Search

Aim: This article is a report of a study protocol designed to explore what factors inform healthcare professionals' clinical decision‐making when providing end of life care for people with dementia in primary care. Design: The proposed study will adopt a qualitative study design, utilizing an ethnographic approach. Methods: A mixed sample group of registered healthcare professionals, including district nurses, specialist nurses and general practitioners, will be purposively sampled and recruited from one health board in Wales, which will cover three settings in primary care. A multi‐method approach will be utilized to provide rich data, including non‐participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and review of key documents. Data will be managed using NVivo 12 and analysed thematically. Ethics approval was gained in April 2022. Discussion: Little is known about the end of life care decision‐making process of healthcare professionals caring for people with dementia in primary care settings. This study will therefore address this pertinent gap. The study findings may also be transferable to healthcare professionals working in similar clinical settings across the UK. Impact It is anticipated that this study will inform the subsequent development of an intervention that can be used by healthcare professionals to support decision making and subsequently the provision of quality end of life care in primary care for people with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the impact of the book People's Law and State Law: the Bellagio Papers, edited by Anthony Allott and Gordon Woodman, published in 1985. It sets out why I consider this publication to be a seminal text in establishing and developing the field of legal pluralism, which had a great impact on both the development of the Journal of Legal Pluralism and on my own development as a young legal scholar. In looking beyond the text, I consider the ways in which scholars have engaged with the book's call for legal and social science to "work from a new map". In doing so I explore a recent arena of scholarship involving international intervention. The article highlights the important contribution that empirical studies can make to research on legal pluralism, by moving beyond the binaries of state and non-state actors, as well as through pursuing how scholars are adopting a more integrated and relational approach to law, one that may involve breaking down traditional disciplinary boundaries. In particular, I explore how concepts such as space and time contribute to a multi-dimensional, scalar perception of law at odds with a formalist, state-centred view of legal pluralism. This allows new insights to be generated into the operation of plural legal structures and constellations in which people operate allowing for a view of law that involves multiple networks of relations cutting across international, national and local boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper introduces a special section exploring how human geographers use research notebooks. It outlines why a fuller exchange about how exactly we do ethnographic note‐taking in human geography is worthwhile, and describes a series of conference sessions in which a group of human geographers took the relatively bold step of showing each other examples of what could be found inside their notebooks. It also provides an overview of how the papers in the special section might help us all to consider the variety of options available to us when we choose to work in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the sonic aspect of the annual Aravan festival celebrated in the rural village of Koovagam, Tamil Nadu, India. The festival has gained popularity as the "Koovagam transgender festival" due to the participation of thousands of transgender women, known as Aravanikal in Tamil, from across India. The paper explores the relationship between the festival and sound by examining four distinct aspects: a patrikai (brochure), a village-specific mythical story, a unique listening experience of a group of women, and the participation of Aravanikal in the festival. The study unveils the integral role of sound, interwoven within a myth, in shaping the identity of the village. It delves into how this significance resonates within the local culture's perception of sound. The paper demonstrates that a particular group of women is excluded from participating in all sensory aspects of a ritual, except for the auditory realm. In this cultural context, sound is not subject to the same restrictions as other senses. The paper further argues that the festival has a hidden erotic dimension beneath its apparent layers, which is revealed through sounds, producing an "aural erotica" that subverts existing norms governing discussions about sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of the everyday workplace learning of cycle technicians. Derived from an ethnography of working cultures and practices at a bike shop in the North of England, this paper rests on a critical reading of Communities of Practice theory in order to explore the complex and heterogeneous learning of cycle technicians. Drawing on a series of vignettes constructed from the ethnographic data, the paper demonstrates the variety of experiences of both formal and informal learning that characterise the trajectories of new cycle technicians as they enter the industry. In addition to providing an account of a qualified and specialist workforce that is under-represented in extant research literature, the paper also provides an exemplar for ethnographic research as a vehicle for exploring working practices through a Communities of Practice lens, using the paradigmatic theoretical elements of the theory. The paper concludes by arguing that for cycle technicians, and perhaps other occupations as well, Communities of Practice theory can generate rich and complex accounts that do justice to the richness and complexity of the craft and practice being observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of concepts in the policing literature denote a so‐called “sixth sense” that police officers claim to possess. “Intuition,” “suspicion,” or “common sense” all specify a tacit knowledge said to heighten an officer's sensitivity to danger and potential suspects. This paper argues this type of knowledge exemplifies the application of “cultural schema” (DiMaggio, 1997): a shared knowledge structure that allows people to respond to environmental stimuli in ways that render their lives more predictable. We combine two case studies—one in Canada, the other in the Netherlands—which include ethnographic field notes and 199 interviews with police officers, to reconsider the police sixth sense in light of theoretical and empirical advances in cultural sociology and cognition research. This paper further discusses the benefit of studying this sixth sense itself as a form of cultural knowledge—that is, as “police culture”—to improve our understanding of cultural resources most or least compatible with emerging police reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnography is often considered as a suitable methodological approach to explore childhoods, nevertheless, there is limited reflection on ethics in the field in the Global South educational settings, such as China. Previous China-based fieldwork studies suggest complex field relationships as a major ethical challenge. Although the issue is especially prominent in research that contests "normative" Chinese childhoods, it hasn't been sufficiently discussed