scholarly journals From an ethnography of the everyday to writing echoes of suffering

Author(s):  
Richard Rechtman

Veena Das has introduced a major shift in our contemporary conception of ethnography. While she brings forward a new way of looking at everyday life, which is already a major achievement, she also offers a conceptual resolution to a classical unresolved opposition between the individual and the collective, and between idiosyncratic psychology (subjectivity) and collective modes of thinking, through a challenging debate on what makes one a member of a group and yet radically distinct from all others. The ethnography in her book Affliction stands on three major pillars: The first is the ethnographer’s subjective position in the field regarding the issues of lives, testimony, and research. The second is the neighborhood as the site of fieldwork, with all of its heterogeneity, rather than the group, such as an ethnic or racial group or one cohering around another criterion of belonging. The third and final pillar is the focus on the ordinary through ethnography of the everyday. I then illustrate Veena Das’s perspective on subjectivity with my own fieldwork with survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
José Edilson Amorim

ResumoA partir de uma crônica de Bráulio Tavares, este artigo reflete sobre cenas da precariedade de ontem e de hoje. A primeira cena está em Lima Barreto, em Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha, ao referir a Revolta da Vacina no Rio de Janeiro do século XX, comparada às manifestações de 2013 e 2014 no país; a segunda é a espetacularização da mídia sobre as manifestações de rua em 2013 e 2014, e sobre o processo de impedimento do mandato presidencial de Dilma Rousseff em 2015; a terceira é uma cena da vida cotidiana de uma moça de Brasília em outubro de 2014. As três situações revelam o mundo da classe trabalhadora e seu desamparo em meio ao espetáculo midiático.Palavras-chave: Trabalho. Mídia. Política. Espetáculo. AbstractFrom a chronicle by Bráulio Tavares, this paper reflects about scenes of the precariousness of yesterday and today. The first scene is in Lima Barreto’s novel Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha (Memories of the scrivener Isaías Caminha), when referring to the Vaccine Revolt in the Rio de Janeiro of the 20th century, compared to the manifestations of 2013 and 2014 in Brazil; the second is about the media spectacularization of the street manifestations between 2013 e 2014 in Brazil, and also on Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process in 2015; the third one is from the everyday life of a girl from Brasília in October of 2014. All those three situations reveal the world of the working class and its helplessness in the face of the media spectacularization.Keywords: Work. Media. Politics. Spectacle.


Slovene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-253
Author(s):  
Dmitry Rudnev ◽  
Heng Fu

The article presents a many-sided analysis of a pamphlet by Giovanni Marana translated by Antiochus Kantemir into Russian in 1726. In the first part of the article, we describe various editions of Marana’s pamphlet and establish the one that became the source for Kantemir’s translation. This source is found out to be the publication of the pamphlet in one of the “Élite des bons mots” collections. Next, the correspondence between the text of the translation and the French text is analyzed, the deviations and errors in the Kantemir’s text are revealed and their explanation is given. It is concluded that the surviving manuscript of the translation was made from an earlier one and was not the final version of the text. The manuscript of the translation was published in 1868 as a part of the collected works by Antiochus Kantemir and was subjected to a considerable revision. The second part of the article is devoted to comparing the text of the manuscript and the published text, describing spelling and punctuation corrections, as well as mistakes made during the publication of the manuscript. The contradictions in introduced spelling corrections are noted. In the third part of the article, the technique of translation, ways of transferring lexical and syntactic units to Russian are analyzed. Kantemir uses a large number of borrowed words to describe the everyday life in Paris and France, however, mainly Slavic word-building models are used for translating the behavioral sphere vocabulary. The fourth part of the article describes the stylistic key of translation. While making the language of translation closer to the language of the French original, the translator left Russian as a basis, which he slavicised in two ways: first, with a small number of “background slavonicisms”, evenly distributed throughout the text; secondly, with “slavonicisms-inclusions”, creating points of stylistic tension. It is concluded that the degree of slavicisation of the text is not great.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-648
Author(s):  
Georgios Tsagdis

The essay thematises the question of care in conditions of total power - not merely extra muros, in the everyday life of the Third Reich, but in its most radical articulation, the concentration camp. Drawing inspiration from Todorov?s work, the essay engages with Levinas, Agamben, Derrida and Nancy, to investigate Heidegger?s determination of Dasein?s horizon through a solitary confrontation with death. Drawing extensively on primary testimonies, the essay shows that when the enclosure of the camp became the Da of existence, care assumed a radical significance as the link between the death of another and the death of oneself. In the face of an apparatus of total power and its attempt to individuate and isolate death, the sharing of death in the figure of care remained one?s most inalienable act of resistance and the last means to hold on to death as something that could be truly one?s own.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (54) ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
Monika Lewicka

