scholarly journals Creating and upholding an elite community: ‘Consecrating exclusion’ in Djursholm, Sweden

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802612199178
Author(s):  
Mikael Holmqvist
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Economic Elite ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Reported Data

This article addresses a largely neglected area of study in sociology, namely the consecration of people in elite communities. Through the notion of ‘consecrating exclusion’, I explore how Sweden’s foremost elite community Djursholm was founded in 1889, and how its aura and character as an exclusive neighbourhood are maintained today. Data come from historical material and a five-year ethnographic study consisting of field observations, interviews and archival material. I analyse how Djursholm was created as a sanctuary for the economic elite in Sweden and that its foremost purpose has been to socially elevate its residents, making them appear honourable and morally superior. I report how the community has defended its borders by various practices of exclusion, and how Djursholm aims to present itself as a role-model, a ‘shining city upon a hill’ which is critical to its social standing and status. The study contributes to the sociology of elites in three ways: (a) theoretically through the notion of ‘consecrating exclusion’, by synthesizing ideas on social and moral distinction with ideas on symbolic boundaries and moral hierarchies; (b) empirically by presenting in-depth qualitative data on the construction and maintenance of a peculiar elite community, noting that few studies have reported data from a neighbourhood designated as ‘elite’ from the start; and (c) methodologically by drawing on a mix of methods including historical documents, interviews and participant observation in order to examine both historical and contemporary aspects of ‘consecrating exclusion’.

Young Muslim America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muna Ali
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cultural Citizenship ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
Anthropology Of Islam ◽  
Dominant Narratives

This book explores the identities, perspectives, and roles of the second and subsequent generations of Muslim Americans of both immigrant and convert backgrounds. As these younger Muslims come of age, and as distant as they are from historical processes that shaped their parents’ generations, how do they view themselves and each other? What role do they play in the current chapter of Islam in a post-9/11 America? Will they be able to cross intra-community divides and play a pivotal role in shaping their community? Culture figures prominently in the discussions about and among Muslims and is centered on four dominant narratives: 1) culture is thought to be the underlying cause of an alleged “identity crisis,” 2) it presumably contaminates a “pure/true” Islam, 3) it is the cause for all that divides Muslim American immigrants and converts, which could be remedied by creating an American Muslim community and culture, and 4) some Americans fear an “Islamization of America” through a Muslim cultural takeover. In this ethnographic study, Muna Ali explores these questions through these four dominant narratives, which are both part of the public discourse and themes that emerged from interviews, a survey, social and traditional media, and participant observation. Situating these questions and narratives in identity studies in a pluralistic yet racialized society, as well as in the anthropology of Islam and in the process and meaning of cultural citizenship, Ali examines how younger Muslims see themselves and their community, how they negotiate fault lines of ethnicity, race, class, gender, and religious interpretation within their communities, and how their faith informs their daily lives and how they envision a future for themselves in post-911 America.

Mass fainting in garment factories in Cambodia

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Eisenbruch
Keyword(s):  
Health Workers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Industrial Accidents ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Garment Factory ◽  
Garment Factories ◽  
Garment Factory Workers

This paper reports an ethnographic study of mass fainting among garment factory workers in Cambodia. Research was undertaken in 2010–2015 in 48 factories in Phnom Penh and 8 provinces. Data were collected in Khmer using nonprobability sampling. In participant observation with monks, factory managers, health workers, and affected women, cultural understandings were explored. One or more episodes of mass fainting occurred at 34 factories, of which 9 were triggered by spirit possession. Informants viewed the causes in the domains of ill-health/toxins and supernatural activities. These included “haunting” ghosts at factory sites in the wake of Khmer Rouge atrocities or recent fatal accidents and retaliating guardian spirits at sites violated by foreign owners. Prefigurative dreams, industrial accidents, or possession of a coworker heralded the episodes. Workers witnessing a coworker fainting felt afraid and fainted. When taken to clinics, some showed signs of continued spirit influence. Afterwards, monks performed ritual ceremonies to appease spirits, extinguish bonds with ghosts, and prevent recurrence. Decoded through its cultural motifs of fear and protest, contagion, forebodings, the bloody Khmer Rouge legacy, and trespass, mass fainting in Cambodia becomes less enigmatic.

scholarly journals Contingent authority and youth influence: When youth councils can wield influence in public institutions

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 537
Author(s):  
Angela Booker
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Advisory Board ◽  
Sociology Of Education ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Youth Participation ◽  
Public Practice ◽  
State Education

<p class="RESUMENCURSIVA">Studies of youth public participation have dealt with varied conceptions of citizenship that emerge from literatures on human rights, civic engagement, youth development, and youth organizing and activism. Where those conceptions rely on developmental logics that limit or exclude youth participation, young people’s attempts to gain authority reveal concurrent ways they navigate these multiple conceptions of participation. Drawing on an 18-month ethnographic study, the analysis presented here focuses on a specific venue for youth participation: a student advisory board. Data includes participant observation, interviews, and artifacts including resolutions and emails. Twenty-one of 27 students, representing roughly 15 high schools in their school district, participated in the study. When students attended to paperwork like bylaws and the state education code, they gained access to contingent authority, a limited but influential form of Weberian authority. Key implications of the study indicate that while youth advisory councils can reliably produce exclusion on developmental grounds, they can also provide the parameters for establishing contingent authority. Paperwork is a key to accessing this form of bureaucratic authority, but exercising it requires sustained, public practice. This article contributes to literatures on youth studies, public participation and more broadly to sociology of education.</p>

