Category: Culture, Society & Family

NSF funds research to unravel Arizona’s prehistoric puzzle: The Hohokam ceramic industry

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 19, 2010

Can a manufacturing industry purr along without a class system of managers and workers? That’s part of a longtime mystery that may soon be solved: How did a prehistoric, egalitarian people called the Hohokam produce large quantities of decorated ceramic vessels without a “manager” hierarchy?

Archaeologists from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the Cultural Resource Management Program of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona have launched a unique research partnership to solve the puzzling mechanics of the large-scale industry.

The vessels were made in about 1000 A.D. by a culture archaeologists call the Hohokam. The ancient people used the pottery for daily serving, storage, and social and religious gatherings. Today’s Gila River residents, the O’odham, are descendants of the Hohokam.

Reidus hilli, John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Dipluridae,

The National Science Foundation is funding the research with a $134,636 grant.

Unprecedented partnership
Under the landmark research partnership, the tribe and SMU hope to decipher the mechanics of the Hohokam ceramic technology and manufacturing techniques.

The three-year project examines artifacts and ceramic production materials from 12 sites in the Sonoran Desert just south of what is now Phoenix, according to archaeologists and co-investigators Sunday Eiselt and J. Andrew Darling. Eiselt is director of the SMU-in-Taos Archaeological Field School and an SMU assistant professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology. Darling is director of the O’odham tribe’s Cultural Resource Management Program.

The analysis looks at a slice of time from 1000 A.D. to 1070 A.D. when production of the decorated ceramic pots, known as “red-on-buff,” was at its peak, said Eiselt and Darling.

Ritually regulated or a managerial elite?
The researchers will probe how a prehistoric society that was fairly egalitarian, without cities or strict social classes, was able to mass-produce ceramic pottery, Eiselt said.

The pottery was critical to a complex system of water management devised by the Hohokam. They used hand-dug canals to irrigate thousands of miles of desert, making the land suitable for growing a wide variety of farm crops.

As pottery specialists living along the middle Gila River, the Hohokam produced and perhaps traded thousands of vessels to the entire region in return for agricultural commodities from surrounding groups, according to the researchers.

“With production output at the level suggested by the millions of sherds and vessel fragments recovered from archaeological sites of this period, we would expect to find political hierarchies, craft specialists, guilds and mass-production techniques,” Eiselt said. “In this situation that wasn’t the case. The results have the potential to show that highly productive craft industries can occur in the absence of managerial elites.”

Hierarchical forms of management for mass-production are more familiar in the non-Indian world, Darling said.

“It’s been postulated by archaeologists that stratification and ranking can be superceded by alternative approaches to production in quantity,” Darling said. “That’s particularly true for societies whose traditional beliefs are not ruled by the bottom line or production and demand.”

Which theory is right?
Eiselt and Darling said the current study will test two competing hypotheses by probing the organizational principles and capacity of core Hohokam technological systems:

The first proposes that a number of villages were producing ceramics independently and trading them for agricultural products — such as cotton — to outside consumers.
The second proposes that ceramic manufacturing was highly concentrated in one or a few villages that were supplied with raw materials by other villages. That implies a greater level of inter-village coordination to create greater economies of scale at the expense of emerging settlement hierarchies.

“The competing hypotheses will be tested through geochemical and petrographic examination of raw materials and ceramic artifacts in order to determine how the Hohokam achieved such great economic and production success,” Eiselt said.

Petrographic thin-section analysis and chemical assays will target the components of red-on-buff sherds — including clay, temper and paint — to identify and characterize raw material sources and reconstruct patterns of ceramic manufacture, the researchers said.

The mineralogical and chemical composition of raw material from different geographical sources will be compared to ceramics from sites across the region.

“This will enable us to map the circulation of raw materials, not just finished products, and thereby identify, geochemically, not only resource trade, but the segmentation of tasks among producer communities, in so far as that existed,” Eiselt said.

From there the researchers can test whether ceramic manufacture for exchange was concentrated at independent centers, or whether there was a division of labor in the production and distribution of raw materials that was part of a broader system for enhancing production efficiency. It will also show whether or how the productive system connected with regional exchange or nascent market systems.

Building on existing Gila research
The project is part of the community’s efforts to recover information from archaeological sites impacted by centuries of development, said Darling. Work will take place on the Gila River Indian Community Reservation under the oversight of the Cultural Resource Management Program.

Results will aid the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, an ongoing effort to restore water resources that were historically lost to the O’odham — previously called Pima — through diversion and damming, Darling said.

