Ethnographic Case Study Research Articles

Equitable land-use policy? Indigenous peoples’ resistance to mining-induced deforestation

India's centralized mining of sub-soil minerals is rapidly changing the forested landscapes. This empirical research examines two interrelated questions: how do Indigenous Peoples perceive centralized mining affecting their traditional forest rights, and what are some of the community-led initiatives to address mining governance and forest policy? Two aspects of the rights-based approach on the extreme continuum – Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and social movements – are used for analyzing three ethnographic case studies each from India’s top three mining states, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha. The forested landscapes are inhabited by a million ethnically diverse Indigenous Peoples also known as Scheduled Tribes or Adivasis, often devoid of formal recognition. The Oraon, Pando, Paudi Bhuniya, and Munda Indigenous communities face the consequences of mining-induced deforestation on their livelihoods and are excluded from land-use decisions before and after extractions. The findings compare diverse forms of social movements seeking decentralized mining and community-based forest governance. Key recommendations from the Indigenous communities for inclusive forest and land-use policy are illuminated in the conclusion.

Toward decolonizingSTEM: Centering place and sense of place forcommunity‐based problem‐solving

AbstractGiven the growing global environmental threats, shifts to increasingly binary thinking that isolate and polarize discourse, and the erosion of caring for each other and our places, the authors believe it is imperative that we change the way science and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education connect with communities and are taught in school. As part of the larger study, this paper explores how the integration of STEMS2Pedagogy with community based problem solving (re)shapes two case‐study teachers' learning environments and serves as a tool to facilitate decolonizing STEM education by addressing the research question. Research question: How does the integration of community‐based problem‐solving and STEMS2Pedagogy impact how the case study teachers think about STEM education and the design of STEM curriculum? Drawing from longitudinal critical ethnographic case studies and Hawaiian hermeneutics frameworks, two public school educators (co‐authors), we collected data between Fall 2017 to Fall 2021. The inductive analysis process described above resulted in two key claims: (1) Grounding STEM instruction in place strengthens sense of place and kuleana, and (2) Strengthening one's sense ofkuleanachanges the measure of success.

Enthusiasm and Alienation: How Implementing Automated Journalism Affects the Work Meaningfulness of Three Newsroom Groups

ABSTRACT Automated journalism is currently being implemented in newsrooms all over the world. This ethnographic case study of two Norwegian newsrooms explores how different newsroom groups relate to the innovation. Finding that editors and developers tend to applaud the possibilities of machine-written news while reporters are more critical, this study applies the concept of work meaningfulness to better understand the divergent reactions. The results show that key aspects making work meaningful—such as skill variety, self-development, autonomy, and sense of purpose—are influenced in severely different ways among the groups. As the investment in automated journalism has led to fewer editorial resources, reporters have experienced less room for in-depth reporting, few opportunities for extending skills, and little self-government. They also state that classical journalistic knowledge is no longer celebrated, while technical competence is perceived as essential. In contrast, the work meaningfulness of most editors and developers has increased. The paper concludes that all three newsroom groups hold a strong secular calling toward their work. It is therefore crucial that editors and media leaders acknowledge different groups’ work-related beliefs and purposes when implementing new technology. If not, the result can be a dramatic loss of work meaningfulness.

Restorative validity and healing through inquiry: A visual ethnographic case study in Guatemala

AbstractThis case study is an exploration of the potential restorative and healing qualities of inquiry. The co‐authors—a university‐affiliated researcher, a Kaqchikel Maya community leader, and forensic anthropologists—document their stories navigating a participatory action research project as co‐researchers. Using visual ethnography, we illustrate how we approached inquiry from a place of restorative validity, which challenges inquirers to reclaim and restore the humanity of researcher, researched, and the research process itself. Through a culturally sustaining frame, we grounded our interpretations in the Maya cultural elements of land, community, and attachment to place. We demonstrate how we intertwined our various ways of knowing and methods, from Indigenous oral tradition to interactive techniques such as ripples of change, to co‐create a form of inquiry rooted in relationships, justice, and liberation. As peace, conflict, and justice researchers and practitioners work with those who have been subjected to and witnessed atrocities, we problematize whether our methodological practices are in line with our values as a community of care. In moving toward restorative validity, we ask: If the outside world robs people of their humanity, identities, and memories, do we simply observe and document these injustices; or can our inquiry work toward reclamation and restoration?

