The Promise and Peril of Charitable Choice: Religion, Poverty Relief, and Welfare Reform in the South

This study analyzes narratives of welfare reform and faith-based poverty relief articulated by religious leaders in rural Mississippi congregations. These congregations are situated in and around Mississippi\u27s Golden Triangle Region, a locale that includes a diverse group of small and mid-sized towns, as well as remote rural areas. As a state with entrenched social disadvantage, a thriving religious economy, and the nation\u27s first faith-based welfare reform program, Mississippi is an ideal locale to study this important issue. We begin by discussing the charitable choice provision in welfare reform legislation. This legal provision bars discrimination against religious organizations as social service providers. We then briefly outline the poverty relief strategies utilized in a purposive sample of thirty Mississippi religious congregations that vary by denomination, racial composition, and size. Finally, we analyze pastors\u27 appraisals of charitable choice, paying special attention to the various rationales they enlist to justify their evaluations of this policy initiative. We conclude by discussing our study\u27s implications for charitable choice implementation in the rural South

Mooney Award Committee Report

The 2001 James Mooney Award Committee Teviewed ten books submitted by six university presses. As we made our final evaluations we soon reached a consensus that two of the ten books were superior in meeting the criteria for the Mooney Award. Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, 1840-1950 / by Laurie Wilkie (2000, Louisiana State University Press). Reviewed by Hester A. Davis, Mooney Award Committee, Arkansas Archeological Survey The Estuary\u27s Gift: An Atlantic Coast Cultural Biography / by David Griffith (1999, Pennsylvania State University Press). Reviewed by Helen Regis, Mooney Award Committee, Louisiana State Universit

IGF-I increases bone marrow contribution to adult skeletal muscle and enhances the fusion of myelomonocytic precursors

Muscle damage has been shown to enhance the contribution of bone marrow–derived cells (BMDCs) to regenerating skeletal muscle. One responsible cell type involved in this process is a hematopoietic stem cell derivative, the myelomonocytic precursor (MMC). However, the molecular components responsible for this injury-related response remain largely unknown. In this paper, we show that delivery of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) to adult skeletal muscle by three different methods—plasmid electroporation, injection of genetically engineered myoblasts, and recombinant protein injection—increases the integration of BMDCs up to fourfold. To investigate the underlying mechanism, we developed an in vitro fusion assay in which co-cultures of MMCs and myotubes were exposed to IGF-I. The number of fusion events was substantially augmented by IGF-I, independent of its effect on cell survival. These results provide novel evidence that a single factor, IGF-I, is sufficient to enhance the fusion of bone marrow derivatives with adult skeletal muscle

An interferon-free antiviral regimen for HCV after liver transplantation.

Background Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the leading indication for liver transplantation worldwide, and interferon-containing regimens are associated with low response rates owing to treatment-limiting toxic effects in immunosuppressed liver-transplant recipients. We evaluated the interferon-free regimen of the NS5A inhibitor ombitasvir coformulated with the ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitor ABT-450 (ABT-450/r), the nonnucleoside NS5B polymerase inhibitor dasabuvir, and ribavirin in liver-transplant recipients with recurrent HCV genotype 1 infection. Methods We enrolled 34 liver-transplant recipients with no fibrosis or mild fibrosis, who received ombitasvir-ABT-450/r (at a once-daily dose of 25 mg of ombitasvir, 150 mg of ABT-450, and 100 mg of ritonavir), dasabuvir (250 mg twice daily), and ribavirin for 24 weeks. Selection of the initial ribavirin dose and subsequent dose modifications for anemia were at the investigator's discretion. The primary efficacy end point was a sustained virologic response 12 weeks after the end of treatment. Results Of the 34 study participants, 33 had a sustained virologic response at post-treatment weeks 12 and 24, for a rate of 97% (95% confidence interval, 85 to 100). The most common adverse events were fatigue, headache, and cough. Five patients (15%) required erythropoietin; no patient required blood transfusion. One patient discontinued the study drugs owing to adverse events after week 18 but had a sustained virologic response. Blood levels of calcineurin inhibitors were monitored, and dosages were modified to maintain therapeutic levels; no episode of graft rejection was observed during the study. Conclusions Treatment with the multitargeted regimen of ombitasvir-ABT-450/r and dasabuvir with ribavirin was associated with a low rate of serious adverse events and a high rate of sustained virologic response among liver-transplant recipients with recurrent HCV genotype 1 infection, a historically difficult-to-treat populatio

