Search

The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has issued a call for papers on the topic of ethnographies of infrastructure. The aim is to examine how infrastructure has been studied ethnographically, exploring its visible and invisible elements, material and non-material dimensions, geopolitical and economic implications, and its relationship to other structures. The special issue seeks papers that offer theoretical perspectives and methodological treatments of infrastructure, grounded in empirical case studies or critical reviews of existing ethnographies. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2024. [Extracted from the article]

This paper revisits discussions about the pursuit of a singular location for ethnographic research. Citing challenges to the fixity of location, from circulation of people to the impossibility of containing digital worlds, scholars have proposed multi-sited, multi-scalar, multi-modal and multi-sensorial ethnographies, advocating that the researcher 'follow the actor'. Drawing upon these innovations, this paper traces the affects generated in the process of following the actors as well as the consequent blurring of the division between the researcher and the researched so that they together constitute the category of 'actors' who co-produce the field. Using the example of an ethnography with young lower middle class women in Delhi, this paper deploys the researcher's experience of dislocation or unexpected shuttling in the field to develop 'dislocation' as a methodological and analytical strategy for studying marginalisation in the context of socio-economic change by embracing intersubjective relations, affects and partiality of knowledge in ethnographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic researchers have long relied upon observation as a powerful means to learn about social relations. This paper discusses research observation that was conducted as a part of an institutional ethnography (IE) investigating how people use the language and ideas of neurodiversity across different settings. While our research protocol initially called for ethnographic observation to take place at in-person events in Southern Ontario, our approach needed to be re-formulated with the switch to online events during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the shift to online-only spaces, a total of 52 sessions at 7 online events related to neurodiversity or autism were observed by a team of 5 researchers: these events were no longer geographically restricted but were officially "hosted" by institutions in Canada, the US, and the UK. This paper reflects upon the challenges and opportunities we encountered as we conducted observations in digital spaces, including our experiences of navigating the "chat" feature. We discuss the need to analyze the format as well as the content of online events, and present findings on how neurodiversity appeared in these social spaces. Finally, we consider the implications of this research for people who are conducting ethnographic observation in an increasingly online world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article further systematizes the existential body, contributing to the ethnographic model of embodied objectivity. It situates embodiment as the foundation of knowledge, demonstrating its underdevelopment in anthropological literature. The paper explores the philosophical relationship between being-in-the-world and Merleau-Ponty's body-proper, emphasizing the central role of embodied pre-objective signification in representational ethnographic knowing. This aspect is often insufficiently addressed, particularly in light of certain ethnographic applications of the epoché. The paper concludes that, given the oscillatory apprehension of embodiment, the use of terms like "systematizing" and "inter-objectivity" adequately enhances its portrayal as a pre-objective phenomenon rather than an objective one. [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]

Choosing an appropriate qualitative methodology in nursing research is a researcher's first step before beginning a study. Such a step is critical as the selected qualitative methodology should be congruent with the research questions, study assumptions, data gathering and analysis to promote the utility of such research in enhancing nursing knowledge. In this paper, we compare focused ethnography by Roper and Shapira and interpretive phenomenology by Benner. Though these methodologies are naturalistic and appear similar, both have different methodological underpinnings. The historical, ontological, epistemological, and axiological philosophy guiding each methodology are described. In addition, the methodological underpinnings of both methodologies and a justification for use in nursing research are provided. This paper will assist future researchers who aim to employ these methodologies in nursing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the City of Portland, Oregon's recent zoning code amendment which legalized sanctioned homeless encampments. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in Portland, the paper details how the City Government's long-held opposition to homeless camping shifted to a position of acceptance. The paper identifies the state of emergency (SOE) on housing and homelessness as a critical moment for developing not only a legal foundation, but also a social justification, for legalizing encampments as an official shelter strategy. In contrast to research over the past few decades articulating the camp as the realization of punitive sovereign power, the paper suggests the relationality of emergency governance, or "governing-through-emergency," instead provides an opportunity to legitimate the lived experiences and desires of unhoused people residing in sanctioned encampments. It concludes by warning that, although emergency governance serves as a critical tool to advance the interests of the unhoused, such governing strategies are limited by structural forces producing homelessness more broadly. [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 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]

