Missing the Mark? Women and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa and Oceania

Missing the Mark? Women and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa and Oceania

Author: Naomi M. McPherson

Publisher: Demeter Press

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1772580562

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In the year 2000, United Nations world leaders set out eight targets, the UN Millennium Development Goals, for achieving improved standards of living at the micro level in poorer nations around the globe, by the year 2015. The papers in this collection present fine-detailed ethnographic studies of cultures in Africa and Oceania, with a focus primarily on MDG 3, targeted to “promote gender equality and empower women” and MDG 5, targeted to “improve maternal health” to ascertain whether or not these goals have made or missed their mark. Ethnographic case studies located in Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Ghana, Malawi, Cameroon, and South Ethiopia show that women in these cultures, regardless of nation state, face the same issues or problems—lack of empowerment, gender inequities, and inadequate access to cultural or state resources—to realize good health in general and good maternal and reproductive health, in particular.


Book Synopsis Missing the Mark? Women and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa and Oceania by : Naomi M. McPherson

Download or read book Missing the Mark? Women and the Millennium Development Goals in Africa and Oceania written by Naomi M. McPherson and published by Demeter Press. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the year 2000, United Nations world leaders set out eight targets, the UN Millennium Development Goals, for achieving improved standards of living at the micro level in poorer nations around the globe, by the year 2015. The papers in this collection present fine-detailed ethnographic studies of cultures in Africa and Oceania, with a focus primarily on MDG 3, targeted to “promote gender equality and empower women” and MDG 5, targeted to “improve maternal health” to ascertain whether or not these goals have made or missed their mark. Ethnographic case studies located in Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Ghana, Malawi, Cameroon, and South Ethiopia show that women in these cultures, regardless of nation state, face the same issues or problems—lack of empowerment, gender inequities, and inadequate access to cultural or state resources—to realize good health in general and good maternal and reproductive health, in particular.


First Fieldwork

First Fieldwork

Author: Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2018-08-31

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0824876237

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First Fieldwork: Pacific Anthropology, 1960–1985 explores what a generation of anthropologists experienced during their first visits to the field at a time of momentous political changes in Pacific island countries and societies and in anthropology itself. Answering some of the same how and why questions found in Terence E. Hays’ Ethnographic Presents: Pioneering Anthropologists in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (1993), First Fieldwork begins where that collection left off in the 1950s and covers a broader selection of Pacific Islands societies and topics. Chapters range from candid reflections on working with little-known peoples to reflexive analyses of adapting research projects and field sites, in order to better fit local politics and concerns. Included in these accounts are the often harsh emotional and logistical demands placed on fieldworkers and interlocutors as they attempt the work of connecting and achieving mutual understandings. Evident throughout is the conviction that fieldwork and what we learn from and write about it are necessary to a robust anthropology. By demystifying a phase begun in the mid-1980s when critics considered attempts to describe fieldwork and its relation to ethnography as inevitably biased representations of the unknowable truth, First Fieldwork contributes to a renewed interest in experiential and theoretical nuances of fieldwork. Looking back on the richest of fieldwork experiences, the contributors uncover essential structures and challenges of fieldwork: connection, context, and change. What they find is that building relationships and having others include you in their lives (once referred to as “achieving rapport”) is determined as much by our subjects as by ourselves. As they examine connections made or attempted during first fieldwork and bring to bear subsequent understandings and questions—new contexts from which to view and think—about their experiences, the contributors provide readers with multidimensional perspectives on fieldwork and how it continues to inspire anthropological interpretations and commitment. A crucial dimension is change. Each chapter is richly detailed in history: theirs/ours; colonial/postcolonial; and the then and now of theory and practice. While change is ever present, specifics are not. Reflecting back, the authors demonstrate how that specificity defined their experiences and ultimately their ethnographic re/productions.


