Clarence C Gravlee
Biographic Data
| ID | 81496 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Clarence C Gravlee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Clarence C |
| FAMILY NAME | Gravlee |
| SIGNATURE | GRAVLEE C C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Florida |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0913-2320 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 996 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Ethnographic methods: Training norms and practices and the future of American anthropology
American anthropology is engaged in significant self-reckonings that call for big changes to how anthropology is practiced. These include (1) recognizing and taking seriously the demands to decolonize the ways research is done, (2) addressing precarious employment in academic anthropology, and (3) creating a discipline better positioned to respond to urgent societal needs. A central role for ethnographic methods training is a thread that runs thr…
Racial, Gender, and Size Bias in a Medical Graphical Abstract Gallery: A Content Analysis
Introduction: Graphical abstracts may enhance dissemination of scientific and medical research but are also prone to reductionism and bias. We conducted a systematic content analysis of the Journal of Internal Medicine (JIM) Graphical Abstract Gallery to assess for evidence of bias. Materials and Methods: We analyzed 140 graphical abstracts published by JIM between February 2019 and May 2020. Using a combination of inductive and deductive approac…
Ethnographic Methods Training Norms and Practices and the Future of American Anthropology
American Anthropology is engaged in significant self-reckonings that call for big changes to how anthropology is practiced. These include (1) recognizing and taking seriously the demands to decolonize the ways research is done; (2) addressing precarious employment in academic anthropology; and (3) creating a discipline better positioned to respond to urgent societal needs. A central role for ethnographic methods training is a thread that runs thr…
The social patterning of vicarious discrimination: Implications for health equity
Overall, our data show that vicarious discrimination is more common than widely understood and associated with individual-level sociodemographic characteristics that index one's position in broader social systems. The prevalence of vicarious discrimination in the absence of direct discrimination suggests that standard approaches, which measure individual exposures in isolation, are subject to misclassification bias. Our results imply that existin…
Teaching Ethnographic Methods: The State of the Art
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…
Stressful social environment and financial strain drive depressive symptoms, and reveal the effects of a FKBP5 variant and male sex, in African Americans living in Tallahassee
OBJECTIVES: The World Health Organization estimates that almost 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. African Americans are understudied for depression-related phenotypes despite widespread racial disparities. In our study of African Americans, we integrated information on psychosocial stressors with genetic variation in order to better understand how these factors associated with depressive symptoms. METHODS: Our research strategy…
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…
The Biology of Racism
Systemic racism, chronic health inequities, and Covid ‐19: A syndemic in the making
For a brief moment, in the early days of COVID-19, some reports heralded the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, as a “great equalizer.” It is unlikely that any anthropologist, human biologist, historian, or public health scientist found this idea tempting. Pandemics always follow the fault lines of society—exposing and often magnifying power inequities that shape population health even in normal times (Wade, 2020). Soon, that stark reality became clear…
Shortened telomere length is associated with unfair treatment attributed to race in African Americans living in Tallahassee, Florida
OBJECTIVES: Experiences of interpersonal discrimination are pervasive stressors in the lives of African Americans. Increased discrimination stress may cause premature aging. Telomere length (TL) is a plastic genetic trait that is an emerging indicator of cellular health and aging. Short TL is a risk factor for the earlier onset of disease. TL shortens with age, a process that may be accelerated by psychosocial stress. Our study explores the relat…
Experiences of Discrimination Are Associated With Worse Metabolic Syndrome Severity Among African Americans in the Jackson Heart Study
Our results suggest that, in a large community-based sample of African Americans, discrimination is a salient psychosocial risk factor for severity of MetS
Mode effects in cultural domain analysis: Comparing pile sort data collected via internet versus face-to-face interviews
This article tests whether collecting pile-sort data online produces results similar to those obtained with face-to-face methods. We collected pile sorts from 227 university students in the cultural domain of emotions. To test for mode and design effects, we randomly assigned participants to face-to-face or internet modes and to either a 15- or 30-item sort. We found no evidence of mode effects in semantic structure, but the level of agreement am…
Culture: The missing link in health research
Community Engagement and Health Equity