due to a culture of silence surrounding researchers' emotions and positionality. This paper uses emotional reflexivity as a lens to revisit two Chinese female researchers' experiences of fieldwork, respectively, with left-behind children and disabled children in Chinese primary schools. The analysis examines how we identified ourselves and negotiated complex relationships with school members and unpacks experiences of "sameness" and "otherness" and the vulnerability and creditability impacted by our fluid identities. The paper adds insights into ethical considerations of school-based ethnographic research with diverse children in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid increase in the use of remote platforms in court hearings has fundamentally changed the nature of hearings and produced a productive point of reflection for digital and legal geographies. This paper uses geographical theorisations of space to make sense of digital developments in court space. It proposes that the introduction of remote platforms generates three spatial ruptures in court hearings: the space of remote hearings is dispersed across multiple sites, stretched into non‐traditional justice spaces, and sometimes snapped back into the physical hearing centre. Analysing these spatial ruptures through ethnographic research conducted in immigration bail hearings in the UK offers insights into the relationship between physical and virtual hearing spaces. Specifically, it reveals three things about this relationship: that physical and virtual hearing spaces are relational; that remoteness does not annihilate hearing space; and that remoteness can be best understood as existing on a continuum. In doing so, this paper seeks to bring legal geography's well‐developed understanding of court space into conversation with recent digital developments in courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines ecological practices at the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem, West Bank. Through an analysis of the museum's botanical gardens, the article explores what it calls 'biodiverse futures' as a spatio‐temporal alternative to the ecological domination of settler colonialism in Israel/Palestine. While much scholarship has focused on the environmental imaginaries that have informed colonial conquest in Palestine, this paper draws attention to the ways in which these relationships extend into constructions of the future. Combining the literature on environmental violence with the literature on futurity and decolonisation, this article develops an approach that foregrounds the relevance of 'ecological temporalities' in examining alternatives to settler futures in Israel/Palestine. To date, only a limited number of contributions have examined environmentalism as a powerful discursive tool for constructing the future. The case of the museum gardens highlights three interrelated aspects of the production of ecological counter‐futures: futures as knowledge, futures as (bio)diversity, and futures as survival. Drawing on ethnographic material and interviews with museum staff and volunteers, this paper contributes to the study of the temporalities of environmental violence and ecological resistance in Israel/Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Established research supports collaborative patient-clinician communication as a means of improving pain management and decreasing opioid use by patients with chronic pain. However, much of this scholarship emphasises clinicians’ capacities to shape and improve communication; limited research investigates patients’ roles in this process. Drawing on 40 ethnographic observations of patient-clinician interactions, clinical spaces and case conferences within one specialist pain clinic in Brisbane, Australia, this paper investigates how and why patients present themselves in particular ways within consultations. Our theoretical lens combines concepts from Goffman on patienthood and stigma with Foucauldian theories of pastoral and disciplinary power. Findings suggest that elements of the clinical environment – namely posters – usher patients towards presenting in what we conceptualise as the ‘good pain patient’ role. In this role, patients demonstrate that they are moral, responsible, and contributing members of society. Yet, such a role is problematic to opening communication, with the role constraining what is socially acceptable for patients with chronic pain to say, do, or feel. In recognising how clinical contexts facilitate problematic good pain patient presentations, this paper directs attention to the spatial and relational nature of implicit clinical expectations and constrained good pain patient presentations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their efforts to dissuade Africans from engaging fruitfully on matters of design, including design anthropology, colonialists dismissed the indigenes as only capable of designing witchcraft and sorcery for which they were sadly famed in colonial anthropology. Arguing that twenty-first century African universities need to include design anthropology in the curriculum, this paper contends that the future of anthropology, and of Africa, lies in design as is evident in discourses and practices on designer babies, designer humanoid sex robots, industrial robots, designer robotic spouses, synthetic biology, Artificial Intelligence, human enhancements, nanofabrication, biohacking, gene and genome editing, reverse engineering and rewiring humans, gene and genome deletion, social designs and so on. Drawing on autoethnography and extensive literature review, the paper argues that design anthropology is increasingly becoming relevant in a world that is rethinking modernist designs which are at the core of the Anthropocene. Put differently, design anthropology enables [African] graduates to engage with contemporary, empirical issues of design in a twenty-first-century world where the discipline can only survive by shifting focus from an obsession with sterile discourses about, inter alia, the past and present of African witchcraft, culture, society and sorcery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While methodologies on fieldwork are widely discussed in geography, this paper illuminates the challenges of emotional labor that are associated with ethnographic fieldwork. For many geographers, fieldwork is an exciting and crucial part of their job, but for some, especially junior faculty and graduate students, there are many undiscussed and unanticipated difficulties associated with this work. We focus on three challenges that in particular require emotional labor: always being on alert, attachment to places, and the relationships to research participants. Building on personal stories from their research in US cities, both authors reveal the hardships and realities of ethnographic fieldwork. Yet, in order to open up more critical dialogue and honest conversations about the emotional toll of research, this paper demands an institutionalization of support services, particularly for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), so fieldwork can continue to be a crucial and rewarding part of our discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decades, Nigerian migrant women in the European sex market, described as victims of trafficking, have generated consistent concern and outrage. This article analyzes data from an ethnographic study of more than 800 Nigerian sex workers in southern Spain, describing the networks used by these women to carry out their migration projects and the