Pub Date : 2022-10-19DOI: 10.1177/14661381221134432
Q. Jiang
This paper presents empirical data on how religious giving structures African Muslims’ transnational lives in Guangzhou, China. It provides insight into mechanisms of mutual aid within a socially and economically marginalized migrant group in a Muslim-minority society. I argue that in this context Islamic charitable giving helps enable African Muslims to cope with everyday challenges, especially those related to their tenuous immigration statuses and social exclusion. Giving that promotes mutual charity is especially important for African Muslims in Guangzhou since the city’s formal welfare system is inaccessible to most migrants. The article argues that African Muslims’ religious giving creates a social network that safeguards group members from socioeconomic hardship and offers African Migrants a sense of belonging. It concludes by discussing the limitations of religious giving when ties of religious engagement are weak, with individuals failing to fulfil their religious responsibilities in the eyes of the community.
{"title":"Giving and belonging: Religious networks of Sub-Saharan African Muslims in Guangzhou, China","authors":"Q. Jiang","doi":"10.1177/14661381221134432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221134432","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents empirical data on how religious giving structures African Muslims’ transnational lives in Guangzhou, China. It provides insight into mechanisms of mutual aid within a socially and economically marginalized migrant group in a Muslim-minority society. I argue that in this context Islamic charitable giving helps enable African Muslims to cope with everyday challenges, especially those related to their tenuous immigration statuses and social exclusion. Giving that promotes mutual charity is especially important for African Muslims in Guangzhou since the city’s formal welfare system is inaccessible to most migrants. The article argues that African Muslims’ religious giving creates a social network that safeguards group members from socioeconomic hardship and offers African Migrants a sense of belonging. It concludes by discussing the limitations of religious giving when ties of religious engagement are weak, with individuals failing to fulfil their religious responsibilities in the eyes of the community.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":"24 1","pages":"371 - 388"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44756008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.1177/14661381221130278
Peter Sutoris
This ethnographic study of environmental learning in a South African township school unravels how formal education can depoliticise young people’s understandings of environmental decay. Conceptualising environmental learning through Rob Nixon’s notion of ‘slow violence’ and Hannah Arendt’s understanding of ‘action’, the article argues that despite the depoliticization enacted through schooling, individual learners and educators articulate subterranean understandings of the environmental multicrisis rooted in informal learning. This helps us understand the potential of environmental learning outside schools.
{"title":"Slow violence, depoliticisation and hope: Cultural landscapes of schooling in Wentworth, South Africa","authors":"Peter Sutoris","doi":"10.1177/14661381221130278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221130278","url":null,"abstract":"This ethnographic study of environmental learning in a South African township school unravels how formal education can depoliticise young people’s understandings of environmental decay. Conceptualising environmental learning through Rob Nixon’s notion of ‘slow violence’ and Hannah Arendt’s understanding of ‘action’, the article argues that despite the depoliticization enacted through schooling, individual learners and educators articulate subterranean understandings of the environmental multicrisis rooted in informal learning. This helps us understand the potential of environmental learning outside schools.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48744116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-30DOI: 10.1177/14661381221124512
E. Koike
One of the most influential nonprofit organizations in Japan’s contemporary parenting movement, Fathering Japan has a mission to “increase the number of smiling fathers” and to eliminate obstacles that prevent fathers from participating in family life, which the nonprofit promotes as an enjoyable and fulfilling sphere of activity. Fathering Japan encourages fathers of young children to break with the practices of previous generations of Japanese fathers—who generally eschewed domestic labor—by practicing masculinities that engage actively in child care in ways that lessen women’s workloads and help to raise Japan’s low birthrate. Yet many of the nonprofit’s projects cater to the needs of suit-wearing men pursuing Japan’s traditional heteronormative lifestyles. In contrast, within Fathering Japan, members of the subgroup called the Secret Society, “The Househusband’s Friend,” don aprons and engage in play and parody that both problematize and reaffirm the links among masculinity, work, and family.
