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This paper puts the spotlight on the dominant 'imaginary' (Castoriadis 1987) governing writing research, focusing in particular on the way in which evaluation regimes shape analytic orientations towards writing as a phenomenon. Drawing on data from three different research projects- student writing ( e.g. Lillis 2001), scholars' writing for publication (e.g. Lillis and Curry 2010), writing in professional social work (e.g. Lillis, 2017)-the paper has three objectives: 1) to illustrate the normative evaluative approach towards writing evident in practises of uptake within the evaluation regimes, that is by teacher, reviewer, manager/inspector; 2) to signal that some widely used analytic categories/frames used across writing research traditions may mirror features of evaluation regimes and lead to a misrecognition, rather than an illumination of what is going on; 3) to illustrate the value of ethnographically oriented approaches, in particular work which explores writing through a focus on trajectories (of texts and of people) for opening up our research imaginaries and for making visible key dimensions to the phenomena we are exploring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze how professionals of palliative care -a branch of medicine specialized in the care of dying patients- define, plan and disclose the "terminal" status of patients with advanced cancer diseases. The article is based on ethnographic observations and interviews with professionals in a palliative care service in the Buenos Aires city. The paper analyzes the tasks of definition and projection of the dying process and the way professionals disclose information about the dying prognosis. The analysis of these practices shows how the "end of life" is constructed in two ways: as a stage of psychological preparation for patients and families (and therefore an object of professional intervention), and as gradual process culminating in death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines power relationships in the classroom. Using the concepts of rhizome, schizophrenia and deterritorialisation of Deleuze and Guattari, a semesterlong ethnographic work was conducted in the course Sex, Culture and Society at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá. The course studies discourses on sex, gender and sexuality in order to deconstruct heteronormative formations of identity. A feministic pedagogic approach allows relationships within the classroom to develop through traditional university learning methodologies. The paper explores this nontraditional approach and its results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is compiling some of the main methodological axes around which a research on political violence incidence on daily life of peasants in the Macarena sierra, located in Colombian Western Amazonia. This text aims to bring some elements to the methodological debate addressed by several anthropology works made in local contexts affected by political violence. Written as a research report, this paper presents several results of our work, the analysis framework used and the main features defining ethnographical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss the idea that certain phenomena, which relate to the notion of culture in anthropology, are paramount in understanding some of the causes of international emigration. In order to achieve this I will use three concepts: identity, local structures of desire and imaginary geographies. With these I intend to complement comprehensively other research approaches on migration based on the study of economic or macro-sociological causes. The fourth contribution I wish to outline regards the role of ethnography in its three types - experiential, thick description and multi-sided - as a suitable means for studying international migration. This reflection is based on the results of nearly five years of research on international migration in the city of Pereira -and its metropolitan area-, known in Colombia for its high rates of emigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This lecture aims to illuminate the girardian theory of imitation from a critical perspective of a recent ethnographic research on the mayas Tsotsiles Chamula, from Chiapas, México. Girardian hypothesis of "mimetic desire" presents many possibilities to explain social and cultural conflicts, especially those arising in an "intra-ethnic" way. It also offers opportunities to better understand rites or rituals developments, or customs and traditions as relevant mimetic expressions developed to control the power or the generative force of mimesis when communitarian conflicts increase. However, Girard's theory raises strong criticism from a scientific anthropology, against major theories attempting to explain almost everything; and from the academic space of socio-cultural anthropology as well. From this framework, this paper warns about what is needed in current field studies: first, how to document empirically relevant indicators of interactive power of mimesis and, second, how to test Girard's hypothesis, namely: what be the elusive but very influential variable of "mimetic desire". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shuffles together several reflections which were wrung out of a specific ethnographic approach, staged on a street at the Manizales' historical center (Colombia). Through it, the ethnographer's experience on the field is shown as a journey of "walking" on the street, so that it provides the grounds to impinge upon current problematic notions in anthropology, such as reflexivity, the social significance of massive flow spaces and methodological questions, and the practices such ethnographic situations demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of rituals as a way of political positioning has been a very difficult task, essentially because the category of ritual itself has darkened important issues concerning the rituals' functions. Using the category of ritual digression, the present paper assesses how a specific healing ritual performed by Embera people becomes a tool to generate political commitment. The study considers the ritual as a discursive and performative work, which produces political identities in a context where conflict prevails. The present work is based in ethnographic fieldwork carried out from 2000 to 2004, in sporadic seasons in an Indian reserve called La Albania, Risaralda and San José de Caldas, Caldas, Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lies, accounts and performance aimed at deceiving the audience, always haunt the researcher's mind. Whether one chooses quantitative or qualitative (even ethnographic) means, researchers come up with methodological devices (triangulation, re-interviewing, being there, rapport) as ways to eliminate distortion from researchers and respondents, and to get true statements and categories from our social subjects. In this paper I take advantage of an "identity lie" (or a fake identity) which came up while I was working with Malvinas war veterans in Buenos Aires (1992). By comparing veterans' identities to my own identity as an anthropologist in the field, I show that lies are part of metacommunicative competences by which both vets and I learn to talk and act about "Malvinas". By means of this reflexive twist, deceptive informants appear to challenge our methodological assumptions, not just because they alter the reliability of our accounts, but rather because they illuminate the very core of our identities at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]