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Several years ago Sir Peter Medawar urged analysts of science to study in detail “what scientists do” in the course of their research. As a distinguished practicing scientist, Medawar himself was well aware that what scientists say about their activity can never be taken at face value. Instead he urged that “only unstudied evidence will do — and that means listening at a keyhole.”1 In fact, however, the few analysts of science who have followed this prescriptive suggestion effectively have preferred to establish themselves as participant observers on the inner side of the keyhole, to penetrate into the laboratory itself and to watch the activities of scientists from the perspective of the ethnographer or anthropologist.2 Valuable and provocative as such studies are, however, I think their authors have underestimated the extent to which historical studies can also contribute to a better understanding of scientific practice.3 Clearly it is desirable in any case that we should trace how the practice of research has changed over the longue duree of the history of science, in conjunction with changing social and cognitive circumstances. But quite apart from that, there are also ways in which much more ’finegrained’ historical studies may give us better access than research on modern science can, to the “unstudied evidence” that Medawar saw was needed; and they may avoid the observational or interpretative &#x2019distance’ that was implied in his metaphor of the keyhole.

International health development discourse constructs and regulates male sex workers as risky bodies in need of interventions for HIV. Drawing on ethnographic research among male sex workers and interviews with development sector actors in Nairobi, Kenya, this paper shows how the identification of male sex workers as a high-risk group for HIV offers a singular conceptualisation of their bodies as risky and renders invisible broader everyday struggles for security and wellbeing. Within these everyday struggles, male sex workers experience bodily risk as they are exposed not only to HIV, but also to being outed or outing themselves as gay. Interview findings show that development actors recognise and are empathic to male sex workers’ security risks but have limited opportunity to address these due to restrictive donor regimes. To contribute to enduring change and develop appropriate and effective programmes, it is important for donors to continue funding HIV activities in relation to male sex work, while broadening their understandings of risk.

A major challenge for today's researchers studying 'online' learning is how to design their studies. The ostensibly simple question of what and how to collect and analyse data becomes a major obstacle. Recent theoretical developments emphasise that learning, communication and knowledge construction are embedded and distributed in the social and cultural context where they 'naturally' occur, and inseparable from these contexts as an object of research (see e.g. Suchman, 1987; Latour, 1987; Cole & Engestrom, 1993; Hutchins, 1995). Some 'ground-breaking' studies that have expanded and, to a certain extent, had an impact on the understanding of learning and knowledge construction have been based on detailed ethnographic research (e.g., Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Ethnographic research represents a long tradition for studying various forms of social processes in everyday life situations. Ethnography or, more generally, qualitative methods have been used extensively in educational research, for example when studying classroom culture and interaction, but also when dealing more explicitly with technology. However, 'traditional' ethnographic approaches do not readily suit distributed ICT environments, and there are some inherent methodological issues with which ethnographers have to deal when entering a setting in order to study distributed collaborative learning. In this paper we argue that, by taking these issues into consideration, ethnography becomes an adequate and fruitful approach for studying learning as process, interaction, and practice also in distributed settings. There is a growing body of literature about ethnographic studies conducted in the fields computer-mediated communication (see e.g. Hine, 2000) and computer supported co-operative work (see e.g. Harper, 2000). These are fields of research closely related to CSCL and the results, findings, and experiences made in these fields are relevant for the discussion of ethnography of distributed collaborative learning. We focus on studying distributed collaborative learning with the techniques, methods, and analytical perspective of ethnography. Distributed collaborative learning is commonly placed in hybrid settings, where the participants engage in computer-mediated communication as part of some sort of institutionalised education. There are thus some inherent issues, both new and old, that need to be taken into consideration when doing ethnography in distributed learning environments. Addressing these issues, we emphasise the role of technology and information infrastructure and how this might impact the learning situation, but also how it can be used as a resource in ethnographic research. In addition, we discuss how to observe, participate and immerse oneself in these technologically dense environments. This includes presenting and exploring concepts such as virtual observations and technological immersion, but also discussing more common topics like access and the role of the researcher. Another important aspect of ethnographic studies is the devotion to an empirical grounding of the research, which again presents methodological challenges when studying students working online and in distributed settings. In particular, we emphasise the specific circumstances for studying distributed learning environments as hybrid settings, and pay special attention to the role of the mediating artefacts and how to approach these analytically. In the full paper the ideas and methodological issues are illustrated by presenting empirical examples from and experiences made in one of our research projects -- DoCTA (Wasson, Guribye & Morch, 2000). In this way we forefront ethnography as a fruitful approach for studying and describing the complexity and contingencies of distributed learning in an informed and structured way.