Book Synopsis First Fieldwork by : Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi

Download or read book First Fieldwork written by Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Fieldwork: Pacific Anthropology, 1960–1985 explores what a generation of anthropologists experienced during their first visits to the field at a time of momentous political changes in Pacific island countries and societies and in anthropology itself. Answering some of the same how and why questions found in Terence E. Hays’ Ethnographic Presents: Pioneering Anthropologists in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (1993), First Fieldwork begins where that collection left off in the 1950s and covers a broader selection of Pacific Islands societies and topics. Chapters range from candid reflections on working with little-known peoples to reflexive analyses of adapting research projects and field sites, in order to better fit local politics and concerns. Included in these accounts are the often harsh emotional and logistical demands placed on fieldworkers and interlocutors as they attempt the work of connecting and achieving mutual understandings. Evident throughout is the conviction that fieldwork and what we learn from and write about it are necessary to a robust anthropology. By demystifying a phase begun in the mid-1980s when critics considered attempts to describe fieldwork and its relation to ethnography as inevitably biased representations of the unknowable truth, First Fieldwork contributes to a renewed interest in experiential and theoretical nuances of fieldwork. Looking back on the richest of fieldwork experiences, the contributors uncover essential structures and challenges of fieldwork: connection, context, and change. What they find is that building relationships and having others include you in their lives (once referred to as “achieving rapport”) is determined as much by our subjects as by ourselves. As they examine connections made or attempted during first fieldwork and bring to bear subsequent understandings and questions—new contexts from which to view and think—about their experiences, the contributors provide readers with multidimensional perspectives on fieldwork and how it continues to inspire anthropological interpretations and commitment. A crucial dimension is change. Each chapter is richly detailed in history: theirs/ours; colonial/postcolonial; and the then and now of theory and practice. While change is ever present, specifics are not. Reflecting back, the authors demonstrate how that specificity defined their experiences and ultimately their ethnographic re/productions.


The Digitizing Family

The Digitizing Family

Author: Geoffrey Hobbis

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-07

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 3030349292

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At once a digital ethnography of smartphones and a classically conceived village-based ethnography, this book relocates the study of digital technologies to rural Melanesia, with a focus on the Lau of Malaita, Soloman Islands. In this ‘technography’, Geoffrey Hobbis studies the materiality and functional attributes of smartphones and their object biographies—modes of acquisition, maintenance, uses, limitations and the problems specific to this region in adopting and adapting smartphones in everyday life. As he examines the various uses of smartphones, as both telephone and multimedia device, Hobbis also explores the social and cultural transformations, the hopes and uncertainties, with which they are associated. Ultimately, in bringing together a study of digital technologies with classical anthropological theory, The Digitizing Family develops a theory of smartphones as kinship technologies and supercompositional objects.


Book Synopsis The Digitizing Family by : Geoffrey Hobbis

Download or read book The Digitizing Family written by Geoffrey Hobbis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-07 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once a digital ethnography of smartphones and a classically conceived village-based ethnography, this book relocates the study of digital technologies to rural Melanesia, with a focus on the Lau of Malaita, Soloman Islands. In this ‘technography’, Geoffrey Hobbis studies the materiality and functional attributes of smartphones and their object biographies—modes of acquisition, maintenance, uses, limitations and the problems specific to this region in adopting and adapting smartphones in everyday life. As he examines the various uses of smartphones, as both telephone and multimedia device, Hobbis also explores the social and cultural transformations, the hopes and uncertainties, with which they are associated. Ultimately, in bringing together a study of digital technologies with classical anthropological theory, The Digitizing Family develops a theory of smartphones as kinship technologies and supercompositional objects.


Gender Violence & Human Rights

Gender Violence & Human Rights

Author: Aletta Biersack

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2016-12-14

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1760460710

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The postcolonial states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu operate today in a global arena in which human rights are widely accepted. As ratifiers of UN treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these Pacific Island countries have committed to promoting women’s and girls’ rights, including the right to a life free of violence. Yet local, national and regional gender values are not always consistent with the principles of gender equality and women’s rights that undergird these globalising conventions. This volume critically interrogates the relation between gender violence and human rights as these three countries and their communities and citizens engage with, appropriate, modify and at times resist human rights principles and their implications for gender violence. Grounded in extensive anthropological, historical and legal research, the volume should prove a crucial resource for the many scholars, policymakers and activists who are concerned about the urgent and ubiquitous problem of gender violence in the western Pacific. ‘This is an important and timely collection that is central to the major and contentious issues in the contemporary Pacific of gender violence and human rights. It builds upon existing literature … but the contributors to this volume interrogate the connection between these two areas deeply and more critically … This book should and must reach a broad audience.’ — Jacqui Leckie, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Otago ‘The volume addresses the tensions between human and cultural, individual and collective rights, as played out in the domain of gender … Gender is a perfect lens for exploring these tensions because cultural rights are often claimed in defence of gender oppression and because women often have imposed upon them the burden of representing cultural traditions in attire, comportment, restraint or putatively cultural conservatism. And Melanesia is a perfect place to consider these gendered issues because of the long history of ethnocentric representations of the region, because of the extent to which these are played out between states and local cultures and because of the efforts of the vibrant women’s movements in the region to develop locally workable responses to the problems of gender violence in these communities.’ — Christine Dureau, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology, University of Auckland


