Birth Experiences Oral History Project

A winner of the James F. Slevin Assignment Sequence Prize, the sequence originates from Development Sociology 1203, Medicine, Technology, and Control Over Women’s Bodies. This sequence exposes students to sociological and feminist discussions of childbirth in the United States, stimulating analysis and evaluation of the dominant forms of health care for pregnant and new mothers. The sequence is designed to give students experience with different forms of writing , to help them put into practice a number of tips for excellent wriiing, and to push them to develop their own analysis while engaging with and integrating the larger conversation into their own writing. Preparatory steps include an interivew, an interview summary, and an analysis of childbirth practices in the U.S. Students work in groups but write their essays independently. 18 page pd

Research In, On, or About Honors

In his thought provoking essay in this issue, George Mariz makes a call for “devoting some serious attention to setting an agenda for honors research.” He tells us that research in honors is a lot less common than it would appear to a casual observer, writing that “Both narrative and statistical accounts of honors are so far inadequate to yield useful conclusions.” Honors administrators, he contends, need this sort of analysis in order to “be able to argue with hard evidence for the . . . demonstrable advantages of honors.” As a result of these concerns, he writes, “Research in honors has become a priority for the National Collegiate Honors Council. I wholeheartedly agree both that it is surprising that more data haven’t been gathered or analyzed and that such analyses will help administrators demonstrate the significant benefits of honors education for both honors students and the larger colleges and universities we serve. I also support a renewed focus on research within the broader honors community. I am struck, though, by what I think is a misplaced preposition in both Mariz’s essay and in the broader discussions at the NCHC. While usually tagged with the phrase “research in honors,” these conversations are usually about research on honors. We need to clarify that there is—and should be—a great deal of research in honors that is not on honors. Like Ted Estess before me, I am unsatisfied with the view that “‘Honors scholarship’ [means] scholarship about Honors programs, their students, curricula, and institutional settings” (26). To suggest that what qualifies as research in honors is strictly research about what happens in honors is to ignore some of the most creative, innovative, unique, and honors-like research that we and our students do. If we tell ourselves, and the broader communities we serve, that the only—or the privileged—research in honors is research on honors, we do ourselves and our students a grave disservice

Research In, On, or About Honors

In his thought provoking essay in this issue, George Mariz makes a call for “devoting some serious attention to setting an agenda for honors research.” He tells us that research in honors is a lot less common than it would appear to a casual observer, writing that “Both narrative and statistical accounts of honors are so far inadequate to yield useful conclusions.” Honors administrators, he contends, need this sort of analysis in order to “be able to argue with hard evidence for the . . . demonstrable advantages of honors.” As a result of these concerns, he writes, “Research in honors has become a priority for the National Collegiate Honors Council. I wholeheartedly agree both that it is surprising that more data haven’t been gathered or analyzed and that such analyses will help administrators demonstrate the significant benefits of honors education for both honors students and the larger colleges and universities we serve. I also support a renewed focus on research within the broader honors community. I am struck, though, by what I think is a misplaced preposition in both Mariz’s essay and in the broader discussions at the NCHC. While usually tagged with the phrase “research in honors,” these conversations are usually about research on honors. We need to clarify that there is—and should be—a great deal of research in honors that is not on honors. Like Ted Estess before me, I am unsatisfied with the view that “‘Honors scholarship’ [means] scholarship about Honors programs, their students, curricula, and institutional settings” (26). To suggest that what qualifies as research in honors is strictly research about what happens in honors is to ignore some of the most creative, innovative, unique, and honors-like research that we and our students do. If we tell ourselves, and the broader communities we serve, that the only—or the privileged—research in honors is research on honors, we do ourselves and our students a grave disservice

Cultivating Empathy: Lessons from an Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Course

In “Thinking Critically, Acting Justly,” Naomi Yavneh Klos suggests that the key questions for honors education and social justice are first “how to engage our highest-ability and most motivated students in questions of justice” and second “how honors can be a place of access, equity, and excellence in higher education.” These goals are both important and complementary; achieving the latter helps achieve the former. Honors education creates a fruitful space for inclusion where the knowledge and experience of diverse students develop skills oriented toward justice for the whole community. Making honors a place of access and equity prompts deeper engagement in questions of justice for all. Particularly in its emphasis on interdisciplinary and experiential learning, honors education creates, as Yavneh Klos writes, opportunities to “develop an understanding of the world in its complexities [and to] listen and engage [across difference].” Honors also prompts students to learn from the intersections of experience, recognize assumptions based in privilege, and challenge the notion that justice is about helping distant others. Through these practices, honors education is particularly well-positioned to cultivate empathy, a necessary foundation of social justice education. We base our conclusions about building empathy in honors education on our experience team-teaching an experiential, interdisciplinary course focused on mass incarceration in the University of New Mexico Honors College. Titled “Locked Up: Incarceration in Question,” the two-semester course integrated methodologies and approaches from sociology and art, fostering interdisciplinary inquiry into the historic roots and contemporary practices of incarceration. The aim of the class was to cultivate empathetic and engaged citizens, both caring about the world around them and prepared to create change in their communities. During the fall semester, students examined mass incarceration as a civil rights issue and explored how art allows us to both construct meaning and communicate knowledge about injustice. This class prepared students for service learning projects during the spring semester, when student groups worked with community partners to provide requested services. During the activities of both semesters, students came to destabilize the false dichotomy between themselves—often relatively privileged students in their state’s flagship university—and individuals directly impacted by the injustices of the carceral apparatus. Students found such complexities also mirrored in their own lives

Cultivating Empathy: Lessons from an Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Course

