Introduction: ethnography, history and the vagaries of research

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hearn
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Face ◽  
To Come ◽  
Design And Methods

This chapter introduces the study, and the reasons for returning to the original data after more than a decade. It gives an account of how the original research was conducted, outlining the research design and methods. The chapter reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of ethnographic research, explaining the idea of ‘salvage ethnography’, as the study of disappearing culture in the face social change. It argues that historical perspective changes our understanding of ethnographic material, concluding with a summary of the chapters to come.

scholarly journals How “Peasant Apartments” Could Undermine Rural Governance in China: Spatial Realignment, Moral Reconfiguration and Local Authority

2019 ◽  
Vol 242 ◽  
pp. 376-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Yep ◽  
Ying Wu
Keyword(s):  
Local Authority ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Political Challenge ◽  
The Face ◽  
To Come ◽  
Residential Pattern ◽  
China Today

AbstractA seismic change in the residential pattern is emerging in rural China today: traditional rural houses have been rapidly erased from the face of the countryside with large numbers of peasants being relocated to modern high-rise buildings. This process of “peasant elevation” has had a monumental impact on rural China. It redefines the entitlement to land use by the rural citizenry and negotiations for a new regime of property rights concerning land administration, while, most importantly, it undermines the position of the local state in rural China, whose authority is an aggregation of three distinctive elements: coercive power inherent in the state apparatus, control over economic resources, and resonance with local morality. Based on original data collected in Chongqing, Nantong and Dezhou, this paper argues that the comprehensive uprooting of the Chinese peasantry from the land and the resulting complications have caused moral disorientation among the relocated peasants and fragmentation of local authority. The difficulty in establishing community identity in the new setting has further undermined local governance. This may in turn trigger a wave of social and political tensions that may eventually turn out to be a major political challenge to the regime for years to come.

National Liberalisms in Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark I. Vail
Keyword(s):  
Economic Model ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Market Making ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Analytical Frameworks

This chapter analyzes the development of French, German, and Italian liberalism from the nineteenth century to the 1980s, giving particular attention to each tradition’s conceptions of the role of the state and its relationship to groups and individual citizens. Using a broad range of historical source material and the works of influential political philosophers, it outlines the analytical frameworks central to French “statist liberalism,” German “corporate liberalism,” and Italian “clientelist liberalism.” It shows how these evolving traditions shaped the structure of each country’s postwar political-economic model and the policy priorities developed during the postwar boom through the early 1970s and provides conceptual touchstones for the direction and character of these traditions’ evolution in the face of the neoliberal challenge since the 1990s. The chapter demonstrates that each tradition accepted elements of a more liberal economic order while rejecting neoliberalism’s messianic market-making agenda and its abstract and disembedded political-economic vision.

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Germana
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial History ◽  
The Face

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist examines Ralph Ellison’s body of work as an extended and ever-evolving expression of the author’s philosophy of temporality—a philosophy synthesized from the writings of Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche that anticipates the work of Gilles Deleuze. Taking the view that time is a multiplicity of dynamic processes, rather than a static container for the events of our lives, and an integral force of becoming, rather than a linear groove in which events take place, Ellison articulates a theory of temporality and social change throughout his corpus that flies in the face of all forms of linear causality and historical determinism. Integral to this theory is Ellison’s observation that the social, cultural, and legal processes constitutive of racial formation are embedded in static temporalities reiterated by historians and sociologists. In other words, Ellison’s critique of US racial history is, at bottom, a matter of time. This book reveals how, in his fiction, criticism, and photography, Ellison reclaims technologies through which static time and linear history are formalized in order to reveal intensities implicit in the present that, if actualized, could help us achieve Nietzsche’s goal of acting un-historically. The result is a wholesale reinterpretation of Ellison’s oeuvre, as well as an extension of Ellison’s ideas about the dynamism of becoming and the open-endedness of the future. It, like Ellison’s texts, affirms the chaos of possibility lurking beneath the patterns of living we mistake for enduring certainties.

