Negotiating Identity and Power during a Crisis: An Analysis of ‘Small Stories’ Told by Australian Christian Priests during the COVID-19 Health Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 25-43
Author(s):  
Margo Louise Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Crisis Period ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Small Stories

Abstract The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and localised government responses have led to fundamental changes in the conditions in which organisations operate. This article draws on a social constructionist understanding of identity as multiple and performed (Angouri 2016; Butler 1990) to explore the experiences of a group of six Australian Christian priests during this crisis period. Drawing on in-depth interview data, the article presents a narrative analysis of the storying of identities and power relations within church communities whose everyday activities were suddenly curtailed. In contrast to linguistic studies of narrative which often focus on structural features of canonical discourse ‘events’, this article takes up Bamberg and Georgakopoulou’s (2008) extension of narrative analysis to focus on ‘small stories’ which reflect the everyday, situated practices in which identities and power relations are negotiated and performed. This article contributes unique insights into the operation and practices of religious organisations in a crisis context.

scholarly journals Distant places in children’s everyday activities: Multiple worlds in an Australian preschool

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsuzsa Millei
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Global Flows ◽  
Multiple Worlds ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Critical Pedagogies ◽  
Ethnographic Data

Abstract Global flows and their geopolitical power relations powerfully shape the environments in which children lead their everyday lives. Children’s images, imaginations and ideas of distant places are part of these global flows and the everyday activities children perform in preschool. Research explores how through curricula young children are moulded into global and cosmopolitan citizens and how children make sense of distant places through globally circulating ideas, images and imaginations. How these ideas, images and imaginations form an unproblematised part of young children’s everyday preschool activities and identity formation has been much less explored, if at all. I use Massey’s (2005) concept of a ‘global sense of place’ in my analysis of ethnographic data collected in an Australian preschool to explore how children produce global qualities of preschool places and form and perform identities by relating to distant places. I pay special attention to how place, objects and children become entangled, and to the sensory aspects of their emplaced experiences, as distant spatialities embed in and as children’s bodies inhabit the preschool place. To conclude, I call for critical pedagogies to engage with children’s use of these constructions to draw similarities or contrast aspects of distant places and self, potentially reproducing global power relations by fixing representations of places and through uncritically enacting stereotypes.

Convivial linguistic practices: lived togetherness through language in the United Arab Emirates

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robert Amilan Cook
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
The City

Abstract This paper takes up conviviality as an analytical tool to investigate everyday language choices made by foreign residents living in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It draws on recent work in human geography and cultural studies to understand conviviality in terms of practices rather than outcomes. Specifically, it investigates some of the linguistic dimensions of conviviality deployed by residents of the city in everyday situations of linguistic contact and negotiation of difference. The paper focuses on participants’ “small story” narratives (Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2015. Small stories research: Methods – analysis – outreach. In Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 255–272. Malden: John Wiley & Sons) that exemplify everyday language choices in the face of a highly ethnolinguistically diverse as well as racially and economically stratified society. Considering the multitude of ethnolinguistic and socioeconomic divisions in the city and the country as a whole, the paper unpacks how such cross-border contact is negotiated through everyday language practices. The paper identifies four types of convivial linguistic practices described by my participants: language sharing, benevolent interpretation, language checks and respectful language choices. In the process, I also probe the limits of what studying conviviality can tell us about everyday linguistic togetherness in highly segregated societies marked by stark inequalities.

Brokers of crisis: the everyday uncertainty of Eastern Congo's mineral négociants

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Vogel ◽  
Josaphat Musamba
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Conflict Minerals ◽  
Regulatory Changes ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Violent Conflicts ◽  
North And South

ABSTRACTEastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) artisanal mining sector is often linked to the violent conflicts that have beset Central Africa for over two decades. While many analyses emphasise its ‘criminal’ and ‘illegal’ nature, less attention has been paid to the ambiguity of this economy, most prominently incarnated by the intermediate mineral traders callednégociants. Focusing on their entrepreneurship, networks and everyday activities, this essay offers a more nuanced understanding of local mineral trade in the context of a ‘crisis economy’ framed by competing governable orders. It investigates the uncertainty along eastern DRC's mineral supply chains, that are undergoing major regulatory changes to curb the trade of so-called ‘conflict minerals’. Drawing from extensive fieldwork, this essay demonstrates how this uncertainty shapes the négociants’ role as brokers of socio-economic life in the provinces of North and South Kivu.

scholarly journals Gossip as evaluative sensemaking and the concealment of confidential gossip in the everyday life of organizations

