Puzzles, Time, and Ethnographic Sensibilities: Research Methods after the Arab Spring

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-140
Author(s):  
Wendy Pearlman
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Publishing World ◽  
Fast Pace ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Experience Of Change ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

Parallel transformations in both the post-Arab spring Middle East and the publishing world present tests for scholars of the region. This essay suggests three strategies for reframing challenges as opportunities and reconceptualizing the seeming liabilities of academic work as resources. First, I propose that the surprising character of recent upheavals ought not demoralize scholarly inquiry but rather invigorate it by showcasing the kinds of difficult puzzles that propel innovation in research and theory-building. Second, I suggest that the fast pace of publishing over the Internet should renew our appreciation for its antithesis: the unique benefits of exploring and developing ideas slowly over time. Third, I argue that these two challenges-turned-opportunities come together to highlight the value of research methods with an ethnographic sensibility. These approaches can help us ground theory in a more nuanced understanding of the individual and the lived experience of change.

scholarly journals Digital use and mistrust in the aftermath of the Arab Spring: beyond narratives of liberation and disillusionment

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1125-1141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Moreno-Almeida ◽  
Shakuntala Banaji
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Young People ◽  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Arab Spring

Through the prism of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East in 2010–2011, new media has been presented as diametrically opposed to the top-down and mistrusted. Asking the question, ‘In what ways do trust, privacy and surveillance concerns intersect and inflect the individual and collective practices of young people in networks of participation, and their sense of civic connection through old and new media?’, this article presents a nuanced understanding of the relationship between digital media and mistrust. Through the study of original case studies in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and the UAE, we examine attitudes towards and usage of digital media in creating and maintaining political, civic, cultural and artistic networks among communities. We analyse our abundant qualitative interviews, observations and ethnographic data collected to reveal the continuity of media mistrust as people move into the digital arena. As new tools continue to be launched many young people in the region remain alert to the ways in which these tools can serve or hinder individual and group aims. Beyond narratives of liberation, disillusionment or democratisation, ‘new’ media poses both mundane and surprising challenges in encouraging and engaging networks of participation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Autoethnography and Other Self-Inquiry Methods for Practice-Based Doctoral Research

2022 ◽  
pp. 154-169
Author(s):  
Crystal Lewis ◽  
Robin Throne
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Doctoral Program ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The Individual

For some doctoral practitioner-researchers, the methods used within autoethnography and other self-inquiry-based research methods are appropriate for a practitioner dissertation as the phenomenon of inquiry is a central human, intrinsic, and experiential self-focused construct. The tenets of autoethnography and other self-as-subject research support the view that new knowledge can be discoverable from within the individual lived experience, and this chapter presents current trends and scholarship for the use of autoethnography and other self-inquiry research methods for practice-based doctoral research. The chapter also presents one case from a recent doctoral autoethnographer to illustrate the experience of a practice-based autoethnographic dissertation study within a practitioner doctoral program.

scholarly journals RELIGION, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE: REPRESENTATIONS OF MUSLIM WORLD IN ACADEMIC ANALYSES OF THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ARAB SPRING

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeela Arshad Ayaz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Arab Spring

This article deconstructs the dominant constructions and portrayals of the Muslim world in literature on social media and civic engagement in relation to the Arab Spring. A critical reading of literature on social media and ‘Arab Spring’ shows that analyses by Western scholars and commentators are still grounded in ‘modernist dualism’ and orientalist understandings. The article starts by tracing the history of technology to argue that analyses of social media’s educational and civic potential within the Western context in general, is continuation of arguments about earlier technologies in relation to societal development. However, when it comes to analyzing social media and civic engagement particularly in the Muslim world this tendency gets muddled with another well-established trend, that of Orientalism. The overall impact of this tendency results in restricting majority of arguments within the essentialists/determinists paradigm. Such analyses essentialize the technological aspects of social media as universal and constitute the West as civilized, democratic, multicultural, and progressive. On the other hand Muslim world is represented as uncivilized, undemocratic, uncultured, and chained in past traditions. Thus, there is a need for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between the social media and civic engagement in the Muslim world, which can be conceptualized by framing the issues within a postcolonial critique of neoliberal globalization. DOI: 10.15408/tjems.v1i2.1264

The Arab Spring Uncoiled

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Kurzman
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Micro Flow ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Opposition Movements ◽  
The Arab Spring

