H J Francois Dengah
Biographic Data
| ID | 88472 |
|---|---|
| NAME | H J Francois Dengah |
| GIVEN NAMES | H J Francois |
| FAMILY NAME | Dengah |
| SIGNATURE | DENGAH H J F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utah State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3646-5160 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 204 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
“You can take a guy’s wife, but don’t take his water”
As hydroclimatic stress intensifies across the western United States, conflicts over water use increasingly reflect deep moral and social divisions rather than purely technical constraints. In Utah, severe drought, rapid population growth, and the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake have exposed competing ethical frameworks governing water access, responsibility, and value. While public debate has emphasized ecological decline and political contro…
Tabletop Role-Playing Games as Drama Therapy in the Wild
Clinicians have started to experiment with using tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as complementary to more traditional psychological treatments or as a standalone form of therapy in a group setting. However, researchers still do not understand well the therapeutic processes and mechanisms through which such forms of play might be helpful to patients. Following insights developed by drama therapists, we anticipated that th…
Player-avatar bonds and gaming benefits and risks
How players relate to their avatars in digital and analog gaming predicts both positive and negative gaming experiences. For example, a perceived discrepancy between one’s actual and avatar self is associated with both gaming benefits and risks. However, such self-discrepancy approaches treat avatars narrowly as self-substitutes that allow players to project idealized identities in a virtual environment. Yet, those approaches have not examined ho…
The Benefits of Using Cultural Domain Analysis in Applied Anthropology
Cultural domain analysis (CDA) is a suite of methods and analytical techniques that allow researchers to rapidly and reliably understand the ways in which people conceptualize their world. Consisting of various approaches, including free lists, pile sorts, and related interview techniques, CDA is an effective means of systematically identifying shared knowledge. This article briefly reviews the strengths of this approach, and highlights examples …
Planning to Work as an Applied Medical Anthropologist? The Advantages of a Broad and Strategic Methodological Toolkit
Applied medical anthropologists work in a variety of settings. This diversity of career paths is exciting as it allows anthropological theory and method to influence many spheres of society that impact people's everyday lived health. Success in this wide arena requires an inclusive and broad way of thinking about ethnography that incorporates multiple ways of thinking and the ability to employ a range of methodological tools. This short piece pro…
Deep hanging out, mixed methods toolkit, or something else? Current ethnographic practices in US anthropology
We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine 1354 survey responses from members of the American Anthropological Association about their practice and teaching of cultural anthropology research methods. Latent profile analysis and an examination of responses to open-ended survey questions reveal distinctive methodological clustering among anthropologists. However, two historical approaches to ethnography remain prominent: deep h…
Sharpening causal reasoning in applied ethnographic research
Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The meth…
Teaching Ethnographic Methods
Ethnography is a core methodology in anthropology and other disciplines. Yet, there is currently no scholarly consensus on how to teach ethnographic methods—or even what methods belong in the ethnographic toolkit. We report on a systematic analysis of syllabi to gauge how ethnographic methods are taught in the United States. We analyze 107 methods syllabi from a nationally elicited sample of university faculty who teach ethnography. Systematic co…
Doing Gender in Brazil
Cultural consonance is both a theoretical and methodological approach that provides a means of locating an individual within a cultural space via their degree of adherence to a particular shared cultural norm or model. Yet, lacunae remain in the cultural consonance approach, namely, the mechanisms that motivate putting cultural knowledge into practice. Using the performance of gender roles in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, as a backdrop, this paper exam…
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
Indian Gaming Zones as Oppositional Subculture
On the basis of participant observation and questionnaire data, we consider the cultural shaping of video gaming pleasure and distress in face-to-face gaming centers in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. We analyze how and why young adult Indian gamers experience their play as both deeply satisfying and dangerously addictive. To explain this dual consciousness, we join the concept of cultural consonance (individuals' relative consistency with their cultu…
Intensive online videogame involvement
Extending classic anthropological "idioms of distress" research, we argue that intensive online videogame involvement is better conceptualized as a new global idiom, not only of distress but also of wellness, especially for emerging adults (late teens through the 20s). Drawing on cognitive anthropological cultural domain interviews conducted with a small sample of U.S. gamers ( N = 26 free-list and 34 pile-sort respondents) (Study 1) and a large …