relationships they establish with their agents. Thus, it contributes to refuting the hegemonic narrative about trafficking and its victims by contrasting it with data collected and systematized over almost a decade of participant observation and informal conversation. This paper argues that the stereotypical image of the Nigerian migrant women as victims of abuse and violence by transnational trafficking networks functions to justify strict migration-control policies and the denial of labor rights to sex workers. As an antidote to the dominance of narratives based on stereotypes and pseudoscientific claims, this paper underscores the urgent need for ethnographic research and its focus on emic (participant) perspectives. The goal is to develop tailored and effective policies and practices for the prevention of and intervention in migrant women's experience of exploitation, abuse, and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project We:Design delves into the digital inequalities affecting young people in Vienna during their transition from education to employment. It not only investigates the barriers faced by youth in the job market but also collaborates with them to create an accessible and open-source job application mobile app. Employing a mixed-method approach, the project is an equal-footed collaboration between computer science and social and cultural anthropology. This paper explores the notion of ‘drifting’ within participatory research and how seemingly irrelevant data can inform the design process. By examining the We:Design case study, we discuss the importance of embracing interdisciplinary tensions and the unexpected insights that research and design ‘byproducts’ can inspire, thus advocating for a more inclusive, flexible, and open-ended approach to participatory design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of life has become a central value in the provision of healthcare for patients with chronic conditions. This has engendered debates in critical medical sociology on the non-neutral effects that valuing health and illness, medical interventions, and health care delivery in terms of quality of life yields. Focusing on the case of nephrology, this paper presents qualitative data collected in Austria of two dialysis units in which nephrologists initiated projects aimed towards 'the improvement of patients' quality of life'. Whereas the first involved nurses supporting patients in the administration of peritoneal dialysis at home, the second implied the provision of treatment and care exclusively focused on a well-being 'in the here and now' to patients. By conceptualising physicians as actors within networks of relations and values enacted in practices, it analyses how in both dialysis units reference to quality of life enabled nephrologists to problematise the provision of standard haemodialysis treatment to multi-morbid, elderly patients, to develop a new treatment protocol, and to interest and enrol others in the provision of healthcare according this new protocol. Valuing medical interventions in terms of quality of life not only leads to a governmentalization of living and an economisation of health. It also allows physicians to articulate a socio-medico-ethical problem – the availability of life-prolonging technologies for a growing population of elderly, multi-morbid patients – and develop solutions locally. What the solutions consist in may fundamentally differ, however. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secure children's homes are locked institutions that deprive children of their liberty. The government are investing significantly in these homes, yet there remains a lack of clarity about their nature and purpose. Drawing on data generated through a substantial ethnography in one secure children's home in England, this paper uses Goffman's (1961) theorising as a conceptual lens to view the institution. It concludes that ambiguity and confusion about what these institutions are, and what they seek to achieve, impacts negatively on the experience of everyday life within. Clarity is needed urgently to improve experiences and to enable the assessment of outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on the concepts of figurations, capital, and hegemonic masculinity to analyse a bullying relation involving two fifth-grade boys at a Swedish comprehensive school. The findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observations and group interviews with eight teachers and fourteen students (seven girls and seven boys) from the same class. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of the relation between the boys and suggest that rather than constituting a straight-forward bullying situation involving a problematically aggressive 'bully' targeting a less powerful 'victim', it is part of a more complex figuration involving interdependent social relations that are tenuously balanced in terms of power dynamics and where the boys position themselves and are positioned in relation to the long-term symbolic norms of status dominant within their specific school field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do we make sense of our place in the field as researchers and as sexual, spiritual beings? Ethnographic fieldwork is central to several disciplines, including geography. It involves the researcher encountering and gathering stories and meanings through interaction with people's lived experiences in settings that are often not the researcher's own. Although rarely strain‐free, fieldwork is seen as a transformative experience, both from the personal and the academic point of view. This paper, situated at the intersection of geography, queer/ing practices, and ethnographic methodology, explores poetry as a form of self‐care in the field. In recent years, poetry has emerged as a creative and productive mode of representation and (co‐)interpretation of qualitative data. Based on my own spiritual experience(s) while conducting fieldwork in Spain, I consider prayer cards as a poetic form and a means through which issues of self‐care and spiritual self‐preservation are made visible, particularly when experienced within a social environment that is hostile to LGBTQ+ lived experiences of faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers' reflexivity usually focuses on the spatiality and sociality of their ethnographic fieldwork. As a result, the temporal context of their positionality, whereby their various identities interact with one another at different research phases, is often overlooked. This paper adopts an agentic intersectional approach and draws from our separate studies of Thai migrant women in Belgium and Hong Kong to unpack the temporality of the power dynamics between study participants and us (the researchers). Through this reflexive exercise, we identify three salient aspects: first, different identities of the researchers intersect at each phase of the study; second, researchers are dependent on gatekeepers and study participants, notably during the data-gathering phase; and third, the changing researcher–participant dynamics throughout the research process are embedded in broader relations of power that encompass social institutions and migrant/ethnic networks. Hence, researchers' self-discipline and constant awareness of positionality are of utmost importance for achieving well-situated knowledge (re)production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives voice to the victims of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Using criminological ethnographic research in