Speculative spaces: Children exploring socio-ecological worlds with mythical nature spirits

Drawing on Donna Haraway's notion of speculative fabulation, in this study the authors investigate how a pedagogy grounded in mythical nature spirits, children's imaginative explorations and storying activities created spaces for children to explore socio-ecological worlds. Their inquiry draws on an ethnographic case study of three children (aged seven to eight) in a Finnish primary school who participated in a cross-curricular unit framed by a set of pedagogical materials called ‘The Riddle of the Spirit’. Their inquiry shows how speculative fabulations emerged into performing spaces, in which imaginary fabulations of humans, spirits and places created alternative narratives about more-than-human relations. Such fabulations emerged when the children became spirits, when the spirits were transformed from kings to queens, and when trees that humans had cut down could be revived and returned to the forest. Thus, the authors’ inquiry suggests that myths embedded in storying activities can offer unexplored educational opportunities to invite children to attend to and imagine socio-ecological worlds.

Being disliked and bullied: A case revealing interplay between peer status and bullying

AbstractTo better understand chronic bullying, this school ethnographical case study mapped peer rejection processes that fuel bullying. The study focused on a case of a victimized 13‐year‐old girl and analysed observations of the classroom social interactions, interviews with teachers and students' essays. Thematic analysis elucidated how students, together with the class teacher, constructed the girl as having annoying personal characteristics, being a misfit to the group, and as being on the bottom of the classroom hierarchy. Next, it suggested how these processes made her more vulnerable to being bullied and not defended by teachers or classmates. The study showed that interventions in chronic bullying need to not only stop bullying, but also target the social processes underlying peer rejection.

Gastfreundschaft durch «gastfreundschaftlichen» Stil?

This paper analyses interactions between a host of a Swiss mountain destination and her guests. The conversations take place in a scenic gondola. The analysis is conducted in the format of an ethnographic case study and focuses on the interactants’ speech style. The case study constitutes a part of a larger, applied and interdisciplinary project of the Business School of the University of Applied Sciences of Lucerne. The aim of the main project is to specify what could be defined as “hospitality” in a touristic context and to develop tools to enhance hospitality at touristic destinations in Central Switzerland.
 The aim of the present ethnographic case study is to analyse interactions between hosts and their guests. It seeks to find communicative elements which let the guests perceive an inter-action as hospitable and to discuss if generic features of a “hospitable speech style” may be identified.

Returning Children to the ’Āina and Fanua: Indigenous Survivance in Pacifica Early Childhood

Researchers of child learning and development continue to hone understandings of cultural and social impacts on cognition, development, and education. Concurrently, Indigenous educators call for decolonizing schooling at all levels. Land-based education (LBE), as an instructional approach, responds to calls to decolonize education. The authors use LBE to understand the cultural and social nuances and complexities of Indigenous learning in preschool and primary school age Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children. Through ethnographic case studies in Hawai’i and Sāmoa, we expand conceptions of culture in learning to attune to the diversity and specificity of Indigenous contexts, argue that LBE must be place-based, and recognize land is an active and necessary coparticipant in the learning process.

Institutional influences on academic writing feedback practices: A case study from an EFL context

A growing body of recent research has explored feedback in relation to the context where it takes place; however, up to now, little is known about how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) institutional contexts influence feedback on academic writing. This paper reports an ethnographic case study on how the institutional context of a major foreign studies university in Mainland China impacted feedback practices. Based on data collected over three semesters through interviews, process logs, documents, and emails, this research found that teachers’ and students’ perspectives on and experiences with feedback were shaped by the EFL institutional context mainly through curriculum structure, institutional regulations, and power relations. Informed by the situated understanding of feedback on academic writing, we call for more efforts to develop productive feedback practices by fostering supportive pedagogical contexts.This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.

