scholarly journals Navigating post-prison life. Social positioning and agency in unstable circumstances

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Sieferle
Keyword(s):  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Social Navigation ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
The World ◽  
Incarcerated Men

People that are released from prison experience 'life outside' as unpredictable and insecure. They are faced with stigmatization, poverty and feelings of alienation from the 'world outside.' Based on ethnographic research in the field of post-prison life, this paper asks how formerly incarcerated men act and position themselves within and around uncertain circumstances that characterize post-prison life. The paper introduces the concept of 'social navigation' as an epistemological tool for approaching post-prison life ethnographically. In doing so, it shows the potential of the concept of social navigation in understanding actor's social positioning and agency within unstable sociocultural landscapes and within a disrupted sociocultural order.

Obstetric Violence in Their Own Words: How Women in Mexico and South Africa Expect, Experience, and Respond to Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780122110373
Author(s):  
Vania Smith-Oka ◽  
Sarah E. Rubin ◽  
Lydia Z. Dixon
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Powerful Method ◽  
Obstetric Violence ◽  
The World ◽  
Core Feature ◽  
Temporal Model ◽  
Women's Stories ◽  
Structural Inequalities

This article, based on ethnographic research in Mexico and South Africa, presents two central arguments about obstetric violence: (a) structural inequalities across diverse global sites are primarily linked to gender and lead to similar patterns of obstetric violence, and (b) ethnography is a powerful method to give voice to women's stories. Connecting these two arguments is a temporal model to understand how women across the world come to expect, experience, and respond to obstetric violence—that is, before, during, and after the encounter. This temporal approach is a core feature of ethnography, which requires long-term immersion and attention to context.

scholarly journals ‘When the Numbers Stop Adding’: Imagining Futures in Perilous Presents Among Youth in Nairobi Ghettos

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi van Stapele
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Youth Gangs ◽  
Social Navigation ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Over Time

AbstractStudying the aspirations of young men, in Mathare, Nairobi, highlights their social becoming in contexts in which they incessantly risk social and physical death. Taking aspiration as a relational concept brings into view the temporal and spatial interactions between different aspirations and how these connect to emerging and future pathways of these young men. The ensuing relationalities at play are analysed through their context-bound negotiations of dominant gender norms to elucidate how these inform their social navigation towards male respectability, now and in the future. Adding the dimension of positionality here is useful to bring out how individual negotiations of gender norms in space and over time allows a nuanced view on situated entanglements of aspirations, pathways and dominant discourses and how these convolute and intensify in particular decision-making processes. The analyses are based on longitudinal ethnographic research with youth gangs in Nairobi for four months annually on average since 2005.

scholarly journals Entrepreneurial ecosystems: A study of organizational interactions and interrelations in entrepreneurial ecosystems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yoseph S. Ayele
Keyword(s):  
Open Systems ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Open Systems Theory ◽  
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems ◽  
The World ◽  
Ecosystem Level ◽  
Business And Management

<p>Entrepreneurial ecosystems are emerging around the world, and their relevance in business and management is increasing. Practitioners and researchers are using biological metaphors to understand collaborative aspects of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This thesis explores the use of bio-ecological metaphors to study interactions and interrelations taking place in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Specifically, it examines the characteristics of an ecosystem that influence interactions and interrelations within ecosystems. This thesis is part of a qualitative ethnographic research that employs an inductive approach to data analyses. It studies a New Zealand based ecosystem and presents findings on three characteristics that influence interactions and interrelations in ecosystems: interdependence, diversity, and organizational birth and death cycles. In doing so, this thesis makes a number of contributions to management theory and practice. Firstly, it combines aspects of organizational ecology and open-systems theory to develop an ecosystem-level unit of analysis. By using an ecosystem lens, researchers can better observe collaborative aspects of organizations. Secondly, findings suggest that increasing the degree of interdependency and diversity and facilitating organizational birth and death cycles can enhance levels of interaction and interrelations in ecosystems. This implies that more skills, knowledge, ideas, resources, and different forms of support can be exchanged within ecosystems. Such exchange can enrich ecosystems.</p>

scholarly journals Entrepreneurial ecosystems: A study of organizational interactions and interrelations in entrepreneurial ecosystems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Yoseph S. Ayele
Keyword(s):  
Open Systems ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Open Systems Theory ◽  
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems ◽  
The World ◽  
Ecosystem Level ◽  
Business And Management

<p>Entrepreneurial ecosystems are emerging around the world, and their relevance in business and management is increasing. Practitioners and researchers are using biological metaphors to understand collaborative aspects of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This thesis explores the use of bio-ecological metaphors to study interactions and interrelations taking place in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Specifically, it examines the characteristics of an ecosystem that influence interactions and interrelations within ecosystems. This thesis is part of a qualitative ethnographic research that employs an inductive approach to data analyses. It studies a New Zealand based ecosystem and presents findings on three characteristics that influence interactions and interrelations in ecosystems: interdependence, diversity, and organizational birth and death cycles. In doing so, this thesis makes a number of contributions to management theory and practice. Firstly, it combines aspects of organizational ecology and open-systems theory to develop an ecosystem-level unit of analysis. By using an ecosystem lens, researchers can better observe collaborative aspects of organizations. Secondly, findings suggest that increasing the degree of interdependency and diversity and facilitating organizational birth and death cycles can enhance levels of interaction and interrelations in ecosystems. This implies that more skills, knowledge, ideas, resources, and different forms of support can be exchanged within ecosystems. Such exchange can enrich ecosystems.</p>