refugee camps in Bangladesh, we examine the qualitative accounts of violence and persecution and 'break the silence' by giving voice to Rohingya people who had fled military violence. We place the Rohingya's testimonies within a wider theoretical and historical discussion that also addresses the condition of criminology when it comes to understanding and analysing the crime of all crimes—genocide. In recent years, the potential for postcolonial criminology in explaining global inequalities and injustices has been much discussed. However, we critique parts of this debate and instead emphasize the importance of foregrounding the realities of extreme victimization of powerless individuals such as the Rohingya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nordic countries, 'welfare technology' is a concept used increasingly by policymakers when discussing the promise of digitalisation in care for older people. In this paper, I draw on data from 14 qualitative ethnographic interviews with employees in municipal eldercare in Sweden, as well as observations carried out at a nursing home, to suggest the importance of studying how good care is enacted through welfare technology, whilst simultaneously attending to the adverse effects sometimes consequent from these practices. In this article, I explore what values are supported when doing care with welfare technology, and what values are neglected in this process. The theoretical starting point for this article takes its inspiration from recent discussions of care within Science and Technology Studies (STS). Employing a double vision of care, the article argues for the importance of understanding how good care is enacted with technology, while also attending to what these care practices exclude and neglect. Focusing on the use of social alarms, the article shows that when doing care with such technology, values such as independence, safety and some forms of togetherness and availability were enhanced; while other values such as other forms togetherness and availability, a stress-free working environment and functionality were neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore how children's achieving privacy is interwoven with parental recognition of their agency, by providing empirical accounts of family lives in Türkiye. Building on a relational understanding of agency and privacy, it debates both concepts as social constructs that can be distinctively understood in western and Turkish cultures. It employs ethnographic research with children aged 10–14 years and their families to illustrate everyday contexts of parental privacy invasions and children's exercise of relational agency in response. A relational approach towards achieving agency and privacy as an interlaced process mirrors children's experience of power asymmetries within family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Court ethnographies have commonly relied on the physical presence of the ethnographers. This paper explores the opportunities and the challenges of conducting court ethnographies without this physical presence. Specifically, it examines what it means to conduct remote ethnographies of legal processes where neither the ethnographer nor the other hearing participants are physically co‐present. The sudden shift towards remote hearings in fieldwork conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic presented an opportunity to compare in‐person and remote ethnographic methods. Through a case study of bail hearings in the immigration tribunal in the UK, this paper explores the value and challenges associated with conducting remote ethnographies and asks how they can help to shed light on the impact of absences in legal events. Court ethnographies have commonly relied on the physical presence of the ethnographers. This paper explores the opportunities and the challenges of conducting court ethnographies without this physical presence. Specifically, it examines what it means to conduct remote ethnographies of legal processes where neither the ethnographer nor the other hearing participants are physically co‐present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on geographies of masculinities by examining how young men's (aged 12–18) performances of masculinity through humour was mutually constitutive of and constituted by the spaces of the Fusion and Retro youth cafés in the city and suburbs of Cork in the south of Ireland. Research on open access youth provision such as youth clubs, centres and youth cafés have found that they can afford young people the opportunity to 'be themselves', reflecting the ideals of safety and inclusivity that are meant to be sustained in these spaces. Using ethnographic observations, this paper shows that such ideals are never a given as the inequality embedded in gendered performances mean the spaces must be continually (re)produced as inclusive. It contributes to an understanding of youth cafés as micropolitical spaces of becoming that shape and are shaped by negotiations over meanings of gender and masculinity in particular. Furthermore, it advances two new concepts - 'humorous improprieties' and 'humour bombing' - to the performative geographies literature, highlighting two nuanced ways in which young men construct themselves as men in relation to space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss how the earthquake risk is exploited by 'disaster capitalism', in order to convert Istanbul to a massive construction site. The shock of the 1999 Marmara Earthquake has been effectively used by the neoliberal market and government as 'a shock therapy' to implement a construction‐led development model for Turkey and to favour the construction sector by introducing new incentives, exceptional rights and interventions, which otherwise might be challenged. The current Turkish government justify the ongoing massive urban transformation and new mass housing projects as an improvement of the housing stock to make residential buildings stronger and more resilient to earthquakes. However, areas actually under earthquake risk do not match the areas that are officially declared under disaster risk by the government. The Disaster Law #6306 that granted the government the absolute right to expropriate land based on the justification of 'protecting residents against earthquakes and other natural disasters' was applied in a selective way to seize valuable land in Istanbul. In the paper I explore how the disaster was quickly converted to an opportunity for economic growth. To do that I introduce stories of three different neighbourhoods in Istanbul, namely Moda, Tozkoparan and Fikirtepe, each of which experience the ongoing massive urban transformation differently based on the land value of the neighbourhoods, class position of the residents, and residents' capacity to organise in order to protect their rights. I describe, how disaster capitalism is lived and experienced differently in these three neighbourhoods. Although the massive construction projects are indifferent to life's sustainability, those projects are justified as interventions in terms of public health and safety through making housing resilient to earthquakes. I critically discuss how in each case biopolitics presents disaster capitalism's massive urban transformation projects as a manifestation of liveliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together two areas of importance to social work education, professional identity and professional writing; identity is often viewed as central to social work practice and education, whilst writing as