Doing Oral History as Public Anthropology

Doing Oral History engages students as co-researchers in a community-engaged oral history project begun in 2011. Supported by a research partnership between a faculty member, a university oral history center, and a non-profit archive, the course engages learners in the exploration of a festival and its communities. Through oral histories with long-time festival workers, artists, staff, volunteers, and neighbors, we contribute to expanding the history of a festival and the social movements that have shaped it. We also consider the ways in which diverse festival workers come to feel a part of a community centering African American working-class folk, cultures, and performance traditions. Students learn from narrators connected to the festival, recording their life histories, and learning about neighborhood and city history, cultural traditions, and social movements. These oral histories engage the complex racialized, classed, and gendered hierarchies which the festival reflects, the central place of folklore and cultural heritage in the public culture of the region, and the challenges of making a living in a precarious tourism economy. In this article, I reflect on how the class contributes to doing and teaching public anthropology in the South

Ships on the Wall: Retracing African Trade Routes from Marseille, France

With this essay on decolonizing ways of knowing, I seek to understand the phantom histories of my father’s French family. Filling in silences in written family accounts with scholarship on Marseille’s maritime commerce, African history, African Diaspora studies, and my own archival research, I seek to reconnect European, African, and Caribbean threads of my family story. Travelling from New Orleans to Marseille, Zanzibar, Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Martinique and Guadeloupe, this research at the intersections of personal and collective heritage links critical genealogies to colonial processes that structured the Atlantic world. Through an exploration of family documents, literature, and art, I travel the trade routes of la Maison Régis

Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era

By John P. Bartkowski and Helen A. Regis New York University Press (Hardcover, $60.00, ISBN: 0814799019, 2/2003; Paperback,$19.00, ISBN: 0814799027) Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America’s welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty. Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation’s highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives. The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice. John P. Bartkowski is Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender Negotiation in Evangelical Families. Helen Regis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Louisiana State University. Her work on New Orleans jazz funerals and second lines has appeared in American Ethnologist and Cultural Anthropology.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mwp_books/1059/thumbnail.jp

Introduction. The Public South: Engaging History, Abolition, Pedagogy, and Practice

With this issue of Southern Anthropologist, we introduce several new features, which we hope will enliven conversations and expand the readership of the journal

