Social networks and cultural practices

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Cardon ◽  
Fabien Granjon
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Cultural Practices

scholarly journals Doing research with police elites in Ghana

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 537-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Addo Sowatey ◽  
Justice Tankebe
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Informal Social Networks ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Senior Officers

Much of our methodological insights from researching policing in sub-Saharan Africa comes from studies of frontline officers. Consequently, many important methodological questions about research on senior police officers remain unanswered. This article addresses this gap by drawing on insights from interviewing senior officers in Ghana. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities in negotiating access, establishing trust during interviews and dealing with ethical dilemmas. We highlight the role of informal social networks and cultural practices of surprise visits, what we have termed strategic ambush, in securing formal approval for our research. However, this represented mere or putative access for which deference towards institutional gatekeepers was key to its actualization. Deference towards officers and extensive knowledge of the policing environment helped to put the senior officers at ease, and enhanced the chances of a successful interview. Finally, we offer reflections on our responses to unexpected ethical dilemmas that we faced in the field.

scholarly journals Symbolic Ethnicity and the Dilemmas of Difference: Talking Indianness with New Zealand-Born Gujaratis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Amanda Gilbertson
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
The People ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Local Discourses

<p>Marcus Banks (1996: 8) argues that the life of ethnicity has been lived out through the writings of academics rather than in the lives of the people they have studied and, indeed, local discourses of ethnicity are remarkably understudied. This thesis takes a step towards addressing the lack of attention given to local discourses of ethnicity by exploring the ways in which sixteen New Zealand-born Gujaratis talked about their Indianness in interviews conducted specifically for this project. Herbert Gans’ (1979) notion of symbolic ethnicity is initially employed as a framework for understanding participants’ narratives. Although this analysis gives an indication of the salience of ethnicity in the lives of my participants, it fails to account for the complex dilemmas of difference they expressed – the definition of ‘Indian culture’ in terms of difference from other ‘cultures’ and the suggestion that they were different from other New Zealanders by virtue of their Indianness. These issues are explained through an exploration of the assumptions about the cultural and the person that were inherent in notions expressed by participants of living in ‘two worlds’ and having to find a balance between them. This analysis suggests that participants constructed both ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ as highly individuated categories. It is argued that these conceptualizations of ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ can be usefully understood in terms of reflexive, or liquid, modernity and reflexive individualism. Under the conditions of late modernity, reflexive – that is, selfdirected and self-oriented – thought and activity become idealised and individuals are ideologically cast as the producers of their own biographies. My participants’ discussions of their Indianness can, therefore, be understood to represent a kind of ‘self-reflexive ethnicity’ that is centred on the person rather than on social networks or cultural practices. This mode of ethnicity does not necessarily require the decline of such networks and practices; they are simply reconfigured in terms of personal choice.</p>

scholarly journals Reconstructing memory narratives on Facebook with Digital Methods

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 014
Author(s):  
Òscar Coromina ◽  
Adrián Padilla Molina
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Collective Process ◽  
Digital Methods

Social platforms are playing an increasingly more important role in different aspects of our daily lives, which can range from the most mundane to such crucial processes as the transmission of meanings and values in our society. Much of the interest lies in the fact that storytelling on social networks is a collective process in which users participate by creating, sharing and commenting on content. All these actions generate digital traces that are easily accessible, in a non-intrusive and automated manner, which represents an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the mediation of social and cultural phenomena. Digital Methods is an epistemological proposal that, aligned with Studies in Science, Technology and Society (STS), assumes the existence of a technological mediation of social and cultural practices and uses computational techniques, not only to extract the digital traces left by the users of these social networks, but also to analyze and display their content. This article takes as a case study the representation of the Spanish Civil War on Facebook to exemplify the affordances of such a methodological approach to investigate the processes of generation, diffusion and representation of historical knowledge.

scholarly journals Cyfrowe (nie)kompetencje. Nowe technologie w służbie „ja”

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (50) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Stachura
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
New Media ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Social Competences

The paper aims at examining the significance of new media for redefining meanings of social competences. As social actors witness new social situations in the technologically mediated world, they start seeking for alternative means of enhancing their social position and adapting to the altering reality of everyday life. New media users learn to manage the different ways of managing and broadcasting their ‘self’. Streaming their lives online they navigate networked audiences, trying to find balance between the public and the private. Digital networking platforms are being used not only for the purpose of sociability but also to negotiate their image and create perceptions of ‘self’. However, the majority of them do not possess the skills needed to efficiently maneuver through mediated social networks. Moreover new media are considered to create conditions for the eruption of cultural narcissism and addiction to new technologies. In the paper attention is drawn to the tensions related to the significance of this new set of social competences and potential drawbacks of the development of the analyzed type of cultural practices.

