Ciara Edwards-Mendez’s AHSS Summer Research Project

Ciara is another one of SOAN’s recipients of the AHSS summer research project grants. With her funding, Ciara returned to Los Angeles for the summer, and has designed a fascinating oral history project that explores aspects of her own neighborhood and its history. As the faculty advisor of her project, I asked Ciara to provide our departmental audience with a bit of detail about her emerging project. Here’s what he had to say!

My research doesn’t propose a singular research question, but instead is a collection of ex-graffiti gang members remnants and a set of interviews making up an oral history of their time in the gangs in the 1990s. When gathered, I will correlate all their individual yet analogous recollections to analyze what graffiti meant to them, and assess their perspectives during this time, with particular attention to the dichotomy between art and vandalism, which captures the social realities of the graffiti writers in urban environments. ​​Altogether, this research will explore a multitude of different topics and social themes, such as poverty and violence, and will investigate these artists’ experiences along social, cultural, and political lines. East Los Angeles is a marginalized urban community in which residents began establishing territories and reconfiguring urban space well before the 1990s. But because of tensions, largely defined by the racial and ethnic segregation, and coupled with a deep distrust of the police and ongoing violence, gangs rose in prominence in this period. Graffiti served as a way for members of this urban community to mark turf and establish territory.

I have been in contact with subjects that are now working as muralists or as established graffiti artists. They have detached themselves from any involvement in any graffiti gang activity for the past twenty years, and as I have commenced this project, these artists have brought me to the places in the neighborhood that are important locations from their yesteryears: I’ve been at the walls they’ve tagged, into their houses, and via ethnographic methods, I’ve been trying to blend into the scene, so that I might deploy participant observation to gather as much evidence as possible in addition to the interviews I’m conducting for the oral history​. 

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A composite image from two of the photographs that Ciara collected in early interviews.

Ciara, that sounds so interesting, and we’re looking forward to hearing more. We’ll catch up with you again in a few months as your project nears completion!

Andrew

Zach Hermann’s Summer Research Project

Zach is one of the University of Puget Sound’s Matelich scholars, and that scholarship has allowed him to pursue an independent summer research project in cadence with the AHSS summer research students on campus. As the supervisor of his project, I asked Zach to provide our departmental audience with a bit of detail about his research interests this summer. Here’s what he had to say!

The primary research question I seek to engage with in this project will be: How does Reform Jewish youth engage with and understand their role in Palestinian liberation movements?

In recent months, the Israeli occupation has continued to encroach on territory within the West Bank. In response to the actions of the Israeli government, the If Not Now​ movement has created a petition for Reform Jews to demand more from the Union of Reform Judaism in regards to condemning Israeli apartheid. I hope to learn from engaged Reform Jewish community leaders who have signed onto this petition in order to better understand their perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what drives them to engage with the If Not Now movement.

I hope to create of a resource based on what I learn from the testimonials of engaged research participants in order to propose means for improving If Not Now’s engagements as well as providing insights for the Union of Reform Judaism to better understand the growing ideological shift within young community members.

As Palestinians oppression continues to be justified in the name of Jewish safety, the need for Reform Jews to understand the shifting consensus surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has never been greater. As anti-semitism increases across the globe, the Jewish people must find solidarity in humanity’s collective liberation of the oppressed. Through movements like If Not Now, Reform Jews are learning a new side to their story and face an urgent need to reevaluate their approach to Israel education within the faith. In this proejct, I hope to bring forth voices that can bring clarity to the ways in which both the Union of Reform Judaism and the If Not Now movement can increase and retain their engagements with Reform Jewish youth.

Although Zach’s semester with me in SOAN 299 Ethnographic Methods was thrown out of whack by the pandemic, the project he’s pursuing here certainly reflects the aspirations I try to convey to students — to design projects that are of scholarly and academic interest, but also incorporate applied goals that are useful in assessing real world issues or friction. We’ll check back with Zach at the end of the summer and hear more about his findings then!

Andrew

Maya Gilliam’s Research Podcast: All Things Intentional.

This posting is about the podcast that senior Maya Gilliam produced about her summer research project!

