scholarly journals ‘What is infrastructure? What does it do?’: Anthropological perspectives on the workings of infrastructure(s)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lav Kanoi ◽  
Vanessa Koh ◽  
Al Lim ◽  
Shoko Yamada ◽  
Michael R. Dove
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract Infrastructure is often thought of in big material terms: dams, buildings, roads, and so on. This study, instead, draws on literatures in anthropology and the social sciences to analyse infrastructures in relation to society and environment, and so cast current conceptions of infrastructure in a new light. Situating the analysis in context of President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill, the paper expands what is meant by and included in discussions of infrastructure. The study examines what it means for different kinds of material infrastructures to function (and for whom) or not, and also consider how the immaterial infrastructure of human relations are manifested in, for example, labour, as well as how infrastructures may create intended or unintended consequences in enabling or disabling social processes. Further, in this study, we examine concepts embedded in thinking about infrastructure such as often presumed distinctions between the technical and the social, nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the urban and the rural, and how all of these are actually implicated in thinking about infrastructure. Our analysis, thus, draws from a growing body of work on infrastructure in anthropology and the social sciences, enriches it with ethnographic insights from our own field research, and so extends what it means to study ‘infrastructures’ in the 21st century.

John Lofland's concept of analytical ethnography

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
ANDRII MELNIKOV ◽  
KATERYNA ALEKSENTSEVA-TIMCHENKO
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Theoretical Interpretation ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Strategy

The paper presents a historical and theoretical interpretation of the ethnographic paradigm in the social sciences, its specificity, general principles of application and main research directions. The sources of analytical ethnography, its founders and the period of formation as an independent approach in the structure of interpretive metaparadigm are briefly considered. An ethnographic perspective is defined as a systematic, integral understanding of social processes and the organization of the collective life in the context of everyday practices. The intellectual heritage of the analytical ethnography’s founder John Lofland is presented by characterizing the basic research principles that constitute the essence of his theoretical and methodological strategy: generic propositions; unfettered inquiry; deep familiarity; emergent analysis; true content; new content; developed treatment. An attempt is made to trace the further connections of Lofland's analytical approach with other areas of the ethnographic paradigm.

Evolutionary social science beyond culture

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 356-356
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Explanations ◽  
The Common

Mesoudi et al.'s case can be improved by expanding to compelling selectionist explanations elsewhere in the social sciences and by seeing that natural selection is an instance of general selectionist process. Obstacles include the common use of extreme idealizations and optimality evidence, the copresence of nonselectionist social processes, and the fact that selectionist explanations often presuppose other kinds of social explanations.

From Intended Strategies to Unintended Outcomes: The Impact of Change Recipient Sensemaking

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (11) ◽  
pp. 1573-1601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Balogun ◽  
Gerry Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Managers ◽  
Strategic Change ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Planned Change ◽  
Change Implementation ◽  
Time Analysis ◽  
Real Time Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

The tendency for intended strategies to lead to unintended consequences is well documented. This longitudinal, real-time analysis of planned change implementation provides an explanation for this phenomenon. We focus on the social processes of interaction between middle managers as change recipients as they try to make sense of the change interventions. We show the extent to which lateral, informal processes of inter-recipient sensemaking contribute to both intended and unintended change outcomes, and therefore the unpredictable, emergent nature of strategic change. The findings raise the issue of the extent to which it is possible to manage evolving recipient interpretations during change implementation.

Beyond the Case

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Singular Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Extended Case Method ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comparative Ethnography

The social sciences have seen a substantial increase in comparative and multisited ethnographic projects over the last three decades, yet field research often remains associated with small-scale, in-depth, and singular case studies. The growth of comparative ethnography underscores the need to carefully consider the process, logics, and consequences of comparison. This need is intensified by the fact that ethnography has long encompassed a wide range of traditions with different approaches toward comparative social science. At present, researchers seeking to design comparative field projects have many studies to emulate but few scholarly works detailing the process of comparison in divergent ethnographic approaches. Beyond the Case addresses this by showing how practitioners in contemporary iterations of traditions such as phenomenology, the extended case method, grounded theory, positivism, and interpretivism approach this in their works. It connects the long history of comparative (and anti-comparative) ethnographic approaches to their contemporary uses. Each chapter allows influential scholars to 1) unpack the methodological logics that shape how they use comparison; 2) connect these precepts to the concrete techniques they employ; and 3) articulate the utility of their approach. By honing in on how ethnographers render sites or cases analytically commensurable and comparable, these contributions offer a new lens for examining the assumptions, payoffs, and potential drawbacks of different forms of comparative ethnography. Beyond the Case provides a resource that allows both new and experienced ethnographers to critically evaluate the intellectual merits of various approaches and to strengthen their own research in the process.