Find that Balance
Cultural consonance and religious participation are both associated with salutogenic mental health outcomes. Yet studies of religious and other cultural models must take into account multiple and conflicting cultural norms. In this article, we explore the consequences of trying to adhere to the oppositional cultural models of religious (Latter-day Saint or Mormon) and secular American gender roles as perceived by college-aged women at a Utah univ…
Cultural Models ofRaça
Nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Harris published a seminal paper that examined how Brazilians create taxonomic categories of racial identity. In the intervening decades, new cognitive theories and analytical approaches have enabled researchers to investigate cultural domains with increased sophistication and nuance. In this paper, we revisit, replicate, and extend Harris’s research by utilizing modern cognitive anthropological approaches such as mult…
Social genomics of healthy and disordered internet gaming
OBJECTIVES: To combine social genomics with cultural approaches to expand understandings of the somatic health dynamics of online gaming, including in the controversial nosological construct of internet gaming disorder (IGD). METHODS: In blood samples from 56 U.S. gamers, we examined expression of the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA), a leukocyte gene expression profile activated by chronic stress. We compared positively eng…
A Formal Method for Detecting and Describing Cultural Complexity
The most widely used formal approach to culture, the cultural consensus theory (CCT) of Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, originally relied on a priori definitions of cultural groups to map their unity and diversity. Retaining key features of classical CCT, we provide techniques to identify two or more cultural subgroups in a sample, whether those groups are known in advance or not. Our method helps CCT practitioners connect to contemporary approac…
Religion as Cultural Models
Despite a century's worth of work, lacunae remain in our understanding of the religion-health relationship. Scholars in this field have called for increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of religiosity that refine its connection to well-being, accounting for both positive and negative associations, while being sensitive to the cultural variations in the experience of religion. This article argues that cognitive anthropological methods provi…
Being Part of the Nação
Neo-Pentecostalism is notable for its emphasis on "prosperity theology," the belief that economic prosperity is available to the faithful. Members give monetary offerings in exchange for later blessings of financial prosperity. Despite the faith's rapid growth worldwide, the influence of prosperity theology on believers' lives is still being understood. This mixed-method study examines Brazilian neo-Pentecostal rituals through the dual paradigms …
Religious Dissociation and Economic Appraisal in Brazil
A guild culture of ‘casual raiding’ enhances its members’ online gaming experiences
We document the norms and practices of a “casual raiding guild” pursuing a balanced approach to World of Warcraft gaming under the banner “offline life matters.” Confirming insights in the problematic online gaming literature, our ethnography reveals that some guild members experience gaming distress. However, this guild’s normative culture helps its members better self-regulate and thus protect themselves from, among other things, their own impu…
Undergraduates deserve methods too
Some in the public sphere question the value of an anthropology degree. This assessment is unfortunate, as an education in anthropology prepares students for a wide variety of careers. To communicate the relevancy of anthropology, the discipline needs to have a renewed focus on applied methods. No longer can research be primarily for PhD students. Undergraduates also need opportunities for developing tangible skills that will be attractive and us…
Involve me and I learn
The role of anthropology to inform and shape public discourse has never been more necessary. Yet, the discipline struggles, at times, to remain relevant and accessible to students. It is increasingly important to provide students with skills that are useful outside academia. The ability to make the anthropological research process accessible is a critical determinate of the future of our discipline. This introduction situates the articles of this…
Culture and the Jitters
We examine how online sociocultural context influences play experience in the popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how guilds, in-game associations of like-minded players, establish social relationships and cultural understandings that shape online play experience. Some guilds help their members regulate the stressful arousal emerging from challenging gaming activities-such as collaborative raids, where multiple …
A vacation from your mind
Involve me and I learn
The role of anthropology to inform and shape public discourse has never been more necessary. Yet, the discipline struggles, at times, to remain relevant and accessible to students. It is increasingly important to provide students with skills that are useful outside academia. The ability to make the anthropological research process accessible is a critical determinate of the future of our discipline. This introduction situates the articles of this…
Enhancing one life rather than living two
How religious status shapes psychological well-being
"I Swear to God, I Only Want People Here Who Are Losers!" Cultural Dissonance and the (Problematic) Allure ofAzeroth