2021 ◽  
pp. 135050762097936
Author(s):  
Ziyun Fan ◽  
Patrick Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Learning Paradox ◽  
Espoused Values ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
And Behavior

Gossip is pervasive at the workplace, yet receives scant attention in the sensemaking literature and stands on the periphery of organization studies. We seek to reveal the non-triviality of gossip in processes of sensemaking. In drawing on empirical data from an observational study of a British Media firm, we adopt a processual perspective in showing how people produce, understand, and enact their sense of what is occurring through gossip as an evaluative and distinct form of informal communication. Our research draws attention to the importance of gossip in the routines of daily practice and the need to differentiate general from confidential gossip. We discuss how gossip continuously informs learning as evaluative sensemaking processes that encourages critiques and evaluation to shape future action and behavior. Within this, we argue how confidential gossip can challenge power relations while remaining part of formal authority structures, constituting forms of pragmatic and micro-resistance. This shadowland resistance provides terrain for learning that both criticizes and preserves espoused values and cultural norms. We conclude that confidential gossip as an evaluative and secretive process provokes a learning paradox that both enables and constrains forms of resistance in reinforcing and simultaneously questioning power relations at work.

Being a retailer: narratives not on display

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Ruth ◽  
Frances Gunn ◽  
Jonathan Elms
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Business Setting ◽  
Strategy As Practice ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Retail Entrepreneurs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the everyday tasks and activities undertaken by retailer entrepreneurs and owner/managers when they strategize. Specifically, it interrogates the nature of the intuitive, idiosyncratic strategic agency of a retail owner/manager.Design/methodology/approachThrough adopting a combination of phenomenological and narrative approaches, focussing on illuminating the everyday operational and strategic practices of one retail entrepreneur and owner/manager, a richly contextualized, ideographic account of the procedures and outcomes of their strategizing is provided.FindingsBy revealing narratives that are seldom obvious – often kept behind the counter, and not on display – the authors are able to unravel the social reality of the retailer's decision-making, and the influences of identity, connections with customers and community, emotions and the spirit, and love and family. This study also illuminates how entrepreneurs retrospectively make sense out of the messiness of everyday life particularly when juggling the melding of personal and business realities.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper explores the experiences and reflections of the decision-making of one retail entrepreneur manager within a particular business setting. However, the use of an ideographic approach allowed for an in depth investigation of the realities of strategic practices undertaken by a retail owner that may be extrapolated beyond this immediate context.Originality/valueThis paper develops original insights into the retailer as an individual, vis-à-vis an organization, as well as nuanced understanding of the actual nature of work undertaken by retail entrepreneurs and owner/managers. To this end, this paper contributes to the “strategy-as-practice” debate in the strategic management literature, and to narrative analysis and advances insights to the perennial question: “what is a retailer?”.

scholarly journals Pinkas-notebook and pinkas-register book: evolution, structure, and composition

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 1199-1218
Author(s):  
Evgeniya D. Zarubina
Keyword(s):  
Academic Language ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Uniform Structure ◽  
European Origin ◽  
The Public ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diverse Data ◽  
Communal Institutions

Minute books (pinkas) constitute one of the most valuable sources for studying the history of the Jewish communal institutions up to the 20th century. They comprise rich and diverse data on the everyday activities of the Jewish people. In the academic language, the word “pinkas” is applied not only to the communal minute books and minute books of the communal bodies but also to private minute books. The article deals with the development of this category of sources which evolved from private minute books dating back to at least the 11th century to the communal ones as well as the minute books of the communal bodies based on the dozen manuscript examples. These are mostly of European origin, however, with a few Eastern additions. This evolution process becomes visible as a result of the analysis of the manuscripts’ internal structure and composition. Special attention is paid to the techniques used to enforce this structure on codicological and paleographic levels. The data at hand suggest that at the beginning of the Modern period some of the minute books were shifted from private to the public domain. This was a response to the demand from the rapidly evolving communal institutions. To suit the widened audience of varying backgrounds the communal minute books compared to those for private use adopted a more uniform structure as well as with a set of “navigation” or referencing tools, such as captions written on margins. The early modern Italian communal minute books tend to be the most structured ones.

scholarly journals A formação sacerdotal. Contradições teórico-práticas no cotidiano do Seminário

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (277) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Sílvio José Benelli
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Field Data ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
The Everyday