{"title":"Men in aprons versus men in suits: Reshaping masculinities within a Japanese nonprofit promoting fatherhood","authors":"E. Koike","doi":"10.1177/14661381221124512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221124512","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most influential nonprofit organizations in Japan’s contemporary parenting movement, Fathering Japan has a mission to “increase the number of smiling fathers” and to eliminate obstacles that prevent fathers from participating in family life, which the nonprofit promotes as an enjoyable and fulfilling sphere of activity. Fathering Japan encourages fathers of young children to break with the practices of previous generations of Japanese fathers—who generally eschewed domestic labor—by practicing masculinities that engage actively in child care in ways that lessen women’s workloads and help to raise Japan’s low birthrate. Yet many of the nonprofit’s projects cater to the needs of suit-wearing men pursuing Japan’s traditional heteronormative lifestyles. In contrast, within Fathering Japan, members of the subgroup called the Secret Society, “The Househusband’s Friend,” don aprons and engage in play and parody that both problematize and reaffirm the links among masculinity, work, and family.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44889688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-29DOI: 10.1177/14661381221111683
A. Rezaei
This article draws from fieldwork with Iranian-American Muslim women in Los Angeles to address the difficulties of occupying a halfie position in the ethnography of faith. While halfies are assumed to have easier access to communities in which they are part-members, and often have to justify their sufficient distance from the research subject, they are not readily accepted as insiders by their interlocutors either. I argue that having an in-between, insider/outsider position with respect to interlocutors' faith, particularly in sensitive sociopolitical contexts where religion is a primary site of boundary work, increases the potential for mistrust and suspicion rather than facilitating ethnographic research.
{"title":"The Halfie Predicament in the Ethnography of Religion: Fieldwork with Iranian-Americana Muslim Women in Los Angeles","authors":"A. Rezaei","doi":"10.1177/14661381221111683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221111683","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws from fieldwork with Iranian-American Muslim women in Los Angeles to address the difficulties of occupying a halfie position in the ethnography of faith. While halfies are assumed to have easier access to communities in which they are part-members, and often have to justify their sufficient distance from the research subject, they are not readily accepted as insiders by their interlocutors either. I argue that having an in-between, insider/outsider position with respect to interlocutors' faith, particularly in sensitive sociopolitical contexts where religion is a primary site of boundary work, increases the potential for mistrust and suspicion rather than facilitating ethnographic research.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46248609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-29DOI: 10.1177/14661381221110051
Yidneckachew Ayele Zikargie
This article outlines the significance of a normative social and cultural practice, Jala role, for collaborative ethnography in a hostile research frontier. Based on self-reflective notes and fieldwork details, this article critically discusses the notion of Jala as a methodological enterprise of collaborative ethnography in Omo Valley, Ethiopia. The Jala role enables a pathway to emic perspectives of the right-holders and reflect on the methodological limitation of the predominant focus on the conduct of duty bearer. Its normative value enables modes of self-presentation and access to ethnographic knowledge holders by going back and forth in multi-sited fields iteratively. These features establish the concept of collaborative ethnography as deliberate and explicit collaborations with participants of ethnographic fieldwork. The parties to the relationship have mutual obligations to support each other that neither define collaboration as reciprocation nor let the parties enter into stressful relationships except for a few challenges explored reflexively.
{"title":"Jala Role: Normative Practice of Collaborative Ethnography in a Hostile Research Frontier, South Omo, Ethiopia","authors":"Yidneckachew Ayele Zikargie","doi":"10.1177/14661381221110051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221110051","url":null,"abstract":"This article outlines the significance of a normative social and cultural practice, Jala role, for collaborative ethnography in a hostile research frontier. Based on self-reflective notes and fieldwork details, this article critically discusses the notion of Jala as a methodological enterprise of collaborative ethnography in Omo Valley, Ethiopia. The Jala role enables a pathway to emic perspectives of the right-holders and reflect on the methodological limitation of the predominant focus on the conduct of duty bearer. Its normative value enables modes of self-presentation and access to ethnographic knowledge holders by going back and forth in multi-sited fields iteratively. These features establish the concept of collaborative ethnography as deliberate and explicit collaborations with participants of ethnographic fieldwork. The parties to the relationship have mutual obligations to support each other that neither define collaboration as reciprocation nor let the parties enter into stressful relationships except for a few challenges explored reflexively.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48736870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-15DOI: 10.1177/14661381221115191
Peter Anton Zoettl
In Brazil, a growing number of young citizens from the socioeconomic periphery embark on a career in crime, earning their living by armed robbery or selling drugs. Through the life stories and narratives of inmates of a juvenile prison in the state of Bahia, the article anatomizes what makes these young men take up and stick to a life in conflict with the law, despite the limited profits and substantial hardships involved. I argue that the experience of violence, both suffered and perpetrated, is central to the forging of the youths’ criminal identities, and their persistent failure to change their life trajectories.
