Journal of Contemporary Ethnography最新文献

Airports are indispensable to life in the Arctic. Often shaped by geopolitical agendas and external economic interests, they provide vital links for local communities across remote landscapes. However, their societal roles have received limited scholarly attention. By conducting an ethnographic comparison of three cases, this study examines the relational affordances of Arctic airports. Our case studies include Longyearbyen, which is extremely remote but well connected through its airport; Rovaniemi, a central Arctic hub with an international airport and a range of other transport infrastructure; and Tasiilaq, a region that currently does not (yet) have a well-working air connection. While the first towns are established Arctic tourism destinations, the last aspires to increase accessibility and thus tourist visits by establishing a more central airport. The study applies a relational framework that foregrounds the complex socio-material interactions through which infrastructures acquire meaning and function. Our study reveals how Arctic airports simultaneously afford mobility and essential services for residents, enable economic activities such as tourism, and serve broader state and strategic interests. The comparison enables us to capture not only the salient similarities but also the striking differences between Arctic airports according to their local socio-material and environmental contexts, the availability of alternative transport infrastructure, and broader political processes. By centering airports' relational affordances, this article advances anthropological understandings of Arctic infrastructures and calls for greater local participation in shaping future infrastructural development.

Since establishing a delivery hub in Iqaluit, Nunavut in 2020, Amazon.com, Inc. has become an essential resource for many Nunavut residents, providing affordable access to goods otherwise constrained by high costs and limited availability in the Arctic. This article explores the significant yet underexamined role of the Amazon corporation in Nunavut, Canada, as a response to the territory's infrastructural and economic challenges. By combining an alimentary understanding of infrastructure with the theoretical concept of assemblage theory, I analyze Amazon's operations as part of a complex system shaped by global logistics and local agency. My research based on ethnographic fieldwork highlights how Inuit residents adapt Amazon's services to navigate gaps left by government programs. This nuanced perspective challenges assumptions about e-commerce as a purely homogenizing force, illustrating how residents adapt global platforms to meet local needs, and underscoring the interplay between global corporations, local infrastructure, and Indigenous agency in shaping Arctic livelihoods.

Getting access to the right information to complete their immigration file, follow-up on their application or appeal a decision is crucial for immigration applicants. However, the Canadian immigration bureaucracy is known for its inefficiency, complexity, and opacity. Applicants often turn to online discussion forums to guide them through the process. Based on interviews with twelve immigrants to Canada and ethnographic observations in four online Canada immigration forums, this article focuses on the development of immigration expertise online. Building on the concept of interpretive labor, we suggest that the violence of the immigration bureaucracy pushes migrants away from official sources of information and paves the way for the emergence of lay experts through their intensive participation in online forums. Online lay experts provide current, essential tips tested and validated through firsthand experience and the experience-based knowledge collected from thousands of users, which allow them to circumvent immigration difficulties and thus, be one step ahead of the system.

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.