marginal. However, given that social work is a ‘writing intensive’ profession, writing is a key site of the enactment of professional identity and practice, meriting significant attention. Using the notion of ‘voice’ this paper explores professional identity in writing by analyzing two datasets: 1) a corpus of 1 million words of professional social work writing, exploring the use of I and my perspectival phrases; 2) interviews with 71 social workers exploring perspectives on professional voice in written discourse. Textual analysis indicates six key functions of the social worker I, with an emphasis on the professional voice as reporter, rather than evaluator or analyst. Thematic interview analysis offers insights into the complexity of voice, indicating the contested positioning of the social worker I. We call for critical attention to be paid to voicing in written discourse in social work education and ongoing professional development, indicating ways in which findings and data from this article could be used as resources for pedagogy and debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessors' perspectives on their evaluative practices remain relatively under-researched. Given evidence that higher education assessment and feedback continue to be problematic, this paper proposes a specific methodological innovation with potential to contribute both to research and practice in this area. It explores the potential of a micro-analysis of textual engagement, nested within an ethnographic approach, to defamiliarize the often taken-for-granted practice of marking. The study on which the paper is based used screen capture combined with audio-recorded, concurrent talk-around-text to throw light on the processes, strategies and perspectives of eight teachers within one university as they assessed undergraduates' work. This close-up focus was nested within broader ethnographic data generation incorporating interviews, marked assignments and other assessment-related texts. The paper presents selected 'moments of engagement' to show how this methodology can offer a renewed understanding of evaluative literacies as complex, 'messy' and shot through with influences invisible in the final assessed text but which may nevertheless be highly consequential. The paper concludes by reflecting on the potential for this type of data and analysis to contribute to assessor development and inform debate about the future of higher education assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I question how a researcher might fulfil the unique adequacy requirement when studying novices in a setting in which the researcher is already a member. Since novices by definition lack the expected competencies in a setting, having unique adequacy for novice methods may appear oxymoronic. However, this paper suggests that unique adequacy requires enacting specific ways of 'seeing' as part of accomplishing local order; once one is competent, it becomes difficult to enact incompetent action in a locally adequate way, suggesting one can actually lose unique adequacy. Furthermore, as any given situated involves a multifaceted set of competencies, exactly which or whose competencies are relevant is both an analysts' and members' issue to solve. With reference to examples, I discuss how analysts and members delimit the 'provinces of meaning' in the process of finding what is locally adequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that power promised to England's teachers by the 2010 'Importance of Teaching' white paper has rather played out as a reformulation of methods of policymaking to more indirect modes of government control. I trace the growth of government control in English schools, promised front-line power in 2010 and a rise in non-statutory guidance after this point. Taking an actor–network theory approach to ethnographic data I then describe how a school takes up one such non-statutory educational initiative – 'Maths Mastery'. Focusing on early stages of the school's adoption of the initiative, I trace associations of actors which problematize existing practices for the teaching of maths and how the initiative is imbued with authority in relation to these. I argue that the ways in which certain actors – statutory education policy and government funding – associate with the 'optional' initiative reveals a 'back door' control of teacher agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lies at the intersections of Jewish Anthropology, History, Diaspora Studies, and cross-cultural Jewish Studies. It intertwines two analytical trajectories. The first is the thematic core: extensive ethnographic research conducted among Indian Jewish communities living in Israel, some of whom made aliya over four decades ago. The second trajectory entails self-reflections on my subject-position as a non-Jewish, non-Israeli researcher conducting fieldwork among over 125 Indian Jews living across Israel. This paper delves into the process of doing Jewish Anthropology by identifying the spaces where shared cultural and linguistic "Indian-ness" intersected to dissolve boundaries of "difference" between my respondents and myself, facilitating community inroads and culminating not only in the successful accomplishment of extensive fieldwork but in creating enduring bonds of personal engagement. In stepping back to reflect on my own journey, I offer possibilities to understand certain nuances in the process of anthropological engagement, more specifically in doing Jewish Anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into the lessons learnt as the primary researcher during an instrumental ethno-case study research project that took place in a mainstream secondary academy that set out to examine the physical education (PE) experiences of adolescent, white, pupils in a 'typical' working-class secondary school (Ayrefield Community School – ACS). With the term instrumental ethno-case study used to reflect the non-continuous nature of the 34 days spent in the school over a 16-month period, the structure and content of the paper aims to provide a greater theoretical and practical understanding of this relatively nuanced and contemporary approach to qualitative research in education. Determined that the study design remained based in ethnography, consideration is also given to the impact of professional and personal time constraints on an ability to engage in a truly immersive ethnographical study. In this regard, the paper also aims to provide additional guidance on the design and implementation of the study and the recording and interpretation of the data for any researcher with similar aims and/or time constraints. In addition, the paper also utilises Norbert Elias' sociological concept of involvement and detachment as the lens through which the juxtaposition between objective researcher and experienced mainstream secondary school teacher was explored and managed throughout the duration of the study. Overall, therefore, the paper aims to provide a theoretical justification for the use of the term instrumental ethno-case study design, additional guidance and lessons learnt on the design and implementation of this approach, and further detail on the extent to which the potential conflict between objective researcher and former school teacher was acknowledged and managed. The project itself primarily set out to examine the physical education (PE) experiences of adolescent, white, pupils in a 'typical' mainstream working-class secondary school (Ayrefield Community School – ACS) and in doing so also sought to explore the attitudes of the