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Ethnographic Analysis (ethnographic + analysis)
Selected AbstractsCOSMOPOLITANISM, REMEDIATION, AND THE GHOST WORLD OF BOLLYWOODCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2010DAVID NOVAK ABSTRACT This essay considers the process of remediation in two North American reproductions of the song-and-dance sequence Jaan Pehechaan Ho from the 1965 "Bollywood" film Gumnaam. The song was used in the opening sequence of the 2001 U.S. independent film Ghost World as a familiar-but-strange object of ironic bewilderment and fantasy for its alienated teenage protagonist Enid. But a decade before Ghost World's release, Jaan Pehechaan Ho had already become the lynchpin of a complex debate about cultural appropriation and multicultural identity for an "alternative" audience in the United States. I illustrate this through an ethnographic analysis of a 1994 videotape of the Heavenly Ten Stems, an experimental rock band in San Francisco, whose performance of the song was disrupted by a group of activists who perceived their reproduction as a mockery. How is Bollywood film song, often itself a kitschy send-up of American popular culture, remediated differently for different projects of reception? How do these cycles of appropriation create overlapping conditions for new identities,whether national, diasporic, or "alternative",within the context of transcultural media consumption? In drawing out the "ghost world" of Bollywood's juxtapositions, I argue that the process of remediation produces more than just new forms and meanings of media, but is constitutive of the cosmopolitan subjects formed in its global circulations. [source] Election Day: The Construction of Democracy through TechniqueCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 4 2004Kimberley A. Coles An ethnographic analysis of the international community's efforts to democratize postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina argues for greater acknowledgement of the social within the technical aspects of politics. Rather than viewing elections as a ritual symbolically reflecting or producing meaning, the insights of Bruno Latour and other scholars of science are applied to elections as a site that creates democratic knowledge and authority. Technical practices and objects construct elections as an apolitical and acultural event. However, the forms of authority and social relations created through this apparently neutral techne are tremendously social and political. Democracy and elections are firmly embedded in social practices, knowledges, and artifacts. [source] ,Who is the Developed Woman?': Women as a Category of Development Discourse, Kumaon, IndiaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2004Rebecca M. Klenk This article analyses gendered discourses of development in rural North India, and addresses the usefulness of recent scholarship on development as ,discourse' for understanding connections between development and subjectivity. This scholarship is an excellent point of departure for exploring the contradictions inherent in the institutionalization of economic development and the global reach of its discourses, but it has focused primarily upon development as discourse at official sites of deployment, while paying less attention to how specific discourses and processes of development are appropriated by those constituted as beneficiaries of development. The under-theorization of this aspect has meant that the range of processes through which development projects may encourage new subject positions are poorly understood. By investigating what some women in rural Kumaon have made of their own development, this article contributes to emerging scholarship on development and subjectivity with an ethnographic analysis of the polysemic enthusiasm for development expressed by some of its ,beneficiaries'. [source] The Macabre Style: Death Attitudes of Old-Age Home Residents in IsraelETHOS, Issue 4 2003Tova Gamliel An inductive, ethnographic analysis of death attitudes among old-age home residents in Israel is employed to describe the construction of a peculiar death-related discourse termed "the macabre style." This authentic voice of elderly residents emerges from interviews, conversations, and observations as a form of self-immersion in a particular collective consciousness generated by expectations of impending death. The macabre style's rhetorical devices include grim and direct references to death and dying, black humor, historical archetypes, and biblical myths. This construct is further used in order to reflect on and criticize the conceptual circularity of conventional academic categories regarding death attitudes such as "acceptance" and "denial," and as an indication of an old age metonymic discourse of self-transcendence. [source] Frontier Masculinity in the Oil Industry: The Experience of Women EngineersGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 1 2004Gloria E. Miller This study contributes to the empirical evidence in the area of gendered organizations (Martin and Collinson, 2002) and their effects on the women who work in them through an interpretive, ethnographic analysis of the oil industry in Canada, specifically Alberta. The study combines data from interviews with women professionals who have extensive employment experience in the industry, a historical analysis of the industry's development in the area and the personal contextual experience of the author. It is suggested that there are three primary processes which structure the masculinity of the industry: everyday interactions which exclude women; values and beliefs specific to the dominant occupation of engineering which reinforce gender divisions; and a consciousness derived from the powerful symbols of the frontier myth and the romanticized cowboy hero. In this dense cultural web of masculinities, the strategies that the women developed to survive, and, up to a point, to thrive, are double-edged in that they also reinforced the masculine system, resulting in short-term individual gains and an apparently long-term failure to change the masculine values of the industry. [source] "Official" Doctrine and "Unofficial" Practices: The Negotiation of Catholicism in a Netherlands CommunityJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2001Tony Watling This article examines the Dutch Catholic Church. It is based on a qualitative ethnographic analysis of a particular Dutch Catholic community. It seeks to demonstrate that despite a decline in the church since the 1960s many Dutch parishioners are becoming active in redefining the church and attempting to revitalize Catholicism, creating democratically organized local communities where laity and local clergy, women and men, work together as equals in negotiating change, but argues that this may involve "unofficial" practices, possibly at odds with "official" church hierarchy controlled doctrine, which may resist acknowledging them and resist change. By examining these