EthnographyPub Date : 2022-04-17DOI: 10.1177/14661381211073122
M. Esteban, Miren Guilló-Arakistain, Marta Luxán-Serrano
{"title":"Ethnography of the kitchen: The Women’s House, a space for feminist alliance and intercultural encounter","authors":"M. Esteban, Miren Guilló-Arakistain, Marta Luxán-Serrano","doi":"10.1177/14661381211073122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211073122","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we delve into a debate about whether a kitchen was to be installed in a new Women’s House in a city in the Basque Country (Hernani, Gipuzkoa). The ethnography presented here was conducted by observing the process around the creation of the House. Articulating the debate’s main points led us to examine the dominant cultural assumptions about cooking in Basque society, especially in view of the opposing feminist positions on the kitchen and the domestic sphere. To understand the changes that took place, it is essential to consider the participants’ previous experience, the shape the discussion took and the diffractions and interferences that occurred during the process, as well as the priority placed on ‘being and doing together’ and being aware of the (self-)imposed limits while also allowing, even for a short period of time, the dichotomies that characterize and delimit this intercultural encounter to be questioned.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48943125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-31DOI: 10.1177/14661381211069669
Line Richter, Henrik Vigh
{"title":"Tangier heat: On migrant vulnerability and social thermology","authors":"Line Richter, Henrik Vigh","doi":"10.1177/14661381211069669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211069669","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates a particular moment of political tension and intimidation of sub-Saharan migrants in Northern Morocco. Drawing on insights gained from collective fieldwork in Tangier, as well as from individual, longstanding ethnographic engagements with migrants from Guinea-Bissau and Mali, it describes the way West African migrants are policed, used as political capital and made the unwilling pawns of large-scale geopolitical negotiations. Targeted and intimidated as part of a diplomatic performance related to the bilateral dealings between Morocco and the European Union, their hardship is orchestrated to communicate the Moroccan state’s control of migration flows into the EU. The article clarifies the existential and social consequences of such staged persecution among migrants and elucidates how it is made sense of and managed through vernacular notions of ‘heat’, a metaphor for nonviable existence. As we shall see, such metaphors provide a window to a larger ‘social thermological’ register prevalent in making sense of precarious circumstance in both social life, social science and politics.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46460798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-31DOI: 10.1177/14661381211073287
S. Kirsch
{"title":"Design ethnography: A view from an industrial think tank","authors":"S. Kirsch","doi":"10.1177/14661381211073287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211073287","url":null,"abstract":"Anthropologists increasingly turn to design research for inspiration. Yet work in design anthropology is frequently cut off from ethnographic research. To some extent this is intentional, given concerns that ethnographic methods have failed to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. But anthropologists should not have to choose between ethnography and design research. This article examines the author’s participation in an industrial think tank in which anthropologists and engineers collaborated to address the environmental impacts of mining. This included discussion of unrecognized sources of pollution at mining sites and rising penalties for environmental damage. The members of the think tank also developed designs for new technology intended to reduce the exposure of artisanal gold miners to mercury and its release into the atmosphere, facilitate the recycling of electronic waste in developing countries, and reduce the catastrophic risks posed by tailings dams. Our collaborations point to the value of combining ethnography and design research in new ways.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43898287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-26DOI: 10.1177/14661381221076277
R. Krnić, Dino Vukušić
{"title":"Social participation of youth through volunteering: Case study of Centre for Peace Studies in Zagreb","authors":"R. Krnić, Dino Vukušić","doi":"10.1177/14661381221076277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221076277","url":null,"abstract":"Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) ( Centar za mirovne studije – CMS) falls under the broader corpus of examples of youth activation where organisation has used its work to highlight the existence of a ‘critical mass’ among youth in Croatia. This ethnographic research deals with social activism through attempts to make up for (according to the actors) inefficient state care for marginalised groups, in this specific case migrants. Participatory observation method and semi-structured interviews provided us with an in-depth insight into the activities of the organisation, but also into the specific motives, values and norms of young people gathered around the organisation. The basic research questions refer to the specific sets of motives of young people involved in volunteering and their attitude towards their own culture and cultural heritage as an indicator of the strategy of constructing their own identity and attitudes towards the ‘other’.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42533669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.1177/14661381211069670
L. Lombard
{"title":"The interpretation of relationships: Fieldwork as boundary-negotiation","authors":"L. Lombard","doi":"10.1177/14661381211069670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211069670","url":null,"abstract":"Following critiques of anthropologists’ involvement in colonialism and insufficient attention to power, friendship, solidarity, and closeness have become implicit ideals for fieldwork relationships. But distance is also inherent to respectful fieldwork relationships. I therefore argue for greater attention to boundaries—the ways we are able to mutually understand in the midst of, rather than by dissolving, difference and distance—and the labor and finesse that go into negotiating them. Foregrounding boundary work allows for a greater honesty about fieldwork relationships and facilitates the broadness of spirit that is the discipline’s hallmark. It also helps people who are most engaged in boundary work to grapple with it and not see that work as failure, weakness, or their taking “risks.” And it further helps one avoid imposing one’s own social ideals for egalitarianism or intimacy on one’s interlocutors. Boundaries are not the enemy of mutual understanding and integrity; in fact, boundaries facilitate them.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42615417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-21DOI: 10.1177/14661381211069044
