Anthropologist
Explore My Work
I completed my doctorate in the Anthropology Department at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) April 30, 2015. My graduate training includes a rich background in cultural anthropology focusing on ethnic diversity as well as comparative international education with a regional focus on South Africa. I have a master’s degree from Lehman College in the Bronx, New York focusing on Social Studies Education and nearly two decades’ experience teaching at the secondary and tertiary levels - from community college to R1 institutions, from large lectures to specialized, intimate courses. My research interests involve informal education, race, gender, and representation.
THROUGH A COLOURED LENS:
Post-Apartheid identity formation amongst Coloureds in KZN
Although the term creolization is widely applied in the Caribbean and Latin America, I find the concept useful in describing the ethnogenesis of Coloureds as a new group of people in South Africa. To call Coloured people “creole” deviates from the prescribed racialized and informal definition of them as “mixed-race” thereby also circumventing the idea of racial “purity.” Recognizing that creolized societies, communities, and peoples merge two or more “formerly distinct” ethnic or cultural entities in new spaces to create unique social orders in heterogeneous styles, structures and contents eliminates essentialized definitions of people as being “mixed” and/or “pure.” By examining Coloured people through a creole framework, we come to understand the ways these people weld unique cultural and genetic attributes together. In this way, Coloureds can be seen as differently preserving and adapting to new circumstances with new multifaceted meanings. South Africa’s national government, popular media and economic leaders, as well as ordinary citizenry claim a special place on the global stage based on their economic resources and infrastructure, the peaceful transition from White minority government to black majority rule, and multicultural background of the citizenry. By embracing the nation’s nickname “The Rainbow Nation,” coined by Bishop Desmond Tutu, the implied ethnic and racial diversity of peoples is respected and celebrated. However, in multi-cultural nations people with blended ancestries aggregate and form liminal groups in which they inherit, adopt, and create cultural practices from every group on the racial continuum to create their own uniquely creolized (or blended) culture. However, these blendings are not always recognized or appreciated. I anchor my analysis of Coloureds living in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) as a liminal population between Black and White. My research differs from other scholars examining Coloureds, in that I scrutinize a province associated with a Zulu ethnic majority. By addressing a territory beyond the Coloured “homeland” of the Western Cape (of which the literature abounds) I am able to draw historical and ethnographic comparisons of creolization between the two areas and provide a space for discussion in alignment to Coloured’s own cultural formations.
RACIALISM AND REPRESENTATION IN THE RAINBOW NATION
Despite a commitment to non-racialism in the South African Constitution and anthropology’s steadfast position that race is a social construction, race is still a highly valued ideology with real-life implications for citizens. In South Africa, racialism particularly affects heterogeneous, multigenerational, multiethnic creole people known as “Coloureds.” The larger category of Coloured is often essentialized based on its intermediary status between Black and White and its relationship to South Africa’s “mother city” (Cape Town, where the majority of Coloured people live). Through research on Coloured identity in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, I show how the nuances of personal and collective histories, spatial constraints, and education affect the identities of youth and elders differently from their Cape counterparts. By incorporating a photo-voice methodology, which I called Photo Ethnography Project (PEP), participants produced their own visual materials and challenged essentialized versions of themselves (specifically) and South Africa (in general). Through three public displays of photography and narratives, youth in three communities answered the question of what it means to be Coloured in today’s rainbow nation.
Keywords race, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Coloured youth, photography, education
STIRRING THE POT: BRINGING THE WANAMAKER PHOTOS HOME
Joseph Stahlman and Fileve Palmer
Stirring the Pot: Bringing the Wanamaker Photos Home is a project we conceived about continuing community-based collaboration photography projects. Part of Fileve’s PhD research involved photo-ethnography, which motivated South African Coloured (mixed-race) youth to capture images that represented their identities and their communities. We exhibited the photos in many locations throughout Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa and Bloomington, Indiana. In the last bit of Joe’s fieldwork, 2011, we attempted a similar project with the sixth grade class of Tuscarora Indian School students under the tutelage of the school’s cultural teacher Joanne Wienholtz. Mrs Wienholtz finished the project and exhibited the student work after we returned home. Because we both study identity, we decided to continue the previous work to incorporate photography in exploring the identity of the Tuscarora people in the Wanamaker collection, but also demonstrating the continuity of the community.