pupils in relation to their views on qualifications and education generally, how they spent their leisure time, and more specifically, how their own actions and relationships with their male PE staff came to influence the content and delivery of their PE provision. Therefore, reflecting on the use of the traditional case study methodologies of covert and overt observations, informal guided conversations, and focus group interviews with male pupils and school staff, the paper highlights and examines the practicalities and considerations associated with the selection of, and access to, a 'typical' white, working-class school, how care was taken to encourage 'natural' behaviour during covert and overt observations, the specific nature of informal guided conversations with pupils and staff, and the techniques utilised in order to facilitate focus group interviews with these male adolescent pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As researchers, we are trained to publish the most polished versions of our core findings. Yet, what is hidden away when we do so are the raw and sometimes messy accounts of what we see, feel, hear, and experience during fieldwork. Integrating fieldwork challenges into research outputs is still uncommon in human geography. In this paper, I present an excerpt of field notes from research that examined the (re)creations of home by Sri Lankan refugees resettling in Sydney, Australia that were made using the ‘Voice Memos’ application on a smartphone. I reflect on the process of capturing voice field notes using a smartphone, the emotional aspects of fieldwork, and the benefits of documenting fieldwork experiences and challenges at different times and places. This paper champions digital technologies as useful tools to capture immediate emotions felt during fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike for other forms of qualitative data, examples of how fieldnotes are analysed are rarely provided in the literature. Using fieldnotes from my ethnographic study of the production of public space on London's South Bank as a starting point, this paper considers why this might be the case. In particular, the paper argues that for fieldnote‐based research, analysis is a feature of note‐taking, rather than a discrete phase of activity conducted using our fieldnotes once they have been collected. In this vein, the paper encourages researchers to be aware of the analytical in their fieldnotes, and to be open to the ways that analysis inside the notebook can help us identify salient objects of enquiry in our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among the Dimasas (of Assam and Nagaland) in Northeastern India. This Indigenous group has a system of double descent which places them separately from the other ethnic groups in the Indian subcontinent. In double descent, lineages are drawn through both the paternal and maternal lines of descent. The existing literature suggests that studies on double descent have mostly focused on ethnic groups in Africa, while not much research has been done on Dimasas or other Indigenous groups with double descent in the region. The paper attempts to fill the gap in South Asian anthropological literature on kinship discourses by focusing on the Dimasas of Northeast India. Further, by taking gender as an analytical tool, the paper attempts to explore the complex cultural contours of the double descent system, which intricately gets subsumed within the patriarchal setup in Dimasa society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim Design Methods Results Conclusion Impact Reporting Method No Patient or Public Contribution The focus of this paper is to provide a detailed ethnographic exploration of rural nurses' experiences of their resuscitation preparedness and the subsequent post‐resuscitation period.An ethnographic study across two small rural hospital sites in New South Wales, Australia.Fieldwork was undertaken between December 2020 and March 2022 and included over 240 h of nonparticipant observation, journalling and interviews. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.The first key theme—‘Sense of Preparedness’—included three subthemes: ‘Gaining experience’, ‘Issues with training and education’ and ‘Lack of warning’. The second key theme ‘Aftermath’ comprised two subthemes: ‘Getting on with it’ and ‘Making sense of the resus’.This study has highlighted the intricate relationship between resuscitative preparedness and the post‐resuscitation period in shaping rural nurse's experiences and their well‐being. Rural nurses are asking for an authentic and contextually relevant training experience that mirrors the unique rural challenges they experience. In the absence of frequent resuscitation presentations, the post‐resuscitation period should be viewed as a crucible moment that can be leveraged as a valuable learning opportunity enhancing rural nurses' sense of preparedness and the provision of quality resuscitation care.Having a greater level of insight into the challenges that rural nurses experience in the pre‐ and post‐resuscitation period is critical. This insight opens the door for fortifying policies and work processes that will better support rural nurses in the resuscitation environment.Reporting complied with COREQ criteria for qualitative research.This study explored the experiences of rural nurses. No patient data were collected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking inspiration from ethnographic methods, this study presents the experiences of young children and their families, as they interact with a display at the Workers Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, analysing these through Ben Anderson's concept affective atmospheres. Adding to scholarship on emotion in leisure studies, the paper presents young visitor experiences as ongoing relational interactions between bodies, objects, and places, where atmospheres are central to the sensory leisure experience and deeply enmeshed with affectivity. With this perspective, we contribute to broadening the scholarship that challenges the division between positive and negative emotions, which continues to be foregrounded in leisure scholarship, arguing that such binary framework does not account for the granularity and complexity of emotional worlds. The research invites scholars and practitioners to attend to affective atmospheres in visitor experiences, while letting go of the notion that these can be controlled through careful curation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of TikTok on the public's understanding and engagement with psychiatric and psychological concepts. The rise of mental health-related content on social media has been linked to an increase in adults seeking a diagnosis of ADHD (Yeung et al. 2022). By reviewing a case study: the revision of the term "object permanence" from a developmental stage to an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptom, I argue that a looping effect, modeled after Hacking (1999), can explain the pattern of language revision for psychological terms on TikTok. Interviews with TikTok users provide preliminary evidence for this looping effect and the research is contextualized within the broader psychiatric discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans have always lived with and around algae. At times, algae enable life, and at others, render life difficult. This article examines two sites suffering from atypical—and potentially harmful—algae blooms: Lake Erie in Ohio (USA) and the Riviera Maya (Mexico). Referring to ethnographic