UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
42 results
Search Results
Item Beyond Consultation: Rethinking the Indigenous Right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Costa Rica(2024) Breitfeller, Jessica Ashley; Chernela, Janet M.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is an international legal norm meant to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ right to be consulted about projects that affect their lands. Over the past decade, the small Central American country of Costa Rica has strived to develop and implement a series of new, ‘culturally appropriate’ consultation protocols to better uphold the right to FPIC. This dissertation investigates the concept of FPIC as it applies to the Indigenous Bribri in the context of Costa Rica's burgeoning national forestry and climate change strategy known as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program. Drawing on extended, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, this dissertation addresses the issues of Indigenous agency and autonomy by considering the ways in which the country’s REDD+ consultations and emerging FPIC processes serve to both strengthen and weaken communities’ rights to participation and self-determination. Weaving together a conceptual framework from political ecology, critical development theory, and political and legal anthropology, this study reveals that the country’s current FPIC protocols perpetuate historical state-Indigenous relations while simultaneously creating new opportunities for negotiation, compromise, and resistance. I demonstrate that FPIC consultations are all at once sites of ontological conflict, a legal instrument for the ontological defense of territoriality, and participatory spaces of (re)negotiation and resistance wherein ontological differences are arbitrated in an effort to shape policy and transform age-old power relations. Ultimately, this research deepens our understanding of how Western mechanisms designed to protect human rights and natural resources intersect with Indigenous ways of knowing and being to inform broader debates on Indigenous self-determination and climate justice. In doing so, it asks us to consider how we—as scholars, advocates, and practitioners—may go about collaboratively reimagining and rethinking FPIC in the future.Item The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and Faunal Repatriation(2024) Touchin, Jewel Miriam; Palus, Matthew M; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was enacted in 1990 for the repatriation and disposition of certain Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. Although it has been 34 years since the law was enacted, tribal nations have experienced hurdles associated with repatriating faunal remains from institutions. This thesis uses data from the Federal Register, published sources documenting oral histories, and the National NAGPRA website to address two research questions. In addition, a survey questionnaire provided additional information from bioarchaeologists and faunal analysts, and tribal cultural resources professionals regarding their general thoughts on NAGPRA. These sources of information were analyzed to address two questions:• How have dog remains been repatriated through NAGPRA? • Are there any trends in the data that show progression and integration of tribal voices or tribal input regarding faunal repatriation during the NAGPRA process? This is an important issue for tribal communities who have different ways of defining faunal remains based on their concepts of personhood and based on their oral traditions. This thesis focuses on dog remains and attempts to demonstrate how dog remains have been repatriated in the past and to identify any trends that show tribal input during the repatriation process.Item THE EMBODIED EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES OF BLACK MEN PARTICIPATING IN A HOSPITAL-BASED VIOLENCE INTERVENTION PROGRAM(2024) Wical, William Grant; Richardson, Joseph; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gun violence is a public health and racial justice issue which requires significant societal change to effectively decrease its impact on the lives of Black men and their communities. While hospital-based violence intervention programs have been identified as a promising mode of prevention, they have largely overlooked the ways Black men who survive gunshot wounds feel, determine what constitutes effective violence prevention, and subjectively experience trauma. This dissertation explores how those who received psychosocial support from an intervention program interpret their emotional experiences related to trauma, healing, and loss to make claims about society, themselves, and justice. Their affective experiences contrast significantly with dominant discourses of violence, race, and emotionality. Attention to these emotional experiences can provide a foundation for a fundamentally different ethics of caring. This redefinition of what it means to provide care challenges the current usage of trauma as the primary analytic to evaluate Black men’s experiences related to violence and underscores the need to shift prevention efforts away from individualistic models toward those geared at creating structural change.Item “But Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not” Comparing Gender Roles in the Ballad Tam Lin and Medieval and Renaissance Scotland.(2023) Conant, Charlotte; Bianchini, \Janna; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tam Lin, a medieval Scottish Ballad tells the story of an unusually forceful young Lady Janet. Janet does many of the feats of strength in her story, defies her father, refuses to behave as a ‘good Christian woman’ might and suffers no consequences for her actions. She ends her story successfully married to a noble Christian man, having saved him from the evil pagan Fairy Queen. This ballad has been popular for centuries, and has been cited as a ballad unique to Scotland that represents Scottish culture. The ballad contains ideas that one might think contradictory to the ideas of a medieval Christian society, yet the ballad was so popular it had a ballet (now lost) and has survived for at least four hundred years. This dissertation examines the differences and similarities between the lack of consequences Janet suffers and what real women in Scotland from the Medieval Ages to the Early Modern period would have experienced. It also will delve into the various cultural groups that contributed to the ‘Scottish Nature’ of the ballad. Stories