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Supporting ageing in place, quality of life, and activity engagement are public health priorities for people with dementia. The importance of maintaining opportunities for meaningful activities has been widely acknowledged for those with dementia in long-term care, but little is known about what makes activities meaningful for, and how they are experienced by, people with different types of dementia in their own homes. This study used focussed ethnographic methods to explore the motivations and meanings of everyday activity engagement within the homes of 10 people with memory-led Alzheimer's disease and 10 people with posterior cortical atrophy. While participants' interactions with their everyday environments were challenged by their diagnoses, they were all finding ways to continue meaning-making via various activities. The main findings are encapsulated in three themes: (1) The fun and the function of activities; (2) Reciprocities of care, and (3) The constitution and continuity of (a changing) self. Ongoing engagement with both fun and functional activities offered participants living with different dementias opportunities to connect with others, to offer care and support (as well as receive it), and to maintain a sense of self and identity. Implications are discussed regarding the development and delivery of tailored interventions and support to enable continued engagement in meaningful activities for people with different types of dementia living in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illness trajectories are particularly characterised by the temporal dimension of human existence. In the area of low back pain, patients often have challenging temporal experiences such as unproductive waiting time and fragmented, repetitive consultations over many years. This study seeks to investigate relationships between digital technologies, temporal agency, and illness, through describing how users experienced a new digital solution, BackTrace, targeting patients with low back pain. The study builds on six months of ethnographic fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and a workshop. The study shows how the introduction of the digital solution could facilitate new possibilities of temporal actions for individuals living with and receiving care for low back pain. For many research participants, the use of BackTrace facilitated a useful visualisation of their past and present low back pain state; BackTrace could assist participants in navigating different external temporal demands; and it allocated time devoted to managing their back pain in everyday life and in consultations with health professionals. The study discusses how temporality can be a useful analytical entrance point to operationalise and explore the often-desired goal of empowerment in patient pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As healthcare systems grow increasingly complex, greater demands are placed on patients' abilities to find, understand, appraise, and use health information – often termed their 'health literacy'. Most health literacy research does not focus on information appraisal. When it does, there is a tendency to equate it with patients' assessment of credibility. This reproduces a healthcare-centric understanding of information appraisal where patient agency is omitted. This study explores how participants in a health information intervention practiced information appraisal. The intervention aimed to increase information uptake for people with low back pain by delivering health information to them through animations. This study draws on ethnographic participant observation of the encounters between the intervention and its participants, including 49 rapid interviews and semi-structured telephone interviews with 23 participants carried out in the spring of 2021. Inspired by a social practice approach, the study thoroughly grounds the health literacy subcategory of 'appraisal' in practice. It illustrates that participants appraised the information provided in the intervention according to several factors. These include relating the information to their personal health needs, interpreting the intended audience of the health animations, and prioritising their attention situationally between the animations and other immediate concerns. We suggest that information appraisal is a fundamental component of health literacy and should be considered key in research, policy and practice. To accommodate current healthcare ideals of patient centeredness, empowerment and informed choice, the complex and dynamic ways in which people appraise health information need be considered legitimate practices of health literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates ethnographically how early-stage impact investors evaluate the credibility of the impact promises made by social entrepreneurs. Uncovering how investors carry out this task beyond observable characteristics and self-reported prosocial intentions, I propose that their evaluation of impact promises centers on four interrelated aspects of the entrepreneurs' behavior: impact metrics, impact track record, impact management, and impact prospects. I articulate these aspects into a framework explaining how credible beliefs about entrepreneurs' impact promises emerge among investors and embolden their investment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that management concepts tend to spread from corporate to public organizations. Branding is an example of such a concept, with suggestions that it can address not only economic but also social issues, often referred to as "inclusive branding." This ethnographic study explores how branding is received and spreads in a Swedish city, and analyzes efforts to use branding to tackle inequality and segregation. Our findings reveal that the initial focus on social problems was glossed over in favor of following corporate branding ideals, but also that city communicators expressed critique, confusion, and doubt regarding the relevance of branding to their work. Surprisingly, this did not slow down but rather energized the branding process. Through an interactionist analysis, we suggest that rather than addressing social problems, branding in cities may give rise to an Eigendynamik, signifying a self-energizing inner dynamic fueled by a tension between "frames," specifically between the branding frame and the civic frame of the city. This theorization lays the groundwork for contributions to the understanding of inclusive branding: it can start with good intentions to address civic issues but may get swept up in corporate branding concepts and activities that are ill equipped to deal with social issues. More generally, complementing established notions of translation and colonization, our study provides a novel understanding of how management concepts migrate from corporate to public organizations through what we call frame-induced Eigendynamik. Overall, we contribute by shedding light on the role of self-energizing processes as reasons why organizational members engage with management concepts even when they struggle to see their relevance to their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary organising frequently relies on affective intensities to direct organisational efforts. However, it is not well understood how these intensities are cultivated