Analysis Of Ethnographic Interviews Research Articles

“Los Frikis”

This article examines the culturally complex context of the 1980s in Cuba through the little-known figure of the frikis, an underground culture linked to rock and metal music that flourished at a time of growing discontent with the country’s political regime. The revolutionary government marginalized frikis because of their interest in Anglo-American culture and because their social and aesthetic practices did not align with their vision of the ideal revolutionary citizen. Frikis were officially considered social parasites, hedonistic and indifferent in their attitude towards mainstream society, but their behavior and practices were, more than just parasitic or careless, rather thoughtful choices. They built their scene as a social alternative to the establishment that would allow them to express socio-political and cultural interests different from those stipulated by the government, and their rise in the 1980s can be seen as an early manifestation of the post-socialist subjectivities that would develop after the Soviet Bloc collapsed. Through the analysis of ethnographic interviews and short stories, this article explores the creative strategies frikis used to build a shared identity, protest, and survive in the face of State repression, becoming socio-cultural antecedents for other underground cultures, such as punk, which would flourish in a post-Soviet context.

Agency in the Nexus of Identity and Social Network: Understanding the Second Language Socialization Experiences of International Students in China

ABSTRACT Studying abroad entails international students’ identity (trans)formation and social network development, but individuals’ decisions and choices while engaging in these processes remain underexplored. Informed by the notion of agency in second language socialization theory, this longitudinal case study examined the interplay of identity and social network in the socialization experiences of three international students learning Chinese as an additional language in China. Analysis of ethnographic interviews, a Study Abroad Network Questionnaire, observational field notes, and supplementary data revealed the role of individual agency in mediating the students’ heterogeneous ways of mobilizing linguistic and cultural resources to construct identities and build social ties. The study also illustrated that agency was not readily or equally accessible to all participants, but it was negotiated in the nexus of their identity and social network. Finally, the study discussed the issues that surfaced in students’ distinctive learning trajectories, and offered implications to inform potential stakeholders.

“Mi Historia Familiar Es Sencilla” (My Family History Is Simple)”: Testimonio in the New Latino Diaspora

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we share the testimonio of Santana, an immigrant from rural México, who explained the ways that she navigates her life and raises her children as a Latina immigrant woman here in the southeastern United States. Our inquiry is guided by analysis of ethnographic interviews conducted with Santana over a period of three years. We argue that Santana saw these interviews as an opportunity to share testimonios—embodied life stories that bear witness to a history of social injustice. Testimonio centralizes marginalized knowledge and documents a collective experience of injustice via an individual narrative. Santana’s testimonio underscores the complex ways that Latina migrants draw from embodied experiences to resist oppression and sobrevivir, a verb that implies not only enduring, but moving forward with knowledge, power, self-confidence, and creativity. We argue that her testimonio disrupts the power relations embedded in the traditional hierarchy between the researcher and the research participant.

The ecological paradox: social and natural consequences of the geographies of animal health promotion

Drawing on the example of bovine tuberculosis (bTb), this paper examines the geographies of animal health promotion. Using theories from the sociology of health, the paper outlines how the spatial practices of animal health promotion have had adverse policy consequences – what the paper refers to as an ‘ecological paradox’. Analysis of ethnographic interviews with 61 farmers in England and Wales provides a range of reasons why farmers do and do not implement biosecurity. Drawing on the concept of lay epidemiology and ideas of ‘the candidate’– that is, the terms by which someone/thing is most likely to suffer from a particular illness – the paper shows how farmers construct farmers, cattle and badgers as likely to be a candidate for bTb; and how aspects of luck and fatalism are significant elements of candidature. These effects are traced to a clash of spatial practice within the different knowledge articulated by official attempts to promote animal health and farmers’ understandings. In failing to consider these cultural understandings of disease, the paper argues that the state's attempts to promote animal health have served to reinforce the explanatory power of candidacy and traditional understandings of bTb, thereby overriding attempts to promote biosecurity. The resulting negative consequences for badgers, cattle and farmers are defined as the ecological paradox.

Understanding Latino Family Attitudes in Relation to Latino Gang Members' Substance Abuse

This paper presents a content analysis of ethnographic interviews from long-term Latino gang members whose families have recently immigrated to the United States. Positive relationships within the family, parental support, a consistent and constructive parental discipline style and adult supervision tend to be related negatively to adolescents' deviant behaviors and their association with deviant peers. An expected positive relationship between the parent-child constructs, adolescents' deviant behaviors, and association with deviant peers was not found. Positive family attitudes toward deviance were associated with the number of drug type transactions and greater levels of drug use. This association has been overlooked in previous research. Our study expands the examination of the influence a family's positive attitudes toward deviance has on the apparent progression of drug use in a sample of Latino gang members with histories of drug use. An analysis of structured interview content differentiated family attitudes toward deviance as: encouragement and tolerance, imitation, and defining norms.

Encoding Advertisements: The Creative Perspective

The role of advertising within consumer culture as an ideological force has received much attention within academic studies in the advertising and marketing disciplines, and has also been the subject of inquiry and debate in related fields within sociology and cultural studies. While many of these works approach the role of advertising in society through textual analysis of advertisements and consumer interpretations of advertising meaning, surprisingly fewer studies have approached the subject from the perspective of the producers of advertising, particularly within the advertising and marketing disciplines. This paper examines how advertisements are encoded with meanings by advertising "creatives" by exploring the practices and processes in which these cultural practitioners engage. A discourse analysis of ethnographic interviews conducted with copywriters and art directors within an Irish advertising agency forms the empirical material for this inquiry. Four central interpretative repertoires are developed from these interview texts which provide insights into the pivotal work of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries within consumer culture.

Interpreting discourse: Coherence and the analysis of ethnographic interviews

(1982). Interpreting discourse: Coherence and the analysis of ethnographic interviews. Discourse Processes: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1-32.