Awkward Encounters Research Articles

Magic, metaphysics, and methods

Magic, metaphysics, and methods

Understanding and Engaging Generation Z

Liz Hathaway, Ph.D., MPH, is a UC Foundation assistant professor in Health and Human Performance at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She teaches Health Behavior Change and Psychology of Sport and Exercise in the Exercise and Health Sciences undergraduate program and serves as the program coordinator for the Healthy Eating and Active Living Through HHP Residential Learning Community for HHP freshmen. Her interests include learning how to best motivate individuals to make lasting, positive behavior change. She loves coffee, life chats, awkward encounters, and banter. Becca O'Shields, MATS, LCSW, is a graduate of the University of Georgia's School of Social Work of Athens, Georgia. She currently serves as the integrated care clinical lead for Advantage Behavioral Health Systems of Athens, Georgia, where one of her duties includes helping clients engage in long-term positive behavior change. Her interests include spending time with her daughter, son, husband, and two dogs. Disclosure: The authors declare no conflict of interest and do not have any financial disclosures.

Supporting Transition to the Bereaved Community After the Death of a Child.

Supporting Transition to the Bereaved Community After the Death of a Child.

Awkward Encounters with Sarah Waters: Shame, Reading, and Queer Subjectivity

AbstractFocusing on Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet (1998) and Affinity (1999), this article examines how the reader-pleasure afforded by contemporary reimaginings of Victorian lesbianism accommodates the complicated emotional response of shame. Through an investigation of how both texts relate queer experience to shame and what narrative strategies facilitate or induce shame in the reader during their reading experience, this article argues that Waters’s work invites a more sophisticated analysis of shame: one that relates to, and arguably reproduces, the empathetic engagement between the text and the reader. In so doing, this article demonstrates the importance of affect and narrative studies in unpacking the complicated reading pleasure afforded by Waters’s writings and its political potentials.

Wielding the Power of Self-Determination Theory

Liz Hathaway, Ph.D., MPH,is an assistant professor in Health and Human Performance at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She teaches Health Behavior Change and Psychology of Sport and Exercise in the Exercise Science undergraduate program and Health Promotion and Communication Strategies in the Master of Public Health program. Her interests include learning how to best motivate individuals to make lasting, positive behavior change. She loves coffee, life chats, awkward encounters, and banter. Mckenzie Gregg, MPH,graduated with her Master of Public Health at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) in May 2020. She graduated in May 2018 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology. She has played soccer at multiple levels and was captain of the UTC Mocs Soccer Team. She plans to attend medical school to become a pediatric cardiologist. She is currently the head of marketing for Heat Shields Shoe Inserts. In her spare time, she enjoys going on mission trips, being with family, coaching, being a raconteur, and verbal jousting.

Role of Yoga for People Suffering from Schizophrenia in India

Schizophrenia is a serious long-haul emotional wellness condition. It causes a scope of various mental manifestations. It is a genuine dysfunctional behavior influencing diverse districts of the cerebrum, which causes indications, for example, fantasies and hallucinations. Urban areas are more effected with Schizophrenia then rural regions. Yoga can play an important role in treating anxiety and depression among patients suffering from Schizophrenia. It lessens tension, discouragement and pregnancy related awkward encounters. AI can be used to learn more about Schizophrenia. The focus of research was to show awareness among people suffering from Schizophrenia in India.

An awkward technocracy:

ABSTRACTIn Sweden, an ostensibly secular‐majority society, urban planners facilitate the construction of new churches and mosques for minority religious groups. In this work, they typically perceive themselves as neutral professionals relying on a technical education. But since the 1980s, Swedish civil servants, including planners, have transformed from experts to managers, and their interactions with clients for mosques and churches often reveal their opinions and preferences, including for modernism and secularism. These awkward encounters challenge the planners’ technocratic understanding of their work, forcing them into a new kind of productive labor: as uncomfortable arbiters of difference and its public presence. This is a result of neoliberal governance, which has ambiguously expanded the types of European civil servants asked to manage minority groups, as well as the professional roles they must play. [urban planning, neoliberalism, secularism, mosques, churches, immigration, Sweden]

Social Gaffes: Awkward interpersonal encounters at work and their interpersonal repercussions

There are a host of errors or mistakes one may make at work. One understudied, but potentially impactful, type of mistake is a social gaffe, which we define as an unintentional action that violates...

