George Gmelch
Biographic Data
| ID | 84500 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Gmelch |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Gmelch |
| SIGNATURE | GMELCH G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Union College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 384 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Remembering Willie Mays
On June 18, 2024, the Hall of Fame outfielder Willie Mays died of heart failure at age ninety-three in an assisted living facility in Atherton, California. Mays began his professional baseball career as a seventeen-year-old in the Negro leagues playing for the Birmingham Black Barons. He made his Major League Baseball debut with the New York Giants just two years later in 1951, after hitting .477 in Triple A. He was just the tenth black player in…
Richard King Nelson (1941-2019)
Moonwalk Memories
In the Field
The authors draw on their 40 years as anthropologists and educators to illustrate through a narrative-style text and photographs what it is like to be an anthropologist and to “do” anthropology—the problems encountered as well as the pleasures and rewards of living in other cultures and learning from other people. Through accounts of their lives and work in varied cultural settings, the authors describe the many forms fieldwork can take, the kind…
Southern Exposure
This essay describes the encounter of a white, minor-league ballplayer, now an anthropologist, with segregation in the American South in the 1960s. As an autoethnography, it examines what Jim Crow practices meant for young professional baseball players, both black and white. It treats how the author came to the research topic and the consequences for himself and his career in writing a newspaper feature in 1967 about Jim Crow in the North Carolin…
Rural-Urban Difference and Student Fieldwork
This article compares the research and field experiences of students studying in rural villages with those studying in a city. The student subjects are participants in two anthropology field training programs (rural Barbados and urban Tasmania) designed to give them a hands-on experience of anthropological fieldwork. The comparison of rural and urban field schools reveals that the students doing fieldwork in the city have: 1. greater difficulty i…
An anthropologist on the team
This essay describes the experiences of an anthropologist who once having been a professional baseball player returned to study his former profession. Discussed are personal challenges in doing fieldwork among elite athletes, the fallibility of memory, the transfer of skills from sport to academe, and the opinions of professors towards the study of sport, and the status of the anthropology of sport in the U.S
Commenting on Student Papers and Field Motes
Baseball Wives
This article focuses on how the structure and constraints of the occupation of professional baseball shapes the lives of the players' wives. The major constraints on the role of baseball wives include high geographical mobility, the husband's frequent absence, lack of a social support network, and the precariousness of baseball careers. Baseball wives are expected to fulfill a traditional role of support for their husbands and families. Baseball …
Rules and Respect, Pranks and Performance
An Ethnographic Field School
Groupies and American Baseball
Widespread public awareness of 'groupies'-women who seek relationships with male celebrities-in American professional baseball dates to the 1970s, particularly to the release of popular films such as Bull Durham and the publication of several insider accounts of the lives of ballplayers. This article, based on interviews with groupies and with major and minor league ballplayers, first examines the motivations of the women who pursue such relation…
Crossing cultures
Irish Travellers
Barbados's Amerindian Past
Les fouilles archeologiques sur le site de Chancery Lane a Barbade permettent de mieux connaitre la population prehistorique : population horticole plantant du cassava dans les clairieres, vivant sur la cote et s'alimentant de poissons et de coquillages. Les Amerindiens vivaient dans des maisons communes ou les espaces pour hommes et pour femmes etaient distincts. Ceremonies et rituels etaient importants et ils croyaient en une vie apres la mort.…
Gender and Migration
Significant gender differences were found in the satisfaction and readjustment of return migrants to Barbados, Ireland, and Newfoundland. In all three societies, women were less satisfied than men to be home. The greater dissatisfaction among women appears to stem from their limited employment opportunities and a range of social factors
Double Passage
Sugarball
Learning Culture
It is often said that you have to live in another culture before you can understand your own. But what is it that we learn and how do we learn it? To answer this question this paper examines the experiences of American students living and doing field research in villages on the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados. The students field experiences in a social and cultural world very different from the one they come from shape their attitudes and un…
Urban Life
John Bull's Island
We're Better Off Here
Panama Money in Barbados, 1900-1920
