are deficit-oriented, have yielded lackluster results. Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study: This paper investigates how minoritized youth attempted to build connecting pathways between STEM-related worlds, how such attempts unfolded, and the resultant outcomes pertaining to their developing STEM expertise and subsequent STEM engagement. We introduce the idea of pathhacking, where youth had to create their own pathways into STEM, often with improvised tools and in treacherous territory, because there were no pre-laid paths. Research Design/Data Collection and Analysis: Data were drawn from longitudinal critical ethnography of 48 youths across STEMengagement spaces, in both community and formal school spaces. Attention is paid to the particular resources, both relational and material, and the barriers that affect youths' efforts to hack pathways toward deeper and more connected engagement in STEM. Spaces included school classrooms, school settings, after-school STEM programs held in community clubs, other spaces in communities such as residential neighborhoods, and local universities. Findings/Results: Three broad claims are presented: (a) Pathhacking involves youth engaging in practices that challenge and expand ways of being in STEM-related spaces; (b) Pathhacking practices, when coordinated through social activity, reorganize social worlds for both individuals and collectives, expanding future pathhacking possibilities; (c) To aid in pathhacking, youth utilize tools including critical STEM-mobility artifacts and allies as brokers across scales of activity. Conclusions: The current U.S. education-policy climate focuses attention on student achievement in individual subject areas, highlighting the achievement gap. We illustrate the challenges minoritized youth face as they seek more consequential STEM engagement through hacking connecting pathways. Institutions, people, tools, and practices--all imbued with and embedded in histories--have structured these youths' opportunities to hack connecting pathways and have also provided points of access and resistance for the youth to resist marginalization during the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many ways, grief is thought to be outside the realm of bioethics and clinical ethics, and grieving patients or family members may be passed off to grief counselors or therapists. Yet grief can play a particularly poignant role in the ethical encounter, especially in cases of brain death, where the line between life and death has been blurred. Although brain death is legally and medically recognized as death in the United States and elsewhere, the concept has been contentious since its inception in 1968. Yet in most cases, families are not allowed to reject the determination of brain death. Apart from religious exemptions, families have no recourse to reject this controversial determination of death. This paper explores the role of grief in brain death determinations and argues that bioethics has failed to address the complexity of grief in determinations of brain death. Grief ought to have epistemological weight in brain death determinations because of the contested nature of the diagnosis and the unique ways in which grief informs the situation. Thus, I argue that, in some rare cases, reasonable accommodation policies should be expanded to allow for refusals of brain death determinations based on the emotional and moral force of grief. By drawing on ethnographic accounts of grief in other cultures, I problematize the current procedural and linear understandings of grief in brain death determinations, and I conclude by offering a new way in which to understand the case of Jahi McMath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, ethnographers often presented themselves in the classic hero frame, where they appeared authoritative and calm. Recent ethnographers, though, reveal hardship and vulnerability yet prevail as "new age heroes" who overcame danger and doubt. Missing are the important methodological insights of ethnographers who experience multiple setbacks and obstacles, ones that lead to a broken ethnography, or one that never materializes or starts. Here, the ethnographer suffers, becoming dispirited and wanting to surrender or give up. This paper breaks that methodological silence, showing how difficult gang research in Los Angeles County placed me in a broken ethnography, one where I became disillusioned and questioned my abilities and resolve. In the end, the experience revealed important methodological lessons, ones that provide guidance for future ethnographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The ceremonial use of psychoactive/hallucinogenic plant based drugs, such as ayahuasca, psilocybin and others, is a growing trend in the United States (US) and globally. To date, there has been little research documenting how many people are using psychoactive substances in this context, who the users are, what benefits/risks exist in the use of these drugs and the relationship between ceremonial drug use and recreational drug use. In this paper we describe a cohort of plant medicine facilitators in the US and explore how they differentiate plant medicine use from recreational drug use. Methods: Using modified ethnography, individual interviews were conducted in 2016 with 15 participants who are currently facilitating plant medicine ceremonies in the US. Descriptive content analysis was performed to discover themes and to inform a larger mixed-method study. Results: Ceremonial drug use was seen by participants as a natural healing and treatment modality used in the context of community and