scholarly journals Symbolic Power for Beginners: The Very First Social Efforts to Control Others’ Actions and Perceptions

2021 ◽  
pp. 073527512110506
Author(s):  
Wilfried Lignier
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
Symbolic Practices ◽  
Social Backgrounds

Becoming a social agent requires the ability to gain some power over others’ actions and perceptions. For that purpose, symbolic practices and language matter, especially when physical means of control are unavailable, ineffective, or illegitimate. Based on an in-depth ethnographic study, I analyze such a process of symbolic empowerment from the viewpoint of very young practitioners: children age 2 to 3 years. I explore the symbolic means through which toddlers seek control over adults, from simple signals, naming, and politeness to basic fictionalization. Children’s social backgrounds, not just age and development, inform their tendency to affect adults through words. The content of symbolic practices is determined by preexisting social hierarchies between persons, groups, and institutions. In fact, the crucial challenge for young children is to take advantage of these hierarchies by publicly putting them in line with their own emerging interests.

Collecting visual voices: Understanding identity, community, and the meaning of participation within gay rodeos

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshoula Capous-Desyllas ◽  
Marina Johnson-Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Photo Elicitation ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Usa ◽  
A Site

Rodeos have been an integral part of American cowboy culture since the 1800s, however, it wasn’t until the 1970s when gay rodeos began to form and challenge some of the assumptions about ‘cowboys,’ ‘sexuality,’ and ‘masculinity.’ The purpose of this ethnographic study was to utilize participant-driven photo-elicitation (PDPE) method to understand how individuals who participate in gay rodeos experience their identities and the meanings they attribute to their participation in this queer subculture. The diverse images shared by the participants illustrate their unique identities and the various meanings they attribute to their participation in gay rodeo. The findings from this study serve to highlight various aspects of the gay rodeo subculture and the role of gay rodeo as a site of support and solidarity for LGBTQ communities. In this study, gay rodeo emerges as a space of contestation, resistance and reification of gender norms and heterosexuality. The findings call into question tensions that exist when trying to dismantle sexual minority stereotypes while simultaneously perpetuating white hegemonic masculinity through the pervasive image of the gay cowboy. Interrogating the ways in which gay rodeo participants simultaneously reinforced and challenged hegemonic masculinity helps to understand how the idealized (hetero)sexual images of cowboys connected to symbolic power, strength and self-worth, position gay rodeo participants. This research study also reveals that participants of gay rodeo, who travel within and across the USA in order to participate in rodeo events, experiment with multiple non-heterosexual identities as they search for spaces and communities away from compulsory heterosexuality.

Scripts of Blackness

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isar P. Godreau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Racial Mixture ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

The geopolitical influence of the United States informs the processes of racialization in Puerto Rico, including the construction of black places. This book explores how Puerto Rican national discourses about race—created to overcome U.S. colonial power—simultaneously privilege whiteness, typecast blackness, and silence charges of racism. Based on an ethnographic study of the barrio of San Antón in the city of Ponce, the book examines institutional and local representations of blackness as developing from a power-laden process that is inherently selective and political, not neutral or natural. The book traces the presumed benevolence or triviality of slavery in Puerto Rico, the favoring of a Spanish colonial whiteness (under a hispanophile discourse), and the insistence on a harmonious race mixture as discourses that thrive on a presumed contrast with the United States that also characterize Puerto Rico as morally superior. In so doing, the book outlines the debates, social hierarchies, and colonial discourses that inform the racialization of San Antón and its residents as black. Mining ethnographic materials and anthropological and historical research, the book provides powerful insights into the critical political, economic, and historical context behind the strategic deployment of blackness, whiteness, and racial mixture.

scholarly journals Using Video in Research with Young Children, Teachers and Parents: Entanglements of Possibility, Risk and Ethical Responsibility

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Maggie Haggerty
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Teachers And Parents ◽  
Visual Technologies ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Critical Consideration

Abstract This article draws on research conducted for the author’s PhD study and concepts in semiotic multimodality and relational materialism (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2008) to explore the dynamics of what partnering with video/visual technologies in educational research with young children can be, do and become. This study was an ethnographic study which examined the curriculum and assessment priorities six focus children in Aotearoa-New Zealand encountered during their last six months in an early childhood (EC) centre and their first six months at school. In the article the author focuses on two video-recorded observations included in the PhD report by way of opening up for critical consideration the entanglements of possibility, risk and ethical responsibility entailed in the use of video in research with young children.

“I Am Not a Hijra”: Class, Respectability, and the Emergence of the “New” Transgender Woman in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 620-647
Author(s):  
Liz Mount
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Transgender Women ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Trans Women

This article examines the mutual imbrication of gender and class that shapes how some transgender women seek incorporation into social hierarchies in postcolonial India. Existing literature demonstrates an association between transgender and middle-class-status in the global South. Through an 18-month ethnographic study in Bangalore from 2009 through 2016 with transgender women, NGO (nongovernmental organization) workers and activists, as well as textual analyses of media representations, I draw on “new woman” archetypes to argue that the discourses of empowerment and respectability that impacted middle-class cisgender women in late colonial, postcolonial and liberalized India also impact how trans women narrate their struggles and newfound opportunities. Trans woman identities are often juxtaposed to the identities of hijras, a recognized (yet socially marginal) group of working-class male-assigned gender-nonconforming people. Instead of challenging stereotypes of gender nonconformity most evident in the marginalization of hijras, some transgender women are at pains to highlight their difference from hijras. These trans women are from working-class backgrounds. It is partly their similarities in class location that propel trans women’s efforts to distinguish themselves from hijras. They employ the figure of the disreputable hijra to contain negative stereotypes associated with gender nonconformity, thus positioning their identities in proximity with middle-class respectable womanhood.