We use ethnographically informed survey and interview data to explore therapeutic and problematic play in the onlineWorld of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how game-play inWoWis driven by shared and socially transmitted models of success that we conceptualize as cultural ideals. Our research reveals associations between having higher online compared to offline success, on the one hand, and gamers' reports about how their play both adds to and subtra…
The Contract with God
Understanding contested cultural boundaries continues to be a theoretical and empirical issue for anthropologists. For some time, cognitive and other likeminded anthropologists have used cultural consensus analysis (CCA), developed by Romney, Weller, and Batchelder (1986), to quantitatively estimate the level of cultural sharing around a particular domain. This method has limits and, as its critics (fairly or unfairly) have pointed out, can prese…
A formal anthropological view of motivation models of problematic MMO play
Yee (2006) found three motivational factors- achievement, social, and immersion-underlying play in massively multiplayer online role-playing games ("MMORPGs" or "MMOs" for short). Subsequent work has suggested that these factors foster problematic or addictive forms of play in online worlds. In the current study, we used an online survey of respondents ( N = 252), constructed and also interpreted in reference to ethnography and interviews, to exa…
Undergraduates deserve methods too
Some in the public sphere question the value of an anthropology degree. This assessment is unfortunate, as an education in anthropology prepares students for a wide variety of careers. To communicate the relevancy of anthropology, the discipline needs to have a renewed focus on applied methods. No longer can research be primarily for PhD students. Undergraduates also need opportunities for developing tangible skills that will be attractive and us…
Restorative Magical Adventure or Warcrack? Motivated MMO Play and the Pleasures and Perils of Online Experience
Combining perspectives from the new science of happiness with discussions regarding "problematic" and "addictive" play in multiplayer online games, the authors examine how player motivations pattern both positive and negative gaming experiences. Specifically, using ethnographic interviews and a survey, the authors explore the utility of Yee's three-factor motivational framework for explaining the positive or negative quality of experiences in the…
Intensive online videogame involvement
Extending classic anthropological "idioms of distress" research, we argue that intensive online videogame involvement is better conceptualized as a new global idiom, not only of distress but also of wellness, especially for emerging adults (late teens through the 20s). Drawing on cognitive anthropological cultural domain interviews conducted with a small sample of U.S. gamers ( N = 26 free-list and 34 pile-sort respondents) (Study 1) and a large …
Culture and the Jitters
We examine how online sociocultural context influences play experience in the popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how guilds, in-game associations of like-minded players, establish social relationships and cultural understandings that shape online play experience. Some guilds help their members regulate the stressful arousal emerging from challenging gaming activities-such as collaborative raids, where multiple …
A guild culture of ‘casual raiding’ enhances its members’ online gaming experiences
We document the norms and practices of a “casual raiding guild” pursuing a balanced approach to World of Warcraft gaming under the banner “offline life matters.” Confirming insights in the problematic online gaming literature, our ethnography reveals that some guild members experience gaming distress. However, this guild’s normative culture helps its members better self-regulate and thus protect themselves from, among other things, their own impu…
Find that Balance
Cultural consonance and religious participation are both associated with salutogenic mental health outcomes. Yet studies of religious and other cultural models must take into account multiple and conflicting cultural norms. In this article, we explore the consequences of trying to adhere to the oppositional cultural models of religious (Latter-day Saint or Mormon) and secular American gender roles as perceived by college-aged women at a Utah univ…
Religion as Cultural Models
Despite a century's worth of work, lacunae remain in our understanding of the religion-health relationship. Scholars in this field have called for increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of religiosity that refine its connection to well-being, accounting for both positive and negative associations, while being sensitive to the cultural variations in the experience of religion. This article argues that cognitive anthropological methods provi…
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The meth…
A Formal Method for Detecting and Describing Cultural Complexity
The most widely used formal approach to culture, the cultural consensus theory (CCT) of Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, originally relied on a priori definitions of cultural groups to map their unity and diversity. Retaining key features of classical CCT, we provide techniques to identify two or more cultural subgroups in a sample, whether those groups are known in advance or not. Our method helps CCT practitioners connect to contemporary approac…
Indian Gaming Zones as Oppositional Subculture
