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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 paper examines the work practices involved in making data legible to machines and machine output legible to humans. The study is based on ethnographic research of a team of art experts at DNArt – a data classification system that features a growing database of art images, a classification scheme, a similarity matching algorithm, and a website that together serve as a consumer judgment device in an emerging online market for art. I analyze interactions from meeting observations, interviews, documentation, and online interaction data to show how non-technical art experts explain and repair sociotechnical breakdowns – when their expectations for similarity between art images and artists differ from the similarity relations produced by the algorithm. By repairing breakdowns, the art experts construct the algorithm anew, as a legitimate revealer of similarity in art. In doing so, the team's repair work is folded back into the black box of the algorithm, rendering it invisible and unacknowledged, sometimes even by the experts themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articles in this special issue extend research on urban space and politics in Istanbul with approaches that explorate the relationships between urban form, urban change, and political processes as assemblages of things, beliefs, institutions, and landscapes. They share a commitment to extended ethnography and thick description in urban studies, and contribute to research that destabilizes universalizing urban theory produced in Europe and America. The dramatic state-led project of neoliberal urban transformation in Istanbul has generated an important body of work that focuses on the consequences of creative destruction, urban displacement, and urban social and political exclusion. These papers contribute to that research with additional questions that incorporate understudied material and cultural elements of the urban political economy. What role do material elements (concrete, plexiglass, signs, maps) play in the practices that propel urban dynamics: that justify, for example, the rebuilding of some properties and the destruction of others? How do the subjective dimensions of human life (memory, belief, emotion, art, suspicion, and imagination) propel particular forms of urban development? Istanbulites' theories of why, where, and to whom destruction or fortune happens – and of what particular material things mean, or what they're meant to be used for – are crucial elements of the total urban situation. Istanbulites' theories cohere disparate elements into assemblages which, in turn, work to transform the city's material realities and social worlds. These papers invite us, as scholars, to resituate our urban theories and to bring urban residents' theories into assemblage with our own. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What role do texts play in LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) parents’ experiences of disability service systems? In interviews with 15 LGBTQ parents of disabled children in Toronto, Canada, participants selected documents to be used as a focus for discussion. Parents considered how LGBTQ identity and other intersectional identities influenced their experiences of institutional texts including adoption certificates, intake forms, and assessments. Findings suggest that documentation practices can operate as forms of systemic gatekeeping. LGBTQ identity was sometimes very significant in parents’ accounts, and sometimes less central than other aspects of their families' identities and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we are interested in how ethnographic research can contribute to the promotion of public deliberation. We do not use ethnography only to study deliberative processes but rather we intend to interpret ethnographic research as a social practice, and we research conditions under which ethnographic research might have deliberative consequences. The paper summarizes the results of the multidisciplinary research project Stories of Drought, which combines natural and social sciences in its approach. The project aims to understand how people in Czech rural areas respond to localized effects of climate change, especially drought. Following a systemic approach to deliberative democracy, we study how ethnography contributes to fulfilling three deliberative functions: (1) the epistemic function; (2) the ethical function and (3) the democratic function. In the context of irrigation disputes in South Moravia, we map the arguments of main actors and critical tensions in local discourses. We conclude that ethnographic research, due to its hybrid position between different sources of knowledge, its institutionally recognized expertise and its ability to establish an ethnographer as a trustworthy actor, can outweigh local critical power imbalances blocking deliberative capacity in local policy systems. [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]

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]

Derived from an ethnography of working cultures and practices at a bike shop in the North of England, this paper rests on a critical application of social practice theories of literacy (Literacy Studies) in order to explore the complex and heterogeneous literacy practices 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 underpin the literacy practices of the cycle workshop. 