across time and different contexts to engage and coordinate heterogeneous actors. By applying a practice approach to affect, this paper proposes the concept of affective practices to theorise how affect is mobilised in materially driven (inter)actions to shape actions and relationalities around organisational goals. The analysis of ethnographic data from a long-term public art project reveals that four affective practices – enticing, envisioning, attending and asserting – are pivotal to sustaining the distributed process of voluntary organising. The sense of fascination, enthusiasm, care and discomfort that these affective practices mobilise instigates participation, support, acceptance and compliance from diverse partners, volunteers and the local public. Contributing to the affective turn in practice theory, the paper theorises how affective processes are cultivated as situative accomplishments in an ongoing and translocal organisational process, highlighting the important role played by the vibrant presence of matter in affective practices. Additionally, the study expands our understanding of how an interplay of affective intensities engages and aligns diverse individuals and groups in voluntary organising by fostering coalitional moments in the organisational process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In gratitude toward those who have paved the way for a multitude of academic writing genres, we continue to de-stabilize writing conventions to propose, so as to put forward, ways of writing ethnographic research differently. We do this through an exploration of how the poetics of materiality can be written in ethnographic research. By means of Bachelard's work on material imagination and poetic instants, as well as re-visiting ethnographic clay-and-wood fieldwork, we suggest the subgenre of vertical ethnography. This is a genre that enables a shift from the often taken-for-granted thick description, which focuses on interpretations of meaning of what happened in the field, to deep inscription, a writing that breaks through the surface when our entanglement with materiality is awakening poetic sensibilities, enabling a vertical writing of ethnographic accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exercise for people with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is important for their health and wellbeing and can provide opportunities for community participation. However, they may find it difficult to participate in some contexts, such as community gyms because social and environmental barriers in these settings may compound difficulties caused by physical impairments or intellectual disability. This study aims to observe and understand the actions and interactions of people with PWS when they exercise in community gyms. A focussed ethnographic study will be conducted. Field notes will be taken in community gyms where people with PWS are participating in a structured exercise program for six months as part of a randomised control trial called PRESTO. Up to ten participants will be observed, with at least three observations planned per participation during the program. Gym sessions observed will be approximately 1 hour long. Within the framework of interpretive description, reflective thematic analysis will be used to interpret observational data. Our findings will inform how best to support people with PWS to exercise at a community gym. Trial Registration Number: ACTRN12620000416998; Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undignified care of women during labor has been associated with increased preventable maternal morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this study was to explore midwives' perspectives on undignified care of women in a midwife's obstetric unit within a rural community healthcare center in South Africa. Using ethnographic methods, seven midwives were recruited to participate in individual interviews and participant observations were conducted in the unit. Three main themes describing undignified care were identified based on an inductive analysis of observations and interview data. These included a lack of respect for women's bodily autonomy during labor, structural challenges in the provision of quality maternity care, and the lack of confidential care for women in labor and delivery. The study findings show that obstetric violence remains a serious crisis in the well-being of women during childbirth. Policy development by stakeholders in maternity care, including operational healthcare practitioners, should prioritize training, monitoring, and peer support on dignified care and curbing disrespect and abuse of women during childbirth, which seemed to be deeply rooted in the routine unorthodox treatment of childbirth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the so-called wars on terror impact queer lives and politics? This article addresses this question by exploring the racialized gender and sexual politics of Turkey's own brand of war on terror and its ramifications for LGBTQI+ lives. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the disabled veterans of Turkey's Kurdish war and public culture analysis, I reveal how the political construction of Kurdish militants as queer figures goes hand in hand with state terrorization of LGBTQI+ people in contemporary Turkey. I anchor my analysis in a novel counterinsurgency trope—"terrorists in skirts"—a trope popularized by the state-controlled media for psychological warfare purposes. I argue that the voyeuristic media fascination with cross-dressing militants is both symptomatic and constructive of an Islamist-nationalist authoritarian regime where terrorism and gender and sexual nonnormativity are violently conflated in state discourse and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses reproductive labour in everyday utopias. Everyday utopias refer to spaces and practices that experiment with alternative forms of life and create new social imaginaries. Drawing on ethnographic research in three everyday utopias in Finland, the article argues that labour plays a key role in transformative politics by prefiguring socially and ecologically sustainable forms of life not conducive to capitalist logic. The article brings together feminist social reproduction theory and utopian studies to shed light on different forms of reproductive labour in everyday utopias. It identifies four forms of labour: manual, affective, mnemonic and experimental. In particular, experimental labour foregrounds the importance of everyday utopias as sites of political imagination in which novel forms of life are actively developed and tried out. The article concludes by suggesting that everyday utopias subvert conventional understandings and practices of labour and social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic fieldnotes can contain richer and more thorough descriptions of social phenomena compared to other data sources. Their open-ended and flexible character makes them especially useful in explorative research. However, fieldnotes are typically highly unstructured and personalized by individual researchers, which make them harder to use as a method for data collection in collaborative and mixed methods research. More precisely, the unstructured nature of ethnographic fieldnotes presents three distinct challenges: 1) Organizability—it can be difficult to search and sort fieldnotes