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to present the dilemmas of everyday life of contemporary mothers related to society’s expectations of motherhood and their individual experiences. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The research problem was the (re)construction of everyday life of modern mothers during a pandemic. The narrative interview technique was used in the research. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: This article analyzes how mothers experience motherhood during a pandemic against the background of social transformations. The issue of everyday life as an important category was presented in the considerations contained in the article below. Then, the methodological assumptions and research results focused on the issues of the multiplicity of choices in the present day and the difficulties associated with them, as well as the everyday life of mothers, were presented. The article ends with reflections on the situation of mothers in the context of contemporary challenges. RESEARCH RESULTS: A conclusion can be drawn about the positioning of motherhood between the traditional and modern pattern of the ideal mother. First of all, mothers feel tired of the seriousness of the role they play, and from fulfilling which many people can “hold them accountable”. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The conducted research shows interesting conclusions pointing to changes related to the perception of the role of the mother in modern times. They contribute to the undertaking of more extensive research on the need for (re) construction of motherhood.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Christian Harwig ◽  
Johan Roeland ◽  
Hijme Stoffels

This study is a qualitative study into the meaning that visitors derive from participating in the Dutch online church Mijn Kerk (litt. My Church). By focusing on the experience of the individual visitors, the everyday context of visitors is taken into account. What people are looking for online is determined by their relationship with the local church as well as further offline circumstances. This can be roughly divided into two categories: connectedness (with other people) and sustenance (inspiration for everyday life). Within Mijn Kerk visitors both offer and search for fulfillment of these needs, resulting in four typical behaviors: to vent, to encourage, to inspire and to recharge. Being very approachable, relatively anonymous and non-committal, while at the same time offering stability, real personal contact and durable relationships, Mijn Kerk is a unique community online in which people try to overcome the tension between individualism and the desire for connectedness.


Numen ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 486-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jan Margry

Abstract This article deals with the transnational Dutch-Canadian apparitional cultus of our Lady of All Nations/Peoples. It analyses how contemporary visionary Catholicism is influenced by religious eclecticism, esotericism, and New Age spiritualities, and how this devotion has shifted into an autonomous millennialist movement. Finding fertile soil in modern societies in socio-economic, political, and religious crisis, and due to the dwindling of existential certainties at the individual level, its ideology of “progressive millennialism” has shown itself to be a successful religious format that mobilizes devotees, even when its deviation brings the movement into conflict with the formal Church. The movement’s prophetic and millennialist views fit into a salvific system of conditionality according to which the visionary, unveiled as the reincarnation of Mary herself, will realize the new millennium if her party will fulfill certain conditions. With its new theology the Quebec movement tries to appropriate the whole Lady cultus as a vehicle for universal salvation. In this way the means for revelation and salvation are taken from the hierarchical ecclesiastical powers-that-be and situated in the “banality” of the everyday life of the reincarnated Mary. In the providential Marie-Paule Giguère, the devotees involved find an appealing prophet who is both Mary and a co-redeeming messiah, and who in the near future is supposed to realize the second millennium, framed in a new, modern cosmology, for all peoples and faiths.