The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) is a diverse team of academic and community members interested in examining existing health disparities and in improving the health of those experiencing social or economic disadvantage. In 2010, HEAT designed a Heart Health study to examine the causes of high blood pressure and heart disease among African Americans living in Tallahassee, Florida. The study aimed to understand how the social enviro…
Introduction to the Special Issue
This issue of Practicing Anthropology presents work that emerged from the 2013 season of the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School (EFS), an ongoing NSF-supported program and community-academic partnership in Tallahassee, Florida. Most of the papers in this special issue directly examine field school experiences; others represent the broader reach of community-academic partnerships. The HEAT Field School plays a u…
Integrating Methods Training and Community-based Participatory Research: The NSF-Supported Ethnographic Field School in Tallahassee, Florida
The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School (EFS) uses a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to provide intensive, hands-on training in methods of collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative ethnographic data. In this article, we describe (1) how the field school addresses a disciplinary need for more rigorous training in research methods, (2) the value of grounding field training in a …
Biology and Culture Beyond the Genome: Race, Racism, and Health
Over the past few decades, anthropologists have increasingly used genetic approaches in their efforts to understand humans and their primate relatives.Technological and theoretical developments in recent years have enabled anthropological geneticists to expand their field of inquiry far beyond what was thought possible even a few years ago (Crawford 2000).Most importantly, the cost of collecting large genetic data sets has dropped dramatically, a…
Anthropological Genetics
Over the past few decades, anthropologists have increasingly used genetic approaches in their efforts to understand humans and their primate relatives.Technological and theoretical developments in recent years have enabled anthropological geneticists to expand their field of inquiry far beyond what was thought possible even a few years ago (Crawford 2000).Most importantly, the cost of collecting large genetic data sets has dropped dramatically, a…
Food store owners’ and managers’ perspectives on the food environment: An exploratory mixed-methods study
Our results link food stores to multilevel, ecological models of the food environment. Efforts to reshape the consumer food environment require attention to factors across multiple levels of analysis, including local conceptions of "healthy foods", the business priority of making sales, and policies and practices that favor the delocalization of decision making and constrain access to healthful foods
Transitions, Access, Conversations: Editor's Introduction
Mode Effects in Free-list Elicitation: Comparing Oral, Written, and Web-based Data Collection
The growth of the Internet opens new possibilities for web-based data collection in cognitive anthropology. This study examines whether free-list data collected online are comparable to those collected with face to face interviews or with self-administered paper questionnaires. We collected free lists for two cultural domains in the United States: one diffuse ( things that mothers do) and one relatively well defined ( racial and ethnic groups). W…
Education, Genetic Ancestry, and Blood Pressure in African Americans and Whites
Objectives. We assessed the relative roles of education and genetic ancestry in predicting blood pressure (BP) within African Americans and explored the association between education and BP across racial groups. Methods. We used t tests and linear regressions to examine the associations of genetic ancestry, estimated from a genomewide set of autosomal markers, and education with BP variation among African Americans in the Family Blood Pressure Pr…
Short but catching up: Statural growth among native Amazonian Bolivian children
The ubiquity and consequences of childhood growth stunting ( Z score, HAZ) in rural areas of low‐income nations has galvanized research into the reversibility of stunting, but the shortage of panel data has hindered progress. Using panel data from a native Amazonian society of foragers‐farmers in Bolivia (Tsimane'), we estimate rates of catch‐up growth for stunted children. One hundred forty‐six girls and 158 boys 2 ≤ age ≤ 7 were measured annual…
Cultural Consonance and Psychological Well-Being. Estimates Using Longitudinal Data from an Amazonian Society
Cultural consonance and body morphology: Estimates with longitudinal data from an Amazonian society
Researchers have hypothesized that the degree to which an individual's actual behavior approximates the culturally valued lifestyle encoded in the dominant cultural model has consequences for physical and mental health. We contribute to this line of research by analyzing data from a longitudinal study composed of five annual surveys (2002–2006 inclusive) from 791 adults in one society of foragers–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane'. We e…
How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality
The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the most important venue for advancing both scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human biological variation. In the United States and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes-cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others. Among bio…
