scholarly journals The anticipatory politics of dispossession in a Senegalese mining negotiation

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Fent
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Land Expropriation ◽  
Multiple Timescales ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Environmental Impact Assessments ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
To Come

The concept of accumulation by dispossession is often mobilized in political ecological and geographical literature, to explain the ways that capitalist accumulation depends on the violent and extra-economic seizure of land and resources. Yet dispossession is also mobilized as a fear about the future, as a way of articulating historical and non-capitalist motivations for land expropriation, and as an avenue for political action. Amid negotiations for a heavy mineral sands mine in the Casamance region of Senegal, narratives of dispossession circulated frequently, even though no mining had yet taken place. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews, this article examines the contentious politics around the proposed mine, which mobilize multiple timescales. In this context, activists and village residents have engaged in an anticipatory politics that is influenced by past and present processes of land occupancy, environmental change, and state disinvestment, and is aimed at contesting potential dispossessions to come, making claims to resources, and securing a place in the imagined future. At the same time, state and corporate actors have engaged in their own anticipatory actions, through environmental impact assessments and other technologies of prediction that minimize, invalidate, or circumvent anti-dispossession movements. This article argues that experiences of and resistances to dispossession are mediated by the folding together of temporal frames and diverse displacements. In particular, it attends to anticipation as a key temporal mechanism through which dispossession is both enacted and contested. As such, it contributes to political ecology by combining materialist conceptions of dispossession and displacement with theorizations of anticipation and the future.Keywords: accumulation by dispossession, anticipatory politics, mining, Senegal

scholarly journals ‘Do We Look like Boy Racers?’ The Role of the Folk Devil in Contemporary Moral Panics

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Young Drivers ◽  
The Media ◽  
Collective Process ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Societal Reaction

This article addresses the failure of studies concerning moral panics to take into account the reaction of those individuals who are the subject of social anxiety. It responds to the suggestion by McRobbie and Thornton (1995) that studies of moral panic need to account for the role played by the ‘folk devils’ themselves, for a moral panic is a collective process (Young, 2007). The paper presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork with the ‘boy racer’ culture in Aberdeen, qualitative interviews with members of outside groups, and content analysis of media articles. The societal reaction to the ‘boy racer’ subculture in Aberdeen is evidence of a contemporary moral panic. The media's representation of the subculture contributed to the stigmatization of young drivers and the labelling of the subculture's activities as deviant and antisocial. The drivers were aware of their negative portrayal in the media; however their attempts to change the myth of the ‘boy racer’ were unsuccessful. Although subcultural media can provide an outlet of self-expression for youths, these forms of media can also become caught-up in the moral panic. Ironically the youths’ own niche and micro media reified the (ir)rationality for the moral panic.

scholarly journals Ethnographic strategies for making the familiar strange: Struggling with ‘distance’ and ‘immersion’ among Moroccan-Dutch students

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Machteld De Jong ◽  
Frans Kamsteeg ◽  
Sierk Ybema
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Education ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Higher Vocational Education ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
To Come

Ethnographic fieldwork is a balancing act between distancing and immersing. Fieldworkers need to come close to meaningfully grasp the sense-making efforts of the researched. In methodological textbooks on ethnography, immersion tends to be emphasized at the expense of its counterpart. In fact, ‘distancing’ is often ignored as a central tenet of good ethnographic conduct. In this article we redirect attention away from familiarization and towards ‘defamiliarization’ by suggesting six estrangement strategies (three theoretical and three methodological) that allow the researcher to develop a more detached viewpoint from which to interpret data. We demonstrate the workings of these strategies by giving illustrations from Machteld de Jong’s field- and text-work, conducted among Moroccan-Dutch students in an institution of higher vocational education.

scholarly journals Asking is not enough. A research study on teaching qualitative interviews in Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albertina Pretto
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
To Come

In the area of social research, it is not uncommon to come across qualitative interviews (transcribed or recorded) that present conduction strategies which seem to be in contrast to that is recommended by the literature on this subject. In order to understand the reason why this occurs, I present the results of a research carried out among Italian sociologists who use qualitative interviews for their research; I try to establish a connection between the conduction strategies used by researchers and their training. I found three different conducting styles, and divided my interviewees into three categories. But, only one of these categories presents a real positive attitude towards qualitative interviews. The problem is that all these researchers also teach qualitative methods at University or train new interviewers for their research and they pass down their same attitude to their students, for better or worse.