The Role of Guanxi, Ubuntu, and Wasta in Shaping Workplace Leadership and Culture

2017 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Anne Namatsi Lutomia ◽  
Ping Li ◽  
Raghida Abdallah Yassine ◽  
Xiaoping Tong
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Leadership Styles ◽  
Human Resource Development ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cultural Leadership

Social networks are taking center stage in organizations for the ways they shape and inform workplace leadership. Hofstede's cultural dimensions and social capital provide a framework for enabling better cross-cultural discussion about leadership in general and understanding how leaders in globalized workplace settings tap onto existing cultural practices and values vis-à-vis social networks. In China, Kenya, and Lebanon, these cultural practices and values include Guanxi, Ubuntu, and Wasta, respectively. Responding to calls for more studies comparing social network and on cross-cultural leadership, this chapter seeks to examine how Guanxi, Ubuntu, and Wasta shape workplace leadership and culture in the three respective countries. It discusses leadership styles, reviews the way Guanxi, Ubuntu, and Wasta informs workplace leadership respectively and their intersections, generates a conceptual framework, offers recommendations, suggests future research possibilities, and provides implications for human resource development.

scholarly journals Symbolic Ethnicity and the Dilemmas of Difference: Talking Indianness with New Zealand-Born Gujaratis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Amanda Gilbertson
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
The People ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Local Discourses

<p>Marcus Banks (1996: 8) argues that the life of ethnicity has been lived out through the writings of academics rather than in the lives of the people they have studied and, indeed, local discourses of ethnicity are remarkably understudied. This thesis takes a step towards addressing the lack of attention given to local discourses of ethnicity by exploring the ways in which sixteen New Zealand-born Gujaratis talked about their Indianness in interviews conducted specifically for this project. Herbert Gans’ (1979) notion of symbolic ethnicity is initially employed as a framework for understanding participants’ narratives. Although this analysis gives an indication of the salience of ethnicity in the lives of my participants, it fails to account for the complex dilemmas of difference they expressed – the definition of ‘Indian culture’ in terms of difference from other ‘cultures’ and the suggestion that they were different from other New Zealanders by virtue of their Indianness. These issues are explained through an exploration of the assumptions about the cultural and the person that were inherent in notions expressed by participants of living in ‘two worlds’ and having to find a balance between them. This analysis suggests that participants constructed both ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ as highly individuated categories. It is argued that these conceptualizations of ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ can be usefully understood in terms of reflexive, or liquid, modernity and reflexive individualism. Under the conditions of late modernity, reflexive – that is, selfdirected and self-oriented – thought and activity become idealised and individuals are ideologically cast as the producers of their own biographies. My participants’ discussions of their Indianness can, therefore, be understood to represent a kind of ‘self-reflexive ethnicity’ that is centred on the person rather than on social networks or cultural practices. This mode of ethnicity does not necessarily require the decline of such networks and practices; they are simply reconfigured in terms of personal choice.</p>

scholarly journals DOING YOUR HOMEWORK: THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A FRIENDSHIP FILTER

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alecea Irene Standlee
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Desirable Outcome ◽  
Use Of Social Media

This article explores the emergence of technologically integrated relationship practices among college students in two U.S. universities. This work is situated within the significant body of social research and popular cultural discourse surrounding the consequences of technology and cultural integration among young adults. Analyzing interviews with 52 participants, I explore how they construct, establish and maintain cultural practices and social norms that shape peer interaction, social networks and interpersonal relationships in offline and online settings. This paper focuses specifically on the emergence of techno-social cultural norms that impact friendship and social network construction. Findings suggest the establishment and maintenance of friendships using social networks frequently includes the use of social media profiles as means to collect social and political attitude data on potential friends. Some participants report the use of such data as essential to the decision-making process utilized while establishing and maintaining offline friendships. Motivations for this practice include safety and security, social normativity and a desire for efficiency. Furthermore, participants articulate a social and politically homogeneous friendship network as a desirable outcome to data collection. These findings contribute to our ongoing understanding of the role of informational echo chambers within a technologically integrated social environment.

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