Our exhibit centers on the 6 Tuscarora portraits located in the Wanamaker Collection at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, Indiana. We took those portraits in an 11×17″ format and took nearly 600 photos with many of the descendants of the 6 earlier Tuscarora subjects. We, with the assistance of the Mathers Museum, selected 25 images from that larger cache. We identified the 25 on discussions and narrowed them down to the most appealing and the ones that told the best stories visually.
We named the endeavor Stirring the Pot, because of blending the past with the present, decolonizing a former colonial project, at juxtaposing temporal and cultural elements to tell our shared human story. We see it told in a lot of ways all of the time. However, this story is slightly different, because it has an American Indian cast without predetermined conclusions for the audience. Each viewer will take something different from the photographs. We hope you enjoy seeing the photographs as much as we enjoyed taking them.
THE ENVIRONMENT IN ANTHROPOLOGY (SECOND EDITION): INSTRUCTOR'S GUIDE
Fileve T. Palmer and Allison Harnish
The Environment in Anthropology presents ecology and current environmental studies from an anthropological point of view. From the classics to the most cur-rent scholarship, this text connects the theory and practice in environment and anthropology, providing readers with a strong intellectual foundation as well as offering practical tools for solving environmental problems. Haenn, Wilk, and Harnish pose the most urgent questions of environmental protection: How are environmental problems mediated by cultural values? What are the environmental effects of urbanization? When do environmentalists’ goals and actions conflict with those of indigenous peoples? How can we assess the im-pact of “environmentally correct” businesses? They also cover the fundamental topics of population growth, large scale development, biodiversity conservation, sustainable environmental management, indigenous groups, consumption, and globalization.This revised edition addresses new topics such as water, toxic waste, neoliberal-ism, environmental history, environmental activism, and REDD (Reducing Emis-sions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and it situates anthropology in the multi-disciplinary field of environmental research. It also offers readers a guide for developing their own plan for environmental action. This volume offers an introduction to the breadth of ecological and environmental anthropology as well as to its historical trends and current developments. Balancing landmark essays with cutting-edge scholarship, bridging theory and practice, and offering suggestions for further reading and new directions for research, The Environment in Anthropology continues to provide the ideal introduction to a burgeoning field.
TEACHING CHILDREN THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
Katy Börner, Fileve Palmer, Julie M. Davis, Elisha Hardy
Abstract Maps of the world are common in classroom settings. They are used to teach the juxtaposition of natural and political functions, mineral resources, political, cultural and geographical boundaries; occurrences of processes such as tectonic drift; spreading of epidemics; and weather forecasts, among others. Recent work in scientometrics aims to create a map of science encompassing our collective scholarly knowledge. Maps of science can be used to see disciplinary boundaries; the origin of ideas, expertise, techniques, or tools; the birth, evolution, merging, splitting, and death of scientific disciplines; the spreading of ideas and technology; emerging research frontiers and bursts of activity; etc. Just like the first maps of our planet, the first maps of science are neither perfect nor correct. Today’s science maps are predominantly generated based on English scholarly data: Techniques and procedures to achieve local and global accuracy of these maps are still being refined, and a visual language to communicate something as abstract and complex as science is still being developed. Yet, the maps are successfully used by institutions or individuals who can afford them to guide science policy decision making, economic decision making, or as visual interfaces to digital libraries. This paper presents the process and results of creating hands-on science maps for kids that teaches children ages 4-14 about the structure of scientific disciplines. The maps were tested in both formal and informal science education environments. The results show that children can easily transfer their (world) map and concept map reading skills to utilize maps of science in interesting ways.
Keywords: science, maps, children, education, cross-modal, haptic learning, visual learning
Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220836098_Teaching_children_the_structure_of_science [accessed Dec 15 2020].
RADICAL
One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter
Towards the end of 2016, during the Fall semester at Purdue University a fringe group of white supremacists began posting propaganda posters reminiscent of the Nazi era. This prezi was created in response to the uproar it caused in order to put in perspective how people become radicalized across the world and how we can stave the trend.