Senior Maya Gilliam

The University of Puget Sound offers students the competitive opportunity to pursue independent research over the course of the summer. Projects are funded by the university, and are conducted under the guidance and supervision of a faculty member. The SOAN Department — with its sustained emphasis on quantitative and qualitative methodological training, the disciplinary commitment to fieldwork and the value of experiential learning, and the constellation of interests that have long coalesced under the banners of sociology and anthropology — has greatly benefitted from the AHSS Summer Research Program, and we are proud of the amazing work that our students have conducted in summers over the past decade. You can glimpse some of that collected work here.

Over the chaotic summer of 2020, senior Maya Gilliam pursued an independent project that sought to explore the ideas, commitments, and practices integral to various intentional communities in the contemporary era. Although her original plans were to travel around the western states exploring various manifestations of international community, the pandemic constrained Maya to the PNW, and simultaneously made fieldwork difficult for Maya and for several other students pursing independent projects. Nonetheless, instead of producing a paper or an article, Maya pulled together this insightful and fascinating podcast that summarizes her summer exploration. I’ve linked to it below — have a listen!

All Things Intentional Audio File

This is really excellent, Maya! I love this work, and I’m now thinking about how other students might explore this medium in Ethnographic Methods. Thanks for leading the way 🙂

Andrew

Collaborative Creation of a Nepalese Research Center: An AHSS Summer Research Project

Greetings all,

Several students in the orbit of the SOAN Department have new AHSS Summer Research projects they’re pursuing amidst the tumultuous summer. I asked Karina to tell us a bit about her summer project, and her work with my good friend Deependra Giri. Here’s what she had to say:

Collaborative Creation of a Nepalese Research Center 

Karina Cherniske

This summer I am honored to be working remotely with Deependra Giri in the collaborative construction of an NGO in Nepal. Deependra has a vision to create an NGO in Nepal, his home, and hopes that the NGO will support researchers on various projects. I intend to help him built his vision, and these efforts will coalesce in creating a website that will distill some of the key research elements he intends to provide, including translation, scheduling, data collection, and establishing qualitative samples. Additionally I will be conducting my own interviews with Deependra and others to explore the current challenges and socio-political climate in Nepal, and attempt to discern what role international research plays in Nepalese society. In the project I hope to gain a perspective on the presence and role of NGOs in South Asia, and better understand how they are responding to the unique needs of the global pandemic. 

While I had originally intended to travel and to Bhairahawa, Nepal, I will now be communicating with Mr. Giri remotely. This changes the participant observation emphasis of the project, but still allows for many of the original goals to be implemented. I am excited to learn more about the ways that communities in Nepal are sharing resources and coming together to meet the needs of all people in the face of an uncaring federal government.

Good luck to you, Karina! We’re obviously sorry to hear your trip to Nepal was called off, but this project sounds wonderful nonetheless! Some additional details: With the sustained emphasis on independent field-based research, students in Puget Sound’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology have frequently received support from the University’s competitive program for funded student summer research. Indeed, the sequence of fascinating projects — conducted by SOAN students as part of the University’s AHSS program. This year was no exception, and we’re proud of our students’ success! But the global pandemic threw a wrench in these students’ plans. As a result, projects funded and approved for summer research had to be quickly reconfigured to the new realities of the Summer of 2020. The reconfigured results are detailed above.

Alternative Lifestyles: Off-the-Grid and Intentional Communities: An AHSS Summer Research Project

Greetings all,

As previously noted, several students in the orbit of the SOAN Department have new AHSS Summer Research projects they’re pursuing amidst our tumultuous summer. I asked Maya to tell us a bit about her summer project, and here’s what she had to say:

Alternative Lifestyles: Off-the-Grid and Intentional Communities

Maya Gilliam

My project revolves around individuals or groups of people who choose to organize community and live in ways that deviate from the norm. Specifically I am interested in ‘alternative’ or ‘off the grid’ lifestyles. Washington state has an abundance of these communities that I aim to make contact with and to further understand the driving forces of these places, and the common values they share. The project will delve into particular communities to grasp a deeper knowledge about the social circumstances they respond to. Through this project I hope to aid in dismantling the oversimplification of alternative communities in mainstream culture, and extrapolate and explain their complexities. Although pandemic protocols don’t allow student researchers to engage in person with subjects, I am going to get creative and find a number of ways to explore this topic. My research will look into both historic intentional communities and their changes throughout time. Additionally, I want to grasp a sense of the ways in which these communities are responding to the contemporary crisis. What community ethos are arising in this moment? How is the pandemic changing these communities?