and thus to get an overview of them, 2) Integrability—it is difficult to meaningfully integrate fieldnotes with other more quantitative data types such as more such as surveys or geospatial data, and 3) Computational Processability—it is hard to process and analyze fieldnotes with computational methods such as topic models and network analysis. To solve these three challenges, we present a new digital tool, for the systematic collection, processing, and analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes. The tool is developed and tested as part of an interdisciplinary mixed methods pilot study on attention dynamics at a political festival in Denmark. Through case examples from this study, we show how adopting this new digital tool allowed our team to overcome the three aforementioned challenges of fieldnotes, while retaining the flexible and explorative character of ethnographic research, which is a key strength of ethnographic fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To minimize negative interactions and their impacts, teachers and students must successfully negotiate loaded moments, points in time when two or more parties realize that their needs differ and that they must confront that difference. In this literature review, we synthesize 30 studies, published from 2000 to 2020, that describe the evolution of loaded moments between teachers and students with the goal of identifying and explicating the co-construction of escalation and de-escalation during classroom interactions. We found that macro level social contexts and existing classroom patterns set the scene for the occurrence of a loaded moment. In addition, loaded moments emerge when specific instigating circumstances are co-constructed, which refer to incompatibilities between teacher and student(s). Furthermore, loaded moments (de)escalate, depending on the co-construction of the moment as it progresses, such as through mutual trade-offs, turnings, or refusals. Finally, these co-constructions can result in a specific long-term relationship- and bond-development. Implications of these findings for research concerning student–teacher conflict are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fandom and the tribune both generate their own cultures. Fandom can be positioned in a variety of contexts while establishing this culture. In this sense, hooliganism, ultra-groups, and fandom all gain popularity. This study assessed tribune culture in Turkey. The study further performed ethnographic and netnographic observations in addition to the tribune culture and its facets. During the ethnographic observance phase September-December 2019 period, eight and two home and away matches were watched, respectively, with Bursaspor spectator groups, including Texas, Marathon, and Uni-crocodile (Ünitimsah). The notes conveyed here served as the basis for the first stage of the study. The second stage comprised the netnographic method to review the official Twitter accounts of the fan groups between September and December 2019. During this period, @teksasorg, @maratonplatform, and @unitimsah accounts shared 146, 30, and 230 tweets, respectively. These profiles appeared to create a fan culture that was similar both in real life and the digital environment. As a result, the study concluded that the structure of the sports fan organizations in Turkey is ultra-featured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information security refers to 'the practice of defending information from unauthorised access'. Information security practices include everyday activities such as protecting your bank details, or keeping your workplace logins secure. Despite increasingly restrictive approaches to research ethics, academia continues to lag behind journalism when it comes to best practice with regards to information security. This article discusses information security as it pertains to qualitative and especially ethnographic research into crime and deviance. In doing so, the article addresses a gap in the methodological literature by drawing on lessons and real-world examples from journalism, academia and activism, in order to offer guidance for researchers seeking to maintain information security in a digital, networked social world. The article proceeds in three parts. First, the article considers what information researchers might want to protect, who they might want to protect it from and what the consequences might be if they failed to do so (an exercise known as 'threat modelling'). The different powers, resources and capacities of, and threats posed by, state actors such as the police and intelligence agencies, as well as an array of non-state actors, are considered. Second, the article outlines some general principles of information security and how they might apply to ethnographic research into crime and deviance. Third, the article discusses a range of practical considerations when it comes to using mobile phones (cell phones), social media, passwords and encryption in the course of researching crime and deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes visual practices of stigma resistance as a continuous play with identification and disidentification. Based on an ethnographic study of young, stigmatized activists' self-images, I argue that the oft-employed concept of recognition only partially captures visual/digital resistance to stigma. In addition to claiming recognition, I show how creating unrecognizability is a key component in subverting stigmatizing categorizations. Complementing existing analyses on how we fight stigma by 'presenting ourselves differently' to others, my analysis of self-images looks at how the activists relate to themselves differently : how they negotiate and work with identifications. I distinguish two strategies of visual stigma resistance: resignification and opacity through multiplicity. Resignification – the visual interpretation of reclaiming – refers to one (temporarily) identifying with a derogatory label but redefining it into a source of pride. Multiplicity, in turn, operates by portraying the self as multiple and transforming, destabilizing potential categories and names, and rendering the self unintelligible. By showing stigma resistance as a play with becoming visible and unintelligible, the article argues for moving beyond recognition and stigma as binary concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the social construction of masculinity within the Israeli society, focusing on the associations between masculine identity, prior military service, and current involvement in long-distance running. A 2-year ethnographic research design was utilized, involving two running groups, which incorporated participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and running websites. The findings shed light on the significance of military service experience and the utilization of military discourse as strategies employed by runners to navigate the challenges of long-distance running and to reinforce their masculine identity. Through an analysis of the runners' military discourse and behavior, it becomes evident that the integration of women into traditionally masculine domains of intense physical activity poses a threat to masculine dominance, eliciting various responses from men, such as intensified sports training and the use of sexist and aggressive language. These coping mechanisms