Pub Date : 2022-04-26DOI: 10.1177/08912416221094653
Liora O’Donnell Goldensher
Thick description has long been the standard for both credibility and quality in ethnographic, community action, and participatory observation research across the disciplines, but I argue that researchers have an ethical obligation to consider when to decline to describe thickly. When ethnographers write about actions their informants took that broke, skirted, or challenged laws and rules in service of meeting their own basic needs, anonymization is not enough. We risk drawing the attention of law enforcement or hostile regulators to whole communities employing those practices, rendering their future actions more highly policeable or criminalizable—even if we do not intend to do so, and even if we adequately conceal the identities of the particular individuals described. I suggest five principles for ethical description of criminalized or policeable conduct: justified disclosure, substituting thick description of evidence of a practice for description of the practice itself, balancing thickness with thinness, telling stories when the risks of criminalization are decreasing, and narrating affinities with less-surveilled practices.
{"title":"“Mimicked Winks”: Criminalized Conduct and the Ethics of Thick Description","authors":"Liora O’Donnell Goldensher","doi":"10.1177/08912416221094653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221094653","url":null,"abstract":"Thick description has long been the standard for both credibility and quality in ethnographic, community action, and participatory observation research across the disciplines, but I argue that researchers have an ethical obligation to consider when to decline to describe thickly. When ethnographers write about actions their informants took that broke, skirted, or challenged laws and rules in service of meeting their own basic needs, anonymization is not enough. We risk drawing the attention of law enforcement or hostile regulators to whole communities employing those practices, rendering their future actions more highly policeable or criminalizable—even if we do not intend to do so, and even if we adequately conceal the identities of the particular individuals described. I suggest five principles for ethical description of criminalized or policeable conduct: justified disclosure, substituting thick description of evidence of a practice for description of the practice itself, balancing thickness with thinness, telling stories when the risks of criminalization are decreasing, and narrating affinities with less-surveilled practices.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"52 1","pages":"139 - 162"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45762442","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 : 2022-04-20DOI: 10.1177/08912416221089925
Bonifacio M. Amper
Streets are public spaces where people pass through in going from one place to another. As such, streets are not supposed to be dwelling places. However, rapid urbanization has ushered in problems on housing, livelihood, and basic social facilities and services, giving rise to informal settlements and street living in cities. In Cebu City (a highly urbanized city in Central Philippines), displacement from urban slums as well as, lack of livelihood options have pushed some people to dwell on the streets and sidewalks in sites most visited by foreign and local tourists. Through street ethnography, this research uncovers how street dwellers in a heritage site in downtown Cebu City came to live and make a living here. The findings point to the fact that street dwellers have socially constructed and purposely transformed heritage spaces into places where they do their daily domestic routines as well as livelihood activities, in order to survive. This article posits that placemaking by these street dwellers in this heritage site is a process from entering and integrating into the place, appropriating specific spaces into places with meanings for them, building and maintaining social networks, contesting notions of the place, and developing a street culture over time.
{"title":"Families on the Streets: Placemaking in an Urban Heritage Site in Cebu City, the Philippines","authors":"Bonifacio M. Amper","doi":"10.1177/08912416221089925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221089925","url":null,"abstract":"Streets are public spaces where people pass through in going from one place to another. As such, streets are not supposed to be dwelling places. However, rapid urbanization has ushered in problems on housing, livelihood, and basic social facilities and services, giving rise to informal settlements and street living in cities. In Cebu City (a highly urbanized city in Central Philippines), displacement from urban slums as well as, lack of livelihood options have pushed some people to dwell on the streets and sidewalks in sites most visited by foreign and local tourists. Through street ethnography, this research uncovers how street dwellers in a heritage site in downtown Cebu City came to live and make a living here. The findings point to the fact that street dwellers have socially constructed and purposely transformed heritage spaces into places where they do their daily domestic routines as well as livelihood activities, in order to survive. This article posits that placemaking by these street dwellers in this heritage site is a process from entering and integrating into the place, appropriating specific spaces into places with meanings for them, building and maintaining social networks, contesting notions of the place, and developing a street culture over time.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"52 1","pages":"108 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49083058","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 : 2022-04-06DOI: 10.1177/08912416221085713
P. Olsson
This article uses ethnographic social media analysis to interpret affective practices concerning research funding. The analysis is based on Finnish Twitter discussions both within academia and between researchers and those outside academia. Different kinds of affective practices, both sharing and othering, are present in the discussions that guide the ways we make sense of the role of science in our individual lives, as well as in society more generally. We need to see these emotions at work as signals of negotiations of values in the context of neoliberal universities and freedom of science.