For this project I will do a considerable amount of book research, in addition to reaching out to specific communities to do zoom or phone interviews. Collecting as many interviews and first hand accounts as possible is greatly important for an ethnographic study like this. I aspire to come away from this project with a much more extensive historical and contemporary understanding of alternative lifestyles, and present this acquired knowledge through a captivating platform (blog, podcast, or magazine article). I am really looking forward to engaging in this topic, continuing to be flexible with my work, and learning new and unprecedented tools for safe and responsible ethnographic research.

We’re excited to hear about your findings, Maya! Good luck this summer, and we’ll check back in a few months to hear how it’s all going! Some additional details: With the sustained emphasis on independent field-based research, students in Puget Sound’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology have frequently received support from the University’s competitive program for funded student summer research. Indeed, the sequence of fascinating projects — conducted by SOAN students as part of the University’s AHSS program. This year was no exception, and we’re proud of our students’ success! But the global pandemic threw a wrench in these students’ plans. As a result, projects funded and approved for summer research had to be quickly reconfigured to the new realities of the Summer of 2020. The reconfigured results are detailed above.

An Exploration of the Urban Landscape and Marginal Communities in Tacoma, Washington: An AHSS Summer Research Project

Greetings all,

Several students in the orbit of the SOAN Department have new AHSS Summer Research projects they’re pursuing amidst the tumultuous summer. I asked Oscar Edwards-Hughes to tell us a bit about his summer project:

Interstitial Space: An Exploration of the Urban Landscape and Marginal Communities of Tacoma, Washington

Oscar Edwards-Hughes

Cities, and the urban landscape they comprise, are complicated collections of social, political, and historical forces. In the United States, and much of the world, these cities are simultaneously two things: a patchwork of private property and public space, and densely populated areas with a notable social fabric. In all cities around the world, there are better properties and worse properties, and considering contemporary inequality in America specifically, there are wealthy Americans and poor Americans. Of these poorer Americans, many live on the same city streets we see and walk down every day. This project is an exploration of that junction — between urban space in America and American society.

Interstitial space “comprises the zones and spaces between plans, the unplanned, spaces that for some reason or another have eluded planners’ gaze,” (Gardner ND). This unplanned or abandoned space can be seen throughout urban areas, consisting of spaces where planning and boundaries are unclear or non-existent; a space seemingly missed or uncalculated by city planners. At first glance this space seems totally functionless, but previous academic research suggests the possibility that interstitial space, sometimes referred to as “junk space,” provides functions for communities overlooked by the general public (Koolhaas 2002).

This summer I will be conducting a series of interviews with community outreach coordinators, activists, and law enforcement personnel. With these interviews I hope to discover what communities of people are involved with this interstitial space, their differing opinions and roles, and the interactions between them. These interviews are to serve as a tool for gaining more insight into what work is already being done, or has been done, in these spaces, as well building an understanding into the history of these spaces. The heart of my project will be observation in Tacoma’s interstitial spaces in an effort to understand how this space is functionally vital to some of the most marginal members of our society. I will be spending time in Tacoma’s interstitial spaces, observing the things, people, and happenings I see in the space, and documenting my experiences through writing and photography. In my research, I will be observing how people interact with this space, what functions the space serves, what common happenings occur, and what common identifying features these spaces share. I will be observing normal everyday occurrences and abnormal events, the movement and attitudes of people, the mundane and the exciting, etc. Through this observation I aim to build an understanding of the domain, the people interacting with the space, and the space’s functionality.

