scholarly journals Office Setting as Organizational Structure in “Bartleby the Scrivener”

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401769043
Author(s):  
Lori Duin Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Interpersonal Dynamics ◽  
Office Setting ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
A Site

This article uses a methodology from the social sciences known as institutional ethnography to analyze the office setting in Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a site of social organization. This approach contributes to an understanding of how that office came to adopt specific structures as crucial to its functioning and how, as a consequence of those structures, individuals’ roles within the organization’s hierarchies became constituted. As fieldwork occurs inside of organizations, institutional ethnography also provides a tool for identifying and evaluating linguistic markers for an individual’s placement within a larger organizational structure. This approach to the story seems particularly useful for understanding the interpersonal dynamics at the heart of “Bartleby.” At the same time, it provides a method for identifying the larger institutional process at work in Melville’s story, one that contributes to the reproduction of a system of social relations in the workplace that requires subordination and compliance to insure its success.

Migrant Workers in Ontario's Tobacco Belt: An Examination of Workplace Dynamics

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-67
Author(s):  
Robert Michael Bridi
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
A Site ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

Recent critiques by scholars conducting research on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program and labour geographers assert that there has been a lack of emphasis in the academic literature on the relevance of the formal workplace for developing an understanding of the social relations between capital and labour. In this article, I address these critiques through an empirical examination of workplace dynamics on two small-scale tobacco farms in Delhi, Ontario, Canada. My analysis draws upon original empirical evidence from interviews with three Mexican and nine Jamaican workers, two union representatives, and two farm owners. I argue that the farm is not simply a site for producing tobacco with economic efficiency, but an arena of struggle in which workers confront their employers, and a place of critical contests in the politics of production.

scholarly journals Queer Bodies, Queer Lives in China English Contact Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua M. Paiz ◽  
Anthony Comeau ◽  
Junhan Zhu ◽  
Jingyi Zhang ◽  
Agnes Santiano
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
China English ◽  
Ha Jin ◽  
Queer Spaces ◽  
A Site ◽  
Post Cultural Revolution

Abstract Ha Jin and his works have contributed significantly to world Englishes knowledge, both through direct scholarly engagement with contact literatures and through the linguistic creativity exhibited in his works of fiction (Jin 2010). His fiction writing also acts as a site of scholarly inquiry (e.g., Zhang 2002). Underexplored, however, are how local varieties of English as used to create queer identities. This paper will seek to address this gap by exploring how Ha Jin created queer spaces in his short story “The Bridegroom.” This investigation will utilize a Kachruvian world Englishes approach to analyzing contact literatures (B. Kachru 1985, 1990, Y. Kachru & Nelson 2006, Thumboo 2006). This analysis will be supported by interfacing it with perspectives from the fields of queer theory and queer linguistics (Jagose 1996, Leap & Motschenbacher 2012), which will allow for a contextually sensitive understanding of queer experiences in China. This approach will enable us to examine how Ha Jin utilized the rhetorical and linguistic markers of China English to explore historical attitudes towards queerness during the post-Cultural Revolution period. These markers include the use of local idioms and culturally-localized rhetorical moves to render a uniquely Chinese queer identity.

Anthropocene futures: Linking colonialism and environmentalism in an age of crisis

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Ecological Protection ◽  
The Social ◽  
Environmental Discourses ◽  
The Future ◽  
Canadian Boreal Forest ◽  
A Site

The universal discourse of the Anthropocene presents a global choice that establishes environmental collapse as the problem of the future. Yet in its desire for a green future, the threat of collapse forecloses the future as a site for creatively reimagining the social relations that led to the Anthropocene. Instead of examining structures like colonialism, environmental discourses tend to focus instead on the technological innovation of a green society that “will have been.” Through this vision, the Anthropocene functions as a geophysical justification of structures of colonialism in the services of a greener future. The case of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement illustrates how this crisis of the future is sutured into mainstream environmentalism. Thus, both in the practices of “the environment in crisis” that are enabled by the Anthropocene and in the discourse of geological influence of the “human race,” colonial structures privilege whiteness in our environmental future. In this case, as in others, ecological protection has come to shape the political life of colonialism. Understanding this relationship between environmentalism and the settler state in the Anthropocene reminds us that the universal discourse of the Anthropocene is intertwined with the attempt to sustain whiteness into the future.

scholarly journals Rethinking Vocational Rehabilitation through Institutional Ethnography

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siri Yde Aksnes
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Rehabilitation ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Support Needs ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Activation Policy ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Institutional Boundaries

In Norway, vocational rehabilitation for people with support needs involves complex inter-professional and inter-organizational processes that do not have clear institutional boundaries. Every process involves a new constellation of actors, representing divergent practices, ideas and objectives. This article argues that much of the current research on the implementation of activation policy inadequately captures the mechanisms and processes that influence vocational rehabilitation practices. The article proposes the use of institutional ethnography (IE) to empirically examine vocational rehabilitation, and argues that IE provides methodological concepts and tools that enable researchers to link and make visible the everyday practices, the social relations and the institutional contexts that make up vocational rehabilitation processes.

