Search

This article addresses the issue of harm in the research process. While researchers seek to conduct research that minimises harm, this paper argues that approaches adopted often create new forms of harm. This proposition is examined through drawing on Bourdieu's ideas about symbolic violence and poststructural theories of identity, to critically reflect on three moments of harm that occurred in research on violence with groups of young people in South Africa and the UK. The paper traces ways in which the research topic, research relationship and dynamics of friendship groups produced physical, emotional and symbolic violence, and asks whether the research was itself an act of violation. Yet sometimes there is value in the conflicts that happen. Conflicts in the research setting may disrupt, destabilise and contest violence, and perhaps the most ethical research position may not be to try to eradicate harm, but to increase these destabilising moments.

One proposed strategy to overcome labour shortages in male-dominated jobs is to attract female workers. This has been the case for lorry driving in the UK. These efforts, however, often work to reproduce binary gendered stereotypes, or seek to include women without questioning how working conditions and everyday embodied work itself constructs gender roles and difference and is differentially experienced. In this paper, we highlight differentiated lorry driving bodies at work, centring lorries as an essential part of global logistical systems. Empirically drawing from interviews and mobile ethnographies with freight drivers in England, we tell a series of composite stories which uncover gendered ideals of worker-bodies, and embodied experiences of mobilities. With the gendered, embodied life's work of lorry driving remaining largely invisible and poorly understood, we illustrate the complex intersections between places, people, materialities and forms of work. Through this paper, we show how (gendered) narratives and bodily difference are both reproduced and disrupted through lorry driving work. We argue that only through recognising – and destabilising - the gendered re/production of mobile work will other logistical futures be made possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: There is limited scholarship on artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education governance, despite the growing prevalence of AI-powered technologies in many fields, including education. However, as the technology is still nascent and has yet to reach its full potential, ideas and arguments abound, championing or cautioning against the use of these technologies. Design/Approach/Methods: To fill this gap in research on policy networks and AI in British higher education, this article employs network ethnography and discourse analysis to study how ideas about AI-powered technologies in higher education circulate in policy networks in the United Kingdom. Findings: The findings evidence a policy network showing signs of a heterarchy permeated by neoliberal rationales and populated by policy actors actively promoting artificial intelligence technologies to be used in education. Originality/Value: This paper builds on existing research by looking at the university and not-for-profit sectors, in addition to the governmental and educational technology sectors. Using network ethnography, this article expands our understanding of the policy actors involved and critically analyzes ideas regarding the use of AI in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty in the UK continues to rise, making it more important than ever to understand lived experiences of poverty. This paper responds to a gap in understanding collective experiences of poverty by analysing the affective atmospheres at three foodbanks in two British cities in 2014 and 2019. Drawing on ethnographies at the three foodbanks, it approaches affective atmospheres through Spinoza and a focus on capacity: the capacity of clients to be in a situation different to that of their current experience of food poverty; and the capacity of foodbank volunteers and managers in terms of how they desired the foodbank to be run. Overall, the paper argues that affective atmospheres at the foodbanks were formed by an ever‐changing relation between these capacities through the past, present, and anticipated future, and the ongoing context of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative research methods are increasingly used in nutrition and dietetics research. Ethnography is an underexploited approach which seeks to explore the diversity of people and cultures in a given setting, providing a better understanding of the influences that determine their choices and behaviours. It is argued that traditional ethnography, that is, the methodology of living within participant communities, is a dated practice, with roots in colonialism, accessible to only researchers with the means, connections and status to conduct such research, typically white, privileged males. This paper proposes a formal interpretation of 'patchwork ethnography', whereby research is carried out in situ around existing modern‐day commitments of the researcher, thus enabling more researchers within health, nutrition and dietetic practice to benefit from the rich data that can be discovered from communities. This review proposes the concept that pragmatic patchwork ethnography is required, proposing a framework for implementation, providing researchers, particularly within the fields of human nutrition, dietetics and health, the accessibility and means to deploy a meaningful client‐centric methodology. We present pragmatic patchwork ethnography as a modern method for use within multiple healthcare settings, thus adding a progressive brick in the wall of qualitative research. Key points: Ethnography in health research allows professionals to gather rich qualitative data such as lived experiences of participants.However, undertaking traditional ethnography can be demanding, costly and time‐consuming, consequently rendering it inaccessible and challenging to undertake.Pragmatic patchwork ethnography is underpinned by guiding principles of traditional ethnography, enabling researchers to weave the method into existing life and health practice commitments.This paper sets out the seven steps required to deploy pragmatic patchwork ethnography enabling and empowering public health, nutrition and dietetic researchers to undertake valuable qualitative research in a contemporary research landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper 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 contributes to the literature on Procedural Justice Theory (PJT) by exploring its capacity to explain the dynamic interactions between police and citizens within the context of police detention. Analysis is based on observation and interviews in police custody suites (i.e. locations where arrested citizens are formally processed and held) within one of the larger metropolitan police forces in the UK. The qualitative thematic analysis highlights how, in order to adequately understand police–detainee interactions, it is critical that PJT properly recognises (a) the importance of context for framing 'procedurally fair' encounters, (b) the central role and consequences of categorisation, and (c) the role of power in shaping police–citizen encounters. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this research for assumptions regarding the causal ordering often assumed in the PJT literature. Specifically, we suggest that procedural justice is more than merely a mechanistic route to achieving compliance but can also be conceptualised as a 'reward' by the powerful to those already willing to be subordinated and acquiescent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on my PhD thesis about the production culture of Chinese entertainment. I will discuss the challenges I faced during my fieldwork in China and will reflect on a general level on how to access this non-western field for doing media ethnography. As a UK-based university researcher, doing ethnography in my own country, China, this brought me particular challenges. Some ethical guidelines in the UK were not applicable to issues concerning consent. Regarding this inapplicability, Chinese scholar Suiming Pan questioned the application of Western guidelines in a Chinese context: as sociology in China lacks local theories, should Chinese researchers apply Western theories in China or invent new theories based on phenomena that have never occurred in the West? By the same token, how should Chinese researchers adapt Western ethics guidelines? This paper aims to discuss these questions in the Chinese context -- how I had to be flexible with guidelines while upholding academic standards. Since gaining access to Chinese media remains challenging, many compromises were made during the interactions with television production teams, gatekeepers and colleagues in the field. Furthermore, I encountered problems during my interviews with creative workers. Lastly, I will illustrate how I built relationships with people in the field and how I handled my identity crisis as an ethnographer in my own culture, hoping that my research experience can shed light on future ethnographic works in non-Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School food policy sets ambitious targets for improving child health and wellbeing through the provision of a nutritionally balanced school lunch, but there is very little evidence that policy and legislation designed to improve the quality of school food is having a positive impact on either the number of children choosing a school meal, or on improving children's health. This paper reports on findings from an institutional ethnography carried out in three UK primary schools between 2017 and 2019 to explore the issue of low meal uptake. It discusses the spatial issues that school food workers reported as impacting upon their work and traces these issues to a divergence between school food policies and building design processes. It concludes with recommendations for policy makers to reconsider the spatial implications of school food policies that seek to increase uptake, and to work with the accounts of school food workers to improve policy impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the aspects related to education and aspiration through the on-going experiences of Female Malay Muslim students in UK higher institutions. Building on an ethnographic approach, an in-depth interview with 30 female Malay students, I focus on the various aspects of the students' lives as scholarship holders, addressing in particular how they handle diplomatic practices in their everyday lives as Malaysian mini ambassadors overseas. The notions of aspiration, well-balanced citizenship and 'everyday diplomacy' are deployed in this research to understand the everyday experiences of these students. Hence, it is argued that the privileges in education policy for Bumiputera Malays have shaped the notion of achievement they hold and their attitude towards overseas education as well as their experiences abroad. My research suggests that being a mini diplomat means not only promoting the relationship between different cultures but also contributing to nations abroad through their volunteering work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that everyday life in housing contains the possibility to shape and transform its material, cultural, and social conditions. Mobilizing a materialist ontology and insights from human geography, we examine how shared spaces manifest practices of togetherness which prefigure the enactment of socioecological degrowth. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork on a housing estate in Manchester (UK) to identify practices that characterize everyday housing geographies, including reappropriation, commoning, accepting limits, and territorializing tendencies. These constitute a therapeutic assemblage, facilitating wellbeing while simultaneously enfolded with(in) the political possibilities being realized on the estate to form a contingent, yet durable, instantiation of everyday degrowth. We thus contribute to revealing how transformative degrowth politics are sustained in everyday housing contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eolith debate mirrors the development and demise of evolutionist anthropology in Britain between 1880 and 1940. This paper traces the connections between some of the key protagonists in the controversy, especially those associated with the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. The evolutionist pre-occupation of early Oxford anthropology with the continuity between archaeology and ethnology is shown to be linked to an interest in the Eolithic controversy, and these concerns persisted into a second generation as evolutionism was marginalized and prehistoric archaeology matured. Although the eolith debate finally floundered in the debris of the “epistemic rupture” between the world of Victorian evolutionism and late twentieth-century anthropology, some of its technical pre-occupations—particularly in relation to what we would now call ethnographic analogies and in terms of the techniques for distinguishing artefacts from geofacts—persist and are very much current issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines strategies for improving recycling behaviour within the Cornwall National Health Service (NHS). Using quantitative (questionnaires and waste bin analyses) and qualitative (ethnography and interviews) methodologies, the study examined the waste management practices of staff from the Cornwall NHS. It was found that employee participation in waste recycling at work was low due to a range of factors including NHS focus and policies, group norms, and individual attitudes and beliefs about sustainable waste management. Recommendations for improving the sustainability of NHS, employee waste management practices, with a specific focus on recycling are included in the paper. These recommendations include measures focused towards both the NHS organization and individual staff members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an account of an access encounter, and uses this case to reinforce the potential for access meetings to provide a rich source of ethnographic data. The paper originates from one of the authors' experience of negotiating research access in a UK local authority social services department. In response to a summary research proposal sent in advance that expressed interest in social work with men, a gatekeeper expressed his concern during an initial meeting that the author might be a ‘paedophile’ wanting to make contact with others of a similar persuasion. This