Injuries, Impairment, and Intersecting Identities: The Poor in Buffalo, NY 1851–1913

Byrnes, Jennifer F.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-56949-9_11

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…In recent years, intersectionality has been applied in bioarchaeological research to untangle the effects of factors such as diet, childhood stress, and occupational hygiene upon past individuals' health (e.g., Dent, 2017; Gowland et al, 2018; Hughes‐Morey, 2016; Ives & Humphrey, 2017; Newman & Gowland, 2016). However, few works explicitly name and foreground the principles of intersectionality theory (e.g., Byrnes, 2017; Torres‐Rouff & Knudson, 2017; Yaussy, 2019). These recent investigations demonstrate the importance of an intersectional approach that places value on understanding the interactions between, for example, status, the cultural construction of identity, frailty, and disability.…”

Section: Bioarchaeology and Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Intersectionality and trauma analysis in bioarchaeology

Mant

Cova

Brickley

2021

American J Phys Anthropol

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Intersectionality, the theory named by Kimberlé Crenshaw, outlines how multiple elements of an individual's social identity overlap to create and preserve societal inequalities and discrimination. Recently bioarchaeology's engagement with intersectionality has become increasingly explicit, as the field recognizes the lived experience of multiple axes of an individual's identity. Evidence of trauma can remain observable in an individual's skeleton for years, making it an ideal subject of study for intersectional analyses in bioarchaeology. Using contrasting case studies of two individuals who died in hospitals and were unclaimed after death, we explore the theoretical and methodological application of intersectionality to investigations of accidental and interpersonal trauma. Differences in identities and structural inequalities affect bone quality and health outcomes. As we demonstrate, a broken bone is the intersecting result of biological, histomorphological, sociocultural, and behavioral factors. This approach allows for a better acknowledgement of the inherent complexity of past lives, elevating and amplifying previously silenced voices. In this way, intersectionality in bioarchaeology demands social justice.

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Section: Bioarchaeology and Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Intersectionality and trauma analysis in bioarchaeology

Mant

Cova

Brickley

2021

American J Phys Anthropol

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“…By "shifting the focus from identity to identities" (Byrnes 2017:204), we begin to see how multiple components of social identity become embodied. Dynamics of class, power, age, disability, gender, and ancestry gather together at the site of the body, creating particular configurations and possibilities (Boutin 2016;Byrnes 2017;Byrnes and Muller 2017;Geller 2016).…”

Section: Central Concepts and Methods Of Osteobiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Osteobiography: A Platform for Bioarchaeology Research

Hosek

Robb

2019

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Osteobiography provides a rich basis for understanding the past, but its conceptual framework has not been outlined systematically. It stands in conceptual opposition to a traditional statistical approach to bioarchaeology modeled upon clinical studies in biomedicine, but is interdependent with it. As such, its position mirrors those of clinical case histories as opposed to statistical studies, participant-observation ethnography as opposed to quantitative sociology, and microhistory and biography as opposed to quantitative history. Such disciplinary comparisons provide a framework for exploring the strengths and weaknesses of osteobiography. It is not merely a tool for engagingly illustrating the "typical" life history as established statistically. Rather, it allows us to understand issues that population studies cannot explore. These include both analytical directions (exploring the complexity of deeply layered data, understanding the role of contingency in human lives, integrating osteological and cultural evidence) and philosophical directions (the interaction of material and conceptual factors in the creation of human bodies, embodiment, the experience of time).

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“…In bioarchaeology, intersectionality and other relational approaches promote the examination of pervasive systems of social stratification (such as gender) and the effects these systems of inequality have in terms of access to resources, which ultimately affects patterns of health and disease (Zuckerman and Crandall 2019). One bio archae ol o gi cal study that incorporates intersectionality into its study design is a study by Byrnes (2017) of the interactions among various social categories and impairment and disability. Byrnes examines a skeletal sample excavated from the site of the Erie County Poorhouse in Buffalo, New York, which includes 207 adult individuals who exhibit osteological evidence of physically impairing injuries.…”

Section: Bioarchaeology and Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Generally, results indicated that males of low socioeconomic status were more likely to exhibit a greater number and greater severity of traumatic injuries, which is likely related to the hazards posed by the occupations available to the unskilled laborers residing in the poorhouse. By combining evidence gathered from the skeletal data with evidence from documentary sources on the demographics of the inmates of the poorhouse, Byrnes (2017) concludes that ethnicity also contributed to the lived experiences and health outcomes endured by the inhabitants of the poorhouse. Specifically, the intersection of gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and age likely influenced employment opportunities, access to resources, social mobility, and degree of impairment experienced by the poor in late eighteenth-and early nineteenthcentury New York.…”

Section: Bioarchaeology and Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Intersectionality and the Interpretation of Past Pandemics

Yaussy

2022

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Intersectionality refers to the potential for multiple axes of identity to overlap and interact within a single individual, whose lived experiences are further affected by structural forms of oppression that are perpetuated within their society. Intersectionality has been adapted by a variety of social science disciplines exploring the negative effects of multiple marginalization and systemic inequality in living populations, but remarkably few intersectional studies of health or pandemics in the past have been produced in bioarchaeology. Bioarchaeologists, specifically, are uniquely positioned to contribute to interdisciplinary discourse by expanding the contextual and temporal purviews of intersectionality scholarship, which currently focuses primarily on living populations from Western, industrialized contexts. The purpose of this review is to encourage and facilitate intersectionality research within bioarchaeology. To accomplish this goal, the article is divided into three sections: the first section provides a general overview of intersectionality, the second section discusses examples of intersectional scholarship from related disciplines that address health disparities and modern pandemics, and the third section considers the ways in which bioarchaeologists might integrate intersectionality in our empirical research on health and disease in the past. Given the potentially daunting task of using bioarchaeological data to investigate intersectionality and health in the past, the third section also highlights three quantitative methodologies that intersectionality scholars have used to investigate the independent, additive effects of individual social identities as well as the multiplicative effects of those same identities as they operate in conjunction with each other to produce patterns of health outcomes in living populations.

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Injuries, Impairment, and Intersecting Identities: The Poor in Buffalo, NY 1851–1913

Cited by 15 publications

References 42 publications

Intersectionality and trauma analysis in bioarchaeology

Intersectionality and trauma analysis in bioarchaeology

Osteobiography: A Platform for Bioarchaeology Research

Intersectionality and the Interpretation of Past Pandemics

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