Divorce: a visual essay

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigrid Norris ◽  
Andrea Brandt
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Year 2000

AbstractThis visual essay incorporates poetry and paintings, telling a narrative about the stages of divorce that Andrea (retrospectively) experienced. The stages developed through this project were not lived as such, but rather are an analysis of past lived experience. The paintings, which were produced in 2011 embed poems that were written around the year 2000 during an ethnographic study on identity construction (Norris, 2011) in which Andrea was one of the participants. Back then, the researcher used poetry to jot down emotions of participants and other difficult-to-describe aspects encountered during ethnographic fieldwork. This year, we revisited the poems that came about because of Andrea’s divorce at the time, and illustrate our findings in this essay.

Achieving Collaborative Aims through Multiple Identity Construction: Managing a public inter-organizational collaboration

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Isidora Kourti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Effective Management ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Stability And Change ◽  
Multiple Identity ◽  
Organizational Collaboration

Although public inter-organizational collaborations can offer better public services, their management is a complex endeavour and they often fail. This paper explores identity construction as a key aspect that assists in managing successfully these collaborations. The study draws upon a longitudinal ethnographic study with a Greek public inter-organizational collaboration. The research illustrates that managers should encourage partners to construct collaborative and non-collaborative identities in order to achieve the collaboration aims. It also suggests that managers should seek both stability and change in the collaborative process and offers four collaborative patterns for the effective management of public inter-organizational collaborations.

Mechanisms of biopower and neoliberal governmentality in precarious work: Mobilizing the dependent self-employed as independent business owners

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Moisander ◽  
Claudia Groß ◽  
Kirsi Eräranta
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Managerial Control ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Direct Sales ◽  
Work Arrangements ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Self Worth

In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging ‘gig economy,’ standard employment relationships appear to be giving way to precarious work. This article examines the mechanisms of biopower and techniques of managerial control that underpin—and produce consent for—precarious work and nonstandard work arrangements. Based on an ethnographic study, the article shows how a globally operating direct sales organization deploys particular techniques of government to mobilize and manage its precarious workers as a network of enterprise-units: as a community of active and productive economic agents who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as enterprises to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy and self-worth as individuals. The article contributes to the literature on organizational power, particularly Foucauldian studies of the workplace, in three ways: (1) by building a theoretical analytics of government perspective on managerial control that highlights the nondisciplinary, biopolitical forms of power that underpin employment relations under the conditions of neoliberal governmentality; (2) by extending the theory of enterprise culture to the domain of precarious work to examine the mechanisms of biopower that underpin ongoing transformations in the sphere of work; and (3) by shifting critical attention to the lived experience of precarious workers in practice.

scholarly journals Refugee Students’ Access to Three European Universities: An Ethnographic Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Sontag
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Refugee Students ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Migratory History ◽  
History Of

The article presents an ethnographic fieldwork carried out at three universities in Switzerland, Germany, and France, and analyses how access to higher education for refugees was addressed in the three cases, how and which institutional change and activities were initiated, and by which actors. The article argues that the topic cannot be addressed in isolation but has to consider four intersecting areas: the personal biography and migratory history of the students, the asylum system, the educational system, and the funding situation. For the refugee students, the challenge is that these areas need to be taken into account simultaneously, but what is more challenging is that they are not well in tune with one another. Solutions need to take this complex—and place-specific—situation into account.

scholarly journals A Bridge to Portugal: Language and Identity in Bridgeport, CT

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Fabio Scetti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
American English ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Status

Here I present the results of BridgePORT, an ethnographic study I carried out in 2018 within the Portuguese community of Bridgeport, CT (USA). I describe language use and representation among Portuguese speakers within the community, and I investigate the integration of these speakers into the dominant American English speech community. Through my fieldwork, I observe mixing practices in day-to-day interaction, while I also consider the evolution of the Portuguese language in light of language contact and speakers’ discourse as this relates to ideologies about the status of Portuguese within the community. My findings rely on questionnaires, participant observation of verbal interaction, and semi-structured interviews. My aim is to show how verbal practice shapes the process of identity construction and how ideas of linguistic “purity” mediate the maintenance of a link to Portugal and Portuguese identity.

Hybridity and Identity Performance in Diasporic Context: An Autoethnographic Journey of the Self Across Cultures

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria Nziba Pindi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Third Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
Ways Of Being

In this autoethnographic article, I am interested in theorizing about how hybridity illuminates my lived experience of identity performed across cultures, and more specifically in diasporic context, at the intersections of various facets of my selfhood: Black, female, postcolonial, African, bi-tribal, diasporic, immigrant, nonnative English Speaker, “French native speaker,” and so on. I use personal narrative as a locus of subjectivity to recount critical moments of my lived experience as a hybrid subject navigating at the borderlands of two cultural worldviews: Congolese and American. My cross-cultural journey reveals a series of challenging and triumphant episodes from my childhood back home to my life in the United States, a journey during which I have experienced both privilege and oppression. My process of identity construction results in the creation of a third space that celebrates difference through new ways of being, encompassing cultural values from both the United States and the Congo. This process is articulated through different ways of being/not being “American” and/or “African” and just being “different.”

