Pub Date : 2024-12-01Epub Date: 2024-08-14DOI: 10.1177/08912416241273245
Meng Xu
The rise of malls in China raises questions about their roles as public spaces in Chinese cities. This article proposes the concept of everyday space of publicness to trace contextually sensitive ways that urban inhabitants make the mall a space for public life. The making of everyday space of publicness is evidenced using data from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an inner-city open-air mall in Beijing. I demonstrate how the mall becomes an everyday space of publicness across three aspects: spontaneous social activities, cooperative practices of regulation, and users' interpretations of their mall experiences. Centering on mall users' everyday experiences and interpretations, these accounts offer nuanced insights into the dynamic relationship between urban spaces and publicness, and contribute to understanding the lived dimension of Chinese urbanism.
{"title":"The Making of Everyday Space of Publicness: Insights from a Mall in Beijing.","authors":"Meng Xu","doi":"10.1177/08912416241273245","DOIUrl":"10.1177/08912416241273245","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The rise of malls in China raises questions about their roles as public spaces in Chinese cities. This article proposes the concept of everyday space of publicness to trace contextually sensitive ways that urban inhabitants make the mall a space for public life. The making of everyday space of publicness is evidenced using data from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an inner-city open-air mall in Beijing. I demonstrate how the mall becomes an everyday space of publicness across three aspects: spontaneous social activities, cooperative practices of regulation, and users' interpretations of their mall experiences. Centering on mall users' everyday experiences and interpretations, these accounts offer nuanced insights into the dynamic relationship between urban spaces and publicness, and contribute to understanding the lived dimension of Chinese urbanism.</p>","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"53 6","pages":"796-821"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11534670/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142591959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-14DOI: 10.1177/08912416241278693
Justin Malachowski
This article explores the contradictions and political possibilities of creating a “safe space” using “family” as an organizational concept in a contemporary public art project in Tunisia. Amidst the backdrop of foreign development funding for the arts flowing into Tunisia and a global contemporary art scene where “patriarchal structures” are taken as antithetical to collaborative practices, family has been an intuitive and meaningful mode of organizing artistic projects in Tunisia, particularly as it relates to fostering safe spaces for queer youth. As opposed to “participation,” “commoning,” and other institutionally supported art concepts, family is not a concept widely exhibited. In relation to tendencies toward “sensible” approaches to the political efficacy of contemporary art, the artistic practice of making family points to a “nonsensible” politics of aesthetics, where the aesthetic is better understood not as the location of politics but as a quality of feeling that enables spaces of political possibility.
{"title":"My Cigarette Wife and Other Queer Tales of Kinship from Tunisia’s Contemporary Public Art Scene","authors":"Justin Malachowski","doi":"10.1177/08912416241278693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241278693","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the contradictions and political possibilities of creating a “safe space” using “family” as an organizational concept in a contemporary public art project in Tunisia. Amidst the backdrop of foreign development funding for the arts flowing into Tunisia and a global contemporary art scene where “patriarchal structures” are taken as antithetical to collaborative practices, family has been an intuitive and meaningful mode of organizing artistic projects in Tunisia, particularly as it relates to fostering safe spaces for queer youth. As opposed to “participation,” “commoning,” and other institutionally supported art concepts, family is not a concept widely exhibited. In relation to tendencies toward “sensible” approaches to the political efficacy of contemporary art, the artistic practice of making family points to a “nonsensible” politics of aesthetics, where the aesthetic is better understood not as the location of politics but as a quality of feeling that enables spaces of political possibility.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142248718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-10DOI: 10.1177/08912416241278698
Weiqi Jiang, Peter Waterhouse, Hongzhi Zhang, Eisuke Saito
Having aspirations and goals to strive for provides a sense of purpose and motivation, which can greatly contribute to one’s overall happiness and satisfaction. However, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of how individual aspirations interact with societal expectations and constructs, potentially resulting in feelings of anxiety and frustration. This collaborative cross-cultural autoethnographic study examines the interplay between the individual and the sociocultural, with a special interest in Eastern and Western lenses of well-being. Based on data from autoethnographic narratives, fieldnotes, and reflection with critical friends, this study aims to provide an insider’s account of an international doctoral candidate’s experiential journey of aspiration/s, and transformation/s, to meet societal expectation/s. Through analysis of these experiences, we propose that societal constructs should be given more attention in discussions of well-being, to envision a more equitable educational environment in which aspiration/s and transformation/s can be better recognized and appreciated.
