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Ethnographic Fieldwork (ethnographic + fieldwork)
Selected AbstractsImprovising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork by Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa MalkkiAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010KIRSTEN SCHEID No abstract is available for this article. [source] Understanding nursing on an acute stroke unit: perceptions of space, time and interprofessional practiceJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 9 2009Cydnee C. Seneviratne Abstract Title.,Understanding nursing on an acute stroke unit: perceptions of space, time and interprofessional practice. Aim. This paper is a report of a study conducted to uncover nurses' perceptions of the contexts of caring for acute stroke survivors. Background. Nurses coordinate and organize care and continue the rehabilitative role of physiotherapists, occupational therapists and social workers during evenings and at weekends. Healthcare professionals view the nursing role as essential, but are uncertain about its nature. Method. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in 2006 on a stroke unit in Canada. Interviews with nine healthcare professionals, including nurses, complemented observations of 20 healthcare professionals during patient care, team meetings and daily interactions. Analysis methods included ethnographic coding of field notes and interview transcripts. Findings. Three local domains frame how nurses understand challenges in organizing stroke care: 1) space, 2) time and 3) interprofessional practice. Structural factors force nurses to work in exceptionally close quarters. Time constraints compel them to find novel ways of providing care. Moreover, sharing of information with other members of the team enhances relationships and improves ,interprofessional collaboration'. The nurses believed that an interprofessional atmosphere is fundamental for collaborative stroke practice, despite working in a multiprofessional environment. Conclusion. Understanding how care providers conceive of and respond to space, time and interprofessionalism has the potential to improve acute stroke care. Future research focusing on nurses and other professionals as members of interprofessional teams could help inform stroke care to enhance poststroke outcomes. [source] Cooperation, conflict and integration among sub-ethnic immigrant groups from TaiwanPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 2 2007Christine Avenarius Abstract This paper investigates how immigrants from Taiwan who share a common place of origin but not the same sub-ethnic affiliation create social lives for themselves in southern California's vast areas of urban sprawl. With affluence, the first generation of immigrants has become increasingly able to socialise exclusively with others who share similar cultural and political backgrounds. There is less need to maintain ties with outsiders for the sake of survival and adaptation as immigrants. Today, few older Hoklo Taiwanese keep up relationships with non-Taiwanese. The community organisations in which they participate have predominantly Taiwanese members who speak Hoklo when they are together. They are connected to similar groups because they have members in common and are therefore part of a cluster of Taiwanese organisations. Older immigrants emphasise sub-ethnic differences more than most people in Taiwan itself. In contrast, the interaction patterns of younger first-generation immigrants from Taiwan depend on their self-identification and degree of participation in the ethnic community. Ethnographic fieldwork for this paper was conducted in Orange County, California, in 1997 and 1998. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Ethnographic fieldwork: an anthropological readerTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2009Emma-Jayne Abbots [source] ,It's Not Fair!',Voicing Pupils' Criticisms of School RulesCHILDREN & SOCIETY, Issue 6 2008Robert Thornberg Socialisation theories have traditionally focused on how children are socialised in a rather unidirectional manner, according to a transmission model. However, more recent research and theories show that children are not just passive recipients, but active agents in their socialisation process. At the same time, children are subordinated to adult control. In school, they are regimented and involuntarily subjected to mass routines, discipline and control. The aim of this study was to explore and give a voice to pupils' critical thinking about school rules and their teachers' behaviour in relation to these rules. Ethnographic fieldwork and group interviews with students were conducted in two Swedish primary schools. The findings show that pupils criticise some school rules, distrust teachers' explanations of particular school rules, perceive some school rules and teachers' interventions as unfair and inconsistent, perceive no power over the construction of school rules, and express false acceptance and hidden criticism. The findings are discussed in terms of hidden curriculum, power, mentality resistance, democracy, participation and democratic citizenship education. [source] GOOD GIFTS FOR THE COMMON GOOD: Blood and Bioethics in the Market of Genetic ResearchCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2007DEEPA S. REDDY This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Indian community in Houston, as part of a NIH,NHGRI-sponsored ethics study and sample collection initiative entitled "Indian and Hindu Perspectives on Genetic Variation Research." At the heart of this research is one central exchange,blood samples donated for genetic research,that draws both the Indian community and a community of researchers into an encounter with bioethics. I consider the meanings that