issues, the article aims to understand the dialectic and tension between what could be termed "popular" and "orthodox", "private" and "public", beliefs and to examine the constraints or possibilities this may place on the church. In this sense, the article also aims to explore how religion, thought to be vulnerable to recent change encouraging individual independence from social institutions, may negotiate (or reject) new developments. Although challenged, Catholic identity may still be valued and provide individuals with resources for negotiating new developments. However, the success or failure of this may depend on the nature of the struggle for authority and influence between "official" and "unofficial" versions of Catholicism. [source] Re-Thinking Illegality as a Violence Against, not by Mexican Immigrants, Children, and YouthJOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 1 2003Jocelyn Solis Sociohistorical theory was used to examine illegality as a form of state violence that bears upon the formation of undocumented Mexican immigrants. This article proposes a theory of dialectical violence that integrates societal with personal enactments of violence through case illustrations of Mexican youth. In a grassroots association defending immigrants' rights, youth develop within conflicting discourses about undocumented immigrants proposed by society, family, and community. Methods included ethnographic analysis of the association's documents, a workshop in which five participants authored a booklet with texts and illustrations about their lives in the city, and an interview with their mothers. Findings illustrate how Mexican youth enter a cycle of violence as a result of their undocumented status, socioeconomic class, language and ethnic-racial memberships. [source] Street-Level Bureaucracy, Interprofessional Relations, and Coping Mechanisms: A Study of Criminal Justice Social Workers in the Sentencing ProcessLAW & POLICY, Issue 4 2009SIMON HALLIDAY This article builds on the work of Michael Lipsky and develops an argument about the significance of interprofessional working for street-level bureaucracy. It presents an ethnographic analysis of criminal justice social workers writing presentence reports for the Scottish courts. Social workers' report writing for judges brought into relief issues of relative professional status. Social workers were uncertain of their place within the legal domain and concerned about their credibility as criminal justice professionals. Reports were written, in part at least, as a way of seeking esteem and credibility in the eyes of judges,a motivation that undermined the policy objectives of social enquiry in sentencing. Applying the conceptual tools of Bourdieu to our findings, we argue that street-level bureaucrats who have to work across bureaucratic "fields" may find, or fear, that the cultural and symbolic "capital" they retained within their own field is undervalued in the symbolic economy of new fields, putting them in a position of relative inferiority. This issue of relative professional status, and how officials respond to it, is significant for our understanding of street-level bureaucracy. [source] Solutions out of context: Examining the transfer of business concepts to nonprofit organizationsNONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, Issue 2 2008Tammy E. Beck Small nonprofit organizations face a dilemma when applying management theories and techniques developed for large, private businesses. Research evidence suggests both benefits and problems associated with application of these techniques. To avoid potential problems, nonprofit managers commonly limit the selection and transfer of business techniques to those that solve specific problems or appear consistent with nonprofit orientations. One consequence is that business solutions often create unintended negative outcomes that are due to contextual differences between the two types of organizations. One possible solution to this dilemma is adoption of bundles, or configurations, of practices that introduce important contextual checks and balances along with the specific tools and techniques. We explore this option through a critical, participatory ethnographic analysis of a small nonprofit service organization. [source] Capitalism as culture, and economy1THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2009Diane Austin-Broos Contemporary cultural anthropology has been marked by its distance from the analysis of economy. I argue that anthropology as a discipline has suffered from this distance and suggest a form in which these interests can be reconciled for the purposes of ethnographic research. The discussion is divided into three sections. In the first, I trace the ,disappearing' of economy from cultural anthropology. In the second, I propose a schema for bringing economy back. This schema involves adopting a phenomenology of the subject that relies on notions of value drawn from Appadurai and from Heidegger and Marx. Finally, I instance two examples of this schema in my own ethnographic research. One concerns Central Australia and pertains to recent debates about remote indigenous life. The other concerns Kingston Jamaica and references debates about gender, sex and dancehall. Both milieux involve types of change and violence that can bear on modern subjects. My suggestion is that anthropology will address these issues in more interesting ways if economy becomes a part of ethnographic analysis. [source] Muslim Youth in Canadian Schools: Education and the Politics of Religious IdentityANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2001Jasmin Zine This article provides an ethnographic analysis of the schooling experiences of Muslim youth in Canada who are committed to maintaining an Islamic lifestyle despite the pressures of conformity to the dominant culture. Little attention has been paid to how religious identity intersects with other forms of social difference, such as race and gender in the schooling experiences of minoritized youth. Using a case study often Muslim students and parents, this article demonstrates how Muslim students were able to negotiate and maintain their religious identities within secular public schools. The participants' narratives address the challenges of peer pressure, racism, and Islamophobia. Their stories reveal how Muslim students are located at the nexus of social difference based on their race, gender, and religious identity. The discussion further explores the dynamics through which these youth were able to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic identity and practices within schools despite the challenges that they faced. Building upon existing theories of identity maintenance and construction, this research demonstrates how the interplay of the core factors of ambivalence, role performance, and interaction and isolation are implicated in the way Muslim students negotiate the politics of religious identity in their schooling experiences. [source] | ||||||||||