{"title":"Being crime: Youth violence and criminal identities in Bahia, Brazil","authors":"Peter Anton Zoettl","doi":"10.1177/14661381221115191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221115191","url":null,"abstract":"In Brazil, a growing number of young citizens from the socioeconomic periphery embark on a career in crime, earning their living by armed robbery or selling drugs. Through the life stories and narratives of inmates of a juvenile prison in the state of Bahia, the article anatomizes what makes these young men take up and stick to a life in conflict with the law, despite the limited profits and substantial hardships involved. I argue that the experience of violence, both suffered and perpetrated, is central to the forging of the youths’ criminal identities, and their persistent failure to change their life trajectories.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42009944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-14DOI: 10.1177/14661381221124514
Michael L. Siciliano
In this article, I draw upon 20 months of participant observation to compare the labor processes of routine, office staff in the popular music and digital content industries in the U.S. In both cases, workers play a game of disappearing, pursuing immersive experiences in their efforts to be more productive. These pleasurably immersive experiences vis-à-vis technology described by informants bear a similarity to aesthetic experiences typically associated with art objects. Comparing how workers describe their aesthetic experiences, I show how the materiality of technology as well as management mediate workers’ immersion. In doing so, this article extends theories of control over work by highlighting the importance of work's affective and aesthetic dimensions while also making an empirical contribution by examining the culture industries’ often overlooked, routine workers in conventional and platformized contexts.
{"title":"Effort in absence: Technologically mediated aesthetic experiences of the culture industries’ routine workers","authors":"Michael L. Siciliano","doi":"10.1177/14661381221124514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221124514","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I draw upon 20 months of participant observation to compare the labor processes of routine, office staff in the popular music and digital content industries in the U.S. In both cases, workers play a game of disappearing, pursuing immersive experiences in their efforts to be more productive. These pleasurably immersive experiences vis-à-vis technology described by informants bear a similarity to aesthetic experiences typically associated with art objects. Comparing how workers describe their aesthetic experiences, I show how the materiality of technology as well as management mediate workers’ immersion. In doing so, this article extends theories of control over work by highlighting the importance of work's affective and aesthetic dimensions while also making an empirical contribution by examining the culture industries’ often overlooked, routine workers in conventional and platformized contexts.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41890775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-03DOI: 10.1177/14661381221124502
A.J.C.C. d'Hoop, J. Pols
In many countries the lockdown measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic forbade social gatherings, including for performing arts. Numerous artists developed projects, often attempting to reach audiences in cyberspace. We offer an ethnographic study of such a project: a jazz concert played live for a particular audience, who attended it from home. We seek to understand how musicians, audience, and the material setting made it possible to engage with music in a way that gave these moments a particular density. What made this experience meaningful, we argue, was the eventness of the performance: the ‘game was on’, happening in the moment, in the unpredictable, risky interactions between musicians, and with the ‘push of the audience’ listening to the gig in real time. The eventness of this online concert was created in such a way it made possible a collective engagement with and through live music, notwithstanding the physical distance.
