The Natives Are Gazing and Talking Back: Reviewing the Problematics of Positionality, Voice, and Accountability among "Native" Anthropologists

In this article, a linguistic anthropologist reviews the growing literature on the possibilities and problematics of understanding "native" anthropology and its implications for the construction of ethnographic knowledge. The author examines the centrality of language for "native" scholars in negotiating their legitimacy in the field. Confessions of failure by native scholars and their dilemmas with translation illuminate the dialogic and political nature of ethnographic inquiry, particularly when research is conducted in "home" communities. Moreover, native ethnographers' critical reflexivity regarding their subject positionings and "voice" may constitute a counterhegemonic rhetorical strategy for negotiating multiple accountabilities. Self-identification as a native scholar is seldom a means through which researchers "play the native card" via a noncritical privileging of their "insider" status. Instead, claiming native status may act tactically as both a normalizing and an exclusivizing endeavor, as well as a signif ier of the decolonization of anthropological thought and practice. The author considers these and other critical implications of native anthropological research in relation to her own multisited research on African American linguistic and cultural practices focused on hair care. [Keywords: "native" anthropology, language, representation, reflexivity, translation]     

Diversité culturelle des peuplements pionniers du Sud du Brésil à l’Holocène initial

The variety of South American lithic industries in the Early Holocene indicates that the settlement processes were characterized by cultural diversification and adaptive flexibility. In the present article, we will analyze the bifacial lithic industries of southern Brazil that include projectile points in their repertoire of instruments, through a comparative study between the results of research in the hydrographic regions of Uruguay River and Lake Guaíba. Our objective is to problematize issues about the construction of cultural territories in the process of initial settlement of the South American Cone through the analysis of technical systems.     

Culture at work: Polish migrants in the ethnic division of labour on Norwegian construction sites

Following large-scale labour migration from Poland to the Norwegian construction sector since 2004, new ethnic divisions of labour have been established between the usually native core workforces of construction firms, and Polish migrant workers hired through temporary subcontracting and staffing agencies. Survey data suggest that there is very little mobility between these segments of the labour market. The establishment and reproduction of this ethnic division of labour is analysed through qualitative interviews with Norwegian employers and Polish migrant workers. Polish migrants and their particular ‘work culture’ are perceived by Norwegian employers as well-suited for work in the firms’ temporary external workforces but unfit for permanent positions unless they assimilate to a ‘Norwegian work culture’. These stereotyped employment practices are reinforced by the migrants’ own tactical use of the cultural capital available to them when negotiating the conflicting expectations in different job segments.     

Using self‐portrait photographs to understand self‐concepts of Chinese and American university students

This study examines differences between self‐concepts of Chinese and American university students. Both groups used 35mm cameras to show who they are. They wrote statements about the intended meaning of their best photo. The signs of other people, materials, and objects, and cultural ideas in each photograph were analyzed. Contrary to expectations, a higher percentage of Chinese students portrayed themselves as independent, and a higher percentage of Americans were oriented to other people. Consistent with expectations, Americans were more likely to be oriented towards materials and objects. Both groups were equally likely to be oriented towards cultural ideas.     

THE LIMITS OF INTIMATE CITIZENSHIP: REPRODUCTION OF DIFFERENCE IN FLEMISH‐ETHIOPIAN ‘ADOPTION CULTURES’

The concept of ‘intimate citizenship’ stresses the right of people to choose how they organize their personal lives and claim identities. Support and interest groups are seen as playing an important role in the pursuit of recognition for these intimate choices, by elaborating visible and positive cultures that invade broader public spheres. Most studies on intimate citizenship take into consideration the exclusions these groups encounter when negotiating their differences with society at large. However, much less attention is paid to the ways in which these groups internalize the surrounding ideologies, identity categories and hierarchies that pervade society and constrain their recognition as full citizens. In contrast, this paper aims to emphasize the reproduction of otherness within alternative spheres of life, and to reveal the ambiguities and complexities involved in their dialectic relationship with society at large. To address this issue, the paper focuses on the role that ‘adoption cultures’ of Flemish adoptive parents with children from Ethiopia play in the pursuit of being recognized as ‘proper’ families and full citizens. The ethnographic research among adoptive parents and adoption professionals shows a defensive discourse and action that aims at empowering against potential problems, as well as a tendency to other the adoptive child by pathologizing its non‐normativity. By showing the strong embeddedness of adoptive families' practices of familial and cultural construction in larger cultural frames of selfing and othering, characterized by biologism and nativism, one begins to understand the limits of their capacity to realize full citizenship.     