The research project builds on earlier fieldwork conducted by the Gila River’s tribal archaeology program. The tribe, in turn, hopes to benefit from SMU’s archaeological expertise, Darling said.

“This is building the tribe’s capacity to conduct scientific research on its own,” he said. “Through collaborative research projects with SMU the tribe is able to exercise its sovereignty in the areas of intellectual research and academic development — not just to inform the world, but to restore the past to the community for their benefit and for future generations at Gila River.”

Both entities benefit, Eiselt said.

“The Gila River Indian Community is investigating the past within the confines of its community with its own team of cultural resource specialists and highly trained archaeologists,” Eiselt said. “It is a rare privilege for SMU to collaborate.” — Margaret Allen

Tags B. Sunday Eiselt, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news

Research of new Dedman Dean Tsutsui spans Japan’s business, environmental and cultural history

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 14, 2010

Historian and author William M. Tsutsui began work July 1 as the new dean of SMU’s Dedman College, home to the humanities, social sciences, and natural and mathematical sciences.

A specialist in the business, environmental and cultural history of 20th-century Japan, Tsutsui holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Princeton universities. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (Palgrave, 2004). He co-edited (with Michiko Ito) In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage (Palgrave, 2006) and has recently completed Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization.”I am honored and thrilled to have been selected as dean of Dedman College,” Tsutsui said when his selection as dean was announced on March 26. “The College has a world-class faculty, talented students, dedicated staff and a broad base of support in the Dallas community. I look forward to working with all these constituencies, and with President Turner and Provost Ludden, to enhance Dedman College’s achievements in teaching, research and public engagement. This is a historic moment for SMU, with a major campaign underway and the university’s centennial at hand, and a time of great opportunity for Dedman College.”

New Dedman role
Dedman College is home to the humanities, social sciences, and natural and mathematical sciences as well as the general education program that all students follow before declaring a major.

Tsutsui will take the lead in implementing a new general education program passed by the SMU faculty March 19.

As dean of Dedman College, Tsutsui will head the largest of SMU’s seven colleges and schools, with its more than 250 full-time faculty members, including 23 endowed professorships. About 40 percent of SMU’s undergraduates pursue their majors in Dedman College through more than 50 baccalaureate degree programs and their minors in more than 50 areas. Eighteen graduate programs in Dedman College lead to a master’s degree and 12 programs lead to a doctor of philosophy degree.

Tsutsui previously was associate dean for international studies and a professor of history at the University of Kansas. He also was director of the Kansas Consortium for Teaching About Asia in KU’s Center for East Asian Studies.

Degrees from Princeton, Oxford, Harvard
Tsutsui received a Ph.D. in history at Princeton University in 1995 and a Master of Arts in history there in 1990. He received a Master of Letters in Modern Japanese History from Oxford University’s Corpus Christi College in 1988 and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies in 1985.

Tsutsui also is the author of Banking Policy in Japan: American Efforts at Reform During the Occupation (Routledge, 1988) and Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan (Princeton University Press, 1998). In addition, he is the editor of Banking in Japan (Routledge, 1999) and A Companion to Japanese History (Blackwell, 2007).

Awards for history research
He received the 1997 Newcomen Society Award for Excellence in Business History Research and Writing, the 2000 John Whitney Hall Prize awarded by the Association of Asian Studies for best book on Japan or Korea published in 1998, and the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award for non-fiction.

Tsutsui was a featured speaker July 10 at Chicago’s annual G-Fest, the world’s largest gathering of scholars and fans of Godzilla.

Prior to his positions as KU associate dean for international studies and a professor of history, Tsutsui was acting director of KU’s Center for East Asian Studies and executive director of its Confucius Institute. He was named faculty fellow at KU’s Center for Teaching Excellence, received a William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in 2001 and won KU’s Steeples Service to Kansas Award in 2001.

Tsutsui is married to Marjorie Swann, director of the Museum Studies Program and the Conger-Gabel Teaching Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas. She will be joining SMU as well.

Tags Dedman College, SMU Department of History, William M. Tsutsui

Culture, Society & Family

Farmers Branch, Tx.: Case study shows immigrants seen as threat to white, middle-class “American” identity

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 6, 2010

Who belongs in America?

Immigration has sparked a raging national debate about that question — including in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas, the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring renters to prove they are legal residents.

