Culture and Causality: An Anthropological Comment

This comment discusses the role of Anthropology and cultural models for explanation and understanding of demographic processes. It reflects on mixed method approaches in demography with a sympathetic eye to survey methods and an argument for the necessity of considering culture.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91302/1/Fricke2003.Culture and Causality.pd

Working Selves, Moral Selves: Crafting the Good person in the Northern Plains

A later version of this working paper appears in Elizabeth Rudd and Lara Descartes (eds.), 2008, The Changing landscape of Work and Family in the american Middle Class: Reports from the Field. New York: Lexington Books, pp. 17-39.This paper explores transformations in ideas of the good person as family member and worker, across generations and in the context of certain loss. The themes addressed include the moral sources of personhood in place, family, and work. Primary material comes from the contemporary everyday life a farm family and its continuity with the founding stories of ancestors who arrived at the turn of the 20th century.Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91305/1/workingselves.2008.pd

Studying West River: North Dakota Field Letters

A series of vignettes detailing everyday life among farmers and ranchers in western North Dakota. From ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2000. Detailing ranching and farming life.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91306/1/westriver.letters.pd

Mystery and Manners: A Conversation with Robert Coles

Transcript of an interview with and profile of Robert Coles discussing writing, documentary, and views on contemporary America.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91301/1/fricke2006.coles.pd

Marriage change as moral change: Culture, virtue, and demographic transition

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58048/1/fricke1997.moral.pd

A taste shared: Reflecting John Hitchcock and the good in fieldwork

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58049/1/fricke2002.pd

Tamang Conversions: Culture, Politics, and the Christian Conversion Narrative in Nepal

In 1990 the Buddhist people of Timling, on Nepal's northern borderland, converted en masse to evangelical Christianity and later to Roman Catholicism. While the process implies a profound cultural rupture, in this talk I consider the logic of conversion itself. From the converts you'll hear a common story about the healing efficacy of Christian prayer -- about its cheapness compared to the once necessary offerings to afflicting spirits. Yet, this conversion finds parallels in past "conversions" into intensified religious practice. Enshrined in story and myth, all conversions follow a plot structure involving the correcting of a dharma gone astray. Their elements, embedded in a common ethos of exchange, include the cyclic decline and renewal of virtue, the role of political strongmen, the vice of greed, and the search for holy men. This talk is based on fieldwork since 1981 with the most recent period specifically devoted to Christian conversion narratives. Timling became Christian in 1990. That same year Nepal's "partyless panchayat " government fell in response to street action and social disruption. The subsequent democratic experiment in Nepal, marred by civil war, is still fragile. I want to suggest that the shared timing is more than accident.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61162/1/timlingconversion.txt3.dist.do

Imagining Yhebe: Of Friendship and the Field

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58046/1/fricke2006.yhebe.pd

Taking culture seriously: Making the Social survey Ethnographic

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58047/1/fricke2005.pd

Molecular characterization of two new alternaviruses identified in members of the fungal family Nectriaceae

Since the first report in 2009, at least ten additional viruses have been identified and assigned to the proposed virus family Alternaviridae. Here we report two new mycoviruses tentatively assigned to this family, both identified as members of the fungal family Nectriaceae, which were isolated from surface-disinfected apple roots (Malus x domestica, Borkh.) affected by apple replant disease (ARD). ARD is a highly complex, worldwide-occurring disease resulting from plant reactions to a disturbed (micro)-biome and leads to high economic losses every year. The first alternavirus characterized in this study was identified in a Dactylonectria torresensis isolate. The virus was tentatively named dactylonectria torresensis alternavirus 1 (DtAV1) as the first member of the proposed new species Alternavirus dactylonectriae. The second virus was identified in an isolate of Ilyonectria robusta and was tentatively named ilyonectria robusta alternavirus 1 (IrAV1) as the first member of the proposed new species Alternavirus ilyonectriae. Full genomic sequences of the viruses were determined and are presented. Further, we found hints for putative components of a methyl transferase machinery using in silico approaches. This putative protein domain is encoded by segment 2. However, this result only establishes the basis for subsequent studies in which the function must be confirmed experimentally in vitro. Thus, this is the first study where a function is predicted to all three genomic segments within the group of the alternaviruses. These findings provide further insights into the virome of ARD-associated fungi and are therefore another brick in the wall of understanding the complexity of the disease