Alejandra's Human Ethology Assignment
Last night I went to Crimson Café to do my ethology experiment.
It was a Monday night, so there were not many people there, and my results are not as exciting, but I could at least observe some of the stages and characteristics.
Focal Sampling
I sat on the upper level of the Café so that I could see everything else and pretend that I was watching TV while looking at the people.
When I got in, I noticed a girl sitting at the bar, talking very vividly to a man. She was sitting very close to her, as well as to other guy who, then I figured out, was there by himself. I thought maybe he was sitting so close to her because there had been more people at the bar before.
The girl I observed was wearing casual clothes (jeans and a long-sleeved shirt) and glasses. I do not think that she was... read more ❯
23&me
I'm super excited that my class was funded to do 23&me. I've been wanting to do it for the past two years, but I haven't gotten around to doing it. I'm most interested in discovering my ancestry. My family has been in the United States long enough that I don't know much of my heritage. (I can actually trace every side of my family back over 100 years in the same two adjacent counties in North Alabama). There has been some circumstantial evidence that I may have Scottish in me, but that is the only European country I can name-despite my family being completely of European descent. And as every other white southerner would say, there is a rumor that my great-great grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee. I've always been fascinated by figuring out my ancestry, and having these results could give me some interesting clues.
The second part to 23&me is... read more ❯
Guys, We're Finally Talking About Monkeys.
Pia Nystrom
Pia Nystrom and Pamela Ashmore are university professors, researchers, and best friends. They are also passionate animal lovers. Nystrom and Ashmore both received PhDs in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis where they met as graduate students. Nystrom now lectures across the Atlantic at the University of Sheffield in the UK, while Ashmore is an Anthropology department head at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Though they have lived in different continents since 1994, these two friends managed to write a book for undergraduates on their favorite subject, primates.
The Life of Primates (2008) gives the reader an in-depth yet straightforward review of nonhuman primate biology. This includes the social behaviors, environments, and cognitive processes of primates as well as basic physiology. The chapter we’ll be discussing is “The Primate Brain and Complex Behavior.” In this section, Nystrom and Ashmore cover a... read more ❯
The Bribri and the way of Siwa
Sometimes while searching frantically through the University libraries’ databases for peer-reviewed journal articles you find that pot of gold under the rainbow. I had a moment like that this morning; I had been searching for peer-reviewed articles which contain information concerning the recent history of the Bribri. This information has been extremely difficult to find. I have been patching together information I have found in websites and books, but I've been unhappy with either the sources of my material or the information contained therein. This morning my hard work paid off and I found an article written by Polly J. Posas entitled “Shocks and Bribri agriculture past and present.” In this article, which mostly focuses on Bribri agriculture, Posas includes data gleaned from editorials written at the University of Costa Rica and a couple of books written in Spanish which I have not been able to gain access to. This... read more ❯
23 & Me
I'm really excited about having the opportunity to have my genes tested with my Biology, Culture, & Evolution class. I am looking forward to learning more about my ancestry. All I know is that at some point my ancestors lived in Ireland and Scotland, and on my mother's side my great-great grandmother was a Choctaw Indian. I think it will be really cool to find out more about my ancestry even further back than that. I also think it will be really beneficial for me to know which diseases I'm at risk for. High blood pressure and cardiovascular disease run in my family on both my maternal and paternal side. If I am at greater risk for that, I can make sure to maintain a healthy diet and exercise in order to prevent those diseases. However, I am a little worried about finding out that I may be at a... read more ❯
My investigation into my genes and family history
If you've been reading some of the blogs on this site, you probably know by now that the Biology, Culture, and Evolution class has the opportunity to do genetic testing this semester. I've always thought ancestry was fascinating, and my mom's side of the family has much more mystery surrounding our heritage so I would really like to find out what I can about that. However, I'm also looking forward to some of the information they can give me on genes more pertinent to my daily life and my future.
I am interested in the health issues that 23 and Me will test. I am especially interested in the genes for Tourette's Syndrome and restless leg syndrome. I have read some research recently that Tourette's, RLS, and other tic disorders are very closely related genetically. I have a chronic tic disorder, which is on a... read more ❯
A New Look at an Old Method: Ethnography as Essential to Good Work, or How Doing Should Start with Being
The inaugural meeting of the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology Journal Club was held Friday January 18th at 2:00 p.m. Attendees were grad students Tina Thomas, Becky Read-Wahidi, Anjelica Callery, Achsah Dorsey, and Greg Batchelder; undergrads Brittany Brooks, Samantha Sloan, and professors Kathryn Oths, Dick Diehl, and Ian Brown.
With me (Kathy Oths) moderating, a lively discussion ensued regarding a recent piece in Social Science and Medicine (SSM), On sitting and doing: Ethnography as action in global health by Stacy Pigg [99:27-134(2013)], the previous editor of Medical Anthropology. She relates scenes from her fieldwork among International Health (now Global Health) and NGO personnel who were attempting to introduce HIV/AIDS prevention education in Nepal in the late 1990s. As she sat and listened ‘between the cracks’, it emerged that a word-play exercise that encouraged participants to shout out ‘sex’ words was antithetical to a Nepalese aversion to discussing sex (much less... read more ❯
“Depresión”: What does it mean?
During my stay in Yorkin this past summer, it was mentioned by one of the women that there used to be a lot of “depresión” in the village before they started their ecotourism project. My initial reaction was, “I wonder what exactly they mean by “depresión”?” And then I started thinking about administering the CES-D, which is a depression scale that has been used in many contexts internationally, in the community. I also knew that some way, somehow, I would have to get at exactly what they mean by “depresión” but I was a little unsure of how to do this.
After my presentation of my pre-dissertation research in Yorkin, our new faculty member in the department of anthropology here at the University of Alabama, Lesley Jo Weaver, turned me on to an article she had just had published (Weaver and Kaiser 2014) describing the methodology that I was looking for. In this article she... read more ❯
Shelby's Human Ethology Assignment
Date: 2/9/2013
Time: 8:06 PM (arrival)
Location: Workplay Theatre (Birmingham, AL)
550 23rd Street S.
Setting:
very dark, smokey, crowded
hipsters everywhere (flannel, PBR and thick rimmed glasses are abundant)
older crowd (25 - baby boomers)
locals - very talkative (not boisterous); everyone has a drink
FOCAL SAMPLING
white male; 20s; tall; longer brown hair
flannel
drinking - whiskey and coke, PBR; smiling; swaying; laughing
with a flanneled friend (male)
swaying to music, occasionally glancing around; not nervous but obviously interested in finding a partner
focal point and friend talk and glance around a lot; laughing occasionally
lots of eye contact with other women (attractive crowd) - winking or smiling
very receptive to all attention
makes eye contact with me at 8 min
again at 11 min
walks over after 2nd round of eye contact
“Are you going to dance with me or am I going to have to buy you a shot or two to get your back off of this wall?” *he taps hand on wall I’m leaning against... read more ❯