{"title":"The Mental Life of a Telephone Pole and Other Trifles: Affective Practices in the Context of Research Funding","authors":"P. Olsson","doi":"10.1177/08912416221085713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221085713","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses ethnographic social media analysis to interpret affective practices concerning research funding. The analysis is based on Finnish Twitter discussions both within academia and between researchers and those outside academia. Different kinds of affective practices, both sharing and othering, are present in the discussions that guide the ways we make sense of the role of science in our individual lives, as well as in society more generally. We need to see these emotions at work as signals of negotiations of values in the context of neoliberal universities and freedom of science.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"52 1","pages":"84 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48428502","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 : 2022-04-01Epub Date: 2021-07-20DOI: 10.1177/08912416211031645
Bronwyn Bragg
Drawn from 18-months of ethnographic research with resettled refugees living in a mini-enclave in one Canadian city, this article explores what ethnography offers research with resettled refugees. By interrogating the process of securing ethics approval from the Research Ethics Board (REB), I examine the figure of the refugee at the heart of liberal projects aimed at "saving" refugees. I demonstrate that the REB's reluctance to approve this project stemmed not only from conventional bureaucratic overreach related to ethnographic research but also from an unexamined and problematic idea of what it means to be a refugee. I discuss the gaps between institutionally perceived forms of vulnerability and the actual vulnerabilities that shape life for refugee women. I argue that vulnerability and risk must be understood as contextual and contingent, rather than inherent. Second, I explore the implications of positioning refugees as always already vulnerable on research practice and the value that ethnography offers for overcoming these blind spots.
{"title":"(De)constructing Refugee Vulnerability: Overcoming Institutional Barriers to Ethnographic Research With Refugee Communities.","authors":"Bronwyn Bragg","doi":"10.1177/08912416211031645","DOIUrl":"10.1177/08912416211031645","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Drawn from 18-months of ethnographic research with resettled refugees living in a mini-enclave in one Canadian city, this article explores what ethnography offers research with resettled refugees. By interrogating the process of securing ethics approval from the Research Ethics Board (REB), I examine the figure of the refugee at the heart of liberal projects aimed at \"saving\" refugees. I demonstrate that the REB's reluctance to approve this project stemmed not only from conventional bureaucratic overreach related to ethnographic research but also from an unexamined and problematic idea of what it means to be a refugee. I discuss the gaps between institutionally perceived forms of vulnerability and the actual vulnerabilities that shape life for refugee women. I argue that vulnerability and risk must be understood as contextual and contingent, rather than inherent. Second, I explore the implications of positioning refugees as always already vulnerable on research practice and the value that ethnography offers for overcoming these blind spots.</p>","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"51 1","pages":"197-222"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8866751/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46775379","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 : 2022-03-31DOI: 10.1177/08912416221085560
Piotr A. Chomczyński, R. Guy, R. Cortés
Findings discussed in this article addressed a gap in the literature on cannabis markets in Mexico. This article primarily draws on interviews with (N = 64) street drug dealers including 24 incarcerated ones, and ethnographic work in 3 impoverished neighborhoods in Mexico City. We find that cannabis sellers enter the profession through early biographical experiences that are reinforced throughout adolescence. Dealing in the context of this cannabis culture is not only acceptable in the present but also viewed as inherently part of their future. Further analysis reveals a typology of dealers that tends to be marked by the transition from cannabis specialists to polydrug vendors. As dealers progress to more profitable sales of hard drugs, they tend to lose the trust and support of neighborhood residents who view their suppliers, clients, and associates as dangerous. We conclude with policy interventions uniquely derived from ethnographic research that are intended to minimize the risk of escalating to more serious drug distribution while preserving community stability and cohesion.