Encountering the world with voice search: A young immigrant and emergent bilingual child’s digital literacies

This article explores a 4-year-old recent immigrant and emergent bilingual child’s encounter with voice search technology to understand how assemblages among a young immigrant child, his voice, his family, digital technology, and materials create new possibilities for the understanding of ethnolinguistically marginalized children and families' literacies and digital literacies practices. Data in this article is taken from a larger ethnographic case study and drawn from the child’s home and the preschool classroom. Situated in critical posthumanist scholarship and vital materialism, I show that a child’s unbounded digital and media access and unpredictable encounters through his voice and crossing over languages take part in redistributing the hierarchy of bodies, performances, and productions. Finally, I suggest that understanding children’s use of voice search as one of their key ways of doing literacies and making meaning and noticing the unpredictable, intimate, and playful literacies can help us disrupt the traditional, assimilatory conceptualization of digital literacies.

An Ethnographic Case Study of Secondary School’s Moral Education in a Mainland City of the Greater Bay Area

Chinese moral education is a much broader concept and is heavily criticized for being overly politicized and indoctrinated. The Greater Bay Area (GBA) initiative upholds the people-centered development philosophy in education. This study aims to investigate the school-level implementation in Shenzhen, one of the GBA cities, and teachers' perspectives to determine the facilitating and inhibiting factors across different layers in the student-centered ecological systems of students’ moral development. A two-year-long ethnographic case study was conducted in the case school based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. The study participants consisted of 18 teachers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the participants' perceptions. The study findings revealed that the facilitating factors include clear guidelines on the national level, cooperative teachers, and ambitious principals with a consciousness of visions and responsibilities for moral education. Meanwhile, Shenzhen has the potential to be the pioneer of moral education reformation. However, the rigid content in the textbooks and the stuffy school culture hinder the success of moral education at the school level. The lack of communication and mutual understanding contributes to the splintered and emotionally exhaustive experience of moral education teachers. More efficient and measurable strategies should be used to uphold a tight alliance across different layers. Future research should examine alternative moral education models, decision-making processes, Chinese school management style, and the specific appliance of the ecological systems theory in the unique Chinese educational context.

Situating machine learning – On the calibration of problems in practice

ABSTRACT In this paper, we employ John Dewey’s notion of the situation as an analytic lens for observing and theorizing machine learning. Based on two ethnographic case studies in art and science, we account for machine learning as practice and examine the dynamics of the situations it gives rise to. Following Dewey, our observations focus on the transformation of situations from an initial state of indeterminacy through to problematizations and their resolution. Rethinking machine learning through the situation, we analyze how cooperating machine learners, both human and non-human, resolve situations and thereby refine their mutual attunement. With Dewey, we first explain how machine learners train through disruption and adaptation as they identify and solve problems. Second, we show that these problems concern issues of latency and addressability in efforts of cooperation between heterogeneous machine learners. Third, we discuss how machine learning practices cultivate situations that feature careful calibrations of problems that allow for their productive transformation. Our empirically grounded approach offers a pragmatist account of machine learning as a continually indeterminate and dynamic situated practice. As a contribution to ongoing discussions in social theory, we reframe existing characterizations of machine learning as issues of latency and addressability in cooperation.

Sensing weather: scientific and experiential modes of knowledge production for small-scale farming in western Kenya

Abstract. Agriculture depends in large part on relations with weather phenomena, such as rain and temperature. Anticipatory knowledge about the atmosphere therefore is vital in agricultural livelihoods. Based on an ethnographic case study of weather forecasting for small-scale farming in western Kenya, in this paper I discuss different ways in which knowledge about the future weather is produced. While development organizations promote expert forecasts that draw on meteorological sensing technologies as a solution to dealing with climate change, I show how knowing the weather is an entangled affair in a sensory assemblage that simultaneously draws on scientific instruments and on other entities such as animals, plants, clouds and embodied sensoria associated with experiential knowledge. Building on concepts related to science and technology studies that address the relations between humans and nonhumans, I suggest to treat scientific and experiential devices symmetrically by looking at their more-than-human sensoria, proxies and imaginations to understand how farmers attune to the weather. In practice, then, navigating the uncertainties of the weather is not enabled by scientific meteorology alone, but by combining different sensory devices and practices of interpretation that together mediate the weather as something to be known and acted upon.