On the basis of participant observation and questionnaire data, we consider the cultural shaping of video gaming pleasure and distress in face-to-face gaming centers in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. We analyze how and why young adult Indian gamers experience their play as both deeply satisfying and dangerously addictive. To explain this dual consciousness, we join the concept of cultural consonance (individuals' relative consistency with their cultu…
Being Part of the Nação
Neo-Pentecostalism is notable for its emphasis on "prosperity theology," the belief that economic prosperity is available to the faithful. Members give monetary offerings in exchange for later blessings of financial prosperity. Despite the faith's rapid growth worldwide, the influence of prosperity theology on believers' lives is still being understood. This mixed-method study examines Brazilian neo-Pentecostal rituals through the dual paradigms …
Doing Gender in Brazil
Cultural consonance is both a theoretical and methodological approach that provides a means of locating an individual within a cultural space via their degree of adherence to a particular shared cultural norm or model. Yet, lacunae remain in the cultural consonance approach, namely, the mechanisms that motivate putting cultural knowledge into practice. Using the performance of gender roles in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, as a backdrop, this paper exam…
Cultural Models ofRaça
Nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Harris published a seminal paper that examined how Brazilians create taxonomic categories of racial identity. In the intervening decades, new cognitive theories and analytical approaches have enabled researchers to investigate cultural domains with increased sophistication and nuance. In this paper, we revisit, replicate, and extend Harris’s research by utilizing modern cognitive anthropological approaches such as mult…
Magical Flight and Monstrous Stress
Enhancing one life rather than living two
Restorative Magical Adventure or Warcrack? Motivated MMO Play and the Pleasures and Perils of Online Experience
Combining perspectives from the new science of happiness with discussions regarding "problematic" and "addictive" play in multiplayer online games, the authors examine how player motivations pattern both positive and negative gaming experiences. Specifically, using ethnographic interviews and a survey, the authors explore the utility of Yee's three-factor motivational framework for explaining the positive or negative quality of experiences in the…
The Contract with God
Understanding contested cultural boundaries continues to be a theoretical and empirical issue for anthropologists. For some time, cognitive and other likeminded anthropologists have used cultural consensus analysis (CCA), developed by Romney, Weller, and Batchelder (1986), to quantitatively estimate the level of cultural sharing around a particular domain. This method has limits and, as its critics (fairly or unfairly) have pointed out, can prese…
A formal anthropological view of motivation models of problematic MMO play
Yee (2006) found three motivational factors- achievement, social, and immersion-underlying play in massively multiplayer online role-playing games ("MMORPGs" or "MMOs" for short). Subsequent work has suggested that these factors foster problematic or addictive forms of play in online worlds. In the current study, we used an online survey of respondents ( N = 252), constructed and also interpreted in reference to ethnography and interviews, to exa…
A vacation from your mind
How religious status shapes psychological well-being
"I Swear to God, I Only Want People Here Who Are Losers!" Cultural Dissonance and the (Problematic) Allure ofAzeroth
We use ethnographically informed survey and interview data to explore therapeutic and problematic play in the onlineWorld of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how game-play inWoWis driven by shared and socially transmitted models of success that we conceptualize as cultural ideals. Our research reveals associations between having higher online compared to offline success, on the one hand, and gamers' reports about how their play both adds to and subtra…
Religious Dissociation and Economic Appraisal in Brazil
A guild culture of ‘casual raiding’ enhances its members’ online gaming experiences
We document the norms and practices of a “casual raiding guild” pursuing a balanced approach to World of Warcraft gaming under the banner “offline life matters.” Confirming insights in the problematic online gaming literature, our ethnography reveals that some guild members experience gaming distress. However, this guild’s normative culture helps its members better self-regulate and thus protect themselves from, among other things, their own impu…
Undergraduates deserve methods too
Some in the public sphere question the value of an anthropology degree. This assessment is unfortunate, as an education in anthropology prepares students for a wide variety of careers. To communicate the relevancy of anthropology, the discipline needs to have a renewed focus on applied methods. No longer can research be primarily for PhD students. Undergraduates also need opportunities for developing tangible skills that will be attractive and us…
Involve me and I learn
The role of anthropology to inform and shape public discourse has never been more necessary. Yet, the discipline struggles, at times, to remain relevant and accessible to students. It is increasingly important to provide students with skills that are useful outside academia. The ability to make the anthropological research process accessible is a critical determinate of the future of our discipline. This introduction situates the articles of this…
Culture and the Jitters
