Maasai beadwork has always been modern: an exploration of modernity through artefacts

Abstract: Please refer to full text to view abstrac

David Robbins ‘Walking to Australia : 21st century excursions into humanity’s greatest migration’

Abstract: When David Robbins traverses the continents from his mother country in South Africa to his autistic grandson’s home in Australia, he imagines himself tracing humanity’s first and greatest migration, a 20 000 year journey that took place 85 000 years ago. Travelling by modern means, sleeping in hotels and dining in restaurants, he certainly does not replicate the journey on foot, but relies on eight years of intermittent excursions to key locations along the route, although he is not granted access to all. His informants on the way are mainly tourist guides who accompany him to musea and historical sites, but whose personas, personal stories and insights nevertheless come alive. The book is a journey of a man looking for roots and connections, as he is longing to find a safe place, a home in the turbulent world..

Intercultural communication in research interviews : accessing information from research participants from another culture

Abstract: Much research is done across cultural divides and necessarily relies on intercultural communication. However, existing practical guidelines for interviewing generally remain blind to the culture of the interviewer in relation to the interviewees. This affects the quantity and quality of the data collected from research participants who do not share the cultural and/or socio-economic background of the researcher. I address the implications of doing interviews that cross a cultural gap, showing how the researcher can step into the shoes of the Other and create cross-cutting ties. These practical solutions toward common pitfalls in intercultural research situations form a next step in reaction to a growing body of literature that critically reflects on how interviews are located in social contexts

Eliamani's Homestead

'Eliamani's Homestead' was shot as a result of long-term anthropological research in Tanzania and the translations were created in close cooperation with the Maasai research participants. Originally recorded for research purposes for a project on the relationship between images of and interactions with ‘the other’, the 20-minute single-shot includes jerky camera movements, but was left uncut and without voiceover in order to give the viewer a real-time experience of 'being there'. Within anthropology, the documentary invites to reflect on parallels between anthropology and tourism, and spurs debates regarding reflexivity. It addresses elements of the 'observer paradox' through the almost complete invisibility of the researcher’s camera, which stands in stark contrast with the obtrusive tourist cameras. That is, until Eliamani looks straight into the lens and dismissively comments upon the researcher’s camera too, making researcher and the documentary’s public part of the voyeuristic 'problem' as well. Outside anthropology, it invokes debates about how we see and interact with 'the other' in (cultural) tourism as well as in wider contexts. It thus addresses the question whether and how audiovisual data segments could be used to share anthropological knowledge inside and outside the discipline and academia

“When we are laughing like this now, we are also being recorded by them”: Eliamani’s Homestead and the Complicity of Ethnographic Film

Abstract: Eliamani's Homestead is an unfiltered presentation of unequal power relations, othering, suspicions, misunderstandings, and the untranslated in an exchange between Indigenous hosts and their guests in a cultural tourism setting. A family of Dutch tourists visits a Maasai homestead in Tanzania, where Eliamani and her child have no food. The tourists take copious pictures of the women and children and haggle over the price of a bracelet—a common scene in cultural tourism encounters the world over. The discomforting exchange is all the more palpable when Eliamani breaks the fourth wall and reminds the filmmaker and viewer of their complicity. This film dialogue is part review, part conversation with the filmmaker who describes the process of making, editing, and screening the film, including audience and participants’ reactions. It situates Eliamani's Homestead within the ambit of ethnographic film, both illustrating visual ethnography’s complicity in cultural tourism and revealing its potential to offer its own critique when it maintains a multivocal approach that strives for dialogue with “the other” on both sides of the camera

Antibiotic Exposure and Risk of Clostridium difficile Infection: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Rochester. School of Medicine & Dentistry. Dept. of Community and Preventive Medicine, 2010.Clostridium difficile Infection (CDI) is a major cause of hospital-acquired diarrhea and is most commonly associated with changes in normal intestinal flora caused by administration of antibiotics. The recent emergence of strains of C. difficile demonstrating new antimicrobial resistance patterns may mean that antibiotics that have seldom been implicated in the past now confer a greater risk of CDI. Few studies have examined increases in the risk of CDI associated with total cumulative dose, duration, or number of antibiotics. Therefore, a retrospective cohort study was conducted to determine the incidence of CDI at Strong Memorial Hospital in 2005 among hospitalizations during which two or more consecutive days of antibiotics were prescribed, and to examine the class, total dose (measured in Defined Daily Doses (DDD)), days, and number of antibiotics in relation to CDI. 10,154 hospitalizations were included in the study. Dose-response relationships were observed, with increasing exposure conferring increasing CDI risk for all dose-related antibiotic measures evaluated. For instance, the risk of CDI for hospitalizations in the second, third, and fourth quartile of DDD was 1.24 (95% CI 0.72, 2.15), 2.77 (1.67, 4.59), and 5.16 (3.02, 8.79) times higher, respectively, as compared to the lowest quartile, even after accounting for the effects of potential confounders. Similar patterns were observed in the estimates for cumulative number of antibiotics and antibiotic days. For comparisons across antibiotic classes, receipt of fluoroquinolones was associated with a four-fold increase in the risk of CDI relative to hospitalizations during which no fluoroquinolones were prescribed (95%CI 2.75, 5.97), independent of other antibiotics received during hospitalization. Cephalosporins, β-lactamase inhibitor combinations, sulfa drugs, and intravenous vancomycin were also associated with a significant increase in risk of CDI. Our results suggest that cumulative antibiotic exposures are associated with the development of CDI. A reduction of patients’ total cumulative exposures to antibiotics and substitution of higher risk antibiotics for lower risk alternatives, when feasible, may reduce the incidence of hospital-acquired CDI

Speaking with other animals through intuitive interspecies communication: towards cognitive and interspecies justice

Intuitive interspecies communication (IIC) involves detailed, non-verbal and non-physical communication between humans and other animals using a wide range of intuitive capacities. IIC and the growing number of animal communicators who practice it professionally have been virtually ignored in academic research in animal geographies and beyond. In response to calls for epistemological innovation and ontological diversity as well as cognitive and interspecies justice, we introduce IIC as a valuable process to deepen understandings of animals’ perspectives and standpoints. We then discuss lessons learned as researchers and learners who are committed to advancing capacities to conduct research with animals, rather than on them. We offer some reflexive cautions, then posit that IIC can provide an important methodological pathway to engaging animals as active partners in knowledge production. More equitable interspecies collaborations in academic research may be facilitated through the translation capacities of animal communicators.illustrato