contribute to the perpetuation of male dominance within the long-distance running sphere while simultaneously providing male runners with a pseudo-corrective experience associated with their personal history of non-combat military involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focused ethnography (FE) is an emerging method for social work researchers who examine social justice issues within specific sub-cultures and service systems. FE methods may include researchers with background knowledge, specific research questions, and the use of intensive, short-term data collection methods in time-limited settings. Although relevant to applied studies in social work, FE methods remain underspecified. This scoping review examines the extent, variety, and characteristics of FE in social work research. The protocol follows the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews Checklist and Explanation (PRISMA-ScR). We searched Social Science databases between 2018 and 2022. The critical appraisal of articles is guided by published FE methodology and American Psychological Association (APA) journal reporting standards for qualitative research. Researchers justified the use of FE in relation to their ethnographic goals, research populations, and specific questions. However, they were inconsistent in their discussion of the integration of theory and reflexive processes in research methods. While most studies used thematic analysis or coding of qualitative data, some lacked the recommended elements outlined in the journal reporting standards for qualitative research. In particular, they lacked transparency when discussing the impact of background knowledge and positionality on data analytic processes and findings. In this review, we discuss the strengths and limitations of FE for social work research and offer recommendations for methodological improvement. To enhance understanding and trustworthiness of reported findings, we recommend transparency in discussions of data analytic and reflexive processes, as well as uniform reporting in accordance with APA standards for qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of life has become a central value in the provision of healthcare for patients with chronic conditions. This has engendered debates in critical medical sociology on the non-neutral effects that valuing health and illness, medical interventions, and health care delivery in terms of quality of life yields. Focusing on the case of nephrology, this paper presents qualitative data collected in Austria of two dialysis units in which nephrologists initiated projects aimed towards 'the improvement of patients' quality of life'. Whereas the first involved nurses supporting patients in the administration of peritoneal dialysis at home, the second implied the provision of treatment and care exclusively focused on a well-being 'in the here and now' to patients. By conceptualising physicians as actors within networks of relations and values enacted in practices, it analyses how in both dialysis units reference to quality of life enabled nephrologists to problematise the provision of standard haemodialysis treatment to multi-morbid, elderly patients, to develop a new treatment protocol, and to interest and enrol others in the provision of healthcare according this new protocol. Valuing medical interventions in terms of quality of life not only leads to a governmentalization of living and an economisation of health. It also allows physicians to articulate a socio-medico-ethical problem – the availability of life-prolonging technologies for a growing population of elderly, multi-morbid patients – and develop solutions locally. What the solutions consist in may fundamentally differ, however. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories produce bodies that produce stories in an endless intra-active metabolic continuum. Stories do not only represent material worlds but also shape and make new worlds. Starting from these premises, this article develops "composting storytelling," a methodological approach to heterogeneous, open-ended, small stories interwoven with everyday interaction. Drawing on years-long ethnographic work in a school greenhouse, and multispecies and critical animal studies literature as well as feminist storytelling, the authors develop a twofold argument. First, composting storytelling can be mobilized as a critical research approach in which critique emerges along with horizontal movement from closer, warm assemblages to more distant or erased, cool assemblages. Furthermore, multispecies storytelling can inform the broader field of qualitative research by positioning the ethnographer and the field in a relationship characterized by a hesitant ethics of knowing. The study draws attention to the polyphony of voices and temporalities, foregrounds intra-active transformation, and suggests a more modest position for the human protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnography documents the emergence and persistence of the sexual abuse I experienced by multiple male peer athletes in a youth sports setting. The testimony signals how my presence in the locker room felt like a space invader for the group, resulting in numerous micro-behaviours, group formation processes, and shifting norms, which led to sexual abuse. Based on the notes and writings in my diary, a thick description is produced, to help facilitate an understanding of the culture in which the abuse took place. I offer my story as a pedagogical resource to incorporate in bystander education programs to teach trainers and coaches about the toxic and harmful interactions and dynamics that can emerge in male team sports because of a dominant, masculine, team culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective is to analyse the progress of a 2-year-olds classroom in a school in Cantabria (Spain) towards an inclusive participation project. The research, carried out over three school years, has been based on the qualitative paradigm and ethnographic approach. A variety of research strategies have been employed: participant observation; discussion groups; informal conversations; ambulation and child conferencing using image elicitation. We have analysed the transformation of the educational approach in a classroom for 2-year-olds into a pedagogy of inclusive participation. These transformation process have deployed through three practitioner enquiry cycles with different focuses: materials and proposals; curriculum as progetazzione ; decision-making opportunities and child participation. These transformation processes have also allowed educators to move towards a critical ecology of the profession perspective. Finally, the teachers who enquired into their educational reality by listening to children, embarded on a process of transformation towards more participatory education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages in a reflection about the use of social media to carry out fieldwork online for contemporary ethnography. The reflection is based on the ethnographer's experiences of discomforts and affects in digital fieldwork, in which she used her own social media accounts to interact with the interlocutors recruited for the project as a means to create reciprocity with them. This article uses these discomforts as generators of ethical, epistemological and political reflections by discussing the