Anthropology Newsletter

Karen Brison, Associate Professor of Anthropology, has been awarded an NSF grant to conduct research in Fiji during the summer of 2003 on children’s acquisition of gender roles.

The project will integrate research and education by including two undergraduate research assistants who will live with Fijian families and study children’s play, and will consider Fijian gender roles through conducting life history interviews. It is relatively unusual for undergraduates to be able to participate meaningfully in cross-cultural research, due to the difficulties of adjusting to a new culture and winning the trust of local people. Amanda Haag ’03 and Peter Devine ’03, who are the student researchers in this project, will have the advantage of having already been to Fiji for an anthropological term abroad during the winter of 2003, run by Brison and Stephen Leavitt.

The project adds a cross-cultural dimension to literature largely based on North American children. Brison’s previous research in Fiji shows that gender roles among adults are clearly defined and dichotomized; children, however, do not focus on gender – an interesting contrast to the well-documented emphasis on gender among many Western children. Brison suspects that a strong emphasis on ranking based on age in Fiji leads Fijian children to center their emerging identities around age rather than gender. These findings suggest that neither biology nor an adult emphasis on gender will necessarily cause children to focus on gender. The research will also enhance our understanding of gender in the contemporary Pacific by exploring the possible ways of constructing gender in postcolonial Fiji and the factors that make these findings meaningful to individuals.

The National Science Foundation makes grants and awards for social, behavioral, and economic research that builds fundamental knowledge of human behavior, interaction, and social and economic systems, organizations and institutions. There is consensus among economists and policy researchers that public investments in science and engineering yield very high annual rates of return to society. Furthermore, the activities supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) - fundamental research and education based at academic institutions - are generally viewed as among the most productive of all Federal investments. NSF grants are highly competitive and prestigious.

Term in Tasmania Planned

The Anthropology Barbados/Ireland Term Abroad is moving to Australia. Next winter the program will take eleven students to study and do research in Australia’s only island state of Tasmania. The program will begin with four days in the city of Sydney, followed by eight days of exploring the southeast coast en route to Melbourne, and from there by boat to Tasmania. In Tasmania, students will spend the first week in the capital of Hobart before moving in with their host families in individual communities to begin their research.

Regular two- and three-day trips will be taken to different regions of Tasmania, with each trip having a different theme or focus relating to cultural ecology, Tasman culture, and /or tourism. The rest of the time students will do full-time field research in their communities. There will also be weekly field assignments aimed at developing familiarity with different research strategies and acquiring a broad understanding of Australian/Tasmanian culture and society.

A field course on cultural ecology will be taught by Dr. Richard Nelson, an anthropologist and one of America’s leading nature writers. A weekly seminar will feature visiting speakers as well as lectures on research methods by Prof. George Gmelch and the anthropology of tourism by Prof. Sharon Gmelch.

Professors Give Talks

In March, Sharon Gmelch attended the annual meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology and gave a paper on Anthropology Field Schools in an invited session on “Assessing Experience in Programs Abroad.”

This spring Steve Leavitt gave a talk at the Medical Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry Seminar run by the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University. The seminar has met weekly for several years and invites speakers from a number of disciplines. Steve presented life history material on childhood experiences from his Papua New Guinea fieldwork. He was interested in exploring what stories from childhood look like in a society with very different ideas about how early life affects adult identity.

In April, George Gmelch was invited to give a public talk at the Field Museum in Chicago in conjunction with the “Baseball as America” exhibit. The exhibit is traveling to six US Cities over two years and is expected to draw four to five million visitors. George’s talk was an anthropological look at the sport, especially how the culture of professional baseball has changed since he was part of the game in the 1960’s as a minor leaguer.

Visiting Prof. Steve Jones joined with Research Professor Dennis Foley, Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Andy Wolfe and members of the Schenectady County Community College faculty and local CRM archaeologists to give poster and power-point presentations on archaeology in Schenectady during the Colonial Festival last February.

Also, excavations by the Lewis Henry Morgan Institute (Andrew Wolfe, Dennis Foley and Prof. Jones) began in April at the Flint House, Scotia, and will continue every weekend through June with projects at the Flint House, Reist Sanctuary in Niskayuna, and on the Erie Canal in Rotterdam. Union Scholar, Jason Farrow *04, is doing an evaluation of the archaeological potential of the Flint House property as his sophomore project.

Prof. Jones also presented workshops for the Union’s Science Technology Engineering Program (STEP) on May 3^rd and 10^th.

Prof. Jones notes that Theresa J. Rourk ’04 has been awarded a summer fellowship to serve as an archaeological assistant.

Reginald Byron Talks About

His Research

On Wednesday, April 16th, students, faculty and friends of Union were treated to a lunchtime talk by Research Professor Reginald Byron of the University of Wales at Swansea. Byron’s recent book, Irish America, describes how his research dispels a number of conventional scholarly ideas about Irish-American “ethnicity” and “identity” demonstrating that these ideas did not hold when applied outside cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

Byron’s research over the past year in the US explored this hypothesis. His entertaining talk covered such subjects as the Irish mindset that women should always make a marriage that would improve their social status, mail order brides, Irish girls taking jobs in wealthy homes as maids, and the role that the railroad had in the spread of Irish immigrants to the western USA.

