scholarly journals A Slippery Stage: Tensions and Solidarities in the Cairo Cabaret

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (Summer) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Christine Şahin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Dance Floor ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Critical Dance Studies ◽  
Moving Bodies

This ethnographic case study viscerally explores the micro-level of tactics, tensions, and insights cabaret dancers offer in regard to macro-level gender, class, sexuality, and nationality politics within Cairo, Egypt. As the night wears on in a Pyramid Street cabaret, the dancer’s stage becomes increasingly slippery, not just from five-pound notes littered across the dance floor, but from the increasingly volatile intra-MENA male clientele, who contentiously perform their masculinities and nationalist identities through tahayas (greetings) and tipping. As the tipping wars become more heated, the cabaret ra’asa (female dancer), remains the centrifugal force in precariously performing, playing, and being policed by these intersectionally vexed power plays. This case study comes from larger Critical Dance Studies and Middle Eastern Studies ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo; it explores the ways raqs sharqi and other marginalized moving bodies engage with slippery possibilities despite and amidst the tensions of precarious political and economic transformations Egypt has been experiencing since the 2011 revolution.

Intergenerational Dynamics in Teenage Alcohol use

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Hulvej Jørgensen ◽  
Tine Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Friendship Groups ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
N 93 ◽  
And Control

Aim The paper examines teenage alcohol use from an intergenerational perspective through an ethnographic case study of interaction between teenagers and adults. Methods Two periods of ethnographic fieldwork were conducted in a rural Danish community of approximately 6000 inhabitants. The fieldwork included 50 days of participant observation among 13–16-year-olds (n=93) as well as semi-structured interviews with small self-selected friendship groups. The present paper presents an analysis of field notes from a night of participant observation that is used as an emblematic example of informants' alcohol use and their interaction with adults. Theoretically, the paper adopts French philosopher Michel de Certeau's conceptual framework for understanding the practice of everyday life, in particular his distinction between strategic and tactical action. Results Two scenarios are described and taken to represent two different adult approaches to teenage drinking. In Scenario I, adults accept a group of teenagers' drinking in the home, and in Scenario II adults create an alcohol-free space which they guard against the intrusion of intoxicated teenagers. In both cases, however, adults use their intergenerational position in order to strategically contain teenage drinking. Meanwhile, teenagers act tactically by adjusting their alcohol use in time and space. Further, the use of alcohol marks a shift in the interaction between adults and teenagers in so far as it enables teenagers to create and control a place of their own and hence signal their independence from adults. Conclusion The paper points to the creative, tactical agency of teenagers in response to adult strategies. It is illustrated how teenage alcohol use becomes a transformative factor for adult–teenager relationships, and in particular how teenagers rework intergenerational power differences by taking on drinking.

Laugh it up: humor in inter-cultural management after international mergers

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Janna Leann Rose
Keyword(s):  
Employee Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cultural Management ◽  
Management Literature ◽  
International Mergers ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Different Cultures

Purpose This paper aims to provide some insights for the use of humor when addressing intercultural issues after an international merger. Design/methodology/approach The author focuses on a few key articles that deal with intercultural issues in international contexts, including an ethnographic case study of a merging firm. Findings Although humor in different cultures can be difficult to explicate and define, the author find that humor can be used both positively and negatively among employees, and also among consumers, after international mergers. Originality/value When considering international mergers, management literature often describes various approaches that firms may take toward bridging differences in employee relations and organizational cultures. However, information on the use of humor in post-merger workplaces, at a more micro level, is not easily found. This paper briefly summarizes how humor – as a collective tool – might be used by employees and managers in daily office encounters to ease post-merger office tensions, as well as by consumers who react to mergers online.

scholarly journals Social-Ecological Resilience as Practice: A Household Perspective from Agua Blanca (Ecuador)

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 5697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esteban Ruiz-Ballesteros ◽  
Paulino Ramos-Ballesteros
Keyword(s):  
Ecological System ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Ecological Analysis ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology

Within a social-ecological system (SES), households develop specific practices, the logics of which are not derived directly or exclusively from higher levels (community, social-ecological system). This article advocates paying closer attention to this micro level of social-ecological analysis in order to gain a better understanding of the SES dynamic and its resilience. It explores the links between the functioning of the SES and human agency by means of a household approach (economic strategies, collective participation). To illustrate this proposal, an ethnographic case study was conducted in Agua Blanca, a community in Ecuador. The evolution and current situation of the SES, its desirability and the factors that support its resilience, as well as the practices of the most recently formed households, are analysed. This analytical proposal affords a more consistent understanding of the heterogeneous social-ecological interactions within an SES (plasticity), showing how resilience is inherently linked to practices. For this purpose, ethnographic methodology offers an outstanding tool.