{"title":"Problematising Aspirations, Transformations, and Societal Expectations: Revisioning Academic Success and Wellbeing Through Cross-Cultural Autoethnographic Exploration","authors":"Weiqi Jiang, Peter Waterhouse, Hongzhi Zhang, Eisuke Saito","doi":"10.1177/08912416241278698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241278698","url":null,"abstract":"Having aspirations and goals to strive for provides a sense of purpose and motivation, which can greatly contribute to one’s overall happiness and satisfaction. However, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of how individual aspirations interact with societal expectations and constructs, potentially resulting in feelings of anxiety and frustration. This collaborative cross-cultural autoethnographic study examines the interplay between the individual and the sociocultural, with a special interest in Eastern and Western lenses of well-being. Based on data from autoethnographic narratives, fieldnotes, and reflection with critical friends, this study aims to provide an insider’s account of an international doctoral candidate’s experiential journey of aspiration/s, and transformation/s, to meet societal expectation/s. Through analysis of these experiences, we propose that societal constructs should be given more attention in discussions of well-being, to envision a more equitable educational environment in which aspiration/s and transformation/s can be better recognized and appreciated.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-10DOI: 10.1177/08912416241282886
Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk
{"title":"Call for Papers: Ethnographies of Infrastructure","authors":"Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk","doi":"10.1177/08912416241282886","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241282886","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-02DOI: 10.1177/08912416241273195
Kristina Leppälä, Päivi Kosonen, Mirjami Ikonen
There is an increased need to acquire a more holistic and situated understanding of how and why experiences unfold during real-life situations, especially during research focused on identifying nuanced and dynamic phenomena such as trust. Trust researchers need to revisit and expand their methodological toolkit with immersive qualitative methods for the researching of lived experiences of abstract, intimate, and dynamic experiences. In this article, we discuss two ethnographical approaches to qualitative trust research—autoethnography and at-home ethnography. We illustrate this discussion through two case vignettes from our studies of nuanced and dynamic organizational relationships in which we as researchers were also positioned as a part of the data. We apply philosophical principles connected to reflexivity and provide examples of the researcher as a subject during the study of unfolding vulnerabilities of the field and the researcher.
{"title":"Utilizing Ethnographical Approaches to Study the Abstract, Intimate, and Dynamic Topic of Trust","authors":"Kristina Leppälä, Päivi Kosonen, Mirjami Ikonen","doi":"10.1177/08912416241273195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241273195","url":null,"abstract":"There is an increased need to acquire a more holistic and situated understanding of how and why experiences unfold during real-life situations, especially during research focused on identifying nuanced and dynamic phenomena such as trust. Trust researchers need to revisit and expand their methodological toolkit with immersive qualitative methods for the researching of lived experiences of abstract, intimate, and dynamic experiences. In this article, we discuss two ethnographical approaches to qualitative trust research—autoethnography and at-home ethnography. We illustrate this discussion through two case vignettes from our studies of nuanced and dynamic organizational relationships in which we as researchers were also positioned as a part of the data. We apply philosophical principles connected to reflexivity and provide examples of the researcher as a subject during the study of unfolding vulnerabilities of the field and the researcher.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-02DOI: 10.1177/08912416241275187
Hadrien Holstein
This article is based on an ethnographic study of young activists in Irish republican paramilitary organizations opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. It focuses on analyzing these youth’s trajectories as militants in order to understand the process of generational renewal within armed organizations as conflicts come to an end. The specificity of their trajectories is captured through a comparison with nonviolent young republican activists. This approach shows that, despite their different party affiliations, young postwar republican activists share the same sociological profiles, motivations for engagement and daily militant practices. In other words, the article highlights that although republican paramilitary networks claim to be violent actors, they have adopted nonviolent practices as a mode of ordinary and routine action. As a result, these networks are subject to a relative pacification that is explained more by their recruitment methods and the participation of new young militants than by any gradual support for the peace agreement.
