Microfinance, or the technique of lending small amounts of money to the world's poor for productive activities, has emerged as a dominant approach to poverty alleviation among international development organizations. However, consensus does not yet exist as to the best mechanism for delivery of loans. While most organizations simply offer...
Religious histories have always appropriated pre-existing symbol systems of religion into newer forms, often with the goal in mind to acculturate a population into a new cultural setting to reach a desired status quo of society. The problem with acculturation theory is that it is filled with teleological and quantitative...
This ethnographic study examined some of the ways that global markets and the infrastructure of agribusiness affect local smallholder farmers in the Ten Rivers region who are transitioning toward more sustainable and traditional agricultural methods. The purpose of this research was to discover what barriers smallholder farmers face in developing...
Since the 1952 Bolivian agrarian reform, farmer unions have sought to establish themselves as producers for regional markets. Development strategies led by the World Bank and IMF have largely jeopardized small farmers, and challenged farmers to meet market demands. At present, a new agrarian revolution is being implemented and is...
Several popular cultural movements emphasizing indigenous spirituality have arisen in the United States and Europe within the past thirty years. Spiritual discourses attributed to Native Americans, among other groups, are borrowed by Euro-Americans in search of alternatives to dominant ideologies. In such a circumstance, Native Americans become part of a...
In this paper I focus on the process of formulating an ethnic identity in the United States for individuals of mixed-ethnicity. My main question explores the complexities an individual with parents of separate and distinct ethnic heritages faces when constructing an ethnic identity in our society. American society is reaching...
This research explores differences in environmental worldviews and connections to the land globally and more specifically in a case study of NGOs working in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest. The aims of this project are to investigate different environmental worldviews expressed between western NGOs and non western local NGOs and to...
Music is one of the most important aspects of cultural identity in Corsica. Rooted in ancient history and revitalized in the revolutionary political climate of the 1960s and 70s, its popular choral form--the paghjella--has come to define modern music upon the island. Music, like language, has the ability to communicate...
Smallholder farmers in Africa, who have long relied on rain-fed agriculture, are currently experiencing adverse impacts of climate change which is posing serious challenges to their ability to sustain their livelihoods (Morton 2007). This is the case for many other areas around the world, especially among indigenousor ruralcommunities who rely...
This thesis examines the food insecurity experiences of student clients of the Oregon State University Emergency Food Pantry. Utilizing semi‐structured interviews and participant observation at the food pantry, this study investigated who is using the food pantry, the forms of food insecurity they experience, how they cope with it, and...
What does comida rica mean? In this thesis, I explore the meanings of comida rica, sana, and de nuestra tierra through the discourses, practices, and kitchen geographies in six urban, highland households in the Ecuadorean Andes. This research, as part of a larger investigation carried out by a team of...
Carnival celebrations in Santiago de Cuba transform large swaths of the city for an anticipated week of festivities, during which Afro-Cuban dancers and musicians are center stage, performing a complicated statement of prescribed cultural ideology, historic acts of agency, and nationalism. A particularly revealing celebration, carnival can be understood as...
Mainstream local food systems focus on environmental and individual health, but labor is out of sight and out of mind. We begin with a story that introduces the immigrant in the room, the locavore’s blind spots, and the need to move beyond mainstream environmentalism and embrace social justice. In the...
This thesis is an IRB-exempt oral history focused on the non-profit Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center (CMLC) in Corvallis, Oregon. The CMLC, formerly on 9th Street, was known to many community members as the Yellow House. The Yellow House was a dedicated community-based space where people of all cultures could come...
This is an IRB-exempt thesis exploring place relationship in the valley of Lake Creek, Oregon, at Triangle Lake. An interdisciplinary ethnography of place, it involves a synthesis of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic literature; an analysis of nineteenth-century Coos, Alseya (Alsea), and Kalapuya myth-texts from Native oral tradition; a history of...