Search

In this paper, we draw on the concepts of figurations, capital, and hegemonic masculinity to analyse a bullying relation involving two fifth-grade boys at a Swedish comprehensive school. The findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observations and group interviews with eight teachers and fourteen students (seven girls and seven boys) from the same class. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of the relation between the boys and suggest that rather than constituting a straight-forward bullying situation involving a problematically aggressive 'bully' targeting a less powerful 'victim', it is part of a more complex figuration involving interdependent social relations that are tenuously balanced in terms of power dynamics and where the boys position themselves and are positioned in relation to the long-term symbolic norms of status dominant within their specific school field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a preliminary biographical exploration, this article provides an introductory study into Raymond Firth's early research, as it initially related to Māoridom. Using archival and creative collaborative techniques to look at anthropology's contemporary past, it contends that Firth is amongst the earliest founders of the ethnographic approach known as 'the anthropology of/at home'. A significant interest in the biographic description of anthropologists is currently taking place. As a newly developing self-conscious genre, the intellectual biography is becoming central to the way in which the discipline writes its own history. This paper not only provides an introduction into Firth's Māori work (as found in his MA and PhD research), but also demonstrates the use of experimental methods in creating an 'archaeology of us'. In seeing the lesser known and largely disregarded elements of Firth's personal history as a poorly investigated type of biographical data, I suggest that such interdisciplinary approaches are essential in conducting biographical research. Despite two Festschrifts honouring Firth's contributions to the discipline, there is as yet no lengthy biography of this acclaimed economic anthropologist. He was 'born and bred' in Aotearoa/NZ, but migrated to the UK in 1924 to pursue his doctorate. By tracing the early career path and initial written output of one of the longest lived and most influential ethnographers/ethnologists in the discipline's legacy, this paper contributes to expanding the biographical genre – both regarding antipodean academic history, as well as in dealing with international migration, the movement of ideas and social anthropology's diasporic intellectual landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As personal digital devices have become increasingly embedded in schools, what they do tends to silently fall into the background and generally be taken for granted. In order to scrutinize the silent doings of digital devices, this paper explores how attending to breakdowns as a methodological heuristic device can be an insightful entry point to surface and analyze these doings. By conducting a sociomaterial ethnographic study in one Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) school, this paper disentangles four different breakdowns that occurred during the ethnographic study. The analysis reveals a particular mode of digital doings at school, coined as digital pedagogics, that characterizes the school space–time as plastic and poly-synchronous and curates lesson activities. Moreover, this mode is heavily conditioned by and through the school's sociomaterial infrastructure. The paper concludes that in the wake of the breakdowns, the school's infrastructure comes into being not merely as a bundle of cables and basic structures that make the school function, but more importantly as a complex configuration of clouds, software and interfaces, algorithms and patterns, standards, protocols and negotiations. This sets the condition for framing contemporary digitized schools within a particular techno-scholastic milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on data generated within and resulting from a pedagogical encounter between four Black and Latinx youth, two fitness professionals, and myself – the researcher – in an urban after-school setting. I draw on Tinning's (2010) concept of pedagogy and affect theory (Hickey-Moody, 2013; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010) to explore how health and fitness knowledge(s) were exchanged in/through a pedagogical encounter and the potential affects of such an encounter. Using MacLure's (2013a) notion of wonder and glows, the paper turns its focus to a specific encounter within a larger 18-month visual ethnography to follow affective capacities that may open up and/or limit further affects and change. Through data generation and inquiry, two affective moments are produced and discussed. These affective moments come to represent possibilities for exploring the role of pedagogy outside formal schooling milieus, among different cultural players, and the potential in producing affective resides that linger beyond the encounter itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnography as a methodological approach presents the fieldworker with many ethical crossroads throughout the research process. This is because of the unique position that ethnographers find themselves in, the environments that they research and the relationships which are formed. This paper presents four confessional vignettes from a broader ethnographic research project that illuminate the underside of fieldwork, and how the author dealt with a number of difficulties and dilemmas in the field as a working-class academic. Fieldwork was undertaken in a Welsh (UK) secondary school for one full academic year, and the paper argues that researcher identity must be remain fluid so that successful field relations are established and maintained. The paper concludes that researchers must think intersectionally about their endeavours and to also consider how one's own social baggage might impact upon the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes to use the concept of co-production to account for the mutual co-production of private as well as public security actors and critical infrastructure. Through an exploration in the field of urban security provision, we aim to contribute to critical security studies by turning to the entanglements of public and private security actors in the process of securitising infrastructure. As the construction and provision of infrastructural security depends