‘Awkward Encounters’: East German Relations with the Third-World ‘Other’

‘Awkward Encounters’: East German Relations with the Third-World ‘Other’

Kids, raccoons, and roos: awkward encounters and mixed affects

Within the Western cultural imaginary, child–animal relations are characteristically invoked with fond nostalgia and sentimentality. They are often represented as natural and innocent relations, thick with infantilizing and anthropomorphizing ‘cute’ emotions. Our multispecies ethnographic research – which is conducted in the everyday, lived common worlds of Australian and Canadian children and animals – reveals a very different political and emotional landscape. We find these embodied child–animal relations to be non-innocently entangled, fraught, and messy. In this article, we focus on some awkward encounters of mixed affect when kids and raccoons co-inhabit an urban forest setting in Vancouver, and when kids and kangaroos bodily encounter each other in a bush setting in Canberra. We trace the imbroglio of child–animal curiosities, warinesses, risks, inconveniences, revulsions, attachments, and confrontations at these sites as generative of new ethical logics.

Neither father nor biological mother. A qualitative study about lesbian co-mothers' maternity care experiences

ObjectiveTo explore lesbian co-mothers' maternity care experiences and their implications for the caring encounter. MethodsA qualitative interview study with data from a convenience sample of eleven Norwegian comothers was conducted. Systematic text condensation was used for data analysis. ResultsAnalysis showed that ordinary tokens of recognition created feelings of being included, while lesbian self-confidence played a major role in awkward encounters. Being neither father nor biological mother sometimes challenged parental identity. Being women helped co-mothers understand what their partners went through but they had to find other ways of mothering than if they had given birth themselves. Co-mothers addressed themselves with different terms and perceived some concepts as unnatural or excluding. Parental identity was defined by their relationship to baby, and the term “co-mother” was perceived as a bureaucratic concept. ConclusionFor lesbian co-mothers, being recognized in maternity care implies that they are valued for the qualities that separate them from other user groups on a personal level. On a societal level, being recognized is related to acknowledgement of inventive ways of doing family. Everyday signs of recognition may prevent moral violation, and by paying particular attention to use of language, staff can help co-mothers feel acknowledged.

Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture by Francis X Hezel, sj (review)

Reviewed by: Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture by Francis X Hezel, sj Joseph H Genz Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture, by Francis X Hezel, sj. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. isbn 978-0-8248-3661-0, xii + 182 pages, maps, suggested reading, index. Cloth, us$27.00. Making Sense of Micronesia sensitively and vividly depicts the cultures of Micronesia for readers unfamiliar with the region and its inhabitants. Drawing on more than four decades of personal experiences as a Jesuit priest and based on insights gleaned from interviews, conversations, and research, Francis X Hezel engagingly presents his own process of slowly stumbling toward cultural knowledge. Shaped by embarrassing moments, awkward encounters, and cultural collisions, the result is an enjoyable glimpse—what he at one point terms a “cultural guidebook” (165)—into the general cultural patterning of the Islanders of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau. As Hezel acknowledges, many features of this synthesis may resonate with other island groups in Micronesia and the broader Pacific. After the introductory chapter on the history of cultural change and the social context of Micronesia, the book’s twelve main chapters each delve into and seek to illuminate one key aspect of general Micronesian culture that may seem at first glance to be mystifying to foreigners. After opening each chapter with a revealing vignette, Hezel examines each theme from his emergent understanding of the ways in which Micronesians think about each topic while also suggesting how the underlying traditions have been changing even as they endure. Although the chapters build on each other, they can also be read as stand-alone sections focusing on and highlighting particular themes. For instance, in the first two chapters Hezel writes of the persistence of a personalized face to every aspect of Island life, and he connects this to the primacy of a collective identity and the importance of cooperation and solidarity. These three “peaks in the cultural landscape” (166) are carefully interwoven in the remaining chapters, which speak to the following issues: generosity and the redistribution of wealth; circumspection and the guarding of information; the importance and meaning of silences when communicating; the significance of strong forms of respect; the private and familial nature of sex; the strict division of labor and the indirect power of women in society; culturally patterned emotional responses of love, affection, uncertainty, and loss; and culturally mediated mechanisms for coping with conflict. In the summary chapter, Hezel importantly outlines the ways in which the traditional Micronesian worldview clashes with the contemporary aims of foreign-imposed economic development. In this work, Hezel complements [End Page 569] his more academic treatment of related topics in The New Shape of Old Island Cultures: A Half Century of Social Change in Micronesia (2001). By chronicling his own reallife experiences and those of others in the tradition of the best reflective ethnographic writing, he brings the narrative to life while underscoring a lifetime’s dedication to understanding local people and their beliefs and practices. For instance, we witness the tragedy of a teenager named Tomaso, who committed suicide after his father’s refusal of a request for money; we feel the confusion and embarrassment when a volunteer compliments the beauty of a student’s sister; we notice an apparent and perhaps misleading lack of affection between a husband and wife when one of them departs on an international flight; and we follow Hezel to the woods after a memorable meal where he vomits up his dinner with complete lack of secrecy. Having spent considerable time in the region, I can relate to the poignancy of nearly every vignette with great empathy. Hezel acknowledges the possibilities and limitations of this approach. Caught in a nearly timeless present, a deliberate blurring of the complexities of the numerous Island societies within this region enables Hezel to generalize about a singular Micronesian culture in comparative counterpoint to a Western worldview. This works. The many vignettes, written for broad appeal, resonate with anyone who has either spent time in Micronesia or has engaged with Micronesians abroad, and this invites the...