Introduction: Cancer remains a significant health burden in Nigeria and requires the efforts of all stakeholders to address it. Little is known about how the worldviews of Nigerian patients with cancer and other institutional factors affect cancer management in Nigeria. This paper draws evidence from an ethnonursing study conducted in a Nigerian cancer care setting. Method: This study adopted a qualitative design using an ethnonursing approach. The study was conducted in one of the primary cancer treatment centers owned by the federal government of Nigeria. Data collection was conducted using participant observation, interviews, and field notes. Data collected were analyzed using NVivo 12 and presented as categories and sub-categories. Results: Analysis yielded two themes and seven sub-themes. The major themes included (1) dominant worldview and (2) institutional/contextual factors. Participants attributed life, living, and death as being controlled by a supreme being. Cancer care was constrained by unfavorable institutional factors such as lack of equipment, staffing, and intensified workload. Discussion: Cancer institutions should provide more cancer care infrastructure that will facilitate the work of nurses and other health care workers. There should be an enabling environment that would attract and retain nurses in the cancer wards. The hospital environment should be made conducive for the cancer care providers, patients with cancer, and their relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have found that many post-secondary music students suffer from physical and mental health issues. However, researchers have mainly studied these problems at the individual level, with little investigation of how music students' work is shaped by the coordinating effects of policies, texts, and discourses at and beyond their local site. This paper describes a protocol for an international project that will explore the health of music students in the context of their daily work. Using an institutional ethnography approach, we will examine the social organization of music students' work at three universities: two in Canada and one in Australia. This will be the first set of studies that use institutional ethnography specifically for the purpose of understanding how the social organization of music students' work shapes their health. Data will be collected using several methods common to institutional ethnography: interviews, focus groups, observations, and collecting texts. Data analysis will begin during the data collection process and proceed in two fluid stages. The first stage will involve a detailed investigation of the pertinent work activities at each music school. The second will involve linking that work to specific social relations within and beyond the institution. After data analysis has been completed at all three sites, findings will be compared to one another to identify commonalities and differences in how students' work is organized. Findings of the entire project may inform policy-making and lead to positive change at the institutions studied, as well as others where similar social organization may occur. The novel approach described here will provide opportunities to expand current knowledge about music students' work and health beyond what has been learned through approaches that focus on students' individual behaviours and attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a fruitful tension in ethnomethodological work. On the one hand, real-world data are used to rein in analytical privilege. On the other, conceptual discussions necessarily take place in a more open analytical space. Describing settings in detail and thinking about things in the abstract are both essential components of the ethnomethodological project. What ethnographies might consist in complicates this picture. Garfinkel initially deflated the concept of 'ethnography', using it to refer to how all members of society make sense of their world. Sacks, on the other hand, initially construed his sociological project as a more rigorous form of professional ethnography. Ethnographic methods rightly remain an important tool for ethnomethodological analyses. They provide an empirical grounding for analysis and facilitate 'thinking about things' in a more open manner than some other forms of data. This paper argues that ethnographic analyses more generally can be used as ethnomethodological resources, (re)introducing the idea that others' fieldwork and analyses are legitimate resources for ethnomethodological work. Some materials from Elijah Anderson's classic ethnography A Place on the Corner are used to illustrate the possibilities taking this approach might offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video-Reflexive Ethnography (VRE) is an innovative and participatory research and improvement methodology that involves videoing in-situ work practices and collaboratively analysing this footage with participants during reflexive sessions. This involves participants 'slowing down', engaging reflexively with their everyday working practices, and taking time out to discuss issues collectively. VRE has increasingly been used across a range of different healthcare settings. However, one setting that has received less attention is the Acute Medical Unit (AMU). AMUs are busy short-stay hospital departments with very high patient throughput and large multidisciplinary teams where patients receive initial assessment, diagnosis and treatment before being moved to other wards or settings. The aim of this study was to examine how VRE as a research and improvement methodology can be applied, in the busy and complex setting of an AMU. In this paper we outline some of the methodological challenges encountered in this setting and discuss how these were transformed into opportunities and solutions. Then, we evaluate our work by using the four guiding principles at the heart of VRE (care, collaboration, reflexivity and exnovation) to test if, and how, the methodology can be used in such a complex and busy setting without losing its methodological rigor and impact. We show how it is possible to initiate and achieve the core principles of VRE in the complex and busy AMU setting through careful planning, constant revision of data collection methods, remaining highly flexible and adaptable to the spatial and temporal rhythms of the ward and being sensitive to hierarchical inter- and intra-professional relationships and vulnerabilities. Finally, we share recommendations for using VRE in other busy and complex settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically examines the notion of interpretation and interpretive practices within journalist-scientist interactions in the news production process. The linguistic ethnographic work in this paper offers rare insights into an intense and lengthy collaboration between a newspaper, university, and government agency as they set up a citizen science project on air quality in Belgium. Our analysis focuses on how journalists and scientists interpret scientific results and how they actively reflect on