Book Synopsis Gender Violence & Human Rights by : Aletta Biersack

Download or read book Gender Violence & Human Rights written by Aletta Biersack and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The postcolonial states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu operate today in a global arena in which human rights are widely accepted. As ratifiers of UN treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these Pacific Island countries have committed to promoting women’s and girls’ rights, including the right to a life free of violence. Yet local, national and regional gender values are not always consistent with the principles of gender equality and women’s rights that undergird these globalising conventions. This volume critically interrogates the relation between gender violence and human rights as these three countries and their communities and citizens engage with, appropriate, modify and at times resist human rights principles and their implications for gender violence. Grounded in extensive anthropological, historical and legal research, the volume should prove a crucial resource for the many scholars, policymakers and activists who are concerned about the urgent and ubiquitous problem of gender violence in the western Pacific. ‘This is an important and timely collection that is central to the major and contentious issues in the contemporary Pacific of gender violence and human rights. It builds upon existing literature … but the contributors to this volume interrogate the connection between these two areas deeply and more critically … This book should and must reach a broad audience.’ — Jacqui Leckie, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Otago ‘The volume addresses the tensions between human and cultural, individual and collective rights, as played out in the domain of gender … Gender is a perfect lens for exploring these tensions because cultural rights are often claimed in defence of gender oppression and because women often have imposed upon them the burden of representing cultural traditions in attire, comportment, restraint or putatively cultural conservatism. And Melanesia is a perfect place to consider these gendered issues because of the long history of ethnocentric representations of the region, because of the extent to which these are played out between states and local cultures and because of the efforts of the vibrant women’s movements in the region to develop locally workable responses to the problems of gender violence in these communities.’ — Christine Dureau, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology, University of Auckland


Post-Colonial Cameroon

Post-Colonial Cameroon

Author: Joseph Takougang

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 149856464X

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This book by a diverse group of Cameroonian scholars, both at home and in the diaspora, presents multidisciplinary insights on some of the critical issues including political, economic, and sociocultural developments in post-colonial Cameroon.


Book Synopsis Post-Colonial Cameroon by : Joseph Takougang

Download or read book Post-Colonial Cameroon written by Joseph Takougang and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book by a diverse group of Cameroonian scholars, both at home and in the diaspora, presents multidisciplinary insights on some of the critical issues including political, economic, and sociocultural developments in post-colonial Cameroon.


Engaged Anthropology

Engaged Anthropology

Author: Stuart Kirsch

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-03-30

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0520297946

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Does anthropology have more to offer than just its texts? In this timely and remarkable book, Stuart Kirsch shows how anthropology can—and why it should—become more engaged with the problems of the world. Engaged Anthropology draws on the author’s experiences working with indigenous peoples fighting for their environment, land rights, and political sovereignty. Including both short interventions and collaborations spanning decades, it recounts interactions with lawyers and courts, nongovernmental organizations, scientific experts, and transnational corporations. This unflinchingly honest account addresses the unexamined “backstage” of engaged anthropology. Coming at a time when some question the viability of the discipline, the message of this powerful and original work is especially welcome, as it not only promotes a new way of doing anthropology, but also compellingly articulates a new rationale for why anthropology matters.