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 literacy practices. The paper also suggests that ongoing debates concerning transferable workplace skills can be enriched through considering situated, contextualised literacy events. The paper concludes by arguing that for cycle technicians, and perhaps other occupations as well, Literacy Studies can generate rich and complex accounts that unpack the textual practices found alongside the occupational expertise and competence being observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an ethnographic account of the quasi-religious romanticism of the crypto-community towards blockchain technologies. To do so, we explore the cultural significance of phenomena such as myth, faith, and ritual, without excluding both the realms of technological practices and techno-scientific narrative. Drawing on a comparison with the legend of King Arthur, we analyse how the legendary creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, translates contemporary anxieties resulting from the financial crisis and the centralisation of power. By analysing white papers, we further explore the persuasive narratives which convey how ethics and virtue can be encoded into software, and, finally, we describe the secular rituals that reinforce cohesion among the community – in moments which are often guided by charismatic preachers and specialists. We argue that blockchain technologies have had a symbolic impact in re-invigorating enchantment and material romanticism towards finance and technology, which has had a wider impact on the social perception and acceptance of the transition to a digital society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To advance understanding about the way endogenous knowledge on mangrove swamp rice (MSR) farming is transmitted, reinvented and negotiated between generations and highlight the implications this has for R4D. Long-term qualitative research using an ethnographic approach, technography and biographies of farmers. The endogenous Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) is dynamic but faces shortcomings owing to socio-environmental changes. This highlights the relevance of knowledge exchanges from multiple sources, eroding the divide between endogenous and exogenous from the farmers' point of view. For positive exogenously induced socio-technical change to occur, external actors must fully understand the conditions under which (a) endogenous knowledge is produced and reinvented and (b) endogenous innovations flow among farmers. This will then allow the co-production of innovations adapted to each specific agro-ecological, cultural and socio-economic context, leaving them to be further transformed and refashioned by smallholders to meet their individual 'dispositions' and generate the roots necessary for a strong AKIS. This paper highlights the importance of locally embedded processes of learning and innovation, the better understanding of which can provide a more solid basis for the co-production of technologies and the establishment of an AKIS. This paper improves understanding of socio-technological change in smallholder agriculture by focusing on endogenous processes of learning and innovation. This paper advances the knowledge on endogenous processes of learning and socio-technical change in smallholder agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on some of the findings of an ethnographic doctoral study on ESD in a Jamaican school and community. The research study explored the interaction between local knowledge, values and practices and dominant Western approaches to education for sustainable development (ESD). Accordingly, the paper focuses on the challenges and lessons revealed by these diverse perspectives and how they can inform academic and policy ESD discourses locally and globally. Imbued with eco-pedagogical and postcolonial perspectives, it proposes that encompassing a Rastafarian spiritual ethos within ESD pedagogical approaches in Jamaica represents a potential to address some of the shortcomings that emerge from a critical review of the international literature on ESD, as well as the drawbacks of ESD implementation in the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers who wish to become insiders to children's cultural worlds need to genuinely engage with the difference in social power between them and their participants. Most published accounts of adult positionality have been provided by those who have explored children's school practices. The ethnography discussed in this paper focused on the home and school literacy practices of children in a rural village in India. Cognisant of the unequal teacher-student relationships in this part of the world, I positioned myself as a least-teacher which, I argue, presents a cultural approximant for the least-adult role extensively discussed in literature. The role enabled the children to view me differently from their teachers – as a madamii. In this paper, I discuss its various facets with the twin focus of examining the efficacy of the role for future research and its affordances for the vision of a teacher provided by Indian policy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how a consumer social movement employs prefigurative practices to resist a dominant market logic and drive market changes in the here and now. We based our research on one year of ethnographic fieldwork with vegetarian and animal welfare activists embedded in a cultural milieu that predominantly supports the consumption of animal products. We used the storytelling method for the description and data analysis. Our findings reveal that activists challenge the market logic of animal abuse in three ways. First, they work to revolutionise the so-called meat culture. Second, they pro-actively demand laws that protect animal rights. Third, they establish singular modes of community-based exchange that detach themselves from the doxa of the consumption of animal products. By opposing the mainstream culture, the mainstream policy and the mainstream marketplace, these activists develop influential arenas of consumption that resemble their ideal world and impact the market as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a methodological paper that seeks to encourage thought about the nature of auto-ethnography and which types of auto-ethnography might be most worthwhile within educational research. It reviews the various types of auto-ethnographic writing within education, focusing initially on the accounts of the process of doing educational research which started to be published in the 1970s and 1980s. The paper discusses the merits and potential problems of such accounts, drawing upon examples of such work. During the 1980s and 1990s other forms of auto-ethnography in education started to be published that focused more on a contribution to knowledge through providing new data related to education. The paper discusses the merits and potential problems of this type of account, again drawing on various published examples. The paper argues that worthwhile auto-ethnography, of whatever type, should meet the criteria set for worthwhile ethnography as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recovery-orientated approaches have grown more and more common in