Contrary to what many believe, however, race isn’t the only driving reason that some white, middle-class people feel threatened by immigrants, according to a new analysis by anthropologists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Some white, middle-class people also perceive immigrants who are settling in their suburban communities as a threat to their class status and to their very identity as Americans, say anthropologists Caroline B. Brettell and Faith G. Nibbs.

Immigrants — with cultures and traditions different from white suburbanites — are viewed by some as an assault on long-standing symbols of American nationality, the researchers say. Those symbols include middle-class values and tastes, and the perception that Americans are patriotic and law-abiding, say the researchers, both in the SMU Department of Anthropology.

“For many whites, American identity is wrapped up with being suburban and middle class, and when they see immigrants changing their communities and potentially threatening their class status, they react with anti-immigrant legislation,” says Brettell.

Class and culture
It’s true that for some whites, immigrants can represent competition for economic security and scarce resources, say Brettell and Nibbs — but in the suburbs they are also seen as a threat to the white, middle-class concept of “social position.”

Because of that, Brettell and Nibbs argue for greater attention to class and culture in the study of contemporary immigration into the United States.

The anthropologists base their conclusion on a close analysis of Farmers Branch, a suburb of almost 28,000 people. Farmers Branch made news in 2006 as the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring that apartment managers document tenants as legal residents.

For their analysis, the researchers looked at newspaper articles and blogs, conducted a lengthy interview with a key City Council member, carried out background historical research and analyzed U.S. Census data.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal International Migration in an article titled “Immigrant Suburban Settlement and the ‘Threat’ to Middle Class Status and Identity: The Case of Farmers Branch, Texas.”

Flooding into suburbia
New immigrants to the United States are settling in major gateway cities like Dallas and making their homes directly in middle-class suburbs, say Brettell and Nibbs.

These suburbs — once called the “bourgeois utopia” where middle-class values triumph — are populated by white people who decades before fled the central cities to escape poor housing, deteriorating schools, and racial and ethnic diversity, the researchers say.

But when immigrants and white suburbs mix, the result can be explosive — as in the case of Farmers Branch. Whites view their hometown changing. And the changes feel very foreign to them — new religious institutions, ethnic strip-shopping malls, signs in languages other than English, and bilingual programs for education, health care and law-enforcement programs.

“Free and white”
The historic roots of Farmers Branch lie in a land grant designed to draw “free and white” inhabitants to the area in the 1850s, say the researchers.

Farmers Branch grew to 17,500 by 1970, and at that time there were 320 Hispanic surnames in the city. By 2000, however, the Hispanic population had grown to more than one-third of the total. By 2008, Hispanics were the largest demographic group, with 46.7 percent of the population.

Today, like many such cities, Farmers Branch sees its minority, elderly and low-income population growing faster than the national average, say Brettell and Nibbs.

The number of owner-occupied homes in Farmers Branch has fallen dramatically, from 87 percent in 1960 to 66 percent in 2000. Raw median income in 2000 was below what it was in 1970 dollars, adjusted against 2008 dollars, say the researchers.

“If you are a family with options, would you move into this neighborhood if presented with these figures?” asks Mayor Tim O’Hare in the journal article. O’Hare led the fight for the renter’s ordinance.

“Rule of Law”
Brettell and Nibbs say that white suburbanites have also invoked the “Rule of Law” in Farmers Branch and elsewhere.

“As the formulation of laws and their enforcement are disproportionately unavailable to ethnic minorities, and completely inaccessible to undocumented immigrants, the principle of Rule of Law has become a convenient weapon for the Farmers Branch middle class in their fight for status and the status quo,” say Brettell and Nibbs in the article. “Add to this a bit of the legacy of Texas frontier mentality and patriotism and you have a line drawn in the sand by those who stand for the Rule of Law as something absolutely fundamental to American identity and hence perceive illegal immigrants as a threat to that identity.”

In that way, the “Rule of Law” is a tool to exclude unauthorized immigrants and attempt to legislate a certain quality of life, such as English-only communication, as well as proof of citizenship to rent a dwelling, apply for food stamps or get school financial aid, say the researchers.

“Everyone is looking at race but not at class in the study of immigrants, and particularly in anti-immigrant backlash,” Brettell says. “We add to this literature the analysis of ‘Rule of Law’ as a newly rhetorical device that excludes illegal immigrants. Our article offers a new way of looking at this issue.”