neither solely on public nor private actors but on their interaction, we propose the concept of co-production to account for these dynamics. Based on a focused ethnography, the paper mobilises material collected during a security conference in Israel, in which the close connections between private and public security actors were forged and where infrastructure was at the heart of the security concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an ethnographic account of the culture of school meal time at Peartree Academy, with a specific focus on notions of social learning. This qualitative study is focused on a collection of interviews, observations, field notes and analyses what happens when the school organises its canteen as a restaurant. The focus moves away from the traditional realms of nutrition and explicitly introduces the notion of social learning in its informal sense through which a conceptual framework of a skills model is applied. The paper argues how the school dining hall known as the restaurant can foster opportunities for a form of social competence which is not necessarily seen but can be experienced in the social reproduction of its actors. The findings highlight tensions of control within the environment, which are said to impinge upon these social learning opportunities from occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on my experience of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Indian Himalayas to study the illegal hashish trade in the region. The work required me to spend time with cannabis cultivators, dealers, drug tourists and law enforcement officials. My informants would regularly engage in the consumption of narcotic substances. A significant part of building close and durable relationships with informants was getting intoxicated with them. Dealer and cultivator groups were generally tightly knit, and an outsider was looked upon with mistrust. I found that consuming narcotics with informants would generally induce candid conversations, which meant a good amount of data coming my way. This paper analyses the social dynamics of such interactions and discusses the ethical ambiguity inherent in such a process of data collection. Although there have been a number of insightful ethnographic studies on narcotic substances, there have been surprisingly few studies addressing the ethnographer's experience and potential risks involved. Through a mainly reflexive examination of my fieldwork, this paper is an account of how the ethnographic method frequently pushes the fieldworker to transgress ethical, psychological, professional, social and personal boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of metaphors in the production of re-descriptions of the world within the framework of technological design processes. Drawing on a collaborative ethnography with the Economic Space Agency (ECSA), a start-up developing post-blockchain technology, this paper illustrates how metaphors mimic the toponymy of decentralized material infrastructures, while simultaneously pushing forward 'posthuman' values that are expected to become fixated through software. Through an analysis of a 'collection' of metaphors produced by ECSA, this paper sheds light on the work performed by specific vocabularies, within technological communities, in shaping a symbiotic relationship between futuristic politics and material culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the history of bareback sex (condomless sex between men), 'subjects' have been created, particularly through scientific literature, to characterise the men who engage in the sexual practice. For example, a gay man who does not use a condom may be framed as a pathologised subject. This paper first presents this history. Afterwards, by relying upon ethnographic data such as interviews collected from fieldwork research done in Toronto in 2014 with young gay men who have bareback sex, it shows exactly how these young gay men related themselves to those subjects. Then, it focuses on the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) Truvada as a new HIV prevention technology. Although PrEP can allow condomless sex to occur while diminishing the risk of HIV transmission, at the time of the research, none of the young gay men were interested in using this tool despite being the subjects for whom the drug is tailored. This paper argues that PrEP and subjectivity are coproduced and can have conflicting meanings. This contradiction of meanings is a result of the various representations and symbols of bareback sex and the men who engage in the practice that have been produced throughout the history of bareback sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to our understanding of the spiritual and invisible aspects of African military landscapes through a historical and ethnographic study of Zimbabwe liberation war guerrillas' spiritual practices. Guerrillas mobilized and deployed their spiritual beliefs and practices in the execution of the 1970s liberation war against well equipped Rhodesian forces, and in subsequent deployments as members of the post-colonial national army. Guerrillas' understanding of their landscape of deployment as spiritual influenced their engagement with it's physical materials such as trees and caves and wild animals as active objects representing the ancestors. The paper argues that the spirituality of African military landscape challenges dominant western conceptualizations of military landscapes as passive sites that are dominated and shaped by violent military activities. Spirituality makes African military landscapes active and affective beyond the dictates of human [militay] action, therefore shaping and controlling ways in which the military engage with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores questions of mobility, ethnicity and spatial imaginaries in Sri Lanka through the experiences of fishermen in Mutuwall, a neighborhood of Colombo. While scholars of Sri Lanka have explored the historically contingent nature of Sri Lanka's island-identity, this paper engages with the contemporary construction of island-ness through ethnographic fieldwork with twenty-first century residents of the city. Through fishers' accounts of their pre-war itinerant lifestyles and their experiences living in the coastal High Security Zone during the civil conflict, this essay juxtaposes the free movement of fishers before the war with the heavily restricted movement they experienced at the height of the tensions between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Fisher itineraries can be