that interpretation. Beeman and Peterson's (2001) notion of interpretive practice is adopted as an analytical framework and operationalized by looking into how routine procedures, cultural categories, and social positions from the fields of journalism and science are adapted, negotiated or reflected on in the dataset. The findings show that the scientists go beyond providing data and expertise and are heavily engaged in the interpretive work within the news production process. The close-knit interaction between the scientists and journalists brings about a struggle over whose interpretation should be a part of the final news product and limits the interpretive power of the journalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical epistemologies and methodologies have over time challenged the static and mono-dimensional approaches to fieldwork, allowing researchers to contemplate and conduct their research in spaces of in-betweenness. Despite this important shift, the essentialist idea that both 'the field' and 'home' in a fieldwork setting must be actual places persists. In this article, we challenge the conceptualization and operationalization of 'home' not only as the juxtaposition to 'the field', but also as the embodiment of a place in a specific temporality. We argue that the postulation of 'home' as a constant disregards the non-predetermined and unpredictable nature of fieldwork relationships that are often complicated by implicit and explicit power dynamics, especially in places researchers identify as 'home'. We demonstrate that unequal power relations, especially (1) between the Global North and Global South, (2) between majority and minoritized groups, (3) among genders, and (4) between elites and non-elites, require us to envisage 'the field' and 'home' in relative terms. We propose the reconceptualization of fieldwork place as a hybridized space that conjoins 'the field' and 'home' as 'field-home', particularly at a time when research mobility is restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this way, we extend the literature on issues related to power, positionality and reflexivity in qualitative research, and provide practical insights for those preparing for fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education is in flux with more precarity, a stronger focus on effectiveness, and productivity having resulted in a competitive and hostile culture. For this article, we take a proactive approach to counteract the narrative of silencing by exploring the opportunities collaboration may afford. Drawing on our personal experiences, professional knowledge, and research, we engaged in a collaborative form of poetic inquiry. Our contribution in this article lies with the links we make between collaboration, creativity through autoethnographic poetic inquiry, and translanguaging. This approach constitutes a model for collaboration which counteracts the silencing impact of the contemporary competitive academic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the current trends in conducting ethnographies, with time and funding limitations and the need to reflect on the researcher's positionality, this article explores the implications of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a mixed team (in terms of gender, race and nationality) with highly vulnerable populations in a context of crisis. To that end, the article analyses the experience of conducting a team ethnography with African migrants in Tijuana, Mexico. While the study did not start with a self-awareness of what a team ethnography implied, as fieldwork developed the gender, race and nationality of both interviewees and researchers became crucial elements to produce a meaningful multi-layered, multiply-positioned ethnography. This article argues that methodological flexibility and the researchers' relationship with themselves and the respondents are vital elements that require further experimentation in ethnographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this autoethnography of ethnographic training and methodologies, I reflect upon unaddressed tensions in a Los Angeles County gurdwara ethnography, pursued as an intellectualized response to the 2012 Oak Creek gurdwara shooting. I theorize the gurdwara (and other similarly sociopolitically located spaces) as "already-surveilled," where intimacy in a US white supremacist context must also be seen as a forced relation with the state surveillance apparatus. Analyzing field notes from the classroom and gurdwara, I offer three possible approaches to ethnographic inquiry: participant observation, bearing witness, and embodied conviction. I argue that, without an embodied approach, ethnographic approaches fail to incorporate analyses of power and precarity (the material), particularly for communities of belief (the immaterial). Finally, I offer a model for generating theoretical and methodological frameworks from embodied practices of belief or conviction—in this case, Sikh praxes of relation, knowing, and belief that are witnessed across various gurdwaras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newcomer adolescents make up a large minority of Canada's population and their positive integration experiences with education systems across the country are critical for both their development and the country's long-term success. The current study examined newcomer adolescents' (n = 4, between 16 and 18 years old) integration experiences using an arts-based engagement ethnography to understand what influences their positive integration into the school system. Artifacts, interview, and focus group data were analyzed systematically using ethnographic research guidelines. Five structures were identified: (1) barriers to advancement at individual, school, and macro levels, (2) fluctuating relationship with cultural identity, (3) limited trust in systems, (4) resilience through independent learning, and (5) facilitating factors to positive integration experiences at the family and school level. In keeping with a relational developmental systems theory framework, each structure accounts for multiple inter- and intra-individual factors at multiple environmental levels. These findings outline considerations for systemic issues in academic institutions and offer suggestions for how institutions can better support newcomer adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an unexpected methodological shift made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during doctoral research, and exemplifies reflexivity in action whilst negotiating my complex positionality as both a researcher and a social worker. The