{"title":"‘The game is on!’ Eventness at a distance at a livestream concert during lockdown","authors":"A.J.C.C. d'Hoop, J. Pols","doi":"10.1177/14661381221124502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221124502","url":null,"abstract":"In many countries the lockdown measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic forbade social gatherings, including for performing arts. Numerous artists developed projects, often attempting to reach audiences in cyberspace. We offer an ethnographic study of such a project: a jazz concert played live for a particular audience, who attended it from home. We seek to understand how musicians, audience, and the material setting made it possible to engage with music in a way that gave these moments a particular density. What made this experience meaningful, we argue, was the eventness of the performance: the ‘game was on’, happening in the moment, in the unpredictable, risky interactions between musicians, and with the ‘push of the audience’ listening to the gig in real time. The eventness of this online concert was created in such a way it made possible a collective engagement with and through live music, notwithstanding the physical distance.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49073804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1177/14661381221124511
L. Junnilainen
For a long time, researchers have explored practices of kinship, but while focusing on individuals and groups, have ignored a crucial aspect of social life: place. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in low-income neighborhoods in Finland, this article analyzes practices of kinship as emplaced, asking what kinship in a particular urban setting does and how. Empirical data suggests that the social function of kinship practices is to make people belong to a neighborhood. The process of becoming family provides emotional and practical support but is also beneficial in previously understudied ways: For newcomers, kinship is a shortcut for becoming “a local,” whereas for established residents, kinship serves the reproduction of the historical place narrative and local moral order. As meaningful sources of respect and recognition, kinship practices connect people to families but even more to places in which they live.
{"title":"Turning newcomers into locals: Kinship practices and belonging in low-income neighborhoods in Finland","authors":"L. Junnilainen","doi":"10.1177/14661381221124511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221124511","url":null,"abstract":"For a long time, researchers have explored practices of kinship, but while focusing on individuals and groups, have ignored a crucial aspect of social life: place. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in low-income neighborhoods in Finland, this article analyzes practices of kinship as emplaced, asking what kinship in a particular urban setting does and how. Empirical data suggests that the social function of kinship practices is to make people belong to a neighborhood. The process of becoming family provides emotional and practical support but is also beneficial in previously understudied ways: For newcomers, kinship is a shortcut for becoming “a local,” whereas for established residents, kinship serves the reproduction of the historical place narrative and local moral order. As meaningful sources of respect and recognition, kinship practices connect people to families but even more to places in which they live.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44036343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-25DOI: 10.1177/14661381221116351
Anaïk Pian
This article, based on fieldwork conducted in 2016 at the French national Court of Asylum (CNDA), explores reflections on the role and position of interpreters in the examination of asylum applications. Interpreters occupy a position that is at once an interstitial position – that is, at the crossroads of the social worlds of judges and claimants – and a ‘bastard’position, in the sense that, although they are indispensable, their legitimacy is never fully established. To grasp the full ambiguity and complexity of their position, on the one hand, the article aims to shed light on the trajectories and working conditions of interpreters as actors in this system whose legitimacy is fragile, yet who play an essential bridging role between the institutions and the foreigners seeking their protection. On the other hand, it seeks to identify and explore other factors, beyond the codification of the role within highly standardized hearings, which may influence the ways interpreters carry out their missions in practice, in both speech and behavior.
{"title":"Interstitial position or ‘bastard’ status? Interpreters at the French National Court of Asylum","authors":"Anaïk Pian","doi":"10.1177/14661381221116351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221116351","url":null,"abstract":"This article, based on fieldwork conducted in 2016 at the French national Court of Asylum (CNDA), explores reflections on the role and position of interpreters in the examination of asylum applications. Interpreters occupy a position that is at once an interstitial position – that is, at the crossroads of the social worlds of judges and claimants – and a ‘bastard’position, in the sense that, although they are indispensable, their legitimacy is never fully established. To grasp the full ambiguity and complexity of their position, on the one hand, the article aims to shed light on the trajectories and working conditions of interpreters as actors in this system whose legitimacy is fragile, yet who play an essential bridging role between the institutions and the foreigners seeking their protection. On the other hand, it seeks to identify and explore other factors, beyond the codification of the role within highly standardized hearings, which may influence the ways interpreters carry out their missions in practice, in both speech and behavior.","PeriodicalId":47573,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46992994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}