Teaching Culture: UTP Ethnographies for the Classroom – serie

Imagine that you have just lost your job. You wonder: “Who or what can I depend on now?” The answer, it turns out, varies significantly depending on where you live. In Norway, a small European social democracy, you would almost certainly turn to the country’s comprehensive public welfare system. With a work history, you could be eligible for two years of unemployment benefits that replace upwards of 62% of your previous salary. Meanwhile, you would not be too worried about covering other major expenses: annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs are capped at a few hundred dollars, parents receive monthly payments per child, public education is tuition-free, and pensions are guaranteed. What would this experience teach you about government, work, taxes, and freedom?In Down and Out in Utopia, anthropologist Kelly McKowen explains what happens to those without jobs in one of the world’s wealthiest and most egalitarian countries. Following the daily lives of a diverse group of unemployed individuals during the “oil crash” of the mid-2010s, he shows that being “down and out” in a social democracy offers people a unique moral education with lessons about the nature and value of the state, labour, welfare, and belonging. Engaging, timely, and illuminating, Down and Out in Utopia makes the case that through social policy, we shape life’s hardships – and these hardships, in turn, shape us and how we view the world.

Return to Storytelling is a lyrical ethnographic work that presents stories from healers, community members, storytellers, witches, sceptics, and tricksters in an intentionally unnamed Central American Indigenous community. Anthropologist Karen Stocker investigates how stories of all kinds – written historical accounts, stories told within the community, and stories familiar to readers from North American backgrounds – shape people’s frameworks for interpreting both the everyday and the extraordinary. Stocker interrogates history as portrayed in sixteenth-century chronicles and upends scholarly writing styles in favour of the verbal artistry characteristic of the community as well as the Latin American magical realist genre. Thus, Return to Storytelling constitutes an inverted ethnography that prioritizes community collective memory over colonizers’ accounts, and privileges critical insight conveyed in accessible language over jargon-laden writing. At the same time, it remains grounded in sound, long-term ethnographic research and ultimately urges readers to question how they know what they know. By refusing clear distinctions between scholarly voice and storytelling, past and present, or belief and scepticism, this book invites readers to sit with ambiguity as a productive space of knowledge. It offers not only a rethinking of ethnographic practice but also a broader meditation on storytelling as a political, ethical, and imaginative force that continues to shape lives long after colonial encounters.

Thousands of children participate in community sports every year, enjoying recreation time with their peers, getting healthy exercise, and learning a variety of personal and group skills. At the same time, children's sports are not without controversy: parents can be overly invested in their children's exploits, competitive success is often the focus, and rising costs can limit participation. Consider, too, that these activities, billed as being for the kids, are often overlaid with other agendas by the adults who volunteer, work, and generally support children's sports. Noel Dyck incorporates nearly two decades of ethnographic field research into this anthropologically informed account that illustrates how all those involved in children's sports-boys and girls, parents, coaches, and sport officials-shape these complex, vibrant fields of play. In the process, he explores larger questions and debates about contemporary family and community and the shaping of childhood, youth, and adulthood. Bridging anthropology, sport studies, and childhood studies, Fields of Play offers a rich understanding of an area that has, to date, gained relatively little attention by social scientists.

In the cities of Northeast Brazil where 50 per cent of the population lives in poverty, children play a key role in the local economy-in their households, in formal jobs, and in the thriving informal sector (washing cars, shining shoes, scavenging for recyclables, etc.). Why children migrate to the city, how they negotiate their existence, and why they stay are just some of the questions addressed in this fascinating study. Mary Kenny spent close to 15 years in the urban areas of Northeast Brazil talking with and interviewing children. She even gave them disposable cameras to document their daily lives (many of the photographs they took are included). Rather than lament a lost childhood, or try to save these children, Kenny explores some of the complex conditions under which these children work and live. She illustrates how unrelenting scarcity shapes family and, by extension, children's options, decisions, and worldviews. The issues raised in this book are of critical importance. There are no easy answers, but listening to how these children define themselves and their circumstances is an important step towards understanding and ultimately solving economic and social inequality.

