Doing historical-anthropological fieldwork in Jiangnan

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
Vincent Goossaert
Keyword(s):  
Anthropological Fieldwork

scholarly journals Sustainable Mobility and the Institutional Lock-In: The Example of Rural France

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2189
Author(s):  
Aurore Flipo ◽  
Madeleine Sallustio ◽  
Nathalie Ortar ◽  
Nicolas Senil
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Local Mobility ◽  
European Public ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
Lock In ◽  
Rural France ◽  
Ecological Transition

Sustainable mobility issues in rural areas, compared with urban mobility issues, have so far been poorly covered in the French and European public debate. However, local mobility issues are determining factors in territorial inequalities, regional development and ecological transition. This paper is based on preliminary findings of qualitative socio-anthropological fieldwork carried out in two rural departments of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region: Drôme and Ardèche. Our objective is to highlight how the question of sustainable local mobility is linked to governance issues and multiple overlapping institutions. We argue that analyzing stakeholders’ strategies and territorial governance is key to understanding the contemporary dynamics surrounding a transition towards a more sustainable mobility in rural areas. In order to do so, we show how the debates surrounding the adoption of a law allowing for the transfer of responsibility to local authorities for the organization of mobility services reveals the complexity of local mobility governance in rural areas and provides material for the analysis of the logics of stakeholder engagement, cooperation and conflict within the field of sustainable mobility. Through the case study of the organization of a local public transport service in a rural area, we shed light on the action of multiple stakeholders and their potentially antagonistic objectives.

Denied Violence, Glorified Fighting: Spiritual Discipline and Controversy in Ananda Marga

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaëël Voix
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
Internal Characteristic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork

This article tackles the issue of violence inside Ananda Marga, a contemporary Indian religious movement based in West Bengal. It analyzes a controversy Ananda Marga has been through and questions its role within the movement by examining its link with an internal characteristic of the group: an initiatory process into asceticism. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in India, I describe the structure of Ananda Marga and then distinguish between the "history" of the movement, which is written and given collectively, and the "stories" of the movement, which are told orally and individually. By confronting these different versions of the same event, I argue that the controversy can be seen as a part of a larger initiatory process in which committed disciples gradually acknowledge the legitimacy of violence.

scholarly journals PÅ FELTARBEJDE BLANDT FOLK

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisanne Wilken
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Innate Capacity ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork

Lisanne Wilken: Fieldwork among People Personal relationships between the anthropologist and the informants in a given field plays a crucial role for anthropological fieldwork and for the information the anthropologist gets. With reference to personal experiences from fieldwork in Northern and Central Italy, the author argues that methods of establishing and maintaining personal field relations ought to play a much more prominent role in the discussions of anthropological field methods than is usually the case. In today’s discussions of anthropological methodology one can easily get the impression that field relations are coincidentially automatically, established, or that anthropologists have an innate capacity for the creation of social relationships in a variety of social and cultural contexts. The article discusses how dependence on a few close informants may block the collection of data and suggests ways to establish a broad range of informants. One solution is to establish field relations prior to the commencement of fieldwork. This method not only ensures that informants are available when fieldwork is started but also facilitates the cross-cutting of social boundaries which may otherwise be difficult to crosscut.The article also suggests that questionnaires may be used as a method to attract attention to the research project in the field and to broaden the circle of informants. The focus of the article is not the nature of the data collected during fieldwork, but rather the circumstances for the collection of data.  

scholarly journals Working Time as a Measure of Acceleration of the Serbian Society at the Turn of the Century: Anthropological Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljubica Milosavljević ◽  
Bogdan Dražeta
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Working Time ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
Almost All

Multiple processes in modern Serbia occurred at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century. Almost all of them regard political, economic, and social changes. Influences caused by these changes can be seen in the social template across the spectrum of plans, encompassing various spheres of life of individuals from business to private, all the way to the point where this division, for many, is gradually disappearing. In that sense, this paper will follow the most anthropologically interesting example of research, the one that follows the influences of the undertaken reform processes and observed changes. This is the example that regards the experience and evaluation of time among employed inhabitants of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The aim of this paper was to refer to the results of anthropological fieldwork conducted in 2005, which focused on the experiences, strategies and expectations of employed Belgraders in terms of their working hours and certain temporal boundaries that characterize it. Due to the increasingly intensive business contacts with foreign partners and colleagues since 2000, the working hours of employees were analyzed in a narrower context, as they were on the long list of adjustments, mostly to Western influences. These contacts were not only more frequent after the period of the 1990s, which, among other things, is characterized by a sudden break in cooperation with foreigners, but were often dictated by the EU integration process, the increase of the private sector in which operated companies were oriented towards profit, and the acceleration of time. The last aspect was examined in 2005 through a sample comprising 30 interlocutors of various business backgrounds. The ethnographic material was categorized and analyzed with regard to the differentiation of respondents by age. Fifteen respondents were chosen to represent the older generation (born in the 1940s and 1950s) and as many the younger generation (born in the 1960s and 1980s). The blurring of the boundaries between the employees’ business and private life in Belgrade became more marked at the turn of the century, and it could be clearly stated through the example of working time. Differences between the period of socialism and the period of reforms since the 1990s relate also to a sense of insecurity and fear of losing one's job or having inadequate work, and the simultaneous development of the private sector, which is characterized by stricter rules for employees. More intensive was the influence of business on the private domain of life, but also the intrusion of the private into business life. This has become a necessity and a pledge of individual functioning on both levels, which show combined characteristics of acceleration through the increase of obligations.

