Search

In the early days of anthropology as a discipline in the nineteenth century, evolutionism and diffusionism supplied anthropologists with 'global' visions. Anthropologists have always been involved with all-encompassing cosmopolitan notions such as humankind and culture. Many have thus endeavoured to explain the world as a whole, and how humans have developed in different historical moments. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the new label 'globalization' generated a field of scholarly preoccupations, anthropologists started to contribute to this growing body of literature. Their most valuable contributions are related to the tensions between local and global forces, and between forces of heterogeneity and homogeneity, as well as to the use of ethnography as a methodological tool. Anthropologists have borrowed notions from other related disciplines such as sociology, history, and geography. This paper situates the anthropological production on 'the global' within this diverse history of borrowings, internal disciplinary debates, and wider historical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of alternative forms of representation has been a key issue within the social sciences for a long time, as a postmodern response to the limits of positivist science. However, its use in the field of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences is scarce, as in qualitative research. In this paper, we present an ethnography fiction story that attempts to recreate prison life, particularly that in the sports hall. It is based on data from a two‐year ethnographic study in a Spanish prison that emphasizes the meanings participants assigned to sport and physical activity. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to claim the use of ethnographic fiction as a form of representation in qualitative research. Second, to create a new story to give voice to participants and provoke reader's emotions by evoking participants' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opposition between the categories of shantytown and neighborhood has been crucial in the disciplinary analyses of popular habitat in Argentina. The urbanization of a shantytown in Great Buenos Aires enables us to refresh this discussion, setting the categories into motion. The ethnographic analysis of the category of neighborhood in the urbanization of Villa Torres (La Matanza) will help to explore how this shantytown is constructed as “emblem" for public policies, receiving various resources. In fact, this paper will analyze how the urbanization is legitimized through an image of the neighborhood, of the urbanization and of the people in charge of it as “gente del barrio" [people from the neighborhood] in order to show how local knowledge is implied in this public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of occupational therapy, as a result of the processes of globalization, there is a growing interest in aspects relating to culture and its relationship to health and well-being. The development of occupational therapy in multicultural contexts proposes to go beyond the terminological questions to deepen and refine new guidelines related to the construction and consolidation of knowledge. Thus, this paper raises a critical analysis of the main assumptions of occupational therapy, referring to the nature of the occupation and the link between occupation, health and well-being, as well as the praxis derived from them. The professional culture of occupational therapy is analyzed through doubly reflexive ethnography, a heuristic three-dimensional model consisting of syntactic, pragmatic and semantic dimensions. This study of the occupational therapy aims to raise the development of the discipline that may be conscious and responsible for the relations of power that are implicit and explicit in the theory and practice of occupational therapy. The co-reflexion with the different actors involved is determinant in the development of an intercultural perspective of occupational therapy that may be therapeutically effective. The concept of etnoccupation may be proposed as alternative to the ethnocentric concept of occupation, proposing a vision of the occupation on economic, social and political aspects which aims at social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a conceptual model of humour as a resource of power, by the use of its communicative elements. These elements may be modified or manipulated by those who exert social power. The model is used to compare some field examples in working environments and exposes how to understand humor in certain political contexts or as a source of cultural capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]