Discrimination, Symptoms of Depression, and Self-Rated Health Among African American Women in Detroit: Results From a Longitudinal Analysis
The results reported here are consistent with the hypothesis that everyday encounters with discrimination are causally associated with poor mental and physical health outcomes. In this sample of African American women, this association holds above and beyond the effects of income and education
Race and Ethnicity in Public Health Research: Models to Explain Health Disparities
The description and explanation of racial and ethnic health disparities are major initiatives of the public health research establishment. Black Americans suffer on nearly every measure of health in relation to white Americans. Five theoretical models have been proposed to explain these disparities: a racial-genetic model, a health-behavior model, a socioeconomic status model, a psychosocial stress model, and a structural-constructivist model. We…
Heredity, Environment, and Cranial Form: A Reanalysis of Boas's Immigrant Data
Franz Boas's classic study, Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants, is a landmark in the history of anthropology. More than any single study, it undermined racial typology in physical anthropology and helped turn the tide against early-20thcentury scientific racism. In 1928, Boas responded to critics of the immigrant study by publishing the raw data set as Materials for the Study of Inheritance in Man. Here we present a reanalysis of…
Ethnic Classification in Southeastern Puerto Rico: "The Cultural Model of "Color
Journal Article Ethnic Classification in Southeastern Puerto Rico: The Cultural Model of "Color" Get access Clarence C. Gravlee Clarence C. Gravlee Florida State University Direct correspondence to Clarence C. Gravlee, Department of Anthropology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-7772. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 83, Issue 3, March 2005, Pag…
Skin Color, Social Classification, and Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico
Objectives. We tested competing hypotheses for the skin color–blood pressure relationship by analyzing the association between blood pressure and 2 skin color variables: skin pigmentation and social classification. Methods. We measured skin pigmentation by reflectance spectrophotometry and social classification by linking respondents to ethnographic data on the cultural model of “color” in southeastern Puerto Rico. We used multiple regression ana…
Culture: The missing link in health research
Boas's Changes in Bodily Form: The Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas's Physical Anthropology
In two recent articles, we and another set of researchers independently reanalyzed data from Franz Boas's classic study of immigrants and their descendants. Whereas we confirm Boas's overarching conclusion regarding the plasticity of cranial form, Corey Sparks and Richard Jantz argue that Boas was incorrect. Here we attempt to reconcile these apparently incompatible conclusions. We first address methodological differences between our reanalyses a…
Race, Ethnicity, and Racism in Medical Anthropology, 1977-2002
Researchers across the health sciences are engaged in a vigorous debate over the role that the concepts of "race" and "ethnicity" play in health research and clinical practice. Here we contribute to that debate by examining how the concepts of race, ethnicity, and racism are used in medical-anthropological research. We present a content analysis of Medical Anthropology and Medical Anthropology Quarterly, based on a systematic random sample of emp…
Moving beyond a Snapshot to Understand Changes in the Well-Being of Native Amazonians: Panel Evidence (2002-2006) from Bolivia
Forces such as the opening of trade, globalization, multinational corporate resource extraction, urbanization, acculturation, and colonization catalyze economic, ecological, and sociocultural change, which can threaten the well-being and habitat of native Amazonians. Understanding these forces is of paramount importance to improve the well-being of native Amazonians and to foster the conservation of biological diversity, yet most analyses of thes…
Education, Genetic Ancestry, and Blood Pressure in African Americans and Whites
Objectives. We assessed the relative roles of education and genetic ancestry in predicting blood pressure (BP) within African Americans and explored the association between education and BP across racial groups. Methods. We used t tests and linear regressions to examine the associations of genetic ancestry, estimated from a genomewide set of autosomal markers, and education with BP variation among African Americans in the Family Blood Pressure Pr…
Mobile Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing with Handheld Computers: The Entryware System 3.0
Computer-assisted data collection in survey research offers potentially lower costs, quicker turnaround time, and improved data quality as compared to traditional paper-and-pencil methods. The proliferation of handheld computers in recent years now makes these benefits more accessible to field researchers. Handheld computers are inexpensive, portable, and energy efficient, making them ideal field instruments. In this article, I review a new softw…
Inter-rater and test–retest reliability: Methods and results for the neighborhood observational checklist