fieldwork, as well as to newspaper articles, policy papers, and online fora, we demonstrate how the narratives around algae have changed over time and shed light on how changes in these narratives opened the discussion of wetland repair and coastal integrity. We argue that conceptualizing algae as the "unwanted" unifies people, brings them together, and makes the treatment of lake eutrophication and coastal protection actionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cypher, a circle of MCs improvising rhymes in a collaborative jam session, is a relatively unexplored topic in hip hop. Through its focus on community and reciprocity, the cypher represents a crucial nexus of sociability that enables researchers to examine the shifting positionalities and communicative practices of audience members and practitioners. Using a participant observation study and 30 semi-structured interviews of MCs at Legendary Cyphers in New York City, this paper examines how members of the hip hop community navigate their membership, how the cypher acts as a pedagogical space for learning hip hop sociability, and how white practitioners communicate their cultural commitment. The findings indicate the importance of adaptive identities between audience members and performers. Ultimately, membership in hip hop is learned in spaces like the cypher and offers a lens through which we can understand the process of doing and becoming hip hop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role that humans played in the extinction of Pleistocene proboscideans is highly controversial. Ethnohistoric records of elephant hunting, in concert with theoretical rationales, are often used as proxy evidence to support the view that ancient humans regularly and efficiently targeted large-sized proboscideans to the point of extinction. This paper examines the socioeconomic and technological contexts of elephant hunting in contemporary and ethnohistoric records to show how these circumstances influenced the scale of harvest, productivity, and valuation of elephants. Quantitative and qualitative evidence derived from some of these records are used to analyze the efficiency of elephant capture using traditional hunting technologies (spears, poisoned projectiles, traps, and drives). This analytical framework provides a systematic method for evaluating the productivity of proboscidean predation. Results show that prior to the widespread use of firearms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the acquisition of elephants, irrespective of the traditional hunting technology used, was a dangerous, high-cost activity often associated with a high-risk of hunting failure. In the ethnographic record, elephant hunting is consistently associated with prestige-seeking among egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Although the analysis presented here is derived from hunting episodes that involved modern elephants, the physical characteristics and abilities that make these animals expensive and risky to hunt were likely manifested by most Pleistocene proboscideans. Using ethnographic data, a framework for recognizing how prestige hunting is manifested under different ecological and sociopolitical circumstances is provided and offers an alternative and compelling explanation for zooarchaeological patterning of costly prey in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on empirical research this paper explores how gendered discourses position emotions and emotion practices in social work environments characterised as 'macho'. It highlights the intersection of traditional emotion-reason dualism and gendered constructions of emotions with dominant hegemonic organisational and professional norms. This ethnographic study in an English Children's Service explored how emotions were understood and used in practice. It identified essentialist negative beliefs and a paradoxical positioning of practitioners' emotions alongside their constructive use. Problematic perceptions of professionalism fed into notions of conformity, heroism and transgression, devaluing engagement in agile emotion practices which underpin relationship-based systemic practice. Institutionalised dynamics created scope for differential impacts given practitioners' status and social locations such as, gender, race, age, sexuality or status. These findings contribute new knowledge, relevant to humane social work, professionalism and workforce retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the social role played by food assistance initiatives in Portugal. Based on the understanding that these organizations are "spaces of care," it is possible to reflect on the support provided by them in a more comprehensive and integrative way. Therefore, the various care practices that emerge in these organizational contexts are explored. This study presents a qualitative comparative methodological approach and a range of ethnographic methods to explore the perspectives of different actors (supervisors, volunteers, and beneficiaries) within different models of food assistance (Surplus Food Redistribution Charity, Soup Kitchen, and Social Supermarket). The main results indicate the presence of several "improvised" and "veiled" care practices in the analyzed initiatives that go beyond food issues. These manifestations of care may stem from altruistic acts and/or function as a "remedial measure," serving as a compensatory mechanism in response to services deemed inadequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Supervision is integral to social work practice; however, how it operates in day‐to‐day practice remains poorly understood. Existing research mainly comprises quantitative and qualitative accounts of social workers' and supervisors' experiences of supervision. More recently, a small number of studies examining the content of supervision have added to our understanding of what happens in supervision. However, supervisory interactions outside formal supervision have received scant empirical attention. This paper draws on an ethnographic study of four social work teams in England, exploring how formal and informal case discussion supports social workers' sensemaking. Data comprised observations of case talk in the office space (n = 21) and group case discussions (n = 2), recordings of one‐to‐one supervision (n = 17) and semi‐structured interviews (n = 22). Findings highlighted the importance of space in how social workers perceived and engaged with supervision. Supervisory spaces involve the interaction of physical, thinking and emotional spaces to create spaces that are supportive, task‐focused and reflective. Moreover, these supervisory spaces are not confined to formal one‐to‐one supervision or to the dyadic supervisor–supervisee relationship. This raises questions for how child protection social workers can be best supported, across diverse supervisory spaces and relationships, to ensure their practice is effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To explore the nature of interactions that enable older inpatients with cognitive impairments to engage with hospital staff on falls prevention. Design: Ethnographic study. Methods: Ethnographic observations on orthopaedic and older person wards in English hospitals (251.25 h) and semi‐structured qualitative interviews with 50 staff, 28 patients and three carers. Findings were analysed using a framework approach. Results: Interactions were often informal and personalised. Staff qualities that supported engagement in falls prevention included the ability to empathise and negotiate, taking