{"title":"Weed Central: Cannabis Specialists and Polydrug Vendors in Mexico City","authors":"Piotr A. Chomczyński, R. Guy, R. Cortés","doi":"10.1177/08912416221085560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221085560","url":null,"abstract":"Findings discussed in this article addressed a gap in the literature on cannabis markets in Mexico. This article primarily draws on interviews with (N = 64) street drug dealers including 24 incarcerated ones, and ethnographic work in 3 impoverished neighborhoods in Mexico City. We find that cannabis sellers enter the profession through early biographical experiences that are reinforced throughout adolescence. Dealing in the context of this cannabis culture is not only acceptable in the present but also viewed as inherently part of their future. Further analysis reveals a typology of dealers that tends to be marked by the transition from cannabis specialists to polydrug vendors. As dealers progress to more profitable sales of hard drugs, they tend to lose the trust and support of neighborhood residents who view their suppliers, clients, and associates as dangerous. We conclude with policy interventions uniquely derived from ethnographic research that are intended to minimize the risk of escalating to more serious drug distribution while preserving community stability and cohesion.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"52 1","pages":"58 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45567056","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 : 2022-03-31DOI: 10.1177/08912416221085604
Dylan Addison
Prison visitation transportation services perform an important yet understudied role in the process of prison visitation for many people with incarcerated loved ones. This article draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of the experiences of loved ones of incarcerated people using a small, Black-owned prison visitation transportation service. Prison visitation transportation services help to mitigate the carceral state’s inherent function to separate people from their incarcerated loved ones, but in turn these services are also subjected to intensive forms of carceral control themselves. As a result, prison visitation transportation services and their staff experience a form of tertiary prisonization. This ultimately results in the drivers of these services experiencing a heightened and enduring state of layered liminality, which becomes attached to them as individuals.
{"title":"Miles and Bars Between: The Tertiary Prisonization and Layered Liminality of Prison Visitation Transportation Services","authors":"Dylan Addison","doi":"10.1177/08912416221085604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221085604","url":null,"abstract":"Prison visitation transportation services perform an important yet understudied role in the process of prison visitation for many people with incarcerated loved ones. This article draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of the experiences of loved ones of incarcerated people using a small, Black-owned prison visitation transportation service. Prison visitation transportation services help to mitigate the carceral state’s inherent function to separate people from their incarcerated loved ones, but in turn these services are also subjected to intensive forms of carceral control themselves. As a result, prison visitation transportation services and their staff experience a form of tertiary prisonization. This ultimately results in the drivers of these services experiencing a heightened and enduring state of layered liminality, which becomes attached to them as individuals.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"52 1","pages":"30 - 57"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41370928","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 : 2022-03-20DOI: 10.1177/08912416221085558
A. Buck
Sociologists have long known that wages are not all that attract highly skilled workers to jobs. Identity rewards in organizations of work are opportunities for workers to affirm valued identities. Past research has found that workers who value these rewards will protect them when they are threatened. Other scholars have shown that managers can use identity rewards to control and elicit cooperation from workers. Another body of scholarship has explored how gendered assumptions and expectations are built into organizations of work. Based on 2 years of field research and 18 interviews with games industry professionals, my research unites these lines of inquiry, by examining how gendered identity rewards entice game developers for game developers to forgo higher wages and more stable conditions in other areas of software development, reinforcing both exploitive class relations and a culture hostile to marginalized workers.
{"title":"The Price of Consent: Identity Wages in the Games Industry","authors":"A. Buck","doi":"10.1177/08912416221085558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221085558","url":null,"abstract":"Sociologists have long known that wages are not all that attract highly skilled workers to jobs. Identity rewards in organizations of work are opportunities for workers to affirm valued identities. Past research has found that workers who value these rewards will protect them when they are threatened. Other scholars have shown that managers can use identity rewards to control and elicit cooperation from workers. Another body of scholarship has explored how gendered assumptions and expectations are built into organizations of work. Based on 2 years of field research and 18 interviews with games industry professionals, my research unites these lines of inquiry, by examining how gendered identity rewards entice game developers for game developers to forgo higher wages and more stable conditions in other areas of software development, reinforcing both exploitive class relations and a culture hostile to marginalized workers.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"51 1","pages":"868 - 894"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45645274","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 : 2022-03-09DOI: 10.1177/08912416221077676
Patrycja Trzeszczyńska
This article offers a reflection on a certain variant of broadening the position of “being inside” with some “buts,” or through “within but.” Drawing on my field experience in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, I discuss the context-dependent, fluid and labile insiderness and the case of using a researcher’s embodied distinctions (senses, ethnicity, class) in the research site created by the fieldwork participants, and not the researcher him/herself. My considerations are embedded with the dialectics (not opposition) of the insider–outsider and point to the contextual “nativeness” and “strangeness” of the researcher. I also discuss the fluidity and contextuality of a researcher’s field familiarity, as well as when s/he conducts research in cooperation with “their own people,” as well as circumstances and factors that transform this familiarity into strangeness. I argue that the latter, instead of being an obstacle or barrier in the research, is a beneficial and mind-opening ethnographic tool.