ritual. Three main themes were identified relating to participants' differentiation between ceremonial plant medicine use and recreational drug use: (1) participants see a clear delineation between plant medicine use and recreational drug use; (2) plant medicine is seen as a potential treatment for addiction, but concerns exist regarding potential interference with recovery; and (3) plant medicine use may influence recreational use. Conclusions: More research is needed on who is using plant medicine, motivators for use, perceived and real risks and benefits of plant medicine use and harm reduction techniques regarding safe ingestion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public officials more responsive to requests from affluent or poor constituents? A growing body of evidence suggests that lawmakers are more responsive to the rich when they craft policy. However, some scholars theorize that officials also exhibit a corresponding bias in favor of the poor when they handle casework, essentially giving policy to the rich and services to the poor. In this paper, we test this casework prediction using four experiments in which confederates sent simple requests to state or local officials. In each, our confederates’ reported social classes were randomly assigned and signaled with a brief introductory statement mentioning the sender’s occupation or economic situation. Across our samples, we find precisely-estimated null effects of social class biases: the officials we studied were equally likely to respond regardless of the constituent’s class. These findings raise doubts about whether casework is really a class-biased process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommend that pregnant women receive the Tdap vaccine during every pregnancy. The objectives of this paper are to evaluate disparities in Tdap vaccination among pregnant women in the U.S., and to assess whether race/ethnicity and other characteristics are associated with factors that inform pregnant women's decisions about Tdap vaccination. Methods We conducted a nationwide cross-sectional web-based survey of pregnant women in the U.S. during June-July 2014. The primary outcome was self-reported vaccination status with Tdap during pregnancy, categorized as vaccinated, unvaccinated with intent to be vaccinated during the current pregnancy, and unvaccinated with no intent to be vaccinated during the current pregnancy. Secondary outcomes included factors that influenced women's decisions about vaccination and information needs. We used multivariable logistic regression models to estimate odds ratios for associations between race/ethnicity and the outcomes. Results Among pregnant women who completed the survey, 41% (95% CI 36-45%) reported that they had received Tdap during the current pregnancy. Among those women in the third trimester at the time of survey, 52% (95% CI 43-60%) had received Tdap during the current pregnancy. Hispanic women had higher Tdap vaccination than white women and black women (53%, p < 0.05, compared with 38 and 36%, respectively). In logistic regression models adjusting for maternal age, geographic region, education, and income, Hispanic women were more likely to have been vaccinated with Tdap compared with white women (aOR 2.29, 95% CI 1.20-4.37). Higher income and residing in the western U.S. were also independently associated with Tdap vaccination during pregnancy. Twenty-six percent of surveyed women had not been vaccinated with Tdap yet but intended to receive the vaccine during the current pregnancy; this proportion did not differ significantly by race/ethnicity. The most common factor that influenced women to get vaccinated was a health care provider (HCP) recommendation. The most common reason for not getting vaccinated was a concern about safety of the vaccine. Conclusions This study found that some disparities exist in Tdap vaccination among pregnant women in the U.S., and HCPs have an important role in providing information and recommendations about the maternal Tdap recommendation to pregnant women so they can make informed vaccination decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid ongoing controversies in ethnography concerning representation, reproducibility, and generalizability, social scientific scholarship has increasingly taken a mixed-methods turn. While studies that blend qualitative and quantitative data promise to enhance the validity of representations of social worlds under analysis, they cannot escape contending with foundational dilemmas of scientific translation, integration, and commensurability across methodological paradigms. Recent debates have ignited a new line of inquiry about the integration of multiple methods in ethnography. In this paper, we argue that “cameo appearances”—the summoning of either qualitative or quantitative analyses in separate, purely mono-method studies—amounts to a form of methodological tokenism under the guise of methodological pluralism. We articulate sampling design, enhanced training, and curriculum development as crucial for arbitrating these debates as mixed-methods research emerges as a distinct innovation in twenty-first-century ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of the Proffered Papers Meeting held at the Institute of Education, University of London, in London, England on September 20, 2002, on study of human biology. Historical population structure of Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina; Comparison of anthropometric and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry estimates of body fat in African children; Growth of South African urban children during the 1990s.

