scholarly journals Identity Work, Humour and Disciplinary Power

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. 1107-1126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Huber ◽  
Andrew D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Iron Cage ◽  
Five Practices ◽  
Principal Contribution ◽  
Corporate Colonization

How are people’s identities disciplined by their talk about humour? Based on an ethnographic study of a New York food co-operative, we show how members’ talk about appropriate and inappropriate uses of humour disciplined their identity work. The principal contribution we make is twofold. First, we show that in their talk about humour people engaged in three types of identity work: homogenizing, differentiating and personalizing. These were associated with five practices of talk which constructed co-op members as strong organizational identifiers, respectful towards others, flexible rule followers, not ‘too’ serious or self-righteous, and as autonomous individuals. Second, we analyse how this identity work (re)produced norms regulating the use of humour to fabricate conformist selves. Control, we argue, is not simply a matter of managers or other elites seeking to tighten the iron cage through corporate colonization to manufacture consent; rather, all organizational members are complicit in defining discourses, subject positions and appropriate conduct through discursive processes that are distributed and self-regulatory.

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

scholarly journals Composing Individuals: Ethnographic Reflections on Success and Prestige in the British New Music Network

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
HETTIE MALCOMSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
New Music ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Art Worlds ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scant Attention

AbstractIn contrast to established musicians, lesser-known composers have received scant attention in art music scholarship. This article, based on an ethnographic study, considers how a group of British composers construed ideas of success and prestige, which I analyse in terms of anthropological writings on exchange, Bourdieusian symbolic economies, and Foucauldian notions of disciplinary power. Prestige was ascribed to composers who created ‘interesting’ music, a category that eclipsed novelty as an aim. Individuality, enacted within a context of individualism, was key to assessing whether music was interesting. This individuality had to be tempered, structured, and embedded in the social norms of this and related ‘art worlds’. The article examines the social processes involved in creating this individuality, musical personality, and music considered interesting.

Lifeblood of the Parish

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Manual Labor ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Material Religion

Each year the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, celebrates its annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. The crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, a devotional spectacle of strength and struggle in which men lift a four-ton, seventy-foot tower through the streets. This ethnographic study delves into this masculine world of devotion and the religious lives of lay Catholic men. It explores contemporary men’s devotion to the saints and the Catholic parish as an enduring venue for the pursuit of manhood and masculinity amid gentrification and neighborhood change in New York City. It explores the way laymen imagine themselves and their labor as high stakes, the very work of keeping their parish alive. In this Brooklyn church men, money, and devotion are intertwined. In the backstage spaces of the parish men enact their devotion through craft, manual labor, and fundraising. A rich exploration of embodiment and material religion, this book examines how men come to be part of religious community through material culture: costumes, clothing, objects, and tattoos. It argues that devotion is as much about skills, the body, and relationships between men as it is about belief.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Questing for meaningfulness through narrative identity work: The helpers, the heroes, and the hurt

2021 ◽  
pp. 001872672110430
Author(s):  
Sarah-Louise Weller ◽  
Andrew D. Brown ◽  
Caroline A Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Search And Rescue ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Identity Narratives ◽  
Primary Contribution ◽  
Meaningful Lives

What identity narratives do those engaged in dangerous volunteering fabricate and how do they help satisfy their quest for meaningful lives? Based on a three-year ethnographic study of QuakeRescue, a UK-based voluntary, search and rescue charity, we show that volunteers worked on identity narratives as helpers, heroes and hurt. The primary contribution we make is to analyse how meaningfulness (the sense of personal purpose and fulfilment) that people attribute to their lives, is both developed through and a resource for individuals’ narrative identity work. We show how organizationally based actors attribute significance to their lives through authorship of desired identities which are sanctioned and supplied by societal (master) narratives embedded in and constitutive of local communities. In our case, the helper and hero identities dangerous volunteering offered members were seductive. However, their pursuit had ambiguous and sometimes, arguably, negative consequences for volunteers who had seen action overseas, and our study adds to understanding of how organizational members’ quest for meaningful identities may falter and sometimes fail.

scholarly journals Balancing Memory and Material at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Gabrielle A. Berlinger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Lower East Side ◽  
East Side ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
Time Capsule ◽  
A Site

Abstract: Founded in a nationally landmarked apartment building on the ever-gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is an historic site of immigrant social history and material culture. Constructed in 1864 and occupied by over 7,000 immigrants until its closing in 1935, this building has withstood constantly rising visitorship each year since its opening as a museum in 1988. With apartment spaces restored for the public to explore without roped-off restriction, this time capsule of domestic immigrant life requires continual maintenance to preserve its historic physical fabric. Through interviews with the Museum staff and the Preservation Advisory Committee (conservators, architectural historians, curators), as well as documentation of technical processes carried out in the preservation process, this ethnographic study investigates the questions and compromises that arise in the preservation of the tangible and intangible heritage contained within an historic structure in constant use. Which narratives are reconstructed through the Museum’s decisions to restore certain material features of the building while allowing others to decay? What are best practices for interpretation and preservation when a museum’s success results in the gradual destruction of its main artifact (the building) through use? This study explores the intersection of museum mission and practice, heritage construction, and historic preservation at a site both sustained and destroyed by its increasing success.