first UK national lockdown was announced after I had conducted 3 months of ethnographic data collection in a local authority adult social work team, thus halting my research. As society shut down, face-to-face research was paused overnight, however, the local authority continued to provide essential services and support. Forging a path forward, I successfully gained a job practising as a social worker within the team and completed a supplementary ethics application to include auto-ethnographic data which would complement the existing ethnography. Although practicing reflexivity and analysing positionality are established and encouraged parts of ethnographic research, how a researcher actively conducts them varies and usually remains unseen. Methodologies are often presented in a sanitised and polished manner, depriving the reader of the messy yet informative reality of research. This article draws upon fieldnotes to practically illustrate and bring this reflexivity on positionality to the fore. As I move from participant-observer to complete-participant, the findings zoom in on my experience of navigating positionality, revealing a micro picture of the details and subtleties of this process. This unexpected research journey enhanced my level of intimacy with the phenomenon, the research site, and the participants. Overall, this example of enacting reflexivity helps to bridge the gap between how positionality is theorised and how it actively practiced. Finally, this article is a call for more open, deeper, and continual reflexivity on our positionality as researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare workers, globally, volunteered time and skills to the COVID-19 pandemic frontline response. In March 2020, the predicted high demand for extra critical care beds led to the rapid construction of the UK National Health Service (NHS) Nightingale field hospital, London. I volunteered to develop and deliver psychological preparedness training – coined 'Psychological PPE' – to over 2300 frontline staff over an 8-week period. Existing research has identified broad themes of the impact working on the COVID-19 frontline has on healthcare workers but does not capture in-depth accounts of individuals' experiences. Using autoethnographic enquiry, this research explores my frontline experience at the NHS Nightingale during this time, and the personal impact this had on me. Reflexive thematic analysis explored themes of recognition and sacrifice, emotional lability and fragility, and the impact of transitions. Findings inform personal recovery, as well as future research and policy development pertaining to the sustainable recovery of our NHS people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women in Vietnam, historically and today, have participated in the labor force at a high rate. Since Vietnam opened its markets in 1986, their participation has noticeably declined. Given this change, what does economic transformation mean for how men understand the place of women in society, and relatedly, what does it mean for how they understand masculinity? Through ethnography and interviews with 53 men in Ho Chi Minh City, I find that Vietnamese men in this urban center aspire for projects of masculinity that rely on the reimagination of Vietnamese women as non-workers in history. My findings show that men from different economic positions and occupations evidence divergent views of the family and women's role in it. Men who are employed in waged occupations with a high school degree or less seek to realize "tradition" through the single-income family and the homemaker wife, yet this family is not necessarily an echo of the past. By contrast, men in salary paying occupations with some or complete college education view the dual-income family and the female worker as progressive despite the long history of women's labor in Vietnam. This finding presents an opportunity to understand how masculinity as an ideal, a process, and a lived experience occurs during moments of economic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the methodological aspects of a multi-voiced, collaborative ethnographic research process, in particular how video can enhance and amplify this research endeavour. The authors illustrate and discuss how experimental filmic methodologies can help to capture processes of becoming in a collaborative research endeavour, both enabling the development and production of diverse empirical materials and enhancing the multivocality of research practices. Using explorations of the National Tourist Route towards Havøysund in northern Norway as our empirical context, we reflect on diverse engagements along the process, such as becoming aware how the camcorder becomes a member in the research team. The filmed material forms an entanglement where our explorations along the route, our cultural practices related to the northern landscape and diverse disciplinary practices come together. We address three main ways video contributed to our research process and the creation of research materials. First, we highlight how video enables the creation of empirical traces that can be used as research materials. Second, we explore how video can work for mobilisation of multivocal dialogues. Finally, we point out that video opens the way for integration of the sensual into the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces 'future memory work' as a conceptual framework and speculative practice to unsettle the temporal hierarchies that are intrinsically tied to the anthropological project and that lead to Othering through time. By adding a future dimension to memory work – a concept and methodological tool to better understand how we make sense of the world around us – it becomes possible not only to acknowledge but proactively make use of how the future shapes the way we (re)construct the past in the now. The article foregrounds a study wherein young Indigenous people from Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) were invited to create 'future memories' for subsequent generations by producing 'memory texts' that best represent what they consider worth preserving. In my research, I utilize the future to elevate the present in conjunction with the past and illustrate how this future-orientation offers an alternative temporal frame to investigate young Kalaallit's (Greenlandic Inuit) multitemporal relations to the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly hostile immigration policies in the UK produce insecure immigration statuses and exclusion from public services and mainstream welfare benefits. Little is known about how this