psychosocial rehabilitation in Denmark, thus shifting the focus to the dynamic status of mental health issues that were historically regarded as chronic. This change has caused an important shift towards recognizing service users as humans with equal rights and possibilities. But the recovery-oriented approach is also complex and difficult to apply in practice. Drawing on phenomenological concepts of bodies and orientations in space, the paper discusses how bodies, which are perceived as queer, seek to reorientate themselves. The discussion draws on three empirical cases involving service users from fieldwork at housing facilities for people with severe mental health issues. The paper concludes that psychosocial rehabilitation housing facilities may benefit from adopting a broader perspective on body orientations because this contributes with a focus on service users as active agents who strive to inhabit space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents a short ethnographic encounter with the site of the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow in 2021. It communicates an experiential picturing of the site as it was assembled and disassembled, as this was recorded in notes, conversations, via phone footage and in a short talk afterwards with human geography colleagues at the University of Glasgow. The paper seeks to make sense of this short experiential encounter by drawing from scholarship on ethnography, security and events of emergency assemblage. The paper concludes by reflection on the ordinary purpose of walking sites of climate security and emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison to adult-centred research in physical activity, there are far fewer studies which concentrate on hearing children's voices in physical activity research. Additionally, despite a number of studies which utilise a child-centred approach, the number of papers which concentrate on the complexities when conducting research with young people are extremely limited. To consider power relationships between adult researchers and young participants. Also, to provide empirical examples of considerations related to an organic research process and the complexities that may arise during research with children. An ethnographic approach is deemed useful when conducting research with children (Davis and Watson 2017), but particular considerations need to be taken into account as an adult conducting research with young people. The data for this paper was drawn from a year-long ethnographic study with junior korfball players (aged 11–13 years of age). The study involved participant observation where the researcher's role was 'coaches' help'. Nine semi-structured interviews took place 10 months into the study, and numerous informal conversations occurred throughout the research. Some of Foucault's ideas related power were utilised to discuss the way relationships were negotiated with children to maintain a child-centred approach to the research. Adopting an organic approach to research may help reduce young participants' perceptions of adult power. Adopting a Foucauldian lens can also heighten awareness of power divisions and aid the researcher's sensitivity to their own use of techniques of power whilst in the field. Additionally, an organic approach can also help facilitate child-centred research which empowers participants and supports their voices being heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the evolution of the music industry in the digital age by focusing on market intermediation. Drawing on Karpik's (2010) economics of singularities, it aims to understand how digital technologies have transformed cultural intermediaries in the context of the independent music market. More-than-human (n)ethnography supported by depth interviews and secondary data analysis is used to provide new insights into the persistent function of judgement devices in digitalised markets. The findings highlight the material and axiological affordances of judgement devices and show how they provide opportunities for consumers whose intentions affect the actions of judgement devices. Although digitalisation has enhanced consumer empowerment, our study also reveals how actors of the indie music market experience the persistence of power relations in the music industry and the paradoxes of digitalisation. By focusing on the complex nature of technocultural changes, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of the (un)changing role of cultural intermediaries in digitalised markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current debates in the area of researchers' positionalities criticize the notion of the 'insider/outsider' dichotomy and favour the idea of a fluid inbetweener position. However, these narratives foreground researchers' perspectives and often ignore participants' agency in constructing a researcher's positionality in the field. In this paper, as an early career researcher, I analyze my journey with my own positionalities in ethnographic research in a rural community in Bangladesh. Adopting a Critical Realist ontological standpoint, I argue that positionalities are co-constructed by researcher and participant and are products of complex interactions between their agencies and the social structure. I illustrate how reflexivity, taking both my and the participants' views into account, facilitated my movement towards a position where the participants expose their habitual behaviour (not hesitating to offer their day-to-day food – mash potato) rather than providing superficial information (as they do to a guest, for whom they will at least fry an egg – a special arrangement – for dinner). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, there have been a growing number of nature-based early childhood education initiatives [Alme, H., and M. A. Reime. 2021. "Nature Kindergartens: A Space for Children's Participation." Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education 24: 113–131]. Research into early years' nature education internationally remains under-theorised particularly in STEM teaching and learning. The nature or bush kindergarten programme (often referred to as 'bush kinders' in the Australian context), is one such programme where nature play and education occur. This paper considers how children's mathematical thinking develops through their time spent in bush kinder settings. Using an ethnographic lens, this longitudinal study is the first of its type in Australia with a focus on STEM in bush kinders. In this paper, eight 'powerful mathematical ideas' are used to analyse how educators can approach teaching mathematics with only what nature provides. The paper reports one main finding, that bush kinders provide opportunities for children through educator support to build mathematical understandings through nature play. Drawing on fieldwork data and the analysis of research literature, this paper contributes to the conceptualisation of mathematics in early childhood nature play and bush kinder programmes. [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]