Cohabitants, Choice, and the Public Interest

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Leckey
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Regulatory System ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Private Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
System P ◽  
The Face

Through the narrow entry of property disputes between former cohabitants, this chapter aims to clarify thinking on issues crucial to philosophical examination of family law. It refracts big questions—such as what cohabitants should owe one another and the balance between choice and protection—through a legal lens of attention to institutional matters such as the roles of judges and legislatures. Canadian cases on unjust enrichment and English cases quantifying beneficial interests in a jointly owned home are examples. The chapter highlights limits on judicial law reform in the face of social change, both in substance and in the capacity to acknowledge the state's interest in intimate relationships. The chapter relativizes the focus on choice prominent in academic and policy discussions of cohabitation and highlights the character of family law, entwined with the general private law of property and obligations, as a regulatory system.

Design and Analysis for Quantitative Research in Music Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Miksza ◽  
Kenneth Elpus
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Music Education ◽  
General Education ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Traditional Design ◽  
Design Type ◽  
To Come ◽  
Analytical Approaches

This book is an introduction to quantitative research design and data analysis presented in the context of music education scholarship. The book aims for readers to come away with a familiarity of prototypical research design possibilities as well as a fundamental understanding of data analysis techniques necessary for carrying out scientific inquiry. The book includes examples that demonstrate how the methodological and statistical concepts presented throughout can be applied to pertinent issues in music education. For the majority of Part I, the strategy is to present traditional design categories side by side with explanations of general analytical approaches for dealing with data yielded from each respective design type. Part II consists of chapters devoted to methodological and analytical approaches that have become common in related fields (e.g., psychology, sociology, general education research, educational policy) but are as yet not frequently exploited by music education researchers. Ultimately, this work is motivated by a desire to help scholars acquire the means to actualize their research curiosities and to contribute to the advancement of rigor in music education research throughout the profession at large.

Social workers’ peculiar contribution to ethnographic research

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald de Montigny
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Face

Over generations, social workers have borrowed theories from sociology. However, sociologists have generally avoided borrowing theory from social work. By beginning with social work practice wisdom, we can unfold the complex elements organizing social work practice and by extension ethnographic research. Complexity and resulting uncertainty are antidotes for theoretical purity. Practice as grounded in life, that of client’s and social workers is inherently “dirty”, i.e., messy, disorganized, confusing, unfolding, and uncertain. Understandings and practices are accomplished in a connection of self to a profession, agency/organization, mandate and purpose, and ethical orientation, in interaction with colleagues and clients. Social workers take sides as they are grounded in an ethic of care. The challenge of developing an ethical practice in the face of difference, disagreement, disjunction, and conflict lead social workers to bracket, and hence reflect on the putative coherence of a “life world.” Face-to-face work with individuals rather than being a liability provides a source of knowledge and wisdom to inform social science generally.

Does Issue Linkage Work? Evidence from European Alliance Negotiations, 1860 to 1945

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Poast
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Formation Process ◽  
Original Data ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Alliance Formation ◽  
Issue Linkage ◽  
Multiple Issues ◽  
Matching Techniques

AbstractThough scholars widely claim that issue linkage—the simultaneous negotiation of multiple issues for joint settlement—can help states conclude international agreements, there exist some notable skeptics. Resolving this debate requires empirical evidence. However, beyond a few case studies, there exists no direct and systematic evidence that issue linkages actually increase the probability of agreement. I address this lack of direct and systematic evidence by combing original data on failed alliance negotiations with data from the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) database. Using matching techniques, I find that, for alliance negotiations between 1860 to 1945, offers of trade linkage did substantially increase the probability of agreement. Besides confirming issue linkage's ability to help clinch an agreement, this article's research design and evidence have far-reaching implications for the study of negotiations and alliances. The research design illustrates the value of considering the “dogs that didn't bark” as it identifies both successful and failed negotiations. The article's evidence explains the high rate of alliance compliance identified by previous scholars and highlights a need to rethink the alliance formation process.

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