Why does one society survive while others perish? When two cultures come into contact, how do exploitation, violence, and terror arise? Interested in the survival of various cultures in the face of encroaching white civilization, Peter Elsass has studied five separate groups in Venezuela and Colombia and documented their successes and failures as they struggle to remain independent. This book has broad implications for anyone working with minority populations.
Indigenous Peoples, Ethnic Groups, and the State provides a concise introduction to the process of modernization and its effect on tribalism and ethnic parochialism. Part of the Cultural Survival Studies in Ethnicity and Change series, this text focuses on key issues affecting indigenous and ethnic groups worldwide. Ethnic conflicts proliferate throughout the world as indigenous peoples are becoming increasingly vocal in demanding their rights, including the right to be different. Readers are invited to reexamine their ideas about the state, the role of ethnicity in it, and the peculiar situation of indigenous peoples, who are ethnic minorities alien to the states in which they live.
Strategies for Survival: Cultural Behavior in an Ecological Context focuses on the ecological relationships between cultural behavior and its environmental context. The proliferation of ecological studies within anthropology suggests the increasing emphasis given to the systemic context of behavior. The aim of this book is to develop a framework for examining these relationships and for comparing diverse ecological studies within a coherent conceptual structure. It seeks to include any aspect of behavior, to investigate the links between ideological and material factors, to broaden the view of relevant factors and possible assumptions, and to relate the processes of decision-making to their specific context in a manner allowing cross-cultural comparisons. In the process, certain popular forms of ecological explanation will be examined. In addition, specific behavioral examples will be investigated in an attempt to explain patterns of similarities and differences. This book is addressed to all individuals interested in human-environmental interactions, including professional anthropologists and general students of human behavior.
Economic Survival Strategies of Turkish Migrants in London by Olgu KARAN is about economic survival in the Turkish and Kurdish communities of North London with some interesting comparisons to the longer established Turkish Cypriot community. It is to be welcomed that the study spans macro and micro levels. Also to be welcomed is that it eschews the idea that identity and culture is fixed and unchanging, providing some fascinating and important examples to the contrary, and that it moves beyond essentially culturalist approaches to entrepreneurship and even more so, mainstream individualist ones. Dr Karan noticed that two ethnic communities in conflictual relationships with each other in home country (Turkey) are marshalling collective resources in a very cooperative way across ethnic boundaries and forming small business ventures and thus contributing to the empowerment and upgrading of their households and communities.
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
What strategies can a government use to end violent ethnic conflicts in the long term? Under what conditions do these strategies work best? Daniel Byman examines how government policies can affect the recurrence of violent ethnic conflict.
In their later years, Americans of different racial and ethnic backgrounds are not in equally good-or equally poor-health. There is wide variation, but on average older Whites are healthier than older Blacks and tend to outlive them. But Whites tend to be in poorer health than Hispanics and Asian Americans. This volume documents the differentials and considers possible explanations. Selection processes play a role: selective migration, for instance, or selective survival to advanced ages. Health differentials originate early in life, possibly even before birth, and are affected by events and experiences throughout the life course. Differences in socioeconomic status, risk behavior, social relations, and health care all play a role. Separate chapters consider the contribution of such factors and the biopsychosocial mechanisms that link them to health. This volume provides the empirical evidence for the research agenda provided in the separate report of the Panel on Race, Ethnicity, and Health in Later Life.
This ground-breaking work develops theories and methods of analyzing the United States' domination of Native Americans through a study of the Lakota society known as the Sioux Nation of Indians. Two centuries of struggle between nations and cultures during the U.S. expansion over North America are described utilizing policy (BIA) and cross-cultural (US-Lakota) history, with insightful additions to understanding the Tetonwan-Sioux. Contributing new forms of analysis to the study of attempted domination and destruction of Native American societies, the author explores the concept of culturicide in relation to theories of genocide and cultural domination. He links resistance by traditionalists and activists to cultural survival in charts of U.S. and Lakota policies and counter-policies. The study provides maps to identify struggles over land, and shows how social institutions have been used to attack Lakota culture. The author provides documented recent events to illustrate contemporary Lakota social life, often from an insider's point of view. The work provides a framework for understanding similar conflicts for other Native Nations. Also includes maps. James Fenelon is Dakota/Lakota, and is Assistant Professor of Sociology at John Carroll University. Bibliography. Index.