scholarly journals Appropriating Stereotypes of Kin, Romance and Gender: An Ethnographic Study of Filipina Migrants  Married to or in De-Facto Relationships with New Zealand Men

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hollie Alexandria Doar
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Marriage Migration ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Mail Order Brides ◽  
Transnational Marriage ◽  
And Gender

<p>Transnational marriage migration is an emerging area of interest in anthropology, and contemporary scholars have written extensively on the international movements of Filipina women who have married non-Filipino men. Extending this research into an antipodean context, this thesis is based on interviews with Filipina migrants married to or in de-facto relationships with New Zealand men. Through an examination of narratives of love and romance, identity, and kinship, this work highlights the ways participants undertook identity work in their interviews. In particular, this thesis reveals the strategies employed by Filipina migrants in constructing narratives in which they distance themselves from negative stereotypes, while incorporating more positive typologies into their identities. Stereotypes included Filipina women as mail-order brides, domestic workers, subservient wives, and good family members. These narrative strategies demonstrated the ways participants sought to control and manipulate stereotypes in order to present themselves as successful and virtuous migrants. This thesis applies current scholarship on identity work and stereotypes. It also contributes to literature on marriage migration by expanding a contemporary focus on participant agency through acknowledging how migrants utilise identity resources, in this case stereotypes, available in their host society.</p>

scholarly journals 4 Designing dying well: toward a new architectural approach of in-patient palliative care environments

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 361.1-361
Author(s):  
Annie Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Palliative Care ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
List Type ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Body Memory ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Architectural Research

Neither a ‘hospital’ nor a ‘home’; the in-patient hospice has a unique architectural identity remaining largely undocumented. There is a plethora of architectural research regarding more common-place healthcare buildings such as hospitals and care-homes. (RIBA n.d) However the architecture of in-patient hospices is misunderstood in the role it can play in supporting the holistic principles of palliative care as backdrops for ‘not just a good death but a good life to the very end’ (Gawande 2014, pg. 245).Reconciling the social and spatial this research aims to establish an authentic identity for in-patient hospices; developing opportunities and situations for environments that become ‘sympathetic extensions of our sense of ourselves’ (Bloomer KC + Moore CW 1977, pg. 78) enabling those at the end of their life to dwell with dignity.An ethnographic study involving practise led design research; the research engages with experiences of the researcher and users of Welsh in-patient hospices alongside interrogations of existing architectural strategies. This inter-disciplinary methodology will provide a ‘back and forth’ movement to reflect with the community of practise upon design projects and fieldwork.Foundation work concluded that ‘homely’ is a too broad and subjective concept with which to define meaningful architectural responses for the variety of users and uses of in-patient hospices. Building upon this initial visits to Welsh in-patient hospices and design primers of key moments of inhabitation aims to provide conclusions on how architecture can create and balance the individual phenomenological experiences and needs of patients family and staff.References. RIBA. Health buildings and hospitals [Online] (n.d). Available at https://www.ribabookshops.com/books/health-buildings-and-hospitals/010503/ (Accessed: 31 May 2018). Gawande A. Being mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end2014;245. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company.. Kent BC, Charles MW. Body memory and architecture1977;78. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Musical life stories coherence through musicking in the prison setting

2022 ◽  
pp. 174165902110591
Author(s):  
Kjetil Hjørnevik ◽  
Leif Waage ◽  
Anita Lill Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
The Past

Despite the strong relationships evidenced between music and identity little research exists into the significance of music in prisoners’ shifting sense of identity. This article explores musicking as part of the ongoing identity work of prisoners in light of theory on musical performance, narrative and desistance and discusses implications for penal practice and research. Through the presentation of an ethnographic study of music therapy in a low security Norwegian prison we show how participation in music activities afforded congruence between the past, the present and the projected future for participants by way of their unfolding musical life stories. Complementing existing conceptualisations of music as an agent for change, our study suggests that musicking afforded the maintenance of a coherent sense of self for participating prison inmates, whilst offering opportunities for noncoercive personal development. We argue that research into musicking in prison offers fruitful ways of tracing how the complexities inherent in processes of change are enacted in everyday prison life, and that it can advance our knowledge of relationships between culture, penal practice and desistance.

scholarly journals Tales from the Drop Zone: roles, risks and dramaturgical dilemmas

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-259
Author(s):  
James Hardie-Bick ◽  
Susie Scott
Keyword(s):  
Field Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork

This article critically revisits conventional understandings of ethnographic fieldwork roles, arguing that representations of the covert insider as heroic and adventurous are often idealistic and unrealistic. Drawing on one of the authors’ experiences of being both a covert and overt researcher in an ethnographic study of skydiving, we identify some of the dramaturgical dilemmas that can unexpectedly affect relations with participants throughout the research process. Our overall aim is to highlight how issues of trust, betrayal, exposure and vulnerability, together with the practical considerations of field research, combine to shape the researcher’s interactional strategies of identity work.

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