scholarly journals To Stop and See: Contemplative Fieldwork as Thoughtful Observation

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-296
Author(s):  
Suzanne Klein Schaarsberg
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Experiences

Abstract Contemplation, or the practice of sitting still to ‘stop and see’, can expand one’s embodied awareness. This expanded awareness resembles ethnographic sensibility, a disposition practiced by researchers to generate an understanding of the ‘field’. My fieldwork on contemplative activism involves a double thoughtful observation: once as contemplation, and once as ethnographic sensitivity. How do I make sense of data as I cannot distinguish between my own embodied experiences of contemplation and my methodological practices as a fieldworker? How do I engage with ‘data’ that escape words when contemplative activism takes place in silence? Rather than making the familiar strange -as much literature on fieldwork suggests- keeping the ‘strange’ strange might be similarly productive, especially when it concerns esoteric experiences fieldworkers (perhaps) have in the field. Instead of ethnographic sensibility being about seeing differently, ‘learning’ in the field can be about practicing to ‘stop and see’ different things.

Faiza Ambah's Mariam and the Embodied Politics of Veiling in France

Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-350
Author(s):  
Kaya Davies Hayon
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Islam And Secularism ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that Mariam uses its eponymous heroine's lived and embodied experiences of veiling to explore the impact of French secular legislation on Muslim schoolgirls' everyday lives in France. Interweaving secularism studies, feminism and phenomenology, I argue that the film portrays the headscarf as the primary means by which its protagonist is able to resist male patriarchal authority and negotiate her hybrid subjectivity. I conclude that Mariam offers a nuanced representation of veiling that troubles the perceived distinctions between Islam and secularism, oppression and freedom, and the veil and feminism in France and the West.

scholarly journals Between decay and repair: Embodied experiences of infrastructure's materiality

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862098059
Author(s):  
Kavita Ramakrishnan ◽  
Kathleen O'Reilly ◽  
Jessica Budds
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Experiences

scholarly journals Beyond Virtual Classrooms: Exploring Feelings in the Social World

2021 ◽  
pp. 104837132098516
Author(s):  
Chiao-Wei Liu
Keyword(s):  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Virtual Classroom ◽  
Supportive Relationships ◽  
Virtual Classrooms ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Chronic Stressor

In this column, I continue to focus on creating supportive relationships in the virtual classroom amid the pandemic and growing social unrest. As many schools continue to shift between hybrid and remote learning, I ask, how do we address our own and students’ emotional well-being to promote active learning during the pandemic? How can we as teachers help students cope with this chronic stressor, be it the COVID-19 pandemic or the racial inequality? I share my own personal experiences and argue that affect/feelings/emotions are embodied thoughts imbricated with social values and often involved in the preservation of social expectations and power relations. I suggest that educators recognize affect/feelings/emotions as a critical part of students’ embodied experiences, encourage students to attend to their surrounding world and live their life with heightened consciousness and reflectiveness. I end this column with a few curriculum ideas for readers to consider.

Older adults' embodied experiences of aging and their perceptions of societal stigmas toward sexuality in later life

2021 ◽  
pp. 114355
Author(s):  
Lauren B. Towler ◽  
Cynthia A. Graham ◽  
Felicity Bishop ◽  
Sharron Hinchliff
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Embodied Experiences

scholarly journals Heart, Mind and Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062199450
Author(s):  
Lauren McCarthy ◽  
Sarah Glozer
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Emotional Energy ◽  
Online Abuse ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Feminist Organization ◽  
Online Misogyny

Emotional energy is key to disruptive institutional work, but we still know little about what it is, and importantly, how it is refuelled. This empirical paper presents an in-depth case study of ‘No More Page 3’ (#NMP3), an Internet-based feminist organization which fought for the removal of sexualized images of women from a UK newspaper. Facing online misogyny, actors engage in ‘emotional energy replenishment’ to sustain this disruptive institutional work amid emotional highs and lows. We introduce ‘affective embodiment’ – the corporeal and emotional experiences of the institution – as providing emotional energy in relation to disruptive institutional work. Affective embodiment is surfaced through alignment or misalignment with others’ embodied experiences, and this mediates how actors replenish emotional energy. Alignment with others’ embodied experiences, often connected to online abuse, means emotional energy is replenished through ‘affective solidarity’ (movement towards the collective). Misalignment, surfaced through tensions within the movement, means actors seek replenishment through ‘sensory retreat’ (movement away from the collective). This study contributes to theorization on institutional work and emotional energy by recentring the importance of the body alongside emotions, as well as offering important lessons for online organizing.