Why did the rate of homelessness remain at significant levels while the US economy was supposedly booming and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the homeless sheltering industry? Drawing upon five years of ethnographic fieldwork in a homeless shelter in Northampton, Massachusetts, Lyon-Callo argues that homelessness must be understood within the context of increasing neoliberal policies, practices, and discourses. As advocates, activists, policy makers, and homeless people focused attention on market-based and individualized practices of reform and governance, collective efforts that challenged an economy dependent on low wage jobs, declining housing affordability, and the dismantling of the social safety net were marginalized and ignored. Homelessness continued, despite, and partly due to, the limitations of the neoliberal approach. Combining the rich detail of an ethnographic study with the systemic examination of political economic studies, this book offers a view of homelessness and inequality that is rarely explored elsewhere. Chapters include discussion of the medicalization of homelessness, the difficulty of finding paid employment given broader political economic conditions, how shelter staff are trained to manage homeless people, how statistics are used to produce ideas of homeless people as deviants, and how funding concerns affect possibilities for resistance. Key to the study is an activist approach that raises the possibilities and problems associated with a publicly engaged anthropology.

As recently as three decades ago most Inuit lived a lifestyle much like that of their forbearers: "living on the land," with the men hunting according to time-honoured methods and the women performing the same round of daily tasks that their grandmothers and great grandmothers had done. Today these people typically live in settlements, some of them distinctly urban in character. Adults work for wages and use electric appliances, children listen to stereos and run about the settlement on motorbikes. As anthropologist John Matthiasson observes, "the Inuit child of today may look back in fond nostalgia on the lifestyle of his parents when they lived on the land, but he cannot return to it." Matthiasson, who has remained in contact with the Tununermiut since the 1960s, offers both a vivid picture of Inuit society as it was and an illuminating look at the nature and the extent of the enormous changes of the past thirty years.

The Maya of the Yucatán have long been drawn into the Mexican state's attempt to create modern Mexican citizens (mestizos). At the same time, they have contended with globalization pressures, first with hemp production and more recently with increased tourism and the fast-growing influence of American-based evangelical Protestantism. Despite these pressures to turn Maya into mestizo, the citizens of the small town of Maxcanú have used subtle forms of resistance-humor, satire, and language-to maintain aspects of their traditional identity.Loewe offers a contemporary look at a Maya community caught between tradition and modernity. He skilfully weaves the history of Mexico and this particular community into the analysis, offering a unique understanding of how one local community has faced the onslaught of modernization.

In this fascinating exploration of citizenship and the politics of culture in contemporary France, Ingram examines two theatre troupes in Provence: one based in a small town in the rural part of the Vaucluse region, and the other an urban project in Marseille, France's most culturally diverse city. Both troupes are committed to explicitly civic goals in the tradition of citizens' theatre. Focusing on the personal stories of the theatre artists in these two troupes, and the continuities between their narratives, their performances, and the national discourse directed by the Ministry of Culture, Ingram examines the ways in which these artists interpret universalistic ideals underlying both art and the Republic in their theatrical work. In the process he charts the evolution of new models for society and citizenship in a rapidly changing France.

StreetCities charts the development of an alternative communal housing model for chronically homeless men and women in downtown Toronto. In her recounting of the stories and narratives of residents and staff at the original "StreetCity" and the second generation "Strachan House," Bridgman explores how living on the street (something often viewed as negative) has the potential to become a powerful emblem of community growth, tolerance, and caring. The histories of these two supportive housing projects are embedded within larger currents of governmental responses to homelessness in Canada, and the incorporation of photographs, interview narratives, and handwritten fieldnotes brings Bridgman's ethnographic research to life. StreetCities also includes a discussion of the architectural design and operation of the two housing projects, and the eventual closing of the original "StreetCity."StreetCities is written for those who want to learn more about the work being done to help chronically homeless women and men. The book will be useful for researchers, policy-makers, service-providers, teachers, students, and activists working in the fields of homelessness and housing studies, social work, urban and applied anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and qualitative research methods.

