In 2005 Oxfam America initiated Saving for Change (SfC), a new microfinance model in Mali, West Africa that has expanded rapidly in the past four years. SfC departs from earlier models, such as the Grameen Bank, in which external institutions provide micro-loans to the rural poor. SfC’s model trains rural women to establish local savings groups and lend their own capital to members to invest in microenterprise activities. Since 2008 BARA has partnered with Oxfam to conduct a qualitative evaluation on the household and village level impacts of SfC. A summary of key findings from fieldwork in Mali in 2008 and 2009 reveals that while SfC’s success is closely related to increasing social cohesion and solidarity among women, a significant portion of profits from income-generating activities is not recapitalized in business activities. Rather, the primary local use of microfinance is to provide a buffer against household shocks in a climate of persistent vulnerability. Following a brief discussion of the research, we will present a short video documentary depicting women’s experiences with SfC in the Malian village of Dio-gare.
User:
Default Administrator
Time:
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Description:
Toronto is the site of the second largest Caribbean community in North America. Language and music are important semiotic resources deployed by Caribbean Canadians in constructing bicultural identities. Thus, the Canadian reggae scene provides an ideal site for research into individual style and cultural practice in a multicultural setting. In ethnographic work among Canadian-born Jamaicans who are active participants in the Toronto Reggae scene, I studied how Jamaican and North American forms of English are deployed in the discursive performance of complex identities in the context of talking about music. This talk will provide an introduction to the varieties of English involved in discourse practices I studied as well as an overview of the social meanings of these varieties in the metropolitan Canadian context. Using audio and video recordings of a reggae promoter and talk show host, I will present a case study of one bicultural individual’s strategies of using different forms of English in meaningful contrast.
User:
Default Administrator
Time:
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Description:
TBA
User:
Default Administrator
Time:
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Description:
The formative period (1,500 B.C. -A. D. 500) in the lower Azapa Valley in northwest Chile represents a major shift in subsistence strategies in the Atacama Desert, as coastal groups adopted agriculture and moved deeper into the valley. Frequencies of caries and antemortem tooth loss were compared between site locations (coast vs. valley) and by archaeological phase (early vs. late) to interpret the degree to which these incipient agriculturalists were reliant on domesticated resources. Residents of the interior valley exhibited significantly more oral pathology than those along the coast. The results identify that although the Formative period residents of the lower Azapa Valley practiced a mixed subsistence strategy, the degree of reliance on agricultural production differed between the coast and the valley. Ecological models are used to suggest that these patterns are likely tied to local investment, adaptive cycles and niche construction.