Work, Innovation, and Investment
Most empirical studies of return migration have found that migrants contribute very little to the development of their homelands. Most studies, however, have been conducted in rural areas among peasant migrants, whose largely unskilled industrial work experience in foreign countries has little relevance to the agrarian economies to which they return. This article examines return migration to both urban and rural settings in the eastern Caribbean …
Citizen Carney. 1980. Produced and directed by Walter Thoma . and David Nugent
Return Migration
The author reviews the findings of the growing literature on return migration. Topics covered include typologies of return migrants, reasons for return, adaptation and readjustment of returnees, and the impact of return migration on the migrants' home societies. The focus of the study is on international return migration, migration to Northern Europe and northeastern North America, and return migration to the southern and eastern fringes of Europ…
Urban Life
Crossing cultures
Work, Innovation, and Investment
Most empirical studies of return migration have found that migrants contribute very little to the development of their homelands. Most studies, however, have been conducted in rural areas among peasant migrants, whose largely unskilled industrial work experience in foreign countries has little relevance to the agrarian economies to which they return. This article examines return migration to both urban and rural settings in the eastern Caribbean …
Groupies and American Baseball
Widespread public awareness of 'groupies'-women who seek relationships with male celebrities-in American professional baseball dates to the 1970s, particularly to the release of popular films such as Bull Durham and the publication of several insider accounts of the lives of ballplayers. This article, based on interviews with groupies and with major and minor league ballplayers, first examines the motivations of the women who pursue such relation…
Begging in Dublin
Baseball magic
Learning Culture
It is often said that you have to live in another culture before you can understand your own. But what is it that we learn and how do we learn it? To answer this question this paper examines the experiences of American students living and doing field research in villages on the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados. The students field experiences in a social and cultural world very different from the one they come from shape their attitudes and un…
Who Returns and Why
This study examines two vital issues in return migration behavior in two populations: (1) the characteristics of return migrants, and (2) their reasons for returning to their homelands. Comparisons between Irish and Newfoundland returnees are made possible by the use of an identical interview schedule. Sex, age and occupational selectivity, years spent abroad, population of foreign and home residence, and emigration intentions are examined and a …
The Irish Tinkers
Baseball Wives
This article focuses on how the structure and constraints of the occupation of professional baseball shapes the lives of the players' wives. The major constraints on the role of baseball wives include high geographical mobility, the husband's frequent absence, lack of a social support network, and the precariousness of baseball careers. Baseball wives are expected to fulfill a traditional role of support for their husbands and families. Baseball …
An Ethnographic Field School
Uncertainty and the Use of Magic
The Emergence of an Ethnic Group
Description des forces economiques et sociales a l'interieur de la societe irlandaise qui ont conduit a la croissance d'une population itinerante, connue sous le nom de Peuple voyageur, voyageurs ou chaudronnier ambulant. Causes de ce nomadisme: non-emploi, famines, etc. En deuxieme partie: comment l'irlandais itinerant a-t-il developpe une identite ethnique: les Chaudronniers ambulants: vie nomade, isolement physique et social| contact, mariage …
In the Field
The authors draw on their 40 years as anthropologists and educators to illustrate through a narrative-style text and photographs what it is like to be an anthropologist and to “do” anthropology—the problems encountered as well as the pleasures and rewards of living in other cultures and learning from other people. Through accounts of their lives and work in varied cultural settings, the authors describe the many forms fieldwork can take, the kind…
Human biology of the Irish Tinkers
(1974). Human biology of the Irish Tinkers: Demography, ethnohistory, and genetics. Social Biology: Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 321-331
Rules and Respect, Pranks and Performance
Irish Travellers
Gender and Migration
Significant gender differences were found in the satisfaction and readjustment of return migrants to Barbados, Ireland, and Newfoundland. In all three societies, women were less satisfied than men to be home. The greater dissatisfaction among women appears to stem from their limited employment opportunities and a range of social factors
Southern Exposure