The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ehud Halperin
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
The West ◽  
Religion And Ecology ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
Kullu Valley ◽  
Indian Village ◽  
The Many ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Haḍimbā is a major village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, a mountainous, rural area known as the Land of Gods. This book is an ethnographic study of Haḍimbā and her dynamic, mutually formative relationship with her community of followers. It explores the part played by the goddess in her devotees’ lives, particularly in their encounters with players, powers, and ideas both local and external, such as invading royal forces, colonial forms of knowledge, and, more recently, modernity, capitalism, tourism, and ecological change. Haḍimbā is revealed as a complex social agent, a dynamic ritual and conceptual compound, which both mirrors her devotees and serves as a platform for them to reflect on, debate, give meaning to, and sometimes resist their changing realities. The goddess herself, it emerges, also changes in the process. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and textual materials gathered during periods of extensive fieldwork from 2009 to 2017, this study is rich with myths, accounts of dramatic rituals, and descriptions of everyday life in the region. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to tell the story of Haḍimbā from the ground up, or rather from the center out, portraying the goddess in varying contexts that radiate outward from her temple to local, regional, national, and indeed global spheres. The resulting account makes an important contribution to the study of Indian village goddesses, lived Hinduism, Himalayan Hinduism, and the rapidly growing field of religion and ecology.

More Grimaces, Fewer Smiles: Notes on The Thin Line Between The Smile and Grimace in Photographic Depictions

2017 ◽  
pp. 64-67
Author(s):  
Asko Lehmuskallio
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Thin Line ◽  
As If

Grimaces are important facial expressions used in situated interactions for questioning social hierarchies and power relations. They counter the warmth of the smile and its invitation for shared foci of attention. In the photographs that surround us, the grimace is seldom to be found, whereas the smile is an almost ubiquitous expression in depictions in our “facial societies” (Macho, 2011). Interestingly, the need for depicted smiles provides us increasingly with images that depict not only smiles but, ever more, “as if” versions of smiles, facial expressions that we can identify with Goffman as “teeth grimaces”. While teeth grimaces reveal some aspects of how smiles are produced for depiction for our facial societies, the paper further suggests that we need more grimaces and fewer smiles in order to remember how social hierarchies and power relations, far from being abstract phenomena, must be constantly renegotiated in situated interactions. Keywords: communication, face, grimace, social interaction and the grimace, symbolic power and the grimace

scholarly journals An Exploration of Edible Palm Weevil Larvae (Akokono) as a Source of Nutrition and Livelihood: Perspectives From Ghanaian Stakeholders

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Laar ◽  
Agnes Kotoh ◽  
Megan Parker ◽  
Peiman Milani ◽  
Charlotte Tawiah ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Complementary Food ◽  
Dietary Quality ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Palm Weevil ◽  
Infant And Young Child ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Infants And Young Children

Background: Meeting the nutritive needs of infants and young children is a challenge in Ghana. Alternative animal source foods, including insects, could enhance infant and young child dietary quality while also improving livelihoods. Objective: To investigate the perspectives of Ghanaian stakeholders on the acceptability of the palm weevil larvae ( akokono) as a food source and the feasibility of micro-farming this local edible insect as a complementary food for infants and young children. Methods: We conducted an ethnographic study in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. First, 48 caregivers were asked questions about feeding and care practices, including attitudes toward production and consumption of akokono. Then, a selection of previously interviewed respondents joined 1 of 8 focus group discussions to provide further insight on key themes that emerged from earlier interviews. Concurrently, interviews with 25 other key local stakeholders were conducted. Results: Respondents generally had favorable perceptions of akokono as a nutritious food. A small minority would not consume akokono for religious reasons. Key factors positively influencing the acceptability of akokono as a complementary food were familiarity with the consumption of akokono by the primary caregiver and health worker endorsement of akokono. Stakeholders consider the larvae farmable and were open to its domestication. Conclusions: Anticipated barriers to scaling up akokono micro-farming include a need for greater familiarity with and acceptance of the insect as food for infants and young children and creation of a sustainable market. Engagement with stakeholders, including health workers, will facilitate use of akokono as a complementary food.

scholarly journals The Politics of Young Children through the ‘Epistemologies of the South’

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
Cognitive Justice ◽  
Subject Making ◽  
Ways Of Being

Drawing data from an ethnographic study conducted in an early-years setting in Chennai, India, where everyday politics is couched in material and relational practices, the paper ruminates on the idea of ‘children as subjects’ in relation to politics and public life. By using the framework of ‘epistemologies of the south’, the analysis illustrates how a focus on ‘global cognitive justice’ might enable us to understand the politics of life in the global south differently from Western critical theory. The paper further deliberates on how such a ‘decolonial imagination’ would help us to reframe Eurocentric liberalist thinking and its conceptualisations of childhood and the political, practiced in a zone of messy social reality. In so doing, the paper tries to unpack ‘the political’ through paying particular attention to different ways of being, knowing, and doing children’s politics, and the subaltern practices of generational relations in subject making.

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