Susan Sontag, a controversial political activist and philosopher, interrogated ways of seeing photographs, taking photographs and depicting the pain of others. Her system of thoughts teaches how to ask relevant questions before and during any fieldwork where an anthropologist examines configurations of realities and meaning-making processes around visual mediums. She uses them to examine operations of representations without limiting images to either frames or contents. Furthermore, she pushes the definition of frame beyond the limits of the rectangular borders around each photograph or image. Therefore, this chapter explores Tehran, the Iranian capital and visual representations of the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) along Susan Sontag to locate and unpack the universe of meanings which is produced by Iranian propaganda machinery and received in various ways by Iranians. The main argument stresses a photograph can represent at best if only its photographer does not try to report or to transfer assumptions about reality but instead allows a photographic composition to emerge from the encounter with others. This chapter follows such encounters through ethnographic stories and fieldworks in Iran and demonstrates what Susan Sontag calls a mystic receptivity between viewers and visual representations turns photographs into the beginning of fieldwork rather than its end.

Using examples from fieldwork among armed groups in Congo and pre-1989 Romania, this article argues against the prevailing ethos of ethnographers engagement with the people they study, in favor of a dynamic between engagement and detachment, what we call 'emotional management'. Two examples from our fieldwork are given, Hedlund on fieldwork with armed groups, Sampson on his informants being haraased by the Romanian secret police.

This paper explores how normative control is enacted in an alternative ‘minor party’ in Southwest England called Independents for Frome. Based primarily on ethnographic data and interviews, I argue that this case constitutes an example of ‘neo-normative’ control, where homogenizing norms are substituted by a celebration of difference, fun, and individualization. This conceptualization allows me to discuss the relationship between alternative organization and neo-normative control. In doing so, I argue that neo-normative control has progressive and ‘alternative’ potential if practiced alongside procedures that (1) prevent autonomy from turning into isolation and marginalization, (2) ensure that solidarity does not morph into an unquestioned hegemony of the strong, and (3) enable responsibility to the future to be carried out in an accountable manner. This leads me to call for critical performativity projects that team up with ‘allies’ within the formal political system instead of focusing exclusively on extra-parliamentarian organizations.

Drawing on ethnography, this paper conceptualizes invisible mobilities by exploring the linkages between mobility, invisibility and hotel and residence based sex work in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since both are illegal in Bangladesh, hotel and residence based sex workers (HRSWs) become targets of the different laws and sex work related social stigma. We show, in this paper, how invisible mobilities is used to strategize and counter-enact against the existing exploitative gendered socio-political-legal regimes and practices involved in sex work. Invisible mobilities refers to the way HRSWs move in order to hide their occupation from society and the law. Invisibility is at the core of all these connections: It enables HRSWs to continue sex work and avoid exclusion from family and members of their communities. While making themselves invisible permits them to continue their daily ways to earn a living, it also reinforces the same social stigma they are constantly trying to avoid. In doing so, this paper reveals the political economy of sex work in the city and provides a new theoretical window to understand the connections between gender, mobility and the city, constructing a bridge between mobility and sex work studies literature.

This paper explores the topic of police storytelling from an ethnographicperspective. Ethnographies have always been full of stories, but it took awhile for storytelling as such to draw attention to it within the broaderstudy of police culture. Lately, we have seen increased attention forstorytelling in policing. Recent studies cover new ground: they commenton story tellability, on police storytelling among recruits, on thedifferences across settings, and more. Nevertheless, a more systematictreatment of this topic is still lacking. This paper reviews the literatureon police storytelling. Its purpose is to come to a more thorough andcritical understanding of storytelling in policing (studies), which allowsus to identify some challenges and opportunities we see for future(ethnographic) research.

Desire for what is good—and for a good life—is one of the human universals spanning across all societies and cultures. Yet, how people imagine a good life differs significantly according to the individual, and it also depends on numerous social, political, cultural, economic and geographical variables. In this book we explore what a good life looks like for young people in a place that, at first glance, may appear difficult or hostile for human inhabitation: the Arctic region. The Arctic is often portrayed in popular and scientific literature as a frontier characterized by the catastrophic impacts of a changing climate and resource extraction. This adds to the image of the Arctic as a region that is ill-fit for human wellbeing and emplacement, where outmigration should be the default goal of the young generation. In a globalized world, however, youth have more choices than ever where to emplace themselves and how to realize their dreams. This introduction focuses on three principal questions from a theoretical vantage point rooted in the anthropology of wellbeing. What affordances does the Arctic offer for a good life as young people make their choices? What can empirical evidence from working with young people in the Arctic contribute to our general understanding of wellbeing as a concept in the social sciences? Which factors make Arctic towns attractive as places for youth to realize their dreams in life? The chapters in this volume all approach these questions in their own way with empirical evidence from various places in the Arctic.