Caroline B. Brettell is University Distinguished Professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology and Faith G. Nibbs is a doctoral candidate at SMU. — Margaret Allen

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, Faith G. Nibbs, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Mind & Brain

Mad? Sad? Glad? People with severe mental illness can’t easily “read” their partner’s feelings; but there may be help

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 28, 2010

For a healthy couple in a romantic relationship, getting along can be hard enough. But what if one person has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression?

Adding severe mental illness into the mix can make it even harder to keep a relationship healthy, happy and satisfying, say psychologists Amy Pinkham and Lorelei Simpson, both assistant professors in the Department of Psychology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

A new research project by Pinkham and Simpson aims to understand how relationships function where one person has been diagnosed with a severe mental illness. Their study takes a close look at how couple relationships function when one partner has difficulties with the important social ability called “social cognition.”

Failure to understand emotional cues

Social cognition is the ability to understand social information and accurately read and interpret another person’s feelings, to understand their perspective, and then respond appropriately.

Social cognition is commonly lacking or deficient in people with severe mental illness, say Pinkham and Simpson. For example, an ill individual may think their partner is angry when in fact the person is unhappy.

Understanding these deficits could lead to treatments to address social cognition deficits within relationships, say Pinkham and Simpson.

Pinkham and Simpson hope to develop programs for people with severe mental illness to help them improve the social skills critical for them to maintain a happy relationship.

“Understanding a partner’s viewpoint and emotions is key to many relationship skills,” says Simpson. “The social cognition deficits among people with severe mental illness may help explain their greater risk for relationship distress.”

More episodes of domestic abuse
People with severe mental illness tend to have more episodes of intimate partner violence and greater relationship discord, say Pinkham and Simpson. It’s possible that deficits in social cognition may play a role in these negative outcomes, they say.

Over the next few months, the researchers will recruit 60 couples from ethnically diverse backgrounds between the ages of 18 and 65. They will compare social cognition deficits and relationship functioning in couples in which one partner has a severe mental illness to couples in which neither partner has severe mental illness.

The researchers will assess the couples and analyze the data over the next 12 months. The Texas-based Hogg Foundation for Mental Health has awarded the psychologists a one-year, $15,000 grant to fund the study.

Study may provide treatment roadmap

Pinkham and Simpson say they expect to find that impairments in social cognition do detract from a couple’s efforts at a happy relationship.

They hope this initial study will improve understanding of the problems leading to relationship distress that are commonly seen in these couples.

They also expect that the study will lead to longitudinal and treatment studies that will enable them to develop recommendations for treatment and therapy that can help people with severe mental illness overcome the deficit.

“In the last five years, several treatment programs have been developed that show considerable promise for improving social cognitive abilities in individuals with a severe mental illness. If we find that social cognition does contribute to relationship satisfaction, we may be able to extend these same treatments to couples therapy,” says Pinkham.

Pinkham has expertise in social cognition and has investigated social cognitive impairments in people with severe mental illness for the past 10 years. Simpson’s expertise is with couple relationship functioning, couples therapy and couples facing severe mental illness.

About 6 percent of people in the United States suffer from serious mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Due to newer, more effective medications, as well as advances in behavioral therapy, more people with severe mental illness are able to function at higher levels, including maintaining long-term relationships like marriage, say the psychologists.

First study of its kind
However, the illness still takes a toll on people with severe mental illness and their relationships with others. Improving their ability to function is essential for better quality of life, say Pinkham and Simpson.

Over the past 20 years, researchers have studied severe mental illness and social cognitive impairment. But this will be the first study to examine the role of social cognition in how couple relationships function when one person has severe mental illness, say Pinkham and Simpson.

Much of the research on severe mental illness has focused on treating symptoms. But treating symptoms doesn’t necessarily give them skills by which to improve their relationships, say Pinkham and Simpson.

The Pinkham-Simpson study is one of 12 Texas research projects to receive funding from the Hogg Foundation, which was founded to promote improved mental health for Texans.

“Academic research is an important tool in our quest to understand the complexities of mental health,” said Octavio N. Martinez Jr., executive director of the foundation in announcing the awards. “The Hogg Foundation selected these projects because they address issues that profoundly affect people’s lives.”

Tags Amy Pinkham, Lorelei Simpson, Lorelei Simpson Rowe, SMU Department of Psychology

Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Mind & Brain Researcher news

SMU anthropologist to study mental health care needs of abused Mexican women immigrants

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 9, 2010

Domestic%20Violence%20T-shirt%201%20small%20cropped.jpg

An abused woman who seeks medical help may recover more quickly if health care providers understand her culture, and her social and economic background, says Nia Parson, a medical anthropologist in SMU’s Department of Anthropology.