The Old Believers constitute the most conservative branch of Eastern Christendom; they remain the last guardians of the ideology of 'holy Russia'. The outstanding trait of the people is their determination to remain separate from the outside society, which they believe to have succumbed to the agents of antichrist; they see themselves as the last Christians left on the face of the earth. In this book David Scheffel provides both a brief history of this remarkable sect and a detailed account and analysis of the manner in which their traditional life style is kept up in three Alberta communities. Written in an accessible style and treating a fascinating subject, In the Shadow of Antichrist is ideally suited for inclusion on textbook lists of courses in cultural anthropology and anthropology of religion.

Life Among the Yanomami builds on literature and the author's personal experience of the northern Brazil people, the Mucajai Yanomami, with whom he lived from 1958 to 1967 and whom he has since frequently visited. The result is a rich and well-rounded understanding of this famously isolated people. While considerable detail of traditional way of life is provided, particular attention is devoted to the realities of social change arising from initial exposure to missionaries (of whom the author was one) to the more recent pressures from mining and the intervention of government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Family and village life, health and health care, demography, politicization (that includes Yanomami criticism of Western Society), and on cultural survival are among the key issues explored by Peters-compelling issues for indigenous peoples the world over.

Living either full or part time in a recreational vehicle has been an alternative lifestyle in North America since the 1920s. By the 1930s, Wally Byam's Airstream company could not keep up with the demand for his self-contained "house trailers." And today, "RVing" has become so widespread that, for perhaps two million retired North Americans, home is a recreational vehicle. In this book, anthropologists Dorothy and David Counts tell the story of their research living the life of RVing seniors in trailer parks, "boondocking" sites on government land, laundromats, and other meeting places across the continent.The authors convincingly convey the feel of various RV lifestyles (boondocking, full timing, flea marketing and so on). But they also raise broad questions. Are there parallels to be made between the RVers of North America and the gypsies of Europe? Is there an association between RVing and socio-economic status? Why would people sell their homes and live on the road as nomads? The answers come from RVers who argue persuasively that they experience a greater sense of community and fewer of the emotional problems common to old age than do many who have chosen other forms of retirement living.This edition expands the original 1996 text, including an extended section on working RVers and on the CARE center (Continued Assistance for Retired Escapees) in Livingston, TX. The CARE center is a unique and innovative experiment that provides inexpensive assisted living and adult daycare for RVers who must hang up their keys because of age or infirmity, but who want to continue their participation in the RVing community.A new appendix (Appendix 5) offers information, resources and suggestions for people who want to try serious RVing but need help getting started. The authors include a list of websites providing resources and information for both experienced and novice RVers. The list includes sources for RVing families, single RVers, those interested in a particular kind of RVing style ("boondockers," for example), people who want to rent an RV, organizations for RVers with special interests (former military, Canadians, etc.). There is updated information on Canadian provincial residence rules defining eligibility for provincial medical care programs.

Most ethnographic treatments of other cultures restrict the voice of their "subjects"; at most, description and analysis by the observer are accompanied by brief selective quotation. With a methodological openness that may be particularly appropriate to gender studies, anthropologist Judith Abwunza provides in this ethnography both the fruit of her research into the lives of Logoli women of Western Kenya and substantial transcripts giving the women's own description and analysis of their situation.The Avalogoli remain a strongly patriarchal society. Yet, as in many such societies elsewhere in Africa and indeed around the world, women have demonstrated a resilience under patriarchy that has resulted in their nominal power being far outweighed by their actual power. As Abwunza demonstrates, the economic survival of the Avalogoli is dependent not only on women's works but also on their decision-making. Through 'back-door decisions' they have a surprising power to influence national as well as local events. Women's Voices, Women's Power offers no apologies for a system that remains disturbingly patriarchal. But it does attempt to face directly the complexities and paradoxes involved-not the least of which is that many of the women posture an adherence to patriarchy even as they describe the disproportionate burden it places upon them. And it seeks an understanding of the ways in which Logoli society is changing in the face of increasing capitalism and commodification-processes that the author argues may simultaneously empower and disempower women.