Linda Haapajärvi
{"title":"The communitarian stigma: Stigmatization as a mechanism of institutional racism in France","authors":"Linda Haapajärvi","doi":"10.1177/14661381211069044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211069044","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines minority citizens’ attempts of civic participation in the working-class banlieue of Tiercy in the Paris area by considering the double-bind they are confronted to: their efforts to perform as active and locally engaged citizens are readily abrogated by suspicions of violating what public authorities understand as appropriate modes of civic participation. By zooming into the chain of events that caused a minority leader of West African origin to be disqualified as a civic actor based on accusations of ‘communitarianism’, it develops a relational analysis of stigmatization as a meso-level mechanism of institutional racism. The analysis shows that competing definitions of ‘civic’ and asymmetrical social relations together engender racially differentiated principles of interaction that prepare the ground for the emergence of stigma in organization settings.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41966919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-02DOI: 10.1177/14661381211050009
Yan Zhang, Junxiu Wang
{"title":"Chinese rural left-behind elderly: Their individualization, descending familism and difficulties","authors":"Yan Zhang, Junxiu Wang","doi":"10.1177/14661381211050009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211050009","url":null,"abstract":"China’s social changes have altered the family structure of rural villagers, leading to increasing numbers of rural left-behind elderly (RLBE). RLBE are considered victims of social changes, abandoned by their migrant children. However, this ethnographic work from two villages in southern China showed that the problems of RLBE are not related to being left behind but stem from institutional deficiencies faced by rural families. RLBE have been adapting to social changes and showed some signs of individualization; with improved economic status, they will have more opportunities to make personal choices. Nevertheless, migration is a family project; familism is still the core, yet descending. Descending familism was a re-embedment to regain a safety net when institutions were deficient. However, familism is not enough to cope with great risks. New ways to develop rural areas are key to solving the problems of RLBE and their families.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41958443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-02DOI: 10.1177/14661381211054027
Amélie Keyser-Verreault
{"title":"Toward a non-individualistic analysis of neoliberalism: the stay-fit maternity trend in Taiwan","authors":"Amélie Keyser-Verreault","doi":"10.1177/14661381211054027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211054027","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the new sexy maternity phenomenon in Taiwan’s neoliberal context, focusing on analyzing mothers' intense pursuit of getting their bodies back into shape. More specifically, I problematize and nuance the taken-for-granted individualistic analyses of neoliberalism and illustrate how getting the body back into shape involves multiple social actors, a consequence of women’s relational self. Not only does women’s beauty give face to their spouses and honor the family, but consideration of social effects are decisive factors in women’s beautification of their bodies. Thus, I emphasize that the material or immaterial profit of agentic individualism can be collective. In this context, an individual’s entrepreneurial activity should not necessarily be interpreted as an abnegation of the social, since tactful management of social relationships is an indispensable immaterial labor of women’s aesthetic entrepreneurship. I propose the theoretical frame of “reconstruction of the relationality” to better understand the trans-individual relationship under neoliberalism.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41669768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/14661381211058356
A. Islam
{"title":"Ethnographic (dis) locations: An approach for studying marginalisation in the context of socio-economic change","authors":"A. Islam","doi":"10.1177/14661381211058356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211058356","url":null,"abstract":"This paper revisits discussions about the pursuit of a singular location for ethnographic research. Citing challenges to the fixity of location, from circulation of people to the impossibility of containing digital worlds, scholars have proposed multi-sited, multi-scalar, multi-modal and multi-sensorial ethnographies, advocating that the researcher ‘follow the actor’. Drawing upon these innovations, this paper traces the affects generated in the process of following the actors as well as the consequent blurring of the division between the researcher and the researched so that they together constitute the category of ‘actors’ who co-produce the field. Using the example of an ethnography with young lower middle class women in Delhi, this paper deploys the researcher’s experience of dislocation or unexpected shuttling in the field to develop ‘dislocation’ as a methodological and analytical strategy for studying marginalisation in the context of socio-economic change by embracing intersubjective relations, affects and partiality of knowledge in ethnographic research.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45065814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EthnographyPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/14661381211073125
Manata Hashemi
{"title":"Sacrificial heroes: Masculinity, class, and waste picking in Iran","authors":"Manata Hashemi","doi":"10.1177/14661381211073125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381211073125","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how five male waste pickers in Khorramabad, Iran, negotiate the stigmatization and criminalization associated with their work against the backdrop of escalating social inequality. I demonstrate how the men use embodied compliance and discursive narratives of masculine self-sacrifice to position themselves as innocent, sacrificial heroes. In changing the narrative from one of humiliation to valor, the men both amplify the classed and gendered hierarchy while simultaneously critiquing the social order that has led to their marginalization. This gendered identity work arises as a response to both classism and everyday occupational denigration, enabling waste pickers to construct distinct moral selves in Iran’s current global moment, but at the expense of disparaging devalued others and creating new forms of inequality.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65773693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}