How can mental health providers best help an abused woman who is a Mexican immigrant?

Scant research has been done to answer that question, Parson says, even though in Texas 39 percent of Hispanic women report experiencing severe abuse. For that reason, the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health in Austin has awarded Parson a one-year, $15,000 grant to examine the mental health care needs of Mexican immigrant women who have sought help after abuse by a boyfriend or a husband.

Abused suffer depression, PTSD, chronic ailments

Abused women suffer not only physical injuries, but often develop other ailments as well, such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic headaches and backaches. They may seek treatment for those problems in emergency rooms, or public or private clinics.

Delivering care in a way that takes into account a person’s cultural and socio-economic background is termed “cultural competency.” However, medical anthropologists have pointed to the need to move beyond notions of culture that are static, stereotypical, and politically and economically without context.

“It is important to recognize the particular situations of abused women who are immigrants and the specific kind of challenges to their recoveries from the abuse, such as a lack of social and family networks, unfamiliarity with social service systems, language barriers and fear of deportation. It is also crucial to examine diversity of experiences within groups, which this research will also do. Not all Mexican immigrants come from the same backgrounds and share the same experiences,” Parson says.

Minorities get lower quality care

More SMU research news

Medill Reports: Exercise Can Help Keep Depression Symptoms at Bay

London Times: Should Oscar Pistorius be allowed to compete in the Olympics?

Can virtual reality “dates” help women thwart sexual assault?

Wired: DARPA’s beady eyed camera spots the non-cooperative

Texas pterosaur Aetodactylus Halli in the spotlight after 95 million years

Racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive needed mental health services and are more likely to receive lower quality care, according to research cited by the Office of Women’s Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in its report “Action Steps for Improving Women’s Mental Health.” The report — based on the landmark “Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General in 1999” — calls for expanding cultural competence across mental health research, training and services. The report also calls for more gender and cultural diversity in mental health academic research and medicine.

Cultural competency could benefit Hispanics and other minorities, according to the 2009 “National Healthcare Disparities Report” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. According to the report: “Culturally and linguistically appropriate services can decrease the prevalence, incidence, severity, and duration of certain mental disorders.”

The Hogg Foundation in 2005 declared cultural competence one if its priority funding areas. Stating that more than half the population of Texas is ethnic and racial minorities, the foundation says its goal is to increase the availability of effective mental health services for people of color.

Parson already has done some research on cultural competency. In a 2006-07 study of Spanish-speaking immigrant women in New Jersey, Parson found that health care and social services suited for these women were detrimentally lacking.

She also has published research on the struggle for abused women to find adequate and appropriate treatment in Santiago, Chile.

Culturally competent care is beneficial

Hogg Foundation: Providing Evidence-Based Practices to Populations of Color

Texas Council on Family Violence Report: Family Violence in Texas

For some immigrant women, Parson speculates, the proper response might include a public health clinic embedded in the community, or social networks that keep women from feeling isolated. Or it could be that immigrant women need more help finding legal services, getting help with language and computer skills, or connecting with their children’s schools.

“Ultimately, from this research I’d like to broaden our conceptualizations of cultural competency in health care and to have something of value to say to policymakers,” Parson says.

Parson will begin the research this summer. Aided by anthropology graduate student Carina Heckert, Parson will interview 100 women who immigrated to Dallas from Mexico. She and Heckert, along with select undergraduates, will recruit women through The Family Place, a Dallas-based agency that helps victims of family violence by providing intervention, shelter and counseling.

Research to address immigrant women
“Domestic violence research has been conducted over the last 40 years, since the early 1970s,” Parson says. “However, we don’t have much specialized knowledge about how to address the mental health impacts in immigrant women. Recognition of domestic violence as a health issue emerged in the 1990s. And there’s very little research on domestic violence and cultural competency in health care, especially from an anthropological perspective. Medical anthropologists have a lot to contribute to knowledge about how to address mental health problems in diverse populations.”

Parson is one of 12 Texas researchers to receive a research grant from the Hogg Foundation, which promotes improved mental health for Texans.

“Academic research is an important tool in our quest to understand the complexities of mental health,” said Octavio N. Martinez Jr., executive director of the foundation, in announcing the awards. “The Hogg Foundation selected these projects because they address issues that profoundly affect people’s lives.” — Margaret Allen

Tags Dedman College, Nia Parson, SMU Department of Anthropology

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news

Related links

More SMU Research news