Awkward encounters and ethnography

PurposeResearchers rarely present accounts of their awkward encounters in ethnographies. Awkwardness, however, does matter and affects the ethnographic accounts we write and our understanding of social situations. The purpose is to bring these hidden sides of organizational ethnography to the fore, to discuss the consequences of ignoring awkward encounters, and to improve our understanding of organizational realities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents awkward ethnographic encounters in the field: encounters with evangelizing ethnic Chinese business people in Indonesia (Koning), and visiting an artist village in China (Ooi). Based on analysing their awkwardness, and in the context of a critical assessment of the reflexive turn in ethnography, the authors propose a more inclusive reflexivity. The paper ends with formulating several points supportive of reaching inclusive reflexivity.FindingsBy investigating awkward encounters, the authors show that these experiences have been left out for political (publishing culture in academia, unwritten rules of ethnography), as well as personal (feelings of failure, unwelcome self‐revelations) reasons, while there is much to discover from these encounters. Un‐paralyzing reflexivity means to include the awkward, the emotional, and admit the non‐rational aspects of our ethnographic experiences; such inclusive reflexivity is incredibly insightful.Research limitations/implicationsInclusive reflexivity not only allows room for the imperfectness of the researcher, but also enables a fuller and deeper representation of the groups and communities we aim to understand and, thus, will enhance the trustworthiness and quality of our ethnographic work.Originality/valueAwkwardness is rarely acknowledged, not to mention discussed, in organizational ethnography.

Sidestepping awkward encounters: avoidance as a response to outperformance‐related discomfort

AbstractWhen people believe that their higher performance poses a threat to another person, they may experience discomfort or concern that has been termed Sensitivity to being the Target of a Threatening Upward Comparison (STTUC). One way to reduce STTUC discomfort might be to avoid contact with the outperformed person, a possibility examined in three studies of undergraduates. In laboratory contexts, STTUC discomfort predicted reluctance to meet an outperformed peer (Study 1) and preference for a different partner in future competitions (Study 2). In Study 3, which focused on naturalistic outperformance situations, STTUC distress again predicted avoidance. Additionally, avoidance of contact predicted less satisfaction with outcomes, especially in relationships where people knew each other well.

Awkward encounters: Orthodox Jewry and the internet

The role which the mass media plays in modern society means that it has become a sub-agent of contemporary religious identities. This broadens the religious and theological significance of the mass media as an agent for the construction of personal (belief) systems. While in traditional societies, religion is based upon the authority vested in religious bodies, in complex industrial societies individuals construct religious meaning from a variety of sources. In the latter, communication about religious and spiritual issues is increasingly mediated through print and electronic technologies. The internet has accentuated the process of mediation within Judaism by linking Jews, irrespective of whether they belong to physical communal structures, to a virtual, worldwide Jewish community. Yet a key question to be examined here is the impact of the internet upon existing religious communities. This study examines this question by looking at the Israeli case, and the impact of the internet upon the religious identity of Orthodox Jewry.