We examine private supplementary tutoring within the context of Finnish general upper secondary education. Specifically, we focus on profit-driven private preparatory course providers who cater to individual students and their families, aiming to improve applicants' prospects of gaining access to higher education. We examine this during a time when a recent education policy reform has renewed seeking admission to higher education in Finland, consequently impacting the private supplementary tutoring market associated with it. We draw on Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, and habitus as a starting point for discussing the complex dynamics between public and private actors in the field of Finnish general upper secondary education and the role of economic capital. The ethnographic data analyzed for this paper consist of field notes and interviews (n = 58) from three general upper secondary schools, produced in 2019-2020. The study aims to investigate the negotiations between the public and private spheres of education within the everyday practices of Finnish public upper secondary education during an educational policy reform. We conclude that the fields of public and private education are not separate but rather intertwined, and they can become blurred in the everyday life of schools through both temporal and spatial overlaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the datafication of ageing by drawing on a practice approach toward care. We describe the datafication of ageing as a matter of care, achieved through the local tinkering of actors – technology designers, care staff, older adults, and highlighting the practices necessary to develop, maintain and implement data infrastructures. This paper draws on research conducted in a qualitative interview study in a LTC facility that uses AI-supported sensors to detect, predict and alarm care staff about falls of older residents. 18 interviews with developers, staff, residents and interest groups were conducted, as well as 24 h of participant observation in the care facility. The results reveal how AI-development for older target groups is characterized by absent data on these populations. Designers turn to practices that decontextualize data from the realities of older adults, relying on domain experts or synthetic data. This decontextualization of data requires recontextualization, with staff and older residents ensuring that the system functions smoothly, adapting their behavior, protecting the system from making false decisions and making existing care arrangements 'fit' the databases used to monitor activities in these arrangements. The ambivalent position of older adults in this data assemblage is further highlighted, as their caring practices are made invisible by different actors through ageist stereotypes, positioning them as being too frail to understand and engage with the system. While their bodily behavior is core for the databases, their perspective on and engagements with the operating system are marginalized, rendering some aspects of ageing hyper-visible, and others invisible. [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]

One of the key challenges in work-integrated learning (WIL) courses is how to account for learning that takes place away from campus, where the work space, daily routines and emergent actions within an organisation shape the possibilities for student learning. What do students do on placement to open the possibilities of working and learning in temporary sites of work? Using a practice-based approach, this paper outlines an ethnographic study of learning on placement. The paper draws on Gherardi's ([2019]. How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods. 2nd ed. Cheltnham: Edward Elgar Publishing) work on learning and knowing in practice to demonstrate how students learn to participate in situated practices to accomplish work tasks. It employs a rock-climbing metaphor to illuminate what students do in order to continue on with work when they encounter something surprising, make an error or have a question. The findings suggest student learning relies on the sociomaterial practices that produce and are produced by each unique workplace situation. The paper shows how learning on placement comprises the identification and use of distinct 'handhold' activities performed through simultaneous processes of knowing, doing and inventing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the lens of an elite boarding school, this paper seeks to explore afresh the education–development nexus in Nepal. Moving beyond post-modern critiques of the development–schooling nexus, the paper draws on a historical understanding of development and concomitant notions of progress as emerging from earlier contacts between Nepali elites and the West. Combining this historical perspective with six months of ethnographic research at an elite boarding school in Nepal, the paper argues that the concept of development refers to the education of the individual through an emphasis on consciousness, self-discipline and character-building. This personalisation of bik a ¯ s operates as a holistic pedagogy that facilitates students' embodiment of the national project through moral, physical and psychological progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts with the ethical dilemma that appears when researchers end data collection, start to analyse the material, and construct the narrative of the thesis. This is the moment when the research subject might become objectified. Although this is a well-recognised dilemma, the aim of this paper is to investigate this in relation to ethnographic studies in social work in order to further