 

We’re proud of you, Oscar, and we look forward to hearing about how this project goes over the remaining summer. Good luck! Some additional details: With the sustained emphasis on independent field-based research, students in Puget Sound’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology have frequently received support from the University’s competitive program for funded student summer research. Indeed, the sequence of fascinating projects — conducted by SOAN students as part of the University’s AHSS program. This year was no exception, and we’re proud of our students’ success! But the global pandemic threw a wrench in these students’ plans. As a result, projects funded and approved for summer research had to be quickly reconfigured to the new realities of the Summer of 2020. The reconfigured results are detailed above.

Mariana Sanchez Castillo’s AHSS Summer Research Project

Hi all,

Students at the University of Puget Sound can compete for funding to support their summer research endeavors. Our department’s students were particularly successful in past years, and again this year we’ve had numerous proposals successfully funded. In short, the AHSS Summer Research Awards, varying from $3250 to $3750, allow students to pursue an in-depth research project over the summer months. I’ve asked each of this year’s batch of students to tell us a little bit about what they’ll be doing with their time, energy, and grant monies in the coming summer. Here’s what Mariana Sanchez Castillo had to say about her new project:

Mariana at the Church of Santo Domingo in Oaxaca, Mexico

This past February, American movie-lovers witnessed the award nomination and recognition of the Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron for his film “Roma” at the Oscars ceremony. For the first time in the history of the awards, a foreign movie centered around the life of an indigenous woman was nominated for the best picture award. In Mexico, the conversation brought to light the controversial classist and colourist views of the Mexican elite towards indigenous domestic workers as well as their invisibility in modern Mexican life. While rural indigenous communities and traditions have been essential in the creation of the Mexican national identity, when it comes to policy-making their needs are very rarely considered, and they have not been given the agency they deserve to predict their own futures.

In the rise of a global environmental crisis and sociopolitical barriers to indigenous community development, there is a high demand for research that can illuminate how indigenous artisanal practices have developed in relationship to their rural environmental contexts and how those practices might influence national policies to promote the social and environmental prosperity of indigenous communities.

Mariana during her semester abroad in Jaipur, India

Over the course of the summer, I will be visiting my home country of Mexico and living in Oaxaca City, near three different communities of artesanos. I will be conducting interviews with artisans, their families, and non-profit advocates of Oaxacan folk art production in order to gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives surrounding indigenous folk art and its cultural meaning as well as how environmental degradation could impact the preservation of this art and way of life. My research project will research the relationship between the ecological and cultural dimensions of indigenous craft production through a qualitative study on specific communities of Oaxacan artesanos. ​

Mariana, I think I speak for all of my colleagues when I say that this is really a fascinating project, and we look forward to seeing where your thinking ends up on this after your research. We’ll be in touch later in the summer to obtain an update from you after your project is underway. Good luck!

Andrew

The 2018 AHSS Summer Research Symposium

Hi all,

Students in SOAN were well represented at the summer research showcase, and we’re so very proud of each of them. We’re so very proud of each of them!

Tessa Samuels’ project, Segmented Assimilation Concern Among Refugee Families, explored refugees’ experience here in the greater Puget Sound region.

Ashley Coyne’s summer research project, (Re)Writing Home: Unimagining and Reimagining Haitian Identity in Diasporic Literature from the United States, took an ethnographic approach to the literature that arose in diaspora in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake.

Gigi Garzio’s project, Values Justifications, and Perspectives Connected to the Anti-Vaccination Movement, explored the overlapping threads by which this movement perseveres, despite the presence of countervailing scientific data.

Ana Siegal’s project, Environmental Decision-Making and Sense of Place: Exploring the Effects of Bears Ears’ Shifting Status on Stakeholders Personal Relationships to the Land, distilled a summer of Ana’s fieldwork in southern Utah into an assessment of various stakeholders’ sense of place in the contested lands.

Samantha Lilly’s summer research project, An Ethnographic, Experimental Philosophical Inquiry Into Attitudes and Perceptions Toward Suicidality, analyzed how various Americans conceive of the moralities and justifications for suicide and its prevention.

