Makers and Keepers: Two Lives, through Photographs

Looking through the pages of family photo albums or the folders of photographic archival fonds can only be described as holding history in your hands. Whether it is in the form of colour or black and white prints, negatives, or slides, these photo-objects carry histories of lives lived that go beyond their frames. Focusing on a set of oral history interviews conducted with two Black women living in Montréal — a community photographer or image “maker” who was most active during the 1970s–1990s and a photo-collector or “keeper” who is currently active in preserving and sharing photographs for her church and wider communities within the city — this article engages with how the interweaving of photography and oral history gives us a rich way to experience the histories of Black social life in Montréal. Photo-led oral history interviews are sites for fruitful and in-depth conversation, providing interviewee and interviewer alike with the possibility of coming into encounter with everyday or minor histories that are too often overlooked. Moreover, this article is driven by a set entwined questions: How does oral testimony open up additional avenues for sharing the events of the past that have been captured through photographic images? What affective and relational qualities do photographs possess and how, in turn, do these qualities transform the space of the oral history interview? And, most urgently, why was photography used by Black Montréalers as a tool and a practice to remember and insist upon their collective presence?

Keeping life going: Plants and people today, yesterday and tomorrow

I review the contributions to this special issue by focusing on the relational qualities that bind people and plants together through religious ritualization of economic activities such as crop cultivation or plant gathering in the wild. I show how an attention to plants as teachers facilitates cross-cultural comparative analysis.

The Tempo of Solid Fluids: On River Ice, Permafrost, and Other Melting Matter in the Mackenzie Delta

Seasonal and historical transformations of ice and permafrost suggest that the Mackenzie Delta in Arctic Canada can be understood as a solid fluid. The concerns and practices of delta inhabitants show that fluidity and solidity remain important attributes in a solid fluid delta. They are significant not as exclusive properties, but as relational qualities, in the context of particular human projects and activities. Indigenous philosophies of ‘the land’ and Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘tempo’ in Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004) may help to illustrate the predicament of living in a world that is solid and fluid rhythmically, and in relation to particular practices. Economic, political, sociocultural and physical transformations can all be experienced as both solid and fluid, depending on the degree to which they resonate with people’s purposes. In a world where everything seems to be changed and changing, solidity and fluidity may best be seen as indications of relative differences in tempo.

Rock Art Modification and its Ritualized and Relational Contexts

Australia has some of the most complex and extensive examples of modified rock art (e.g., superimposed, re-painted, re-drawn, re-pecked) in the world. Typically used to document style-based chronological sequences and address questions of meaning and intention, less well known are the relational networks within which these ritual modification practices are embedded. In this article we explore the ritual rock art modification relationship to further highlight the value of a ritual-based approach to access and enhance understanding of modified rock art. Central to this approach is the idea that modified motifs do not exist in isolation—their placement, the actions, rules, and structures linked to the modification process, along with the surrounding landscape, are all part of relational networks that extend across multiple social and cultural realms. By identifying key themes associated with this ritual practice, we explore relational qualities to further understand the ritual rock art relationship to broaden archaeological and ethnographic understanding of rock art.

A Confessional Representation of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an Academy Sport Setting

Methodological “confessions” are an established genre of ethnographic writing and have contributed to the development of reflexivity in the practice of qualitative research. Yet despite their prevalence, methodological reflections on the specific challenges of conducting ethnography in institutional sport settings have not been developed. The aim of this article, therefore, is to provide a confessional representation of ethnographic fieldwork in a male academy sport environment in the United Kingdom which exhibited several institutional characteristics. Five images are used as stimuli for further methodological reflection in order to illustrate and analyze some practical, ethical, and relational qualities of ethnographic fieldwork. The interpretation and analysis draw attention to strategic ways ethnographers adapt their ethnographic presence in response to specific contextual challenges and constraints. The article concludes with a series of recommendations to guide ethnographic fieldworkers (especially novice ethnographers) in settings of a similar nature.

Thinking Through Monuments: Levantine Monuments as Technologies of Community-Scale Motivated Social Cognition

This study proposes that monuments are technologies through which communities think. I draw on conceptual blending theory as articulated by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier to argue that monuments are material anchors for conceptual integration networks. The network model highlights that monuments are embedded in specific spatial and socio-historical contexts while also emphasizing that they function relationally by engaging the imaginations of communities. An enactivist understanding of these networks helps to explain the generative power of monuments as well as how they can become dynamic and polysemic. By proposing a cognitive scientific model for such relational qualities, this approach also has the advantage of making them more easily quantifiable. I present a test case of monumental installations from the Iron Age Levant (the ceremonial plaza of Karkamiš) to develop this approach and demonstrate its explanatory power. I contend that the theory and methods introduced here can make future accounts of monuments more precise while also opening up new avenues of research into monuments as a technology of motivated social cognition that is enacted on a community-scale.