develop some aspects of this 'old' dilemma. Three prominent texts on the topics of representation, disclosure, and understanding are used in an analysis of two ethnographic observations in different social work settings. A conclusion is that the main challenge for the ethnographic researcher in social work is the fact that they often write concurrently about people in unequal positions. Hierarchies and power relations have to be part of the question about how to write without objectifying. This fact places the researcher in a position of ambiguity because they act on both sides, including both those who are in privileged positions and those who are considered vulnerable groups. Hence, the ethical dilemma not only includes the relation between the researcher and the research subject, but also inter-party relations between research subjects in different power positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores insights from a recent entrepreneurship education programme in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, an economically deprived region of the UK. An arts-based pedagogical innovation, Cultural Animation (CA), is evaluated for its learning outcomes. The case study explores the specific benefits of this pedagogy for improving the skills of SME owner-managers. Taking an ethnographic approach, a series of CA sessions are analysed to understand their benefits for SME owner-managers. The findings are that CA generates three significant learning outcomes: the development of social ties; the encouragement of peer learning and the creation of a sense of equality amongst participants. This paper contributes to the research on arts-based pedagogies in entrepreneurship education. The findings have applicability to policymakers and entrepreneurship education providers, particularly in economically depressed regions where a lack of social connection is considered to be an obstacle to growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The present study addresses certain methodological challenges of being a 'practisearcher' at a worksite that is physically distant from but no less influential to freelance interpreters – the interpreting agency. Drawing on the discourse of emotionality and positionality of workplace ethnographic research, this paper focuses on the diverse emotions that are experienced by the author through navigating conflicting expectations in a complex business environment. The purpose of this study is to highlight the analytical values of the emotional efforts of the researcher through reflecting upon the uneasy moments when our identities are questioned, our behaviours cause distrust, or when our rushed decisions lead to unforeseen results. Although such instances are integral to everyday fieldwork practice, they tend to be largely toned down in the rational account of academic reasoning. Through presenting a series of extracts from the research diaries and fieldnotes, the author argues that emotions are untapped resources that can help researchers to delve into the complex network of participants, to critically assess our multiple positions and identities (in the eyes of others and our own), as ethnographers go through rites of passage, and to make sense of the socio-cultural contexts where the organisation under study is situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral public policy (BPP) has become increasingly popular with governments across the globe but what defines it in practice? It is not a concrete concept, encompassing a series of instruments, evaluation methods and theoretical influences. Using the findings from an ethnographic study of a behavioral insights team in the Australian Government this paper interrogates how BPP has been translated from these discrete components into practice by policymakers. This research posits that a significant degree of adaptation has taken place during this translation process. Participants could be referring to multiple different things when speaking about and implementing BPP, sometimes even communicating at cross-purposes. This paper incorporates Bevir and Rhodes 'traditions' to existing policy translation research to further interrogate how actors make meaning from and adapt ideas like BPP. This framework makes it possible to explore which translations carry greater influence and asks what this means for the BPP agenda moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of empirical studies focusing on NGO accountability practices remains limited. This paper responds to this gap. It presents the accountability practices identified in an empirical study of a nongovernmental development programme in Tanzania. Drawing on data collected through field work and analysed through coding, visualisations, and detailed descriptions, this study observed how practices constituting this development programme were held together by accountability practices. This paper analyses these accountability practices: (a) prescribing–reporting–verifying, (b) measuring, (c) contracting, and (d) capacity building, learning, and acting together. It demonstrates how these accountability practices facilitate the coordination of this development programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial introduction to the Special Theme, Sacrifice, Suffering and Hope: Education, Aspiration and Young People's Affective Orientations to the Future, we discuss the key theoretical themes (aspiration, sacrifice and affect) that underpin the papers in this collection. With geographical focus on India, Indonesia, Kenya and Bangladesh, our aim is to contribute a more ethnographically-grounded understanding of the affective orientations that emerge or become visible in the context of young people's educational experiences, and that shape and give meaning to processes of aspiration formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings an ethnographic experience to bear on the existing research field of school bullying, rounding out our understanding by focusing on an essential aspect: children's culture. Based on 14 months of fieldwork and a close analysis of the case of Anat, a 9-year-old victim of bullying, the paper identifies a unique formation of school bullying with no leading bully. Drawing from theoretical approaches which focus on pupils' everyday life, the paper asserts that bullying without a leading bully is rooted in children's culture which effectively enforces bullying as a binding norm by constructing its object as disgusting. The paper explores how disgust shapes school bullying into a collective omnipresent rejection. It also discusses intervention programmes and suggests that within such a social position, one practice to consider would be transferring to a new environment where bullied pupils will not be forced to cope with collectively enforced prejudices. [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]