Contesting "Culture": The Perspectives of Hmong American Female Students on Early Marriage

This article complicates the meanings of early marriage among Hmong American female students. It moves beyond explanations of cultural difference in the examination and explication of the discourse and practice of early marriage among female adolescents in the Hmong community. Drawing on the perspectives and experiences of Hmong American female students, this article reveals that early marriage may be an expression of students' opposition to the structures of and experiences with school and family. The significance of this analysis is its recognition and illumination of the fluidity of cultural and social practices, and the tensions between and within ethnic groups.     

Parental Strategies in Contrasting Cultural Settings: Families in México and "El Norte"

A "culturally relevant pedagogy" has been recommended to enhance the achievement of Latino students in American schools. In practice, this pedagogy is often based on a view of the home culture as static and in conflict with mainstream culture. The present study compares the child-rearing practices and values of Mexican immigrants raising their children in the United States with those of their siblings who are raising children in Mexico. The study contributes to the theories of culture, documenting the dynamic nature of cultural practices on both sides of the border and examining the implications of cultural change of different types for practice in language minority education.     

Anthropological films and the myth of scientific truths

This article describes, analyzes, and interprets various cultural influences on the representational drawings of young Navajo students, in order to understand their changing cultural viewpoint. The data and drawings were gathered from two elementary art classes in one Navajo public school in northeastern Arizona, as part of an ongoing study. This information is compared to anthropological data gathered on adult Navajo drawings nearly 30 years ago, as well as to some dominant theories on child art. Data reveal students are influenced by Navajo traditional images, classroom teachers’ versions of school art, popular art images, pan‐Indian influences, and peer copying. Results reveal the persistence of traditional nature imagery, the incorporation of similar schemas and color use with mainstream children, a keen ability to render realistic images and space, and the incorporation of those American things that the Navajo regard as “good for them.” Keen drawing abilities appear at a young age among the Navajo because of the high status of the arts, traditional education through observation and demonstration, peer imitation, and male drawing competition.     

“Feeling worthless”: An ethnographic investigation of depression and problem drinking at the flathead reservation

The study of depression, drinking and suicidality has long preoccupied students of American Indian life, in part because of the assumed connection between these specific forms of psychiatric distress and generalized demoralization. Given the significant variation in suicidal behavior and prevalence rates intertribally, this assumption deserves closer attention. Recently, researchers working with Western populations have sought to clarify the relationships among depression, alcohol abuse and suicidality through an explicit investigation of their comorbidity. Using data collected at the Flathead Reservation, this paper explores the degree to which the investigation of the comorbidity of these three disorders can validly reveal the relevant contours of psychopathological distress in a cross-cultural setting. The data show that while the comorbidity of problem drinking and depression can sometimes indicate severe psychopathological distress, measured in this case by suicidality, comorbidity cannot account for another group at high risk for suicide. The discrepancy is explicable with reference to the cultural construction of depression, drinking and suicidality in relation to the creation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds, rather than in relation to an internal state of demoralization.     

Movement in spaces of liminality: Chinese dance and immigrant identities

This paper explores the roles of immigrant dance in ethnic construction. It is based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with a Chinese dance organization in the US Midwest. Chinese dance in the US, a transnational cultural practice, solidifies a sense of belonging among Chinese immigrants. As these immigrants make sense of what it means to be Chinese and to do Chinese dance in contemporary American society, they reinvent their collective identity while holding on to primordial understandings of ethnicity rooted in the constructed ideas of ancestry and homeland. A case study of the ethnic construction theory, this research sheds light on the paradox of embodied immigrant identities: they are constructed through cultural practices and yet often understood as primordial, transnational and yet necessarily place-bound.     

Damp Rooms and Saying ‘Please’: Mimesis and Alterity in the Host Family Space in Study-Abroad Experiences

Study-abroad programs are a ‘globalizing project’ developed at the intersection of educational institutions seeking new income sources and the ideologies that the world is comprised of a mosaic of cultures and that ‘intercultural experience’ is valuable. While research on study-abroad programs often focuses on their effect on the students’ ‘global competence’ and language proficiency, this article focuses on the space, the space of host family in particular, produced in study-abroad programs. Study-abroad programs here are perceived in a wide sense to include various programs for students to go to another country to study.