encounter, and the issue of sexual abuse that it introduced, highlights a number of ethical, epistemological and gendered tensions for ethnographic work, which this paper attempts to negotiate. Some of the potential implications of this specific access meeting are discussed, and set within broader methodological and empirical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open water swimming (OWS) has rapidly grown in popularity, driven by the purported health benefits of cold-water immersion. A paucity of research remains specifically considering the notable risks inherent in OWS participation, and a lack of qualitative research on freshwater swimming experiences, and safety-related issues therein. This rapid ethnographic study, based at a dedicated OWS lake in the UK, conducted semi-structured interviews with OWS participants (n=17; female=11, male=6). Two core themes emerged: environmental issues impacting OWS experiences and behaviours; and knowledge and education of OWS which highlighted safe/unsafe practices, levels of education for managing risks, personal preparedness, swimming solo/with others, use/non-use of specialised equipment, anxieties relating to participation, and environmental conditions. Findings suggest a lack of safe practice persists pertaining to immersion in cold water environments. Specific strategies are suggested that organisations involved with the promotion of the sport should consider to promote safer and more enjoyable OWS experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a feminist approach to research focusing on the organising power of texts and language. This paper explores how to analyse texts in IE while considering the importance of reflexivity and accountability to feminist research. Based on a five year study of UK university audit processes, I developed a three-part IE text analysis approach which sits on a spectrum of closeness to the text(s) under analysis: (i) text – close analysis of one text or a small array of texts; (ii) process – mapping across a textually-mediated process and (iii) discourse – identifying a textually mediated discourse. Additionally, I make three analytic points about how texts organise: the importance of reader interpretation (researchers and users of texts); the strategic multi-layered translation work done by readers to fit into institutions and anticipate readerships; and, the importance of non-readers who can make mythologised understandings of texts material through writing future texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the mid-career experience of female managers within a small higher education institution in the UK. It considers how managers manage “self” within this phase of career. Design/methodology/approach – This study takes an ethnographic approach to the exploration of experiences in mid-career. Using a relational approach it was possible to draw together new insights deriving from the data. A narrative approach provided the framework from which deeper insights were captured through detailed participant stories told in situ. Findings – This study offers a deep analysis of the constructs of management experience as these are negotiated within mid-career. The priority of female managers in this study is directed towards the balance of home and work. There is less evidence of a desire for upward progression, instead the focus now shifts to the achievement of authenticity and balance. Research limitations/implications – This study was conducted in the higher education sector in the UK which is noted for its increasing commercialisation agenda and low staff turnover. Undertaking comparable research in other sectors will provide further insights into the generalisability of findings. Managers in this study were wholly white, middle class and most are still working in the region in which they were born. A more diverse cohort may be studied to ascertain the importance attributable to balance of work and life across different groups. Practical implications – This study presents some important areas of consideration for those involved in the support and advancement of female managers. Indeed, for those engaged in cognitive and developmental work this study provides rich and in-depth qualitative data that may prove helpful when formulating policy. It is of significance to senior managers within organisations and encourages attention towards executive development and organisational culture, both of which support the retention of talent within the organisation. Social implications – This paper provides insights into middle and senior management practice that may be of use by policy makers in the wider higher education sector context, as well as in general management good practice discussions more widely. This study may also be of interest to aspiring female managers and those relatively new to their roles as they seek to position themselves to achieve a sense of authenticity within their organisations. Originality/value – This study provides an empirical contribution to the study of female managers working within a small higher education institution in the UK. It provides deep insights into management practice at mid-career within the workplace and the way in which this is conceived in situ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue Addressed: Concepts of empowerment feature strongly in global health discourses. Empowerment is frequently advocated as a positive approach to addressing individual and community-level health needs. Despite its popularity, relatively little has been said about the unintended consequences of empowerment, which may give rise to some troubling ethical issues or, indeed, result in outcomes that may not be considered health promoting.Methods: Drawing on current uses of empowerment within health promotion, along with insights from an ethnographic study on young people's health, this paper raises some critical questions about the ethics of empowerment. By doing so, the paper troubles the idea that empowerment is a 'good thing' without some careful attention to the varying ways in which the ethics of empowerment may unfold in practice.Results: Findings revealed young people's different perspectives on health and priorities for health promotion. The present analysis highlights how these alternative framings prompt a number of ethical tensions for understanding and operationalising empowerment.Conclusions: In conclusion, the findings underscore the importance of promoting ethical reflexivity in health promotion and, crucially, attending to the unintended and potentially ethically problematic consequences of empowerment. So what? This paper raises some critical questions about the ethics of empowerment and calls for a more thorough engagement with the unintended consequences of empowerment within health promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses nihilism as it relates to contemporary urban multiculture in outer East London. It addresses how contemporary discourses on, and performances of, nihilism signal shifts in the constitution of urban multiculture. Attention is paid to acts of anti-sociability (and sociability) for what they reveal about contemporary urban rearrangement, and in particular the re-formation of urban multiculture in a moment defined by globalization, virtual communication, ethnic diversity and neoliberal marginalization. Through addressing discourses