positionality of the ethnographer in a digital fieldwork. Firstly, it delves into the potential of these discomforts as a reflective tool for knowledge generation. It also reflects on the power dynamics consequence of the position that the anthropologist occupies in the field. Finally, the article initiates a political reflection on academic life when extensive exposure to fieldwork breaks down the boundaries between work and personal life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year the United States government detains and deports hundreds of thousands of people who prior to their removal are held in confinement for an average of 55 days. The short and long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic on migrant detention and deportation continue to be evaluated in real time, including how we can best study it. This paper provides a timely analysis on the relationship between immigration enforcement and confinement, public health emergencies, and ethnographic methods. It makes two contributions. The first is methodological and focuses on the challenges and opportunities of ethnographic methods in carceral settings when pandemic-related protocols have raised additional challenges to conventional in-person prison ethnography. The second contribution is empirical and documents how we adapted ethnographic methods to an interdisciplinary research design and to the exigencies of the pandemic to study the spread of the coronavirus in four immigrant detention facilities in New Jersey, USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current article, I reflect on data from an ethnographic study at the National Training Academy of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), where I participated in the correctional officer training program (CTP) with the objective to gain appreciation for the many realities of the training process and content. Reflecting on experiences as a uniformed participant in the 14-week in-person component of the program, I describe the challenges tied to starting an immersive ethnography midcareer and unpack the central ethical dilemmas shaping data collection and article preparation. First, I speak to what it means to be part of the 14-week job interview with 24 other individuals, with a strong emphasis on how participant values and ethics align with those of the organization and the challenges of consent. Next, I unpack the complexities across relationships that emerge in doing ethnographies in an organization with a hierarchical structure, specifically the role conflict between being a researcher (e.g., working in partnership with CSC) and participant (e.g., doing the training). As an ethnographer, I did not want to affect the experiences or outcomes of other recruits, but my presence may have influenced them regardless of my intentions. I conclude by highlighting implications for further consideration when conducting ethnographic work in partnerships with organizations of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how sense of place guides organizational sustainable development practices. Despite global phenomena, sustainable development challenges such as poverty and climate change are locally experienced and require local actions. Sense of place, which focuses on local phenomena, offers rich potential to understand organizations and sustainable development practices. This article presents an in-depth case study of Norlha Textiles, an enterprise implementing sustainable development practices in a nomadic village on the Tibetan Plateau. I apply an ethnographic approach to data collection through 3 months of fieldwork. I identified two forms of sense of place: emotional attachment and functional dependence, which can be disembodied from or embodied in the biophysical place. Then, I theorized organizational sustainable development practices in three pathways: maintaining, developing, and transforming place. This study advances organization studies on sense of place and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of buying and reselling tickets for profit, known in the United Kingdom as ticket touting, can offer insights into the online–offline overlaps of contemporary illicit-market activities. While the technological advancements of the last decades have revolutionized the way in which tickets for U.K. concerts and sporting events are bought and sold, traditional forms of offline touting are arguably far from extinct. And yet the focus and efforts of campaigners, the media, and of (some) members of parliament have been dedicated entirely to the online aspect of illegal ticket resale. Indeed, legislation banning the use of "bots" to purchase tickets was introduced in 2017, and additional measures that only target the online methods of a so-called new generation of touts are again being considered. Empirical data collected through observations outside music venues and football stadia alongside in-depth qualitative interviews with contemporary touts, however, reveal a very different picture. Not only is street touting surviving and thriving, new evidence suggests that the touts' traditional street spirit and deviant savoir-faire are now effectively being emulated by the same online resale companies that stakeholders are trying to target. In fact, the failed attempts to curb this much-vilified practice can in part be attributed to a widespread neglect of the touts' traditional offline practices. In particular, the touts' use of creative strategies to deceive and manipulate consumers, and to exploit longstanding, favorable connections within the official, primary market, continue to elude experts. The article situates touting alongside other illicit-market phenomena that, although impacted by recent technological innovations, still rely on original forms of offline offending. While street touting is seldom mentioned in the debates on regulating tickets, it is the very connection between the illegal resale market's online and offline aspects that could shed light on the areas that most require attention and reform, beyond technology and the bots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of "smaller-scale platforms," distinguishing them from both large-scale, infrastructural platforms (such as Silicon Valley giants and Chinese infotech monopolies), and small, single-use platforms. To do so, it presents an ethnographic case study of the Chinese-owned, multinational entertainment live-streaming platform, Bigo Live. The article argues that smaller-scale platforms, positioned at the fringe of the internet business ecosystem, are non-infrastructural yet still serve as integral components of the larger, global platform economy and international trade. The ethnography presented shows how smaller-scale platforms target niche and occasionally unconventional markets, offering specialized services within agile, cross-platform, and transnational business sectors. The ethnography also depicts the naturalization of the Chinese "internet thinking" business model, as well as unusual and even extreme events among Chinese expatriate platform personnel, local non-Chinese employees, guilds of live-streamers, the live-streaming audience, and other stakeholders operating within complex geopolitical contexts. Finally, the paper delineates prospective research trajectories stemming from the theorization of smaller-scale platforms, articulating potential inquiries that