scholarly journals Agnostic Interactionism and Sensitizing Concepts in the 21st Century: Developing Shaffirian Theory-Work in Ethnographic Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-91
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kelly ◽  
Michael Adorjan
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Real World ◽  
Concept Formation ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Empirical Investigations

In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences taking a graduate qualitative methodol­ogy course with Dr. William (Billy) Shaffir. We highlight Billy’s approach to ethnographic research and his declaration to “just do it.” Rather than just absorbing theoretical knowledge from the liter­ature, Billy taught us to be wary of the dangers of a prior theorization and how it can distort rather than shed light on empirical investigations. Despite his belief that sociological theory is far too often abstract and removed from real-world contexts, he nevertheless provided us with a latent theoreti­cal commitment to concept formation, modification, and testing in the field that guides our research to this day. We explore Shaffir’s agnostic and at times ironic approach to theory and demonstrate how his specific type of theory-work, derived from Everett Hughes’ and Howard Becker’s interac­tionist perspective on “people doing things together,” influenced how many of his students study occupations and organizations via sensitizing concepts. Billy managed to get us to think differently about how we theorize in the field and how to cultivate a playful and healthy skeptical attitude towards its application. This type of agnostic-interactionism does not dismiss theory outright, but is always vigilant and mindful of how easy it is for practitioners of theory to slip into obfuscation and reification. We conclude with a Shaffir inspired theory-work that argues for the continuing sig­nificance of an agnostic stance towards ethnographic and qualitative inquiry; one that continues to sensitize the researcher to generic social processes through which agency-structure is mediated and accomplished.   

scholarly journals Prologue: Language Challenges in the 21st Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 428-437
Author(s):  
Megan E. Birney ◽  
Janin Roessel ◽  
Karolina Hansen ◽  
Tamara Rakić
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds ◽  
Shed Light

As immigration and mobility increases, so do interactions between people from different linguistic backgrounds. Yet while linguistic diversity offers many benefits, it also comes with a number of challenges. In seven empirical articles and one commentary, this Special Issue addresses some of the most significant language challenges facing researchers in the 21st century: the power language has to form and perpetuate stereotypes, the contribution language makes to intersectional identities, and the role of language in shaping intergroup relations. By presenting work that aims to shed light on some of these issues, the goal of this Special Issue is to (a) highlight language as integral to social processes and (b) inspire researchers to address the challenges we face. To keep pace with the world’s constantly evolving linguistic landscape, it is essential that we make progress toward harnessing language’s power in ways that benefit 21st century globalized societies.

Narrated Photography

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Sarah Dunlop ◽  
Peter Ward
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Shed Light

This article describes how a recently refined visual ethnographic research method, “narrated photography,” contributes to the study of religion. We argue that this qualitative research method is particularly useful for studies of lived religion and demonstrate this through examples drawn from a study the sacred among young Polish migrants to England. Narrated photography, which entails asking people to photograph what is personally significant to them and then to narrate the image, generates visual and textual material that mediates the subjective. Through using this method we discovered that family was considered to be sacred, both in terms of links to religious practice and a desire for a secure home which family relationships provide. Additionally, narrated photography has the potential to expand our conceptions of lived religion through the inclusion of visual material culture and the visual context of the research participants. In this case the data revealed that the Polish young people view structures within their landscape through a particularly Polish Catholic lens. These findings shed light on the religious tensions that migrants encounter in everyday life.

