scholarly journals Un relato etnográfico de la conciencia ecológica: historias y prácticas cotidianas de transformación y resistencia/ An ethnographic account of ecological consciousness: stories and daily practices of transformation and resistance

Author(s):  
Anapaula Ramírez

En este artículo se explora la relación entre la humanidad y la naturaleza, con el propósito de indagar en cómo se construye una conciencia ecológica. A través de un estudio etnográfico se mantuvo conversaciones profundas con tres personas que viven en reservas naturales en diferentes partes de Ecuador, con el objetivo de explorar sus historias de vida en relación con el territorio que habitan. El análisis de estas historias se enmarca en la teoría de la ética ambiental, la antropología ecológica, y la teoría de la práctica. Asimismo, se define lo que se entiende por conciencia ecológica y se identifican las áreas prioritarias de conservación a nivel mundial y en Ecuador, para resaltar la importancia de la conservación privada. A través del uso de herramientas metodológicas como las historias de vida, la observación participante y el diario de campo, se profundiza en la vida de tres practicantes de la conservación para analizar motivaciones y prácticas que dan cuenta de una conciencia ecológica. Abstract This article explores the relationship between humanity and nature, with the purpose of deepening our knowledge on how an ecological conscience is built. In this ethnographic study, conversations were held with three different persons who live in natural reserves in Ecuador, with the objective of exploring their life story and relating it to the territory they inhabit. These stories are framed in the theory of environmental ethics, the theory of the social actor, and the theory of practice, through which we analyze the motivations and transformations towards an ecological consciousness. The history of conservation in Ecuador is also described, making visible the various tools for conservation and their level of incidence in this country. Likewise, hotspots were identified worldwide and in Ecuador, to highlight the importance of private conservation, and finally define what is meant by ecological awareness. Through a qualitative-interpretative paradigm, and the use of methodological tools such as life stories, participant observation, and a field diary, the life of three conservation practitioners is analyzed in depth to identify motivations and practices that give account of an ecological consciousness.

Author(s):  
Julia Wesely ◽  
Adriana Allen ◽  
Lorena Zárate ◽  
María Silvia Emanuelli

Re-thinking dominant epistemological assumptions of the urban in the global South implies recognising the role of grassroots networks in challenging epistemic injustices through the co-production of multiple saberes and haceres for more just and inclusive cities. This paper examines the pedagogies of such networks by focusing on the experiences nurtured within Habitat International Coalition in Latin America (HIC-AL), identified as a ‘School of Grassroots Urbanism’ (Escuela de Urbanismo Popular). Although HIC-AL follows foremost activist rather than educational objectives, members of HIC-AL identify and value their practices as a ‘School’, whose diverse pedagogic logics and epistemological arguments are examined in this paper. The analysis builds upon a series of in-depth interviews, document reviews and participant observation with HIC-AL member organisations and allied grassroots networks. The discussion explores how the values and principles emanating from a long history of popular education and popular urbanism in the region are articulated through situated pedagogies of resistance and transformation, which in turn enable generative learning from and for the social production of habitat.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 744-762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Nicholas Edwards ◽  
Robyn L Jones

The primary purpose of this article was to investigate the use and manifestation of humour within sports coaching. This was particularly in light of the social significance of humour as a critical component in cultural creation and negotiation. Data were gathered from a 10-month ethnographic study that tracked the players and coaches of Senghenydd City Football Club (a pseudonym) over the course of a full season. Precise methods of data collection included participant observation, reflective personal field notes, and ethnographic film. The results demonstrated the dominating presence of both ‘inclusionary putdowns’ and ‘disciplinary humour’, particularly in relation to how they contributed to the production and maintenance of the social order. Finally, a reflective conclusion discusses the temporal nature of the collective understanding evident among the group at Senghenydd, and its effect on the humour evident. In doing so, the work contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the social role of humour within sports coaching.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 233339361879295
Author(s):  
Oona St-Amant ◽  
Catherine Ward-Griffin ◽  
Helene Berman ◽  
Arja Vainio-Mattila

As international volunteer health work increases globally, research pertaining to the social organizations that coordinate the volunteer experience in the Global South has severely lagged. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to critically examine the social organizations within Canadian NGOs in the provision of health work in Tanzania. Multiple, concurrent data collection methods, including text analysis, participant observation and in-depth interviews were utilized. Data collection occurred in Tanzania and Canada. Neoliberalism and neocolonialism were pervasive in international volunteer health work. In this study, the social relations—“volunteer as client,” “experience as commodity,” and “free market evaluation”—coordinated the volunteer experience, whereby the volunteers became “the client” over the local community and resulting in an asymmetrical relationship. These findings illuminate the need to generate additional awareness and response related to social inequities embedded in international volunteer health work.


