Hanumān is a popular Hindu deity across the Indian subcontinent and his popularity has spread to the United States, with many temples dedicated to Hanumān and devotees who follow him around the ...country. Southern California, however, only has two Hanumān temples: the Shri Bhaktha Anjaneya Temple in San Diego, CA and the Sri Panchamukha Hanuman Temple in Torrance, CA. I conducted an ethnographic research project to learn why people attend these two temples and why they follow Hanumān, along with whether they associate Hanumān with monkeys. I found a great deal of diversity and complexity in people’s responses to all questions. People worship Hanumān for a number of reasons, the main ones I found being his power and strength, his role as ultimate devotee to Rama, and other good qualities Hanumān possesses that makes worshippers want to be like him. The main reasons people attend the temples include being able to feel the presence of god, power associated with temple rituals, and the size of the murtī. I also found that many people attend other temples along with the Shri Bhaktha Anjaneya Temple, in particular, most notably the Hare Krishna Temple in San Diego, CA. Many are able to reconcile Hanumān devotion with the Hare Krishna movement by viewing Hanumān as their guru. Finally, I found that the ways that Hanumān devotees think about monkeys are equally as diverse as how people think about Hanumān. Some people associate Hanumān with monkeys, while others make a clear distinction between monkeys and vānaras. Some people I spoke to fear monkeys, although nobody dislikes monkeys. This project builds on literature from cultural anthropology, religious studies, and ethnoprimatology, and contributes to each. This thesis enriches the ethnoprimatological literature by exploring how primates fit into Hindu religious traditions in the United States. It also offers ethnographic insights into the diversity of thought among Hindus in Southern California. Finally, this project examines how sacred places are created and become culturally meaningful, contributing to the literature on sacred place in both anthropology and religious studies.
Background/significanceHawaiʻi has the highest Diversity Index in the United States, with a 74.1% chance that two people chosen at random would be from different racial and ethnic groups (U.S. Census ...Bureau, 2023). The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Nancy Atmospera-Walch School of Nursing (NAWSON) is faced with the challenge of training upcoming nurses to serve this highly diverse state. Cultural safety is the key to effectively engaging with patients from diverse backgrounds.Purpose/AimsThe purpose is to provide training on cultural safety concept and themes for the nursing faculty at NAWSON with three main goals: 1. Introduce cultural safety concept and themes; 2. Increase self-confidence about cultural safety; 3. Increased knowledge about the application of cultural safety.MethodsThe cultural safety training was delivered online through the university’s google site. It included pre- and post-Likert Scale questionnaires and two video presentations covering cultural safety. The faculty were notified via email to participate in the training. No identifiable information was collected to ensure privacy and anonymity.ResultsParticipation rate was low. This could be due to the fact that it was a voluntary training. Furthermore, training was during the middle of the semester. Due to the low participation rate, there was insufficient data to draw statistically significant conclusions about the effectiveness of the intervention.ConclusionDue to low participation, the project was unable to collect enough data to analyze the impact of cultural safety training on the NAWSON faculty. A mandatory faculty meeting could have yielded a higher participation rate and is a feasible format. Cultural safety training is an evidence-based intervention proven to equip healthcare professionals to address the diverse cultures of their patients. Training the NAWSON faculty with a strong understanding of cultural safety is a crucial first step towards creating a culturally safe nursing workforce prepared to serve the diverse populations of Hawaiʻi and the Asia-Pacific region.Implications/RecommendationsAn asynchronous format for cultural safety training is a viable option for nursing faculty. Cultural safety training can increase faculty’s attitude, knowledge, and application in cultural safety concepts within their curriculum. Thereby, the faculty can train and educate a nursing workforce in cultural safety to be equipped to serve the diverse populations in the State of Hawaiʻi and the Asia-Pacific region.