on, and performances of, nihilism the overall argument of the paper is for a renewal of the terms on which we understand and engage with urban multiculture, and for an appreciation of how relations between class, race and culture have shifted since key texts on the subject were published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background This review aimed to better understand experiences of being invited to cancer screening and associated decision-making. Methods Qualitative evidence explaining UK cancer screening attendance decisions was systematically identified. Data were extracted and meta-ethnography used to identify shared themes, synthesize findings and generate higher level interpretations. Results Thirty-four studies met inclusion criteria. They related to uptake of breast, cervical, colorectal, prostate, ovarian and lung cancer screening. Three primary themes emerged from the synthesis. ‘Relationships with the health service’ shaped decisions, influenced by trust, compliance with power, resistance to control or surveillance and perceived failures to meet cultural, religious and language needs. ‘Fear of cancer screening’ was both a motivator and barrier in different ways and to varying degrees. Strategies to negotiate moderate fear levels were evident. ‘Experiences of risk’ included the creation of alternative personal risk discourses and the use of screening as a coping strategy, influenced by disease beliefs and feelings of health and wellness. Conclusions The findings highlight the importance of the provider–patient relationship in screening uptake and enrich our understanding of how fear and risk are experienced and negotiated. This knowledge can help promote uptake and improve the effectiveness of cancer screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines diplomatic processes that compose our geopolitical world as dynamic and yet also seemingly affirm the status quo. It turns attention to the entrepreneurial creativity of individual diplomats, the transformations occurring at threshold moments, spaces and practices, and the materiality of diplomacy that exceeds human agency. The paper does so by forging an innovative dialogue between assemblage theory and the notion of liminality as developed in cultural anthropology, and by focusing on a hitherto overlooked set of diplomatic actors: British Overseas Territories. Three vignettes of Overseas Territory diplomacy are traced: an account of the liminal subjectivity of London-based Overseas Territory representatives, the 1982 Argentinian invasion that tipped the Falkland Islands into a state of greater autonomy, and the geophysical ‘tipping point’ of the 1997 volcanic eruption on Montserrat that made the island dependent for the foreseeable future. The paper concludes by noting potential avenues of future research that the synergy between liminality and assemblage may open up in the fields of Science and Technology Studies, anthropology, and geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on empirical research with NEET populations (16–24-year-olds not in education, employment or training) in the U.K. in order to engage with issues around identification, data and metrics produced through datalogical systems. Our aim is to bridge contemporary discourses around data, digital bureaucracy and datalogical systems with empirical material drawn from a long-term ethnographic project with NEET groups in Leeds, U.K. in order to highlight the way datalogical systems ideologically and politically shape people’s lives. We argue that NEET is a long-standing data category that does work and has resonance within wider datalogical systems. Secondly, that these systems are decision-making and far from benign. They have real impact on people’s lives – not just in a straightforwardly, but in obscure, complex and uneven ways which makes the potential for disruption or intervention increasingly problematic. Finally, these datalogical systems also implicate and are generated by us, even as we seek to critique them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Like many communities, the people who live alongside the Calder River and its catchment in Yorkshire, UK, are having to face the health and other consequences of climate change, and catastrophic flooding is becoming a frequent event. Through the concept of planetary health, it is claimed the protection of natural and human systems could be achieved, in part, through the stewardship of common pool resources by the communities that know and depend on them. This paper explores, ethnographically, the challenges of enacting stewardship in the context of austerity. It shows how the socially reproductive capacity required for stewardship is limited in the context of austerity, which impinges the wellbeing and agency of stewards and the sustainability of their stewardship work. Building on theories of care, it is suggested that by aligning stewardship work with the ethical principles of permaculture – care for the earth, care for people, and fair share – forms of agency and action capable of addressing the many challenges wrought by austerity and climate change could be enabled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a case of engaged ethnography developed by a group of geographers from the University of Cagliari focusing on the everyday experience of urban marginality by the residents of Sant’Elia, a low-income district in Cagliari, Italy. Stigmatised for being ‘at the margins’ of the city, the district reveals on the one hand, degraded socio-economic conditions and, on the other hand, a strong sense of identity and belonging among its inhabitants. The main aim of the study is to discuss and contrast the stigma affecting Sant’Elia through the direct involvement of a group of women living in the district in participative fieldwork utilising a mixed set of both quantitative and qualitative tools and aimed at collecting a multilayered reality of ideas, emotions, perceptions, experiences and images of the district as perceived by its own inhabitants. By presenting the different phases, methodologies and results of the study, the paper operates at two different, albeit interconnected, theoretical and methodological levels. From a theoretical standpoint, it deconstructs the concept of marginality, showing what it means to live in a ‘difficult’ district on a daily basis. From a methodological point of view, it proposes a wider reflection on the politics of multimodal ethnography, by focusing on how the different positionalities of researchers and residents have been challenged by the fieldwork activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork within a UK academic synthetic biology research centre, and 22 interviews with its inhabitants, this paper explores the ways in which the application of an engineering approach to biology is understood, spoken about, and enacted by a group of synthetic biologists. Motivated by the idea of producing ‘interesting’, ‘useful’, and above all, ‘industrialisable’ biological ‘products’, these synthetic biologists are attempting to adhere to a rational design cycle of work while embracing ideas and concepts drawn from an idealised notion of engineering. In this paper, I show that attempting to bring engineers and biologists together in order to take an ‘engineering approach’ to biology has impacted on the way these collective synthetic biologists