could enhance scholarly understanding within this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For qualitative scholars, achieving interpretive depth when analyzing large global datasets represents a particular challenge. It is, however, a challenge worth navigating given the power of such datasets to provide a depth of insight into large-scale societal issues. Building on existing insights about qualitative analysis and examples from my own experience of large global research projects, here I seek to offer some advice in this regard. I provide three general heuristics that scholars can keep in mind as characterizing this endeavor: the hermeneutic circle, distributed cognition; and embracing doubt. I then show how these heuristics unfold practically, illustrating a four-step process that I hope is helpful for qualitative researchers seeking to balance depth and breadth to understand macro phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex health care interventions often consist of specific and non-specific effects and can present a methodological and intellectual challenge to researchers. This is especially the case in Complementary and Integrative Medicines (CIM), where research may inadequately capture the holistic nature of therapies, affecting the quality of outcomes and evidence reported. This article introduces a novel approach that advances methodology and helps researchers to "step inside" the therapeutic drama, to improve the quality of evidence produced. The method, termed Theatricality, was trialed in five complementary health centers across four European countries and provides a fresh view of therapy, where the interventions, practitioners, and researchers appear bound by their context and space, creating, or limiting the potential for these acts. Delivered as an adjunct to Ethnography, this approach offers a new way of conceiving, capturing, and communicating whole health care performances that may help to improve the quality of evidence in complex health care interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research takes a socio-technical approach and uses participant observation and in-depth interviews to explain how two major TV news organizations from Colombia utilize social media to distribute video and engage TV audiences in online settings. Findings show that social media, particularly Facebook, are changing how television channels think of videos and their perceptions of audience engagement at the organizational level. Social media not only play a dominant role for distributing video but they influence with their recommendations and metrics TV decisions regarding content production. Finally, this research discusses the implication of these findings for the future of TV journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, language and literacy scholars working within a sociocultural framework have laboured to bring attention to the strengths of marginalized students in an effort to create more inclusive and equitable learning environments (e.g., Cummins, 2000 ; Dyson, 1997 ; González et al., 2005 ; Heath, 1983). While this work has moved the field forward in invaluable ways, it has not consistently engaged with processes of marginalization as a complex practice, which has produced gaps in our understanding of how we can best address it in research and practice to the benefit of all learners. Drawing on the notions of literacy socialization (Sterponi, 2012) and syncretic literacy (Duranti and Ochs, 1996 ; Gregory et al., 2013a), in this paper I conduct a close examination of the in- and out-of-school literacy socialization practices of Max Calfu, a seven-year-old Chilean-Canadian boy, over the course of a year-long ethnography that I conducted with his family at their home, at his Spanish-English bilingual public school, and in transit between home and school in a large Western Canadian city. At school, Max's Indigenous identity was regularly rendered invisible by the cultural capital his Chilean-national heritage held within the Spanish bilingual program (Calderón and Urrieta, 2019). Using thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2013), I demonstrate how Max incorporated the wolf figure into his literacy practices over the course of the research year, considering multiple scales of space and time, and in relation to key mediators. My analysis calls attention to the ways in which he drew on his syncretic literacy experiences to author his Indigenous identity in official and unofficial learning spaces. I conclude the paper by arguing that examining syncretism in children's literacy practices can lay the foundation for a more ethically, emotionally, and culturally engaged language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the recent anthropological literature on white supremacy. We argue that this ethnographic literature presents innovative approaches for a theory of race, power, and capitalist modernity applicable to anthropology as a whole. To highlight this literature's analytical contributions, we pursue a close but not exhaustive review of recent studies of white supremacy, showing how ethnographers have expanded an influential theoretical foundation by braiding together or "epistemically stitching" their work on white supremacy to a variety of other theoretical conversations in anthropology. We suggest this epistemic stitching—an important form of theory-building in anthropology that creatively ties together theoretical conversations and leaves evidence of that labor—provides important insights into the workings of white supremacy by drawing together critical theories of race with several different theoretical influences, from new materialism and critical anthrohistory to studies of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In research on videogame production, much attention has been given, justifiably, to 'crunch', whereby employees in large studios work extremely long hours for months at a time prior to a game's launch, at the request of management. There has to date been limited research about how duration and urgency are experienced at other periods, and also in the economically and culturally significant 'independent' (or indie) sectors and companies. This article draws on a Deleuzian framework initially developed to analyse experience of temporality in academic research, and applies it to data generated by an ethnography of a UK-based indie game studio, which examined how games are produced as part of a more routine working life. The framework enables a re-examination of how 'passionate' work in the cultural industries is lived day-to-day, and aims to contribute to debates about the politics of time in the games sector, offering analytic resources which expand the vocabulary for expressing desired experiences of time in game work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the resistance practices of the social sciences and humanities researchers who are doing small-scale qualitative research in Finnish universities. The research material was generated in three online 'cafés' where 22 researchers from different academic career stages gathered to share and discuss their experiences and emotions related to both their everyday work and to the effects of current research strategies on their work. The social sciences and humanities researchers felt discomfort with current neoliberal science politics, but they must, to some