In the densely populated urban neighbourhoods of Java, women manage their houses and their communities through daily exchanges of food, childcare, and labour. Their domestic work is based on local ideas of community cooperation and support, but also on the Indonesian government's use of women as unpaid social workers. Consequently, women are a pivotal point in both state-sponsored programs of domesticity and in the local practice of community exchange managed from individual houses. Back Door Java explores the everyday lives of ordinary urban Javanese from a new perspective on domestic space and the state. Using rich ethnographic description of a neighbourhood in Central Java, Newberry illuminates the ways in which state rule is intimately connected to the household and the community.

Winner of the Society for Medical Anthropology's 2009 New Millennium AwardImagine yourself in advanced age, forced to depend on others for all your basic needs. What would you want to retain of your personal life?This question is at the heart of a set of case studies that examine the lives of nursing home residents who were diagnosed with senile dementia. Based on two years of intensive comparative ethnographic study in a nursing home in a Northeastern American city, The Person in Dementia dramatically contrasts the outcomes of two approaches to dementia care for elders with severely disturbed behaviors: a task-oriented approach based on a biomedical view of disease progression and a flexible person-sustaining approach focusing on individual needs and communication. By emphasizing "personhood," which looks beyond physical and reasoning abilities to a person's will and relationship with others, McLean conceptualizes dementia care as a moral enterprise. She encourages innovative and compassionate elder care and accountability across the spectrum from direct care-givers to nursing home owners to those at the highest levels of government. McLean also offers a fine-tuned analysis of how relations among direct care-giving, professional, and administrative staff within a facility can dramatically affect the quality of dementia care. The book includes policy recommendations that are geared to long-term care administrators and policy-makers as well as to caregivers, families, and elders with dementia.

Waiting for Macedonia gives insight into one of the most moving moments in post-war European history: the hope for a new Europe in the years following the collapse of communism. In this ethnography, Thiessen explores the different ways in which identity has been negotiated in Macedonia since the disintegration of Yugoslavia. In contrast to more familiar approaches to the Balkans-which emphasize tradition, rural life, and women in the contexts of kinship and marriage-Thiessen here investigates the everyday habits of a group of young professional women in Skopje. Using research data spanning eight years (1988-96), she traces key aspects of their life, including family relationships, television and shopping habits, cafe life, and attitudes to work. At the same time, she also raises larger questions about Macedonian, Balkan, and Eastern European notions of identity, suggesting that western discourses about former socialist countries may in turn be influencing the way young urban Macedonians see themselves.

Contested Representations examines the controversy surrounding the Into the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto in 1989-90. The exhibition was meant to travel to the US and Canada, but four major museums cancelled their contracts due to its controversial nature. With this richly textured account of the ways in which the exhibit became the site of an expansive-and explosive-discussion of representation, racism, and power, Butler asks why the exhibit failed for so many people. In the process she discusses issues of curatorial authority, institutional politics, legacies of colonialism, traditions of representing Africa, the politics of irony, and reflexive museology. The combination of race, postmodernism, colonialism, community activism, and heated debate still leaves the Into the Heart of Africa exhibit in a class by itself. It continues to be cited, debated, and used as reference points by Africanists, art historians, museologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians. Originally published in 1994, this case study is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a new Foreword by Anthony Shelton (UBC Museum of Anthropology) and an Afterword by the author outlining recent ROM practices in relation to the Black community and in representing Africa.