Children out of place? Negotiating children’s places from the margins

Inspired by a central concept in the sociology of childhood – that of ‘place’ – this article explores how childhood is constructed and experienced in an atypical place for childhood to unfold. The place in question is a refuge for women and their children who have experienced violence in the intimate sphere. In this article, ‘place’ has a dual meaning as referring to both social positions and physical locations. Employing this dual concept to investigate an atypical place provides insight into the dynamics that shape childhood space. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with children, the analysis shows how children negotiate children’s places in challenging circumstances in a semi-public setting. It uncovers the plurality of children’s places and how these are shaped by the children’s positions in a protective context. The plurality of children’s places becomes apparent by paying attention to the temporality of these places, which foregrounds the relational qualities and fields of power that contribute to the shaping of childhood space.

PUBLIC COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CITIZENS AND PUBLIC AUTHORITIES: FORMING OF JUDMENTS ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Research on the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the field of public communication has become a trend of the last decade. This article aims to identify the relationship between the relational qualities of digital platforms (affordances) and the processes of judgment formation during communication on urban issues. To analyze the functioning of the process of lay epistemics on digital platforms of communication between the authorities and the population, we developed a new methodology of discourse analysis by modifying the parametric model of judgment of the American social psychologist A. Kruglanski and introducing the scale of intensity of its criteria. Communication on the platform "Our St. Petersburg", representing the possibility of interaction of citizens with the city authorities, was used as an empirical base of the research. As a result of the research using descriptive and regression analysis, and a visual survey of this platform, it was found that there is interconnection between the dominance of affordances corresponding to the "authoritarian" type of governmentality and the formation of predominantly informational judgments of the behavioral type. It was also found that the criteria of the parametric model have a different impact on the formation of a certain type of judgment in the framework of digital communication.

Movement, Embrace: Adriana Cavarero with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger (and the Death Drive)

An experience of helplessness during the production of a collective autobiographical narrative offers an opportunity to explore points of convergence between Adriana Cavarero's postural philosophy and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger's matrixial borderlinking. The narrative is treated as a live scene that enfolds the movement of the drive conceptualized in such a way as to avoid the prioritization of death over life. Five successive moves, inspired by Ettinger's rotation of the phallic prism, illuminate affinities between the two thinkers. The first rotation explores the matrixial and relational qualities that compose the scene. The second rotation approaches death from a notional beginning, prioritizing the presence of the mother and her assymmetrical relationship to the infant. The third rotation emphasizes the transformational character of Ettinger's matrixial movement and border-crossing, especially when examined in conjunction with Cavarero's maternal inclination. In the fourth rotation we show how inclination (clinamen) in Lacanian psychoanalysis is linked to the disappearance of the mother from the scene. The (re)introduction of the mother disrupts the Lacanian logic with the possibility of a beginning just as immanent as desire and lack. Movement, qua embrace and unity-disunity (fifth rotation), becomes an indispensable component of feminist ontology that captures the immanence of sharing in the matrixial-maternal plane.

Becoming and Being Irish-Pākehā: Crafting a Narrative of Belonging That Inspirits Indigenous–Settler Relationships

Irish-Pākehā (a European New Zealander of Irish descent) is a settler identity that embodies ancestral relations with forebears and homelands as well as a relationship with Māori, the Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Being of Irish descent carries multiple meanings that can nourish a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, and significant relationships. How have my Irish ancestral relations and places of belonging cultivated in me those relational qualities and ethical–political commitments that inspirit the Indigenous–settler engagements that are part of my personal and professional life? Here I explore the complexities of becoming and being Irish-Pākehā in response to that question. Travelling across generations and two countries, I utilise a series of guiding questions to help construct an Irish-Pākehā diasporic identity through a narrative of belonging. Following Nash, I explore geographies of relatedness, doing kinship, and the effects of identity-making through kinship as a way to understand who I am/am becoming and why being Irish-Pākehā matters in my work with Indigenous Māori.