Author(s):  
Yuliia Pavlenko

The article presents a study of the everyday life discourse in writing about the Self of a fictional subject. It seems obvious that involvement of self-writing in everyday practice calls into question the power of self-writing in the context of everyday life for the self-knowledge of the individual. The purpose of this scientific research is to debunk this illusion and explain the connection between the everyday life and self-writing. It transforms the practice of incorporating one’s own «I» in writing into the dimension of constructing the subject’s identity. There are no works on this topic in modern literary criticism and this fact also indicates the relevance and novelty of the research that is unfolding in the following article. Nowadays, the history of everyday life is booming. It is evidenced by a whole array of scientific papers on this issue. The study of self-writing in the dimension of everyday life appeals to the semiotic approach of Y.M. Lotman and G. Knabe for the analysis of the sign-symbolic nature of everyday life, to the sociological studies of A. Schutz, P. Berger and T. Lukman to identify the ways of constructing everyday life as reality or as a «life world», to the works of V.D.Leleko in the field of aesthetics and culturology of everyday life. The works of the philosophical and anthropological school serve the basis for the research. Particular attention is given to the text-letter of the Enlightenment. The protagonists of the Enlightenment Age invest the issues of everyday life in the work of writing that is a daily practice in the XVIII century. Due to its characteristics, the sphere of everyday life is a measure of self-knowledge and self-affirmation of the individual that was first artistically embodied by enlightened characters. The study shows that everyday life asa strong ground for self-affirmation of the subject was discovered with the help of the personal writing in the novel of the XVIII century, but this discovery became a lost testament to the text-writing of the Enlightenment. Changing the picture of everyday life under the influence of new technologies does not interfere with the text-writing. In the dynamic picture of everyday life offered to us by the 21st century, writing about the Self of a fictional subject opens up new facets of the power of everyday life discourse for the anthropological laboratory of literature. The study is illustrated by thesuch texts as: «Robinson Crusoe» by D.Defoe, «Nun» by D. Diderot, «Memoirs of two young wives» by O. de Balzac, «Poison of Love» by E.-E. Schmitt, «Self-portrait of the radiator» by K. Boben.


1973 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 271-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matina Weinstein

The study lasted two months during the summer of 1972 (19th July–14th September) and was approached by means of three techniques:1. participant observation;2. observation;3. interviews.The first consists in the researcher entering the household, establishing contact with the family, and then studying the everyday life by direct observation and participation in the activities. This technique allows freer access to the household than would normally be possible utilizing other techniques, and thus facilitates the collection of detailed data. This technique was applied to one household (referred to as the “study household”) in the village. Although data were collected on many aspects of daily life, special emphasis was placed on obtaining information about those activities which it was felt would have some relevance to archaeological problems in general.The second approach involves general observations of the village women at work, and in particular, observations of five other village households with which other members of the project co-operated.The third approach involved questioning the “study household” and the other five on general topics, such as the length of time taken to perform certain activities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-114
Author(s):  
Maria Kultaieva

The everyday realities of educational practices of the Third Reich are reconstructed in the memoires of involved observers of these processes.  The most of them can be used as a factual supplement to theoretical reflections on totalitarian transformations in education as their subjective perceiving.  Despite of different origin and life attitudes all the authors of translated fragments are concentrated on those features of totalitarian educational innovations which show their completely incompatibility with the humanistic tradition in education. The everyday life of universities’ and school’s communities in the Third Reich was determined by the national-socialist ideology.             The recalling on Heidegger’s activities as the rector of the University in Freiburg (H. Gottschalk, H. Jonas, K. Löwith, G. Cesar)  expose  the ambiguity of his way of thinking and acting, what was also noticeable in his habitus. His nationalism was not combined strong with the anti-Semitism in the university’s management. The race theory as a part of national-socialismideology wasn’t definitive for the everyday life in those educational institutions, where the educational traditions were connected with the humanistic values existing in families (L. Schmidt, G. Cesar). Some attempts to stimulation of the pro-social behavior of pupil and students (helping and solidarity) were not effective in the Third Reich because of their directive nature (G. Cesar). The comparison of the national-socialism model of the school and  the Lichtwark School taking by L. Schmidt demonstrates the advantages of non-indoctrinated educational institutions withthe pedagogical and socialfreedom used for the all-side development of pupil personality. The experience of the membership in BMD (League of German girls), connected with the force working   is critically analyzed by G. Cesar and L. Schmidt.             The social status of women and their educational influence in the family of the Third Reich design is reconstructed by B. Vinken. She shows that the fascist ideology provides only the subordinated role of women in all spheres of the social life including the educational practices.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Lindón

Abstract. The general subject of this text is the contemporary city, understood as a lived territory: it develops a theoretical–methodological approach to the sociospatial construction of urban territory that integrates both the material and the nonmaterial. The sociospatial construction of the lived city is approached via an articulated set of analytical levels. Accordingly, the first part presents the level of the spatial practices and the urban imaginaries that accompany them. The second part integrates the incorporated affectivity that acts and territorializes itself in the everyday life of the city. The third part considers urban scenarios as situational articulations of the subjects of the two previous parts. Individual topological networks are then incorporated as sequences of urban scenarios that integrate the subjects' biography, leading on to the crisscrossing of different topological networks in an approximation of the lived city in all its fragmented, dense, and fluid complexity.


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