Historiography and narration in transnational history

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Christina L. Knudsen ◽  
Karen Gram-Skjoldager
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body

AbstractThe ‘transnational turn’ has been one of the most widely debated historiographical directions in the past decade or so. This article explores one of its landmark publications: The Palgrave dictionary of transnational history (2009), which presents around 400 entries on transnational history written by around 350 authors from some 25 countries. Drawing on narrative theory and the sociology of knowledge, the article develops an extensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most prominent narrative structures that can be found across the Dictionary, thus piecing together a coherent historiographical portrait of the book's many and multifarious entries. In doing so the article wishes to demonstrate a possible methodology for analysing the growing body of reference works – in the form of dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and handbooks – that are currently mushrooming in expanding research areas across the social sciences and the humanities such as international relations, governance, and globalization studies.

scholarly journals In defence of governance: ethics review and social research

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (10) ◽  
pp. 710-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sheehan ◽  
Michael Dunn ◽  
Kate Sahan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Ethics Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Governance Arrangements ◽  
Constitutive Element

There is a growing body of literature that has sought to undermine systems of ethical regulation, and governance more generally, within the social sciences. In this paper, we argue that any general claim for a system of research ethics governance in social research depends on clarifying the nature of the stake that society has in research. We show that certain accounts of this stake—protecting researchers’ freedoms; ensuring accountability for resources; safeguarding welfare; and supporting democracy—raise relevant ethical considerations that are reasonably contested. However, these accounts cannot underpin a general claim in favour of, or against, a system of research ethics governance. Instead, we defend governance in social research on the grounds that research, as an institutionalised form of enquiry, is a constitutive element of human flourishing, and that society ought to be concerned with the flourishing of its members. We conclude by considering the governance arrangements that follow from, and are justified by, our arguments.

Reviews of the Literature: Uniformities in Human Relations Tentatively Established

1942 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
Charles Harding
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Social

It has been becoming increasingly evident to some of those who have to handle problems of human relations that most social sciences have provided no practical technique for analyzing human relationships. The departmentalization of the social sciences, the result of historical development rather than any actual division of labor based on definitions of human behavior, has only led to confusion. Many of the problems upon which much energy and time is spent seem to be problems arising from the division of behaviors into various fields rather than from behavior itself. Furthermore this unreal departmentalization has led to "passing the buck" among specialists. When hard pressed on a particular point they can always say that at that point the problem ceases to be theirs and becomes the problem of another group of specialists. Thus problems are tossed back and forth, are never faced, and naturally never solved. Unfortunately, the completely unwarranted division of human relations into the fields of economics, sociology, psychology, and so on seems strongly entrenched.

scholarly journals LOZUM HUM: VALERIY N. CHERNETSOV AS A PHENOMENON IN THE FIELD ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE 1930S

2020 ◽  
pp. 261-272
Author(s):  
Olga M. Ryndina ◽  
◽  
Evgeniy V. Barsukov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fine Arts ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Central Field ◽  
General Description ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Field Researcher ◽  
The One ◽  
Gain Access

The article explores the archives of an outstanding Russian specialist in Ugric Studies, Valeriy N. Chernetsov. It aims to reconstruct the researcher’s work and the context of his expeditions, and is a continuation of the previous publication by the authors dedicated to the researcher’s work in the 1920s*. Chernetsov’s research efforts intensified in the 1930s, with his focus at the time being mainly on the northern group of Mansi living on the river Severnaia Sos'va (Northern Sosva). His work reveals continuity in his humanistic orientation, the use of empathy and in-depth interviewing as central field research methods, and his special attention to the study of the Mansi language. His ability to empathize was such that in the 1930s he was no longer seen as an outsider by the Mansi – they called him ‘Lozum hum’, that is, ‘the Lozva Man’. He came to be one of them and was widely known, which allowed him to gain access to the innermost spheres of the Mansi culture and acquire knowledge thereof. As a field researcher, Chernetsov thus became a phenomenon famous for his ability to immerse himself in a culture and explore it from within. It is concluded that during his expedition from 1933 to 1934, Chernetsov was already able to write down long texts in Mansi – such was his knowledge of the language. Thanks to this, his research focus shifted to include the study of Mansi folklore and rituals, including ritual folklore. The main object of his study then was the Bear Feast – the dominant ritual element in the Mansi culture. Most informative in this regard was the expedition that lasted from 1936 to 1937, on the rivers Severnaia Sos'va and Ob'. The article analyzes the social and political context of the 1930s and Chernetsov’s attitude towards the ethno-social processes among the Mansi at the time. His view of these was ambivalent. On the one hand, he was enthusiastic about and actively engaged in developing written Mansi and teaching the language in schools, yet, on the other, he was worried about the transformation of the traditional culture of the Mansi initiated and sustained as a state policy, which concerned, first and foremost, the Mansi youth. A part of Chernetsov’s archives that remains unknown to the wider research community is made up by his drawings, sketches, and photographs – 36 files and 1,239 items, in total. The article explores these materials’ themes, with most informative of them being on fine arts, the Bear Feast, and Mansi clothing. It also provides a general description of the materials filmed by Chernetsov, which include a second version of his film, with episodes that had initially been left out, and some of the film footage from the original version. These materials show the Mansi everyday life and celebration of the Bear Feast by the Mansi on the river Gornaia Ob' and by the northern Mansi on the Kazym River.

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