2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Χρήστος Παπακώστας

The present dissertation aims at studying dancing and music and the relationship between these two forms of culture in the construction of the cultural identity of the Roma in Heracleia of the Prefecture of Serres. Nowadays, Heracleia is a town with 4,000 residents. Its population has a mixed ethnological composition: Vlachs, natives (Greek speakers, and Slavic speakers), refugees, Sarakachans, Roma and Gypsies. In the past Heracleia was known as Tzumaya and was flourishing both financially and culturally thanks to its geographical position in the times of the Ottoman Empire and thanks to its famous bazaar. Thus, for a more complete understanding of the changes and transitions that took place it is significant to embody history as a new fundamental framework of interpretation. An important research tool for the accentuation of the principal arguments of thedissertation is the space. In this specific experiential paradigm the construction of identities and the distinction between the ethnic groups is also reflected on the organization of space. The neighborhood, the space of the Roma(sedentary gypsies), is juxtaposed to the respective neighborhood of the Vlachs, the market. Thus, the space is not only examined a “geography” but as a historical and dynamic category connected and interacting with culture. The dynamic quality of dancing and music, the ethnic mosaic and the history of Heracleia and the neighboring area as well as the continuous mobility of the Roma musicians invites us to investigate if there is actually a total isomorphism of space and culture. Music and dancing are not seen as static and fixed cultural phenomena but as historical, dynamic and fluid categories that are the object of negotiation of collective identities and variants. Dancing and music are simultaneously products and processes and do not merely reflect the social structures but are closely related to the cultural identity of a group. For the transgression of the dichotomy structure/action we adopt the theory of practice (Bourdieu 1977). In this way, dancing and music become cultural practices, by which the Roma of Heracleia handle their cultural identity in any historical conditions. Especially in the case of the Roma, this approach is even more helpful, because, as a social group with a low social status, within music and dancing they are given the chance to re-determine their identity in relation to the others. That is to say that by applying various practices of resistance, acquiescence, conflict and acceptance, they attempt to give a positive perspective to their cultural identity. In the framework of this dissertation the dancing phenomenon in the neighbourhood of the Roma and the music, as a prominent form of their professional activity, are examined.


Author(s):  
Gabriel Rockhill

This chapter proposes a counter-history of a seminal debate in the transition from structuralism to post-structuralism. It calls into question the widespread assumption that Derrida rejects Foucault’s structuralist stranglehold by demonstrating that the meaning of a text always remains open. Through a meticulous examination of their respective historical paradigms, methodological orientations and hermeneutic parameters, it argues that Derrida’s critique of his former professor is, at the level of theoretical practice, a call to return to order. The ultimate conclusion is that the Foucault-Derrida debate has much less to do with Descartes’ text per se, than with the relationship between the traditional tasks of philosophy and the meta-theoretical reconfiguration of philosophic practice via the methods of the social sciences.


Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly

This chapter binds the book together, recapitulating its general argument, and offering pointers as to how the study relates to some contemporary questions of political theory. It suggests that a classification that distinguishes between Weber the ‘liberal’, Schmitt the ‘conservative’ and Neumann the ‘social democrat’, cannot provide an adequate understanding of this episode in the history of political thought. Nor indeed can it do so for other periods. In this book, one part of the development of their ideas has focused on the relationship between state and politics. By learning from their examples, people continue their own search for an acceptable balance between the freedom of the individual and the claims of the political community.


Author(s):  
Gavin Schaffer

This chapter interrogates the relationship between television comedy, power and racial politics in post-war Britain. In a period where Black and Asian Britons were forced to negotiate racism as a day-to-day reality, the essay questions the role played by television comedy in reflecting and shaping British multicultural society. Specifically, this chapter probes Black and Asian agency in comedy production, questioning who the joke makers were and what impact this had on the development of comedy and its reception. The work of scholars of Black and Asian comedy television such as Sarita Malik, and of Black stand-up comedy such as Stephen Small, has helped us to understand that Black- and Asian-led British comedy emerged belatedly in the 1980s and 1990s, hindered by the historical underrepresentation of these communities in British cultural production and the disinclination of British cultural leaders to address this problem. This chapter uses these scholarly frames of reference, alongside research that addresses the social and political functions of comedy, to re-open the social history of Black British communities in post-war Britain through the story of sitcom.


Tempo Social ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-217
Author(s):  
Michael Grenfell

The article discuses the dimension of reflexivity within the work of the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu. It alludes to the provenance of Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the epistemology, which underpins it. Language is a key element in reflexivity, the article therefore outline’s Bourdieu approach to language and the significance it holds in the development of his key concepts, as well as the relationship between subject and object. Reference is made to the works of Habermas, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and others to offer a ground base in just what Bourdieusian reflexivity is and how it operates in practice. Phases and stages in methodology are referred to as well as how reflexivity should operate within them. Finally, the significance of the discussion is underlined with reference to consequent outcomes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1447-1469 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN G. GUNNELL

AbstractThe turn to the philosophy of scientific realism as a meta-theory for the study of International Relations manifests a reluctance to confront the basic problem of the relationship between philosophy and social scientific inquiry. Despite the realists' rejection of traditional empiricism, and particularly the instrumentalist account of scientific theory, the enthusiasm for realism neglects many of the same problems that, more than a generation earlier, were involved in the social scientific embrace of positivism. One of these problems was a lack of understanding regarding the character and history of the philosophy of natural science and its relationship and applicability to the study of social phenomena. Proponents of realism have also neither adequately articulated and defended realism as a philosophical position, and distinguished it from other perspectives, nor confronted the fundamental challenge to realism and other foundationalist philosophies which has been mounted by the contemporary critique of traditional representational philosophy.


Author(s):  
Don C. Postema

Understanding the role of ethics committees in providing ethics consultations, ethics education, and ethics-related policies is the context for exploring the relationship of ethics, psychiatry, and religious and spiritual beliefs. After a brief history of biomedical ethics in the United States since the mid-20th century, this chapter presents several case studies that exemplify frequently encountered tensions in these relationships. The central contention is that respecting these beliefs is not equivalent to acquiescing to ethical claims based on them. Rigorous critical reflection and psychiatric insight, coupled with the values embedded in the social practices of healthcare, provide the grounds for evaluating the weight and bearing of religious and spiritual beliefs in ethically complex cases. This is one contribution that ethics committees can make at the intersection of psychiatry and religion.


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