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Open access publications by faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in the Department of Anthropology.
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Item Trust, Traffic, and Contemporary Evacuation Barriers in Hurricane Ida(Journal of Disaster Studies, 2025-02-05) Trivedi, Jennifer; DeYoung, Sarah; Anyidoho, Prosper; Porada, Maria; Wachtendorf, Tricia; Davidson, Rachel; Nozick, LindaIn hurricane evacuation decision-making research, it is critical to understand complex influences and larger processes at work in shaping the decisions and experiences of people and communities in affected areas and evacuation zones. Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana in 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing economic problems, and disruptions to trust in political officials. Gulf Coast residents made decisions about if and when to evacuate in this context. We use a framework that emphasizes the social causes of evacuation decision making, including optimism bias, compounding disasters, and situational factors. Results show that during Ida residents were navigating the relative risks, varied perceptions, and previous experiences with other disasters, compounding disasters, traffic, work and school demands, and long-term systemic problems. Understanding this reality more deeply and with a more nuanced approach to the complexities of how such perceptions and experiences affect one another, rather than viewing evacuation as a "yes or no" decision, is essential to improving disaster policies and evacuation responses, as well as our knowledge of both. This article delves deeply into the barriers to evacuation still existing in the United States, despite efforts to improve these procedures over time, particularly after Hurricane Katrina.Item Embodied Belonging in the Social Science Lab(ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2025-01-13) Embodiment Lab; Abou Ali, Hanan; Bryan, James Edward; Chennault, Carrie; Grover, Dharni; Haghdadi, Mehrnaz; Islam, Faisal Bin; Kim, Nari; Lucas, Nora; Mohana, Nusrat T.; Naylor, Lindsay; Nixon, Rebecca; Obringer, Kelsey M.; Ramsay, Georgina; Sultana, Naznin Nahar; Thakkar, Kaanan; Thayer, NathanThe Embodiment Lab, rooted in critical human geography, is grounded in embodiment, belonging, mentorship, care, and temporal dynamics to challenge norms in the neoliberal university. We argue that the Lab serves as a counter-practice within the academy by prioritizing our individual and collective well-being over productivity metrics. Weekly practices cultivate radical vulnerability, creating a foundation for a caring environment. Delving into multifaceted spatial dimensions our experiences suggest that the Lab becomes a living example of a feminist ethic of care. Belonging emerges as an antidote to the exclusions ingrained in academic spaces. The Lab empowers its scholars to challenge uneven power dynamics, fostering inclusion where diverse voices are heard. The Lab's emphasis on collective action and intentional processes of growth contrasts with a conventional fast, metric-driven tempo. In this paper, we offer a model to center care in lab spaces by reflecting on our own experiences in a space that values scholars as whole individuals rather than vessels of productivity. We illustrate the reflexive character of the Lab, acknowledging its adaptability and dynamism over time. Rejecting the neoliberal norms that too often dictate research spaces, the Lab exemplifies the messy and ongoing process of creating care-full academic spaces.Item Fundamental Challenges and Opportunities for Textile Circularity(Sustainability, 2024-12-18) Thomas, Kedron; Durrani, Hira; Brady, Julia; Ludwig, Kendall; Yatvitskiy, Michelle; Clarke-Sather, Abigail R.; Cao, Huantian; Cobb, KellyThe negative environmental impacts of the current linear system of textile and apparel production are well-documented and require urgent action. The sector lacks an effective recycling system, resulting in massive waste and environmental pollution. This paper presents the results of qualitative research involving textile and apparel industry stakeholders, including representatives from brands and retailers, waste collectors, recyclers, non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and government agencies. Our research focused on stakeholder perceptions of the significance and importance of textile circularity, the challenges that exist for transitioning the textile and apparel industry from a linear system to a circular economy (CE), and resources that exist to support this transition. The results of this study call attention to the following urgent requirements: a consistent definition of CE to promote transparency and accountability and prevent greenwashing; improved systems for materials identification, sorting, and pre-processing of post-consumer textile waste to enable recycling; innovations in mechanical recycling technologies to maintain the value of recycled materials; and new, materials-driven approaches to design and manufacturing that are responsive to feedstock variability and diverse consumer needs. The research findings also suggest the need for flexible, regional CEs that are rooted in community partnerships.Item Can visits to certain businesses help predict evacuation decisions in real time?