Analysis of Existential Feminism Struggle of Women Online Drivers During the Covid-19 Pandemic

<p align="center"> </p><p><em>This article discusses the women's movement to sustain its existentialism in the COVID-19 pandemic by moving and taking high risks to become female online drivers. Based on research conducted by Simone De Beauvoir, who analyzed the film "The Second Sex" using existentialist feminism theory, women are often used as objects and men as subjects because of the man's masculinity and biological circumstances that are considered to support inter-subjective in men. The contribution of this research is the use of existentialist feminism as an anti-thesis of male masculinity by applying it to the empirical conditions of women. The study used feminist ethnographic methods that combine ethnographic interviews and participant observations. The focus of this study lies on the class struggle of women to maintain their existentialism despite having to take high job risks and the risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus due to high mobility. This research data analysis technique uses data reduction, data display, and data triangulation. The results showed that women worked as online drivers to become subjects for themselves and act as breadwinners and housewives in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Women's struggles in the COVID-19 pandemic undermine the social stigma of society that often makes them objects.</em></p><p>Artikel ini membahas tentang gerakan kaum perempuan untuk mempertahankan eksistensialnya di masa pandemi COVID-19 dengan bergerak dan mengambil resiko tinggi untuk menjadi driver online perempuan. Berdasarkan penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Simone De Beauvoir yang menganalisis film <em>“The Second Sex”</em>menggunakan teori feminisme eksistensialis, perempuan seringkali dijadikan sebagai objek dan laki-laki sebagai subjek karena maskunilitas dari seorang laki-laki dan keadaan biologis yang dianggap mendukung adanya inter-sebujektif pada laki-laki. Kontribusi penelitian ini adalah penggunakan feminisme eksistensialis sebagai <em>anti-thesis</em> maskulinitas laki-laki dengan menerapkan pada kondisi empiris perempuan. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode etnografi feminis yaitu menggabungkan <em>ethnographic interview </em>dan <em>participant observations. </em>Fokus penelitian ini terletak pada <em>class struggle</em><em> </em>kaum perempuan untuk mempertahankan eksistensialnya meskipun harus mengambil resiko pekerjaan yang tinggi dan resiko tertular virus COVID-19 akibat mobilitas yang tinggi. Teknik analisis data penelitian ini menggunakan reduksi data, <em>display </em>data, verifikasi data dan triangulasi data. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa kaum perempuan bekerja sebagai <em>driver online</em><em> </em>untuk menjadi subjek bagi dirinya sendiri sekaligus berperan sebagai pencari nafkah dan ibu rumah tangga dalam kondisi pandemi COVID-19. Perjuangan perempuan dalam pandemi COVID-19 meruntuhkan stigma sosial masyarakat yang seringkali menjadikan mereka sebagai objek.</p>

Qualitative Coding in the Computational Era: A Hybrid Approach to Improve Reliability and Reduce Effort for Coding Ethnographic Interviews

Sociologists have argued that there is value in incorporating computational tools into qualitative research, including using machine learning to code qualitative data. Yet standard computational approaches do not neatly align with traditional qualitative practices. The authors introduce a hybrid human-machine learning approach (HHMLA) that combines a contemporary iterative approach to qualitative coding with advanced word embedding models that allow contextual interpretation beyond what can be reliably accomplished with conventional computational approaches. The results, drawn from an analysis of 87 human-coded ethnographic interview transcripts, demonstrate that HHMLA can code data sets at a fraction of the effort of human-only strategies, saving hundreds of hours labor in even modestly sized qualitative studies, while improving coding reliability. The authors conclude that HHMLA may provide a promising model for coding data sets where human-only coding would be logistically prohibitive but conventional computational approaches would be inadequate given qualitative foci.

Polymedia and family multilingualism

This paper investigates family multilingualism in a polymedia perspective, presenting results from a study of transnational communication among four families with Senegalese background, living in Norway. Ethnographic interview data collected in 2017 and 2018, including mediagrams, are analysed to get insight into the families’ uses of media and language. Furthermore, the moment-by-moment language practices through which family relationships are managed and sustained are examined through fine-grained analysis of interpersonal interaction. The paper thus both draws on and goes beyond polymedia to investigate how linguistic repertoires are developed in digital communication. The aim is to explore ways in which this theory may help us rethink family multilingualism as digital language practices become increasingly significant.

Stay Home, Stay Safe Proximity as Vitality ad Vulnerability Under Lockdown

From March to May 2020 in the UK, measures that became known across the world as ‘lockdown’ curtailed personal freedoms in order to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. While initial criticisms of lockdown focused on the adverse impacts of social isolation on wellbeing, this research article explores how lockdown creates new and altered proximities and intimacies as well as distances. During the initial UK lockdown, the ‘household’ and ‘home’ were deployed in public rhetoric as default spaces of care and security in the face of widespread isolation and uncertainty. However, emergent proximities created by bringing people together in the assumed safety of home also deepened existing inequalities and vulnerabilities. Using anthropological theory, third sector evidence, and ethnographic interview data we explore this process. We argue that understanding proximity and intimacy as fundamentally ambivalent, not normatively affirming, is central to recognising how pandemic responses such as lockdown reinforce and reproduce existing forms of inequality and violence.

“Who Am I Really?”

