Ph.D. - Anthropology

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https://hdl.handle.net/10125/592

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    Embodiment and Precarity in Deep Seabed Mining: Extraction on the Blue Green Resource Frontier
    (2024) Harris, Lindsey; Mawyer, Alexander; Anthropology
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    Qualia in Markets: Ruili's Jadeite Marketplaces in the China-Myanmar Borderland
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Ma, Yi; Golub, Alex; Anthropology
    This dissertation examines how qualia, qualities, and quality-like variables of commodities, are both constitutive of a market and produced by it. By looking at the heterogeneity of a market, this research also explains how a concrete market is configured, practiced and negotiated by a diverse group of actors and agents such as states, market organizations/unions, firms, trading specialists, and street peddlers, and the specified commodities. I present my ethnographic study of Ruili, a jadeite marketplace in Southwest China’s border with Myanmar, and I argue that “qualia” (Munn 1986) as qualities, and quality-like variables of commodities, in the process of market practice, are constantly made and remade through market agencement, the mutuality of heterogenous actors and agents in a market setting (Callon 1990, 1998, 2021). In practice, the “qualia” of jadeite, I suggest, are constitutive of market management and the economics/knowledge of the market (Callon 1990,1998). This research contributes to the study of markets through ethnography of a jadeite marketplace explains how a market is configured and experienced through a set of qualitative dimensions (commodity qualia are realized in addition to labor costs and scarcity as the economics of jadeite), and in turn how these qualitative dimensions are reproduced through market agencement---the constant process of market practice by heterogenous actors and agents in a spatial-temporal framework. In this process, these qualitative dimensions are constantly quantified through commodity pricing, daring modes of business and life (betting), as mastered as expertise and specialization in market management. By combing qualitative dimensions and market agencement, “qualia in markets” provides one way to understand the alignment of human and nonhuman actors, the interplay of structures (Giddens 1984) and the agency of different actors (Callon 1986a, 1998, 2021). It contributes to the epistemology of markets and exemplifies how the anthropology of markets can provide fruitful ways to understand our world. In my analysis, I show how agents price and judge jadeite commodities based on the physical qualities and appearances of jadeite stone, ie. the “qualia of jadeite,” as one way to understand “contemporary jade culture in a market” in Ruili in Chapter 3. Grading and pricing based on preferred qualities and appearances of jadeite commodities (economic valuation), which I also frame as the knowledge/economics of jadeite, is at the core of how this market operates and is set up on the ground. In turn, given the physical characteristics that raw jadeite stones exude and possess, such as their non-perishable character, jadeite commodities are sold, stored, and displayed accordingly to constitute a spatial structure of “qualia in markets” in Chapter 2. Further, the potential of raw jadeite stones that appears as quality-like variables such as the “skin/crust” and color and veins on the surfaces that exude information about whether raw jadeite commodities might be desirable, have further configured a type of “betting” life in Ruili’s jadeite markets in chapter 4. If reading and assessing jadeite stones is an individual practice, are there any market standards? How do traders negotiate in market practice? Chapter 5 further shows a broad range of these valuation criteria, ie. the qualia of jadeite, is further constituted through bargaining as a market mechanism in Ruili. Chapter 5 also shows how bargaining in Ruili’s marketplace is associated with norms and rituals in wider structures of economic life in Ruili. In Chapter 6, I illustrate how the arrival of new e-commerce in jadeite business has reshaped market management in Ruili, with market organizations have playing a “visible hand” in market regulation. The qualia of jadeite commodities are constituted through the expertise and specialization in market organizations. Here trading specialists are conferred expertise by mastering the “knowledge/economic of jadeite” through their extended years of practice which is crucial in the process of market management. Through “qualia in markets” that heterogenous actors and agents are mutually dependent upon, this dissertation shows the alignment of human and nonhuman actors and the interplay of individuals and institutional practice. “Qualia in markets” could be an exemplary form of “reciprocal conception” as framed by Zygmunt Bauman (2002 in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s book): “Society shaping the individuality of its members and the individuals forming society out of their life actions while pursuing strategies plausible and feasible within the socially woven web of their dependencies” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s 2002: 14). I intend for this research to evoke more theoretical discussions about qualia and markets, and also showcase how the anthropology of markets can provide fruitful ways of understanding our world.