Book Synopsis Engaged Anthropology by : Stuart Kirsch

Download or read book Engaged Anthropology written by Stuart Kirsch and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does anthropology have more to offer than just its texts? In this timely and remarkable book, Stuart Kirsch shows how anthropology can—and why it should—become more engaged with the problems of the world. Engaged Anthropology draws on the author’s experiences working with indigenous peoples fighting for their environment, land rights, and political sovereignty. Including both short interventions and collaborations spanning decades, it recounts interactions with lawyers and courts, nongovernmental organizations, scientific experts, and transnational corporations. This unflinchingly honest account addresses the unexamined “backstage” of engaged anthropology. Coming at a time when some question the viability of the discipline, the message of this powerful and original work is especially welcome, as it not only promotes a new way of doing anthropology, but also compellingly articulates a new rationale for why anthropology matters.


One Hundred Years of Argonauts

One Hundred Years of Argonauts

Author: Chris Hann

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2024-06-01

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1805395238

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Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific was a major contribution to anthropological theory and method, while simultaneously establishing the sub-field of economic anthropology. Even a century after its publication, Malinowski’s pioneering work remains critical for anthropology in a postcolonial age. This volume uses ethnographic studies from around the world to contextualize the work politically and intellectually, examining its gestation and influence from multiple perspectives. It critically explores the meaning of “economy” for Malinowski from his formation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to his path-breaking fieldwork in Melanesia and ensuing career in London.


Book Synopsis One Hundred Years of Argonauts by : Chris Hann

Download or read book One Hundred Years of Argonauts written by Chris Hann and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2024-06-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific was a major contribution to anthropological theory and method, while simultaneously establishing the sub-field of economic anthropology. Even a century after its publication, Malinowski’s pioneering work remains critical for anthropology in a postcolonial age. This volume uses ethnographic studies from around the world to contextualize the work politically and intellectually, examining its gestation and influence from multiple perspectives. It critically explores the meaning of “economy” for Malinowski from his formation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to his path-breaking fieldwork in Melanesia and ensuing career in London.


From Band-Aids to Scalpels

From Band-Aids to Scalpels

Author: Rohini Bannerjee

Publisher: Demeter Press

Published: 2021-05-15

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1772583340

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This interdisciplinary anthology contributes to the contemporary dialogues about motherhood/mothering drawing attention to the experiences of motherhood/mothering both within medical practice as physicians as well as highlighting motherhood/mothering experiences of medicine, examining both mothers as patients themselves and with their children as patients. As medical schools steadily increase the number of women studying medicine, research on mothers in medical practice would add to a better understanding on the different values, expectations, institutions, and events that shape and define the identities within medicine. How does the increase of women as mothers practicing medicine affect the outcomes of mothers as patients? Does birthing your own child impact your practice? Does knowing your physician or your child's physician is a mother affect your experience as a patient or that of your child's? The edited volume will explore how relationships between motherhood/mothering experiences in/of medicine are presently being theorized, re-examined, negotiated, and most importantly, debated. This is an interdisciplinary volume which unites essays as well as creative submissions that engage with the issue of motherhood experiences in/of medicine, including works of fiction and creative non-fiction in addition to traditional academic writing, allowing an open and innovative space for critical discussion.


Book Synopsis From Band-Aids to Scalpels by : Rohini Bannerjee

Download or read book From Band-Aids to Scalpels written by Rohini Bannerjee and published by Demeter Press. This book was released on 2021-05-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary anthology contributes to the contemporary dialogues about motherhood/mothering drawing attention to the experiences of motherhood/mothering both within medical practice as physicians as well as highlighting motherhood/mothering experiences of medicine, examining both mothers as patients themselves and with their children as patients. As medical schools steadily increase the number of women studying medicine, research on mothers in medical practice would add to a better understanding on the different values, expectations, institutions, and events that shape and define the identities within medicine. How does the increase of women as mothers practicing medicine affect the outcomes of mothers as patients? Does birthing your own child impact your practice? Does knowing your physician or your child's physician is a mother affect your experience as a patient or that of your child's? The edited volume will explore how relationships between motherhood/mothering experiences in/of medicine are presently being theorized, re-examined, negotiated, and most importantly, debated. This is an interdisciplinary volume which unites essays as well as creative submissions that engage with the issue of motherhood experiences in/of medicine, including works of fiction and creative non-fiction in addition to traditional academic writing, allowing an open and innovative space for critical discussion.