understood as dovetailing with state imaginaries of island-wide sovereignty even as they challenge it by describing subaltern movement through space. Ultimately, this paper suggests the importance of contemporary modes of 'doing' Indian Ocean studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Missionary' and 'archaeology' may appear incongruous partners within contemporary archaeological practice, but archival, museum and oral sources reveal historical connections. This paper explores two missionaries, active in the western Pacific from 1896 to 1973. Reverends Charles Elliot Fox (Melanesian Mission, Solomon Islands) and Frederick Gatherer Bowie (Free Church of Scotland Mission, Vanuatu) both conducted studies related to the prehistory and migration of Pacific people. Both produced material assemblages, as well as textual and visual documents, and formed ideas influenced by their own networks and self identities. The paper examines their data collection methods and relationships with others, considering particularly how their relationships with Pacific Islanders and with psychologist and ethnologist W.H.R. Rivers influenced the missionary research process. By understanding these aspects of their work, Fox and Bowie can be placed within a broader genealogy of Anglophone missionary archaeology dating back to the late 18th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how governors in the EnglishFurther Education and Skills(FE) sector examined their practice as ethnographers. The paper locates both FE governance and ethnography within the challenges of the performative and Panoptic environments facing English education. In doing so, the paper explores how the informants’ mobilisation of ethnographic methods revealed a novel lens on both governance and the role of ethnographer. Employing Grounded Theory, the paper considers how the participants negotiated philosophical questions regarding evidence, objectivity and truth. The paper suggests that despite the deep-seated complexities inherent in conducting ethnography in performative contexts, the participants generated data which painted a unique and revealing picture upon their practice as governor and researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Inspired by Klaus Neumann's critical approach to Pacific history which attends to the 'trash' of the past – 'the irrelevant, the insignificant, the marginal, and the negligible' – this paper revisits the margins of our sources. Captions, doodles, annotations and other forms of marginal trash need to be addressed in their own right, and for the light they shed on the main body of source materials, whether textual, audio-visual, or artefactual. The folio drawings produced by the Russian anthropologist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay in Oceania between 1871 and 1883 provide an exemplary if fragmentary archive through which the interplay of the central and the marginal, the visual and the textual, can be considered. The visual richness of his sketches and the scope for historical and ethnographic analysis and reconstruction are considerably enhanced and extended by focusing on his many marginal scribbles, which include obvious captions as well as stray observations, word-lists, and other commentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the 'affective turn' within social sciences, alongside the shift to a more emotional public and political sphere, and the implications of these shifts for the study of social policy. A context of austerity cuts and reforms to welfare services contributes to heightened and unstable emotions surrounding services. A case study of Sure Start Children's Centers in the UK is presented, in two areas where centers were threatened with closure. Interview and ethnographic material with both staff and service users is presented to show how emotions became heightened and politicized in this context. Both staff and service users articulated the values of the centers in new ways, drawing on intimate and emotional registers of experience. Overall, the material shows how in this context, emotions can be understood as place-based, relational and politicized, potentially producing different values and visions of welfare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on ethnographic biographies to reveal the multiple experiences of displacement among three residents on the Lancaster West Estate in London. It is a longitudinal study of before, during, and after the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. Drawing on in-depth, individual ethnographic biographies, I respond to gentrification scholars' calls for more qualitative methodological approaches to studying the experiences of the displaced. The temporal lens used adds value in showing that residents were being displaced before the fire and that they have continued to experience displacement even when rehomed. The Grenfell literature tends to focus largely on the causes of the fire but here I consider the lived subjective experiences of displacement, slow violence, unhoming and rehoming, among residents on the Estate. Upholding and preserving these voices is crucial for the Grenfell Inquiry and in resisting state-led gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experience of researching food in schools. Food is personal. It is an ingested symbol of culture, family, tradition, ethnicity... What does this mean as a researcher? How do we navigate food relationships? How is this relationship shaped by the rules of the school? This paper examines how I went about doing food research in primary schools, and the various incidents that occurred that revealed food was something more than that consumed. It outlines the ethnographic approach adopted, paying attention to the sensory in research. I explore researcher identity, explaining how my own identity was multiple, and shifting, depending on where I was at a particular "food moment". I draw attention to several events that, on reflection, serve to reveal the importance of food in everyday life, and helped understand both the field site, and the wider context of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper explores self-understandings among same-sex attracted men in Harare along with the local terms such men use to refer to themselves as well as their adoption and modification of globally circulating sexual identity labels. All study participants related to some of the labels that are prominent in the present-day, western-inspired global discourse on same-sex relations. However, they were rarely understood in the exact same way that is