scholarly journals Engaged yet excluded: The processual, dispersed, and political dynamics of boundary work

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (11) ◽  
pp. 1504-1536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludo Glimmerveen ◽  
Sierk Ybema ◽  
Henk Nies
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Work ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Work Processes ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Local Engagement ◽  
Temporal Sequences

What happens when people try to ‘transcend’ organizational boundaries and engage with so-called outsiders? Current boundary-work literature does not fully account for the processual, dispersed, and political dynamics triggered by such efforts. To address this shortcoming, this article builds on an ethnographic study of a professional care provider’s attempts to engage local citizens within one of its care homes. We analyze how actors negotiate the parameters of outsider engagement – that is, how they interactively (re-)erect and (re-)efface boundaries between actors (Who is engaged?), issues (What is their engagement about?), and positions of authority (Does local engagement affect central decision-making?). We contribute to extant theorizing by, first, explicitly scrutinizing boundary work’s temporal and spatial dynamics. Testifying to the importance of analyzing temporal sequences, we show how attempts at transcending boundaries intensified boundary work on multiple organizational platforms. Paradoxically, inclusionary efforts evoked exclusionary effects (and vice versa) as actors came to contest and, eventually, redefine ‘appropriate’ insider–outsider relations. Second, our analysis highlights how the political effectiveness of an inclusive and non-hierarchical approach still, ironically, depends on ongoing hierarchical support and managerial enforcement. Third, our article makes a case for the adoption of long-term, multi-sited methodologies when studying the everyday dynamics of boundary-work processes.

Feminist Political Economy and Flexible Team Interviewing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara J Daly ◽  
Ruth Lowndes
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Long Term Care ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Term Care ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Realities ◽  
Creative Team ◽  
Theoretical Standpoint

This chapter explores how we approached and conducted creative team interviewing during this multiyear ethnographic study of long-term care homes. We discuss interviewing from the theoretical standpoint of feminist political economy and feminist and interpretive interviewing. We outline our creative team interviewing method, as well as identify examples of what worked well and the relational, spatial, and temporal challenges we addressed. The chapter’s final section offers critical reflections on our contributions to creative team interviewing. Specifically, an explicitly feminist orientation in our research enabled us to use interviewing to pay attention to the everyday realities of the work and care in long-term care settings. Feminist political economy enabled us to see and hear experiences from nursing homes in context and in relation to others who live, work, and visit.

Working the System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
System P ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Post War ◽  
Africa Rising

Offering the first long-term ethnographic study of Angola since the end of its decades-long internal conflict, this book offers an empirically and analytically innovative perspective that balances the ‘Africa rising’ narrative pervading mainstream media reports of post-war Angola, and complicates the clientelist account of Angolan politics that predominates in academic literature. It does so by privileging an ethnographic approach rooted in urban life to capture the radical social and spatial dynamics of everyday life in its capital, Luanda. By working through the emic notion of the system (o sistema), this study pays attention to both the material practices and the symbolic repertoires mobilized in the co-production of the political. Examining the functioning of the system through the eyes of its users, the book therefore builds upon, and extends anthropology’s critique of dominance as something produced by a group of select individuals, and investigates instead what it means and how it feels to live in and be part of such a polity.

Assembling tribes

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1024
Author(s):  
Carlos A. Diaz Ruiz ◽  
Lisa Penaloza ◽  
Jonas Holmqvist
Keyword(s):  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Hierarchical Organization ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Material ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Temporal Sequences ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the dynamics of ephemerality within consumer tribes by conceptualizing how tribes constitute, disperse and reconstitute. Building upon assemblage thinking, a philosophical approach that redistributes agency from the subject to a web of interconnected human–material actants, this paper shows that tribes manifest via hybrid assemblages of people, things and ideas. Design/methodology/approach Insights are drawn from a three-year assemblage-oriented ethnographic study of a salsa-dancing tribe, specifically their ephemeral gatherings across multiple sites without hierarchical organization. Methods include observations as a consumer–participant, producer–participant and in-depth interviewing. Findings Introduces a framework documenting how tribes disperse temporarily and reconstitute via a dual process of ascription and distribution. Tribes reconstitute when consumers reproduce an assemblage that effectively overcomes a meshwork of practical challenges. Consumers ascribe to the standards of the tribe while, alternatively, tribes distribute the assemblage beyond the immediate group. Research limitations/implications Conceptualizes the socio-technical dynamics that tribes mobilize to disassemble and reassemble through ephemeral gatherings. Proposes a framework on hybrid interdependencies, including not only participants but also techniques, devices and sites. Practical implications While previous research shows that tribes can collapse, the authors propose that marketers can intervene to foster long-term resilience. As tribes disperse, consumer and marketing efforts operate at different temporal sequences to enable tribal reconstitutions. Originality/value Contributes to the literature on consumer tribes by theorizing ephemerality per ascription and distribution mechanisms.