come to be associated with blood donation as it passes through various hands, agendas, and associated ethical filters on its way to the lab bench: how and why blood is solicited, how the giving and taking of blood is rationalized, how blood as material substance is alienated, processed, documented, and made available for the promised ends of basic science research. Examining corporeal substances and asking what sorts of gifts and problems these represent, I argue, sheds some light on two imbricated tensions expressed by a community of Indians, on the one hand, and of geneticists and basic science researchers, on the other hand: that gifts ought to be free (but are not), and that science ought to be pure (but is not). In this article, I explore how experiences of bioethics are variously shaped by the histories and habits of Indic giving, prior sample collection controversies, commitments to "good science" and the common "good of humanity," and negotiations of the sites where research findings circulate. [source] Extending drug ethno-epidemiology using agent-based modellingADDICTION, Issue 12 2009David Moore ABSTRACT Aims To show how the inclusion of agent-based modelling improved the integration of ethno-epidemiological data in a study of psychostimulant use and related harms among young Australians. Methods Agent-based modelling, ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews and epidemiological surveys. Setting Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, Australia. Participants Club drug users in Melbourne, recreational drug users in Perth and street-based injecting drug users in Sydney. Participants were aged 18,30 years and reported monthly or more frequent psychostimulant use. Findings Agent-based modelling provided a specific focus for structured discussion about integrating ethnographic and epidemiological methods and data. The modelling process was underpinned by collective and incremental design principles, and produced ,SimAmph', a data-driven model of social and environmental agents and the relationships between them. Using SimAmph, we were able to test the probable impact of ecstasy pill-testing on the prevalence of harms,a potentially important tool for policy development. The study also navigated a range of challenges, including the need to manage epistemological differences, changes in the collective design process and modelling focus, the differences between injecting and non-injecting samples and concerns over the dissemination of modelling outcomes. Conclusions Agent-based modelling was used to integrate ethno-epidemiological data on psychostimulant use, and to test the probable impact of a specific intervention on the prevalence of drug-related harms. It also established a framework for collaboration between research disciplines that emphasizes the synthesis of diverse data types in order to generate new knowledge relevant to the reduction of drug-related harms. [source] Linking return visits and return migration among Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean migrants in TorontoGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 1 2004David Timothy Duval Return visits are periodic but temporary sojourns made by members of migrant communities to their external homeland or another location where strong social ties exist. As a result, the conceptual framework in this article revolves around transnationalism as the return visit is shown to be a transnational exercise that may facilitate return. Using data from ethnographic fieldwork, three themes highlight the link between return visits and return migration: (1) the need to facilitate ties such that relationships are meaningful upon permanent return; (2) the functional nature of the return visit, such that changes are measured and benchmarked against what is remembered and internalized by the migration after the migration episode; and (3) the knowledge that return visits aid in reintegration. [source] Children and Power in Mexican Transnational FamiliesJOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 4 2007Joanna Dreby Today, many families find that they are unable to fulfill the goal of maintaining a household by living together under the same roof. Some members migrate internationally. This article addresses the consequences of a transnational lifestyle for children who are left behind by migrant parents. Using ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with a total of 141 members of Mexican transnational families, I explore how children who are left behind react to parents' migrations. I focus on how Mexican children manifest the competing pressures they feel surrounding parents' migrations and consequently shape family migration patterns. The article shows that children may experience power, albeit in different ways at different ages, while simultaneously being disadvantaged as dependents and in terms of their families' socioeconomic status. [source] Religious Cultural Hybridity in Chudosik (Ancestor Memorial Service/Ceremony) in Korean ProtestantismJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 4 2007HUNG CHULL JANG This article attempts to examine Chudosik in Korean Protestantism. The distinctive characteristics of Chudosik can be understood in terms of regarding religion as cultural practices. If so, Chudosik can be seen as a religious practice in everyday life of Korean Protestants. By conducting an ethnographic fieldwork in Seokkyo Korean Methodist church, I conceptualise five practical characteristics of Chudosik: indigenous, transformational, spiritual, pragmatic, and compounded. These characteristics show how the religious practices of Seokkyo congregation members keep both traditional socio-cultural values and the features of Christian service in order to satisfy their demand, and how they transform their religious