Based on my own experience as both a student and a teacher, this paper illuminates the “gap” between the systems of anthropology education in Japanese and American universities, and argues that the major “gap” between the Japanese and the American systems of anthropology education lies in the number of professional anthropologists in the unit of teaching and that small Japanese programs with just a handful of anthropologists can offer only general apprenticeship-type training while large American departments with at least fifteen or more anthropologists can provide a wide range of courses and advisory committees of specialists matching the areas of concentration chosen by graduate students. I conclude that this “gap” in the size and style of anthropology education explains why more “star” anthropologists are produced in America than in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The emergence of the Swift Creek style tradition represents a shift from two or three simple carved paddle designs to many thousands of unique paddle designs by middle Swift Creek then back to merely a few in late and post Swift Creek times. This explosion in designs is a striking phenomenon, in need of consideration. Increased design diversity implicates a rise in creativity, verging on an imperative to be unique, where none previously existed in this medium. In this paper, we offer a revised model of Swift Creek social dynamics by reference to the new-found creativity of paddle makers situated within the context of ethnographic case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was originally designed as an emergency initiative, operating with considerable funds, immediate roll-out, fast scale-up, and top-down technocratic administration. In a more recent iteration, PEPFAR shifted its focus from an emergency response to more closely account for healthcare sustainability. This transition came on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis, which threatened to stall the ‘marvellous momentum’ of the 2000's boom in donor aid for global health overall. Now many programmes are having to do more with less as funding flattens or decreases. This paper examines how this transition took shape in Tanzania in 2011–2012, and the successes and challenges associated with it, using participant observation and interview data from 20 months of fieldwork in rural and urban healthcare settings. In particular, I discuss (1) efforts to increase sustainability and country ownership of HIV programmes in Tanzania, focusing on the shift from PEPFAR-funded American non-governmental organisations to Tanzanian partner organisations; (2) principal challenges stakeholders encountered during the transition, including fragmented systems of healthcare delivery and a weakened healthcare workforce; and (3) strategies informants identified to better integrate services in order to build a stronger, more equitable, and sustainable health system in Tanzania. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is growing concern among US-based clinicians, patients, policy makers, and in the media about the personal and community health risks associated with opioids. Perceptions about the efficacy and appropriateness of opioids for the management of chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) have dramatically transformed in recent decades. Yet, there is very little social scientific research identifying the factors that have informed this transformation from the perspectives of prescribing clinicians. As part of an on-going ethnographic study of CNCP management among clinicians and their patients with co-occurring substance use, we interviewed 23 primary care clinicians who practice in safety-net clinical settings. In this paper, we describe the clinical and social influences informing three historic periods: (1) the escalation of opioid prescriptions for CNCP; (2) an interim period in which the efficacy of and risks associated with opioids were re-assessed; and (3) the current period of “opioid pharmacovigilance,” characterized by the increased surveillance of opioid prescriptions. Clinicians reported that interpretations of the evidence-base in favor of and opposing opioid prescribing for CNCP evolved within a larger clinical-social context. Historically, pharmaceutical marketing efforts and clinicians' concerns about racialized healthcare disparities in pain treatment influenced opioid prescription decision-making. Clinicians emphasized how patients' medical complexity (e.g. multiple chronic health conditions) and structural vulnerability (e.g. poverty, community violence) impacted access to opioids within resource-limited healthcare settings. This clinical-social history of opioid prescribing practices helps to elucidate the ongoing challenges of CNCP treatment in the US healthcare safety net and lends needed specificity to the broader, nationwide conversation about opioids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper argues that older adults living alone in the U.S. face a set of unique challenges, as they are likely to experience a sense of precariousness. The term precariousness points to an intrinsic sense of instability and insecurity stemming from a lack of, or difficulty to, access essential resources. During a two-year ethnography of 47 older solo dwellers, this term captured one of the distinctive traits of the experience of living alone in older age in the U.S. The findings from semi-structured interviews and participant observation highlight the emergence of the notion of precariousness along three levels of analysis. First, on