Stranger situations: Examining a self-regulatory model of socially awkward encounters

A self-regulatory systems model of socially awkward situations was assessed through a mixed-methods analysis of an ecologically valid simulation. Specific hypotheses were that introducing social novelty and inducing explicit social attention would increase reported feelings of social awkwardness. Participant awkwardness ratings, recorded from continuous measurement devices operated by participants viewing taped simulations, were analysed and results were consistent with hypotheses. Further exploratory analysis revealed that events associated with extreme increases in awkwardness ratings included non- and counter-normative situations and behaviors, negative social judgments, and events that made social processes explicit. Events associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings included social acts that emphasized common, shared or familiar interests, helping behaviors, acts of positive social evaluation, and acts that diffused social awkwardness through humor. These findings were interpreted as offering general support for the model and suggesting its utility in distinguishing dispositional and situational factors involved in alienated social functioning.

‘Like touching with your roots’: migrants’ children visiting the ancestral homeland

Many migrants and their descendants make journeys to their homelands, and these visits form an important part of their ethnic identities, kinship relations and transnational connections. While such journeys have attracted increased attention recently, there has been relatively little exploration of the experiences that migrants’ children have when visiting their parents’ homeland, especially in an exile context when there has been little contact with the homeland for an extended period. This paper examines why the children and grandchildren of Estonian migrants to Australia journey to Estonia, and the experiences they have there. Motivations for visiting are complex and varied, and typically interweaved with parents’ stories, ethnic identities, kinship and curiosity. While visiting was a positive but emotional experience for some, it involved awkward encounters for others. This paper explores how these journeys led to respondents reconceptualising their senses of identity, belonging and home, and how many came to align their identities to both Estonia and Australia simultaneously.

Zoning Laws: Facebook and Google+

Zoning Laws: Facebook and Google+

Becoming Pilgrims in the Holy Land: On Filipina Domestic Workers’ Struggles and Pilgrimages for a Cause in Israel

Filipino Christian care and domestic workers’ migration to Israel is a deeply transformative process of embodied subjectification, imbuing their religious practice with imaginative meanings rather than merely economic. Filipino pilgrimages to holy sites in Israel sacralise the humdrum and sometimes demeaning realities of their work, enabling them to transcend through performance the ‘migrant’ label assigned to them by contemporary migration regimes in the international division of labour. Becoming pilgrims (and tourists) in the Holy Land, migrants discover alternative life narratives, which position them on a journey within a sacred geography at the centre of Christian devotion, suffusing their movements along transnational networks and migration routes. By interpreting Holy Land pilgrimages as dynamic and at times awkward encounters with the sacred, inflected by Filipinos’ legal, social and economic status in Israel, I show the creative fusion of pilgrimage, tourism and migration achieved by migrants in their transnational journeys.

The Rise of `Recruitmentology'

Recent debates concerning the biomedical meaning and significance of race have paid relatively little attention to the practical implications of new policies in the US mandating the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities (along with other 'underrepresented groups') as research subjects in clinical studies. I argue that pressures to enroll underrepresented groups have stimulated the development in the US of an auxiliary science I term 'recruitmentology': an empirical body of studies scientifically evaluating the efficacy of various social, cultural, psychological, technological, and economic means of convincing people (especially members of 'hard-to-recruit populations') that they want to become, and remain, human subjects. Via the filtering of social scientific frameworks into the clinical research domain, recruitmentology has promoted hybrid ways of thinking about race--awkward encounters in which depictions of race as a bounded, quasi-biological medical and administrative category sit uneasily alongside an interest in understanding racial identities and communities as sociocultural phenomena. I analyze how recruitmentologists, in addressing the mandate to recruit racially diverse subject populations, conceptualize race while simultaneously grappling with problems of trust, collective memory, and participation. I also examine how the increasingly transnational character of biomedical research is intensifying the exploitative dimensions of recruitment while further transforming the racialized character of human experimentation. This analysis highlights the tensions underlying projects to eliminate health disparities by race.