Annual Meeting Poster Prize Winners

We are please to announce the winners for the 2023 Annual Meeting Valene Smith Tourism Poster Prize and both the onsite and virtual Student Poster Prizes.

Valene Smith Poster Prize Winners

1st Place - SUDAC, Meg (U Puget Sound) A Sense of Belonging: Space and Place in Southern California Surf Culture. Modern surfing is a vital subculture in Southern California. But now the waves have become overpopulated and led local surfers to take a territorial stance. This phenomenon is known as localism and is based on a surfer’s sense of homeland. In its history, localism has been conveyed in aggressive ways that often lead people to feel unsafe. However, as times have moved on localism has taken a different form, focusing on competitiveness and respect. This project focuses on the effects of localism, its legacy, the surfing communities it affects, and the physical spaces and places surfing culture occupies.

Honorable Mention - ARNOLD, Bridget (Purdue U) Foodie Days in the Desert: Living, Working, and Eating in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite National Park in California enjoys roughly 5 million visitors every year as well as the classification of designated wilderness. The NPS employs about 750 summer workers, many of whom live within or just outside park boundaries and struggle with finding affordable, convenient, and nutritious food. For many, the closest supermarket with reasonable prices and a variety of groceries is an hour and 15-minute drive one-way. Given these challenges, this research explores the strategic and nuanced ways that NPS employees based in a designated wilderness area navigate living in a food desert while working in a lower-income seasonal career field.

Honorable Mention - DOUGLASS, Stella, HALE, Emily, and WINGATE, Samantha (BARA, U Arizona), HARKNESS, Rebecca J.. YOFFE, Olivia, and BARCELO, Jorge (U Arizona) Reading between the Boxes: Archaeological Field Schools and the Curation Crisis at the Arizona State Museum. Museums have increasingly faced challenges in preservation space and funding shortages known as “the curation crisis.” Archaeological collections impacted are less accessible and more difficult to keep up to curation standards. The Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) has rehoused and inventoried two field school collections at the Arizona State Museum, the University Indian Ruin (UIR) and Silver Creek Archaeological Project (SCARP). Their respective relational databases combat inaccessibility that leads to the loss of data regarding site heritage. This poster positions the processes used in working with both collections among the larger crisis faced by the museum world.

Onsite Student Poster Prize Winners

1st Place - LAMPARD, Madeline (U Puget Sound) The Bite That Sends Us Back: Exploring the Connection between Food and Identity. The purpose of this project is to collect the stories and memories of food that connect us to our identities. Why do these meaningful dishes compel such emotions and memories, and how do they become a part of our identity? In this project, I explore the connection between food and identity through in-kitchen interviews, where the participant will be cooking the dish they most connect to. This project isn’t a project about dire consequences or social problems. It’s a project that explores and even celebrates how food shapes people’s identity and their connection to food.

2nd Place - PLANICKA, Haley and HUTCHINS, Francis (Bellarmine U) A Constant Presence of Absence: Bringing Visibility to Immigrant Deaths. The same nation that champions itself as a cultural “melting pot” is the very same that allows thousands of migrant bodies to rot in the heat of the US-Mexico Borderlands. It is through the sociopolitical debasement of immigrants to “bare life bodies” that thousands are made invisible and erased through their deaths, with little visibility or recognition. An ethnographic study of invisibility and erasure as it pertains to immigrant populations exposes how power and politics intersect to make certain groups invisible, as well as how the living construct memorials for the dead in an effort to restore their visibility.

3rd Place - DOSS, Jennie (U Memphis) Data Usage in Memphis Nonprofits: How Data Is Shaping Equity Work in the Mid-South. Evidence based decision making, data-driven funding, and measuring impact have become commonplace in most philanthropic organizations. In Memphis, Tennessee, nonprofits are integral to addressing social and systemic inequalities. This research investigates how nonprofits engage with data related to economic equity, and how their engagement navigates structures of power that facilitate or impede their goals. Drawing on eighteen interviews conducted over four months, this project explores the strengths and limitations in data usage of nonprofits looking to provide possibilities of economic equity for Memphians. The findings indicate that accessibility, gaps in data, and a need for skilled workers must be addressed.

Vitrual Student Poster Prize Winner

1st Place - ISHIZAKI, Sakura and KULSTAD, Tess (Grinnell Coll) Triage Decision-Making Processes in Japanese ICUs During the COVID-19 Pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to triage (i.e., select) COVID-19 patients in ICUs arouse globally and Japanese hospitals were no exception. We conducted interviews with ICU nurses and doctors working at the frontline in a general, urban hospital in Japan. Two triage decision-making situations were identified: patient selection into the ICU and ventilator allocation. We discuss patient characteristics that influence decisions made by doctors, and the interaction between doctors, nurses, and hospital administration upon making such decisions. Issues associated with decision-making are highlighted, including the lack of true patient autonomy. Recommendations are made to address the identified issues.

2nd Place - GUTIERREZ, Ana and SARMENTO, Megan (USF) Collaborative Approaches to Health Care at a Syringe Services Program in Florida: Using Praxis to Tailor Services to Individual Needs. Harm reduction refers to a set of practices that aims to lessen the negative impacts related to drug use. At a Florida Syringe Services Program (SSP), these practices depend on the collaboration between anthropology, public health, and clinical medicine. Data collected via daily participant intakes is both ethnographic (participant experiences, stories) and quantitative (overdose rates, infectious disease information) in nature. Combining these techniques creates a fuller picture of participant needs, thereby allowing us to more easily address the social determinants of health. We use a praxis framework to tailor services to participant needs in direct response to their own experiences.

3rd Place - KHORASANI, Danae (UCR) Mapping Heirs’ Property Loss in Rural Hawai‘i. This poster examines the relationship between fractured property ownership and land dispossession in rural O‘ahu, Hawai‘i between 1860 to 2020. Fractured property ownership in the form of “heirs’ property” is the most common form of shared property ownership in the United States, but also the least recognized by land scholars. By tracing parcel ownership in a sample area of O‘ahu, I demonstrate that over 90% of rural land loss can be attributed to the introduction of private property laws and subsequent failure to protect heirs’ property ownership from tourist development through processes of anti-commoning.