The Role of Emotions in Sustaining and Transmitting the Song and Dance Celebration. Summary of the Doctoral Thesis

The name of the Thesis ir “The Role of Emotions in Sustaining and Transmitting the Song and Dance Celebration”. The Song and Dance Celebration is one of the most emotionally fulfilling and positive experiences in the Latvian culture. Previous studies have indicated emotions as a key precondition to transmit and sustain the tradition (Laķe & Muktupāvela, 2018). Because emotions have not been systematically researched in the context of tradition, suitable theoretical and methodological descriptions are lacking. The research question of this thesis was to study emotions as a prerequisite for inheritance and preservation. The aim of the thesis is to reveal the role of emotions in the tradition of the Celebration and related routine activities by amateur art groups, as well as to describe the prerequisites for emotions to improve the preservation of the Celebration. The theoretical basis of this thesis is sociology of emotions and the phenomenon of tradition. The analytical concept of the Celebration is tradition. To describe tradition, an interdisciplinary approach was used. Sociological analysis enables sociocultural description of emotions and reveals the manner in which emotions are the driving force in social interactions. Interaction ritual theory (Collins, 2004) was used as the theoretical framework of this thesis. It enables description of macro processes by means of micro interactions. In this framework, the Celebration was analyzed as a chain of interaction rituals where participants are motivated by long-term emotions. Visual research methods were adapted to study emotions in the context of the Celebration: observation with photo documentation, and photo-elicitation. Additionally, in-depth interviews were used. The thesis is based on qualitative methodology. In this study, 14 observations of amateur art groups, 37 in-depth photo analyses with their members, and 15 in-depth interviews with their leaders were performed. This data enabled analysis of tradition as a chain of tradition rituals to find out what role emotions play in it. In conclusion, the Song and Dance Celebration is the emotional culmination for amateur art groups. The culmination can be reached through positive emotional charge in their routine practices in the interim between Celebrations, which in turn ensures long-term involvement in the Celebration. The thesis provides recommendations for tradition implementers to maintain positive emotions.

Looking for a Space to Breathe

This contribution explores two projects that have addressed urban toponymy by building counter-narratives that challenge dominant historical narratives. It does so through audio-visual materials and draws on biographies as well as intimate gazes. The first section explores the Rome-based Tezeta collective’s Harnet Streets project, where memories and family histories of subjects belonging to the Eritrean diasporas1 become the centre of a new counter-storytelling that starts from the toponymy of the African neighbourhood. The second section focuses on the city of Padova, looking at how some colonial streets have been re-appropriated by the bodies, voices and gazes of six Italian Afro-descendants who took part in a participatory video, re-signifying urban traces of colonialism in a creative way. The teaching and research experience of the Visual Research Methods Lab (University of Padova, Fall 2020) allowed us to question worldviews and social hierarchies that made it possible to celebrate/forget the racist and sexist violence of colonialism.

Cycling in the Flattened City: Urban Assemblages and Digital Visual Research

As urban assemblage theory emphasizes a conceptualization of the city as movement, constituted through the processual interactions between different human and non-human actors. This approach has been recognized as potentially valuable for the study of active bodies in urban environments ( Rick and Bustad 2020 ). Moreover, this approach also encourages the development and implementation of innovative methodologies aimed at conveying the complexity of urban life ( McFarlane and Anderson 2011 ). This article contributes to this approach through the use of digital visual research methods while experiencing a monthly cycling event in Baltimore, Maryland. In particular, we discuss how GoPro cameras might be utilized within the study of the embodied experience of urban cycling, and how this experience demonstrates the assemblage of human, machine, and urban environment. Following Sumartojo and Pink (2017) , we describe how GoPro recordings of active urban embodiment work to provide more than second-hand representations of others’ experiences, and instead can serve to collect and analyze ‘traces’ of the assemblages of urban physical cultures.

Participatory dissemination: bridging in-depth interviews, participation, and creative visual methods through Interview-Based Zine-Making (IBZM)

In this article, I make the case for an underexplored research practice – participatory dissemination – and reflectively introduce a new research method, IBZM (Interview-Based Zine-Making), which I developed in my fieldwork research on the gentrifying neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, in New York City. Participatory dissemination is a practice that engages research participants in the interpretation of preliminary research findings, and through art-based methods, leads to the coproduction of visual outputs and research communication for diversified audiences, especially those beyond solely academic readers. Participatory dissemination has received little attention within academic debates thus far. The paper addresses this gap in the literature by outlining the rationale and potential for incorporating participatory processes within research dissemination, even where so-called traditional (non- or less-participatory) research methods are used. IBZM follows the technique of zine-making (that is, the practice of cutting, rearranging, and creatively pasting printed materials in a new pamphlet), but instead of using media texts and pictures as raw materials, IBZM works with transcribed texts from researcher-conducted interviews. The aim is to let the research participants (zine-makers) engage with the perspectives of the interviewees and find assonances, disagreements, and connections with their own thoughts. The output is a collectively produced zine to be further disseminated. IBZM offers a means of combining traditional detached research methods, such as interviews, with participatory and creative/visual research methods. As such, participatory dissemination can be helpful in bridging literatures and debates on participatory and traditional research methods, providing new avenues for researchers working primarily with the latter to incorporate participatory elements into their research process and outputs.