Digital Childhood?

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-143
Author(s):  
Mariya Stoilova ◽  
Sonia Livingstone ◽  
Giovanna Mascheroni
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Digital Divides ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Smartphone Technology ◽  
Long Term Consequences

Mobile devices play a growing role in the everyday lives of children around the world, prompting important questions about their effects on childhood experiences. Exploring the recent global trends in children’s use of smartphone devices, the authors examine the reconfiguring of children’s communicative practices and cultures of connectivity, documenting the opportunities and risks that smartphone technology affords. Throughout the chapter the authors challenge the notion of “digital childhoods,” drawing on the most reliable research on children and smartphones including findings from Global Kids Online, which suggest that digital divides intersect with existing social inequalities, exacerbating the barriers for less privileged children. This raises further questions about the long-term consequences for children’s development, rights, and future access to opportunities and resources.

scholarly journals Sociolinguistic Markers of Friendship Among Persons With Dementia in Long-Term Care

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 575-575
Author(s):  
Pamela Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Long Term Care ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Pronominal Reference ◽  
Field Notes

Abstract Sociolinguistics and discourse analysis provide tools through which to examine how friendship is socially constructed through language and communication. Research on social isolation and loneliness reveals the importance of social interaction on the psychological and physical health of older adults. Given that linguistic, communicative, and functional abilities decline as dementia progresses, it is challenging to identify markers of friendship. The Friendship Project is an ethnographic study of social interaction among persons with dementia living in a long-term care setting. The data are from transcripts and field-notes of social interactions among residents with a range of cognitive impairments over a six-month time period. Results reveal that persons with dementia employ specific linguistic features such as narrative, evaluation, evidentials, and pronominal reference to make meaning and create relationships over time. Practical implications will be discussed.

scholarly journals Rethinking government and its economy with Giorgio Agamben: The homo sacer in alternative entrepreneurship

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 948-964
Author(s):  
David Redmalm ◽  
Annika Skoglund
Keyword(s):  
Value Creation ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Economic Gain ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Entrepreneurial Ventures ◽  
Organizational Goals

Giorgio Agamben argues in The Kingdom and the Glory (2011) that a theological remnant has survived since the medieval period that today makes it impossible to think of government and economy, or ethico-political questions and the administration of a society’s resources, separately. This conflation can be recognized in today’s growing trend of alternative entrepreneurial ventures that aim to merge social and economic value creation in response to shrinking welfare states. ‘Alternative entrepreneurship’ merges organizational goals and values with those of their members with the aim to increase innovation and productivity, and to spur social change. Rather than asking if and how alternative entrepreneurship can solve social problems, the present article contributes to a sociological understanding of the special kind of humanism embedded in these ventures. Drawing on Agamben’s work, this article theorizes the process that enables the conflation of personal and organizational values, and of ‘government and its economy’. The contribution is based on an ethnographic study of an IT company, founded in Hungary around 2010, and its engagement in the Budapest Pride Parade, in a Roma settlement, and in a mission to help Syrian refugees. Following Agamben, we think through these interventions as ‘zones of indistinction’ where organizational boundaries are dissolved, where contradictory values are conflated, and where the participants are positioned as homines sacri whose humanity is at stake. This article shows how the encounters within these zones enable a merging of idealism and economic gain, turning the company itself into a zone of indistinction.