Young Islam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Secular World ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Islamist Movements

Today, two-thirds of all Arab Muslims are under the age of thirty. This book takes readers inside the evolving competition for their support—a competition not simply between Islamism and the secular world, but between different and often conflicting visions of Islam itself. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research among rank-and-file activists in Morocco, the book shows how Islamist movements are encountering opposition from an unexpected source—each other. In vivid detail, the book describes the conflicts that arise as Islamist groups vie with one another for new recruits, and the unprecedented fragmentation that occurs as members wrangle over a shared urbanized base. Looking carefully at how political Islam is lived, expressed, and understood by young people, the book moves beyond the top-down focus of current research. Instead, it makes the compelling case that Islamist actors are shaped more by their relationships to each other than by their relationships to the state or even to religious ideology. By focusing not only on the texts of aging elites but also on the voices of diverse and sophisticated Muslim youths, the book exposes the shifting and contested nature of Islamist movements today—movements that are being reimagined from the bottom up by young Islam. This book, the first to shed light on this new and uncharted era of Islamist pluralism in the Middle East and North Africa, uncovers the rivalries that are redefining the next generation of political Islam.

Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonatan N Gez ◽  
Yvan Droz ◽  
Jeanne Rey ◽  
Edio Soares
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Foraging Activity ◽  
French Word ◽  
Pollinating Insects ◽  
Shed Light

Based on comparative ethnographic research in four countries and three continents, Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility explores the notion of "religious butinage" as a conceptual framework intended to shed light on the dynamics of everyday religious practice. Derived from the French word butiner, which refers to the foraging activity of bees and other pollinating insects, this term is employed by the authors metaphorically to refer to the "to-ing and fro-ing" of believers between religious institutions.

scholarly journals Do It for the Culture: The Case for Memes in Qualitative Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 160940692110258
Author(s):  
Constance Iloh
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Cultural Relevance ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Rapport Building ◽  
Everyday Communication ◽  
Remote Data

Memes are a prominent feature of global life in the 21st century. The author asserts that memes are significant to current and future qualitative research. In particular, the text establishes memes as: (a) part of everyday communication, expression, and explanation, thus useful in qualitative research; (b) valuable cultural units and symbols; (c) forms of rapport building and cultivating relational research; (d) approaches that bolster and sustain remote data collection; (e) methods that infuse agency, humor, and creativity into the research process. The author then showcases distinctive ways memes can be effectively incorporated in qualitative research pursuits and publications. The article concludes with the necessity of data collection and representation approaches that advance the meaningfulness and cultural-relevance of qualitative inquiry.

scholarly journals “Why Not Nuevo Mexicano Studies?”: Interrogating Latinidades in the Intermountain West, 1528–2020

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Ed A. Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
South Florida ◽  
Intermountain West ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Historical Essay ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Group Diversity ◽  
Shed Light

While there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political status of U.S. Latinx individuals and communities, the majority focuses on traditional Southwestern U.S., Northeastern U.S., and South Florida rural/urban enclaves. Recent “New Destinations” research, however, documents the turn of the 21st century Latinx experiences in non-traditional white/black, and rural/urban Latinx regional enclaves. This socio-historical essay adds to and challenges emerging literature with a nearly five-century old delineation of Latinidad in the Intermountain West, a region often overlooked in the construction of Latina/o identity. Selected interviews from the Spanish-Speaking Peoples in Utah Oral History and Wyoming’s La Cultura Hispanic Heritage Oral History projects shed light on Latinidad and the adoption of Latinx labels in the region during the latter third of the 20th century centering historical context, material conditions, sociodemographic characteristics, and institutional processes in this decision. Findings point to important implications for the future of Latinidad in light of the region’s Latinx renaissance at the turn of the 21st century. The region’s increased Latino proportional presence, ethnic group diversity, and socioeconomic variability poses challenges to the region’s long-established Hispano/Nuevo Mexicano Latinidad.

scholarly journals EDUCATING WOMEN FOR DEVELOPMENT: THE ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2005 AND THE PROBLEM WITH WOMEN'S CHOICES

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 122a-122a
Author(s):  
Fida J. Adely
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Women's Development ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Global Capital ◽  
Human Development Report ◽  
Women And Education ◽  
Shed Light

