Photo at right:
“Tuareg camel caravans played the primary role in trans-Saharan trade until the mid-20th century when European trains and trucks took over. Today, many Tuareg live in sedentary communities in the cities bordering the Sahara that once were the great centers of trade for western Africa.”
Investigating International Issues
The growing interdependence among countries makes understanding international and cultural issues an essential research topic. At SBS, we are involved in analyzing complex international issues from a variety of perspectives. Our experts in Near Eastern Studies examine the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our researchers in Mexican American Studies study immigration. Our political scientists research the structure of foreign governments. Our anthropologists are working to find solutions to hunger in Niger. Our journalism professors analyze how information from other countries is filtered before it reaches the United States. In today’s global society, insight into international affairs benefits us all.
The Latin American Cooperative Project, funded by USAID, was initiated by the Bureau for Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) and the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). Faculty and graduate students spent time in Brazil’s Amazon region and Paraguay working on case studies of agricultural and fishing cooperatives and documenting the impacts of cooperative institutions on the livelihood of their memberships, on regional economies, and on national and international markets. The results of the project will serve as a guideline for improving assistance to the cooperative movement in Latin America.
BARA has expanded its research and outreach presence in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in Senegal, Mauritania, Niger and Tanzania. The African Partnerships Initiative has developed an innovative platform for channeling international assistance to poor Africans, by creating links with African partners, using these networks to assess the needs of local communities, and engaging in problem-solving research that supports development interventions in these communities.
Boy selling water to buy food in Mbuji-Mayi, Democratic Republic of Congo.
The volunteer team for Niger Direct, working in collaboration with BARA, recently completed an assessment of the impacts of the food crisis of the Tanout region of Niger and selected the village of Yighlaf as a partner community. Niger Direct provided $5,000 in cash assistance to 61 households in Yighlaf to support the purchase of food and livestock.
A Near Eastern Studies professor is the author of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, a book which has “helped to define the terms in which we consider the Arab-Israeli conflict,” according to a member of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s delegation at Camp David in 2000. The scholar has been interviewed on BBC, CNBC Singapore, Radio Brazil, Sao Paulo, Radio New Zealand, and networks in the United States.
A scholar from Near Eastern Studies and geography has examined the processes and impact of urbanization on the societies of the Middle East. Research in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in the United Arab Emirates, indicates how these societies are evolving in the context of vast petroleum revenues and large numbers of foreign workers. Often the majority of the Gulf Arab state’s population are not citizens, creating new identities for these migrants as well as the nationals.
A communication researcher has demonstrated that societies we traditionally associate with positive attitudes about aging (e.g., China, Japan) actually harbor similar negative attitudes about older people to those held in the West. Younger people in East Asia are simply more diplomatic about expressing those negative attitudes.
A journalism professor has led reporting teams of journalism and Latin American Studies students to Chile, Panama and Mexico as part of the interdisciplinary International Journalism Program. Following each trip, students produced articles and photographs published in the Tucson Citizen.
A journalism professor has analyzed the ways in which Pentagon press rules have affected the content and perception of information that the American people receive about U.S. military operations in other countries.
A journalism professor has explored the impact that transnational news networks in the Middle East have had on U.S. foreign policy and U.S. news organizations. Her articles also have examined efforts by the U.S. government to influence content on these networks, particularly the Arabic-language network Al Jazeera.
A Latin American Studies researcher is examining the role of civil society and the private sector in helping to promote and sustain true peace and development in the Peru-Ecuador border region following the 1998 peace treaty.
This chart from the Binational Migration Institute in the Mexican American Studies & Research Center shows the increase in recovered bodies of undocumented border crossers (UBC), across the Tucson sector, classified by gender (FY 1990 to 2005).
Researchers in the Mexican American Studies & Research Center created the Binational Migration Institute (BMI). Their research demonstrates why any serious investigation of immigration enforcement practices must encompass Latino citizens and legal residents of the United States, as well as undocumented migrants. The work shows that a startling percentage of south Tucson’s Latino citizens and legal residents (i.e., 19% in 1993 and 16% in 2003) reported some type of legal, verbal or physical mistreatment by immigration authorities.
UA political scientists have discovered that former socialist economies are benefiting less than previously thought from the influx of foreign capital investment. In addition, the increasing foreign economic presence in these countries appears to be stimulating a detrimental outflow of capital.
UA political scientists have shown than even while America’s military power remains overwhelming, its structural power has diminished, thus making it ever more difficult to direct the course of events in Iraq and combat international terrorism.
A professor in the School of Information Resources and Library Science is investigating roles libraries play in providing, not only access to computers, but primary language technical support for Latino cultural communities. Her work shows that addressing the digital divide is more than providing access to computing, but also providing the support necessary to integrate computing into the lives of students from diverse cultural communities.
The Southwest Center is studying, identifying and cataloging Sonoran religious art.
A Southwest Center scholar is researching the cultural production of artisan work on the border, especially on the tourist market of Nogales, Sonora. Because the cultural production of the border region is often mired in commodification and mass reproduction, intellectuals often dismiss it as a “wasteland” of national patrimony. Yet, by taking the kind of closer look that ethnography and folklore make possible, researchers demonstrate that trivial, marginal objects can be read as clues to deeper social relations and material evidence of fragmented and ambiguous projects of the state and the market.
Using in-depth interviews with recognized health experts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, researchers in the Southwest Institute for Research on Women and Colegio de Sonora found that both Mexican and U.S. national political agendas are unresponsive to regional health needs. Both political systems have adopted ideological frameworks that, in effect, limit political authority and economic resources related to social goods, while being ignorant of - or resistant to - gender as a meaningful analytical tool.
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