are told by humans all across the world, a ballad, likely sung in a group, in order to continue being told, must not go against the inherent social rules of the people performing it, or else act as a cautionary tale. However, since Janet does not end her story suffering, Tam Lin is not meant to be a cautionary tale. Why then, was this ballad, that might appear to be so contradictory to the society that was telling it, have managed to survive (and be so popular) to the current day and age.Item Future-making in the City of Gastronomy: Food Heritage and the Narrative Commons(2023) Platts, Ellen Jane; Lafrenz Samuels, Kathryn; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In December 2015, Tucson, Arizona was designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. It joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Creative Cities Network, a program that helps cities use cultural heritage for economic development. This dissertation undertakes an ethnography of Tucson as a City of Gastronomy, examining how this designation has inflamed tensions around the kinds of stories that are told about Tucson, to whom, and to what end. Drawing on extended fieldwork in Tucson, ethnographic methods of interviewing and participant-observation, and archival research, this dissertation explores the dissonance that emerges when stories of the past, present, and future are tapped for use by new actors to new ends. Welding together theoretical approaches based in commons scholarship and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital, this study presents the concept of the food heritage narrative commons, a socio-political space within which overarching narratives built upon food heritage objects, practices, and stories are contested, reconciled, subordinated, or come into co-existence. I argue that caring for the narrative commons is important for encouraging polyvocality, challenging received thought, imagining different ways of being, and maintaining space for productive dialogue. This dissertation examines an enclosure of the narrative commons in the wake of and facilitated by the UNESCO designation. I argue that the UNESCO designation introduced a specific form of symbolic capital as elaborated by Bourdieu that I call gastronomic capital, the value of being associated with the designation. This gastronomic capital empowered ‘Tucson’s Food Story,’ one particular narrative associated with the designation, to drown out others, enclosing the narrative commons, and facilitating economic gain for those able to wield gastronomic capital. Pushback against this process from communities (re)producing alternative narratives, however, points towards models for better governance of the narrative commons, structured by what I call an ethic of careful difference. In examining the interactions between ideas of heritage, narratives, and commons, this dissertation demonstrates the role that fostering a diversity of narratives, each building upon the past, plays in engaging multiple, diverse experiences and ways of being in the world in productive tension towards building different, transformative futures.Item CHRONIC SUFFERING: CHRONIC ILLNESS, DISABILITY, AND VIOLENCE AMONG MEXICAN MIGRANT WOMEN(2022) Guevara, Emilia Mercedes; Getrich, Christina M; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation seeks to better understand how Mexican migrant women who work in the Maryland crab industry make sense of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, and musculoskeletal pain while at the same time living spatially and temporally complicated lives as circular temporary migrant laborers. I explore how immigration and labor policies and practices, constrained and conditional access to resources and care, and exposure to multiple forms of violence structure their chronic illness experiences and entanglements of biological and social processes that intersect. Together, these embodied biological and social processes coalesce into what I describe as problemas crónica-gendered “chronic problems” – and other disruptions that migrant women endure across time and transnational space. I describe how problemas crónicas manifest themselves throughout the lives and migratory careers of Mexican migrant women and how they grapple with obstacles as they seek care, renegotiate their identities, and re/build their lives.Item PERSISTENCE OF FORM: A MATERIAL ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANAHEIM’S 20TH CENTURY LANDSCAPE(2022) Reed, Dean Joseph; Palus, Matthew M.; Samuels, Kathryn L.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the mid-20th century, Anaheim was one of many small unincorporated communities within southern California that would undergo a transition from a rural agricultural community into an industrial and commercial suburban sprawl. Previous works in cultural heritage resource management and local historical research within the City have been primarily centered around their local historic districts or larger commercial areas. However, the areas within proximity to these culturally defining areas have been largely undocumented. Those that have been documented have been studied under the regulatory lens of the National Historic Preservation Act or the California Environmental Quality Act. As a result, they are interpreted as just a product general growth of the City in the post-World War II era and determined ineligible for treatment or protection as historic resources. However, properties of this type are often examined as material culture that is independent of its surroundings. They have not been thoroughly examined for their data potential outside of the regulatory lens, nor has their connection to each other and the greater Anaheim landscape been considered fully. The analysis of architecture is useful in helping us understand production and use of space within the built environment. A further analysis, with the application of theory based in social production, space and place, and landscape may elaborate further on the broader social structures, allow a fuller understanding of the past, and help unpack the notion of material culture as a product. An approximately one-mile segment of East Lincoln Avenue, located near the center of Anaheim, exhibits a variety of the City’s vernacular architecture. In what ways did the City’s development allow these buildings to persist, and what processes were at play in their reconfiguration? Material culture, as a social product, requires a broader theoretical lens, a need to understand cultural resources as a part of a