Qualitative research in crisis: A narrative-practice methodology to delve into the discourse and action of the unheard in the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper develops and applies a methodology of qualitative inquiry that equips researchers to capture how social actors produce and contest accepted forms of knowledge at the margins of mainstream globalizing discourses in times of crisis. Standing at the intersection between conceptual and empirical research, our methodology builds on the common epistemological premises of ‘narrative’, as stories constructed and enacted in social life, and ‘practice’, as tasks and projects composed by ‘doings’ and ‘sayings’. Overcoming the dualism between ‘action’ and ‘discourse’ in traditional social theory, this methodology integrates narrative theory and practice theory into a joint framework for fieldwork and interviews. The use of the narrative-practice methodology in ethnographic case studies – such as interpreters’ experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar – allows researchers to gain analytical granularity on participants’ storied practice and practiced stories of the crisis, to harness ‘peripheral’ knowledge and refashion public discourse.

Frontline discretion from a Bourdieu-inspired field perspective: an ethnographic case study of a Norwegian activation measure for sick-listed employees

ABSTRACT Frontline work is increasingly undertaken in multi-stakeholder settings, indicating a need to revisit issues of frontline discretion. This ethnographic case study, based on an activation measure for sick-listed employees in Norway, applies a Bourdieu-inspired field analysis of frontline discretion. We approach frontline discretion in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) as comprised by ‘position-takings’ in an available space of possibilities in the field of work reintegration. A key feature of this field is that stakeholders employ opposing forms of capital: the NAV caseworker employs activation capital; sick-listed employees use individual or client capital; client employers draw on economic capital; and the clients’ general practitioners employ medical expertise capital. We find that NAV caseworkers undertake three specific position-takings in manoeuvring the other forms of stakeholder capital: nudging and negotiating with and between stakeholders; legitimising NAV’s interests and demands; and making other stakeholders accountable. Notably, frontline discretion is constituted in the configuration of the forms of stakeholder capital, including that of their own organisation, which requires administration and compromises between them. Our theoretical contribution is that an administrative form of capital becomes symbolic, potentially incorporating frontline workers’ future professional habitus.

Dung detective! A multi-scalar, multi-method approach to identification and analysis of ancient faecal material

Ancient faecal material is becoming a highly valuable more frequently investigated proxy with which to address a wide range of research questions. With advancing scientific methodologies it is becoming easier to identify and to analyse. The aim of this paper is to use a set of archaeological and ethnographic case studies to illustrate and evaluate the range of methods that can be used in conjunction with each other to aid investigation of archaeological faecal material. This multi-scalar and multi-method approach uses portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF), spot sampling and smear slide analysis, micromorphology, gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS), environmental scanning microscopy with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (ESEM-EDX), and phytolith analysis. The case studies presented here focus on the Neolithic because of this unique opportunity to examine concentrations of animal dung from managed or early domesticated herds. This research illustrates a range of the methods that can be used in conjunction with each other to locate, identify and analyse faecal material. The results demonstrate that an integrated, multi-scalar, multi-methodological approach enables detection, identification, and investigation of a range of faecal attributes and provides new insights into key issues and themes on environment, animal management, diet, health, the built environment and energy sources. This integrated methodology and pilot study highlights two main recommendations. Firstly, modern faecal comparative material should always be consulted within the study region as a baseline for identifying and classifying different types of faecal material. Secondly, micromorphology and GC-MS samples are always vital proxies in further investigations to confirm the nature and identity of the dung sources once potential sample locations have been identified.

