What makes one country happier than another? For centuries mankind has searched for an answer to what brings bliss, producing a great variety of answers. Over the past two years I have been on my own search; first collecting data and readings from varying scholars and fields of education, I then presented my findings at last year’s URS. A major division between western medicine and eastern wisdom split my presentation, and left me wanting a more visceral experience. Fortunately, my advisers Dr. David Barash and Dr. Judith Lipton took on a book to tackle my primary question, and allowed me to watch their house in the Central American sunspot, Costa Rica. Additionally, Costa Rica had been named the world’s happiest country by several organizations. Both my advisers and I had some qualms on how these organizations (World Happiness Database, Yale Environmental Performance, Happy Planet Index) addressed such subjective variables, and thus my project split. For the summer, I was to explore the country, conduct informal interviews with locals, tourists, and collect field notes to form answers towards some broad questions. Are Costa Rican’s the world’s happiest? What mechanics create such joy? Finally, what can we learn from them? Presently, I am conducting further investigations on how these organizations rank happiness. Possible methodological faults are addressed by comparing mental health and social inequalities to their rankings. In my attempt to put boundaries on an abstract emotion, quantitative and qualitative in nature, I have distilled cloudy answers to what makes us happy. I view these as primal ingredients towards a universal ‘elixir’. This ‘happiness variable’ takes flexibility, openness, purpose, & awareness to create. I believe we all have the capacity to be happy and hope to present some tools discovered while researching to help construct understanding and accessibility to this enriching experience.

Cemeteries allow us to connect with our past and better understand our heritage on an emotional level. In the case of the Kennecott Cemetery, the historic landscape provides a valuable resource to interpret the social history of a mining community that has ceased to exist. From 1908 until 1938, Kennecott was a thriving copper mining town. Hundreds of men worked in the mines and many of those who lost their lives in work-related accidents are buried in the cemetery. When mining operations were terminated in 1938, the entire workforce departed and Kennecott became a desolate ghost town. The cemetery is the only landscape that provides physical evidence of religious influences being present at Kennecott and further reinforces such activities taking place throughout the entire period of the town’s settlement. To date, Kennecott is located within the boundaries of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska, and was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. As an intern for the National Park Service, I partook in conducting an analysis and evaluation of the historic features present at the Kennecott Cemetery. This research contributed to producing a Cultural Landscape Report and Interpretive Plan which will provide planning, management and treatment recommendations for the cemetery. Overall, these documents will be a vital resource to improve the ability of Park managers to identify and protect existing resources and interpret the significance of the landscape to an expansive audience.

I am interested in the affect deforestation and globalization has on indigenous cultures, like that of the Wehea Dayak in Borneo, Indonesia. The deforestation that is a result of palm oil plantation production creates significant challenges for the indigenous community adjacent to the plantations, such as the Wehea Dayak. The Wehea Dayak experience cultural degradation, forced migration and monthly flooding linked to deforestation.  My research will explore the ripple effects of deforestation. Through participant observation and interviewing, I will research links between environmental degradation, poverty, and illness. By having lived there previously, I have a strong, trusting report with the community. This research is imperative for the global community because indigenous communities possess deep ecological knowledge as a result of centuries of living in a specific area. I want to participate in this research because it exemplifies applied work and by helping record and provide cultural documentation the community can then advocate for themselves. The Wehea Dayak voiced their wanting for help in preserving their unique culture and lifestyle, and by applying the research I have obtained through the means of helping a targeted community is an imperative goal of anthropological work.

At a time in the United States when religious participation by youth has decreased (in a recent Pew Forum report, those born in 1981 or later hold the lowest church attendance) there is a rapidly growing church with roots in Washington: Mars Hill. Practicing a unique brand of evangelism, Mars Hill employs a variety of methods, some of them technological, to attract increasing numbers both in their campuses and online. In order to explore what these methods were, I began attending services and researching the current state of religious participation in American Protestants. I then approached my conception of Mars Hill through the works of various philosophers, including Paul Tillich and Emmanuel Levinas. The third aspect of my work is a journal-based account of my experience throughout this project. My project will reflect the above methods in three main sections: The Numbers, The Theory, and The Experience. I plan to present what it is about the reality of Mars Hill that is fulfilling and attractive for today’s religious population. The reality Mars Hill creates uses novel modes of delivery for its message, which has a high-production value and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and an Iphone app, among a larger web presence. In addition, Mars Hill offers an experience of community that substantiates strict doctrine on a weekly basis and provides unique accountability for members. This doctrine argues against a conception of Christianity as a “religion”, which moves Mars Hill into a space of new orthodoxy where meaning is born from contradiction in the potentialities embedded in language. My telling of my experience there will demonstrate the difficulty I experienced regarding the dichotomy between participant and observer roles, resulting in a difficult ultimate decision. To uncover the difference in Mars Hill, I started with numbers, continued with theory, and end in experience.

 CARICOM (Carribean Community) is a community based trade agreement association within the Caribbean region which is comprised of 15 nations. Regional progression is outlined through accelerated, coordinated, and sustained economic development. Theoretically, CARICOM has been ideal in the growth and expansion of the post-colonial Caribbean market. With the rise of it’s global and local commerce, CARICOM can be criticized as a neocolonial paradigm. Although this organization has historically been instrumental in Caribbean advancement, it has begun to reinforce systems of oppression and create cultural rifts within political nationalism. Research will comprise a collection of ethnographic interviews and thorough analysis of text course reserves from the University of the West Indies in Cave hill, Barbados. It was evident throughout my fieldwork in the Caribbean, that tourism still remains a major sector of its economy. How does regional tourism negotiate power relations within Caribbean nations? I will explore possible avenues of exploitation, degradation, and discrimination within Caribbean tourism and its evocative nature of neo-colonialism.