This study seeks to deepen the conversation between Jungian individuation and yogic awakening to explore the question ‘Who am I?’ from a psycho-spiritual perspective. Through focusing on yogic experience, the study explores how Jungian therapeutic benefits might be gained through modern yoga practice. Four long-time yoga practitioners took part in the study that involves ten hours’ worth of ethnographic interviews. The transcripts were analysed using Jungian techniques to identify key themes, symbols, and meanings from the archetypal story patterns of the participants’ yoga histories. The resulting themes represent a potential hermeneutic model for recognising Jung’s analytic psychology within the experiences of the four practitioners. Based on these findings, future research is recommended that is conducted over a longer interview period with practitioners of Non-dual Shaiva Tantra. The ethnographic interview process could include physical yoga practices and an explicit dissection of Jungian concepts to widen the conversation between Jung and yoga.

Higher Degree Students (HDR) during COVID-19

The wellbeing of higher degree research (HDR) students, or postgraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic has been of concern. In Australia, international students have queued for food parcels, while headlines report stark drops in international enrolments and the financial bottom line of universities. We undertook a pilot study using ethnographic interview methods to understand the lived experiences of current international and domestic HDR students at an Australian university in Melbourne, from June to August 2020 (n=26). In this paper, we discuss domestic and international students’ experiences during the pandemic. International HDR students faced similar challenges to domestic students, but experienced further stressors as temporary migrants. We discuss their experiences in relation to resilience, understood as a relational and collective quality. We suggest that institutions develop policies and programmes to address resilience and build students’ sense of belonging and connection, informed by how students cope with challenges such as COVID-19.

Qualitative Coding in the Computational Era: A Hybrid Approach to Improve Reliability and Reduce Effort for Coding Ethnographic Interviews

Sociologists have argued that there is value in incorporating computational tools into qualitative research, including using machine learning to code qualitative data. Yet standard computational approaches do not neatly align with traditional qualitative practices. The authors introduce a hybrid human-machine learning approach (HHMLA) that combines a contemporary iterative approach to qualitative coding with advanced word embedding models that allow contextual interpretation beyond what can be reliably accomplished with conventional computational approaches. The results, drawn from an analysis of 87 human-coded ethnographic interview transcripts, demonstrate that HHMLA can code data sets at a fraction of the effort of human-only strategies, saving hundreds of hours labor in even modestly sized qualitative studies, while improving coding reliability. The authors conclude that HHMLA may provide a promising model for coding data sets where human-only coding would be logistically prohibitive but conventional computational approaches would be inadequate given qualitative foci.

Finding Security on Skid Row: The Positive Role of Organizational and Social Ties in Service Hubs in the United States and Japan

Service hubs are neighborhoods where homelessness and efforts to address it cluster. Are these “skid rows” jails without bars, or are there ways that service hubs bolster residents’ feelings of security about their lives? To address these questions, I analyze ethnographic interview data from sixty residents of four hubs—Skid Row, Los Angeles; Overtown, Miami; Kamagasaki, Osaka; and San’ya, Tokyo. I find that in these service hubs, residents’ ontological security is supported by a combination of engagement with organizations, access to subsidized housing and income, and ties with family and friends. However, this sense of security can be undermined by negative experiences with police and crime, poor sanitation, welfare and aid bureaucracy, and redevelopment projects. I argue that these threats should be addressed to enhance the strengths of service hubs, which can provide important insights for efforts toward more even geographic distribution of housing and aid.

Narrating future selves: perspectives on ageing from a Scottish cohort born in 1936

In this paper we investigate the perspectives individuals take on their future at a particular chronological age, the late 70s. We seek to provide insights into the diverse ways that older people incorporate narratives about possible future selves into their decision making and planning for the future, and how this supports wellbeing. This paper is based on detailed analysis of qualitative biographical interviews conducted with 33 men and women who were all born in Scotland in 1936.These individuals were chosen because they formed part of a longitudinal cohort study called the ‘6-day sample study’ that was initiated in Scotland in 1947. The material we draw on enables us to examine individuals’ biographical narratives as recounted in a research interview alongside insights into individual capacities and wellbeing derived from more structured quantitative questionnaires. We are interested in the presentation of the ageing self in an ethnographic interview, and how these presentations may complement or conflict with insights from the structured quantitative data collected in the study.

Our Language—Linguistic Ideologies and Japanese Dialect Use in L1/L2 Interaction

This study uses conversation data and ethnographic interviews to examine the role of meta-talk in speaker legitimacy for L2 Japanese speakers. Autoethnographic analysis of conversation data demonstrates how an L2 speaker is co-constructed (jointly positioned) as a (non)legitimate speaker of Japanese Dialect. The researcher, an L2 Japanese speaker, recorded Japanese conversations with L1 interlocutors, namely, her L1 Japanese spouse and in-laws. Two contrasting cases of L2 Japanese Dialect use are examined. In the first case, L1 interlocutors respond to the L2 speaker’s dialect with meta-talk about “our language,” co-constructing the L2 speaker as a non-legitimate dialect user. In the second case, the L2 speaker’s dialect use is affirmed when the L1 interlocutor uses similar dialect; no meta-talk occurs. The conversation data is supplemented with ethnographic interview data which underscores the prevalence of meta-talk. Meta-talk reveals speakers’ beliefs about legitimate speakerhood in which “our language” does not include L2 speakers. Conversely, the absence of meta-talk affirms the L2 speaker’s dialect use and depicts dialect as a shared form of “our language.” This study contributes to understanding linguistic ideologies, demonstrates how language ownership and speaker legitimacy manifest in Japanese interactions, and adds to research examining Japanese Dialect use by L2 speakers.