precaritization affects racially minoritized mothers with insecure immigration statuses and 'no recourse to public funds'. The ethnographic study on which this article is based explored the impact of hostile policies on mothering, and found that precaritization increases the significance of mothers' informal support networks, including friendships. I show how hostile policies constrain mothers' friendship practices, shaping access to support. I argue that while mothers share diverse forms of support through their everyday friendship practices, they have to navigate dialectical tensions (contradictions) that play out in ways specific to their precarious legal and financial positioning. Applying theories of friendship and relational dialectics, I highlight the importance of safe, sociable spaces and sustained 'friendship work' to navigate tensions and nurture friendships as sites of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-conflict ethnographic research thrives on bodily immersion in a field site to interact and observe how conflict-affected people navigate and make sense of their world. Therefore, ethnography and distance or ethnographic distance is an oxymoron. Physical immersion in the field has the advantage of generating situated knowledge as the researcher comes to know his situation/location in the field in relation to the social location, conditions, and identities of the researched and all those involved in the knowledge production. Hence, physical presence is desirable for the study of conflict-affected populations. However, when being in the field is dangerous or impossible, the researcher can adapt without losing the key insights that physical immersion provides. COVID-19 research travel restrictions made it impossible for me to travel to Uganda, a post-conflict setting, to conduct fieldwork for my doctoral studies. I had to re-scope my original research design to conduct remote fieldwork. This raised additional ethical challenges associated with fieldwork in such settings. This article reflects on my experience collaborating with two local research assistants (RAs) to conduct remote fieldwork in Northern Uganda. First, my overall ethical responsibility was based on a commitment not to transfer all the risks to the RAs. I formulated my ethical decisions around payment, workload, and the wellbeing of the RAs. Second, remote fieldwork meant that the RAs were the brokers, interviewers, interpreters, transcribers, and translators. These expanded roles significantly impacted the knowledge production processes. To account for this, I asked the RAs to write reflexive statements to situate themselves in the research. I discussed their reflexive statements around their roles as brokers, interviewers and language translators/interpreters and how each impacted knowledge production. The analysis shows that COVID-19 accelerated the localisation of peacebuilding research and provided an opportunity to re-think issues of power relations, local capacity, and gatekeeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnography describes an illness episode caused by breastfeeding complications. It focuses on informed consent processes accompanying this illness episode. Informed consent is a cornerstone of ethical medical practice and has to be obtained before a medical intervention can legally be implemented. It is therefore not trivial that in practice, informed consent processes often fail to achieve what they are set out to. With this autoethnography, I want to provide a review of how informed consent processes can fail in the context of breastfeeding, but also draw attention to what these situations can mean and feel like for those affected. I provide in-depth descriptions of five scenes from my illness episode each representing a different barrier to informed consent. The scenes were developed based on emotional recall and written to grant access to the emotional dimensions of my experience in the tradition of evocative autoethnography. As part of my story, I engage with various issues like practices of prescribing, communicative requirements in vulnerable situations to ensure understanding, the dual purpose of informed consent in the moral and legal realm, and the moralized breastfeeding discourse. Possible routes for change to abolish or reduce described barriers to informed consent are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Eduards Volters (1856–1941), an important ethnographer working in the first part of his career with the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, helped demonstrate the value of first-hand observation, social connection, and social context to ethnography through his research in Lithuania from 1882 to 1918. He did so at a time few of his contemporaries embraced his methods. The article seeks to show Volters' developing theoretical and political strategies during a period of developing Lithuanian nationalism in an emerging Lithuanian nation—a nationalism with which he was in deep sympathy. I focus on the following questions: the meaning of Volters' travels to Lithuania Minor and Lithuania; his contributions to what are now called borderland identities studies and his critical methodological and theoretical approach to the ethnography of his day. That critical approach involved ethnography as a part of political activism on the part of both researcher and research subjects. The piece will contribute to the critique of centralization of imperialism studies and will explore by comparison Volters' relationships with both intellectual predecessors and his contemporaries in Lithuania, Europe, and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tourist's cultural construction of nature can shape their nature sports experience. It can also impact how they perceive the destinations where they engage in nature sports. This ethnography identifies how international tourists on a surfing trip in Australia draw on their cultural knowledge of nature to assign meaning to their experiences and surroundings. The nature sports experience is influenced by three types of cultural knowledge applied to nature: declarative, evaluative, and procedural. Interaction with nature activates that knowledge. Theoretical contributions include offering a comprehensive explanation for how cultural knowledge of nature can transform the nature sports experience and providing a more complete picture of how cultural knowledge impacts the tourist's interpretation of a destination. Applied implications involve drawing on different types of cultural knowledge to create compelling nature sports and destination promotion campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immersive