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]

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]

This paper develops a flexible explication of borderland methodology, demonstrating a practical application of Gloria Anzaldúa's theories on scholarly research. This essay's form duplicates the key insights of her book, Borderlands/La Frontera (2012). Specifically, this author takes as central an auto-ethnographic research project fostered by the support of a professor, Dr. Christine Marin. The discovery process of an undergraduate life-history project enabled this author to see how his research has been made possible by a long line of women's labor, particularly structured by the borderlands. As the author examines in hindsight how he learned to create methods organically, he sees the impact that Gloria Anzaldúa's theories have made across many disciplines and strongly in his own research with an Indigenous community living on both sides of an international border. This essay results in a list of characteristics that the author determines as definitive of a borderland methodology. Avoiding prescriptive boundaries, the essay provides insight into the multiple uses of boundaries and borders in an academic life, particularly in terms of race. The methodology described takes shape in the form of honoring women who labored for the sustenance of their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how children develop digital literacy through offline practices of play. By inventing games, children rehearse and build up the competences, knowledge, and skills necessary to engage with online technologies in later life. While prior studies on digital literacy and play have explored children's digital interactions with media, children's play around media is increasingly traversing online-offline boundaries. Consequently, we argue that to fully comprehend how children build up understandings of the digital, paradoxically, we should also consider how they engage with digital media in offline settings. Drawing upon participants observations of 8–12-year-old children attending afterschool childcare (N = 77) and in-depth interviews with children, their parents, and pedagogical staff in The Netherlands, we develop a typology of practices of converged play through which children replicate, remix, and re-enact digital media in everyday life. Our findings emphasize that children's digital literacy is foremost a social practice developed primarily in relation with others, within and beyond the digital realm. Thus, we argue that taking a sociocultural and non-media centric approach to play is vital for understanding children's development of digital literacy, in a way that does justice to children's continuous exposure to and immersion in digital media in everyday life. Prior state of knowledge: Play is instrumental for how children develop the ability to deal with digital media. Existing research finds that by inventing games, children practice and build up the digital literacy necessary to navigate an increasingly digital society in their later life. Novel contributions: Prior research has primarily focused on how children's online interactions with media foster their digital competencies, knowledge, and skills. We find that children's engagement with the digital in offline settings is equally essential for understanding how children build digital literacy. Practical implications: This study has practical implications for pedagogical staff, parents, and teachers aiming to facilitate children's digital literacy, indicating that facilitating offline play around digital media can help children learn informational skills, knowledge about media production and social norms around technology. [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]

When Europe shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Longyearbyen, the main settlement of Svalbard, was moving from a coal-based economy to one based on science and tourism. The remote location of the Svalbard archipelago in the High Arctic makes it an isolated, secure haven from the chaos worldwide. But this renders its population vulnerable should the virus come since there are neither facilities to care for the sick nor other nearby communities to help in case of need. Svalbard, with its special territorial status, is in a unique geopolitical situation where people are free to come and go. Longyearbyen is an inherently transient space with a highly mobile population. Based on interview narratives of participants' lived experiences in Longyearbyen during the pandemic (both in-person and online), this paper explores how forced and encouraged (im)mobilities impacted their individual life choices during the pandemic. Participants' stories revealed systemic inequalities and vulnerabilities in Longyearbyen that were heightened and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. By combining minor theory with politics of mobility, this paper aims to add to the discussion within mobilities studies on how the personal, emotional responses to these situations are linked to decisions about mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Relationship-based practice has become an influential theory through which social work practice is understood. However, much more critical attention needs to be given to the kinds of relationships involved. This paper is based on an ethnographic study of long-term social work that spent 15 months observing practice with service users and organisational life to find out how social workers establish and sustain long-term relationships with children and parents in child protection cases, or don't. The paper introduces into the literature the concept of a 'holding relationship', which was present in several of the cases we studied, especially where therapeutic change occurred. The aims of the paper are to document the nature of a holding relationship and to