Academia and Motherhood: A Narrative Inquiry of Ontario Academic Mothers’ Experiences in University Graduate Programs

2021 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2110648
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Hillier
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Graduate Studies ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Life Issues

This research provides a qualitative narrative inquiry into the experiences of academic mothers from a Southwestern Ontario university campus. Analysis of the semi-structured interviews and focus groups reveal six key themes regarding the nexus between motherhood and academia: (1) intersection of work and family; (2) embodied experiences of pregnancy; (3) mentoring and networking opportunities; (4) inconsistencies between institutional and program policies; (5) departmental support; and (6) an overall level of satisfaction in being a mother during graduate studies. These key findings are discussed and highlight some of the challenges associated with balancing motherhood, graduate studies, and family life. Issues related to maternal well-being, gender equity, diversity, and inclusion within academia are also discussed and shed light on the experiences of this increasing, yet largely overlooked demographic on Canadian university campuses.

scholarly journals Haptic ambience: Ambient play, the haptic effect and co-presence in Pokémon GO

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Apperley ◽  
Kyle Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Spatial Practice ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Pokémon Go

Haptic media studies emphasize the centrality of touch in the experience of digital media. This article considers how the haptic effect created by relationship between touch, gesture and spatial practice in Pokémon GO cements new possibilities for ambient play and co-presence. The app effectively draws on the genealogies of Nintendo’s handheld Pokémon games, but through the shift to smartphone devices the app creates new forms of ambient play, co-presence and communication that are realized through the publicness of the touch, gesture and comportment which make up the haptic effect of the app. By making the smartphones camera an integral part the game, Pokémon GO suggests the wider relevance of the communicability of feeling and gesture by extending ambient play and co-presence into social media, allowing players to (re)-experience the feeling and touch of Pokémon GO through affective resonance. This suggests that the tactility and touch of the haptic affect are embedded in a matrix of embodied experiences that are revealed through how photography and social media become sites for extending and ambient play.

‘The sickness stands at your shoulder …’: Embodiment and cognitive metaphor in Hornbacher’sWasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Senkbeil ◽  
Nicola Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Marya Hornbacher ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

This paper applies cognitive linguistic approaches, particularly conceptual metaphor theory, to the study of literature, and analyses how Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) by Marya Hornbacher communicates embodied experiences such as sickness, hunger, and (self-)loathing with the help of conceptual metaphors. It explores how the author renegotiates and partly recontextualizes highly conventionalized metaphors around eating disorders, mental illness, and identity to create new meaning, and how this strategy helped explain the mindset of a person with anorexia and bulimia to a broad critical readership in the late 1990s. This paper hence hypothesizes that the book’s emphasis on metaphors as a means to articulate bodily experiences surrounding a mental disorder may hint towards larger trends concerning the representation of the body–mind relationship in literature and culture in the last two decades.

scholarly journals "TASTE THIS VIDEO!": FACEBOOK VIDEOS AS EMBODIED EXPERIENCES.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadas Schlussel ◽  
Paul Frosh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Embodied Interaction ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Physical Character ◽  
The World ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Media Formats

Videos are among the most widely used media formats on Facebook. Yet little research has been done on their aesthetic and formal attributes, and especially on how they operate within the frameworks of attention, interruption and embodied interaction specific to social media interfaces. This paper examines recipe videos published on Tasty, one of the most popular Facebook pages in the world. We analyze these videos through a novel three-dimensional model that integrates their semiotic characteristics (visual, auditory and textual), their interactive and haptic qualities, and their invitation to perceptual engagement and sensorimotor response. We conclude that Facebook recipe videos are exemplary of a broader category of social media videos which we call $2 : these create heightened multisensory experiences that take precedent over informational use or narrative involvement, revealing the deeply physical character of our connections to social media and a yearning for embodied presence in what we might call our online-life.

scholarly journals (Dis)Embodied Disclosure in Higher Education: A Co-Constructed Narrative

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Aubrecht ◽  
Nancy La Monica
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Spatial Processes ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
College Course ◽  
University College ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
College Environments

In this paper we use co-constructed autoethnographic methods to explore the tensions that animate the meaning of “disclosure” in university and college environments. Drawing insight from our embodied experiences as graduate students and university/college course instructors, our collaborative counter-narratives examine the ordinary ways that disclosure is made meaningful and material as a relationship and a form of embodied labour. Our dialogue illustrates the layered nature of disclosure—for example, self-disclosing as a disabled student in order to access academic spaces but not self-disclosing to teach as an instructor. Katie uses phenomenological disability studies to analyze disclosure at the intersection of disability and pregnancy as body-mediated moments (Draper, 2002). Nancy uses Hochschild’s (1983) notion of “emotional labour” to explore how socio-spatial processes of disclosure can be an embodied form of “extra work” (e.g., managing perceptions of stigmatized identities).

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