Study-abroad guidebooks and researchers portray the host family's life as constituting a quintessential ‘native life’, in which study-abroad students should be immersed. However, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this article argues that the distinction between ‘cultural difference’ and ‘cultural sameness’ is a construction, resulting in mutual accommodation and intolerant judgments, respectively. That is, when host parents recognised the ‘cultural difference’ of the foreign students’ behaviour, they often sought to understand meanings behind the behaviour, resulting in mutual accommodation. It turned the space into what Michael Taussig calls the ‘space between’, in which it is unclear who is imitating whom. When the host parents recognised ‘cultural sameness’ based on superficial similarity, however, their efforts to understand meanings behind behaviour was halted and, when the behaviour was considered problematic, led to the student being asked to move out. This article details an ironic space of study abroad where alterity inspired tolerance and similarity inspired intolerance.     

Who's afraid of the boss: cultural differences in social hierarchies modulate self-face recognition in Chinese and Americans

Human adults typically respond faster to their own face than to the faces of others. However, in Chinese participants, this self-face advantage is lost in the presence of one's supervisor, and they respond faster to their supervisor's face than to their own. While this "boss effect" suggests a strong modulation of self-processing in the presence of influential social superiors, the current study examined whether this effect was true across cultures. Given the wealth of literature on cultural differences between collectivist, interdependent versus individualistic, independent self-construals, we hypothesized that the boss effect might be weaker in independent than interdependent cultures. Twenty European American college students were asked to identify orientations of their own face or their supervisors' face. We found that European Americans, unlike Chinese participants, did not show a "boss effect" and maintained the self-face advantage even in the presence of their supervisor's face. Interestingly, however, their self-face advantage decreased as their ratings of their boss's perceived social status increased, suggesting that self-processing in Americans is influenced more by one's social status than by one's hierarchical position as a social superior. In addition, when their boss's face was presented with a labmate's face, American participants responded faster to the boss's face, indicating that the boss may represent general social dominance rather than a direct negative threat to oneself, in more independent cultures. Altogether, these results demonstrate a strong cultural modulation of self-processing in social contexts and suggest that the very concept of social positions, such as a boss, may hold markedly different meanings to the self across Western and East Asian cultures.     

Integrating Interactive Computational Modeling in Biology Curricula

While the use of computer tools to simulate complex processes such as computer circuits is normal practice in fields like engineering, the majority of life sciences/biological sciences courses continue to rely on the traditional textbook and memorization approach. To address this issue, we explored the use of the Cell Collective platform as a novel, interactive, and evolving pedagogical tool to foster student engagement, creativity, and higher-level thinking. Cell Collective is a Web-based platform used to create and simulate dynamical models of various biological processes. Students can create models of cells, diseases, or pathways themselves or explore existing models. This technology was implemented in both undergraduate and graduate courses as a pilot study to determine the feasibility of such software at the university level. First, a new (In Silico Biology) class was developed to enable students to learn biology by “building and breaking it” via computer models and their simulations. This class and technology also provide a non-intimidating way to incorporate mathematical and computational concepts into a class with students who have a limited mathematical background. Second, we used the technology to mediate the use of simulations and modeling modules as a learning tool for traditional biological concepts, such as T cell differentiation or cell cycle regulation, in existing biology courses. Results of this pilot application suggest that there is promise in the use of computational modeling and software tools such as Cell Collective to provide new teaching methods in biology and contribute to the implementation of the “Vision and Change” call to action in undergraduate biology education by providing a hands-on approach to biology.     

International student exchange and the medical curriculum: evaluation of a medical sciences translational physiology course in Brazil

The objective of the present study was to conduct a short-term international course on translational physiology for medical students from Wright State University and the University of Iowa. The goals were to 1) provide students with an exposure to the academic, cultural, and medical environments in Brazil; 2) promote awareness of the global medical community; and 3) provide an academic course focused on translational physiology. An evaluation of the students was conducted to determine whether such a short-term course might be useful in the medical curriculum. The 2-wk course was held in the summer of 2005 at the University of S?o Paulo School of Medicine in Ribeir?o Preto, Brazil, for 23 American students. The program included presentations of basic and clinical topics, meetings with medical students, and clinical presentations. The program finished with student attendance at a scientific meeting sponsored by the Brazilian Society of Hypertension. Student surveys evaluated issues related to perceived treatment, Brazilian medical school environment, culture and personal attributes, and career aspirations. The international Medical Sciences Translational Physiology course for medical students provided a brief, but intense, experience. It gave students a picture of the medical environment in Brazil and an appreciation for the differences and similarities in cultures. Most students reported that it was a positive experience that would be beneficial to their careers. In conclusion, a short-term international course provides an efficient means for medical students to experience aspects of global medical science.     

The Association between Cultural Orientation and Drinking Behaviors among University Students in Wuhan,China

Objectives

This study examines the association between cultural orientation and drinking behaviors among university students. Cultural orientation is the measure of how the cultural values of individuals living in their own society are influenced by cultural values introduced from the outside.

