Theme Ideas for Final Projects
 The culmination of your final project should be a 5-10 minute
presentation on the topic you select. In this presentation you must
demonstrate strong knowledge of the topic, and the application of
a variety of anthropological concepts that help to explain the issue
being presented.
 For the project, you will not be doing original research; in other
words, you will not be asking people about the conditions they are
experimenting (this is a very rigorous process). Instead, you will be
doing library research of a variety of sources that have looked at the
issue, and then craft your own argument…
 Think of it as a sort of short “research paper,” but with pictures,
videos, artifacts, clothing, or anything else that you can come up
with to demonstrate your point…
 Start by thinking of topics that are important or interesting to
you.
 For instance, if you feel strongly about gender or racial inequality,
you may want to look at particular places where such conditions are
strongly affecting individuals in a variety of ways.
 Also note that issues rarely come alone, so you may also take notice
of the intersection of gender and religious issues, or indigenous and
political or economic issues.
 So to start, brainstorm a bit about the kinds of things that you
may want to do research about, here are some suggestions, but
do not limit yourself….
 At the end of the suggestions there will be other instructions to
ease the process…
Global Maya
In the central highland Maya communities of Guatemala, the
demands of the global economy have become a way of life. This
book explores how rural peoples experience economic and
cultural change as their country joins the global market,
focusing on their thoughts about work and sustenance as a
way of learning about Guatemala’s changing economy.
Liliana Goldín observes the intensification of various forms of
production and their growing links to wider markets. In this
book she examines how people make a living and how they
think about their options, practices, and constraints. Drawing
on interviews and surveys—even retellings of traditional
narratives—she reveals how contemporary Maya respond to
the increasingly globalized yet locally circumscribed conditions
in which they work.
Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in
Mexico, California, and Oregon
Lynn Stephen’s innovative ethnography follows indigenous
Mexicans from two towns in the state of Oaxaca—the Mixtec
community of San Agustín Atenango and the Zapotec
community of Teotitlán del Valle—who periodically leave their
homes in Mexico for extended periods of work in California and
Oregon. Demonstrating that the line separating Mexico and
the United States is only one among the many borders that
these migrants repeatedly cross (including national, regional,
cultural, ethnic, and class borders and divisions),
Stephen weaves the personal histories and narratives of
indigenous transborder migrants together with explorations
of the larger structures that affect their lives. Taking into
account U.S. immigration policies and the demands of both
commercial agriculture and the service sectors, she chronicles
how migrants experience and remember low-wage work in
agriculture, landscaping, and childcare and how gender
relations in Oaxaca and the United States are reconfigured by
migration.
Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and
Survival
Fair trade is a fast-growing alternative market intended to
bring better prices and greater social justice to small farmers
around the world. But is it working? This vivid study of coffee
farmers in Mexico offers the first thorough investigation of
the social, economic, and environmental benefits of fair
trade. Based on extensive research in Zapotec indigenous
communities in the state of Oaxaca, Brewing Justice follows
the members of the cooperative Michiza, whose organic
coffee is sold on the international fair trade market. It
compares these families to conventional farming families in
the same region, who depend on local middlemen and are
vulnerable to the fluctuations of the world coffee market.
Written in a clear and accessible style, the book carries
readers into the lives of these coffee producer households
and their communities, offering a nuanced analysis of both
the effects of fair trade on everyday life and the limits of its
impact. Brewing Justice paints a clear picture of the complex
dynamics of the fair trade market and its relationship to the
global economy. Drawing on interviews with dozens of fair
trade leaders, the book also explores the changing politics of
this international movement, including the challenges posed
by the entry of transnational corporations into the fair trade
system.
Friction: An Ethnography of Global
Connection
Anna Tsing, focuses on one particular "zone of
awkward engagement"--the rainforests of Indonesia-where in the 1980s and the 1990s capitalist interests
increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much
through corporate design as through awkward chains
of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the
land from previous claimants, creating resources for
distant markets. In response, environmental
movements arose to defend the rainforests and the
communities of people who live in them. Not confined
to a village, a province, or a nation, the social drama of
the Indonesian rainforest includes local and national
environmentalists, international science, North
American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber
tappers, UN funding agencies, mountaineers, village
elders, and urban students, among others--all
combining in unpredictable, messy
misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that
sometimes work out.
High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women,
Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean
Carla Freeman’s fieldwork in Barbados grounds the processes of
transnational capitalism—production, consumption, and the
crafting of modern identities—in the lives of Afro-Caribbean
women working in a new high-tech industry called “informatics.”
It places gender at the center of transnational analysis, and local
Caribbean culture and history at the center of global studies.
Freeman examines the expansion of the global assembly line into
the realm of computer-based work, and focuses specifically on
the incorporation of young Barbadian women into these hightech informatics jobs. As such, Caribbean women are seen as
integral not simply to the workings of globalization but as
helping to shape its very form. Through the enactment of
“professionalism” in both appearances and labor practices, and
by insisting that motherhood and work go hand in hand, they redefine the companies’ profile of “ideal” workers and create their
own “pink-collar” identities. Through new modes of dress and
imagemaking, the informatics workers seek to distinguish
themselves from factory workers, and to achieve these new
modes of consumption, they engage in a wide array of extra
income earning activities. Freeman argues that for the new
Barbadian pink-collar workers, the globalization of production
cannot be viewed apart from the globalization of consumption
Resources in visual anthropology
 A note on visual anthropology
http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/ruby/cultanthro.html
 http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/
 Some possible visual anthropology concepts to explore
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Japanese Anime Film and Popular Culture
Tattoo culture
Artistic expressions
Advertising and hypersexuality
 If you pay close attention, a great deal of anthropological
work seeks to explain uneven and unequal relationships in
human organization.
 You can use this to spark your own imagination in creating a
project,
 for instance, you may want to look at the relationship or
friction between
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Tourism and indigenous tribes
Women and political or religious organization
Women and globalization
Women and technology
Gender and politics
Gender and religion
Religion and technology
Religion and migration
Race/ethnicity and cultural forms reproduction (music, food,
dance) – this could be further embedded in global contexts
 You can also browse through your textbook for ideas
and resources…
------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear in mind that we, as anthropologists, follow a
relativist perspective, so you must focus on explaining
the emergence and forces that shape the issue,
rather that making value charged judgments.
 Instead frame it around how people are affected, by
what mechanisms, and what are the real life implications
of the issue.