(Re)Placing the Congregation: Fieldwork and Congregational Place-Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Scott Hagley
Keyword(s):  
Christian Identity ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Place Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Congregational Identity

Drawing from place-theory, this essay argues for congregations to employ fieldwork as a means to perform the place-making work claimed in a term like ‘contextualization.’ While ‘contextualization’ articulates the importance of locale for Christian identity, ethnographic fieldwork performs the collaborative elements of place-making. Bringing the two fields together, the essay argues for congregations to employ fieldwork as a means for connecting congregational identity with the life of the neighbourhood.

scholarly journals Putting Indian Christianities into Context: Biographies of Christian Conversion in a Leprosy Colony

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 1134-1159 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES STAPLES
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
South India ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
Material Gain ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
Per Se

AbstractGandhian andHindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often positively construed, identities for those who came to live in leprosy colonies from the mid twentieth century onwards. The paper draws out the distinctive values associated with a Christian identity in India, exploring local Christianities as sets of practices through which, for example, a positive sense of belonging might be established for those otherwise excluded, rather than being centred upon personal faith and theologyper se. Biographical accounts are drawn upon to document and analyse some of the on-the-ground realities, and the different implications—depending on one's wider social positioning—of converting from Hinduism to Christianity in South India.

Sense of Place in Place Making of Creative Multimedia Foundation Studies Annual Exhibition

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-56
Author(s):  
Elyna Amir Sharji ◽  
Lim Yan Peng ◽  
Peter Charles Woods ◽  
Vimala Perumal ◽  
Rose Linda Zainal Abidin
Keyword(s):  
Observational Study ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
Design Criteria ◽  
Visitor Experience ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Individual Behaviour ◽  
The People

The challenge of transforming an empty space into a gallery setting takes on the concept of place making. A place can be seen as space that has meaning when the setting considers space, surroundings, contents, the people and its activities. This research concentrates on investigating how visitors perceive the space by gauging their sense of place (sense of belonging towards a place). Galleries are currently facing changes in this technological era whereby multiple content and context, space and form, display modes, tools and devices are introduced in one single space. An observational study was done during the Foundation Studies Annual Exhibition held at Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University. The exhibition was curated and managed by staff and students of Foundation Year showcasing an array of design works. Analogue and digital presentations of paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography and video works were displayed.. The outcome of this research will contribute towards a better design criteria of place making which affects individual behaviour, social values and attitudes. Characterizing types of visitor experience will improve the understanding of a better design criteria of place making, acceptance, understanding and satisfaction.

Leroi-Gourhan and the Field of Ethnology

Paragraph ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-44
Author(s):  
Christopher Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Arctic Circle ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Language Technology ◽  
Formative Experience ◽  
Post War

The work of French ethnologist and prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–86) represents an important episode in twentieth-century intellectual history. This essay follows the development of Leroi-Gourhan's relationship to the discipline of ethnology from his early work on Arctic Circle cultures to his post-war texts on the place of ethnology in the human sciences. It shows how in the pre-war period there is already a conscious attempt to articulate a more comprehensive form of ethnology including the facts of natural environment and material culture. The essay also indicates the biographical importance of Leroi-Gourhan's mission to Japan as a decisive and formative experience of ethnographic fieldwork, combining the learning of a language with extended immersion in a distinctive material and mental culture. Finally, it explores how in the post-war period Leroi-Gourhan's more explicit meta-commentaries on the scope of ethnology argue for an extension of the discipline's more traditional domains of study to include the relatively neglected areas of language, technology and aesthetics.

Narrating Society: Enacting ‘Immigrant’ Characters through Negotiating, Naturalization, and Forgetting

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Media And Communication

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Irvine
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Fieldwork Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peripheral Participation

What is the role of imitation in ethnographic fieldwork, and what are its limits? This article explores what it means to participate in a particular fieldsite; a Catholic English Benedictine monastery. A discussion of the importance of hospitality in the life of the monastery shows how the guest becomes a point of contact between the community and the wider society within which that community exists. The peripheral participation of the ethnographer as monastic guest is not about becoming incorporated, but about creating a space within which knowledge can be communicated. By focusing on the process of re-learning in the monastery – in particular, relearning how to experience silence and work – I discuss some of the ways in which the fieldwork experience helped me to reassess the social world to which I would return.

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