We examine how online sociocultural context influences play experience in the popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how guilds, in-game associations of like-minded players, establish social relationships and cultural understandings that shape online play experience. Some guilds help their members regulate the stressful arousal emerging from challenging gaming activities-such as collaborative raids, where multiple …
Religion as Cultural Models
Despite a century's worth of work, lacunae remain in our understanding of the religion-health relationship. Scholars in this field have called for increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of religiosity that refine its connection to well-being, accounting for both positive and negative associations, while being sensitive to the cultural variations in the experience of religion. This article argues that cognitive anthropological methods provi…
Being Part of the Nação
Neo-Pentecostalism is notable for its emphasis on "prosperity theology," the belief that economic prosperity is available to the faithful. Members give monetary offerings in exchange for later blessings of financial prosperity. Despite the faith's rapid growth worldwide, the influence of prosperity theology on believers' lives is still being understood. This mixed-method study examines Brazilian neo-Pentecostal rituals through the dual paradigms …
Social genomics of healthy and disordered internet gaming
OBJECTIVES: To combine social genomics with cultural approaches to expand understandings of the somatic health dynamics of online gaming, including in the controversial nosological construct of internet gaming disorder (IGD). METHODS: In blood samples from 56 U.S. gamers, we examined expression of the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA), a leukocyte gene expression profile activated by chronic stress. We compared positively eng…
A Formal Method for Detecting and Describing Cultural Complexity
The most widely used formal approach to culture, the cultural consensus theory (CCT) of Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, originally relied on a priori definitions of cultural groups to map their unity and diversity. Retaining key features of classical CCT, we provide techniques to identify two or more cultural subgroups in a sample, whether those groups are known in advance or not. Our method helps CCT practitioners connect to contemporary approac…
Intensive online videogame involvement
Extending classic anthropological "idioms of distress" research, we argue that intensive online videogame involvement is better conceptualized as a new global idiom, not only of distress but also of wellness, especially for emerging adults (late teens through the 20s). Drawing on cognitive anthropological cultural domain interviews conducted with a small sample of U.S. gamers ( N = 26 free-list and 34 pile-sort respondents) (Study 1) and a large …
Find that Balance
Cultural consonance and religious participation are both associated with salutogenic mental health outcomes. Yet studies of religious and other cultural models must take into account multiple and conflicting cultural norms. In this article, we explore the consequences of trying to adhere to the oppositional cultural models of religious (Latter-day Saint or Mormon) and secular American gender roles as perceived by college-aged women at a Utah univ…
Cultural Models ofRaça
Nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Harris published a seminal paper that examined how Brazilians create taxonomic categories of racial identity. In the intervening decades, new cognitive theories and analytical approaches have enabled researchers to investigate cultural domains with increased sophistication and nuance. In this paper, we revisit, replicate, and extend Harris’s research by utilizing modern cognitive anthropological approaches such as mult…
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
Indian Gaming Zones as Oppositional Subculture
On the basis of participant observation and questionnaire data, we consider the cultural shaping of video gaming pleasure and distress in face-to-face gaming centers in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. We analyze how and why young adult Indian gamers experience their play as both deeply satisfying and dangerously addictive. To explain this dual consciousness, we join the concept of cultural consonance (individuals' relative consistency with their cultu…
Teaching Ethnographic Methods
Ethnography is a core methodology in anthropology and other disciplines. Yet, there is currently no scholarly consensus on how to teach ethnographic methods—or even what methods belong in the ethnographic toolkit. We report on a systematic analysis of syllabi to gauge how ethnographic methods are taught in the United States. We analyze 107 methods syllabi from a nationally elicited sample of university faculty who teach ethnography. Systematic co…
Doing Gender in Brazil
Cultural consonance is both a theoretical and methodological approach that provides a means of locating an individual within a cultural space via their degree of adherence to a particular shared cultural norm or model. Yet, lacunae remain in the cultural consonance approach, namely, the mechanisms that motivate putting cultural knowledge into practice. Using the performance of gender roles in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, as a backdrop, this paper exam…
Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The meth…
Psychology (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Anthropology (14 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Digital Games and Media (10 works) · Ethnography (10 works) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works)