In “Thinking Critically, Acting Justly,” Naomi Yavneh Klos suggests that the key questions for honors education and social justice are first “how to engage our highest-ability and most motivated students in questions of justice” and second “how honors can be a place of access, equity, and excellence in higher education.” These goals are both important and complementary; achieving the latter helps achieve the former. Honors education creates a fruitful space for inclusion where the knowledge and experience of diverse students develop skills oriented toward justice for the whole community. Making honors a place of access and equity prompts deeper engagement in questions of justice for all. Particularly in its emphasis on interdisciplinary and experiential learning, honors education creates, as Yavneh Klos writes, opportunities to “develop an understanding of the world in its complexities [and to] listen and engage [across difference].” Honors also prompts students to learn from the intersections of experience, recognize assumptions based in privilege, and challenge the notion that justice is about helping distant others. Through these practices, honors education is particularly well-positioned to cultivate empathy, a necessary foundation of social justice education. We base our conclusions about building empathy in honors education on our experience team-teaching an experiential, interdisciplinary course focused on mass incarceration in the University of New Mexico Honors College. Titled “Locked Up: Incarceration in Question,” the two-semester course integrated methodologies and approaches from sociology and art, fostering interdisciplinary inquiry into the historic roots and contemporary practices of incarceration. The aim of the class was to cultivate empathetic and engaged citizens, both caring about the world around them and prepared to create change in their communities. During the fall semester, students examined mass incarceration as a civil rights issue and explored how art allows us to both construct meaning and communicate knowledge about injustice. This class prepared students for service learning projects during the spring semester, when student groups worked with community partners to provide requested services. During the activities of both semesters, students came to destabilize the false dichotomy between themselves—often relatively privileged students in their state’s flagship university—and individuals directly impacted by the injustices of the carceral apparatus. Students found such complexities also mirrored in their own lives

Negotiating Hybridity: Moral Economy And Globalization In Highland Bolivia

The norms and practices of reciprocity, or ayni in the Quechua language, deeply influence social and economic life among indigenous peasants in Andean Bolivia, both historically and in the contemporary period. Yet, integration into global systems and processes is profoundly shaping the rural highlands and people who live there. Using a mix of global and multi-sited ethnographic methods, this dissertation examines the interaction between local reciprocity norms, networks and practices, on one hand, and four moments of globalization, on the other. I suggest that reciprocity, which is frequently evaluated as a strictly economic strategy, is motivated by moral and symbolic considerations as well as technical concerns. This makes reciprocity institutions a uniquely socially and ecologically appropriate resource that people use to construct their livelihoods-a highly relevant living institution that is reproduced socially through enacted daily practice. In the process, it is constructed anew to respond to contemporary needs and conditions. In chapters that critically examine local instances of market integration, technological change, religious fragmentation, and shifting migration patterns, this research finds that reciprocity institutions provide a cultural 'toolkit' with which local people negotiate their experience of globalization more on their own terms. Andean peasants use indigenous economic practices and networks to access the opportunities and minimize the challenges and hazards brought by their increasing integration into global systems and flows. In doing so, they are constructing a hybrid space that combines local and global systems, reproducing local communities and cultures while constructing the contemporary global countryside. This work suggests that local institutions, grounded in culture, history and landscape yet dynamically responsive to currents contexts, are key mechanisms through which people think through, take advantage of, contest and cope with the forces of globalization that have come to dominate their lives

Evangelical Protestantism in Rural Andean Bolivia: The Social Impact of Religious Change

A “Protestant Wave” is sweeping across Latin America, challenging the historical dominance of the Catholic Church and bringing with it far reaching social change. This paper examines the contentious process of increasing religious diversity in rural Andean Bolivia. Drawing on ethnographic research in two Quechua villages, Dr. Marygold Walsh-Dilley explores why villagers convert to new evangelical denominations, what tensions result, and how increasing religious diversity interacts with non-religious social networks. She focuses in particular on reciprocity networks and practices, which have long been understood as important cultural and economic resources in the Andes. This research highlights alcohol consumption as a key factor mediating both religious conversion and its effects. Marygold Walsh-Dilley is Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Honors College, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology. She is also a faculty affiliate of the LAII. She holds a PhD in Development Sociology, and an MS in Applied Economics, both from Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersection between rural development, food systems, and indigenous politics, with a geographical focus in Andean Bolivia.https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/laii_events/1038/thumbnail.jp

Rights for resilience: food sovereignty, power, and resilience in development practice

Even as resilience thinking becomes evermore popular as part of strategic programming among development and humanitarian organizations, uncertainty about how to define, operationalize, measure, and evaluate resilience for development goals prevails. As a result, many organizations and institutions have undertaken individual, collective, and simultaneous efforts toward clarification and definition. This has opened up a unique opportunity for a rethinking of development practices. The emergent consensus about what resilience means within development practice will have important consequences both for development practitioners and the communities in which they work. Incorporating resilience thinking into development practice has the potential to radically transform this arena in favor of social and environmental justice, but it could also flounder as a way to dress old ideas in new clothes or, at worst, to further exploit, disempower, and marginalize the world's most vulnerable populations. We seek to make an intervention into the definitional debates surrounding resilience that supports the former and helps prevent the latter. We argue that resilience thinking as it has been developed in social-ecological systems and allied literatures has a lot in common with the concept of food sovereignty and that paying attention to some of the lessons and claims of food sovereignty movements could contribute toward building a consensus around resilience that supports social and environmental justice. In particular, the food sovereignty movement relies on a strategy that elevates rights. We suggest that a rights-based approach to resilience-oriented development practice could contribute to its application in just and equitable ways