In March 2022, the collapse of a dilapidated, early 20th-century blacksmith shop on my family’s sheep ranch in Montour Valley, Idaho prompted a short archaeological salvage project. The project ...recovered approximately 6,200 items, most of which were metal and associated with various aspects of farm life. Through investigation of the recovered historical artifacts, this research explores the role of family-operated blacksmith shops in rural Idaho – a lesser-known, yet vital component of Idaho’s agricultural history. By the turn of the century, Montour Valley was a bustling industrial hub as a result of the mining boom, the nearby Boise-Payette Lumber Company, and the establishment of the Idaho Northern Railroad. These industries supported a rural community engaged in intensive agriculture and ranching. Blacksmith shops operating on private properties were necessary to maintain agricultural livelihoods, and speaking personally, served as an integral part of my family’s history. More broadly, this research aims to deepen our understanding of the role of smaller, local blacksmiths in the rural American West and enrich the agricultural history of Southwestern Idaho.
This thesis contributes to the fuller project of decolonization by focusing on the development of Yoga in the 20th century and up to the present. The essay considers understandings of Yoga that ...reinforce the dichotomous West/Non-West image of the world. It develops new research on contemporary yoga in Mexico to show the limits and distortions of this appearance. The research focuses on ensembles of yoga practices, understood as a domain of relational interaction and change, rather than as a finished form of ether non-Western or Western (translated) provenance. From this perspective, we better appreciate that overcoming the unevenness and constraints of any relation come out of the relation itself, rather than from one pole.
The Old Copper Complex of the Middle and Late Archaic periods in Wisconsin is poorly understood by archaeologists. The Milwaukee Public Museum and the Sheboygan County Historical Society and Museum ...contain some of the largest collections of copper artifacts found in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin dating to the Old Copper Complex. This thesis applied a modified version of a copper artifact recording schema to objects at each museum, providing robust descriptions of legacy collections, and allowing for cross-collection comparisons. Objects at the Milwaukee Public Museum are also assigned potential provenience through a detailed study of known archaeological site records within the Wisconsin Historical Preservation Database. Such work incrementally advances our understanding of the Old Copper Complex and provides a possible framework for locally analyzing Old Copper Complex collections. This thesis project shows that in Sheboygan County, copper perforators were found to co-occur only with other object types, that copper was used for primarily utilitarian purposes, and that fishing activities were engaged in along Lake Michigan while terrestrial game hunting happened inland, particularly near the Sheboygan Marsh.
Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the late Neolithic/Bronze Age migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, can be investigated using ...patterns of genetic variation among the people who lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations. We use a mechanistic admixture model to compare the sex-specifically–inherited X chromosome with the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 late Neolithic/Bronze Age human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggested by the patrilocality of many agricultural populations, we find no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic. For later migrations from the Pontic Steppe during the late Neolithic/Bronze Age, however, we estimate a dramatic male bias, with approximately five to 14 migrating males for every migrating female. We find evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers, perhaps whole families, whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration, potentially connected to new technology and conquest.
The study of the quest for the good life and the morality and value it presupposes is not new. To the contrary, this is an ancient issue; its intellectual history can be traced back to Aristotle. In ...anthropology, the study of morality and value has always been a central concern, despite the claim of some scholars that the recent upsurge of interest in these issues is new. What is novel is how scholars in many disciplines are posing the value question in new ways. The global economic alignments of the present pose many political, moral and theoretical questions, but the central issue the essays in this collection address is: how do relatively poor people of the Australia–Pacific region survive in current precarious times? In looking to answer this question, contributors directly engage the values and concepts of their interlocutors. At a time when understanding local implications of global processes is taking on new urgency, these essays bring finely honed anthropological perspectives to matters of universal human concern—they offer radical empirical critique based on intensive fieldwork that will be of great interest to those seeking to comprehend the bigger picture.
Mit der Aufnahme vieler Geflüchteter im Jahr 2015 ergeben sich in Deutschland neue gesellschaftliche Fragestellungen, die auch religionsbezogene Aspekte beinhalten. Flüchtlingsunterkünfte als ...besondere Räume des Zusammenlebens eignen sich hierbei sehr gut, um nachzuvollziehen, wer jene Geflüchtete sind, inwiefern ihr Alltag von Religion geprägt ist und wie unter den Bewohner*innen und von Seiten der Sozialarbeiter*innen mit Phänomenen um Religion umgegangen wird. Natalie Powroznik nimmt sich diesen Aspekten im nordrhein-westfälischen Kontext an und zeigt aus sozialanthropologischer Perspektive, wie vielfältig und unterschiedlich Religion in Erscheinung treten kann - und warum der erste Blick manchmal täuscht.
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