Concealment and revelation as bureaucratic and ethnographic practice: Lessons from Tunisian prisons

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M Jefferson ◽  
Bethany E Schmidt

Drawing on preparatory work for a study of prison life in Tunisia, this article explores the twin practices of concealing and revealing that are common features of bureaucratic and ethnographic practice. Insights from the anthropology of bureaucracy and secrecy are brought into conversation with the experience of prison ethnographers (seasoned and novice) to illuminate the way prisons as peculiar sites of rule-based domination call for a particular hyper-reflexive methodological approach best understood as ‘craft’. The encounter between research team and prison bureaucracy is documented, and its multi-layered quality illustrated with descriptions of interactions in three prisons and at prison headquarters. This hesitant, slowly unfolding, constrained and contingent negotiation of boundaries is characterised as a gradual sharing of secrets where the configuration of our relationship with gatekeepers – with whom we shared and who shared with us – is highly instructive about prison life, bureaucratic practice and ethnography. The article demonstrates the fundamental role of practices of concealment and revelation in human and institutional interaction.

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-283
Author(s):  
Eleanor Stubley

This paper utilizes the vocabulary and methodological concepts of field theory to explore how play can arise in and through performance. Field is defined as a space or potential for action. The action of play is grounded in an open and expanding space which through a dialectic interplay of feelings motivates self-exploration. The action of musical performance is grounded in a reaching out movement through which the performer forges and sustains a musical voice. The field can create a space for play when the music-making re-directs or challenges the focus of the musical voice. The methodological approach recognizes and respects differences in the way music is made in different cultural traditions. It also articulates a need to develop instructional strategies which treat musical style as a ritualistic process and which define the role of the teacher as a musician.1


2020 ◽  
pp. 221-230
Author(s):  
Sarah Vicary

This chapter concludes the book by drawing together the themes from each of the chapters. It considers the place of the Settlement House movement within the development of social work, social welfare and research and comments upon the way in which a comparison of Settlement Houses as they have developed in different national contexts signify a more complex perspective. Examining the role of historical research and, particularly, the contribution that this methodological approach can have within social work and social work education it uses examples provided within the chapters. It concludes by discussing the role the Settlement House movement holds in the continued development of social work, social welfare and research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 498-516
Author(s):  
Neil O'Sullivan

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, also sympathia, and ἱστορικός as well as historicus. This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words.


Author(s):  
Linda MEIJER-WASSENAAR ◽  
Diny VAN EST

How can a supreme audit institution (SAI) use design thinking in auditing? SAIs audit the way taxpayers’ money is collected and spent. Adding design thinking to their activities is not to be taken lightly. SAIs independently check whether public organizations have done the right things in the right way, but the organizations might not be willing to act upon a SAI’s recommendations. Can you imagine the role of design in audits? In this paper we share our experiences of some design approaches in the work of one SAI: the Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA). Design thinking needs to be adapted (Dorst, 2015a) before it can be used by SAIs such as the NCA in order to reflect their independent, autonomous status. To dive deeper into design thinking, Buchanan’s design framework (2015) and different ways of reasoning (Dorst, 2015b) are used to explore how design thinking can be adapted for audits.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-253
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Stefanowicz

This article undertakes to show the way that has led to the statutory decriminalization of euthanasia-related murder and assisted suicide in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It presents the evolution of the views held by Dutch society on the euthanasia related practice, in the consequence of which death on demand has become legal after less than thirty years. Due attention is paid to the role of organs of public authority in these changes, with a particular emphasis put on the role of the Dutch Parliament – the States General. Because of scarcity of space and limited length of the article, the change in the attitudes toward euthanasia, which has taken place in the Netherlands, is presented in a synthetic way – from the first discussions on admissibility of a euthanasia-related murder carried out in the 1970s, through the practice of killing patients at their request, which was against the law at that time, but with years began more and more acceptable, up to the statutory decriminalization of euthanasia by the Dutch Parliament, made with the support of the majority of society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Laura Hall ◽  
Urpi Pine ◽  
Tanya Shute

Abstract This paper will reflect on key findings from a Summer 2017 initiative entitled The Role of Culture and Land-Based Healing in Addressing and Ending Violence against Indigenous Women and Two-Spirited People. The Indigenist and decolonizing methodological approach of this work ensured that all research was grounded in experiential and reciprocal ways of learning. Two major findings guide the next phase of this research, complicating the premise that traditional economic activities are healing for Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. First, the complexities of the mainstream labour force were raised numerous times. Traditional economies are pressured in ongoing ways through exploitative labour practices. Secondly, participants emphasized the importance of attending to the responsibility of nurturing, enriching, and sustaining the wellbeing of soil, water, and original seeds in the process of creating renewal gardens as a healing endeavour. In other words, we have an active role to play in healing the environment and not merely using the environment to heal ourselves. Gardening as research and embodied knowledge was stressed by extreme weather changes including hail in June, 2018, which meant that participants spent as much time talking about the healing of the earth and her systems as the healing of Indigenous women in a context of ongoing colonialism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.


Theoria ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (165) ◽  
pp. 92-117
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Leebaw

What kinds of lessons can be learned from stories of those who resisted past abuses and injustices? How should such stories be recovered, and what do they have to teach us about present day struggles for justice and accountability? This paper investigates how Levi, Broz, and Arendt formulate the political role of storytelling as response to distinctive challenges associated with efforts to resist systematic forms of abuse and injustice. It focuses on how these thinkers reflected on such themes as witnesses, who were personally affected, to varying degrees, by atrocities under investigation. Despite their differences, these thinkers share a common concern with the way that organised atrocities are associated with systemic logics and grey zones that make people feel that it would be meaningless or futile to resist. To confront such challenges, Levi, Arendt and Broz all suggest, it is important to recover stories of resistance that are not usually heard or told in ways that defy the expectations of public audiences. Their distinctive storytelling strategies are not rooted in clashing theories of resistance, but rather reflect different perspectives on what is needed to make resistance meaningful in contexts where the failure of resistance is intolerable.


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