Pagdihon: The Art and Language of Pottery Making in Bari, Sibalom, Antique

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edbert Jay M. Cabrillos ◽  
◽  
Rowena S. Cabrillos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Photo Documentation ◽  
Language Pattern ◽  
Art And Language

Pottery is seen as creation of ornamentals, cooking and storing materials. Yet, while economic gains are often considered from producing these materials, the artistic and linguistic aspects have been ignored. This study discusses the factors influencing the culture of pottery, the processes of pottery making, and seeks to uncover the language used in processes of pottery making in Bari, Sibalom, Antique. A qualitative research employing ethnographic study with participant observation and face to face interviews using photo documentation, video recording and open-ended questions in gathering the data was employed. There were five manugdihon, or potters, purposively selected as key informants of the study. The study revealed that environmental factors influenced the culture of pottery making in the barangay. There were seven main processes in pottery making. These included gathering and preparing of materials, mixing the needed materials, cleaning the mixed clay, forming of desired shape, detaching, drying, and polishing and varnishing. Further findings indicate that, together the other processes, the language used in poterry making was archaic Kinaray-a, the language of the province. This language pattern suggests a specialized pottery making. Ultimately, the study suggest that the manugdihon should continue their artistic talents so that the language may be preserved. The educational institutions of the province may provide ways to include pottery making in the curriculum so that the art and language of pottery making will be preserved and promoted.

Diglossia and Local Identity: Swiss German in the Linguistic Landscape of Kleinbasel

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edina Krompák ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
Written Form

The city of Basel is situated in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, in the geographic triangle of three countries: France, Germany and Switzerland. Everyday urban life is characterised by the presence of Standard German and Swiss German as well as diverse migrant languages. Swiss German is ‘an umbrella term for several Alemannic dialects’ (Stepkowska 2012, 202) which differ from Standard German in terms of phonetics, semantics, lexis, and grammar and has no standard written form. Swiss German is predominantly used in oral forms, and Standard German in written communication. Furthermore, an amalgamation of bilingualism and diglossia (Stepkowska 2012, 208) distinguishes the specific linguistic situation, which indicates amongst other things the high prestige of Swiss German in everyday life. To explore the visibility and vitality of Swiss German in the public display of written language, we examined the linguistic landscape of a superdiverse neighbourhood of Basel, and investigated language power and the story beyond the sign – ‘stories about the cultural, historical, political and social backgrounds of a certain space’ (Blommaert 2013, 41). Our exploration was guided by the question: How do linguistic artefacts – such as official, commercial, and private signs – represent the diglossic situation and the relation between language and identity in Kleinbasel? Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study, a corpus was compiled comprising 300 digital images of written artefacts in Kleinbasel. Participant observation and focus group discussions about particular images were conducted and analysed using grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) and visual ethnography (Pink 2006). In our paper, we focus on signs in Swiss German and focus group discussions on these images. Initial analyses have produced two surprising findings; firstly, the visibility and the perception of Swiss German as a marker of local identity; secondly, the specific context of their display.

Understanding knowledge brokerage and its transformative potential: a Bourdieusian perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Chew ◽  
Natalie Armstrong ◽  
Graham P. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Healthcare Research ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Knowledge Brokering ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Knowledge Brokerage ◽  
Knowledge Brokers ◽  
Institutional Boundaries

Background: Knowledge brokering is promoted as a means of enabling exchange between fields and closer collaboration across institutional boundaries. Yet examples of its success in fostering collaboration and reconfiguring boundaries remain few.Aims and objectives: We consider the introduction of a dedicated knowledge-brokering role in a partnership across healthcare research and practice, with a view to examining the interaction between knowledge brokers’ location and attributes and the characteristics of the fields across which they work.Methods: We use qualitative data from a four-year ethnographic study, including observations, interviews, focus groups, reflective diaries and other documentary sources. Our analysis draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework.Findings: In efforts to transform the boundaries between related but disjointed fields, a feature posited as advantageous – knowledge brokers’ liminality – may in practice work to their disadvantage. An unequal partnership between two fields, where the capitals (the resources, relationships, markers of prestige and forms of knowledge) valued in one are privileged over the other, left knowledge brokers without a prior affiliation to either field adrift between the two.Discussion and conclusions: Lacking legitimacy to act across fields and bridge the gap between them, knowledge brokers are likely to seek to develop their skills on one side of the boundary, focusing on more limited and conservative activities, rather than advance the value of a distinctive array of capitals in mediating between fields. We identify implications for the construction and deployment of knowledge-brokering interventions towards collaborative objectives.<br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Knowledge brokers are vaunted as a means of translating knowledge and removing barriers between fields;</li><br /><li>Their position ‘in between’ fields is important, but their influence in those fields may be limited;</li><br /><li>Lacking the resources and relationships to work across fields, they may align with only one;</li><br /><li>Both the structure of fields and the prior knowledge and habitus of brokers will influence knowledge brokerage’s success.</li></ul>

scholarly journals Humour in Sports Coaching: ‘It’s a Funny Old Game’