If this special issue on Middle East protest had been published two years ago, it probably would have focused more on accounting for the failure of opposition movements than accountting for their successes. Since the "Arab Spring" emerged in the winter of 2011, however, observers have rushed to explain mass revolts in the region. This introduction to the special issue reviews some of the explanations offered for these extraordinary events, and finds that the factors that are frequently cited in these explanations do not map comfortably onto the sites of greatest protest in the region. The essay then suggests an alternative approach, one that looks past causation in an attempt to understand the lived experience of the uprisings. The goal is to examine how actors changed as they perceived the possibility of protest, how they made meaning of their lives through the act of protesting, or not protesting, during moments of exceptional confusion and stress. This approach focuses on the twists of history that confound social scientific explanation. One twist that is highlighted in this essay and throughout the special issue is the sudden prominence of bravery—the ineffable but potentially influential desire to engage in risky protest. Bravery is not a causal variable but a disposition that may appear and disappear with the vagaries of the moment, altering the micro-flow of events and making a noticeable, if tiny, difference in the course of mass protests.

Autoethnography and Other Self-Inquiry Methods for Practice-Based Doctoral Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Crystal Lewis ◽  
Robin Throne
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Doctoral Program ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The Individual

For some doctoral practitioner-researchers, the methods used within autoethnography and other self-inquiry-based research methods are appropriate for a practitioner dissertation as the phenomenon of inquiry is a central human, intrinsic, and experiential self-focused construct. The tenets of autoethnography and other self-as-subject research support the view that new knowledge can be discoverable from within the individual lived experience, and this chapter presents current trends and scholarship for the use of autoethnography and other self-inquiry research methods for practice-based doctoral research. The chapter also presents one case from a recent doctoral autoethnographer to illustrate the experience of a practice-based autoethnographic dissertation study within a practitioner doctoral program.

Lessons from the South

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-97
Author(s):  
Iain Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
The West ◽  
The Public ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Arab Spring

Iain Chambers' essay challenges explanations of the Arab Spring emerging from the Occidental media, arguing that the terms of engagement set by the Arab revolts can no longer be unilaterally defined by the West. Chambers stresses the centrality of the Mediterranean as an increasingly evident site of confluence between East and West and between North and South. He goes on to argue that the events of the Arab Spring reopen the Western cultural and political lexicon, and put into question the historical alliance between Christianity and the universalising discourses of modernity. Ideas regarding the individual, the public sphere, political agency, religion, secularism and the state are necessarily being renegotiated in the context of the uprisings. The lived experiences of the Arab Spring slip beyond Western constructions of the events to expose the political and cultural burden of a modernity that may no longer be determined or managed single-handedly by the West. The Arab uprisings have occurred in the same time frame as protests in several European capitals, particularly since the fiscal collapse of 2008, and while there are distinct differences in these social unrests there is also, Chambers observes, a common factor: the rejection of the hypocrisies of the modern state. The new perspectives emerging from this confluence of experience around the shores of the Mediterranean may yield a more radical humanism within social, cultural, and political formations that are not automatically circumscribed by the global dictates of neoliberalism.

Drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness: Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsófia Demjén
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Sylvia Plath ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Linguistic Methods ◽  
Linguistic Approach

This paper demonstrates how a range of linguistic methods can be harnessed in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the ‘lived experience’ of psychological disorders. It argues that such methods should be applied more in medical contexts, especially in medical humanities. Key extracts from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath are examined, as a case study of the experience of depression. Combinations of qualitative and quantitative linguistic methods, and inter- and intra-textual comparisons are used to consider distinctive patterns in the use of metaphor, personal pronouns and (the semantics of) verbs, as well as other relevant aspects of language. Qualitative techniques provide in-depth insights, while quantitative corpus methods make the analyses more robust and ensure the breadth necessary to gain insights into the individual experience. Depression emerges as a highly complex and sometimes potentially contradictory experience for Plath, involving both a sense of apathy and inner turmoil. It involves a sense of a split self, trapped in a state that one cannot overcome, and intense self-focus, a turning in on oneself and a view of the world that is both more negative and more polarized than the norm. It is argued that a linguistic approach is useful beyond this specific case.

Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction with Life in the Wake of the Arab Spring

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efstratia Arampatzi ◽  
Martijn Burger ◽  
Elena Ianchovichina ◽  
Tina Röhricht ◽  
Ruut Veenhoven
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
The Arab Spring
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