{"title":"From Nativeness to Strangeness and Back: Ascribed Ethnicity, Body Work, and Contextual Insiderness","authors":"Patrycja Trzeszczyńska","doi":"10.1177/08912416221077676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221077676","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a reflection on a certain variant of broadening the position of “being inside” with some “buts,” or through “within but.” Drawing on my field experience in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, I discuss the context-dependent, fluid and labile insiderness and the case of using a researcher’s embodied distinctions (senses, ethnicity, class) in the research site created by the fieldwork participants, and not the researcher him/herself. My considerations are embedded with the dialectics (not opposition) of the insider–outsider and point to the contextual “nativeness” and “strangeness” of the researcher. I also discuss the fluidity and contextuality of a researcher’s field familiarity, as well as when s/he conducts research in cooperation with “their own people,” as well as circumstances and factors that transform this familiarity into strangeness. I argue that the latter, instead of being an obstacle or barrier in the research, is a beneficial and mind-opening ethnographic tool.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"51 1","pages":"845 - 867"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44399147","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 : 2022-03-09DOI: 10.1177/08912416221081870
D. Schiffer
In this article, I investigate how predominantly cisgender and straight participants of a university LGBT Ally Training program perceived transgender topics. As a trans woman, my positionality and gendered embodiment shaped my research process—depending on whether or not I was perceived as trans. Drawing on 21 interviews with 12 training participants and the training instructor, plus 12 hours of ethnographic observations of 4 Ally Trainings, I show the interactive nature of the research process and how I navigated what I call participant distress. Participant distress manifested due to participant anxiety regarding how I, a trans researcher, perceived their responses. I analyze distress through the lens of Goffman, and offer cistress as a more specific interactive process of disrupting cisnormative statements that results in guilt or anger.
{"title":"Researching While Trans: Being Clocked and Cooling Cistress","authors":"D. Schiffer","doi":"10.1177/08912416221081870","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221081870","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I investigate how predominantly cisgender and straight participants of a university LGBT Ally Training program perceived transgender topics. As a trans woman, my positionality and gendered embodiment shaped my research process—depending on whether or not I was perceived as trans. Drawing on 21 interviews with 12 training participants and the training instructor, plus 12 hours of ethnographic observations of 4 Ally Trainings, I show the interactive nature of the research process and how I navigated what I call participant distress. Participant distress manifested due to participant anxiety regarding how I, a trans researcher, perceived their responses. I analyze distress through the lens of Goffman, and offer cistress as a more specific interactive process of disrupting cisnormative statements that results in guilt or anger.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"51 1","pages":"700 - 725"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47970341","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 : 2022-03-07DOI: 10.1177/08912416221079808
S. Mandel
Designed based on careful specifications and regulations, commercial refrigerators can be found in almost all restaurants across the United States. In this article I explore the multifaceted role of the commercial walk-in refrigerator as a space of mediation, secrecy, and pacification among restaurant industry workers in central Florida. I analyze two years of ethnographic research conducted from 2015 to 2017, and argue that the refrigerator acts as a liminal zone within the restaurant, which is used by management to subdue, pacify, and placate employees. To do so I draw on literature by design justice scholars on discriminatory design, to consider the ways in which the physical structure of American restaurant establishments perpetuate physical and emotional abuse of workers.
{"title":"On Refrigerators and Rage: Secrecy and Pacification in the Florida Restaurant Industry","authors":"S. Mandel","doi":"10.1177/08912416221079808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221079808","url":null,"abstract":"Designed based on careful specifications and regulations, commercial refrigerators can be found in almost all restaurants across the United States. In this article I explore the multifaceted role of the commercial walk-in refrigerator as a space of mediation, secrecy, and pacification among restaurant industry workers in central Florida. I analyze two years of ethnographic research conducted from 2015 to 2017, and argue that the refrigerator acts as a liminal zone within the restaurant, which is used by management to subdue, pacify, and placate employees. To do so I draw on literature by design justice scholars on discriminatory design, to consider the ways in which the physical structure of American restaurant establishments perpetuate physical and emotional abuse of workers.","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"51 1","pages":"726 - 745"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46704375","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}