The Desirable Things of Ogoniok: The Material Face of a Soviet Illustrated Magazine from Stalin to Brezhnev

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-181
Author(s):  
Alexey Golubev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Form ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site

This article examines the popular Soviet illustrated magazine Ogoniok as a site that provoked, negotiated, and exposed consumer desire in post-World War II USSR. It argues that Ogoniok was an important medium that produced and reflected cultural fantasies of material possessions in Soviet society. The article identifies and describes changes in the principles of visual representation of material objects in the magazine, and interprets them as an evidence of changes in the social form of the Soviet commodity. Finally, it analyzes the visual form of Soviet commodity and aims to understand the social relations that encapsulated Soviet commodity-value.

Public Spaces/Muslim Places: Locating Sierra Leonean Muslim Identity in Washington, D.C.

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
JoAnn D’Alisera
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Work Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Way

Abstract In this paper I explore the way in which Muslim space is produced in public venues to become a tangible medium through which Sierra Leonean Muslims living in Washington, D.C. reflect upon the harmonies and tensions of life in the city. I ask how secular sites such as work spaces, street corners and sidewalks are remade by a multiplicity of sanctifying patterns of action that are performed in conscious tension with the way American public spaces are normally perceived. I illustrate the complex ways that spatial practices that emplace the sacred onto mundane sites creates complex social fields in which Sierra Leoneans negotiate the social relations and practical knowledge of their world. In so doing, I show that sacred meaning and significance can coalesce in any place that becomes a site for intensive religious interpretation and thus essential locations of self-reflection and self-constitution in cities.

scholarly journals ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL PROBLEM IN A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND BY FLANNERY O’CONNOR

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Mohamad Hani
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Sociological Aspect ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

This study aims to describe the problems of social problems contained in the short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. This research applied descriptive qualitative. The data source is the short story which title is "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. The results of this study are: (1) Family disorganization, due to lack of communication and lack of social relations within the Bailey family, (2) Crime, the Misfit who came out of the prisoner all members of the Bailey family, (3) Social status, the grandmother who is selfish and does everything she can to maintain social status and people's views on her. On the basis of the results, it has been concluded and by using the sociological aspect that the social problem events in the story can be a lesson and improve understanding and interpretation in communicating and socializing in life. This study is hopefully more useful for readers of literary books, especially the work of Flannery O'Connor and writers.

‘I Find Comfort Here’: Rohingya Women and Taleems in Bangladesh’s Refugee Camps

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhana Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Coping Strategy ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
Place Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site ◽  
Positive Memories

AbstractThis article draws on feminist ethnographic research to examine Rohingya refugee women’s place-making activities through the case of the taleem—a women’s prayer space—as a site of identity, home and belonging in the refugee camps outside of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The findings suggest that, as a space for religious activity and prayer, taleems hold important meanings for Rohingya women in three ways: in the social relations—bonds and friendships—it creates; through religious observance as a coping strategy; and providing a sense of collective identity and belonging in displacement by evoking positive memories of ‘home’.

Technologies of evidence: An institutional ethnography from the standpoints of ‘youth-at-risk’

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 604-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Nichols
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
At Risk Youth ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Youth At Risk

In this article, I investigate the social relations of evidence that transverse and connect schools, homes, the streets, and the courts. This institutional ethnography begins in the standpoints of racialised and ‘at-risk youth’ to investigate how institutional practices – embedded in and constitutive of the new relations of capital and exchange referred to as the knowledge economy – (re)produce intersecting social relations of objectification and exclusion. Beginning with young people’s experiences of silencing and misrepresentation in public sector institutions, the article examines how different forms of evidence are produced and used across the various institutional settings where young people are active. The study demonstrates how seemingly objective institutional processes actually produce the experiences of diminishment and exclusion that young people described.

Institutional Ethnography and the Materiality of Affect: Affective Circuits as Indicators of Other Possibilities

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 691-709
Author(s):  
Debra Talbot
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Done

Many studies have utilized institutional ethnography (IE) to reveal the social relations that govern how things are put together at the frontline of work, particularly in the public sector and education. The focus has generally been on restrictive practices associated with accountability regimes of new public management. Less analytic attention has been paid, however, to discovering ways in which workers are finding how it can be otherwise. Revisiting the data from a longitudinal study, originally conducted as an IE, provided an opportunity to trace the influence of affect in relation to teachers’ practices. Grounded in empirical data, this article makes a case for the methodological innovation of tracing the work done by affect, as part of an IE, in order to reveal possibilities for resistance.

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