ethnographic tradition has strong potential to contribute to a deeper sociological understanding of the construction, maintenance and processes of powerful groups. However, ethnography as a method – and sociology as a discipline – has tended to focus more on developing techniques and toolkits for studying what Bourdieu and Wacquant call a "poverty population" rather than elites systems of power. In response, this article builds a much needed 'toolkit' for would-be-ethnographers, examining how ethnographic methodologies can be adapted to critically examine the elite cultural fields. It does so by adapting Desmond's four foci of relational ethnographic: fields, boundaries, processes and cultural conflict. Adopting a relational orientation, this article provides an illustration of how ethnography can be used in the study of powerful cultural fields, using the context of the City of London, and thereby forming the basis for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark's oldest asylum centre has been in operation in the small town of Jelling since 1993. Here, over time, the institutions of the local community and the asylum centre have merged, spatially and socially. Today, a local daycare centre and the local after-school club operate on the premises of the asylum centre. Based on an ethnographic study of the everyday institutional neighbourliness between 'asylum centre' and 'local community' in this small Danish town, this tale from the field pertains to the overwhelming national media attention that hit the research case halfway through its term – and unpacks how public media collaboration came to alter the very local state of affairs that I was in the middle of studying. It is argued how, more than simply dissemination partners or collaborators, 'the media' instead turned into actual co-creators of the ethnographic field – and so of the concrete empirical findings and analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we delve into a debate about whether a kitchen was to be installed in a new Women's House in a city in the Basque Country (Hernani, Gipuzkoa). The ethnography presented here was conducted by observing the process around the creation of the House. Articulating the debate's main points led us to examine the dominant cultural assumptions about cooking in Basque society, especially in view of the opposing feminist positions on the kitchen and the domestic sphere. To understand the changes that took place, it is essential to consider the participants' previous experience, the shape the discussion took and the diffractions and interferences that occurred during the process, as well as the priority placed on 'being and doing together' and being aware of the (self-)imposed limits while also allowing, even for a short period of time, the dichotomies that characterize and delimit this intercultural encounter to be questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on various ethnographic procedures and findings in ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA), addressing the question of how EM and CA relate to ethnography. Given the obvious answer that EM includes ethnography, we also argue that CA does as well, though just how EM and CA do so needs to be qualified and specified. Ethnographic procedures have been used in EM for decades, although often in non-standard ways, and currently with some ambivalence. In CA, it is more common to disavow ethnography in favor of recorded and transcribed interactional exchanges. However, we argue that CA often makes use of ethnographic insights drawn from extended study of recordings, while also identifying "ethnographic" inquiries of a sort that take place within the organizational settings studied. Our aim is to identify the place of ethnography within EMCA by taking an inventory of ways "ethnography" has been used, invoked, produced, and/or disavowed in particular studies and to highlight what is distinctive about those various EMCA uses of ethnography in contrast with more conventional ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the authors' ethnographies in the fields of taiji, ballet, and yoga, this article outlines and reflects the theoretical and empirical scope of what we mean by "ethnomethodological ethnography." Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EM/CA) have been juxtaposed and pit against various forms of ethnography and vice versa —for example, by criticizing various theoretical underpinnings of ethnographies, viewing EM/CA as a very limited micro-sociological research method, or by critiquing (auto-)ethnography as egocentric, self-absorbed, and ill-equipped to account for the detail and sequential organization of natural occurring actions and circumstances. Contrary to such deliberations, we highlight their common interest in putting empirical social phenomena first. In getting access to and describing what social phenomena consist of, members' competencies and detailed analysis of recorded data mutually elaborate each other. In this sense, they are potentially not only mutually inclusive but, as we shall argue, the entire field of EM/CA studies depends to some degree on actually doing ethnography. Based on our own ethnographic research, we will then zoom in on the case of taiji practice to highlight the relevance of autoethnography and evaluate how ethnographic reflections of self and body constitute and may foster "uniquely adequate" qualitative research. Ultimately, the aim is to explicate how EM/CA research policies differ from textbook oriented instructions and are better considered as praxeological respecifications of doing ethnomethodological ethnography in particular cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text discusses the relationship between ethnomethodology and ethnography and sketches what can be called an ethnomethodological ethnography. To do so, it shows that Garfinkel and his collaborators work ethnographically in order to adequately describe social phenomena and make their phenomenal field properties noticeable. To highlight the distinctive features of ethnomethodological ethnography, the text first discusses other ethnographic approaches. Differences between these approaches and the ethnomethodological ethnography become apparent through two argumentative steps: first, by discussing Garfinkel's reflections on ethnomethodology and ethnography, and second, by discussing actual ethnographies by Garfinkel's collaborators. The text concludes with a general reflection on the methodological principles of ethnomethodological ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers can use data