Methods

In 2011, a cross-sectional survey collected data from 1279 university students from six universities in central China. Participants used a likert scale to rank a series of statements reflecting cultural values from the previously validated Chinese Cultural Orientation Scale and answered questions about their drinking behaviors and socio-demographic characteristics.

Results

Statistically significant differences in cultural orientation were observed for gender, hometown and type of university attendance. Traditional-oriented students were more likely to be occasional drinkers or nondrinkers, while marginal-oriented students, bicultural-oriented students and western-oriented students were more likely to be regular drinkers. Bicultural orientation (OR = 1.80, P<0.05) and marginal orientation (OR = 1.64, P<0.05) increased the likelihood of the student being regular drinking, compared to students with traditional orientations. Males (OR = 4.40, P<0.05) had a higher likelihood of regular drinking than females, graduate students (OR = 2.59, P<0.05) had a higher likelihood of regular drinking than undergraduates, students from urban areas (OR = 1.79, P<0.05) had a higher likelihood of regular drinking than those from towns/rural areas, and students attending key universities (OR = 0.48, P<0.05) had a lower likelihood of regular drinking than those attending general universities.

Conclusions

Cultural orientation influences drinking behaviors. Traditional cultural orientation was associated with less drinking while western cultural orientation, marginal cultural orientation and bicultural orientation were associated with more drinking. The role of gender, hometown and university attendance is partially moderated through the influence of cultural orientation. The relationship between a traditional cultural orientation and alcohol drinking suggests that traditional Chinese cultural values should be examined for their role in possibly reducing alcohol-related risks through education and policy initiatives.     

Cultural niche construction of repertoire size and learning strategies in songbirds

Birdsong is a complex cultural and biological system, and the selective forces driving evolutionary changes in aspects of song learning vary considerably among species. The extent to which repertoire size, the number of syllables or song types sung by a bird, is subject to sexual selection is unknown, and studies to date have provided inconsistent evidence. Here, we propose that selection pressure on the size and complexity of birdsong repertoires may facilitate the construction of a niche in which learning, sexual selection, and song-based homophily may co-evolve. We show, using a review of the birdsong literature and mathematical modeling, that learning mode (open-ended or closed-ended learning) is correlated with the size of birdsong repertoires. Underpinning this correlation may be a form of cultural niche construction in which a costly biological trait (for example, open-ended learning) can spread in a population (or be lost) as a result of direct selection on an associated cultural trait (for example, song repertoire size).     

Hope, Arkansas to Hope, Albania: naivete and idealism to reality and tragedy

The wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo were perpretrated by a radical nationalist Serbian cultural political consciousness that the American cultural political consciousness and leadership had difficulty responding to and understanding. There is a great cultural divide between a 'pathology' in Serbian culture, Milosevi?'s radical nationalism, and a humane 'naivete' in American cultural consciousness. I discuss why, finally, American political leadership, Bill Clinton from Hope, Arkansas, responded to the tragedy of these wars. However, we are still left with the question of good vs evil: What is the course of human history; psychotic political leadership causing repetitive human tragedy or can there be a higher humane and moral order to human cultural events?     

Defining “American” in the context of immigration: a case study of Helping Hands Elementary

Immigration has dramatically changed the face of the nation in the last thirty years, yet it is unclear how children currently define “Americanness” in light of these demographic and cultural shifts. This research explores how elementary students define what it means to be American in the context of immigration-driven diversity. Based on a survey of fourth and fifth graders in an elementary school located in a high-immigrant community, the author shows that despite the diversity of the school and local surroundings, and the multicultural ideology espoused by school staff, students predominately defined “American” in ethnocultural terms – specifically, as white, US-born, and English-speaking. At the same time, a small group of students challenged this narrative and defined Americans in pluralist terms. This study suggests that schools aiming to create inclusive learning communities in an increasingly diverse nation may need more direct approaches to teaching a culturally pluralist model of America.     

(Un)Necessary Toughness?: Those "Loud Black Girls" and Those "Quiet Asian Boys"

This article examines the process of identity construction and its relationship to discursive and representational acts in producing students as academic and social beings. Drawing on Judith Butler's work on gender performativity, I focus on two student populations—black females and Southeast Asian American males—and analyze the symbolic and material effects of the production of them as racialized, gendered Other through the repeated stylization of their bodies and behavior. The materialization of the students as "loud black girls" and "quiet Asian boys," however, opens up the potential for disrupting the hegemonicfbrces of regulatory norms.