The Arab Human Development Report 2005, the fourth in a series that has received much acclaim and stirred much controversy, takes up the issue of women's development in the Arab world. Through a careful reading and analysis of sections of the report that address education and economic participation, this paper offers a critique of the human capabilities framework that frames this report. I highlight critical tensions between the claim that providing education is an essential element of expanding choices and the assumptions embedded in discussions about women and education regarding which choices are acceptable and/or desirable. These tensions point to the persistence of values derived from the mandates of global capital, albeit in the new language of neoliberal choice, revealing that ‘human development’ does not represent a significant departure from earlier conceptualizations of development. I draw on my ethnographic research in Jordan as one example to interrogate such assumptions and to shed light on the ambiguities built into the educational project for young women today.

scholarly journals The new National Atlas of Hungary – volume Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gábor Gercsák ◽  
Károly Kocsis ◽  
Zsombor Nemerkényi ◽  
László Zentai
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Spatial Diversity ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Great Benefit ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Hungarian Society ◽  
Extensive Body

Abstract. The current volume, National Atlas of Hungary – Society, is Part 3 of the series. It presents the special world of Hungarian society and, according to the availability of data, also that of the Carpatho–Pannonian Area. By combining the tools of statistics, geography and cartography, the maps present the spatial structure accompanied by numerous graphs, photos, texts and infographics.The present volume of the National Atlas, Society, contributes to a much deeper understanding of processes and a better understanding of the relationships between phenomena through the presentation of the spatial diversity of demographic and social processes in historical perspective. This is a significant record of the period also showing the challenges that Hungarian society faces at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. This addition to the National Atlas of Hungary – with its extensive body of knowledge presented in this work – is an important document of great benefit not only togeographers but also to historians, economists, politicians, and all other interested parties.

scholarly journals “CONVENTIONAL WISDOM” AND THE POLITICS OF SHINTO IN POSTWAR JAPAN

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-82
Author(s):  
John Breen
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The State ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Post War ◽  
Shed Light

In January 2010, the Supreme Court delivered a historic verdict of unconstitutionality in a case involving Sorachibuto, a Shinto shrine in Sunagawa city, Hokkaido. All of the national newspapers featured the case on their front pages. As the case makes abundantly clear, issues of politics and religion, politics and Shinto, are alive and well in 21st century Japan. In this essay, I seek to shed light on the fraught relationship between politics and Shinto from three perspectives. I first analyze the Sorachibuto case, and explain what is at stake, and why it has attracted the attention it has. I then contextualize it, addressing the key state-Shinto legal disputes in the post war period: from the 1970s through to the first decade of the 21st century. Here my main focus falls on the state, and its efforts to cultivate Shinto. In the final section, I shift that focus to the Shinto establishment, and explore its efforts to reestablish with a succession of post LDP administrations the sort of intimacy, which Shinto enjoyed with the state in the early 20th century.

scholarly journals ‘What is infrastructure? What does it do?’: Anthropological perspectives on the workings of infrastructure(s)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lav Kanoi ◽  
Vanessa Koh ◽  
Al Lim ◽  
Shoko Yamada ◽  
Michael R. Dove
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract Infrastructure is often thought of in big material terms: dams, buildings, roads, and so on. This study, instead, draws on literatures in anthropology and the social sciences to analyse infrastructures in relation to society and environment, and so cast current conceptions of infrastructure in a new light. Situating the analysis in context of President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill, the paper expands what is meant by and included in discussions of infrastructure. The study examines what it means for different kinds of material infrastructures to function (and for whom) or not, and also consider how the immaterial infrastructure of human relations are manifested in, for example, labour, as well as how infrastructures may create intended or unintended consequences in enabling or disabling social processes. Further, in this study, we examine concepts embedded in thinking about infrastructure such as often presumed distinctions between the technical and the social, nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the urban and the rural, and how all of these are actually implicated in thinking about infrastructure. Our analysis, thus, draws from a growing body of work on infrastructure in anthropology and the social sciences, enriches it with ethnographic insights from our own field research, and so extends what it means to study ‘infrastructures’ in the 21st century.

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