extent, play by its rules. However, they have found different ways to resist them, too, and this study scrutinises what kinds of resistance practices were generated in the café encounters and, further, how affects became part of these practices. Through my analysis, anxiety, anger, pride and hope came into being as the most meaningful affects that circulated through the cafés, and which fostered the resistance practices. Furthermore, with these affects, academics move towards individual or collective, but sometimes ambiguously towards both of these ways of resisting. The individual way supports the neoliberal idea of competing individuals, whereas a more collective way can open a possibility for more substantial and rapid change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surely a leader should know what to do? But what happens when complexity means they cannot know which path to take? We answer this question with an ethnographic study of distributed leadership (DL) in an organisation grappling with inherent tensions within its mission. The article makes a counter-intuitive argument for the value and utility of unknowingness, defined as a state of awareness of both an absence of knowing and one's inability to know. Three inter-related aspects to unknowingness are developed – acceptance of not knowing, tolerance of the discomfort of not knowing, and distribution of unknowingness – leading to an innovative theory of unknowingness. We reveal how unknowingness and DL are bound with each other in the sense that not knowing can enable distribution of leadership within the organisation, whilst DL addresses challenges in complex organisations associated with not knowing. We thereby provide an illustration of the interplay between those with hierarchical authority and others dispersed throughout an organisation. In sum, we provide an alternative perspective to the heroic, all-knowing individual leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, Ryan Cecil Jobson made the case for 'letting anthropology burn', arguing that: "the field of anthropology cannot presume a coherent human subject as its point of departure but must adopt a radical humanism as its political horizon" (2019:328). In this article, Robinson upholds Jobson's mandate to adopt a radical humanism, though not by burning, but methodologically rebuilding anthropology using multimodal ethnographic praxis, drawing on learnings from time spent working and learning from DEAF spaces. She charts her intellectual and affective journey from working with deaf artists and educators, through studies in anthropology, and towards transformative encounters with multimodal social semiotics. Through learning to listen and evaluate in DEAF ways, she found that non-deaf, majority-centred ways of conducting research naturally receded, thereby re-scaffolding ethnographic methods, proffering a ready-made approach to inclusive anthropological knowledge-making and a potential means for democratising anthropology from the ground up. Robinson argues that approaching ethnographic praxis in a way that both de-prioritises English-text and prioritises participant-led approaches by default reshapes what constitutes valuable anthropological knowledge, facilitating broader participant inclusion and legibility, while also rendering more apparent entrenched power hierarchies and epistemic imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the field of qualitative research by shining a light on the additional and invisible work demanded of female ethnographers undertaking research in male-dominated spaces. It draws on an 18-month ethnographic study exploring the potential of sport and physical activity as a tool to support the transition of male veterans from the military into civilian life. Previous literature has explored the experiences of female ethnographers, hinting at some of this additional necessary work. This study builds upon this, to highlight the invisible and additional management processes required of female ethnographers in male-dominated spaces, including the management of events, managing image and gender performance and the multi-layered demands of managing emotions. This article argues that a greater degree of effort and labour is demanded of female ethnographers, which should be acknowledged in academic writing alongside the provision of support when entering male-dominated research spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I make two points about the role of threats for ethnographic fieldwork in contexts suffused by interpersonal violence. First, the experience of implicit and explicit threats operates as a powerful cultural agent that significantly transforms fieldworkers' relationship with the field. Second, subjecting oneself to threats can become a central component of the ethnographic immersion into the field. The notion of "threat wisdom" connects these two points by capturing the emerging competence to handle threats and resulting from "becoming threatened," "becoming threatful," and "becoming threat wise." To develop this argument, I discuss insights from my fieldwork with homeless people using cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, in Barcelona. [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 article examines the proliferation of antifeminist and anti-LGBTIQ+ discourses among teenagers in Barcelona (Catalonia) and the role of media and the manosphere – online communities and spaces where discussions about masculinity, anti-feminism, gender relations and men's issues take place – on the pollination of these discourses. Through short-term ethnography conducted in three education centres, involving the collaboration of 59 teenagers between 14 and 18 years old, the study researches the discourses that young people embrace, what mediatised environments are referring to when they speak about gender, feminism and LGBTIQ+ topics, and the meaning young people give to these media content. Findings reveal the manosphere facilitates young people's access to masculinist cultures and point to the urge of addressing the affective dimension of it. To conclude, it highlights the need to challenge these informal learning spaces within contemporary youth culture to promote gender equality and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnography is often considered as a suitable methodological approach to explore childhoods, nevertheless, there is limited reflection on ethics in the field in the Global South educational settings, such as China. Previous China-based fieldwork studies suggest complex field relationships as a major ethical challenge. Although the issue is especially prominent in research that contests "normative" Chinese childhoods, it hasn't been sufficiently discussed due to a culture of silence surrounding researchers' emotions and positionality. This paper uses emotional reflexivity as a lens to revisit two Chinese female researchers' experiences of fieldwork, respectively, with left-behind children and disabled children in Chinese primary schools. The analysis examines how we identified ourselves and negotiated complex relationships with school members and unpacks experiences of "sameness" and "otherness" and the vulnerability and creditability impacted by our fluid identities. The paper adds insights into ethical considerations of school-based ethnographic research with diverse children