Politicizing Roman and the Folklorization of Ethnicity

2019 ◽  
pp. 362-412
Author(s):  
Sonia Tamar Seeman
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Canon Formation ◽  
Land Expropriation ◽  
Accession Process ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
International Festival

Two fundamental shifts in national policies post-2000 set into motion new forms of Roman expression: Turkey’s responses to European Union accession process; Urban Renewal Law 5366. The first promoted Roman as a model minority through the establishment of Roman cultural associations (dernek-s), thereby opening up political space for Roman ethnic identity. The second mobilized extensive expropriation of Roman neighborhoods under Law 5366. Using pedagogy-by-performance to “make oneself known” (tanıtma), dernek-s began forging an emergent Roman-as-folklore. I trace the uneven process of folkloric canon-formation through three performances: an international festival in Istanbul, in Keşan’s annual festival, and in response to the destruction of Istanbul’s entertainment district, Sulukule. The collision of dernek-inspired political action with land expropriation were encapsulated in discourses surrounding—and enabling—municipal destruction of Sulukule. The chapter reflects on the problem of heightened attention to Sulukule as a form of political iconicization that eclipsed suffering experienced in other sites.

scholarly journals Pathways of Conflict: Lessons from the Cultivation of MON810 in Germany in 2005–2008 for Emerging Conflicts over New Breeding Techniques

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Beate Friedrich
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Commercial Application ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Maize Mon810 ◽  
New Breeding Techniques ◽  
Breeding Techniques

The paper uses qualitative interviews and document analysis to examine conflicts over plant and animal breeding techniques from the perspectives of Social and Political Ecology. It asks how past conflicts over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can inform understandings of possible trajectories of emerging conflicts over new breeding techniques (NBTs) such as CRISPR/Cas genome editing. Case studies of conflicts in three areas where the transgenic maize MON810 was cultivated in Germany from 2005–2008 show that the escalation of conflict coincided with the first tangible presence of these already controversial organisms in the rural landscape. Location-specific interlinkages between discursive and material dimensions gave rise to different pathways of conflict in the three areas studied. These empirical results inform the analysis of emerging conflicts over NBTs in Germany and the United Kingdom. The future of NBTs in both countries is still open, and the divergence of regulatory frameworks in Europe could lead to the development of ‘NBT hotspots’ located in particular European countries, provoking an escalation of conflict in areas where commercial application takes place. The paper concludes by examining the potential for a politicization of future conflicts to encompass wider issues related to the transformation of agricultural systems towards sustainability.

The Eloquent Blood

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manon Hedenborg White
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Sexual Freedom ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Positive Reinterpretation ◽  
Feminine Sexuality ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
Written Sources

The study analyzes constructions of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon, a central deity in the British occultist Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) religion Thelema. Babalon is based on Crowley’s positive reinterpretation of the biblical Whore of Babylon and symbolizes liberated female sexuality and the spiritual modality of passionate union with existence. Analyzing historical and contemporary written sources, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Anglo-American esoteric milieu, the study traces interpretations of Babalon from the works of Crowley and some of his key disciples—including the rocket scientist John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons and the enigmatic British occultist Kenneth Grant—from the fin-de-siècle to the present. From the 1990s onward, female and LGBTQ esotericists have challenged historical interpretations of Babalon, drawing on feminist and queer thought and conceptualizing femininity in new ways. Femininity has held a problematic position in feminist theory, often being associated with lack, artifice, and restriction. However, the present study—which assumes that femininities are neither exclusively heterosexual nor limited to women—indicates how interpretations of Babalon have both built on and challenged dominant gender logics. As the first academic monograph to analyze Crowley’s and his followers’ ideas from the perspective of gender, this book contributes to the underexplored study of gender in Western esotericism. By analyzing the development of a misogynistic biblical symbol into an image of feminine sexual freedom, the study also sheds light on interactions between Western esotericism and broader cultural and sociopolitical trends.