His anthropological research is unique since most anthropologists travel to a country and study the culture of a group of people. Byron, instead, studied the history of an immigrant culture in the US, traveling as far as Texas to pore over City Hall records of marriages and visiting cemeteries in small towns looking for Irish names to support his research.

M. Estellie Smith and Charles Bishop Share News

Recently, Research Professors Charles Bishop and M. Estellie Smith brought us up-to-date on their academic achievements.

In 2000, Prof. Bishop published a paper in Papers of the Thirty-Third Algonquian Conference, pp. 13 – 109, titled “Northern Ojibwa Emergence: The Migration.” The paper was edited by H. C. Wolfart and published by the University of Manitoba Press at Winnipeg. He also delivered a paper in 2002 in Quebec City titled “Ojibwa Clans: A History of the Debate” at the American Society for Ethnohistory held October 16-20, 2002.

Currently, he is working on a book, The Ojibwa:Contact to 1821, with Theresa Schenck, and an article, “Historical Evidence for Cree-Inuit Collective Violence: Causes and Implications,” with Victor Lytwyn, to be edited by Richard Chacon.

Prof. M. Estellie Smith is researching and writing a paper she has been asked to contribute to Adventure and Risk: Why is it part of Human Socioculture? edited by R. Gordon. Her contribution will focus on “Entrepreneurs and Risk Taking: Adventurers and Agency.” She will compare political, religious and economic entrepreneurs through a historical continuum including such figures as King David and Jason, Marco Polo, and Luther to Martha Stewart and Prime Minister Berlusconi (Italy).

She has also completed a paper titled “The role of the elite in the development of tourism” to be included in Tourists and Tourism, Sharon Gmelch’s edited volume on global tourism to be published soon by Waveland Press.

Vietnam Exhibit in SSFLAG Gallery

An exhibit of photographs taken by Union students who participated in the term abroad in Vietnam last Fall is currently on display in the Social Sciences Faculty Lounge gallery. The Vietnam program, run jointly with Hobart William Smith Colleges through the Partnership for Global Education, was based in Hanoi, but the photographs were taken all over Vietnam and include portraits of the young and elderly, activities and landscapes. The photos reflect the range of experiences students had on the term and also much of the warmth and friendliness of the Vietnamese people. Students Alison Friedman, Meghann Glavin, Joe Kilcullen, Pat Mahoney, Kaitlyn Richards and Andrea Tehan contributed images as did program directors Sharon Gmelch and George Gmelch (Anthropology). Joe Kilcullen coordinated the exhibit, with help from Andrea Tehan and Pat Mahoney. Michael Mosall from the Visual Arts Department did the printing. (Union students Josh Roth and Lissa Thurston also participated in the term.)

During the time the students were in Hanoi, they studied Vietnamese, took an anthropology course "Photographing Culture," and completed internships or independent study projects. Most of the images were taken with digital cameras. One of the advantages of using digital photography, the group discovered, is the rapport it helps create between photographer and subject. People are more responsive to being photographed since it is possible to show people their photograph on the camera's screen immediately after taking it. With some cameras, it is possible to turn the screen around so that people can see themselves as the photograph is being taken. In this case, photography ends up being even more of an exchange between people rather than something the photographer does to them — typical of the point-and-shoot approach.

Financial support for the exhibit and opening reception were provided by the East Asian Studies Program, the partnership for Global Education, an Internal Foundation Grant, and the Anthropology Department. The exhibit will remain up through graduation and is open weekdays between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm.

Students Complete Theses

Strong Norms, Loose Networks, Weak States: Comparing the Sicilian Mafia and Al Qaeda

The Creation and Affirmation of an Ethnic Identity Among Xīnjiāng’s Turkic Muslim Minorities as Represented in Food

Religious Change in Fiji: The Methodist Church and the Rise of Alternative Evangelical Churches in Northwest Viti Levu

Andrea Tehan ’03 writes about her thesis project: “My thesis looks at the impact of tourism on ethnic minority peoples in Sa Pa, Vietnam which is in the northern mountainous area of the country, right on the border with China, located in Lao Cai Province. Throughout my thesis I examine how the tourism industry is affecting the economy, environment and social cohesion of the ethnic minority peoples in the Sa Pa district. The majority of my data was gathered through visiting and touring the area with a translator, interviews with tour guides and ethnic minority people, as well as staying in a homestay for one night in the Village of Sin Chai.”

Fall 2003 Course Schedule

Notes from the Chair

By Stephen Leavitt

Our congratulations to Karen Brison for receiving the NSF Grant! We're delighted too that Linda Cool has received extended funding from the Mellon Foundation for her research on academic retirement policies. We're also pleased to be able to hire Steve Jones next year for a second year as a visitor in the department.

This term we started what we hope will be a long-standing policy of inviting speakers each term for department colloquia. Reg Byron came in from the University of Wales to give our first talk. He spoke about academic stereotypes of Irish immigrants to the US.

Spring 2003

Karen Brison Gets NSF Grant for Summer Research