speak about biology (as something that can be engineered) and undertake their day-to-day work, affecting the questions they ask, the experiments they conduct, the models they produce, and the data they collect. However, as this paper discusses, their collaborative approach to working comes with both compromises and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the grid of sentiment that structures medical travel to India. In contrast to studies that render emotion as ancillary, the paper argues that affect is fundamental to medical travel's ability to ease the linked somatic, emotional, financial, and political injuries of being ill 'back home'. The ethnographic approach follows the scenes of medical travel within the Indian corporate hospital room, based on observations and interviews among foreign patients, caregivers, and hospital staff in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore. Foreign patients conveyed diverse sentiments about their journey to India ranging from betrayal to gratitude, and their expressions of risk, healthcare costs, and cultural difference help sustain India's popularity as a medical travel destination. However, although the affective dimensions of medical travel promise a remedy for foreign patients, they also reveal the fault lines of market medicine in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy exploded in 2005 over a paper at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of British Geographers which claimed that ethnic segregation in Britain was increasing, ghettos had formed and some British cities were more segregated than Chicago. The paper asserted that indexes failed to measure segregation and should be abandoned in favour of a threshold schema of concentrations using raw data. These assertions were repeated by Trevor Phillips, Director the Commission for Racial Equality, in an inflammatory speech claiming that Britain was sleepwalking into American-style segregation. The argument of this paper is that the index approach is indeed necessary, that ethnic segregation in Britain is decreasing, that the threshold criteria for the claim that British ghettos exist has manufactured ghettos rather than discovered them. A Pakistani ghetto under the schema could be 40 per cent Pakistani, 30 per cent White, 20 per cent Indian and 10 per cent Caribbean. In 2000, 60 per cent of Chicago's Blacks lived in a true ghetto of tracts that were 90-100 per cent Black. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper weaves two stories of the future in the mobile telecoms industry, attentive to what is rehearsed and what is made absent. It follows the concerns of social studies of science and technology, in which futures and practices of future-making are always embodied and epistemologically situated; the future as a social and material activity of knowledge-making. The paper draws on a four-month ethnography of the mobile telecoms industry but enacts two different methods: the first method is a reflective critique of the future in the industry; the second is a generative and inventive interference. The first method weaves a story around the lines of movement near London Heathrow Airport, creating a linear, universal, and fixed future. The second method weaves a story around the island archipelago of Orkney in Scotland to make a mutable, local, and fluid future. In this paper landscapes and futures are inseparable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand more precisely the culture and interpersonal behaviours associated with stress. Design/methodology/approach: The research was conducted using a qualitative approach through an ethnographic methodology in relation to three companies. The greater part of the data collection period was structured into observations that ranged between 2 and 4 hr per day, 1–3 days per week, for a period of six months. A total of ten sites were explored; and on each site, the observations involved activities by 5–20 people. Findings: The results showed the pivotal importance of interpersonal relationships in coping with the uncertainty of working conditions, the coordination of teamwork and managing responsibilities and power interactions. It was found that the impact of stress is multifaceted, affecting the physical status, interpersonal relationships, work performance and emotional well-being of construction workers. The workers who were studied emphasised five sources of support that help moderate work-related stress: additional tools such as communication systems and software, a facilitated access to professional help (e.g. psychological services), organisational changes in leadership, provision of resources for the well-being of personnel (e.g. job training) and better teamwork. Practical implications: The study underlines the importance of dedicated services for stress management and specific training-related abilities devoted to reinforcing positive person–organisation dynamics. In particular, the abilities should relate to managing the impact of stress in terms of physique, interpersonal relationships, work performance and emotional well-being. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to adopt a psychological perspective for understanding construction scenarios and phenomena and was conducted by a qualified psychologist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sport spectator experience is one that is widely held to involve "live" presence at a sporting event, and that the raison detre of sports spectating is to witness events live and in person. This paper builds on a previous ethnography of football spectating in the pub to develop a theoretical basis for the suggestion that sports spectating is as much about shared experience as it is about live presence. In doing so, it utilises perspectives from tourism literature relating to the nature of proximity and to the importance of being able to re-live and re-tell experiences. The paper concludes that whilst the pub as a spectator venue can provide a proximity to the sport spectating experience, the longevity of the experience in terms of its value as an experience to be re-told is significantly shorter than being able to say that one has "been there" at a live event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a case study of the evolution of what is believed to be the earliest UK longitudinal ethnography in the field of education—and discussion of some issues arising. As such, it is a contribution to the contemporary methodological development of qualitative longitudinal research. The Identity and Learning Programme tracked the learning, identity and pupil careers of two cohorts of children from very different socio-economic communities through their primary and secondary school years from age 4- to 16-years-old. Major challenges of sustaining this programme of work over 12 years are identified, with particular reference to aims and intentions, theoretical conceptualization, research strategy, sampling, data management, analysis and ethical foundations. The paper draws attention to underpinning considerations such as the lack of funding continuity, the struggle to understand holistic complexity and the primary significance of interpersonal relationships both within the research team and with the child, parent and teacher participants. The account shows how methodological principles and practical pragmatism were juggled as judgements were exercised to sustain and progress the study. The paper concludes by welcoming the growing interest and recent UK investments in qualitative longitudinal research in social science. Such work has enormous intrinsic worth, and also promises to add further value as a complement to quantitative cohort studies. A new era is in prospect! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the methods and methodology used in a nine‐month‐long empirical study, exploring the constructions of masculinity amongst 10–11‐year‐old boys in three junior schools in the UK. It considers issues arising around sampling and the principal methods of data collection used, which were small‐group interviews and semi‐participant observation. Approaches to writing fieldnotes are also discussed. The second part of the paper looks at the role of the researcher learning to carry out ethnography, and the tensions and dilemmas that occur when working with a young age group in a school setting. Some of the issues that are examined are maintaining relationships, power relations, and the multiple positionings taken by the researcher as an ex‐teacher and gendered adult with a growing awareness of his own masculine identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered to be the gold standard in evaluating medical interventions; however, people from ethnic minorities are frequently under-represented in such studies. The present paper addresses a previously neglected debate about the tensions which inform clinical trial participation amongst people from ethnic minorities, in particular, South Asians, the largest ethnic minority group in the UK. In a narrative review of the available literature, based mainly on US studies, the present authors aim to make sense of the issues around under-representation by providing a theoretical reconciliation. In addition, they identify a number of potential barriers to ethnic minority participation in clinical trials. In so doing, the authors recognise that the recent history of eugenic racism, and more general views on clinical trials as a form of experimentation, means that clinical trial participation among people from ethnic minorities becomes more problematic. Lack of participation and the importance of representational sampling are also considered, and the authors argue that health professionals need to be better informed about the issues. The paper concludes by offering a number of strategies for improving ethnic minority accrual rates in clinical trials, together with priorities for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National museums both mediate and inculcate official and formal versions of national culture and by this means make and maintain national identity. Three times in the course of the twentieth century, various groups have attempted, and failed, to establish a national museum, identified variously as British or English. This paper explores just one of those attempts: the Museum of British History Project, first proposed in 1996 and finally killed off in 2008. The focus here is, therefore, on failure and on the role of the conflation of Britishness and Englishness in that failure as well as the nature of British identity construction more generally.All three attempts to create a national museum placed the rural idyll at the heart of the project. In the course of a detailed investigation of the Museum of British History project, this paper will pay particular attention to the proposed designs for a ‘British Landscape Gallery’ and the project's hegemonic, ruralised and Anglocentric perspectives. The gallery was the principal way in which established constructs of England and Englishness became conflated in the museum with Britain and Britishness and served to perpetuate the dominance of the ‘rural idyll’ in hegemonic manifestations of the nation. But the project remained stillborn in the face of the new museology: a failure which undoubtedly demonstrates the limits to the cultural power of the rural idyll. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This account of a UK live-action roleplay (LARP) event highlights complex shifts between different interpretive frames, foregrounding the role of the physical setting as well as of non-players and locals in providing symbolic resources that inhibit or support breaking frames. The conception of framing used here draws upon and extends Goffman’s definition of a frame as part of the organization of activity that specifies meaning and expectations of involvement. In looking at the setting of such framing processes ethnographically, this article presents UK LARP as a distinctive engagement with rural materiality and a creative alternative to traditional country pursuits. From the point of view of a game organizer, the paper identifies the creation of specific contextual frames by the visiting hobbyists associated with three interpretations: 1) a narrative conception of the space as a backdrop for fantastical events, 2) a ludic conception of the space as an area of game-playing, 3) an event conception of the space and its inhabitants as something to be managed. Three examples of disruptions to the work employed to maintain these frames demonstrate the fragility of the magic involved in this fantastical hobby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Libraries are closing or reducing opening hours in the UK due to budgetary cuts. Library provision for children is consequently diminishing and libraries have to justify their existence. Therefore a reliable methodology for assessing the importance of libraries is vital to demonstrate their value to children’s literacy. Two methodologies were combined to study children visiting children’s mobile libraries (CMLs). The purpose of this paper is to consider whether the combined, qualitative methodology was the correct choice. Design/methodology/approach – Aspects of each methodology are examined for their appropriateness for researching children. The compatibility of their philosophical stance and the validity of combining ethnography and grounded theory is explored and questioned. Findings – It is found that grounded theory and ethnography were the optimum combination to form a powerful research tool that allows children to be active participants in research. The combined methodology was successful because the ethnographic elements allowed the researcher to enter to the children’s world, whereas the grounded theory elements provided a structural framework, exploration into a novel research topic and ensured that a valid conclusion was drawn. Originality/value – It is unusual for qualitative methodologies such as grounded theory and ethnography to be combined in order to study learning in a non-pedagogic, library environment. This paper is valuable reading for librarians, or educationalists wishing to examine how libraries aid literacy because it verifies the benefits of the combined methodology of grounded theory and ethnography and provides a template which can be used by other researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people living with dementia have difficulties at mealtimes, which can result in serious complications for physical and mental health, leading to hospital admissions and even death. However, current training in mealtime care for staff working with this population has been found to be poorly reported, with variable effectiveness. It is essential that care home staff are able to provide good care at mealtimes. This study used ethnography to explore current practice in mealtime care for this population, identify good practice, and understand the factors influencing mealtime care. Approximately 28 h of mealtime observations were conducted in two UK care homes with diverse characteristics. Observations focused on interactions between care staff and residents living with dementia. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were carried out with care home staff, family carers, and visiting health and social care professionals, to explore mealtime care from their perspectives. A constant comparative approach was taken, to probe emergent findings and explore topics in greater depth. Key thematic categories were identified, including: tensions in mealtime care; the symbolic nature of mealtime care; navigating tensions via a person-centred approach; contextual constraints on mealtime care; and teamwork in mealtime care. The findings indicated that a person-centred approach helps carers to find the right balance between apparently competing priorities, and teamwork is instrumental in overcoming contextual constraints. This evidence has contributed to development of a training intervention for care home staff. Future research should investigate the feasibility of mealtime care training in care homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates constraints on desired hours of work using information on hours preferences from the British Household Panel Survey for 1991. Over a third of male manual workers would prefer to work fewer hours at the prevailing wage than they do and we estimate that on average desired hours per week are 4.3 lower than actual hours. We hypothesise that job insecurity and scarcity of alternative job opportunities enable employers to set hours constraints above employee preferences and find that the minimum hours constraints set by firms are an increasing function of the unemployment rate an individual faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnostatistics is the study of the social practices surrounding the construction and interpretation of statistics. This paper considers certain ethnostatistical aspects of the official statistics on AIDS cases - the monthly updated figures on AIDS cases supplied by the Department of Health and derived from the English and Scottish voluntary reporting schemes. The paper focuses on problems in the classification of cases according to the route of virus transmission, particularly where multiple risk practices may be reported. Some (but not all) classification problems can be avoided by adopting a cross-tabular format of presentation. The data on reported Scottish AIDS cases are re-analysed in order to illustrate such a cross-tabular representation. These data are the basis for a concluding statement on the difficulties in projecting future heterosexual epidemic spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses examples from rural studies to demonstrate the relevance of symbolic interactionism for unlocking the complexity of contemporary society. It does so by making a case for a nonprescriptive theory-method dialectic. Case examples are drawn upon in support of the argumentation, including early interactionism and ethnographic work in the United Kingdom, and, in the second half of the paper, rural sociology and fieldwork. The main argument presented is that the traditional remit of interactionism should be extended to recognize how absence is increasingly influential. It concludes that interactionism is in tune with other new trajectories in the social sciences that take into consideration co-presence proximity both on and off-line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the perceptions and experiences of four doctoral researchers to examine how research ethics committee (REC) processes have shaped and influenced specific health-based ethnographic studies. This paper considers how a universal tightening of ethical REC scrutiny at university level, as well as those governing the health and social care sector in the United Kingdom, impacts upon social research involving the inclusion of participants from certain groups. Increased restrictions in ethics scrutiny is justified as protecting vulnerable people from intrusive research and is embedded in legislation, specifically the UK Mental Capacity Act 2005. The general international trend towards greater ethical scrutiny is heralded as an uncontested social good, yet this unquestioned assumption is tested in relation to qualitative social research methodologies that seek to explore the experiences of ‘vulnerable’ individuals. It is consequently argued that ethics review restrictions are in danger of disenfranchising sectors of the community, excluding them from engaging in social research activities that would serve to highlight their experiential and lived conditions. The enhanced bureaucratic control of the doctoral process in conjunction with the REC is also discussed as inhibiting proposed studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Controlled organ donation after circulatory death (DCD) has recently been revived in the UK, as part of attempts to increase organ donation rates. The re-introduction of DCD has subsequently become the focus of bioethical controversy, since it necessitates intervening in the care of dying patients to obtain quality donor organs. Transplant policy responses to these concerns have generated new legal and ethical guidelines to address uncertainties around DCD, producing claims that the UK has overcome’ the ethical challenge of DCD. In contrast, by drawing on Lynch's call to ‘respecify’ ethics, this paper argues that ethics in DCD cannot be reduced to abstract directives for practice, but, instead, are composed and dealt with as an organisational problem. To do this, I utilise data from an ethnographic study examining the production of the ‘minority ethnic organ donor’ within UK organ donation settings; in particular, the data pertains to a case hospital which was in the process of developing a DCD programme during the period of fieldwork. Findings show that the ethics of DCD are encountered as practical sets of problems, constructed in relation to particular institutional locales. I describe how these issues are worked-around by creating conditions to make DCD organisationally possible, and through the animation of standard procedures into acceptable forms of practice. I argue that ethics in DCD go far beyond normative bioethical principles, to encompass concerns around: the reputation of hospital Trusts, public perceptions of organ donation, the welfare of potential donor families, and challenges to the work of health professionals caring for dying patients. The paper enriches understanding of ethics in science and medicine by showing how ethics are assembled and negotiated as a practical-organisational concern, and calls for further examination of how DCD gets constructed as a potential problem and is made to happen in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, anthropologists have drawn attention to the disconnect between a political imagination that conceptualizes nation-states’ borders as unambiguous and linear, and the realities of borderlanders’ experience where cultural and social space is frequently folded and overlapping. Through their very focus on hybridity and crossborder linkages, however, border ethnographies have unwittingly given even more weight to linear demarcations—all the while insisting that they are abstract and ideological. In mining the border-as-skin somatic metaphor, this article foregrounds nonvisual bodily senses such as tactility in its analysis and suggests that the inclusion of proximate senses in ethnographies of border encounters offers significant analytical advantages. It moves away from the visuality that dominates political cartography, thus allowing for a more sensuous and synesthetic ethnographic work. Additionally, in heeding the recent research on topologies published by geographers and social theorists, the paper hopes to contribute to the emerging mathematical turn. [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]