The Case for Parentalism at Work: Balancing Feminist Care Ethics and Justice Ethics through a Winnicottian approach: A School Case Study

AbstractUsing an ethnographic case study based in a UK state school for 11- to 18-year-olds, this paper explores the tensions that arose when the senior leadership team (SLT) introduced a justice-based ethic-of-care that prioritized good grades and equal treatment for all pupils over a feminist ethic-of-care (preferred by most teachers in non-leadership roles) that accentuated individual pupil need and placed greater emphasis on a broader social education. Through highlighting the tensions between a feminist ethic-of-care and a more ‘masculine’ style, justice-based approach to care-ethics, the paper extends the organisational care-ethics literature. We emphasise that such tensions occurred whether the different ethics were enacted by men, women, or non-binary individuals. In order to better understand the tensions between these two ethical approaches, we draw upon the theoretical work of Donald Winnicott, which highlights the importance both of maternal and paternal roles during infancy. We update Winnicott’s ideas, noting how maternal and paternal caring roles can be undertaken by people of varied gender identities. Building on Winnicott’s theory, we propose a new ‘Parentalist’ ethic-of-care, which has the potential to balance and hold together ideas of both a feminist ethic-of-care, and a justice-based ethic. A Parentalist ethic-of-care could support teachers yet recognize the context of the contemporary neo-liberal environment, where most children need to attain formal qualifications in a marketized world, and where such measures of success are highly valued.

Urban Destruction and Redevelopment as Counterinsurgency: The Void, The Limbo and New Face of Sur

This commentary explores the relationship between counterinsurgency strategies, urban destruction, and redevelopment via their impacts and manifestations on urban space through an ethnographic case study in Sur, the old town of Diyarbakır. Sur has been home to working class, marginalized and low-income Kurdish families, thousands of which have been displaced during and after the urban warfare between the Turkish state and the PKK in 2015-16. I discuss how urban destruction and redevelopment are used as counterinsurgency strategies under the AKP regime to subjugate the Kurdish cities, which have been the center of collective resistance and grassroots opposition. My grounded conceptualization follows the physical fractions in Sur: The void focuses on flattened and emptied areas of Sur. The tools for emptying involve curfews, deliberate destruction of the built environment, depopulation of the area, urgent expropriations, and the extension of horizontal and vertical visibility in the redevelopment process for security purposes. The limbo focuses on parts of Sur where all land and properties are urgently expropriated but not demolished yet and unveils the temporality of displacement as a constant threat for the residents. It also discusses the everyday life of the displaced people who still couldn’t be able to establish a stable life. Lastly, New Face focuses on the newly built environment in Sur and exposes the tools of state-led tourism/commercial gentrification; securitization; and depopulation during the neoliberal redevelopment process.

COVID-19 in Pluralea Interactions: A Case Study in Santo Tomé (Corrientes, Argentina)

This paper is an ethnographic case study of COVID-19 emergence in Santo Tomé (South America, NE Argentina, ≂25,000 inhabitants). Based on interviews with healthcare personnel, we describe local containment and prevention policies in a context of national lockdown measures. We reconstruct a tree diagram of infections, index cases and close contacts that spread infection locally. In parallel, fieldwork in a sample of impoverished subsistence agricultures and fishermen allows us to describe drought and fresh food production decline during confinement as convergent ecocrises (pluralea interactions) with the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. The core idea of the article, which emerged from ethnographic fieldwork evidence, is that in the context of climate change, the sudden onset of an infectious disease interacts with convergent ecocrises.

Regulatory capture’s third face of power

AbstractThe term ‘regulatory capture’ is frequently invoked to describe dysfunctional government institutions. In its casual use, it refers to a phenomenon in which regulations benefit regulated industries, rather than public interests. However, as an analytical concept, social scientists have struggled to empirically identify and define the processes in which capture emerges and sustains. In this article, I outline a cultural framework for regulatory capture by linking cultural sociology and the faces of power to existing capture theory. Through an ethnographic case study of digital trade provisions in international trade agreements, I show how capture occurs through the construction and manipulation of ‘public interests’. I trace how capture (a) emerges when industry lobbyists extend existing schemas of a policy network into new frames and (b) is institutionalized into regulatory agencies when policymakers adopt and enact these frames into knowledge production and law. Thus, capture appears through a veneer of consensus, which suppresses alternative interests and policy outcomes.