represented as typical in the 'west', indicating that when understandings and labels travel, they are not simply copied and pasted into new contexts. In Harare, being gay was closely interwoven with considerations about one's gendered self, and many same-sex relations were gender-structured. At the same time, this characteristic appeared to be a matter of emerging dispute, as it was sternly criticised by some. The history of political homophobia in Zimbabwe shone through in many stories and could be identified in some of the local terms used to refer to gay people, some of which had been invented to conceal from outsiders what they laid bare for insiders, and others of which had sting and mocked those in power for ideas and rhetoric perceived to be misguided or bizarre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mental health difficulties and educational trajectories of adolescents with care-experience is a pervasive international concern. This article explores how digital technologies can facilitate self-reflective dialogues and informal education opportunities for adolescents with care-experience. Extracts from vlogs created during an ethnographic project working with adolescents (n = 10, six males and four females, M age = 15.3 years, age range: 14–18 years) and carers (n = 35, ages and gender not sought) in four English residential homes are thematically analysed. Three major themes were constructed: richness of everyday identity; complexities of in care identity; and renegotiating narrative traumas. Themes illustrated how engagement with a blended intervention (featuring digital and face-to-face elements) created opportunities for trusted adults to support the mental health, identity and educational needs of adolescents with care-experience. The paper concludes by critically discussing the educational implications for those working with this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing interest in mobilities among social scientists over the past two decades has generated new research approaches to deepen the understanding of people's diverse movements. These methods have focused on capturing research participants' mobilities, but also led to new ways of thinking about researchers' mobilities as a strategy to collect data. In this paper, we explore the relationship between researchers and research participants' mobilities through the idea of 'following'. Drawing on insights from the Moving Marketplaces research project on eight markets in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, we highlight the lack of beginnings and endings of following. This leads us to a reflection on what to actually follow as well as an analysis of the doings of following. This paper examines some of the unexplored terrains in the conceptual and methodological debate around following and argues that it is essential to reflexively engage with the implications and practicalities of this approach. We argue that it is more productive to regard following not only as the physical process of following people, objects, knowledge, etc., but also as a theoretical and methodological openness that embraces and articulates the dynamic and non-linear character of ethnographic research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore what campesino [peasant] livelihoods in the rural Andean mountains of Colombia offer to understandings of more-than-human co-existence and care. For, while new conservation paradigms promise to transform economic and social horizons, being "paramuno" [resident of the "paramo," or high moorlands] in the small community of Monquentiva is already characterized by becoming-with-other-beings-and-practices; a disposition toward incorporation of elements that are at-hand, and an ethics of care toward other beings in the landscape. We draw on ethnographic data to present this case study, emphasizing the forms of social organization and persistence that have enabled the emergence of economically and ecologically sustainable livelihoods. We explore these processes in terms of what we call world-making practices, showing how relationships with Indigeneity and collectivity are being renegotiated, and arguing for modes of conservation that engage with existing forms of peasant innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mini-ethnographic case study examined the enactment of the mother tongue (MT) medium of instruction policy in teaching information and communication technology (ICT) to preschoolers or early childhood development (ECD) learners in a Zimbabwean school. The study employed an eclectic cognitive sense-making, ethnography of language policy and planning (ELPP), and technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework to look into practices of one preschool teacher, Mrs K, in her quest to enact the mother tongue policy. Despite her 26 years of experience in teaching preschoolers, Mrs K had not received adequate training on teaching ICT, a new subject in the ECD curriculum. While at first glance, she appeared to be abiding by the policy, some of her lessons proved to be teacher-dominated, and the classroom dialogue formulaic thus undermining the all-pervading learner-centred pedagogy on which the new curriculum edifice was premised. The paper thus explores the complex interplay of knowledge of content, technology and pedagogy; experience; cognitive and other contextual factors in impacting teacher sense-making and enactment of the mother tongue policy in teaching ICT to pre-school learners. One major factor which appeared to be influencing teacher understanding of policy was lack of ICT content knowledge and knowledge of how to teach ICT using both English and MT. The policy reformers seemingly rushed to implement the curriculum without capacitating teachers on how to use the mother tongue to teach ICT at ECD level. The study thus proposes strategies for teacher professional development in ICT, particularly for resource-constrained environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiential reality surrounding the Divine Liturgy, a Byzantine rite in Orthodox Christianity that has remained central to Eastern practice globally since Late Antiquity. The article draws on multi-sited ethnography in the glocal context of the Orthodox Church of Finland (OCF), a national church of minority and a site of multicultural interaction. Our analysis shows participants articulate their experiences with the Liturgy in an epistemology of interiority by which (1) they constantly, if unevenly, and agentically engage with the Liturgy in a form of individual, vernacular artistry. This