Staying out of Place

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Simon Turner
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Burundian refugees living clandestinely in Nairobi and living in a refugee camp in Tanzania, the article argues that displacement can be about staying out of place in order to find a place in the world in the future. I suggest that the term displacement describes this sense of not only being out of place but also being en route to a future. Burundians in the camp and the city are doing their best to remain out of place, in transition between a lost past and a future yet to come, and the temporary nature of their sojourn is maintained in everyday practices. Such everyday practices are policed by powerful actors in the camp and are ingrained in practices of self-discipline in Nairobi. Comparing the two settings demonstrates that remaining out of place can take on different forms, according to context.

scholarly journals Answering for Islam: Journalistic and Islamic Conceptions of Authority

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Munnik
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Professional Experience ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Real People ◽  
Official Sources

Media representations of Muslims in Britain have often disappointed both faith practitioners and scholars. Imputed failings include distorting beliefs or practices, essentialising the faith, and amplifying voices that are not representative of Islam. This last factor hinges on questions of authority: what journalists and Muslims recognise as authority can differ in important ways. Drawing on studies of journalism practice, prior professional experience, and ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in Scotland, I discuss the conventional preference among journalists for “official sources” and the problems this can present in terms of hierarchy in Islam. I contrast this with a less-studied imperative, also present in newsrooms, for “real people”. This category matches well with Islam’s decentralised tradition and presents an opportunity to understand how different kinds of sources are presented in media coverage. It is possible for journalists to ensure that these differing claims to authority are represented properly, though this requires knowledge and responsibility.

Mapping the field of religious environmental politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-363
Author(s):  
Jeremy Kidwell
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Personal Belief ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Many ◽  
High Level ◽  
Movement Organizations

Abstract Until fairly recently, consideration of religion has been marginal or even non-existent in the scholarly discourse about environmental politics. Renewed attention to the intersection of these fields has been encouraged by a recent widening in discussions of ‘environmental values’ to include the role of religious institutions and personal belief in forming spiritual environmental values and renewed attention to the place of ethics and religious institutions in global environmental politics. Following a range of historic declarations by religious leaders, the recent encyclical by Pope Francis signalled a new level of integration between Catholic concerns for social and environmental justice. Yet, much of the continued engagement by large environmental NGOs and governments has continued to ignore the complex interrelation of local, intermediate and transnational religious political ecology. In this article, which is based on data gathered during five years of fieldwork, primarily with British Christian REMOs (religious environmental movement organizations), I probe the complexities of political engagement with religious environmentalism which arise from the many different organizational iterations these groups may take. On the basis of such investigation I suggest that effective high-level engagement with REMO groups will be greatly enhanced by a nuanced understanding of the many different shapes that these groups can take, the various scales at which these groups organize, and the unique inflection that political action and group identity can take in a religious context.

Beyond ‘Token’ Firefighters: Exploring Women's Experiences of Gender and Identity at Work

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamika Perrott
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Emergency Services ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Fire Service ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Gendered Organizations ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Token Status

Despite the increasing percentage of women entering masculinized workplaces, certain organizations consistently see little change in the gender makeup of their staff. Contemporary scholarship suggests that women in rigidly gendered organizations are often assigned a token status and are victimized due to their gender. This study relocates the conversations of women as tokens towards a fresh conversation of women's agency in masculinized workplaces. This paper uses ten qualitative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork to discuss how female firefighters navigate their gender at work. This article draws on reflexive accounts of everyday gendered negotiations to look at how the female firefighters ‘do gender’ within a specific fire service in Australia. I argue that emergency services, such as firefighting, create a contradictory field where women are located in (1) a paradoxical environment where the ‘female body’ is problematized (2) a work environment where they have to repeatedly prove their cultural competence in order to confirm their professional identity. The findings suggest that while female firefighters do have agency, tokenism locates many of them in a ‘never quite there’ bind that challenges their ability to progress into leadership roles within the service. This article concludes that the nuanced difference between, and at times, within the women's narratives problematizes the bounds of personal agency and cultural change. This consequently results in resistance to policies by some women that may benefit like-situated women, such as affirmative action.

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