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    Deliberate Noncitizenship: A Generational Project Of The Bamar Muslim Families In The Thai-Burmese Borderland
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Intarat, Phianphachong; Padwe, Jonathan; Anthropology
    The Bamar Muslims are a group of Muslim minorities in Myanmar. The Bamar Muslims discussed in this study are those who moved to Mae Sot, a Thai western border town, during the 1970s-90s, and their descendants born and raised therein. The Bamar Muslims believed that, in Myanmar, their ethnoreligious identity caused them everyday life discrimination and a rejection of Burmese citizenship whereas in Thailand, the Thai state regarded them as illegal immigrants from Myanmar. This double legal exclusion renders the Bamar Muslims in Thailand stateless across generations. Against this backdrop, the stateless Bamar Muslims in Mae Sot strived to formalize their belonging to the Thai polity through Thai state-issued identity document acquirement. Central to this attempt is a legal status entitled the "Person Without Registration Status" colloquially known among the locals as the "Ten-Year card." The status indicates the Thai state’s formal recognition of an individual's legal personhood without guaranteed pathways to Thai citizenship. Despite its seemingly inconsequential benefits, the Ten-Year card is highly sought after among the stateless Bamar Muslims in Mae Sot. In this study, I look at the multi-generational stateless Bamar Muslims’ everyday life struggles and their strategies to acquire Thai state-issues IDs to understand what the Ten-Year card category can tell us about the relationship between the state and its noncitizens, and how this noncitizenship experience differs among the Bamar Muslims of different age, gender, and sexuality. I propose to understand the Ten-Year category as deliberate noncitizenship, a pragmatic state-individual relationship that both parties intentionally establish while allowing normative obligations to one another to be contingent, nonreciprocal, and not guaranteed. Deliberate noncitizenship arises and dwells in the context where various forms of the state’s exclusionary practices such as border demarcation and immigration controls are at work, and yet vii never fully function as they are intended to. Moreover, the pathways to acquire this pragmatic status are not evenly accessible for all noncitizens but are forged by unequal power relations that accompany noncitizen individuals’ different embodiments of age, gender, and sexuality. These power dynamics at play in the Bamar Muslim families connect noncitizen domesticity at a micro level to the larger field of political membership and belonging to the Thai state and society. In sum, this present study provides the field of migration and (non)citizenship studies with an analysis that bridges the often separated discussions between vulnerable mobile figures on the one hand and the statelessness in situ on the other hand. In other words, it points out the interconnectedness between movement and stasis in noncitizenship and its vulnerability. Moreover, by foregrounding multi-generational Bamar Muslim families and their domesticity, the present study enhances the understanding of migration phenomena beyond the hegemonic narrative of labor migration that emphasizes the economic relations between host states and mobile figures.
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    Remapping The Boundaries Of Polynesian Hospitality: Kānaka Maoli Strategies To Sustain Ancestral Relationships To Material And Spiritual Ecologies Of Ko‘olau Ka‘āina O Ka Wai A Kane
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) broadhurst, philip; Tengan, Ty P.; Anthropology
    ABSTRACT Although Hawaiian people are often touted for their hospitality and generosity, perhaps more frequently than any other distinct culture group on the planet, the sociopolitical and economic implications of propagating hoʻokipa or “Hawaiian hospitality” as a local, domestic, and global symbol, and institution of modern Hawaiian society, has largely remained an overlooked, or arguably taboo topic for social scientific inquiry, which this dissertation addresses. A central question of the research is: How do Hawaiians of today reckon with local, domestic, and global demands for Hawaiian hospitality? Broadly, this dissertation uses the lens of hospitality to examine the complexity of negotiating the permanent presence of temporary occupants in Hawaiʻi. Specifically, this ethnographic analysis examines some of the ways that hoʻokipa is contemporarily practiced among Hawaiians to sustain ancestral human-environment relationships to Koʻolau Maui which is also commonly called “East Maui”. The dissertation demonstrates some of the ways ho‘okipa is used by Kānaka Maoli of today in multiple ways to achieve various objectives in Ko‘olau Maui. The research revealed that ho‘okipa is used to establish rapport with “outsiders” (strangers) to share weather or roadway concerns to foster higher levels of safety among visitors to the region. Villagers of Ko‘olau Maui also frequently utilize ho‘okipa as a method to increase visitor awareness of the cultural landscape in order to shield or minimize the ravages of overtourism inflicted upon it. In this context, ho‘okipa acts as an adaptive cultural mechanism utilized to sustain connections to the cultural landscape by collapsing the social distance between residents and visitors. The dissertation will display through text, sound, and image that contemporary forms of ho‘okipa in Ko‘olau Maui are often transmitted as a strategy in order to sustain ancestral relationships to the material and spiritual ecologies of the region. The dissertation argues that contemporary practices of ho‘okipa or Hawaiian hospitality is at once an integral dimension of an underlying indigenous value system that functions as an adaptive cultural mechanism to negotiate shifting social conditions and political climates, as well as a monolithic institutional hegemonic edict that animates the very conditions that many Hawaiians of today are seemingly too often compelled to adapt to.