practices. In this sense, Chudosik represents the cultural hybridity of Korean Protestantism. It is also a spontaneous output of the Korean Protestants' cultural habitus and the Korean context. Furthermore, in regard to Chudosik, it is also possible to say that Protestantism is re-embodied onto Korean culture. [source] Constructing press releases, constructing quotations: A case studyJOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2003Kim Sleurs This paper reports on empirical research into how press releases are being constructed. It starts from previous discourse-analytic work which has pointed to the ,preformulated' nature of press releases: in particular, it has been shown that through a number of metapragmatic features press releases can easily be copied by journalists in their own news reporting. In this paper we set out to subject one of these features, viz. pseudo-quotations (or so-called constructed direct speech), to a further empirical study, in which we scrutinize the process of constructing the press releases. We propose a detailed analysis of this process by combining ethnographic fieldwork with some of the methodology of cognitive psychology, including think-aloud protocols and on-line registration of the writing process. On the basis of this case study it is concluded that the design and functions of quotations in press releases are more complex than has been assumed so far. In addition, our preliminary results indicate that the combination of methods that we propose in this paper provides a sound starting point for both quantitative and qualitative analysis, allowing for a detailed analysis and interpretation of how press releases are being constructed. [source] Under the Law: Legal Consciousness and Radical Environmental ActivismLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 4 2009Erik D. Fritsvold A growing body of sociolegal scholarship focuses the study of law away from formal texts and legal institutions and toward the experiences and perceptions of "everyday" citizens. This study introduces seventeen "radical" environmentalists who engage a repertoire of tactics that includes some actions that involve relatively severe forms of illegality. This research seeks to investigate the role of civil disobedience and lawbreaking within the radical environmental movement and the corresponding legal consciousness of movement actors. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and content analysis, this analysis suggests that Ewick and Silbey's (1998) three-tiered model of legal consciousness is an operative starting point, but could be enhanced through theoretical expansion. This study proposes a new category of legal consciousness,Under the Law,that views the law as the protector and defender of a social order that is fundamentally illegitimate. Under the Law is qualitatively different from existing conceptualizations of legal consciousness and reaffirms the mutually constitutive nature of law and society. [source] Maybe He's Depressed: Mental Illness as a Mitigating Factor for Drug Offender AccountabilityLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2009Leslie Paik Given the often perplexing relationship between mental illness and substance abuse among offenders, this article looks at how a juvenile drug court staff's presumptions of a youth's mental illness affect its decision-making process. Based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork at a Southern California juvenile drug court, this article uses Manzo and Travers's "law in action" approach to analyze how the staff readjusts its application of normal remedies (a concept developed by Robert Emerson) designed to respond to a youth's noncompliance when it suspects mental illness may be influencing the youth's actions. In doing so, it highlights how court staff's considerations of youth mental disorders arise out of its everyday work practices. Furthermore, the article discusses how staff negotiations around a youth's mental illness create tensions for the juvenile drug court's accountability-based model of therapeutic jurisprudence, because assessments of mental illness tend to mitigate responsibility for a youth's behavior. [source] Memory, Forgetting, and Economic Crisis:MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2010Drug Use, Social Fragmentation in an Argentine Shantytown Closely linked to the increase in psychotropic pill consumption, forgetting and remembering emerged from devastated social scenarios as a new local idiom among poor youth in the late 1990s and the new millennium. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out during the years of the deepest economic crisis in Argentina (2001,03), I argue that psychotropic pill consumption is associated with not only deteriorating economic conditions but also changes in the quality and price of cocaine, and in the scarcity and subsequent change of status of medications during the economic breakdown. Taking into account developments in the field of memory studies, I examine the relationship among political economy, social memory work, and changing drug-use practices. Regarding memory as a social practice, I argue that the growth of psychotropic pill consumption in the late 1990s can be understood through the interplay of Paul Ricoeur's notions regarding different kinds and levels of forgetting. By analyzing changing survival strategies, social network dismantlement, changing mortality patterns, and abusive police repression, I discuss how social fragmentation engendered by structural reforms has modified social memory work. [source] How Do Real Indians Fish?AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009Contested Indigeneities in the Colorado Delta, Neoliberal Multiculturalism ABSTRACT There has been a growing interest in anthropology regarding how certain political conditions set the stage for "articulations" between indigenous movements and environmental actors and discourses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how these same conditions can suppress demands for indigenous rights. In this article, I argue that the pairing of neoliberalism and multiculturalism in contemporary Mexico has created political fields in which ethnic difference has been foregrounded as a way of denying certain rights to marginalized groups. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Mexico, I analyze how the arguments of a group of Cucapá for fishing rights in the Colorado Delta have been constrained within these political circumstances. I argue that cultural difference has been leveraged by the Mexican federal government and local NGOs to prevent the redistribution of environmental resources among vulnerable groups such as the Cucapá. [source] Ethnographic exposures: Motivations for donations in the south of Laos (and beyond)AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010HOLLY HIGH ABSTRACT In January 2009, I arranged the renovation of a school in my field site in the south of Laos with funds raised from donors in Australia. This project was initiated at the request of village leaders, and, initially, I saw it as a chance to acknowledge the generous assistance that residents had granted me during my fieldwork. However, the execution of the project was tense, particularly when it brought to the surface long-running ambiguities arising from my adoption as a daughter into a particular Lao family. This adoption, like the school project itself, involved a series of donations that could be interpreted as either self-serving or altruistic,or both. Antagonisms, repressed in donations intended to produce solidarity, make frequent return and imbue those donations with an ambiguous character. Thus, although such exchanges are essential to everyday life in the south of Laos (and to fieldwork), they are also precarious and can lead to conflict as easily as to peace. This ambivalence is especially pronounced in the cross-cultural context of fieldwork, in which the ethnographer is invited to seek out relationships of solidarity and shared understanding but also confronts his or her own specificity. [Laos, the gift, ethnographic fieldwork, fantasy, exchange] [source] Man enough to let my wife support me: How changing models of career and gender are reshaping the experience of unemploymentAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009CARRIE M. LANE ABSTRACT Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among unemployed U.S. high-technology workers, I challenge the association of job loss and unemployment with a crisis of masculinity. I argue that, in the United States today, middle-class workers conceptualize their careers as a string of contract positions, thus mitigating the personal and professional consequences of job loss and unemployment. Changing gender roles and the rise of dual-earner marriages in the United States have also reshaped the experience of middle-class unemployment, alleviating some of the emasculating effects of unemployment for men but prompting new crises for unemployed women. [source] Ethnomethodological insights into insider,outsider relationships in nursing ethnographies of healthcare settingsNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 1 2004Davina AllenArticle first published online: 11 FEB 200 This article re-examines insider,outsider relationships in nursing ethnographies of healthcare settings as a case study in the wider sociological debate around reflexivity in field research. It focuses on the practices through which the fieldwork role is accomplished and the ,identity work' of nurse ethnographers. Insights derived from ethnomethodology are utilized in order to analyse selected aspects of real-life field experiences in order to enhance our understanding of this relatively neglected dimension of the research process. The article is offered as a contribution to an emerging body of scholarship that is directed at promoting a more rigorous and theoretically informed understanding of the conduct and reportage of ethnographic fieldwork. [source] Zanzibar and its Chinese communitiesPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 2 2007Elisabeth Hsu Abstract Zanzibar hosts three different groups of Chinese: the so-called huaqiao community with beginnings that can be traced to the 1930s; the government-sent teams of experts who since the revolution of 1964 have consolidated the links to the People's Republic of China (PRC); and a new wave of business people since the late 1990s, individual migrants who engage in various trades and generally are very mobile. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar in 2001,2004, I explore the backgrounds of these communities and their social relations, as expressed through kinship ties, businesses, medical services, food exchanges and other means of interaction. With few exceptions, members of the three groups were not much interested in increasing relations between each other. They represent different economic positions and wealth, and different allegiances to the local community and to China. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] ,We, the Congolese, we cannot trust each other'.THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2009Democratic Republic of Congo, Trust, norms, relations among traders in Katanga Abstract Congolese traders in Katanga claim that they cannot trust their peers, customers, and employees. Existing literature about social capital in Africa does not enhance our understanding, as it tends to consider trust as depending on the degree of social knowledge. In the Congo, social proximity does not exclude suspicion, nor does social distance necessarily prevent trust. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article aims at developing a more detailed framework. It studies how Congolese traders negotiate two key norms for the building of economic trust , property and reciprocity , with non-relatives, distant relatives, and close relatives. [source] INVENTING A PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY WITH LATINO FARM LABOR ORGANIZERS IN NORTH CAROLINAANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2009Sandy Smith-Nonini In this article, I summarize my experience conducting "an experiment in public anthropology" involving ethnographic fieldwork on a labor union struggle from the standpoint of volunteer work with community advocates for farm labor rights in North Carolina between 1998 and 2004. Theoretical rationales for participatory action research, issues of access, pros and cons from an information-gathering perspective, and ethical perspectives are discussed. [source] Victims and Martyrs: Converging Histories of Violence in Amazonian Anthropology and U.S. CinemaANTHROPOLOGY & HUMANISM, Issue 1 2009Casey High SUMMARY Since the 1950s, indigenous Waorani people of Amazonian Ecuador have had a prominent place in the evangelical imagination in the United States and Europe because of their reputation for violence. Their symbolic status as "wild" Indians in popular imagination reached its peak in 1956, when five U.S. missionaries were killed during an attempt to convert the Waorani to Christianity. With the opening of a U.S.-produced film in January 2006 about the history of Waorani spear killing, entitled End of the Spear, Waorani violence has become part of a truly global imagination. In juxtaposing the film's Christian-inspired narrative with Waorani oral histories of violence, this article explores how indigenous ideas about predation and victimhood are related to the trope of martyrdom that has become prominent in Christian representations of the Waorani since the 1950s. It suggests that visual media such as popular film hold the potential to recontextualize ethnographic representations and allow us to rethink the ways in which Amazonian cosmologies are related to sociopolitical processes that transcend the temporal and spatial boundaries of ethnographic fieldwork. More generally, the article argues that new anthropological knowledge can be produced through the combination of fieldwork and attention to less conventional sources, such as historical missionary narratives and popular cinema. [source] A Meditation on Cazabon's East Indian GroupANTHROPOLOGY & HUMANISM, Issue 1 2004Michael V. Angrosino Using concepts derived from the field of postcolonial studies, as well as insights gleaned from three decades of ethnographic fieldwork among the East Indians of Trinidad, the author, an anthropologist, analyzes East Indian Group, a watercolor by the 19th -century Trinidadian artist Michel Jean Cazabon. The painting is seen as a textual example of a reflexive and resistant representation of the colonial Other. [source] Like Exporting Baseball: Individualism and Global Competition in the High-Tech IndustryANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 3-4 2004Carrie Lane Chet Abstract Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among high-technology jobseekers in Dallas, Texas, during the period 2001-04, this article examines the response of unemployed U.S. tech workers to the intensification of the offshore outsourcing of white-collar work from the United States to lower-cost locations overseas. The researcher found that while a vocal minority of tech workers denounces offshore outsourcing, or offshoring, as unethical, unpatriotic, and economically shortsighted, most high-tech jobseekers see offshoring as a natural offshoot of an unstoppable and ultimately beneficial system of global capitalist competition. These "globalist" workers, who espouse a model of work that privileges individual responsibility and flexibility over loyalty and security, argue that nations and individuals must take the initiative in making themselves competitive with other countries' increasingly skilled, educated, and low-cost workforces if they are to survive in this newly global economy. This perspective is buttressed by globalists' individualist ethos and their remarkably resilient faith in the logic of the market economy. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 4.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2006August 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 4 Front cover Destruction and fertility meet in this photograph of a swidden ('slash and burn') field cultivated by the Rmeet in highland Laos, illustrating Guido Sprenger's article in this issue. After the secondary forest has been burned from the plots, fresh rice stalks grow between charred stumps during the weeding season in June. A field hut, built each year on the newly cleared plot, can be seen in the background. The author's main informant, one of Takheung's village elders, waits for the author to catch up on the slippery paths. Although denigrated as unsustainable by governments and development agencies worldwide, and hotly debated by agricultural experts and policy-makers, swidden agriculture persists in mountainous areas where wet rice cultivation is difficult. Swiddening involves much more than mere subsistence, and anthropologists have been concerned for many decades with questions of its sustainability, as it forms a central focus for a way of life that integrates all aspects of community life, from economy to cosmology and the reproduction of social relations, including families and marriage ties, ritual and exchange, relations between humans and spirits and also identity. Guido Sprenger seeks to remind those with the power to make decisions over swidden agriculture of the