Cosmopolitan English, traditional Japanese

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Baudinette
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Japanese Men ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Queer Space

Abstract The Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo’s premier gay district, Shinjuku Ni-chōme, contains much English-language signage. Previously described in touristic literature as marking out spaces for foreign gay men, this article draws upon an ethnographic study of how signage produces queer space in Japan to argue that English instead constructs a sense of cosmopolitan worldliness. The ethnography also reveals that participants within Ni-chōme’s gay bar sub-culture contrast this cosmopolitan identity with a “traditional” identity indexed by Japanese-language signage. In exploring how Japanese men navigate Ni-chōme’s signage, this article deploys Piller and Takahashi’s (2006) notion of “language desire” to investigate the role of LL in influencing individual queer men’s sense(s) of self. This article thus broadens the focus of LL research to account for how engagement with an LL may impact identity construction, with an emphasis placed on how learning to “read” an LL influences the formation of sexual identities.

scholarly journals The Korku Tribe of Melghat Region in India and Their Current State: An Ethnographic Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
Hari Ram Choudhary ◽  
Abdul Azeez E. P.
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Madhya Pradesh ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Developmental Issues ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Current State ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Tribal Populations

This article is an attempt to document the perturbing socioeconomic and developmental issues of the Korku tribe, one of the most deprived tribal populations found in the state of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, India. The article is a product of extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 10 villages of Melghat region of Maharashtra for a period of 1 year. A close examination was done on the life, lifestyles, and the socioeconomic and developmental indices of the community. The reflections from the fieldwork underline discouraging trends and show the ubiquitous social and development issues of the community. The major shifts in the socioeconomic and cultural life of the Korkus are detailed along with the state of basic amenities, livelihood, health, education, and political affairs. Further, child- and women-related issues are emphasized. The evidence from the study urges the need for focused attention on the developmental strategies for the community.

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.

Keep Research Weird: Psychoanalytic Techniques and Fieldwork in the Study of Religion

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-52
Author(s):  
John C. Seitz
Keyword(s):  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
Research Opportunities ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Research Relationships

Abstract Contemporary ethnographic fieldwork in the study of religion has made a relational turn. Research in this field is often explicitly conceived as a relationship between scholars and those they seek to understand. Knowledge is inter-subjective, the field agrees, and the only reasonable way to move forward is in open acknowledgement of this through attentiveness to the relational character of research. This paper aims to augment this relational turn by considering and addressing the risks it entails. Drawing on research experience among Catholics in Boston, it identifies normalization as a potential liability entailed in the relational understanding of research. Opportunities for enriched understanding may not emerge if researchers prioritize smooth relations with those they get to know. The paper explores the possibility that clinical psychoanalytic techniques of listening, while likely to make research relationships “weird,” may be an asset in the search for understanding in the ethnographic study of religion.

Across intergenerational masculinities: straight divisions, gay multiplications

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Ian Davis ◽  
Mark Vicars
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
Content Type

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present two examples how stories and storying can be utilised to excavate forgotten points and junctures that result as fundamental episodes in the forming of the subjective selves. Writing in-between masculinity and queerness both stories trace the experience of two boys through accounts of initiation and subjection. Design/methodology/approach – Using autobiography as a method, in concert with Deleuzian-Guattarian notions of becoming and becoming other the paper explores how the discovery of subjective difference informs how the work of identity making and survival take place. Findings – What is uncovered in the process of the paper is how we learn the disguises needed for survival through an early encounter away from the dominating and into the dominated. In this process of becoming other strategies are designed to disguise difference and avoid detection. Social implications – The gaps and fissures that exist between intergenerational positions in conjunction with the straight/gay sexuality binary provide the environment within which the paper operates. Through personal biography the paper investigates how this structure informs the subjective positionality and the identity construction. Originality/value – The openness of the writing found in both of these accounts, although clearly a narrative construction, are also akin to a stream of remembering or spontaneous prose writing. The accounts themselves are not heavily edited; they have not been figured and refigured to produce pleasing literary effects. Instead they remain raw utilising narrative tropes such as flash-back and dramaturgy simply as conduits to memory. The tropes that are employed could be read as defensive or distancing mechanism, a protection against the capacity of the unfolding lived experience to disturb and disrupt.

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