Wars of the Past and War in the Present: The Lord's Resistance Movement/Army in Uganda

Africa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sverker Finnström
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Model ◽  
Critical Event ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moral World ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
Resistance Movement

AbstractWar has ravaged Acholiland in northern Uganda since 1986. The Ugandan army is fighting the Lord's ResistanceMovement/Army (LRM/A) rebels. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the article aims at exemplifying the ways in which non-combatant people's experiences of war and violence are domesticated in cosmological terms as strategies of coping, and it relates tales of wars in the past to experiences of violent death and war in the present. There has been a politicized debate in Uganda over whether or not the LRM/A rebels have the elders' ceremonial warfare blessing. In sketching this debate, the article interprets the possible warfare blessing – which some informants interpreted as having turned into a curse on Acholiland – as a critical event that benefits from further deliberation, regardless of its existence or non-existence. It is argued that no warfare blessing can be regarded as the mere utterance of words. Rather, a blessing is performed within the framework of the local moral world. It is finally argued that the issue of the warfare blessing is a lived consequence of the conflict, but, nevertheless, cannot be used as an explanatory model for the cause of the conflict.

The ‘other’ within: Striving for health equity in the Maldives Eva-Maria

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Knoll
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
The Public ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Blood Disorder ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork

Relations within are quintessential in anthropological fieldwork — and in archipelagos in particular. The domestic sea is incorporated in the national consciousness connecting an archipelagic nation but distinguishing individual islands with a strong emphasis on the centre. The Maldivian archipelago displays this spatial organization of a socio-political and economic centre and a dependent island periphery. In the national consciousness, the capital island, Male', contrasts with “the islands” — a distinction which is particularly evident in the public health sphere, where striving for health equity encounters geographical and socio-political obstacles. Using the topic of the inherited blood disorder thalassaemia as a magnifying lens, this paper asks how different actors are making sense of health inequities between central and outer islands in the Maldivian archipelago. Intra-archipelagic and international mobilities add to the complexities of topological relations, experiences, and representations within this multi-island assemblage. Yet, my study of archipelagic health relations is not confined to a mere outside look at the construction of the ‘island other’ within the archipelagic community. It is a situated investigative gaze on disjunctures, connections, and entanglements, reflecting my methodological-theoretical attempt to unravel my own involvement in island–island relations and representations — my being entangled while investigating entanglements.

Voetbalfans als verbeelde gemeenschap?

KWALON ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiebke Lansing
Keyword(s):  
Significant Others ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Partial Identity ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
Soccer Fans

Soccer fans as imagined community? Soccer fans as imagined community? Football fandom in Germany is said to unite people who, outside of football, do not have much contact: it creates imagined communities. To study how that works, I carried out anthropological fieldwork among fans of Borussia Dortmund. While interviews and observations initially confirmed the presence of an imagined bond among the fans, later on I observed many cleavages between the fans, based on socio-economic and ideological factors. Other than celebratory high points of football matches, it appears that the imagined community does not transcend such cleavages. It shows that fanhood is a partial identity marker, which is ultimately weaker than identification with the direct community of family and other significant others.

The Road to Egypt's Tahrir Square

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Marwa Maziad ◽  
Norah Abokhodair ◽  
Maria Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
The Road ◽  
Tahrir Square ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Physical Spaces

On January 25th 2011, Egyptians revolted, thereby making history. Before the date, roads to political activism were being incrementally built towards their eventual converging on Tahrir Square. This chapter argues that “nodes of convergence,” defined as shared political and economic grievances, as well as shared virtual and physical spaces, had to be created first before mass mobilization for a collective action of millions on the street could ensue. Providing in-depth examination of events leading to January 25th, this chapter offers a case study for mobilization, from which generalized theory is extrapolated about online communities' convergence, networking, and coalition building. Two main Facebook pages were studied: April 6th Youth Movement and We Are All Khaled Said-- both in Arabic. The conceptualization is built on anthropological fieldwork trips in Egypt since March 2011. This covered ethnographic participant-observations and interviewing. For evidence triangulation purposes of the “convergence effect”, the authors conducted qualitative content analysis of significant posts.

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