This book examines the changing conception of Native American cultures and histories within American public culture. Popular and academic representations of Native Americans have undergone significant alterations during the past 30 years, advancing, if not celebrating, interpretations which challenge images and narratives once central to national identity and cross-cultural relations. In spite of these positive efforts, museums, monuments, and other exhibitionary spaces continue to devalue, stereotype, and dismiss them. Importantly, then paradoxical effects of these modifications not only recuperate accounts which legitimated the conquest and subjugation of Native America, but also reproduce the inequalities and injustices which continue to structure the relations between EuroAmericans and Native Americans.This book presents historical ethnographies of four contexts to substantiate these positions: the Smithsonian Institution; the invention of Chief Illiniwek, the athletic mascot of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument; the exhibition of Comanche, the horse dubbed "the sole survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn", at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. The study concludes with an evaluation of alternative strategies, including repatriation and reflexivity, which may promote the reconstruction of exhibitionary spaces.

Globally climate-induced disasters have been impacting marginalised communities’ lives, livelihood and gendered relations. This book explores the effects of Cyclone Aila (as a result of climate change) in 2009 on the rural livelihoods and gendered relations of two ethnically distinct forest communities – Munda, an indigenous group, and Shora, a Muslim group – dwelling near the Sundarbans Forest in Bangladesh. Examining the cyclone’s medium- to long-term impacts on livelihoods and comparative aspects of gendered relations between these two contrasting communities, this book addresses a gap in current critical development studies. It adopts an ethnographic research design and analyses the alterations to livelihood activities and reconfiguration of gender relations within the Munda and Shora communities since 2009. The study primarily contends that post-Aila, livelihoods and gendered relations have been substantially transformed in both communities, making the case that the improvement of local infrastructure, as an important part of the geographical location, has noticeably progressed the living conditions and livelihoods of some members of the Munda and Shora communities. Connecting climate-induced changes with the construction and alteration of gendered livelihood patterns, the book will be of interest to a wide range of academics in the fields of Asian Studies, Sociology of Environment, Social Anthropology, Human Geography, Gender and Cultural Studies, Human Geography, Disaster Management and Forestry and Environmental Science.

Using Indonesia as an example of Islam in Asia, this chapter invites readers to listen to the sounds of religious life, with attention to issues of creation, reception, and transmission. The five pillars of Islam are explored through recitation, song, and music created and experienced by individuals and in community to reveal a vibrant and imaginative aspect of Islamic culture. The author invites us to scenarios from her ethnographic research to include a specialist in Quranic recitation and the call to prayer, a competition in Ramadan “wake-up” music, and Nasida Ria, the legendary all-female Islamic pop music group.

This chapter critically investigates discourses of modernization amid experiences of chronic spirit possession, mental illness, and healing practices in Burao, Somaliland, Northwestern Somalia. The research was based on ethnographic fieldwork between January 2013 and March 2020, conducted with the local help of the University of Burao. Data were collected through participant observation in the general society and of religious healers as well as two rounds of semi-structured interviews in 2014–15 and 2018, respectively, involving a total of 26 participants and 42 interviews. Other relevant materials, such as a book manuscript by a local healer, a locally made movie, and several YouTube videos, were also analyzed. This chapter argues that chronic possession experiences and healing practices are conceptualized as part of the modernization process in Somaliland society. In contrast to other research into spirit possession, the Somali experiences suggest that possession does not need to be designated as a traditional phenomenon but is often considered modern. The author outlines how Somali Islamic practice, as part of Somali culture, may be part of a larger modernization vision of the global Islamic movement. The chapter also proposes that embracing possession as a modern phenomenon offers new ways of treating underlying suffering, as the causes of suffering are externalized and personified.

Exploring People and Cultures: Authentic Ethnographic Research in the Classroom provides teachers with tools and activities for conducting a classroom study of ethnic groups and cultures. Through the more than 30 ready-to-use, differentiated lessons, teachers will help students learn how to recognize the elements of culture; think critically; apply real-world research techniques in field experiences; identify behavioral patterns in modern-day cultures; and create, plan, and share their products in a student-led ethnography fair.Grades 5-8

This chapter investigates the responses of front-line managers and technicians to organisational change in a Scandinavian telecommunications company from a temporal perspective. Based on an ethnographic study in the company’s operations department 25 years after the privatisation of the company, it shows how temporal assumptions impacted managers’ and technicians’ responses to change and their experience of work life quality. Drawing on Bourdieu’s temporalisation of practice, the chapter unfolds an alternative understanding of time as both a structured and a structuring structure and it demonstrates how Bourdieu’s temporal epistemology offers an alternative theorisation of the responses of workers and managers to sweeping organisational change. The chapter asserts that the temporal dimension of Bourdieu’s work deserves more attention in organisation and management studies.