interiority is (2) both sensorial and interpretative, and (3) ambivalently grounded in motifs of being "at home" and, at the same time, "on a journey." That is, participants from different backgrounds make a connection to the Liturgy both as a spiritual and a literal home, relating to different elements—Finnish, Karelian, Byzantine, and Church Slavonic—in its ritualistic aesthetics. At the same time, Liturgy emerges as a perpetual journey of new openings and glimpses, informed by past experiences and life trajectories, and participants relate to these two aspects simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of a private television newsroom owned by a newly merged and dominant media company in the small and highly concentrated media market of Flanders (Belgium). Through ethnographic observations and interviews along with desk research and surveys, carried out throughout 2020 both physically and virtually, we operationalise a previously developed model for pinpointing changes inside newsrooms. Our study shows once more that when newsrooms are confronted with changing circumstances, in this case, due to a merger, contemplation about how to address these changes happens largely behind closed doors on the management level, in the meantime leading to frustration amongst employees fearing that their professional identities and practices will be absolved in the newly to be created company structure. Involuntarily, our field study was affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we turned into an opportunity to explore the methodological consequences for ethnographic observations that in the future are bound to be taking place in increasingly hybrid newsrooms and other work settings. Finally, we highlight the importance of studying both physical and virtual spaces in which journalists produce news content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines the placement of people seeking asylum in temporary accommodation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a 14-month collaborative ethnography conducted between 2020 and 2022 with asylum seeking individuals in Glasgow. While moves to temporary accommodation were framed by state authorities and private firms as providing a "safe environment" from COVID-19, we show how these relocations amounted to a racialised process which constructed our participants as "undeserving" and "unworthy" of protection and care during a period of crisis. Our analysis highlights how this racialisation took place not only on a policy level but also in practice through everyday encounters with private provider staff. Advancing the literature on asylum housing and dispersal through new theoretical and empirical contributions, we argue that the rise of temporary forms of asylum accommodation can be understood as constitutive of racial modes of belonging within a regime of differential humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hermeneutical religious positions among Muslim educators vary in flexibility and openness to critical thought. Those within a school community may disagree on how Islam should be interpreted and practiced. In the light of this, who determines which expressions of the faith are acceptable in particular locations, and how? And what messages do these processes send to students? Based on 18 months of ethnographic research at a K-12 Islamic school in the midwestern United States, this paper describes conflict-ridden instances in which school faculty subtly communicated interpretive norms through implication or example. These demonstrate select ways that distinct approaches to Islam were constructed and contested within the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the nexus between migration governance and higher education. While the intersections between these two societal/policy systems have received attention in existing literature, much has changed as a result of the recent COVID-19 crisis. The global pandemic has introduced spatial and temporal disjuncture that significantly impact how international students navigate these systems. We address this issue through the lens of international student mobility, taking postgraduate international students' perspectives as a vantage point. By drawing on a comparative qualitative study between Singapore and the UK (specifically, London), we focus on how international students experience, first, (mis)alignments between migration governance and pandemic-induced mobility regulation and, second, tensions between mobility regulations and institutional measures adopted by universities in Singapore and the UK. In both contexts, pandemic governance often compounded the complexities of migration policies, creating additional barriers for international students. In navigating these new challenges, international students adaptively draw on various resources while also imagining new possibilities presented by the otherwise challenging circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 'transnational turn' in welfare regime theory has disrupted methodologically nationalist analyses of care regimes generating analytical frameworks that capture the interdependencies between care and migration regimes. Those frameworks share a focus on migration for paid care labour as the vehicle connecting care and migration regimes transnationally. In this paper, we highlight familial care-labour mobility as an additional mechanism connecting care and migration regimes across borders. Drawing on the care circulation framework, we argue that a focus on these informal global care chains helps to bridge macro structural level approaches of the frameworks that focus on paid care labour with the more micro-level transnational family care approach. We focus on grandparent care-labour mobility, arguing that while it is 'familial', 'informal', 'private' and 'invisible', its dynamics and the lived experiences of those entwined within it, are mediated at the care-migration systems nexus. Through case-studies on grandparent care-labour mobility between China and Australia and India and the UK, we examine how the care-migration systems nexus is shaped by the prevailing logic of neoliberalism and ensuing patterns of stratification within care and migration systems. We conclude by highlighting the need for a transnational ethics of family care to govern the care-migration systems nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires into the heteronormative regimes of sexual morality, focusing on the experiences of gay and queer men within the locus of family. Drawing upon a phenomenological ethnography involving interviews