Hurry Up and Wait: Oppositional Compliance and Networking around the State in Kuwait

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah L. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
New Media ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Internet Use ◽  
Media Use ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World

In Chapter 4, data collected through ethnographic research and structured interviews are used to argue that new media tools when used, can profoundly alter social and political practices in Kuwait. Internet use removes inhibitions, gives the public a voice, encourages people to demand access to current, transparent news and information, and enables citizens to become more engaged and active in the world. In the words of one 55 year old female Kuwaiti participant, the Internet “opens the eyes of the younger generation and because of this, they find more freedom to exercise and they can compare freedom in their countries to that in other countries” (Interview, July 2009, Kuwait City). Explanations for the increasingly volatile political and social environment in Kuwait are explored in light of new media use. The persistence of patriarchy in spite of enhanced civic engagement reveals the puzzling nature of oppositional compliance in the emirate.

Formerly Incarcerated Men’s Negotiation of Family Support

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-234
Author(s):  
Johnna Christian
Keyword(s):  
Family Support ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Familial Support ◽  
Incarcerated Men ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Research And Policy

Research about prisoner reentry has identified an assortment of needs for formerly incarcerated men. In addition to concerns such as finding employment, securing housing, and complying with supervision requirements, they must navigate family relationships that may have been strained prior to incarceration, and are further challenged by the separation imposed by confinement. Paradoxically, these family relationships that pose challenges also hold great promise to mitigate some of the other hardships posed by reintegration. Family members often provide support and assistance that is not readily available through other channels: a place to sleep, transportation, job leads, meals, and encouragement. Yet, the provision and receipt of instrumental and emotional support requires substantial negotiation of fluid and shifting relationship dynamics. Emotional attachments therefore become entangled with instrumental needs, the availability of specific resources, and willingness to share these resources. Through analysis of in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated men in an urban Northeastern city, this chapter examines how they identify potential avenues of familial support, how they balance and maximize resources gained from family members, and how they manage strains in family relationships. Research and policy implications for understanding both the benefits and limitations of family support for formerly incarcerated men are discussed.

Music and change in Nain, Nunatsiavut: More White does not always mean less Inuit

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 33-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Artiss
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Musical Forms

This paper focuses on Inuitized Western music in Nain, Labrador, as part of a broader look at Inuit responses to change. Drawing on interviews and sustained ethnographic research, I show how a relaxing of strict socio-musical categories coincided with a decline in Moravian missionary influence in the second half of the 20th century. A notable indifference to musical difference is, I suggest, consistent with an Inuit equanimity toward environmental forces of change that cannot be helped (ajunamat). I then give reasons why discursive imbalances are a continued concern and show how the effects of sustained colonial and missionary activity (hybridities, mixtures, overlaps, co-presences) do not always produce the emotional and psychic dissonances sometimes associated with postcolonial ambivalence. Ultimately, I propose thinking of Inuitized Western musical forms as visible protrusions of a much deeper substrate of affective continuities and that such inherited ways of being in the world can remain constant even while specific cultural forms may change.

Transnational Reproduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Deomampo
Keyword(s):  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Surrogate Mothers ◽  
Reproductive Labor ◽  
Stratified Reproduction ◽  
The World ◽  
Gestational Surrogacy ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Global Surrogacy

Transnational Reproduction explores the global surrogacy industry in India, focusing on the ways in which surrogate mothers, parents, egg providers, and doctors navigate their relationships formed through gestational surrogacy. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research in India, Transnational Reproduction argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of “stratified reproduction”—the ways in which political, economic, and social forces structure the conditions under which women carry out reproductive labor—it also complicates that concept as the various actors work to understand their relationships to one another. The book pays special attention to the racial dimensions within transnational surrogacy, investigating how race is constructed among the various actors involved. The book outlines how particular notions of race and difference intersect with notions of kinship and relatedness. Ultimately, the book shows how practices of racialization shape kinship and family making, arguing that racial reproductive imaginaries underpin the unequal relations at the heart of transnational surrogacy. This book illustrates how actors constitute racial reproductive imaginaries through various transnational reproductive practices: through practices that Other, through articulation of difference, and through the production and reproduction of power and stratification.

A Mayan ontology of poultry: Selfhood, affect, animals, and ethnography

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kockelman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
William James ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Cloud Forests ◽  
The World

AbstractThis article has three key themes: ontology (what kinds of beings there are in the world), affect (cognitive and corporeal attunements to such entities), and selfhood (relatively reflexive centers of attunement). To explore these themes, I focus on women's care for chickens among speakers of Q'eqchi' Maya living in the cloud forests of highland Guatemala. Broadly speaking, I argue that these three themes are empirically, methodologically, and theoretically inseparable. In addition, the chicken is a particularly rich site for such ethnographic research because it is simultaneously self, alter, and object for its owners. To undertake this analysis, I adopt a semiotic stance towards such themes, partly grounded in the writings of the American pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and George Herbert Mead, and partly grounded in recent and classic scholarship by linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists. (Linguistic anthropology, political economy, ontology, affect, selfhood, animals, chickens, Mesoamerica, Maya, Q'eqchi')*

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