in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This anthropological study focuses on spatially ordered dimensions of sociocultural life in Kontula, a suburban housing estate located at the urban margins of Helsinki, Finland. With a notorious reputation since its construction in the 1960s, it has come to represent the numerous ills of contemporary urbanity, from poverty and substance abuse to failed immigration policies. Its urban transformation is explored as the entanglement of imagination and materiality, a make-believe space that privileges neither the social constructionist nor the purely materialist perspective. I study the everyday life of its inhabitants as recurring and routinized episodes, occasionally interrupted by events that disturb its embodied flow and force inhabitants to reflect upon their spatially situated practices. I argue that the everyday encounters in rapidly transforming Kontula are simultaneously experienced as absurd and ordinary, and constitute the ordering principles of its affective geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of debates about organizational space, this paper undertakes a multidimensional spatial analysis of everyday organizing. Drawing on an extensive ethnographic study of a housing estate, we use the territory, place, scale, network framework to reveal processes of everyday spatial production that occur through territorial, place-based, scalar and networked organizing. Foregrounding the interplay of these dimensions, we identify four resulting tensions at work in everyday organizing: conflict and resistance, boundaries and (un)boundedness, stasis and movement and alterity and diversity. We propose that centring attention on these dynamics manifest what might be termed 'organizational geographies'. Thus, we contribute an empirical demonstration of the ways in which organizing as a sociospatial process occurs during everyday life in a more 'informal' site, thereby extending the contextual repertoire of organization studies. We also contribute a methodological approach for organization scholars to analyse everyday spatial production as a multidimensional process, pointing to the potential for greater cross-disciplinary fertilization with human geography in future organization research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Fiona Dykes is Professor Emerita of Maternal and Infant Health at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom (UCLAN). Fiona has a particular interest in the global, sociocultural, and political influences upon infant and young child feeding practices; her methodological expertise is in ethnography and other qualitative research methods. She founded the Maternal and Infant Nutrition and Nurture Unit (MAINN) in 2000 which she led until she retired from her full-time professorship in 2020. Fiona established the associated MAINN Conference in 2007. The MAINN conference is a 3 day, international, peer reviewed event held bi-annually in the United Kingdom and, more recently, in alternate years overseas (Sydney, Australia; Falun, Dalarna, Sweden; and Florida, United States). The conference draws together key researchers in the field of infant and young child feeding from around the world. Fiona was a founding member of the journal Maternal and Child Nutrition. She is author of Breastfeeding in Hospital: Mothers, Midwives and the Production Line (Routledge) and co-author, with Dr Tanya Cassidy, of Banking on Milk: An Ethnography of Donor Human Milk Relations (Routledge). She is also joint editor of several books including Infant and Young Child Feeding: Challenges to Implementing a Global Strategy (Wiley-Blackwell) and Ethnographic Research in Maternal and Child Health (Routledge). This interview was conducted on April 20, 2023, by Dr. Tanya Cassidy, and is based on a verbatim transcription and edited for readability. TC = Tanya Cassidy; FD = Fiona Dykes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shares insight on relational ethnographic perspective in breastfeeding research from the lens of social and cultural sciences. It details the relational turn in the social sciences including the concept of relational sociology, links between relations and understanding complexity, and connections between the social world and cultural objects. It also discusses the potential application of relational perspective on the study of cultural and social issues underlying breastfeeding.

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]

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]

Significant barriers remain regarding the implementation of family-centred approaches in the domain of forensic psychiatry despite their effectiveness at increasing adherence to treatment, improving attendance to medical appointments, decreasing readmission rates and reducing episodes of relapse. We attribute these barriers to a fundamental gap in our understanding of the family function and its role within the forensic psychiatric system. Despite requesting to be included and considered as partners, some families feel excluded and sidelined, which causes distress, incomprehension and disengagement. We approached this tension at the discursive level through a critical ethnography of the Review Board and the work of Foucault on psychiatric power, which provided us with a unique opportunity to understand how the role of families are constructed and sustained in the Canadian forensic psychiatric system. To do so, we mobilized data stemming from ethnographic observations and documentary artifacts entitled 'reasons for disposition'. Data analysis allowed us to identify two discursive constructions of familial functions: (1) families as repositories of information and (2) families as supervisory agents. These results have implications for health care professionals and administrators in forensic psychiatry who are increasingly adhering to family-centred care models without questioning what such care or what such family engagement entails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nordic countries, 'welfare technology' is a concept used increasingly by policymakers when discussing the promise of digitalisation in care for older people. In this paper, I draw on data from 14 qualitative ethnographic interviews with employees in municipal eldercare in Sweden, as well as observations carried out at a nursing home, to suggest the importance of studying how good care is enacted through welfare technology, whilst simultaneously attending to the adverse effects sometimes consequent from these practices. In this article, I explore what values are supported when doing care with welfare technology, and what values are neglected in this process. The theoretical starting point for this article takes its inspiration from recent discussions of care within Science and Technology Studies (STS). Employing a double vision of care, the article argues for the importance of understanding how good care is enacted with technology, while also attending to what these care practices exclude and neglect. Focusing on the use of social alarms, the article shows that when doing care with such technology, values such as independence, safety and some forms of togetherness and availability were enhanced; while other values such as other forms togetherness and availability, a stress-free working environment and functionality were neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]