landscape, and a more in depth look into the individual. As the mid-20th century landscape emerges in the historical record, the importance of understanding the social factors that were at play are relevant to their preservation, especially as each phase of construction becomes overshadowed by the next, even to this day.Item Ałhił nda’ jilnishgo, Naa’nish ła eti’ Working Together, Gets Work Done THE NAVAJO APPROACH TO CULTURAL RESOURCES AND HERITAGE MANAGEMENT ON THE NAVAJO-GALLUP WATER SUPPLY PIPELINE(2021) Billie, Tamara; Lafrenz Samuels, Katheryn; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the mid-1800s, non-Navajo and Non-Indigenous archaeologists and researchers dictated the Navajo people's history a Western scientific lens. The Indigenous Archaeology movement of the 1970s and 1980s gave Indigenous people a voice not present before in modern archaeology. The campaign incorporated values important to Native people like oral traditions, landscapes, and sacred places. The revitalization effort has impelled the Navajo Nation's Heritage and Historic Preservation Department to reclaim its heritage. The Navajo THPO is unique in that it decides what is significant to Navajo history, archaeology, and culture. This Navajo approach to heritage is apparent in the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Pipeline project. As the waterline weaves a path through a culturally rich landscape, the Navajo THPO uses its tribal laws and Federal legislation to manage and protect its cultural resources.Item “LEARN AS WE LEAD”: LESSONS FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN(2021) Hufnagel, Ashley Marie; Padios, Jan; Hanhardt, Christina; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the spring of 1968, over six thousand poor people—black, chicano, white, Puerto Rican, and Native American from rural areas to urban centers—converged on Washington, D.C. to call attention to poverty and inequality in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. This six-week demonstration was part of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final and oft-forgotten Poor People’s Campaign. Fifty years later, thousands of people in over forty states have taken part in reviving this movement as the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC 2018+), co-chaired by Bishop William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. From low-wage workers’ fight for $15/hour minimum wage in the South to the Apache struggle to protect sacred land from copper mining in Oak Flat, Arizona; from the battle to stop emergency managers from poisoning and privatizing water services in Michigan to the urgent demands to abolish the criminalization of black, immigrant, and poor communities, “Learn as We Lead” investigates how local and national organizers are utilizing the vehicle of the campaign to build a broad-based movement across lines of identity, geography, and issue, while centering the leadership of the poor. Drawing on participant observation within the campaign, interviews with over forty grassroots leaders from twenty-seven states, and archival research, this dissertation uncovers how movement practitioners are reproducing and reformulating a long history of multiracial and multi-issue class politics—from the welfare rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the National Union of the Homeless of the 1980s and 1990s, from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) of the early 2000s to the Moral Mondays and low-wage worker movements of recent years. In a time of deepening political, economic, environmental and health crisis, leaders with the PPC 2018+ offer critical insights on forging class consciousness and solidarity across difference.Item Using citizen science to collaboratively research and manage Chesapeake Bay(2021) Webster, Suzanne E; Dennison, William C; Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Chesapeake Bay is a complex socio-ecological system with an equally complex adaptive management program. The environmental management community has expressed a need for more local-scale environmental data and increased stakeholder engagement in Bay restoration efforts. Although citizen science has the capacity to meet both of these needs, participatory research is currently underused and undervalued. Additional research is needed to help Chesapeake Bay environmental stakeholders develop and leverage citizen science partnerships to accomplish diverse research and management goals. This dissertation explored various challenges that limit the use and potential impact of citizen science in Chesapeake Bay. Three distinct studies were conducted to gain a more complete understanding of stakeholders’ perceptions and experiences concerning public engagement in scientific research. These studies employed several qualitative and quantitative approaches, including interviews, participant observation, surveys, and cultural consensus analysis. This research provided evidence of widespread agreement that diverse stakeholder concerns should be more prominent in management decisions. Research also found shared feelings of disempowerment across the Chesapeake environmental community. Environmental stakeholders appreciated that science plays a central role in informing environmental policy, but they had mixed perspectives on the utility of citizen science. This research found an underlying cultural understanding of environmental monitoring that provides a foundation for collaboration among stakeholders with different priorities. These findings indicate that citizen science programs can a) serve as boundary spanning organizations that help stakeholders foster a more cooperative mentality, b) allow diverse groups to strategically work together to accomplish goals, and c) increase the impact of volunteer-collected data on Chesapeake science and management. This research also showed that using a transdisciplinary approach to citizen science can increase stakeholders’ feelings of engagement, improve perceptions of a program’s overall credibility, and increase the program’s overall likelihood for impact. The results of this place-based study in the Chesapeake region are also broadly applicable to other socio-environmental systems. This dissertation provides evidence-based support for continued and expanded stakeholder engagement in environmental science and management and offers specific recommendations to support more collaborative, productive, and empowering citizen science partnerships that inform holistic and innovative environmental management decisions.