visualization techniques to explore, analyze, and present data in new ways. Although quantitative data are visualized most often, recent innovations have brought attention to the potential benefits of visualizing qualitative data. In this article, the authors demonstrate one way researchers can use networks to analyze and present ethnographic interview data. The authors suggest that because many respondents know one another in ethnographic research, networks are a useful tool for analyzing the implications of respondents' familiarity with one another. Moreover, respondents often share familiar cultural references that can be visualized. The authors show how visualizing respondents' ties in conjunction with their shared cultural references sheds light on the different systems of meaning that respondents within a field site use to make sense of the social phenomena under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domains of computational social anthropology and computational ethnography refer to the computational processing or computational modelling of data for anthropological or ethnographic research. In this context, the article surveys the use of computational methods regarding the production and the representation of knowledge. The ultimate goal of the study is to highlight the significance of modelling ethnographic data and anthropological knowledge by harnessing the potential of the semantic web. The first objective was to review the use of computational methods in anthropological research focusing on the last 25 years, while the second objective was to explore the potential of the semantic web focusing on existing technologies for ontological representation. For these purposes, the study explores the use of computers in anthropology regarding data processing and data modelling for more effective data processing. The survey reveals that there is an ongoing transition from the instrumentalisation of computers as tools for calculations, to the implementation of information science methodologies for analysis, deduction, knowledge representation, and reasoning, as part of the research process in social anthropology. Finally, it is highlighted that the ecosystem of the semantic web does not subserve quantification and metrics but introduces a new conceptualisation for addressing and meeting research questions in anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I reflect on my empirical engagement in the global (digital) health movement #WeAreNotWaiting in the context of Type 1 Diabetes. I want to take my relationships and interactions in this community as a starting point to discuss the multifacetedness of doing ethnographic research in health-political activist communities while not being affected by the health conditions the research participants are affected by and not sharing their explicit personal-political aim. Building on Donna Haraway's conceptualization of situated knowledge and Kim TallBear's notion of ethics of accountability, I empirically retrace three accounts of disclosing otherness in my empirical engagement that were generative for my understanding of the movement. I suggest that the moments where one needs to explain oneself, where one is met with skepticism, or experiences tensions, might be uncomfortable and challenging but can be generative. To engage with them can contribute to the accountability of the ethnographer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As has recently been highlighted, despite the prevalence of methodological "confessional tales" in ethnography generally, the challenges of undertaking ethnographic research specifically in institutional sports settings remain underexplored. Drawing on data from a 3-year ethnographic study of competitive swimming in the United Kingdom (UK), here we explore some of the practical challenges of balancing different elements of the researcher's role when undertaking ethnographic "insider" research in familiar settings. In particular, we consider the difficulties of balancing the role of a doctoral researcher and the chosen research role of a volunteer coach with a competitive swimming program. Employing the anthropological concept of liminality, we also analyze the lived challenges of leaving a highly familiar field and entering a state of liminality, where the researcher was caught on the threshold betwixt and between a return to full-time employment in the former "known" role of coach, and a move forward to embrace a new "unknown" role as a full-time member of academic staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much should ethnographers involve themselves with the people, places, and processes they study? One answer has become increasingly popular: invert the standard method of participant observation into observant participation. This article draws on an ethnography of ambulance work to consider the trade-offs between these approaches. My fieldwork included "ride-alongs" with labor and management at a private ambulance firm in California (participant observation) and short-term employment as a novice emergency medical technician at the same company (observant participation). Beyond a simplistic distinction in "empirical depth," I identify three issues at stake between participant observation and observant participation: field positioning, analytic gaze, and data assembly. Where participant observation presents more opportunities for mobile positioning, outward gazing, and inscription, observant participation presents more opportunities for fixed positioning, inward gazing, and incarnation. In addition to justifying such contrasts, I consider the advantages of mixing these styles into a hybrid approach when feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based participant-observation purposefully combines participant-observation and community-based participatory research. While participant-observation is the core method of ethnography and foundational to cultural anthropology, community-based participatory research initially emerged from health and related applied sciences to align researchers' and communities' agendas through focused collaboration. Participant-observation and community-based participatory research have different scholarly origins and norms but are united in centering communities' understandings on their terms. Combining the strengths of both, we provide a step-by-step explanation of community-based participant-observation, with examples from a study of water insecurity in colonias north of the U.S.