In the cities of Northeast Brazil where 50 per cent of the population lives in poverty, children play a key role in the local economy-in their households, in formal jobs, and in the thriving informal sector (washing cars, shining shoes, scavenging for recyclables, etc.). Why children migrate to the city, how they negotiate their existence, and why they stay are just some of the questions addressed in this fascinating study. Mary Kenny spent close to 15 years in the urban areas of Northeast Brazil talking with and interviewing children. She even gave them disposable cameras to document their daily lives (many of the photographs they took are included). Rather than lament a lost childhood, or try to save these children, Kenny explores some of the complex conditions under which these children work and live. She illustrates how unrelenting scarcity shapes family and, by extension, children's options, decisions, and worldviews. The issues raised in this book are of critical importance. There are no easy answers, but listening to how these children define themselves and their circumstances is an important step towards understanding and ultimately solving economic and social inequality.

Why did the rate of homelessness remain at significant levels while the US economy was supposedly booming and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the homeless sheltering industry? Drawing upon five years of ethnographic fieldwork in a homeless shelter in Northampton, Massachusetts, Lyon-Callo argues that homelessness must be understood within the context of increasing neoliberal policies, practices, and discourses. As advocates, activists, policy makers, and homeless people focused attention on market-based and individualized practices of reform and governance, collective efforts that challenged an economy dependent on low wage jobs, declining housing affordability, and the dismantling of the social safety net were marginalized and ignored. Homelessness continued, despite, and partly due to, the limitations of the neoliberal approach. Combining the rich detail of an ethnographic study with the systemic examination of political economic studies, this book offers a view of homelessness and inequality that is rarely explored elsewhere. Chapters include discussion of the medicalization of homelessness, the difficulty of finding paid employment given broader political economic conditions, how shelter staff are trained to manage homeless people, how statistics are used to produce ideas of homeless people as deviants, and how funding concerns affect possibilities for resistance. Key to the study is an activist approach that raises the possibilities and problems associated with a publicly engaged anthropology.

The Inuit are a familiar part of Canadian identity but also exotic residing in the remote Arctic. The mix of the familiar and the exotic has resulted in the creation and perpetuation of a number of "White Lies." These are stories that have been developed over long periods of time, reproduced in classrooms, anthropology and sociology textbooks, and other media, but have been rarely challenged, contributing to misunderstandings that have ultimately, in subtle ways, diminished the stature of Inuit traditional culture. In this lively book, designed specifically for introductory students, Steckley unpacks three "White Lies"-the myth that there are fifty-two words for snow, that there are blond, blue-eyed Inuit descended from the Vikings, and that the Inuit send off their elders to die on ice floes. Debunking these popular myths allows him to illustrate how knowledge is shaped by Western social science, particularly the anthropology of the "Other," and that it can be flawed. In the process, students learn not only about Inuit culture, but about the difference between popular and scholarly research.

Since the 1990s, the Ankarana region of northern Madagascar has developed a reputation among globe-trotting gemstone traders and tourists as a source of some of the world's most precious natural wonders. Although some might see Ankarana's sapphire and ecotourist trades as being at odds with each other, many local people understand these trades to be fundamentally connected, most obviously in how both serve foreign demand for what Madagascar has to offer the world. Walsh explores the tensions and speculations that have come with the parallel emergence of these two trades with sensitivity and a critical eye, allowing for insights into globalization, inequality, and the appeal of the "natural." For more information, and to read a hyperlinked version of the first chapter online, visit https://madeinmadagascar.wordpress.com.

Thousands of children participate in community sports every year, enjoying recreation time with their peers, getting healthy exercise, and learning a variety of personal and group skills. At the same time, children's sports are not without controversy: parents can be overly invested in their children's exploits, competitive success is often the focus, and rising costs can limit participation. Consider, too, that these activities, billed as being for the kids, are often overlaid with other agendas by the adults who volunteer, work, and generally support children's sports. Noel Dyck incorporates nearly two decades of ethnographic field research into this anthropologically informed account that illustrates how all those involved in children's sports-boys and girls, parents, coaches, and sport officials-shape these complex, vibrant fields of play. In the process, he explores larger questions and debates about contemporary family and community and the shaping of childhood, youth, and adulthood. Bridging anthropology, sport studies, and childhood studies, Fields of Play offers a rich understanding of an area that has, to date, gained relatively little attention by social scientists.