develop it as a concept. A 'holding relationship' involved social workers being reliable, immersing themselves in the service user's day-to-day existence and developing their life-skills, getting physically and emotionally close to them, and practicing critically by taking account of power and inequalities. The concept of a 'holding relationship' draws on psycho-dynamic and sociological theory to provide new ways of thinking that can help make sense of the practical and emotional relating involved in social work and promote the development of such helpful relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines differentiations between beneficiaries in voluntary organizations. Drawing on the writings of Ahmed and Bauman, the paper suggests that beneficiaries are socially constructed through efforts to assist them and according to complex and varied criteria that combine immediate 're-cognition' of otherhood with attention to the 'achievements' of beneficiaries, i.e. how well beneficiaries narrate and perform their assimilability. Taking the case of language cafés as an example, the study suggests that differentiations between beneficiaries emerge not only according to essentialist criteria, but also according to how convincingly beneficiaries express optimism about the future, intention to contribute to local community, and willingness to shed their past, and how respectful of boundaries they appear in the eyes of selves. Relational, narrative, and ideological dimensions then complement essentialist criteria to influence if/how others are included, implying that identities of both selves and others need to be seen as relational and context dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to show that Bernard Williams' approach to legitimacy falls short of its aspirations in ways that cast doubt on its fitness for guiding the practice of future realist political theory. More precisely, the paper focuses on the shortcomings of Williams' realism in establishing a connection to (the practices of) politics, and on how to redeem those shortcomings in a way that would render them suitable for guiding future realist political theory. The first substantive section of the paper considers how compatible Williams' commitments to diagnosis and interpretation are, with how he spells out his realist thought. The second section argues that making good on Williams' commitments requires realist political theorists to rethink the sources of their insights and the basis of their claims, and sketches pragmatist and ethnographic approaches as promising examples of how realists could match theoretical commitments in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from an ethnographic evaluation of the American violence prevention program Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), the present paper aims to explore 1) The participating girls' views of classroom culture and sense of safety, and; 2) Strategies for and obstacles to creating a transformative space for conversations about sexualized violence in three schools with young people aged 12–18 in Sweden. The material analysed in this paper consists of transcripts from video observations and field notes from all sessions in three classes and from group and individual interviews with participants. The paper contributes to critical research on violence in a broad sense, including its prevention, and on anti-oppressive education. In conclusion, we stress the importance of competence, commitment and preparing for precarity, when involving young people. Addressing boys and men as allies in violence prevention must be balanced with a critical feminist understanding of the realities of violence, including sensitivity both to the needs of the group and of individual possibly victimized participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a longitudinal qualitative study that explored the ethnographic learning processes of 10 modern languages students who spent one full academic year abroad, having first completed successfully an Introduction to Ethnography course in the UK. It begins from the argument that although significant attempts have been made to integrate ethnography into modern languages undergraduate degree programmes, relatively little is known about its actual impact on modern languages sojourners. Drawing on active interviews and reflective diaries that were designed to investigate this impact from shortly before participants embarked on their year abroad to the moment they returned, the thematic and critical discourse analysis of the data focuses attention on two key themes: students' perceptions of their host cultures and the impact of ethnography on students' perceptions. Findings from the first theme reveal that participants' perceptions were derogatory and that they used a number of mitigating discourse strategies to avoid creating a negative impression on the researchers. Findings from the second theme suggest that ethnography made little impact on most participants, given that their derogatory perceptions of the "foreign other" remained almost intact throughout the year abroad. The paper discusses possible reasons for these findings, arguing that the contextual nature of ethnographic inquiry does not always enable modern languages sojourners to dismantle the cultural generalisations they may make. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on peer learning as a process to develop PhD students' disciplinary and scholarly skills. PhD students' experience is not usually framed in terms of peer learning, because peer learning is more often studied and applied at the undergraduate level. This contribution builds on an ethnography of a research team to show the potential of peer learning over the course of the doctorate. A socio-constructivist conceptualisation of learning, inspired by activity theory, guides the analysis. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it proposes an original definition of learning that highlights process and practice, and shows how to work with it. Second, it demonstrates how peer learning unfolds in the interplay between structured and emergent types of interactions. Third, it provides scholars with insights into the conditions facilitating peer learning and stimulates debate around the initiatives that institutions can put in place to support PhD students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]