–Mexico border. Using community-based participant-observation, researchers can facilitate the co-production of knowledge and community benefit by analyzing high-quality data that inform theory building and basic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potential of unruly wild spaces and foraging practices to enable unmediated encounters and unsettling transformations, through the ethnography of neoforaging praxis and its emphasis on seeking direct "connection." In pursuit of connection with nature through foraging practices, neoforagers regularly encounter both non-human and human others at the unruly edges and seams of cultivated space. Neoforagers associate the unruliness and immediacy of such encounters with "true connection" and pursue practices that are considered both "connective" and "transformative," capable of subverting hegemonic narratives and consumerist dependencies. Through the case of Israeli neoforagers in the troubled context of Israel/Palestine, I revisit power and categorical relations in the nation-state from neoforagers' connection-oriented perspective, making salient ongoing processes in which micro-scale encounters are continuously disrupted by the mediating affects of macro-politics, social categories, cultural schemes and such, making salient that in the nation-state unruly situations and unmediated encounters are all too scarce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I examine the opportunities and challenges arising from an experimental digital ethnography I conducted as a digital content creator in response to social restrictions during COVID-19. To explore the perceptions and performances of masculinity among young Uzbek men in Uzbekistan, I created 50 TikTok videos between 2021 and 2022. These videos received more than 300,000 likes in total, not only significantly broadening the reach of my research recruitment but also serving as a substantial source of ethnographic data during the pandemic. Throughout the creation of these digital videos, I assumed a dual role as an agent in the research and an object of observation. This dual role underscores the agency of both researchers and the researched in navigating the digital platform, which allows for the challenging of conventional research gazes and relationships. This digital approach also unveils the complex spatial dynamics that underlie interactions in both online and offline realms, shedding light on how digital platforms can both enhance and constrain research efforts. Moreover, this article delves into the ethical implications of this experimental digital ethnography, which revolve around potential physical and mental risks to researchers, challenges related to the re-definition of research participation, and issues pertaining to obtaining informed consent. The findings provide insights and make contributions to problematising the conceptualisation of digital spaces, online communities/publics and digital ethnography. I conclude by offering insights for researchers who face restrictions in field access or are interested in studying youth culture on social media platforms, particularly in the role of a content creator, an area that has been relatively underexplored in previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnography seeks to open up for re-interpretation and debate three topics that feature within social work practice, research, and education: firstly the value and use of metaphor in understanding practice, secondly approaches to social work reflective writing, and thirdly the issue of poverty and its significance and impact in child and family social work. Metaphors can be valuable in framing understanding of issues within social work practice and advocating for change. Three metaphors have been particularly used in understanding the relationship between social work practice and poverty: The Invisibility of Poverty, The Elephant in the Room, and The Wallpaper of Practice. The three Parts of this autoethnography each adopt a different approach to autoethnographic writing and addresses and unsettles one of these metaphors. The first part adopts a narrative-reflective-analytical approach conventional to reflective writing in social work. The second and third parts adopt poetic and post-humanist approaches, respectively. It is proposed that adopting autoethnography as a methodology challenges the uncritical application of metaphor to situated practice and thereby prevents interpretive foreclosure. 'Writing against' objectified social work knowledge may assist in opening up practice to more challenging critical reflection and re-interpretation. Juxtaposing these three parts demonstrates the potential of non-conventional autoethnographic approaches to provide opportunities for deeper reflection on the experiences of doing social work within the context of poverty than conventional approaches to reflective writing. Furthermore, they indicate a need to reconsider how well these metaphors reflect social work practice experience with poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the impacts of mobility on individuals and their family ties in tourist destination communities, paying attention to the individualization process among the rural, ethnic minority population in contemporary China. Based on my decade-long ethnography in Fenghuang county, Hunan province, I explore how the rapid rise of tourism-induced mobility has brought individual autonomy and collective morality under constant negotiation among previously clan-based people, and what the course and consequences of ongoing individualization are for the non-Han population in China. I argue that individuals' greater mobility may enhance, rather than diminish, the importance of family, and that this is especially true for the rural, ethnic minority population in China. Their experience of dealing with individualization also reveals that the effect of social structure is to some extent unchanged, representing a case of "embedded individualization." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay outlines how Black placemaking, a sociological framework used to study Black residents in urban contexts, might be used to study Black students' experiences at historically White institutions (HWIs) of higher education. Black placemaking engages with the intersection of Blackness, place, structure, and agency. The author argues that this framework has the potential to more expansively study Black students' lives, experiences, and mechanisms of engagement without discounting realities of oppression. Drawing from research on Black students attending HWIs and data from an ethnography conducted by the author, this essay conceptualizes a Black placemaking approach for higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]