Research of the motivation and long-term objectives of Bulgarian and Serbian students

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Borukova ◽  
Vladimir Kotev
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Educational Development ◽  
Variation Analysis ◽  
Frequency Distributions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The University ◽  
Personal Assessment

Education is an activity requiring lengthy efforts and perseverance, as well as skills for acquiring information and its creative usage. All this is based on prolonged motivation, directly related to the improvement of the educational development and the consecutive professional realization. Long-term objectives serve as coordinating terms leading to particular goals in the everyday life and thus, behaviour could be rationalized and directed in a longer prospective towards both the past and the future. The aim of the present study is to survey the opinion and personal assessment of the long-term motivation of students from NSA “Vassil Levski”, Sofia and students from Nish, Serbia. The research was conducted from November 2016 to May 2017. It was done among 96 students (45 fourth-year students at NSA and 51 students from the University in Nish). The students had to fill out a test consisting of 10 questions related to their personal assessment of their long-term motivation. The results of the study were processed mathematically and statistically by: variation analysis, relative share, comparative analysis of two independent samples and comparative analysis of the frequency distributions with χ² – the Pearson criterion.According to the generalized conclusions, a higher percentage of the Bulgarian students is directed towards long-term objectives and prospects than the percentage of the Serbian students. Women are more motivated in their long-term development than men but there are not statistically significant differences along all the questions. Athletes’ motivation is higher than the average one for the whole population. We believe, however, that the motivation changes in the course of the studies and we assume it is higher for the students who are about to graduate.

Precarious city: home-making and eviction in Buenos Aires, Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solange Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
City Center ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The City ◽  
Traditional Roles

This article expands on current conceptualizations and applications of precarity by exploring the everyday socio-spatial complexities of migrant squatters living in informal hotels in the center of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Through ethnographic methods, this research investigates squatters’ practices of negotiating access to shared domestic spaces and resources, while experiencing long-term waiting for eviction from their home and potentially from the city center. Employing a cultural geographies approach, this work is concerned with understanding the ways in which precarity is routinely experienced in the micro-spaces of everyday life. Precarity is examined in its temporal and spatial manifestations, with particular emphasis on gendered experiences and home-making practices. Moving through daily spaces and routine situations, I document how precarity is embedded in the mundane tasks of the domestic, and as a result, unevenly impacts women whose traditional roles as mothers and caretakers mean that they are often at the fore of place-making practices and responsibilities.

scholarly journals Barcelona food retailing and public markets, 1876–1936

Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 454-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
NADIA FAVA ◽  
MANEL GUÀRDIA ◽  
JOSÉ LUIS OYÓN
Keyword(s):  
Food Retailing ◽  
Public Markets ◽  
The Public ◽  
System A ◽  
Urban Markets ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Food Market ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

ABSTRACTThis article is a contribution to comparative research between specific urban markets trajectories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and it aims to juxtapose southern European food market experiences, particularly the Barcelona case, with west European ones. Like other big cities in southern and central Europe, Barcelona consolidated a sturdy polycentric system of district markets between 1876 and 1936, just when such markets were beginning to decline in ‘first comers’ cities of Britain and France. In the inter-war period, the market halls of southern European cities played a prominent role in the everyday food trade and as functional and socializing centres in neighbourhoods. They were poles of dense residential and kinship relations for stall vendors, especially women vendors, and foci of a large part of the food retailing business in many neighbourhoods. Barcelona's particular historical circumstances made the public covered market system a fundamental element of neighbourhood commerce and a long-term urban asset.

scholarly journals Uloga ERP sustava u promjeni poslovnih procesa

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stipe Belak ◽  
Ivana Ušljebrka
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Continuous Change ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Erp System ◽  
Business Change ◽  
Doing Business

This paper discusses the role that the ERP system has in the radical and continuous change of business processes. The radical change in business processes entails a radical modification, more precisely the termination of the existing method of doing business. Such a dramatic change is needed when the performance of the organization has decreased dramatically, and in order to gain a competitive advantage. However, due to frequent changes in the market and pressures to lower prices, better the quality, provide faster delivery, and the like, the once achieved competitiveness can be sustained long term only through continuous adjustments and improvements of business processes. What follows is the importance to constantly monitor and analyze the business processes in order to properly address the changes. Since there are a multitude of business processes within an organization that are connected to each other, and which intersect the functional and organizational boundaries, their monitoring is enabled only through the integrated information system such as ERP. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to examine what is the role of the mentioned system during the implementation of the changes in the business process. The paper concludes that the ERP system acts as an initiator of a radical redesign of business processes, but also as a facilitator of both a radical redesign and a continuous improvement of business processes. Given that any business change demands an adaptation of the information system, what follows is that it is necessary to change the business processes simultaneously with the introduction/modification of the ERP systems.

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