The Biology of Racism
Cultural consonance and body morphology: Estimates with longitudinal data from an Amazonian society
Researchers have hypothesized that the degree to which an individual's actual behavior approximates the culturally valued lifestyle encoded in the dominant cultural model has consequences for physical and mental health. We contribute to this line of research by analyzing data from a longitudinal study composed of five annual surveys (2002–2006 inclusive) from 791 adults in one society of foragers–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane'. We e…
Handheld Computers for Direct Observation of the Social and Physical Environment
This article evaluates the use of handheld computers for systematic observation of the social and physical environments. Handheld computers, also known as personal digital assistants (PDAs), make the advantages of computer-assisted data collection (CADC) more accessible to field-based researchers. In particular, CADC with handheld computers may improve data quality, reduce turnaround time, and enhance research capacity for community-academic part…
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…
Mode effects in cultural domain analysis: Comparing pile sort data collected via internet versus face-to-face interviews
This article tests whether collecting pile-sort data online produces results similar to those obtained with face-to-face methods. We collected pile sorts from 227 university students in the cultural domain of emotions. To test for mode and design effects, we randomly assigned participants to face-to-face or internet modes and to either a 15- or 30-item sort. We found no evidence of mode effects in semantic structure, but the level of agreement am…
Ethnographic methods: Training norms and practices and the future of American anthropology
American anthropology is engaged in significant self-reckonings that call for big changes to how anthropology is practiced. These include (1) recognizing and taking seriously the demands to decolonize the ways research is done, (2) addressing precarious employment in academic anthropology, and (3) creating a discipline better positioned to respond to urgent societal needs. A central role for ethnographic methods training is a thread that runs thr…
The social patterning of vicarious discrimination: Implications for health equity
Overall, our data show that vicarious discrimination is more common than widely understood and associated with individual-level sociodemographic characteristics that index one's position in broader social systems. The prevalence of vicarious discrimination in the absence of direct discrimination suggests that standard approaches, which measure individual exposures in isolation, are subject to misclassification bias. Our results imply that existin…
Mode Effects in Free-list Elicitation: Comparing Oral, Written, and Web-based Data Collection
The growth of the Internet opens new possibilities for web-based data collection in cognitive anthropology. This study examines whether free-list data collected online are comparable to those collected with face to face interviews or with self-administered paper questionnaires. We collected free lists for two cultural domains in the United States: one diffuse ( things that mothers do) and one relatively well defined ( racial and ethnic groups). W…
Biology and Culture Beyond the Genome: Race, Racism, and Health
Over the past few decades, anthropologists have increasingly used genetic approaches in their efforts to understand humans and their primate relatives.Technological and theoretical developments in recent years have enabled anthropological geneticists to expand their field of inquiry far beyond what was thought possible even a few years ago (Crawford 2000).Most importantly, the cost of collecting large genetic data sets has dropped dramatically, a…
Methods for Collecting Panel Data: What Can Cultural Anthropology Learn from Other Disciplines
In this article, we argue for the increased use of panel data in cultural anthropology. Panel data, or repeated measures from the same units of observation at different times, have proliferated across the social sciences, with the exception of anthropology. The lack of panel data in anthropology is puzzling since panel data are well-suited for analyzing continuity and change—central concerns of anthropological theory. Panel data also establish te…
Stressful social environment and financial strain drive depressive symptoms, and reveal the effects of a FKBP5 variant and male sex, in African Americans living in Tallahassee
OBJECTIVES: The World Health Organization estimates that almost 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. African Americans are understudied for depression-related phenotypes despite widespread racial disparities. In our study of African Americans, we integrated information on psychosocial stressors with genetic variation in order to better understand how these factors associated with depressive symptoms. METHODS: Our research strategy…
Anthropological Genetics
Over the past few decades, anthropologists have increasingly used genetic approaches in their efforts to understand humans and their primate relatives.Technological and theoretical developments in recent years have enabled anthropological geneticists to expand their field of inquiry far beyond what was thought possible even a few years ago (Crawford 2000).Most importantly, the cost of collecting large genetic data sets has dropped dramatically, a…