with the Indian gay community, this study demonstrates the disciplinary power of sexual morality over queer lives. It examines the varied strategies of moral regimentation within the locus of family, including regimenting through silencing, moral dictation, and penalizing. These strategies reflect the prevailing conservative and sex-negative attitudes in Indian society, particularly patriarchal expectations toward men and the pressure for marriage, which augments familial and social burdens on gay men, resulting in emotional distress. The cumulative effects lead to gay men living double lives, presenting a socially accepted façade while repressing their authentic queer selves, indicating a guilty conscience and internalized homophobia. These experiences correlate with risky sexual behavior, substance abuse, and overall compromised mental health. This phenomenological inquiry highlights the role of the family as a locus of moral control of queer individuals and contributes to the sociological understanding of morality as a power-relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summative assessment is often considered a motivator that drives students' learning. Higher education has a responsibility in promoting lifelong learning and assessment plays an important role in supporting students' capability to make evaluative judgements about their work and that of others. However, as research often focuses on formal pedagogical design, it is unclear what behaviours summative assessment prompts, thus the relationship between summative assessment, learning and evaluative judgement requires further investigation. Drawing on a small-scale ethnography-informed study, this paper adopts a practice theory approach to explore how undergraduate physics students from three year levels make evaluative judgements in the context of summative assessment tasks. The contexts explored through observations and interviews include a graded in-class tutorial, an out-of-class study group for an in-semester assignment, and individual preparation for examinations. The findings suggest that while summative assessment is a crucial aspect of students' learning context, it does not fully shape students' practices. Instead, students engage in incidental conversations about the quality of their work and how to do things in their studies. By focusing on what students actually do, this study integrates formal and informal aspects of students' learning, highlighting the tensions between undergraduate practices and intended learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the end of the USSR, the mobility infrastructure in Tajikistan followed a trajectory of decay. Transport systems had to be reorganized, mobility practices had to be reshaped, and some areas became less accessible. Meanwhile, new international connections have emerged thanks to new political openness. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2022, this paper offers an empirical analysis of the nexus between remoteness and connectivity by looking at the evolution of physical infrastructure in Tajikistan's VMKB province over the past thirty years and discussing the rather contradictory yet simultaneous processes of internationalization and marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of an ethnographic study on motivation in ultra-endurance sports. The study was conducted in Leon, Spain, between 2018 and 2019 on a sample of 36 athletes involved in several ultra-endurance sports, such as the marathon, ultra-distance racing and mountain activities. Regarding the method, it includes participant observation, an open questionnaire was administered, and in-depth interviews were conducted, providing valuable descriptive data. Categories, patterns, and propositions emerged from the coding process of the data and were permanently called into question. The results indicated that these activities constitute a new form of leisure, with mass participation that is felt as an obligation, with different motivations for leisure and sport that are more intimate and personal than sporting in nature, reinterpreting the wishes, hopes or fears of the participants as offerings, self-blame and other redemptive attitudes, towards life, without great variations between men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the socio-economic integration and marriage prospects of young Syrian refugee men in Jordan. Linguistic, cultural and religious similarities with Syrian culture in Jordanian border towns such as Ramtha and Irbid hold the promise of social inclusion and offer emotional comfort. Yet, this familiarity is combined with experiences of social alienation and labour exploitation. Based on qualitative research and ethnography, I propose the notion of 'double waithood' to capture the two main socio-economic axes that structure opportunities and the activities young men engage in. Apart from the time spent waiting for regulated residency status, young men wait to fulfil the economic requirements that enable them to marry and have a family of their own. While waiting for certainty, many are driven to informal and underage labour to help provide for their families. At the same time, migration as a rite of passage can enable young adolescents to transition to adulthood earlier, as many aspire to fulfil the criteria of the hegemonic figure of the economically self-sufficient male refugee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a crime prevention methodology that focuses on deviant beliefs and behaviors. Situated between developmental and environmental crime prevention approaches, this empirical study utilized ethnographical methods to identify potential and active deviants and their support networks. Interventions were implemented through the community program of Neighborhood Watch, which focused on the identified deviant communities before the actuation of a burglary crime. Comparison between the pre-intervention period and intervention periods show the incidence of burglary crime reducing by 42%. If validated through replication, other fields that engage with active actors, such as insurgents, gangs, and terrorists, may have similar success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diaspora communities use school education as a central way to reproduce their identity throughout generations. However, religious institutions, clubs and specific events can also perform a role in reproducing the groups' cultural identity, working as non-formal spaces of education. We examine how diasporic Armenian families in Brazil perceive the roles that formal and non-formal