{"title":"Engaging in Postconflict Violence: Militant Trajectories of Young Republican Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland","authors":"Hadrien Holstein","doi":"10.1177/08912416241275187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241275187","url":null,"abstract":"This article is based on an ethnographic study of young activists in Irish republican paramilitary organizations opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. It focuses on analyzing these youth’s trajectories as militants in order to understand the process of generational renewal within armed organizations as conflicts come to an end. The specificity of their trajectories is captured through a comparison with nonviolent young republican activists. This approach shows that, despite their different party affiliations, young postwar republican activists share the same sociological profiles, motivations for engagement and daily militant practices. In other words, the article highlights that although republican paramilitary networks claim to be violent actors, they have adopted nonviolent practices as a mode of ordinary and routine action. As a result, these networks are subject to a relative pacification that is explained more by their recruitment methods and the participation of new young militants than by any gradual support for the peace agreement.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-16DOI: 10.1177/08912416241271282
Phil Corkhill (pseudonym), Sarah Charman
This unique autoethnographical perspective on senior police officer (re)socialization offers a vital insight into the challenges for genuine police reform.
{"title":"The Show Must Go On! An Autoethnography of (Re)socialization into Senior Policing in England and the Prominence of “Leadership Theatre”","authors":"Phil Corkhill (pseudonym), Sarah Charman","doi":"10.1177/08912416241271282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241271282","url":null,"abstract":"This unique autoethnographical perspective on senior police officer (re)socialization offers a vital insight into the challenges for genuine police reform.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-16DOI: 10.1177/08912416241269890
Joshua Lew McDermott
In urban Sierra Leone, more than 90% of young men survive precariously in the informal economy. Squeezed by an underdeveloped economy and the pressure to engage in a culture-ideology of consumerism indicative of twenty-first century capitalism, these men face the existential crisis of being unable to meet the material requirements for maintaining romantic relationships, caring for their families, and fulfilling expectations of a consumerist masculinity. This ethnography explores how these young men navigate this disconnect, grounding its analysis of masculinity in a class-based approach which centers the dearth of good jobs and the prevalence of informal work, both central features of capitalism in Africa today.
{"title":"The Dilemma of Consumerist Masculinity in Capitalist West Africa: Men Navigating Gender, Class, and Romance in Sierra Leone’s Informal Economy","authors":"Joshua Lew McDermott","doi":"10.1177/08912416241269890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241269890","url":null,"abstract":"In urban Sierra Leone, more than 90% of young men survive precariously in the informal economy. Squeezed by an underdeveloped economy and the pressure to engage in a culture-ideology of consumerism indicative of twenty-first century capitalism, these men face the existential crisis of being unable to meet the material requirements for maintaining romantic relationships, caring for their families, and fulfilling expectations of a consumerist masculinity. This ethnography explores how these young men navigate this disconnect, grounding its analysis of masculinity in a class-based approach which centers the dearth of good jobs and the prevalence of informal work, both central features of capitalism in Africa today.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-14DOI: 10.1177/08912416241269990
Andrea Bottalico, Annalisa Murgia
The rise of solo self-employment has led to the emergence of increasingly broad categories of workers in search of collective representation, who find no support either in trade unions or in employer organizations. Based on the case of Redacta, an informal group founded in Italy and composed of solo self-employed (SSE) workers in the publishing industry, the article contributes to the debate on Resource Mobilization Theory and New Social Movements by showing that, along with other resources typically available to social movements and activist groups, it is mainly through the combination of institutional and symbolic-performative resources that a process of grassroots organizing—that we call socio-emotional organizing—can be successfully triggered, especially in the case of particularly underrepresented groups of workers, such as the SSE.
{"title":"“We Have Two Engines, and We Must Keep Them Both Running”: The Combination of Institutional and Symbolic Resources in the “Socio-Emotional Organizing” of Solo Self-Employed Workers","authors":"Andrea Bottalico, Annalisa Murgia","doi":"10.1177/08912416241269990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241269990","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of solo self-employment has led to the emergence of increasingly broad categories of workers in search of collective representation, who find no support either in trade unions or in employer organizations. Based on the case of Redacta, an informal group founded in Italy and composed of solo self-employed (SSE) workers in the publishing industry, the article contributes to the debate on Resource Mobilization Theory and New Social Movements by showing that, along with other resources typically available to social movements and activist groups, it is mainly through the combination of institutional and symbolic-performative resources that a process of grassroots organizing—that we call socio-emotional organizing—can be successfully triggered, especially in the case of particularly underrepresented groups of workers, such as the SSE.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142190454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-07DOI: 10.1177/08912416241276589
Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk
{"title":"Call for Papers: Ethnographies of Infrastructure","authors":"Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk","doi":"10.1177/08912416241276589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241276589","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141930984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}