Update on Tessa Samuels’ AHSS Summer Research Project

Hi all,

As we reach the midpoint of our summer break, I’ve asked each of our AHSS summer research award winners to talk about their research projects, what they’re seeing, and what sorts of provisional conclusions or vista points they’ve found. Here’s what Tessa Samuels had to say about her fascinating and timely project: 

Tessa Samuels about to conduct another interview for her summer research project.

My research seeks to determine what public schools, day-camps, and childcare facilities can do to help newly-arrived refugee families in the socialization process. With my AHSS summer research project, I hoped to bridge the communication gap between school/childcare systems and refugee families. This project was to mainly be executed through the use of semi-structured interviews and participant observation.

What I have quickly come to understand is that the families are not so concerned with the on-goings in classrooms or childcare facilities (with only one exception to date) — they face greater challenges with transportation, with understanding various rules and regulations, and with getting longer hours so as to have a little time to themselves.

All childcare workers and teachers I’ve encountered have been enthusiastically willing to accommodate cultural preferences or teachings — such as making special accommodations on Ramadan, or not serving pork to families. However, some childcare workers and teachers have faced behavioral and safety issues that they are unsure about — should they combat these behaviors? And how should they communicate with parents about these behaviors?

Moreover, many of these refugee households are headed by single mothers. Because many of these households’ challenges concern transportation and hours, there is little that the teachers and childcare facilities can do to address them. As a result, my project has shifted slightly — I’m now looking at what ways these needs can be better met, what ways childcare facilities can aid in these solutions, and how they might communicate and help with the behavioral and safety issues the encounter at these childcare facilities.

My understanding of these issues has grown tremendously. Many of the refugee families have accepted me in as almost family. I have been spending 20 – 30 hours a week in participant observation with seven different families. I’ve grown to know the troubles they face in their daily routines, the long hours they work, and their heavy reliance on public transportation to pick up their children and then get home — sometimes even after dark. I have conducted twelve ethnographic interviews and have recently begun

Public transportation is an integral feature of refugees’ quotidian existence in America

transcribing them.

And I’ve grown to realize that I’veacquired more insightful information from participant observation with the families than from these interviews! I’ve spent the majority of my time doing participant observation with these families, while I’ve conducted more formal interviews with childcare facilities and IRC workers to better understand these institutions and the refugee clientele they serve. I went into this project with the idea that this was fascinating work and something of tangible value for multiple communities, but this research has enveloped my life. I’ve developed life-changing relationships, I’ve been invited to family meals, I’ve had deep heart-to-heart conversations about the struggles of childcare in the United States, and I’ve fielded urgent late-night calls from these families.

I spend a couple hours each night writing up field notes, processing my day, and analyzing the interactions, conversations, and interviews. I’ve come to realize the deep complexity of the issue through the interviews and field notes. One major issue regards best beginnings scholarships — a state scholarship for childcare from lower income families. The complexity with best beginning scholarships is that in order to qualify for this one must be working, but to be able to work one must have childcare – so the timing and coordination between families, child care resources, and childcares has to be perfect which is challenging. Another provisional finding that has appeared in the interviews and field notes is that all families I have spoken to are so confused on why people have to pay for childcare at all in the United States. On the side of childcare facilities a common pattern in interviews is that many childcare facilitators are concerned at how desperate for help families are and that they are too trusting on handing over their children when people offer to watch them.

Two of the biggest challenges I’ve faced concern coordinating schedules with the families, and attempting to understand and translate everything I hear in interviews. Many of these refugee families speak Swahili or Tigrinya, and I need a translator to help conduct the interviews and to coordinate much of my fieldwork. This coordination has been very challenging. It’s been easier to tag along on errands and bus trainings with the translators and families, and interview them en route, although I have occasionally sat down with families for a focused interviews. Being invited into their home and having them talk freely has been an easier way to obtain genuine information and thoughts. During more formal interviews, many families are often very polite, but in participant observation and less formal settings I’m privy to the complaints and hardships these families face. Additionally, the translators I use are refugees themselves, and oftentimes

Some refugees in the region come from the DRC, transposed on a map of America to gauge its size

it’s difficult to understand everyone on my interview recordings.