Anthropological Perspectives on Law, Language, and Social Justice

Helen Regis, Session Chair Helen A. Regis (Louisiana State University). Doing Oral History as Public Anthropology: Reflections on an Ongoing Partnership.Doing Oral History” engages undergraduate and graduate students as co-researchers in a collaborative and community-engaged oral history project. Supported by a research partnership between a faculty member, an oral history center and a non-profit archive, the course engages learners in the exploration of a festival and its community. Through oral histories with festival workers, artists, staff, volunteers, and neighbors, we contribute to expanding the public history of Jazz Fest and the social movements that have shaped it. Students learn from an indigenous carver of duck decoys, a sound engineer from New England, a Sicilian-American baker, a Latinx altar maker, a Black hip hop DJ/producer, and an Afro-Creole restaurateur. These oral histories engage complex racialized, classed, and gendered hierarchies and the challenges of making a living in a precarious tourism economy. In this paper, I reflect on how the class contributes to doing and teaching public anthropology in the South. Key words: public anthropology, community-engaged research, oral history, folklore, social justice, pedagogy. Ann Kingsolver (University of Kentucky). Standing Together Against Silencing: Anthropology as Inclusive Public History in the Anti-CRT Legislative Era.Most southeastern states (among many other US states) have passed or have pending bills that prohibit or restrict discussions of structural racism; whiteness; and histories of – and social movements countering – discrimination based on minoritization by race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and sexuality. These bills often name specific forms of structural violence that cannot be referred to in the classroom, like environmental injustice or redlining (a well-documented form of racialized economic injustice). This powerful attempt at silencing weaponizes Critical Race Theory – without knowledge of that area of critical legal studies – to reinforce white fears of a loss of control of the public sphere. I have been documenting such legislative moves (eventually proven unconstitutional, but always doing actual harm) for several decades. In this presentation, I will discuss some ways in which I have used anthropological tools in the past year to stand with others against this kind of silencing and intimidation of educators, and a specific project I am planning to repurpose past anthropological research as a learning resource for public schools in rural Kentucky. Since anthropological projects have most often documented minoritized voices and perspectives, over time, I suggest that there is potential for us to contribute practical resources for use by public educators in teaching creatively about local history in diverse, equitable, inclusive ways. Robin Riner (Marshall University) and John Conley (UNC-Chapel Hill Law School). From practice to ideology: Rethinking engaged research in language and law. Research in language and law from fields including linguistics, anthropology, and sociology largely focuses on documenting and critiquing the linguistic practices used in legal contexts. It does not often provide perspectives on the language ideologies that inform, shape, and make possible such linguistic practices. This paper argues that engaged language and law research involves more than demonstrating how language practices unfold in legal contexts. It also involves working toward a shift in ontological perspectives on language, that is, how one defines language, how they believe it to be structured and to operate in the world. This paper draws on our varied research and professional experiences as trial lawyer and law professor (Conley) and linguistic anthropologist (Riner), providing examples of how fundamental ideas about what language is and how it works lead to unjust legal practice. For example, we examine how jurors’ judgments of witnesses’ credibility and intelligence are often based in racialized, locally-situated ideologies about what constitutes “correct” language use. The belief that Standard English is a universally available, neutral code that can facilitate the “objectivity” of legal processes – common among legal professionals – elides the limitations many face accessing the standard dialect and ignores the fact that we both see language and hear race (Rosa 2019), thus negating the possibility that any language use is neutral. We argue that identifying and bringing to practitioners’ awareness the deep-seated language ideologies that undergird their practices is a step towards systemic legal change. Key words: language and law, language ideologies, legal anthropology. Heidi Kelley and Ken Betsalel (University of North Carolina, Asheville). “You Used to Speak Like Us”: Being Aphasic in a Spanish Galician Community and Affrilachian Neighborhood Elder Club.You used to speak like us,” scolded a Galician friend. “Don’t throw that cornbread away,” admonished one member of the Affrilachian neighborhood elder club. In this paper we explore how being disabled and being aphasic both opens anthropological insights and adds responsibilities to our participants. When one of us started our fieldwork in a Spanish Galician village as a young graduate student, the proximate distance in age and health was relatively close to what villagers perceived as “normal” time. When this American anthropologist had a catastrophic stroke in her 40s, leaving her speechless and immobile, her disability could be seen as another disruption to our village participants. In our fieldwork with an Affrialachian neighborhood elder club, the ethnographer’s disabled body and broken speech, could be seen as a point of convergence in which the horizons of difference can be bridged. Hence, time spent visiting and staying close, allowed for both of the ethnographers to be brought in, to learn that “we don’t throw anything away,” not cornbread, not relationships. Both our fieldwork experiences, refracted through the lens of disability provide the same conclusion: our Galician and Affrilachian participants perceive disability to be just another rupture. But with that realization, comes an urgent responsibility to render our fieldwork more poetically. People do not live in sequenced time alone, but storied time that is made up of non-sequential chapters. Hence, human life is more like poetry than the well-ordered ethnography might suggest--yoking disparate experiences together into a fractured whole. Key words: aphasia, disruption, disability, elders, poetry, visual anthropology