The National Association for the Practice of Anthropology is offering the Sixth Annual Student Achievement Award to recognize student contributions in the area of practicing and applied anthropology. The Award recognizes students who have excelled in these fields and provides opportunities, particularly for students who have worked on team projects and in applied contexts, to be recognized during the AAA annual meeting and see their work published.

NAPA Student Achievement Award CFP 2009 (pdf)

Awards:

1. Three cash prizes: $300 1st Place; $100 1st Runner Up; $50 Second Runner Up

2. All three papers will be published in a special issue of the NAPA Bulletin series

3. Students will be awarded a certificate of recognition and will be acknowledged at the NAPA Business Meeting during the 2006 AAA meeting in San Jose, CA

Eligibility:

Students must be enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate degree program at the time they submit their paper. Submission must be original work of publishable quality. The work may be undertaken alone or in collaboration with others, but for papers with one or more co-authors, an enrolled student must be the paper’s first author.

Requirements and Criteria:

Papers must be no more than 25 pages in text and footnotes, but excluding bibliography and any supporting materials. Papers should conform to author guidelines of the American Anthropologist. Papers must be a product of work relevant to practicing and applied anthropology, including, but not limited to: examinations of community impact, contributions to identifying and improving local/service needs, or communicating anthropological theory and methods to non-anthropologists in collaborative research settings including non-profit agencies, communities and business and industrial organizations.

Papers will be judged according to the following criteria:

• Clearly state the problem or issue being investigated, while also acknowledging divergent or alternative views of the problem or issue.
• Clearly state the practical implications of the research for addressing or understanding real-world problems, resulting in recommendations, appropriate solutions or outcomes.
• Be mechanically sound, including strong grammatical writing, proper formatting, and appropriate citations and bibliography. Papers should be double-spaced 12 pt. font.

Paper Submission Process:

Deadline for submission is July 1, 2009. Papers must be received by this date and should be submitted by email to NAPA Student Representative at:studentrep@practicinganthropology.org.

First Place: Allison D. Harnish, Undergraduate (Western Kentucky University) “Conflict and Opportunity: A Qualitative Study of Community Attitudes towards Ecotourism and the Bushmeat Trade in Kasigau, Kenya”

The problem of bushmeat and the potential for sustainable community-based ecotourism are two very significant issues facing various rural pastoral and horticultural populations living in Africa today. Bushmeat, or illegally obtained wildlife meat, has in recent years become a massive threat to African biodiversity and, as such, a threat to the vital tourist industries of multiple African nations. Ecotoursim, or conservation-minded travel to exotic lands that supports the environment and the well-being of local people, is widely regarded as a viable option for alleviating the disastrous effects of the bushmeat trade and also for reducing the consumptive land use practices that not only threaten native animal species, but also the survival of rural human populations. To more deeply investigate these subjects, in summer, 2005, students and faculty from Western Kentucky University and the University of Nairobi traveled to the Taita Taveta district of southern Kenya to perform research into the development of a sustainable, ecologically sound, and ecotourism-based model of wildlife management in the small town of Kasigau. In the long term, the team of investigators hopes their work will reduce poaching, increase feelings of enfranchisement in the local populace, and produce a model economic system for similar rural communities throughout Kenya to emulate. Focus group interviews and participant observations were conducted in order to gauge the attitudes of locals towards the consumption of bushmeat and the establishment of ecotourism in the community. This paper seeks to provide a general overview of bushmeat and ecotourism as well as summarize the results of this research within the wider context of Kenyan society.

Second Place: Noel B. Salazar, Ph.D. Candidate (University of Pennsylvania) “public interest anthropology among Tanzanian tour guides: Consultancy, teaching… and a lot of learning”

This paper explores how a Public Interest Anthropology (PIA) approach can help engaged anthropologists, and in particular students, to successfully combine their activist drive to change and improve the situation of the people they encounter while doing fieldwork with a more academic concern to grasp the complexities of the contexts in which they work. I do this by presenting and reflecting upon my own work with tour guides in Arusha, Tanzania. During my fieldwork, I performed three partially overlapping tasks: (1) I collaborated with a non-profit organization in a project to improve tour guide training programs; (2) I taught as a guest lecturer in anthropology at a local guiding school; and (3) I did fieldwork in the more traditional sense of the word, trying to understand the politics and poetics of tour guiding. It was the mixture of these different roles and activities that enabled me to establish more solid local working relationships, which in turn allowed me to better address some of the needs of the people I was working with and, at the same time, produced more valuable insights for my own research.

Third Place: Mark Schuller, Ph.D. Candidate (University of California, Santa Barbara) “Directing Democracy: Uses of NGOs in Haiti”

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are promoted in official circles as beacons of participation and direct democracy. Anthropologists have begun challenging this interpretation, arguing that this development is insidious, weakening southern states and paving the way for neoliberal globalization. This paper presents a critical ethnographic evaluation of the U.S. government’s promotion of direct democracy in Haiti. Central to the recent U.S. “democratization” effort in Haiti is USAID’s instrumental use of NGOs. Drawing from 20 months of fieldwork among women’s NGOs in Haiti and three months in Washington DC, I compare representations of democratic participation in official development discourse with the lived realities and perspectives of social actors comprising the “target populations” of NGOs.

First Place: Jason Paiement, Ph.D. Student (McGill University) “Anthropology and Development”

The scope for non-economic social scientists to influence the design and implementation of development policies and projects has expanded considerably since the 1970s. Many factors have contributed to this convergence between anthropology and development, and given the broad scope of these issues and the vast literatures that exist on each this essay is of necessity synthetic. In it I have tried to identify a number of key themes and trends, and to sketch some basic propositions about two aspects of this relationship that seem to me to be the most significant from the standpoint of motivating ongoing debates in the social sciences and development circles about the relevance of contributions of social science concepts, theories, and methods to development studies, projects and policies.