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 744-762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Nicholas Edwards ◽  
Robyn L Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Ethnographic Film ◽  
The Social ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Sports Coaching

The primary purpose of this article was to investigate the use and manifestation of humour within sports coaching. This was particularly in light of the social significance of humour as a critical component in cultural creation and negotiation. Data were gathered from a 10-month ethnographic study that tracked the players and coaches of Senghenydd City Football Club (a pseudonym) over the course of a full season. Precise methods of data collection included participant observation, reflective personal field notes, and ethnographic film. The results demonstrated the dominating presence of both ‘inclusionary putdowns’ and ‘disciplinary humour’, particularly in relation to how they contributed to the production and maintenance of the social order. Finally, a reflective conclusion discusses the temporal nature of the collective understanding evident among the group at Senghenydd, and its effect on the humour evident. In doing so, the work contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the social role of humour within sports coaching.

scholarly journals Client or Volunteer? Understanding Neoliberalism and Neocolonialism Within International Volunteer Health Work

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 233339361879295
Author(s):  
Oona St-Amant ◽  
Catherine Ward-Griffin ◽  
Helene Berman ◽  
Arja Vainio-Mattila
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Health Work ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Volunteer

As international volunteer health work increases globally, research pertaining to the social organizations that coordinate the volunteer experience in the Global South has severely lagged. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to critically examine the social organizations within Canadian NGOs in the provision of health work in Tanzania. Multiple, concurrent data collection methods, including text analysis, participant observation and in-depth interviews were utilized. Data collection occurred in Tanzania and Canada. Neoliberalism and neocolonialism were pervasive in international volunteer health work. In this study, the social relations—“volunteer as client,” “experience as commodity,” and “free market evaluation”—coordinated the volunteer experience, whereby the volunteers became “the client” over the local community and resulting in an asymmetrical relationship. These findings illuminate the need to generate additional awareness and response related to social inequities embedded in international volunteer health work.

scholarly journals COMPREHENSIVE MEDICATION MANAGEMENT SERVICES IN A BRAZILIAN SPECIALITY PHARMACY: A QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirla Barbosa Detoni ◽  
Mariana Martins Gonzaga Do Nascimento ◽  
Isabela Viana Oliveira ◽  
Mateus Rodrigues Alves ◽  
Manoel Machuca GonzÁles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Patient Flow ◽  
Medication Management ◽  
Implementation Process ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Healthcare Team ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Manager Support

Objective: To understand and describe the implementation process of a comprehensive medication management (CMM) service in a public speciality pharmacy in Brazil.Methods: Ethnographic study conducted over 17 mo (September 2014 to February 2016) in a public speciality pharmacy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants. Notes on field journals, resulting from participant observation conducted by the two pharmacists directly responsible for the service implementation, were also used as a source of data.Results: Ten important conditions to improve the success of CMM service implementation were identified: manager support; evaluation of physical and material resources; evaluation of human resources practitioners’ characteristics and knowledge about the theoretical framework of CMM services; time dedicated to CMM services; redefining the work process; defining patient eligibility criteria to CMM service; defining patient flow to CMM service; communication with healthcare team; integration with the staff; and marketing the service internally.Conclusion: The results unveiled by this article can be used by pharmacists and managers as a tool to optimize the implementation of CMM services in different healthcare settings. These conditions do not consist the only aspects necessary to ensure the success of the service; however, they can contribute to optimize the implementation process of the practice

scholarly journals "The group facilitates everything": meanings patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus assigned to health education groups

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 980-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Pereira de Melo ◽  
Edemilson Antunes de Campos
Keyword(s):  
Diabetes Mellitus ◽  
Type 2 Diabetes ◽  
Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
Structured Interviews

OBJECTIVE: to interpret the meanings patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus assign to health education groups.METHOD: ethnographic study conducted with Hyperdia groups of a healthcare unit with 26 informants, with type 2 diabetes mellitus, and having participated in the groups for at least three years. Participant observation, social characterization, discussion groups and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Data were analyzed through the thematic coding technique.RESULTS: four thematic categories emerged: ease of access to the service and healthcare workers; guidance on diabetes; participation in groups and the experience of diabetes; and sharing knowledge and experiences. The most relevant aspect of this study is the social use the informants in relation to the Hyperdia groups under study.CONCLUSION: the studied groups are agents producing senses and meanings concerning the process of becoming ill and the means of social navigation within the official health system. We expect this study to contribute to the actions of healthcare workers coordinating these groups given the observation of the cultural universe of these individuals seeking professional care in the various public health care services.

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