Forgotten Bodies

Forgotten Bodies

Author: Sarah A. Smith

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1978832621

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Women from Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia, who migrate to Guam, a U.S. territory, suffer disproportionately poor reproductive health outcomes. Though their access to the United States is unusually easy, through a unique migration agreement, it keeps them in a perpetual liminal state as nonimmigrants, who never fully belong as part of the United States Chuukese women move to Guam, sometimes with their families but sometimes alone, in search of a better life: for jobs, for the education system, or to access safe health care. Yet, the imperial system they encounter creates underlying conditions that greatly and disproportionately impact their ability to succeed and thrive, negatively impacting their reproductive health. Through clinical and community ethnography, Sarah A. Smith illuminates the way this system stratifies women’s reproduction at structural, social, and individual levels. Readers can visualize how U.S. imperialist policies of benign neglect control the body politic, change the social body, and render individual bodies vulnerable in the twenty-first century but also how people resist.


Book Synopsis Forgotten Bodies by : Sarah A. Smith

Download or read book Forgotten Bodies written by Sarah A. Smith and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women from Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia, who migrate to Guam, a U.S. territory, suffer disproportionately poor reproductive health outcomes. Though their access to the United States is unusually easy, through a unique migration agreement, it keeps them in a perpetual liminal state as nonimmigrants, who never fully belong as part of the United States Chuukese women move to Guam, sometimes with their families but sometimes alone, in search of a better life: for jobs, for the education system, or to access safe health care. Yet, the imperial system they encounter creates underlying conditions that greatly and disproportionately impact their ability to succeed and thrive, negatively impacting their reproductive health. Through clinical and community ethnography, Sarah A. Smith illuminates the way this system stratifies women’s reproduction at structural, social, and individual levels. Readers can visualize how U.S. imperialist policies of benign neglect control the body politic, change the social body, and render individual bodies vulnerable in the twenty-first century but also how people resist.


Sexual Violence in Intimacy

Sexual Violence in Intimacy

Author: M. Gabriela Torres

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-26

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1000225240

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Integrating interdisciplinary and cross-cultural analysis, this volume advances our understanding of sexual violence in intimacy through the development of more nuanced and evidence-based conceptual frameworks. Sexual violence in intimacy is a global pandemic that causes individual physical and emotional harm as well as wider social suffering. It is also legal and culturally condoned in much of the world. Bringing together international and interdisciplinary research, the book explores marital rape as individual suffering that is best understood in cultural and institutional context. Gendered narratives and large-scale surveys from India, Ghana and Africa Diasporas, Pacific Islands, Denmark, New Zealand, the United States, and beyond illuminate cross-cultural differences and commonalities. Methodological debates concerning etic and emic approaches and de-colonial challenges are addressed. Finally, a range of policy and intervention approaches—including art, state rhetoric, health care, and criminal justice—are explored. This book provides much needed scholarship to guide policymakers, practitioners, and activists as well as for researchers studying gender-based violence, marriage, and kinship, and the legal and public health concerns of women globally. It will be relevant for upper-level students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, psychology, women’s studies, social work and public and global health.


Book Synopsis Sexual Violence in Intimacy by : M. Gabriela Torres

Download or read book Sexual Violence in Intimacy written by M. Gabriela Torres and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrating interdisciplinary and cross-cultural analysis, this volume advances our understanding of sexual violence in intimacy through the development of more nuanced and evidence-based conceptual frameworks. Sexual violence in intimacy is a global pandemic that causes individual physical and emotional harm as well as wider social suffering. It is also legal and culturally condoned in much of the world. Bringing together international and interdisciplinary research, the book explores marital rape as individual suffering that is best understood in cultural and institutional context. Gendered narratives and large-scale surveys from India, Ghana and Africa Diasporas, Pacific Islands, Denmark, New Zealand, the United States, and beyond illuminate cross-cultural differences and commonalities. Methodological debates concerning etic and emic approaches and de-colonial challenges are addressed. Finally, a range of policy and intervention approaches—including art, state rhetoric, health care, and criminal justice—are explored. This book provides much needed scholarship to guide policymakers, practitioners, and activists as well as for researchers studying gender-based violence, marriage, and kinship, and the legal and public health concerns of women globally. It will be relevant for upper-level students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, psychology, women’s studies, social work and public and global health.