Mobile Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing with Handheld Computers: The Entryware System 3.0
Computer-assisted data collection in survey research offers potentially lower costs, quicker turnaround time, and improved data quality as compared to traditional paper-and-pencil methods. The proliferation of handheld computers in recent years now makes these benefits more accessible to field researchers. Handheld computers are inexpensive, portable, and energy efficient, making them ideal field instruments. In this article, I review a new softw…
Boas's Changes in Bodily Form: The Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas's Physical Anthropology
In two recent articles, we and another set of researchers independently reanalyzed data from Franz Boas's classic study of immigrants and their descendants. Whereas we confirm Boas's overarching conclusion regarding the plasticity of cranial form, Corey Sparks and Richard Jantz argue that Boas was incorrect. Here we attempt to reconcile these apparently incompatible conclusions. We first address methodological differences between our reanalyses a…
Heredity, Environment, and Cranial Form: A Reanalysis of Boas's Immigrant Data
Franz Boas's classic study, Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants, is a landmark in the history of anthropology. More than any single study, it undermined racial typology in physical anthropology and helped turn the tide against early-20thcentury scientific racism. In 1928, Boas responded to critics of the immigrant study by publishing the raw data set as Materials for the Study of Inheritance in Man. Here we present a reanalysis of…
Skin pigmentation, self-perceived color, and arterial blood pressure in Puerto Rico
Darker skin color has been associated with higher average blood pressure in several African-derived populations in the Americas. This pattern has been interpreted as evidence of genetic, physiologic, or sociocultural mechanisms, but existing evidence does not provide an adequate means of evaluating these alternatives. This paper introduces a measurement strategy to isolate the cultural and biological dimensions of skin color, and it develops a sp…
Skin Color, Social Classification, and Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico
Objectives. We tested competing hypotheses for the skin color–blood pressure relationship by analyzing the association between blood pressure and 2 skin color variables: skin pigmentation and social classification. Methods. We measured skin pigmentation by reflectance spectrophotometry and social classification by linking respondents to ethnographic data on the cultural model of “color” in southeastern Puerto Rico. We used multiple regression ana…
Ethnic Classification in Southeastern Puerto Rico: "The Cultural Model of "Color
Journal Article Ethnic Classification in Southeastern Puerto Rico: The Cultural Model of "Color" Get access Clarence C. Gravlee Clarence C. Gravlee Florida State University Direct correspondence to Clarence C. Gravlee, Department of Anthropology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-7772. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 83, Issue 3, March 2005, Pag…
Race and Ethnicity in Public Health Research: Models to Explain Health Disparities
The description and explanation of racial and ethnic health disparities are major initiatives of the public health research establishment. Black Americans suffer on nearly every measure of health in relation to white Americans. Five theoretical models have been proposed to explain these disparities: a racial-genetic model, a health-behavior model, a socioeconomic status model, a psychosocial stress model, and a structural-constructivist model. We…
Inter-rater and test–retest reliability: Methods and results for the neighborhood observational checklist
Discrimination, Symptoms of Depression, and Self-Rated Health Among African American Women in Detroit: Results From a Longitudinal Analysis
The results reported here are consistent with the hypothesis that everyday encounters with discrimination are causally associated with poor mental and physical health outcomes. In this sample of African American women, this association holds above and beyond the effects of income and education
Handheld Computers for Direct Observation of the Social and Physical Environment
This article evaluates the use of handheld computers for systematic observation of the social and physical environments. Handheld computers, also known as personal digital assistants (PDAs), make the advantages of computer-assisted data collection (CADC) more accessible to field-based researchers. In particular, CADC with handheld computers may improve data quality, reduce turnaround time, and enhance research capacity for community-academic part…
Blood pressure and hypertension in an American colony (Puerto Rico) and on the USA mainland compared, 1886–1930
Race, Ethnicity, and Racism in Medical Anthropology, 1977-2002
Researchers across the health sciences are engaged in a vigorous debate over the role that the concepts of "race" and "ethnicity" play in health research and clinical practice. Here we contribute to that debate by examining how the concepts of race, ethnicity, and racism are used in medical-anthropological research. We present a content analysis of Medical Anthropology and Medical Anthropology Quarterly, based on a systematic random sample of emp…
Why no adult stunting penalty or height premium
How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality
The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the most important venue for advancing both scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human biological variation. In the United States and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes-cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others. Among bio…
Methods for Collecting Panel Data: What Can Cultural Anthropology Learn from Other Disciplines
In this article, we argue for the increased use of panel data in cultural anthropology. Panel data, or repeated measures from the same units of observation at different times, have proliferated across the social sciences, with the exception of anthropology. The lack of panel data in anthropology is puzzling since panel data are well-suited for analyzing continuity and change—central concerns of anthropological theory. Panel data also establish te…
Moving beyond a Snapshot to Understand Changes in the Well-Being of Native Amazonians: Panel Evidence (2002-2006) from Bolivia
Forces such as the opening of trade, globalization, multinational corporate resource extraction, urbanization, acculturation, and colonization catalyze economic, ecological, and sociocultural change, which can threaten the well-being and habitat of native Amazonians. Understanding these forces is of paramount importance to improve the well-being of native Amazonians and to foster the conservation of biological diversity, yet most analyses of thes…
Short but catching up: Statural growth among native Amazonian Bolivian children
The ubiquity and consequences of childhood growth stunting ( Z score, HAZ) in rural areas of low‐income nations has galvanized research into the reversibility of stunting, but the shortage of panel data has hindered progress. Using panel data from a native Amazonian society of foragers‐farmers in Bolivia (Tsimane'), we estimate rates of catch‐up growth for stunted children. One hundred forty‐six girls and 158 boys 2 ≤ age ≤ 7 were measured annual…
Cultural Consonance and Psychological Well-Being. Estimates Using Longitudinal Data from an Amazonian Society
Cultural consonance and body morphology: Estimates with longitudinal data from an Amazonian society
Researchers have hypothesized that the degree to which an individual's actual behavior approximates the culturally valued lifestyle encoded in the dominant cultural model has consequences for physical and mental health. We contribute to this line of research by analyzing data from a longitudinal study composed of five annual surveys (2002–2006 inclusive) from 791 adults in one society of foragers–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane'. We e…
Mode Effects in Free-list Elicitation: Comparing Oral, Written, and Web-based Data Collection
The growth of the Internet opens new possibilities for web-based data collection in cognitive anthropology. This study examines whether free-list data collected online are comparable to those collected with face to face interviews or with self-administered paper questionnaires. We collected free lists for two cultural domains in the United States: one diffuse ( things that mothers do) and one relatively well defined ( racial and ethnic groups). W…
Education, Genetic Ancestry, and Blood Pressure in African Americans and Whites
Objectives. We assessed the relative roles of education and genetic ancestry in predicting blood pressure (BP) within African Americans and explored the association between education and BP across racial groups. Methods. We used t tests and linear regressions to examine the associations of genetic ancestry, estimated from a genomewide set of autosomal markers, and education with BP variation among African Americans in the Family Blood Pressure Pr…
Transitions, Access, Conversations: Editor's Introduction
Food store owners’ and managers’ perspectives on the food environment: An exploratory mixed-methods study
Our results link food stores to multilevel, ecological models of the food environment. Efforts to reshape the consumer food environment require attention to factors across multiple levels of analysis, including local conceptions of "healthy foods", the business priority of making sales, and policies and practices that favor the delocalization of decision making and constrain access to healthful foods
Community Engagement and Health Equity
The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) is a diverse team of academic and community members interested in examining existing health disparities and in improving the health of those experiencing social or economic disadvantage. In 2010, HEAT designed a Heart Health study to examine the causes of high blood pressure and heart disease among African Americans living in Tallahassee, Florida. The study aimed to understand how the social enviro…
Introduction to the Special Issue
This issue of Practicing Anthropology presents work that emerged from the 2013 season of the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School (EFS), an ongoing NSF-supported program and community-academic partnership in Tallahassee, Florida. Most of the papers in this special issue directly examine field school experiences; others represent the broader reach of community-academic partnerships. The HEAT Field School plays a u…
Sociology (24 works) · Medicine (19 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Demography (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Race, Genetics, and Society (10 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · Geography (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Biology (7 works)