I have eight more days left in the field for this project. During that time I intend tocontinue partaking in participant observation. I hope to conduct two more interviews with refugee families, and I’ve planned three more interviews with day camp staff personnel. I will continue to write field notes and analyze data in the evenings. When my fieldwork ends, I plan to compile all these data and begin to analyze those data. In that analysis, I hope to discern patterns in the conversations, complaints, and hardships these families have described to me. I hope to mark some of the best practices of the institutions involved, to point to areas of improvement, and suggest areas where better communication might be helpful, and areas where more services would be of great assistance. All of that will allow me to begin writing an ethnographic assessment of these refugees’ experiences here.

Thanks so much for the update, Tessa, and good look carrying your project to the finish line. We’ll look forward to hearing more from you as the Fall semester approaches.

Andrew

Ana Siegel’s AHSS Summer Research Project

Hello again,

As noted in multiple previous posts, students at the University of Puget Sound can compete for funding to support their summer research endeavors. Our department’s students were particularly successful in past years, and again this year we’ve had numerous proposals successfully funded. In short, the AHSS Summer Research Awards, varying from $3250 to $3750, allow students to pursue an in-depth research project over the summer months. I’ve asked each of this year’s batch of students to tell us a little bit about what they’ll be doing with their time, energy, and grant monies in the coming summer. Here’s what Ana Siegel had to say about her new project:

Ana Siegel perched on the remnants of the Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River.

Though initially overlooked by Euro-American settlers as an arid wasteland, the Four Corners region of the American Southwest has historically been held sacred to countless stakeholders, specifically those with a pro-conservation stance. Many of the region’s indigenous groups—including the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, Uinta, and the Ouray Ute—attribute immense cultural significance to the land, as many of their traditional territories, reservations, and sources of cultural heritage lie in the region. For outdoor recreants, the region is a haven for climbing and trekking; for locals, the land has been used for generations of cattle grazing. Yet, in the last hundred-or-so years, the Four Corners region has been recognized for its natural resource extraction potential, as it is rich in uranium, vanadium, oil, and coal deposits. As a result of the conflicting cultural and economic interests, this region has often been played as a battlefield between contesting groups, toiled over by those who wish to either capitalize upon, or to protect those assets. Bears Ears National Monument is one such landmark, of which has recently come to the forefront of this familiar quarrel. After years of advocacy and petitioning of the federal government, in 2016, the Obama Administration placed Bears Ears under federal protection, by means of the Antiquities Act. But, on December 4, 2017, President Donald Trump made the executive decision to drastically reduce the land protected by Bears Ears National Monument, by 85%. Paired with the simultaneous reduction of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, this ruling was “the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history” (Turkewitz 2017).  

There seems to be a vast disconnect between the understandings and interests of the seemingly-economically-driven decision-makers, and those of the pro-conservation stakeholders; my research will bridge that disconnect by not only drawing attention to, but also making more legible, the narratives of those pro-conservation stakeholders. With this disconnect in mind, the aim of my research is to explore the ways the shifting status, and resulting vulnerability, of Bears Ears has affected the relationship–the sense of place–that connects pro-conservation stakeholders–such as the region’s indigenous groups, environmentalists, outdoor recreants, and locals–to this landmark of the Four Corners region. 

Over the course of the summer, I will be spending time conducting fieldwork in Southeastern Utah; I will be working alongside pro-conservation stakeholders, using varying qualitative ethnographic research methods—conducting semi-structured interviews, engaging in participant observation, as well as organizing transect walks—to explore the ways in which these stakeholders’ relationships are shifting along with the shifting status of the National Monument.The ultimate goal of this research coincides with the fields of public and applied anthropology: I intend to both highlight and amplify these voices by creating a platform, that will be legible to the public and policymakers, through which pro-conservation stakeholders can vocalize their resistance to the reduction, as well as elucidate the reasoning behind their impassioned campaign to protect Bears Ears.​

We’re so excited for you, Ana, and can’t wait to see how your research develops once you get to Moab. We’ll look for an update from you in a few months!

Andrew