Overcoming Challenges of International Migration Research: A Case Study Approach in Southern Mexico

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-143
Author(s):  
Julie Boyles
Keyword(s):  
International Migration ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Migration Research

An ethnographic case study approach to understanding women’s actions and reactions to husbands’ emigration—or potential emigration—offers a distinct set of challenges to a U.S.-based researcher.  International migration research in a foreign context likely offers challenges in language, culture, lifestyle, as well as potential gender norm impediments. A mixed methods approach contributed to successfully overcoming barriers through an array of research methods, strategies, and tactics, as well as practicing flexibility in data gathering methods. Even this researcher’s influence on the research was minimized and alleviated, to a degree, through ascertaining common ground with many of the women. Research with the women of San Juan Guelavía, Oaxaca, Mexico offered numerous and constant challenges, each overcome with ensuing rewards.

Musical Traces’ Retraceable Paths

2018 ◽  
pp. lvi-22
Author(s):  
Robert C. Lancefield
Keyword(s):  
Social Roles ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study

Archival collections of ethnomusicological recordings can be valuable to people in the communities whose practices they document. Repatriating these sounds can raise complex ethical questions—some similar to those entailed in the repatriation of unique objects from museums, others specific to recorded sounds as replicable replicas of evanescent events. These questions can involve histories of collecting, repositories’ social roles, identity, translocality, ethical and legal affordances and constraints, and case-specific constellations of these and other factors. This chapter of the Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation focuses on questions central to musical repatriation, questionnaire responses from archives in eighteen countries, and an ethnographic case study of the return of certain recordings of Navajo music. First published in 1998, it considers repatriation as enacting an ethic founded in responsibility to the creators of music documented in many collections for which archives care, and as emblematic of changing relationships among researchers, institutions, and communities.

Patterns of Social Inclusion and Exclusion Among Youth Living in Stigmatized Neighborhoods

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Espíndola Ferrer
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
Neighborhood Effects ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
High Poverty ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
The Social

This chapter is an ethnographic case study of the social integration trajectories of youth living in two stigmatized and poor neighborhoods in Montevideo. It explains the linkages between residential segregation and social inclusion and exclusion patterns in unequal urban neighborhoods. Most empirical neighborhood research on the effects of residential segregation in contexts of high poverty and extreme stigmatization have focused on its negative effects. However, the real mechanisms and mediations influencing the so-called neighborhood effects of residential segregation are still not well understood. Scholars have yet to isolate specific neighborhood effects and their contribution to processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Focusing on the biographical experiences of youth in marginalized neighborhoods, this ethnography demonstrates the relevance of social mediations that modulate both positive and negative residential segregation effects.

scholarly journals Between Pleasure and Resistance: The Role of Substance Consumption in an Italian Working-Class Subculture

Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Placido
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Critical Criminology ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Substance Consumption ◽  
North Western

In this article I discuss how illegal substance consumption can act as a tool of resistance and as an identity signifier for young people through a covert ethnographic case study of a working-class subculture in Genoa, North-Western Italy. I develop my argument through a coupled reading of the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and more recent post-structural developments in the fields of youth studies and cultural critical criminology. I discuss how these apparently contrasting lines of inquiry, when jointly used, shed light on different aspects of the cultural practices of specific subcultures contributing to reflect on the study of youth cultures and subcultures in today’s society and overcoming some of the ‘dead ends’ of the opposition between the scholarly categories of subculture and post-subculture. In fact, through an analysis of the sites, socialization processes, and hedonistic ethos of the subculture, I show how within a single subculture there could be a coexistence of: resistance practices and subversive styles of expression as the CCCS research program posits; and signs of fragmentary and partial aesthetic engagements devoid of political contents and instead primarily oriented towards the affirmation of the individual, as argued by the adherents of the post-subcultural position.

scholarly journals Online collaboration and identity work in a brony fandom: Constructing a dialogic space in a fan translation project

2021 ◽  
pp. 204275302098892
Author(s):  
Liudmila Shafirova ◽  
Kristiina Kumpulainen
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Collaborative Writing ◽  
Online Collaboration ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Affinity Groups ◽  
My Little Pony ◽  
Dialogic Space

Online collaboration has become a regular practice for many Internet users, reflecting the emergence of new participatory cultures in the virtual world. However, little is yet known about the processes and conditions for online collaboration in informally formed writing spaces and how these create opportunities for participants’ identity work. This ethnographic case study explores how four young adults, fans of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (bronies), negotiated a dialogic space for their online collaboration on a fan translation project and how this created opportunities for their identity work. After a year of participant observation, we collected interviews, ethnographic diaries and participants’ chats, which were analysed with qualitative content and discourse analysis methods. The findings showed how the Etherpad online writing platform used by the participants facilitated the construction of dialogic space through the visualization of a shared artefact and adjustable features. It was in this dialogic space where the participants negotiated their expert identities which furthered their discussions about writing, translating and technological innovations. The study advances present-day knowledge about online collaboration in affinity groups, engendering the construction of a dialogic space for collaborative writing and participants’ identity work.

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