Annual Meeting Poster Winners

SfAA Poster Award

1st Place - MCGINTY, Kaila, ANDREWS, Amaja, LANGHORN, Gabrielle, VIANNA MANSUR, Andressa, and NELSON, Donald R. (UGA) Evolving Environmental Social Contracts Manifest through Social Media. Social contracts evolve, including those that describe responsibilities related to catastrophic weather events. Disaster losses continue to increase and research suggests that incorporating nature-based solutions into infrastructure adaptations may reduce exposure and loss. But, NBS provide protections in substantively and affectively different ways than conventional infrastructure. While researchers and policy makers push for NBS, it is unclear whether they adequately recognize contemporary social contracts and whether contracts are shifting sufficiently to accept these differences. We operationalize social contracts and test a conceptual framework through analysis of tweets before and after major storms. Results provide insights into contemporary and changing contract expectations. 

2nd Place - GALL, Baili (U Alabama) Food (in)Justice and Stigma: Who Is the “Ideal” Recipient of Federal Nutrition Assistance? Food insecurity and poverty are highly concentrated in the southern region of the United States, further reinforcing class, racial and health inequalities. From a biocultural perspective, this study used a mixed methods approach to identify the presence of stigmatizing ideologies directed towards Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. Participants created a picture of the “ideal” SNAP recipient, in which they described “other” recipients misusing the program, whereas they used benefits responsibly. Such perspectives are rooted in historical, political-economic and cultural processes that continue to persist in society. The dissemination of information about recipient characteristics and patterns of use could disrupt stigmatizing ideologies in the future.

3rd Place - ZHENG, Madeleine (ASU), AWAD, Nora (Wheaton Coll), VIDMAR, Abby and b (USF) The DUUC WatSan Insecurity Scale: A Participatory Approach to Exploring Water and Sanitation Needs. Disadvantaged unincorporated urban communities in the U.S. increasingly lack consistent access to safe water and adequate sanitation. In such communities, households often rely on private drinking water wells and on-site wastewater treatment, which can be impacted by environmental toxicants from neighboring industries. To help identify these and other challenges, we developed a community-based, participatory rapid assessment tool for assessing household WatSan insecurity that helps identify households in the community at greater risk for WatSan problems. The tool was implemented, tested, and refined in the University Area Community of Tampa, FL, and can be adapted to other community contexts elsewhere.

Valene Smith Tourism Poster Prize

1st Place - BARRON, Jennifer (TX State U)  Educational, but Ethical?: The Tension within Historic Skeletal Collections. In an ongoing study of viewership of a historic skeletal collection housed at the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State, visitors are asked about their first impressions of a historic pathology collection on display. This study is the first step in a larger dissertation research project regarding the best practices for historic human skeletal collections that lack an ethical provenience. The early data suggests a strong tension between the fascinating and educational component of the collection and an aversion and discomfort to the display of the collection. This study is the first quantitative evaluation of its kind. 

Honorable Mention- ROBINSON, Kat, NADEEM, Alveena, and BRONDO, Keri (U Memphis), KENT, Suzanne (CO State U), TURCIOS, Josely (Bay Islands Conservation Assoc) Our Voices: Bridging the Gap between Conservation and Cultural Heritage. This poster presents an overview of a multiyear project to explore local knowledge and perceptions of cultural and environmental change on a small Honduran island in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. This collection of local knowledge will be incorporated into an extensive environmental education project, consisting of generational knowledge and conservation developments. Including sharing preliminary results of this collaborative project - which brought together a team of US-based anthropologists with Honduran conservation professionals and young adults enrolled in an environmental leadership program - we discuss challenges to collaborative data collection and analysis across time and space throughout the global pandemic.

SfAA Virtual Poster Award

1st Place - DARLING, Sally, CLARK, Ben, KELLER, Jessica, QURESHI, Arooj, STOCKER, Lisa, and WANG, Jingwen (UNT) Communicating across the Gap: Online Gaming, Communication, and Community. Online gamers use technology for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and building communities and culture with fellow gamers. Our research indicates that sharing aspects of personal identity online can help build stronger communities, but engaging in a more extensive online social sphere increases individual gamers’ vulnerability to marginalization, racism, sexism, and other toxic behavior. This study highlights how an approach located at the intersection of design anthropology and anthropology of technology can support designers of inclusive and safe virtual spaces by helping them reflect deeply on user identity and communication in the context of online social worlds. 

2nd Place - JACOVES, Joshua (Trinity Coll) Reimagining Yiddishkeit: Place and Belonging in a Modern Orthodox Jewish Community. This is a study of place and belonging in an urban, multi-generational Modern Orthodox Jewish community in the northeastern U.S. It asks how members define themselves as part of a religious community. Living within walking distance of their synagogue, members build community based upon shared space. However, they must share their streets and neighborhood with often-hostile others. Orthodox Jews are concerned by rising anti-Sematic threats. So, to support local Orthodox action against violence, this study offers new ways of counteracting existing anti-Jewish narratives by focusing on the lived stories of Orthodox Jews in a pluralistic American city.

3rd Place - RANSDELL, Henrietta, STOREY, Angela, and CORA, Maria (U Louisville) Agency and Community in Campus Sustainability Work: A Student-Focused Participatory Ethnography. Based upon participatory research at the University of Louisville, KY, this poster asks: how do students think about their agency and leadership in campus sustainability efforts? Students’ capacity to organize within an institution is framed by relations of privilege and power; interactions with staff, faculty, and administrators become key ways through which students discuss their roles and outcomes of their work. Students also form relationships and community through their experiences in sustainability, becoming a motive for further participation. With students leading research design and ethnographic data collection, this project shifts the lens from faculty and staff perspectives to student organization.