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    Conceal at All Costs: Lived Experiences of Menstruation in Japan
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Stephens-Chu, Maura Haley; Brunson, Jan; Anthropology
    Although reproductive technologies and the gendered dimensions of medicalization have been thoroughly studied in anthropology, menstruation itself is a neglected topic, especially in urban and post-industrial settings. This research takes as its focus the complex and varied experiences of menstruation for young Japanese women in the Tokyo metropolitan area and examines the Japanese menstrual product industry from an ethnographic and critical feminist perspective. Informed by interdisciplinary studies on embodiment, gender, and reproductive health, I interrogate taken-for-granted notions of “normal” menstrual cycles, menstrual products, and menstrual education by highlighting the diversity of physiological, social, and emotional experiences surrounding menstruation. “Hegemonic menstruality” is what I call the macro, public discourse of menstruation – built up through school lessons and textbooks, commercial menstrual products and their advertisements, and media treatment of women and their bodies. Young women encounter and interact with hegemonic menstruality on a daily basis, and this project details the varied ways in which they embrace, conform, adapt, resist, and/or reject this hegemony. Simply put, hegemonic menstruality refers to the “correct” way to menstruate as a member of society; it is a particular form of menstrual being that, if followed, lends a menstruator more power, or at least less stigma, than if not followed. Due to cultural connections between menstruation, sex, and reproduction, as well as strong expectations of motherhood for women, hegemonic menstruality and hegemonic femininity have quite a few (implicit and explicit) overlaps. Hegemonic menstruality promotes two conflicting components of an ideal woman: 1) she has a “regular” menstrual cycle – perfect reproductive health – and thus is capable of producing children, 2) and simultaneously, she conceals from public perception all signs of that all-important menstrual cycle. Pain, discomfort, and discursive silence are normalized aspects of menstruation for Japanese women, and failure to conceal menstruation – through sight, smell, sound, and affect – connotes a lack of discipline and femininity which women are expected to maintain. Menstrual product advertisements enforce these expectations of disciplined femininity, and the products themselves are technologies that act as mediators (or barriers) between a woman and her menstrual body. Tokyo as a research site provides the opportunity to study the effect of pronatalist government policies and discourses about fertility, gender roles, and parenthood on embodied experiences of menstruation. In the context of twenty-first century economic precarity, prolonged singlehood, and changing social relations, menstruation – with its discursive connection to motherhood – can have great significance to young Japanese women, who must balance career goals with personal desires and/or social pressures to have a family.
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    A tale of two cities: an evaluation of political evolution in the Eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia since AD 1000
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1984) Bath, Joyce E.; Anthropology
    The history of political evolution is traced in two highly stratified island societies in the Eastern carolines of Micronesia. The people of the two islands, Ponape and Kosrae, are closely linked genetically, linguistically and culturally. Yet at the time
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    Communal versus individual socialization at home and in school in rural and urban Western Samoa
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980) Sutter, Frederic Koehler; Anthropology
    When cultural differences exist between students and their school, the educational process is often impeded. Children from traditional societies around the world have experienced difficulty in learning in introduced Western-oriented schools . The complex