Drawing on a series of ethnographic encounters collected while hanging around at a seafood stand in east London, the following article aims to explore the relationship between individual expressions of distaste and the production of class, ethnic and generational forms of distinction. Starting with the visceral expressions of distaste directed towards a seafood stand, the following paragraphs draw on a combination of historical and ethnographic data rendered through a matrix of anthropological, sociological and psychoanalytic theory, to explore the role of everyday ambient experiences and the stratifying processes that cut across the lives of the city's inhabitants. Arguing against purely biological explanations of disgust, the paper explores how social histories and cultural experience inflect gut responses to the sensoria that suffuse urban environments. Moving the focus beyond the social construction of urban sensibilities, the paper goes on to develop an account of culturally inflected forms of distaste, shaping the city and the lives of its inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is concern that current UK policy and intervention aimed at supporting fathers remains primarily informed by dominant White middle-class values and experiences, and therefore fails to respond adequately to the needs of Britain's diverse fathers. This paper contributes to understanding of ethnic diversity in fathering contexts, practices and experiences, by reporting findings from a qualitative study of British Asian fathers, involving in-depth interviews with fifty-nine fathers and thirty-three mothers from Bangladeshi Muslim, Pakistani Muslim, Gujarati Hindu and Punjabi Sikh background, and over eight additional respondents engaged through Key Informant interviews, ethnographic interviews and group discussions. The paper highlights four areas that require greater recognition by policy-makers and practitioners to appropriately meet the needs of fathers from diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. These are: recognising that fathers and mothers do not necessarily constitute an autonomous unit; appreciating diversity in fathers’ understandings of desirable child outcomes; addressing additional obstacles to achieving similar outcomes for children; and understanding that the boundaries and content of fathering are not universally recognised. Policies that are less normative and more responsive to diversity are essential to ensure that all fathers can be effectively supported. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'The body' has become a significant topic of theoretical discussion within social scientific writing, as well as within qualitative research methods debate (especially in the sociology of health and illness). This paper argues that these trends are, paradoxically, far less apparent with the sociology of religion, and virtually non-existent within the study of Islam and Muslims in Britain. On the basis of fieldwork experiences with British Muslim chaplains, I explore how visible markers of difference and identity that are inscribed on the body of the researcher (especially age, gender and race) can have important implications for the data that one is - or is not - able to collect. The paper considers how researchers are 'moved about' fieldwork sites by research participants, and how our physical transitions around different contexts (homes, corridors, wards, cells, etc.) and by different means (on foot, by car) require particular physical behaviour in relation to the socio-cultural rules and institutional norms that govern these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emotional coexistence of three groups of Polish migrants in the UK. In particular it focuses on how this coexistence is reflected in narratives-in-interaction produced by members of Polish communities. Methodologically the paper is anchored in a constructivist view of emotions, when they are seen as discursive practice, as way of speaking, rather than as some internal states associated with physiological conditions of our bodies. Consequently, discourse and narrative analysis is my chosen way to analyse emotions in a given research area of Polish migration. The data come from my current project on leisure activities as well as cultural consumption among Polish migrants and were collected in established Polish 'centres' in the UK. My informants belong to three different groups of immigrants: 1) post-World War Two immigration; 2) post-1989/pre-enlargement immigration; and 3) post-enlargement immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

powell j., harris f., condon l. & kemple t. (2010) Nursing care of prisoners: staff views and experiences. Journal of Advanced Nursing 66(6), 1257–1265. Title. Nursing care of prisoners: staff views and experiences. Aim. This paper is a report of a study of the views and experiences of nurses and other prison healthcare staff about their roles and the nursing care they provide to prisoners. Background. Nurses have become the key providers of healthcare in prison settings in England, replacing the previous prison service-run system. However, there is very little evidence about the health services they provide to meet the health needs of prisoners. Method. A ethnographic study was conducted. Participants were 80 healthcare staff working in 12 prisons of all security categories in England. Twelve individual interviews with general healthcare managers and 12 key informant focus group discussions with healthcare staff were undertaken in 2005 using a semi-structured interview schedule. Issues investigated included participants’ thoughts and experiences of nursing roles and delivery of primary healthcare. The group discussions and interviews were analysed to identify emerging themes. Findings. Participants gave accounts of day-to-day processes and the healthcare routine. They saw their work as identifying and meeting the health needs of prisoners and maintaining their health, and identified major influences that shaped their daily work, including new ways of working in primary care. They identified how policy and organizational changes were affecting their roles, and acknowledged the conflict between the custody regime and healthcare delivery. Conclusion. The move towards a NHS-led primary healthcare service within prisons, predominantly delivered by nurses, has made positive changes to healthcare. Healthcare managers have benefited from the involvement of the local NHS in improving the health of prisoners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]