the micro and subjective level of analysis, older solo dwellers may struggle to perform the chores related to their household as they may deal with a failing body, faltering memory, and fixed if not shrinking income. Second, on the meso and institutional level of analysis, older adults living alone need to navigate the complex, scattered, and ever-changing landscape of services and understand their eligibility criteria, accessibility, fees, and conditions. At the same time they may have to deal with family issues. Finally, the macro level examines the pressure on older solo dwellers of a prevalent ideology that prizes independent behaviors and personal responsibility. In conclusion, the notion of precariousness illustrates the unique position of older adults living alone as they face different type of challenges on a micro, meso, and macro dimension. The paper ends with an invitation to create social policies that accommodate the needs of a growing number of older adults living alone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the grid of sentiment that structures medical travel to India. In contrast to studies that render emotion as ancillary, the paper argues that affect is fundamental to medical travel's ability to ease the linked somatic, emotional, financial, and political injuries of being ill 'back home'. The ethnographic approach follows the scenes of medical travel within the Indian corporate hospital room, based on observations and interviews among foreign patients, caregivers, and hospital staff in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore. Foreign patients conveyed diverse sentiments about their journey to India ranging from betrayal to gratitude, and their expressions of risk, healthcare costs, and cultural difference help sustain India's popularity as a medical travel destination. However, although the affective dimensions of medical travel promise a remedy for foreign patients, they also reveal the fault lines of market medicine in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tells a story about miscegenation between US military personnel and Okinawan women from 1945-1952, which includes sexual violence, the establishment of 'entertainment districts,' and the emergence of international marriage. Whereas this history has been mobilized by leftists as a truth-weapon in the struggle for political sovereignty from the US military, this paper takes an explicitly genealogical approach. Drawing on Foucault's work on biopower, this paper shows how Okinawans were transformed into 'petitioning subject' - subjects that negotiated the sexual exploitation of their bodies in tandem with the radically changing relationship between their bodies and the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the psychology field moves towards establishing more evidence-based treatment (EBT), the applicability of EBT for different racial and immigrant groups (i.e., African American, Asian Americans and Pacific Islander, and Native American/Native Alaskan) is paramount. The current paper highlights the process of culturally adapting an EBT group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention for use with Haitian American adolescents diagnosed with depression. Overall the main objective of this project was to culturally adapt the Adolescent Coping with Depression Course (ACDC) to ensure that it includes cultural factors that are likely to engage and retain Haitian adolescents in mental health treatment. The paper summarizes the cultural training of the focus group leaders, the focus group sessions with a group of Haitian middle-school students, and the feedback received from the participants regarding the intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports based on data collected from the 2000 U.S. Census reveal a dramatic transformation in the landscape of poverty and inequality in the United States in the 1990s. U.S. central city areas have witnessed considerable decreases in rates of poverty while, at the same time, suburbs have experienced significant increases in rates of poverty. Indeed, the outcome of this shift has resulted in demographic trends, quality of life issues, economic and social outcomes, and signs of physical deterioration that we often associate with deteriorating inner cities now being found in a number of American suburbs. Beyond basic demographic information, however, little is known about daily life in these areas. This paper explores the conceptual, analytical, and methodological contributions of Herbert Gans, specifically, his ethnographic study of the suburban community Levittown, for the study of these changes. The paper reviews the literature on suburban poverty in order to identify the ways in which Gans's work contributes to future suburban scholarship as students of the suburb grapple with trying to understand and examine this transformation and the impact that this suburban change has had on the daily lives of the poor living in these recently turned poor suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the multiple expressions of Central American immigrant Pentecostalism in the Pico Union district of Los Angeles. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in three temples and informal conversations with over 30 active Pentecostals, this paper shows that Central American immigrant Pentecostals tend to congregate on the basis of “congregational homophily,” or shared social and cultural characteristics, especially in terms of age, marital status, presence of infirmities or ailments, and national/regional origin. This paper also explores the ways in which Central American immigrant Pentecostals tailor their religious practices to reflect their “congregational homophily” through the differential inclusion/exclusion of practices such as healing, “roommating,” and formal and informal discussions of shared histories. By focusing on “congregational homophily” and the active constructions and reconstructions of Central American immigrant Pentecostalism, we gain more insight into the ways some Central American immigrants negotiate their lives and experiences in the increasingly fettered social, cultural, and political topography of contemporary Los Angeles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the struggles of the Mexican American civil rights in Los Angeles, California during the early Cold War era. Accordingly, the paper explains the ways in which those mid-century campaigns for Mexican American civil rights were fundamentally cooperative. The paper also highlighted the significance of the struggle of the Mexican American civil rights for Mexican Americans' quest for full citizenship

The article focuses on the issues surrounding the citizenship of Mexican-Americans in the U.S. Accordingly, the paper traces back, and unravels the often-pragmatic history of racial and ethnic politics of Mexican-Americans. The paper also provides opinions as a way to engage the past history of racial reform among Mexican-Americans and as part of an ongoing effort to understand the context, history, and activism of those who worked to expand the meaning of citizenship for minorities in the U.S.

This paper first defines race and related dehumanizing experiences and then explores the history of the study of Blacks in ethnography and in psychoanalysis before addressing the primary focus: psychoanalytical ethnography. Psychoanalytical ethnography is valuable for transforming racially wounded communities into vibrant open communities through creating a safe place for community leaders and residents to ‘play’. In the process of their play, they gradually unravel the layers of race, which most fundamentally is emotionality, and begin to engage in tasks that work towards developing a more open, welcoming community. The paper draws on the work of neo‐Freudians such as Winnicott and Kohut to develop a safe space for the researcher and focus groups to create a process of play that unpeels layers or race as an emotional scar and to develop empowering ways to transform closed communities into open communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper provides the most complete accounting of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) Native outreach since 1995, when there were only a few scattered projects. Method: The descriptive overview is based on a review of project reports, inventories, and databases and input from the NLM Specialized Information Services Division, National Network Office of the Library Operations Division, National Network of Libraries of Medicine, and Office of Health Information Programs Development of the Office of the NLM Director. The overview focuses on NLM- supported or sponsored outreach initiatives involving Native peoples: American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Results: The review of NLM's relevant activities resulted in a portfolio of projects that clustered naturally into the following areas: major multisite projects: Tribal Connections and related, Native American Information Internship Project: Sacred Root, tribal college outreach and tribal librarianship projects, collaboration with inter-tribal and national organizations, participation in Native American Powwows, Native American Listening Circle Project, Native American Health Information, and other Native American outreach projects. Implications: NLM's Native American Outreach reached programmatic status as of late 2004. The companion paper identifies several areas of possible new or enhanced Native outreach activities. Both papers highlight the importance of solid reporting and evaluation to optimize project results and programmatic balance and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Overcoming health disparities between majority and minority populations is a significant national challenge. This paper assesses outreach to Native Americans (American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians) by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). A companion paper details NLM's portfolio of Native American outreach projects. Method: NLM's Native American outreach is assessed in light of the presentations at a community-based health information outreach symposium and the goals set by NLM's plan to reduce health disparities. Results: NLM's current portfolio of Native American outreach projects appears most advanced in meeting the goal set in area 1 of the health disparities plan, "Promote use of health information by health professionals and the public." NLM's portfolio also shows significant strength and good progress regarding area 2 of the plan, "Expand partnerships among various types of libraries and community-based organizations." The portfolio is weaker in area 3, "Conduct and support informatics research." More knowledge-building efforts would benefit NLM, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, and Native American and community-based organizations. Implications: The current Native American outreach portfolio should be continued, but new approaches are needed for evaluating Native American outreach and for forging collaborations with Native American groups, approaches grounded in consultation