education play in supporting the conservation of their Armenian identity. The paper draws from an ethnographic study conducted in Armenian ethnic institutions in Sao Paulo. Participants expressed having ambiguous feelings towards these organisations, valuing their educational features distinctly. While they do not perceive the everyday practices of the Armenian school as having a central role in reproducing cultural identities, they acknowledge that non-formal educational spaces and one-day events are pivotal to celebrate these identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of precolonial class inequality systems in the intergenerational transmission of education processes amongst ethnic groups in Africa. Using ethnographic and household survey data from six African countries and grouping ethnic groups by the historical class system that existed within them, I observe variations in intergenerational persistence between them with varying levels of significance in the different countries included. The findings suggest that understanding intergenerational mobility within African countries should take into account the different historical ethnic group characteristics, although the mobility process does not evolve uniformly across countries. Country-specific colonial administrative systems and the immediate post-independence education policies are critical factors that also need to be taken into account to understand the changes in education-based intergenerational persistence from the precolonial to the contemporary period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Nepali youth expectations about political equality in the 'New' Nepal following the promulgation of a constitution in 2015. It discusses the outcome of seven deliberative youth assemblies held across the country in 2018 and 2019, in which youth debated their priorities for the governments at the local, provincial, and federal levels. These assemblies revealed that youth were committed to a conception of meritocracy that prioritizes individual achievement over cultural ascription as a basis for social and economic justice. Current efforts to introduce equity through ethnic, caste, and gender reservations were seen as useful instruments to achieve this equality but also distrusted as they appeared to contradict meritocratic principles or as tactics to sustain Nepal's existing cultural barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a history of the Oxford Ethnography Conference. Over more than three decades, a regular conference of sociologists of education and ethnographers has met and produced a series of academic writings. The paper describes some of the interrelationships between developments that occurred within the conference and external changes to the academic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an edited volume on laughter and joking by way of exploring the relative marginalisation of humorous phenomena within the anthropological literature. In framing a new body of work in the area, rather than suggesting a collective thesis or unified theoretical approach to humorous phenomena, it argues for the necessity and value of detailed ethnographic descriptions of laughing and joking behaviours. In particular, it proposes that such ethnographically specific approaches provide important analytical perspectives on how people in post-colonial and increasingly global social fields manage enduring and emergent social inequalities. In conclusion, the paper suggests that whilst the capacity of anthropologists to write about joking will always be mitigated by the 'you-had-to-be-there' syndrome, it is this same contextual immediacy that defines the ethnographic endeavour and methodology. As such, laughter and humour represent not only important dimensions of social life to be better understood, but important perspectives on the understandings we already take for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1950, the Human Relations Area Files, Inc. has produced what is currently known as the eHRAF Collection of Ethnography. This article explores the reasons why it was created and describes the structure of this complex collection of ethnographic works. Over time, this resource has been produced in four different formats: paper slips, microfiche, CD-ROM, and online. The similarities among and differences between these are discussed. An attempt to locate any remaining paper sets is described, and a list of current locations of the file in this, its original form, is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion paper provides an introduction and overview of Ethnography as a qualitative research methodology and outlines its usefulness in understanding the experiences of patients and service users during their healthcare journey. Ethnographic research provides an insight into the group being studied. In this paper that author suggests that ethnography can provide an insight into the behaviours, thoughts and feelings of a patient group. Research methods used in ethnographic research have been outlined and discussed along with some of the possible methodological and ethical issues that might occur when carrying out an ethnographic study with a group of patients. This paper discusses some of the potential results of an ethnographic study with patients and how ethnographic research can be used to study the experiences of patients. the author draws together some lessons that can be learnt and some possible applications of ethnographic research in healthcare settings with patients. Implications for rehabilitation are also proposed. Ethnography is a simple and effective qualitative research methodology for studying groups of people with a common enterprise or experience, ethnography studies the culture, behaviours and norms of the group. Ethnography is a useful research methodology to understand the experiences of patients and service users during their healthcare journey. It can provide information about what it is like to have a particular medical condition or diagnosis and the norms and behaviours of patients with this condition. Ethnographic data allows the patient's voice to be heard. Data from ethnographic studies of patient groups can be used for service improvement within health and social care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using multidisciplinary literature, this paper takes a multispecies approach to human-termite interactions across the tropics to demonstrate how termites exploit ecological effects of human behaviours and in turn provide humans with significant ecosystem services. These provisions