Graphic Anthropology

Graphic anthropology, broadly construed, approaches drawing as a mode of anthropological inquiry. Most commonly, drawing and sketching have been employed by cultural anthropologists as visual research methods during fieldwork. This practice, which can include sketching fieldnotes and inviting research interlocutors to create or respond to drawings, has developed as a way to document the process of coming-to-know during research and to visually explore the different perspectives at play in an ethnographic encounter. In archaeology, technical drawings, field drawings, and the analysis of drawings from the archaeological record have been central to the research process. In recent years, anthropologists across the sub-disciplines have begun to more actively explore the conceptual and critical potentials of drawing as a process (to draw) and product (a drawing) that is open-ended, multidimensional, and attuned to bodily practice. The creation and analysis of graphic arts in anthropology has fostered cross-disciplinary affinities and overlaps with medical and digital humanities, public health, visual culture studies, and the visual and literary arts. Of particular interest to many cultural and medical anthropologists is the genre of comics, as its unique blend of text and image arranged in sequence allows for the layering of different times, spaces, bodies, and perspectives within a single page in non-linear and non-hierarchical ways. While comics have long been a tool in public health campaigns, the early 2000s saw the growth of the field of “graphic medicine,” which explores how comics about illness and healing can provide unique insights into the cultural, personal, embodied, and epistemological contexts of medicine. Similarly, the fields of anthropology, literature, and visual studies have recently witnessed renewed interest in the social and aesthetic dimensions of drawings and there has been an upsurge in the creation of comics, zines, and graphic novels as major research outputs across academic disciplines and anthropological sub-disciplines. Graphic anthropology can also be situated in relation to the subfield of multimodal anthropology, which expands the domain of visual anthropology beyond its historical focus on film and photography to include engagement across multiple media technologies, platforms, producers, and publics. While graphic anthropology is connected to visual anthropology, the strong interdisciplinary articulations of drawing as a mode of research, practice, and creation combined with a focus on comics as site of cultural production mark the “graphic” as a rich domain of anthropological inquiry in its own right.

(RE)FRAMING SPATIALITY AS A SOCIO-CULTURAL PARADIGM: EXAMINING THE IRANIAN HOUSING CULTURE AND PROCESSES

With rapid changes in urban living today, peoples’ behavioural patterns and spatial practices undergo a constant process of adaptation and negotiation. Using “house” as a laboratory and everyday life and spatial relations of residents as a framework of analysis, the paper examines the spatial planning concepts in traditional and contemporary Iranian architecture and the associated socio-cultural practices. Discussions are drawn upon from a pilot study conducted in the city of Kerman, to investigate ways in which contemporary housing solutions can better cater to the continually changing socio-cultural lifestyles of residents. Data collection for the study involved a series of participatory workshops and employed creative visual research methods, participant observation and semi structured interviews to examine the interlacing of everyday socio-spatial relations and changing perception of identity, belonging, socio-cultural and religious values and conflict. The inferences from the study showcases the emerging social and cultural needs and practices of people manifested through the complex relationship between residents, the places in which they live, and its spatial planning and organisation. For a better understanding of this complex relationship, the paper argues the need for resituating spatiality as a socio-cultural paradigm.

A photographic inquiry into Reggio inspired natural outdoor environments in Ontario early learning settings

This qualitative study explores the translation of Reggio principles in 20 Ontario natural outdoor early learning settings. Through visual research methods, digital images revealed the translation of the following principles: the image of the child, the environment as a third teacher and the hundred languages of children in the outdoor environments. Moreover, nature was a predominant element in two ways. First, nature was incorporated in the curriculum and natural spaces. Second, half the sites committed to connecting children to nature through frequent excursions in local green areas. This research positions the potential for practice in creating outdoor early learning spaces by merging both the principles of nature-based education and Reggio inspired pedagogy, in considering compatibility with the Ontario Early Years Framework. This research addresses the current gaps in the literature pertaining to quality outdoor environments, and provides recommendations for a proposed Outdoor Pedagogy for the Early Years.

A photographic inquiry into Reggio inspired natural outdoor environments in Ontario early learning settings

This qualitative study explores the translation of Reggio principles in 20 Ontario natural outdoor early learning settings. Through visual research methods, digital images revealed the translation of the following principles: the image of the child, the environment as a third teacher and the hundred languages of children in the outdoor environments. Moreover, nature was a predominant element in two ways. First, nature was incorporated in the curriculum and natural spaces. Second, half the sites committed to connecting children to nature through frequent excursions in local green areas. This research positions the potential for practice in creating outdoor early learning spaces by merging both the principles of nature-based education and Reggio inspired pedagogy, in considering compatibility with the Ontario Early Years Framework. This research addresses the current gaps in the literature pertaining to quality outdoor environments, and provides recommendations for a proposed Outdoor Pedagogy for the Early Years.