patient perspectives into account. Although registered nurses had limited time for this, families/carers and other staff, including engagement workers, did so and passed information to nurses. Conclusions: Some older inpatients with cognitive impairments engaged with staff on falls prevention. Engagement enabled them to express their needs and collaborate, to an extent, on falls prevention activities. To support this, we recommend wider adoption in hospitals of engagement workers and developing the relational skills that underpin engagement in training programmes for patient‐facing staff. Implications for Profession and Patient Care: Interactions that support cognitively impaired inpatients to engage in falls prevention can involve not only nurses, but also families/carers and non‐nursing staff, with potential to reduce pressures on busy nurses and improve patient safety. Reporting Method: The paper adheres to EQUATOR guidelines, Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research. Patient or Public Contribution: Patient/public contributors were involved in study design, evaluation and data analysis. They co‐authored this manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-wildlife interactions can affect human wellbeing and wildlife population persistence. This paper addresses the perceived impacts of wildlife on agropastoral food production in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania. It is based on sixteen months of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with agropastoral Maasai communities (2019–2020; 2022; 2023), 240 semi-structured interviews, and a household survey (n = 1076). People felt that caterpillars, elephants, and zebras had the most significant effects on crop production, while hyenas were responsible for the bulk of livestock depredation by carnivores. These social costs of wildlife merit further attention from conservation policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the formation of children’s subjectivities, related to the metaphysical conditions of being and becoming a subject, within outdoor early childhood provision in Scotland. It applies a sociomaterial metaphysical framework to propose an alternative way of understanding how subjectivities come to form in early childhood environments, bringing together Spinozist monism in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage and affect. Methodologically, an ethnographic approach inspired partly by the postqualitative field of scholarship is employed to gather data on children’s subjectivities at Wood Fire, a primarily outdoor early childhood setting. The data produced in this study affords an opportunity to understand the materiality and relationality of primarily outdoor early childhood provision through which subjectivities are in-formed. Thus, they demonstrate a more expanded understanding of how we, humans, are produced as individuals in specific encounters through processes of ‘affective sociomaterialisation’. Practically, this carries implications for how researchers might attune to the child’s sense of self on more expansive terms through processes of affective sociomaterialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and applies a methodology of qualitative inquiry that equips researchers to capture how social actors produce and contest accepted forms of knowledge at the margins of mainstream globalizing discourses in times of crisis. Standing at the intersection between conceptual and empirical research, our methodology builds on the common epistemological premises of 'narrative', as stories constructed and enacted in social life, and 'practice', as tasks and projects composed by 'doings' and 'sayings'. Overcoming the dualism between 'action' and 'discourse' in traditional social theory, this methodology integrates narrative theory and practice theory into a joint framework for fieldwork and interviews. The use of the narrative-practice methodology in ethnographic case studies – such as interpreters' experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar – allows researchers to gain analytical granularity on participants' storied practice and practiced stories of the crisis, to harness 'peripheral' knowledge and refashion public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which the recent past of political violence is presented to the students is one of the fundamental tasks of contemporary education. However, it is often constricted by the rational and cognitive objectives of the duty of memory. In response to this, in this paper I propose an ethnographic gaze, attentive and sensitive to the textures of its daily performance, in order to contribute in a more solid and realistic way to the pedagogy of the duty of remembrance. This look has allowed me, in an investigation carried out in La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina) in 2018, to account for the intertwining of the work around the recent past with the school culture and the disciplinary code of history, with the relationships that the subjects have with each other and, through the links they build between different temporalities, with multiple attitudes and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is scholarly consensus among theologians and their disciplinary partners that religion closely links with identity formation, unmatched by identification with any other social group. However, detachment from organised religion in Western cultures among young people is increasingly evident. This paper presents research findings for theological reflection derived from an empirical sequential mixed-method, ethnographic Gadamerian doctoral study exploring Ireland's rapidly changing religious landscape. Survey findings (n = 178) and follow-up interviews (N = 22) of a random sample of 18–39 year olds suggest that while Irish Catholicism remains culturally important there is increasing disconnection from the institutional Church. It appears that privatised, self-referential forms of spirituality related to a wellness culture are growing. However, this paper suggests that a positive benefit may also accrue from these trends, specifically that sectarianism as a historically pernicious form of racism may diminish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commercial surrogacy industry in India administers in a way where the women working as surrogate mothers live in surrogate houses. It is a space deliberately designed and run by either the fertility clinics or a third-party agency, where the surrogate mothers are required to stay for the entire gestation period. The surrogacy industry in India utilizes the vulnerability of couples who do not or cannot have children, in order to prepare valuable and docile bodies which can serve as a platform for accumulation of wealth. This paper draws from an ethnographic inquiry of the surrogate housing facilities functioning in two cities in India: Anand and Bengaluru. The paper will argue that the surrogacy industry in India produces geographies of carceral domesticity by deploying disciplining apparatuses governing the day-to-day mundane activities of the reproductive laborers. The medical experts often resort to the narrative that these women cannot be trusted with the safety of the babies they carry, hence, justifying their confinement in the surrogate house. Further, the possibility that the surrogate mothers may develop emotional attachments to the babies they carry, which in turn, will endanger the surrogacy arrangements, also runs through such narratives of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]