First Place: Jacob R. Hickman, Ph.D. Student (University of Chicago) “Is it the Spirit or the Body?: Syncretism of Health Beliefs among Hmong Immigrants to Alaska”

Due to the emphasis within the Hmong folk health system on spirituality and non-physiological etiologies, there has been a significant degree of conflict between Hmong refugees and the Western health care system. This conflict has have been well documented in the literature. The present study, however, seeks to explain how and why the Hmong health system is developing into a syncretism of the folk beliefs and elements of the Western medical paradigm. This syncretism has lead to an intricate system of physical / spiritual diagnoses which significantly affects the way health care decisions are made within the Hmong community. Irwin and Jordan’s (1987) model of the authoritative construction of medical knowledge is utilized to implicate local discourse concerning Western medical hegemony (including consequent legal intervention) as a significant factor in this syncretism. [Hmong, Folk Health, Syncretism, Medicalization]

Second Place: Alejandro Angee, Bri Barclay, Jasney Cogua-Lopez, and Emily Eisenhauer (Florida International University) “Community Knowledge and Attitudes towards Refugees and Asylees in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties: An Analysis for the International Rescue Committee”

During the last sixty years, the South Florida population has been changing: it has grown in size, and has seen changes in its socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Historical events and international political disputes have produced a very diverse and multi-ethnic community. Additionally, South Florida’s geographic position also has helped create a special social and economic relationship with other communities, especially in Latin American and Caribbean countries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2004), more than 35 percent of Miami-Dade and Broward county residents are foreign born, and 45 percent are of Hispanic descent. As hundreds of people arrive in South Florida every day, for a variety of reasons, this community continues to change and develop.

First Place: Adam Daniel Kiš (University of Florida) “An Analysis of the Impact of AIDS on Funeral Culture in Malawi.”

Mr. Kis received his B.A. in French from Andrews University, and has been in a PhD program in Anthropology at the University of Florida since 2002, where he has worked as the Graduate Assistant to the President of WARA (the West African Research Association), a worldwide interdisciplinary association dedicated to research and collaboration across the Atlantic. He edits a bi-annual newsletter for WARA and designs and maintains its website. Before beginning his PhD studies, he worked as a recruiter for a foreign language and cross-cultural consulting firm in Detroit. He also spent a year as a volunteer church worker in Benin, West Africa, where he was able to use his French speaking and interpreting abilities. He will be presenting his M.A. research (for this paper) at this African Health and Illness conference at the University of Texas at Austin, March 25-27, 2005. For his dissertation research, he will continue to study the intersection of AIDS and culture by investigating the low HIV sero-prevalence of migrant mine workers in Guinea, West Africa, work that could lend important insights into strategies for fighting the AIDS epidemic elsewhere. Adam is also an accomplished musician (piano and voice) and runner. Together with his wife, he completed the 1999 LaSalle Banks Chicago Marathon. In addition, Adam and his wife, of four years, are expecting their first child in August 2005.

Second Place: Samuel James Redman (University of Minnesota) “What Self-respecting Museum is Without One?: Midwest Museums and Classical Archaeology, 1893-1998.”

Mr. Redman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and his family now resides in Red Wing, Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota, Morris for his first three years as an undergraduate, and hopes to complete his B.A. in Anthropology and History at the University of Minnesota’s Twin-Cities campus. Over the past six months, he has completed his second summer as an intern in the Department of Anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Sam hopes to continue his study of the history of collecting in museums, possibly comparing his research in the U.S. with museums abroad. When not at school, Sam enjoys skiing, hiking and playing with his black lab “Bear.”

Third Place: Margaret Clare Messerschmidt (University of Kentucky) “Government and Community Relations and Efforts for Co-management in Macizo de La Muerte, Costa Rica.”

Ms. Messerschmidt is an undergraduate senior at the University of Kentucky with dual majors in Anthropology and Spanish, and a minor in Environmental Studies. She is also active in leadership roles UK’s Environmental Club and Recycling Program. After completing her B.A., she plans to travel to Alaska and work there, and in other areas of the Northwest, before continuing her academic education, perhaps in Environmental Anthropology. She is specifically interested in the community management of natural resources.

First Place: Inez F. Adams (Georgetown University) “An Ethnographic Evaluation of Michigan’s High-Risk Hepatitis-B Vaccination Program.”

At the time of this award, Ms. Adams was a PhD student at Michigan State University and doing a research fellowship at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center on how trust and discrimination, at both individual and institutional levels, affect breast cancer treatment options for Black women. Her research interests are in health disparities due to social class and racial/ethnic differences. She had done public health research in both urban and extreme rural areas of Michigan. For her dissertation research, she was planning to examine disparity in access to and utilization of healthcare between northern and southern regions of Italy.

Second Place: Michelle Albus (SUNY Buffalo) “Health Change in Patients Using Alternative Medical Systems in Cuenca, Ecuador.”

At the time of this award, Ms. Albus was a PhD student at SUNY Buffalo and interested in doing research on religious healing in Puerto Rico. In particular, she was interested in seeing how the religion of Santeria, is being used for healthcare on the island, and the contexts in which people choose to use Santeria from among other healthcare systems, including biomedicine. Her M.A. research (for this paper), was completed in 1998 while she was a student at Washington State University.

Third Place: Karen Greenough (University of Kentucky) “Development Agents and Nomadic Agency: Four Perspectives in the Development ‘Market’.”

At the tme of her award, Ms. Greenough was conducting fieldwork in Niger, and she was not able to be present to receive her award at the 2003 annual AAA meeting