are deeply entangled within cultural practices and ideologies. Conceptualisations of human and landscape fertility, and the role of termites in facilitating life, create gendered interactions that are manifested in ecological knowledge and praxis relating to termites and termite mounds. The strong association between termites and farmers in particular, may offer insights into past human settlement patterns and their relationships with ecosystems. This paper proposes the use of geomorphology, thin-section ceramic petrography, and stable isotope analysis to investigate these relationships across the tropics. A multispecies approach creates new possibilities for a diachronic understanding of human ecology and raises important questions for the Anthropocene and the future of farming in the tropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed the outsourcing of immigration and border controls to economically struggling states. Infrastructural projects around controlling migration are transforming localities in the Global South: from shifting legal and political economic systems to altering socialities between migrant and local populations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the Republic of Nauru, this paper considers how past and present infrastructural forms give shape to the ways that (in)justices are created. Nauru, the world's smallest island state, was almost entirely economically dependent on the phosphate industry in the twentieth century. After the wealth it derived from phosphate extraction was depleted in the 1990s, the sovereign state resurged on the back of the refugee industry by importing Australia's maritime asylum seeking populations. In this paper, I examine the material life of infrastructure around managing migration in Nauru's 21 km2 locality, including the toxic interrelationships between phosphate and refugee processing, the industries' built environments, and the people who live and work in them. I explore how Nauru's refugee project has reconfigured colonial infrastructural forms, practices of dependency, and socio-legal affiliations as the country is refashioned as a company town in line with new forms of human production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from an ethnographic study with families who relocated from the United States to Mexico, I explore what I call parents' transborder pedagogies of the home, or the home-based educational practices that adults with experiences across transnational institutions draw upon to prepare their children for life and learning on both sides of the border. I argue it is important to understand parents of forced repatriation as transborder thinkers who draw upon a range of transnational knowledges that push against mononational expectations to educate their children and make challenging schooling decisions. Findings illustrate how caregivers and children may vary in their alignment regarding these decisions, especially when U.S.-born children's return to the United States for schooling would entail new arrangements of family separation due to the lack of authorised pathways for their parents' return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is drawn from research undertaken from 2009 to 2013 as part of a project, involving girls and women from Malaita in the Solomon Islands. The research identifies cultural elements that serve as barriers to girls and women wanting to participate in community leadership or mentoring roles. The methodology implemented for the research project was ethnographic and uses stories from observations, individual interviews and focus groups. My role as an outsider with 'insider knowledge' played a significant role in the ethnographic research process and data collection phase, demonstrating the significance of the wantok system, its reach and how it can be used to gain access, get ahead and support families. This paper the wantok system is used within communities of the Solomon Islands and how this system advantaged the research process and the data collection phase by enabling the researcher to freely access stories specific to the research project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmodern anthropology has used the claims of reflexivity, inter-subjectivity and recognition of differences in individual experiences in its attempt to unsettle the authority of traditional anthropology. This has led anthropologists to assert that ethnography is a cultural construct, whereby 'fieldwork' is conceptualised as 'embodied spatial practice'. Drawing on village studies from India, this paper argues that the recognition of different embodied practices of ethnographers from diverse social locations has not necessarily led to the democratisation of the discipline. Conversely, insufficient engagement with hierarchical, overlapping power relations within the ethnographic field, as well as within the disciplinary establishment, has led to the standardisation of disciplinary articulations of research ethics, the terms of which privilege hegemonic groups within the discipline. The articulation of the concerns of scholars from marginalised social groups often remains difficult within such disciplinary frameworks. This paper argues that establishing a critical tradition in ethnography in the true sense requires the postmodern sensibility of recognition of the differences in experiences, supplemented with feminist and subaltern critical interrogations of power and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applied communication interventions call for detailed knowledge of the scene and the cultural assumptions that inform the communication taking place. This paper shows how Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) was used to study the practice of 'conversation' in English language learners (ELLs) groups at a public library in the Western United States. The analysis demonstrated that 'conversation' is a culturally specific practice requiring elucidation. This led to the design of storytelling workshops that helped participants improve their language skills and cultural knowledge. Data were collected in a three-phase project: (1) a preliminary ethnography(2) a design phase to create a strategic plan for addressing concerns, and (3) an applied communication intervention consisting of storytelling workshops for ELLs. The paper provides a model for conducting applied communication research using an ethnographic, culture-centered approach, and demonstrates the value of storytelling as a practice for improving English language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]