and mutual understanding of needs and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Luc Faucher and others have argued for the existence of deep cultural differences between ‘Chinese’ and ‘East Asian’ ways of understanding the world and those of ‘ancient Greeks’ and ‘Americans’. Rejecting Alison Gopnik’s speculation that the development of modern science was driven by the increasing availability of leisure and information in the late Renaissance, they claim instead—following Richard Nisbett—that the birth of mathematical science was aided by ‘Greek’, or ‘Western’, cultural norms that encouraged analytic, abstract and rational theorizing. They argue that ‘Chinese’ and ‘East Asian’ cultural norms favoured, by contrast, holistic, concrete and dialectical modes of thinking. After clarifying some of the things that can be meant by ‘culture’ and ‘mentality’, the present paper shows that Faucher and his colleagues make a number of appeals—to the authority of comparative studies and history of science, to the psychological studies of Nisbett and his colleagues, and to a hidden assumption of strong cultural continuity in the West. It is argued that every one of these appeals is misguided, and, further, that the psychological findings of Nisbett and others have little bearing on questions concerning the origins of modern science. Finally, it is suggested that the ‘Needham question’ about why the birth of modern science occurred in Europe rather than anywhere else is itself multiply confused to the extent that it may express no significant query. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Multi-disciplinary research projects are increasingly common in the social sciences, but melding diverse methods and techniques together, especially in the often chaotic data collection phase, has received little attention from office-bound quantitative researchers and qualitative researchers obsessed with issues of reflexivity. As an ethnographer and ‘junior partner’ on a multidisciplinary study of HIV risk among youth in Brooklyn, New York, this paper examines some of the unanticipated problems and surprising outcomes encountered in trying to combine the two research approaches. The complex issue of constructing an identity in the field—survey researcher versus ethnographer—is discussed in light of experiences from this project. The researchers had expected the ethnography to facilitate the survey component of the research, and it did, but an unexpected outcome was how the survey helped later ethnographic work by decreasing ambiguity about the ethnographer''s identity and purpose in the neighbourhood. The paper also examines a single, unpleasant event that occurred while administering the structured survey to underscore the hypothesis- and theory-generating potential of ethnography. While fieldwork may clearly be risky in a variety of ways, the paper underscores the idea that the fieldwork process is often essential to the development of theory. A seamless fit between quantitative and ethnographic approaches to research remains a distant goal, but ethnographers must continue to exercise flexibility, persistently and creatively carving out their unique niches within the larger field of social science research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyses the identity politics of the US Patriot Movement and how it addresses the anxieties its primary constituency—working-class whites—have with globalization. White workers find themselves straddling an identity fault under globalization. By virtue of their class, they suffer exploitation within a capitalist system. By virtue of their race, they find themselves the beneficiaries of racial privileges. To analyse how a patriot politic addresses this dual positionality, a poststructuralist identity theory is employed, focusing on a subset of this literature known as whiteness studies. It is argued that discourses of patriotism keep patriots from addressing the economic basis of many of their grievances while buttressing notions of cultural/racial superiority through 'safe' nationalistic coding. The Patriot Movement in Central Kentucky is examined as a case study—in particular,its deployment of a patriot politic around two issues: calls to legalize industrial hemp and efforts to stop the designation of a biosphere reserve in the state.This paper's conclusions are situated within a current debate in whiteness studies between those calling for the abolition of whiteness and those calling for its reconstruction. The paper contends that disidentification is not a viable option without alternative categories to replace it. The willingness of Kentucky patriots to galvanize around a patriot politics despite realizing goals through it indicates that working-class whites are anxious for political categories of action in the new global era. Given that working-class whites are mobilizing around categories that code their race-based anxieties, however, reconstruction paradigms must also consider the reconstruction of categories—such as 'patriot'—that currently work to divide workers along racial lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The openness of the concept of gentrification—its practical flexibility as a sign—makes it useful, and thus prominent, in everyday conversations about the socio-spatial changes affecting Oakland, CA and other US cities. Within gentrification studies, however, this openness has often been seen as a conceptual problem to be corrected. In this paper, rather than refine a categoric definition of gentrification, we focus on the contingent ways that