The Maya of the Yucatán have long been drawn into the Mexican state's attempt to create modern Mexican citizens (mestizos). At the same time, they have contended with globalization pressures, first with hemp production and more recently with increased tourism and the fast-growing influence of American-based evangelical Protestantism. Despite these pressures to turn Maya into mestizo, the citizens of the small town of Maxcanú have used subtle forms of resistance-humor, satire, and language-to maintain aspects of their traditional identity.Loewe offers a contemporary look at a Maya community caught between tradition and modernity. He skilfully weaves the history of Mexico and this particular community into the analysis, offering a unique understanding of how one local community has faced the onslaught of modernization.

Charting the rise and fall of an experimental biomedical facility at a North American university, Culturing Bioscience offers a fascinating glimpse into scientific culture and the social and political context in which that culture operates. Krautwurst nests the discussion of scientific culture within a series of levels from the lab to the global political economy. In the process he explores a number of topics, including: the social impact of technology; researchers' relationships with sophisticated equipment; what scientists actually do in a laboratory; what role science plays in the contemporary university; and the way bioscience interacts with local, regional, and global governments. The result is a rich case study that illustrates a host of contemporary issues in the social study of science.

Charting the rise and fall of an experimental biomedical facility at a North American university, Culturing Bioscience offers a fascinating glimpse into scientific culture and the social and political context in which that culture operates. Krautwurst nests the discussion of scientific culture within a series of levels from the lab to the global political economy. In the process he explores a number of topics, including: the social impact of technology; researchers' relationships with sophisticated equipment; what scientists actually do in a laboratory; what role science plays in the contemporary university; and the way bioscience interacts with local, regional, and global governments. The result is a rich case study that illustrates a host of contemporary issues in the social study of science.

Charting the rise and fall of an experimental biomedical facility at a North American university, Culturing Bioscience offers a fascinating glimpse into scientific culture and the social and political context in which that culture operates. Krautwurst nests the discussion of scientific culture within a series of levels from the lab to the global political economy. In the process he explores a number of topics, including: the social impact of technology; researchers' relationships with sophisticated equipment; what scientists actually do in a laboratory; what role science plays in the contemporary university; and the way bioscience interacts with local, regional, and global governments. The result is a rich case study that illustrates a host of contemporary issues in the social study of science.

This book explores the question of why fishing communities continue their struggle to survive, despite often calamitous changes in ecology and economy. Using historical ethnography as a lens through which to understand how fishers of the Bigouden region of France and their families have reinvented themselves, Menzies argues that local identity plays an important role in their perseverance as global capitalist pressures continually force them to reorganize or disappear entirely. Touching on many concepts that are fundamental to anthropology-culture, identity, kinship, work, political economy, and globalization-and filled with personal stories and warmth, this ethnography will be a welcome teaching tool for instructors and an enticing read for students.

This book explores the question of why fishing communities continue their struggle to survive, despite often calamitous changes in ecology and economy. Using historical ethnography as a lens through which to understand how fishers of the Bigouden region of France and their families have reinvented themselves, Menzies argues that local identity plays an important role in their perseverance as global capitalist pressures continually force them to reorganize or disappear entirely. Touching on many concepts that are fundamental to anthropology-culture, identity, kinship, work, political economy, and globalization-and filled with personal stories and warmth, this ethnography will be a welcome teaching tool for instructors and an enticing read for students.

This book explores the question of why fishing communities continue their struggle to survive, despite often calamitous changes in ecology and economy. Using historical ethnography as a lens through which to understand how fishers of the Bigouden region of France and their families have reinvented themselves, Menzies argues that local identity plays an important role in their perseverance as global capitalist pressures continually force them to reorganize or disappear entirely. Touching on many concepts that are fundamental to anthropology-culture, identity, kinship, work, political economy, and globalization-and filled with personal stories and warmth, this ethnography will be a welcome teaching tool for instructors and an enticing read for students.