importance of being well informed, as their decisions may radically influence an entire way of life. Back cover Islamic Charities Islamic charities are found all over the world and are mostly uncontroversial. Our back cover shows an appeal, with detachable banker's order form, for the orphan programme of the Beit Al-Khair ('house of charity') Society, a domestic charity in the United Arab Emirates launched in 1989. Almost every Islamic charity operates an orphan programme. Islamic charities have been subjected to close scrutiny, especially by the US Treasury, since 9/11, and are the subject of two books recently published by the university presses of Yale (by Matthew Levitt) and Cambridge (by J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins), which belong to the genre of counter-terrorism studies. Such studies emulate the methods of police investigators and financial regulators, making ample use of intelligence websites and newspaper reports and seeking to identify associative networks of culpable individuals and entities. The drawback of these studies is that they do scant justice to the positive aspects of Islamic charities and often attribute guilt by association, since charities blacklisted by the US Treasury have only limited rights of defence and appeal, though very few have been successfully prosecuted. Scrupulous social research, by contrast, tries to understand the words and deeds of charities and charity workers in the widest context. The social research published so far on Islamic charities has focused on their political aspects, including Western-Islamic relations, divisions among Muslims, and connections with opposition movements. In this issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Jonathan Benthall, who has been studying Islamic charities for 13 years, turns his attention to analysing the special opportunities that international Islamic charities can take advantage of in majority Muslim countries. His article outlines the work of the British-based Islamic Relief in the north of Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, with the implicit suggestion that more in-depth residential ethnographic fieldwork in such settings could yield valuable insights. [source] PROCESSING CLAY FOR POTTERY IN NORTHERN CAMEROON: SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS,ARCHAEOMETRY, Issue 1 2000A. LIVINGSTONE SMITH For several decades, interpreting technical variations in the physical characteristics of pottery has followed two major trends: the ,cultural'approach and the ,behavioural or ,techno-functionalist'approach. Using data collected during extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I will consider the relative importance of social and technical requirements in the field of clay processing techniques in the Faro area (northern Cameroon) 1 will show that environmental and techno-functional constraints cannot explain technical variations, while cultural factors appear determinant. However, faking the discussion one step further, I will show the complexity of the social/cultural mechanism involved in the regional distribution of these techniques. [source] A heuristic blunder: Notes on an ethnographic situation in southwest ChinaASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2010Stéphane Gros Abstract During long-term fieldwork the increasing involvement of the ethnographer in the lives of others raises a series of methodological and ethical issues. These can become even more pronounced when one is working with ethnic minorities in a socialist country. Yet, a seldom acknowledged reality of ethnographic fieldwork experience are the ,little failures' that occur along the way, alongside ethnographic blunders. I argue that these are difficult to avoid and can be part of an important learning process, oftentimes for both researcher and researched. Through the detailed description of a blunder that the author made during his research in southwest China with members of the Drung ethnic minority, this article advocates for the heuristic value of such mishaps, suggesting that one can learn a lot from accidents and unexpected events while undertaking in-depth ethnographic fieldwork. In this case, this helped to shed light on the micropolitics of Drung village life in southwest Yunnan, and the place of a ,minority nationality' in wider Chinese society. [source] A family business: Women, children and smallholder sugar cane farming in FijiASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2003Sue Carswell Abstract: This paper highlights the contribution of women and children to the sugar industry in Fiji by examining the importance of family labour in the historical development of the smallholder system and describing the present situation for the study participants. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted during 1996,97, on the island of Vanua Levu in the northern region of Fiji. The twenty smallholder households in the study comprised both Fijian and Fiji Indian respondents who relied primarily on selling sugar cane for their cash income. How inequalities within the household in terms of allocation of labour and resources are legitimated is outlined. Resource distribution within the household in regards to two important issues for the sugar industry, land and trade liberalisation, are examined. In light of global trends in trade liberalisation and probable falls in sugar prices, future strategies for survival identified by Fijian and Fiji Indian smallholders are also discussed. The case study demonstrates that the sugar industry is still largely reliant on family labour and, particularly for low socio-economic smallholders, the unremunerated labour of family members makes an essential contribution to the production of sugar cane. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||