a range of political actors articulate relational identities and claims in struggles over public space. We observe that, as a situated and unstable constellation of meanings and resonances, the talk of gentrification is central to urban cultural politics in places like Oakland. We thus argue that the ‘chaotic’ use of the term is neither a conceptual problem nor a political failure. Instead, it is in itself a rich and meaningful subject of research on urban life, pointing to a multiplicity of sites in which new and consequential formations of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and disbelonging, are forged in practice. Using six months of ethnographic fieldwork, we detail the struggle over Oakland First Fridays, a downtown street festival. In particular, we show how a diverse group of organizers drew on ‘gentrification’ as agrid of meaningto configure and reconfigure the event’sdeserving publicin ways that rendered commercial vendors, young people of color and political protesters increasingly out of place. We thus argue that viewing ‘gentrification’ as a grid of meaning allows us to appreciate fluctuating formations of inclusion and exclusion—formations that a too-rigid focus on gentrification as a socio-spatial and political–economic process of urban change can either naturalize or obscure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on testimonials of migration journeys of indigenous Cañaris from southern highland Ecuador, this paper examines strategies of mobility and social networking employed by migrants and facilitators in the human smuggling market. Following a series of economic crises in the late 1990s, Ecuadorian transnational migration increased significantly, with a 55.5 percent increase to the United States between 2000 and 2008, and staggering 12,150 percent increase to Spain between 1998 and 2005. This article focuses on the growth of a regional migration industry in the southern highland region, and pays special attention to the roles of indigenous Cañari migrants and migration merchants. The guiding questions are: how does indigeneity figure in mobility strategies; in what ways is indigenous identity strategically employed in the migration journey; and how might indigenous migration merchants contribute to the expansion of migration? As migration routes become increasingly dangerous, migrants and human smuggling actors employ more innovative and riskier strategies. I contend that while indigenous identity may be used strategically and allow migrants to forge new transnational social networks, indigenous migrants struggle for legibility in the face of ethnic and linguistic discrimination, in communities of origin, along migratory routes, and in migration destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1900, Eva Shawnee, a Creek girl, enrolled in Hampton Normal and Agriculture Institute. Hampton aimed to uplift the black race through academics, industrial trades, and manual training. It opened its doors to Native Americans between 1878 and 1923; however, when Eva's youngest siblings enrolled at Hampton, they registered as Negro. Traditional perspectives in American history, because of institutionalized racial hierarchies inside and outside the academy, provide challenges to the types of interdisciplinary scholarship that may address families like the Shawnees. Utilizing but transcending the academic sphere, this article encourages dialogue between marginalized groups and argues that they have more to gain by uniting than by maintaining colonial divisions between them. This paper will explore recent academic work on African American-American Indian families and consider how indigenous critical theoretical perspectives may challenge traditional views of American history. This topic is as timely as it is timeless. This history is pregnant with possibilities and burdened with pain. As imperialism haunts our hearts and our minds, its specter promises to plague our children if we do not extract lessons and actively work to break complementary cycles of oppressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical anthropology has long appreciated the clinical encounter as a rich source of data and a key site for critical inquiry. It is no surprise, then, that a number of physician-anthropologists have used their clinical insights to make important contributions to the field. How does this duality challenge and enhance the moral practice and ethics of care inherent both to ethnography and to medicine? How do bureaucratic and professional obligations of HIPAA and the IRB intersect with aspirations of anthropology to understand human experience and of medicine to heal with compassion? In this paper, I describe my simultaneous fieldwork and clinical practice at an urban women's jail in the United States. In this setting, being a physician facilitates privileged access to people and spaces within, garners easy trust, and enables an insider perspective more akin to observant participation than participant observation. Through experiences of delivering the infants of incarcerated pregnant women and of being with the mothers as they navigate drug addiction, child custody battles, and re-incarceration, the roles of doctor and anthropologist become mutually constitutive and transformative. Moreover, the dual practice reveals congruities and cracks in each discipline's ethics of care. Being an anthropologist among informants who may have been patients reworks expectations of care and necessitates ethical practice informed by the dual roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]