Procuramos fazer uma leitura crítica do Seminário católico como instituição educativa, a partir dos estudos de Marmilicz. Discutimos as possibilidades ambíguas do processo pedagógico em geral, destacando as relações de poder que o atravessam, produzindo, inclusive, efeitos inesperados. Explicitamos como as dimensões da formação sacerdotal também implicam questões políticas, psicológicas e normalizadoras. Estudamos as possibilidades e os limites da “formação participativa”, analisando a organização das relações de poder na formação presbiteral. Tratamos da sexualidade no processo formativo, tomando o corpo sexuado como objeto da formação do sacerdote celibatário. Finalmente, comentamos os dados de campo coletados por Marmilicz e indicamos como eles são compatíveis com a literatura específica sobre o tema. Tal como o autor, também notamos contradições teórico-práticas na formação sacerdotal no cotidiano do seminário.Abstract: We try to do a critical reading of the Catholic Seminary as an educational institution on the bases of Marmilicz’studies. We discuss the ambiguous possibilities of the pedagogical process in general, emphasizing the power relations that cross it and that may produce unexpected results. We explain how the dimensions of the priests’ training also involve political, psychological and normalizing issues. We examine the possibilities and the limits of “participative education” analyzing the organization of the power relations in the presbyteral education. We deal with sexuality in the formative process taking the sexualized body as the object of the celibate priest’s education. Finally, we commented on the field data collected by Marmilicz and pointed out how they are compatible with the specific literature about this theme. Like the author, we also noticed theoretical-practical contradictions in the education of priests in the everyday life of the seminary.

scholarly journals A Brief Review on Viral Variants of COVID-19 Infection

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Ishank Panchal ◽  
Sunita Vagha
Keyword(s):  
Respiratory Distress Syndrome ◽  
Distress Syndrome ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Nucleotide Polymorphism ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Mutational Pattern ◽  
Steady Improvement ◽  
Probable Role ◽  
Therapy Strategies

SARS is a type of acute respiratory syndrome. Coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV2), highly contagious, affecting people worldwide. Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID19) leads to a rapidly spreading respiratory distress syndrome. It has caused a global pandemic and severe health crisis in most countries. Due to its continual evolution, further research into the virus's pathogenicity and virulence mechanisms and the development of efficient therapy techniques are urgently required. The current paper summarises what is known about the virus's evolutionary and structural features to comprehend better its mutational pattern and probable role in the current pandemic. In December 2019, the Coronavirus Disease (SARSCoV2) began a destructive path toward a global pandemic in Wuhan, China. Since then, several SARS CoV2 variants have been discovered. Despite the speedy development of a COVID19 vaccine and ongoing mass vaccination efforts around the globe, the discovery of the latest SARSCoV2 variants could undermine the substantial success till now in stopping the spread of SARSCoV2.This review aims to characterize the different SARS CoV2 mutations and investigate the associated morbidity and death. Due to the virus's steady improvement, with its various unmarried nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) versions and lineages, figuring out SARS-CoV-2 infectivity is extraordinarily hard. but, similarly research into the virus's pathogenicity and virulence mechanisms, as well as the improvement of green therapy strategies, is urgent present-day The present day contribution summarises existing expertise regarding the virus's evolutionary and structural homes to clarify its mutational sample and ability function inside the ongoing pandemic.

scholarly journals Young Children, Maker Literacies and Social Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Kristiina Kumpulainen ◽  
Anne Burke ◽  
Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
The Everyday

Although making—that is, playing, experimenting, expressing, connecting, and constructing with different tools and materials towards personal and collective ends—has characterised the everyday activities of many children and adults across cultures for ages, there seems to be no doubt that novel digital technologies and media are transforming and re-mixing more traditional maker activities, with new opportunities for communication, collaboration, learning, and civic engagement [...]

scholarly journals Discourses of (hetero)sexism in popular music

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Coffey-Glover ◽  
Rachel Handforth
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Questionnaire Data ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Queer Linguistics ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Significant Conflict

Abstract This article analyses interview data to explore how participants negotiated discourses of (hetero)sexism in relation to the controversial pop song Blurred Lines. Our previous work, based on questionnaire data, interrogated interpretations of Blurred Lines (Handforth, Paterson, Coffey-Glover & Mills 2017) and showed how participants drew on discourses of sexism in their responses. Several participants experienced significant conflict in their interpretations, and here we focus on these more complex interpretations, considering the “small stories” (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) identified in follow-up interviews with participants. Individual narratives acted as mechanisms through which participants linked Blurred Lines to wider issues such as rape culture, drawing parallels between these and their own lives. Following research in queer linguistics (King 2014; Leap 2014; Motschenbacher 2010) our use of thematic analysis, corpus linguistic tools and narrative analysis highlights the various subject positions that participants negotiated in their storytelling, and how these positions both echoed and challenged normative understandings of gender and sexuality.

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