scholarly journals Monumental Misunderstandings

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Morten Nielsen ◽  
Mikkel Bunkenborg
Keyword(s):  
Stainless Steel ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
Steel Cast ◽  
National Stadium

A statue of stainless steel cast in China and placed at the entrance of the new National Stadium in Mozambique sparked controversy between Chinese donors and Mozambican recipients in the period leading up to the stadium’s 2011 inauguration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Mozambican and Chinese nationals involved in the project, we explore the multiple misunderstandings surrounding the statue and show how they came to define Sino-Mozambican relations. Entextualized through materiality, the misunderstandings assumed a monumental form in the statue, and the message of mutual incomprehension continued to reverberate across the social terrain of Sino-Mozambican relations long after the statue itself had been removed. Misunderstandings, we argue, should not be dismissed as ephemeral communicative glitches, but seen as productive events that structure social relations.

Prostitution indendørs. Massageklinikken som socialt rum

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Alzaga
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Work Experiences ◽  
Life World ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working World

Cristina Alzaga: Indoor Prostitution: The Parlour as a Social Space This article presents a sociological hermeneutic analysis of the lived everyday working world of Danish indoor prostitutes. It draws upon observations and interviews, as well as documentary and experiential data, produced during a six-month period of ethnographic fieldwork at a Copenhagen massage parlour, where the author served as “telephone lady“. The article uncovers the social order (nomos) of this life world, its social relations and shared interpretations as well as organizational traits and practical-corporeal terms. It also discusses the variety and multidimensionality of the relations between prostitutes and clients. The article seeks to uncover the meanings of the distinct experiential dynamics and work experiences that take form within this particular working universe, and examines their contradictory relations to the dominant views and accounts of prostitution in the outside world, including the views pre¬sented by mainstream research on prostitution.

Ambiguous fear in the war on drugs: A reconfiguration of social and moral orders in the Philippines

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Anna Bræmer Warburg ◽  
Steffen Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Discourses

This article explores the social and moral implications of Duterte's war on drugs in a poor, urban neighbourhood in Manila, the Philippines. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, surveys, and human rights interventions, the article sheds light on policing practices, social relations, and moral discourses by examining central perspectives of the state police implementing the drug war, of local policing actors engaging with informal policing structures, and of residents dealing with everyday insecurities. It argues that the drug war has produced a climate of ambiguous fear on the ground, which has reconfigured and destabilised social relations between residents and the state as well as among residents. Furthermore, this has led to a number of subordinate moral discourses — centred on social justice, family, and religion — with divergent perceptions on the drug war and the extent to which violence is deemed legitimate.

Social Determinants of Remitting Practices among Bangladeshi Migrants in Japan

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasan Mahmud
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Structural Determinants ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Bangladeshi Migrants ◽  
Depth Interviews

Why do migrants send remittances? Through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews among Bangladeshi migrants in Tokyo, this article explores the social determinants of migrants’ remitting practices. It offers a realist analytical approach following Durkheim’s perspective on how society determines an individual’s action. It recognizes social relations between the migrants and their families and relatives as the essential foundation for remitting to occur, while migrants’ adherence to social norms, as well as legal and social exclusion in the destination, causes them to participate in various qualitatively distinct remitting practices. Therefore, it argues that migrants’ social relations to the family and community cause them to remit, and changes in these relations result in subsequent changes in their remitting. It complements the New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) approach by incorporating the social (both relational and spatial) context of remitting. By bringing in migrants’ agency, it also overcomes the limitations in social-cultural approaches that prioritize structural determinants.

scholarly journals The Power of Place: Tourism Development in Costa Rica

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Nost
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Resource Use ◽  
Tourism Development ◽  
Print Version ◽  
Tourist Destinations ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Southern Caribbean ◽  
The Social

Full-text, in-print version here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616688.2012.699090Citation: Nost, E. 2013. The Power of Place: Tourism Development in Costa Rica. Tourism Geographies. 15(1): 88-106.In this paper, I question how representations of tourist destinations color and are colored by development. Presenting the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, I find that the authenticity of portrayals of place is important not for its veracity, but for the social work it performs. Authenticity is not merely socially constructed but expressive of social relations which value people and places. Tourist perceptions of the caribe sur as genuinely underdeveloped—gauged by an analysis of photos and guidebooks as well as surveys—produce an approach to resource use within the community that is limiting. Because the value of the place is its underdevelopment, development itself constrains the possibility of sustaining further growth. Ultimately, reading development via place can be a guide for critically appreciating contemporary patterns of tourism and sustainable development in the caribe sur and elsewhere.

The SRM Approach to Family Assessment

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 216-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Cook
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Risk Behaviors ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Family Dynamics ◽  
Family Assessment ◽  
High Risk Behaviors ◽  
Analysis Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
Direction Of Effects

Abstract. In family systems, it is possible for one to put oneself at risk by eliciting aversive, high-risk behaviors from others ( Cook, Kenny, & Goldstein, 1991 ). Consequently, it is desirable that family assessments should clarify the direction of effects when evaluating family dynamics. In this paper a new method of family assessment will be presented that identifies bidirectional influence processes in family relationships. Based on the Social Relations Model (SRM: Kenny & La Voie, 1984 ), the SRM Family Assessment provides information about the give and take of family dynamics at three levels of analysis: group, individual, and dyad. The method will be briefly illustrated by the assessment of a family from the PIER Program, a randomized clinical trial of an intervention to prevent the onset of psychosis in high-risk young people.

Narrating Society: Enacting ‘Immigrant’ Characters through Negotiating, Naturalization, and Forgetting

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Media And Communication

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

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