(Natural Hazards, 2025-01-06) Anyidoho, Prosper K.; Davidson, Rachel A.; Nozick, Linda K.; Trivedi, Jennifer; DeYoung, Sarah E.; Wachtendorf, TriciaThis study aims to help understand and predict evacuation behavior by examining the relationship between evacuation decisions and visits to certain businesses using smartphone location and point of interest (POI) data collected across three hurricanes—Dorian (2019), Ida (2021), and Ian (2022)—for residents in voluntary and mandatory evacuation zones. Results from these data suggest residents visit POIs as part of preparatory activities before a hurricane impacts land. Statistical tests suggest that POI visits can be used as precursor signals for predicting evacuations in real time. Specifically, people are more likely to evacuate if they visit a gas station and are more likely to stay if they visit a grocery store, hardware store, pet store, or a pharmacy prior to landfall. Additionally, they are even less likely to leave if they visit multiple places of interest. These results provide a foundation for using smartphone location data in real time to improve predictions of behavior as a hurricane approaches.Item Woman the hunter: The physiological evidence(American Anthropologist, 2023-09-04) Ocobock, Cara; Lacy, SarahMyths of “Man the Hunter” and male biological superiority persist in interpretations and reconstructions of human evolution. Although there are uncontroversial average biological differences between females and males, the potential physiological advantages females may possess are less well-known and less well-studied. Here we review and present emerging physiological evidence that females may be metabolically better suited for endurance activities such as running, which could have profound implications for understanding subsistence capabilities and patterns in the past. We discuss the role of estrogen and adiponectin as respective key modulators of glucose and fat metabolism, both of which are critical fuels during long endurance activities. We also discuss how differences in overall body composition, muscle fiber composition, the metabolic cost of load carrying, and self-pacing may provide females with increased endurance capacities. Highlighting these potential advantages provides a physiological framework that complements existing archaeological (Lacy and Ocobock, this issue) and cultural work reassessing female endurance and hunting capabilities as well as the sexual division of labor. Such a holistic approach is critical to amending our current understanding of hu(wo)man evolution. Land Acknowledgment: The University of Notre Dame is on the traditional territory of the Haudenosauneega, Miami, Peoria, all of the Bodéwadmik Potawatomi peoples, and particularly the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik/Pokagon Potawatomi. The University of Delaware occupies lands vital to the web of life for the Lenni Lenape and Nanticoke, who share their ancestry, history, and future in this region.Item Woman the hunter: The archaeological evidence(American Anthropologist, 2023-09-04) Lacy, Sarah; Ocobock, CaraThe Paleo-fantasy of a deep history to a sexual division of labor, often described as “Man the Hunter and Woman the Gatherer,” continues to dominate the literature. We see it used as the default hypothesis in anatomical and physiological reconstructions of the past as well as studies of modern people evoking evolutionary explanations. However, the idea of a strict sexual labor division in the Paleolithic is an assumption with little supporting evidence, which reflects a failure to question how modern gender roles color our reconstructions of the past. Here we present examples to support women's roles as hunters in the past as well as challenge oft-cited interpretations of the material culture. Such evidence includes stone tool function, diet, art, anatomy and paleopathology, and burials. By pulling together the current state of the archaeological evidence along with the modern human physiology presented in the accompanying paper (Ocobock and Lacy, this issue), we argue that not only are women well-suited to endurance activities like hunting, but there is little evidence to support that they were not hunting in the Paleolithic. Going forward, paleoanthropology should embrace the idea that all sexes contributed equally to life in the past, including via hunting activities.Item Futurity Beyond the State: Illegal Markets and Imagined Futures in Latin America(Latin American Politics and Society, 2022-10-21) Dewey, Matías; Thomas, KedronThis collection of articles features field-based research on illegal markets across Latin America, with special attention to the expectations and representations of the future that surround and emerge from people’s involvement in illegal economic activities. In contrast to explanatory models in the social sciences that are oriented toward the past and the present—where “an outcome is explained by previous events, leading causally to what is being observed in the present” (Beckert and Suckert Reference Beckert and Suckert2020, 2)—we are witnessing renewed interest across various disciplines in the future, understood as a temporality that is socially produced, circulated, and experienced. Scholars in anthropology, sociology, and political science are now documenting the ways that people imagine the future and orient themselves in practice toward potential opportunities and outcomes. Futurity has emerged as a keyword that refers to an affective phenomenon with concrete and specific manifestations and significant implications for everyday life.Item Anti-Racist Struggle - Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by Peter Wade, James Scorer, and Ignacio Aguiló. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2019. Pp. 220. $32.00 paper; $26.00 e-book; free pdf.(The Americas, 2021-09-23) Guerrón Montero, CarlaThe image of Latin America and the Caribbean as “race paradises” lingers in the popular imagination and even in some academic settings. This book offers a powerful rebuttal of that stereotypical depiction by engaging with the prevalent racism that has historically permeated the region, which its editors and authors interpret as a product of long-standing colonial and postcolonial practices of domination and inequality in the global world order.