This essay describes the encounter of a white, minor-league ballplayer, now an anthropologist, with segregation in the American South in the 1960s. As an autoethnography, it examines what Jim Crow practices meant for young professional baseball players, both black and white. It treats how the author came to the research topic and the consequences for himself and his career in writing a newspaper feature in 1967 about Jim Crow in the North Carolin…
Rural-Urban Difference and Student Fieldwork
This article compares the research and field experiences of students studying in rural villages with those studying in a city. The student subjects are participants in two anthropology field training programs (rural Barbados and urban Tasmania) designed to give them a hands-on experience of anthropological fieldwork. The comparison of rural and urban field schools reveals that the students doing fieldwork in the city have: 1. greater difficulty i…
An anthropologist on the team
This essay describes the experiences of an anthropologist who once having been a professional baseball player returned to study his former profession. Discussed are personal challenges in doing fieldwork among elite athletes, the fallibility of memory, the transfer of skills from sport to academe, and the opinions of professors towards the study of sport, and the status of the anthropology of sport in the U.S
We're Better Off Here
Economic strategies and migrant adaptation
1977). Economic strategies and migrant adaptation: The case of Irish Tinkers. Ethnos: Vol. 42, No. 1-2, pp. 22-37
Baseball magic
Human biology of the Irish Tinkers
(1974). Human biology of the Irish Tinkers: Demography, ethnohistory, and genetics. Social Biology: Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 321-331
The Emergence of an Ethnic Group
Description des forces economiques et sociales a l'interieur de la societe irlandaise qui ont conduit a la croissance d'une population itinerante, connue sous le nom de Peuple voyageur, voyageurs ou chaudronnier ambulant. Causes de ce nomadisme: non-emploi, famines, etc. En deuxieme partie: comment l'irlandais itinerant a-t-il developpe une identite ethnique: les Chaudronniers ambulants: vie nomade, isolement physique et social| contact, mariage …
Economic strategies and migrant adaptation
1977). Economic strategies and migrant adaptation: The case of Irish Tinkers. Ethnos: Vol. 42, No. 1-2, pp. 22-37
The Irish Tinkers
Migration and Adaptation
The Irish Tinkers
Begging in Dublin
Uncertainty and the Use of Magic
Return Migration
The author reviews the findings of the growing literature on return migration. Topics covered include typologies of return migrants, reasons for return, adaptation and readjustment of returnees, and the impact of return migration on the migrants' home societies. The focus of the study is on international return migration, migration to Northern Europe and northeastern North America, and return migration to the southern and eastern fringes of Europ…
Who Returns and Why
This study examines two vital issues in return migration behavior in two populations: (1) the characteristics of return migrants, and (2) their reasons for returning to their homelands. Comparisons between Irish and Newfoundland returnees are made possible by the use of an identical interview schedule. Sex, age and occupational selectivity, years spent abroad, population of foreign and home residence, and emigration intentions are examined and a …
Dae (Gypsy Birth). 1979
Land of Heart's Desire
Citizen Carney. 1980. Produced and directed by Walter Thoma . and David Nugent
Gypsies Sing Long Ballads. 1982. Directed by John Cohen
Panama Money in Barbados, 1900-1920
Work, Innovation, and Investment
Most empirical studies of return migration have found that migrants contribute very little to the development of their homelands. Most studies, however, have been conducted in rural areas among peasant migrants, whose largely unskilled industrial work experience in foreign countries has little relevance to the agrarian economies to which they return. This article examines return migration to both urban and rural settings in the eastern Caribbean …
We're Better Off Here
John Bull's Island
Urban Life
Learning Culture
It is often said that you have to live in another culture before you can understand your own. But what is it that we learn and how do we learn it? To answer this question this paper examines the experiences of American students living and doing field research in villages on the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados. The students field experiences in a social and cultural world very different from the one they come from shape their attitudes and un…
Sugarball
Double Passage
Gender and Migration
Significant gender differences were found in the satisfaction and readjustment of return migrants to Barbados, Ireland, and Newfoundland. In all three societies, women were less satisfied than men to be home. The greater dissatisfaction among women appears to stem from their limited employment opportunities and a range of social factors
Irish Travellers
Sociology (25 works) · History (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Geography (12 works) · History (11 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Economics (10 works) · Art history (8 works) · Citation (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works)