Ethnographic Examples Research Articles

Dhandha, Accumulation and the Making of Valuable Livelihoods in Contemporary Mumbai 1

In this paper, our main objective is to pay attention to social and material accumulations in a form of self-employed work practised by non-elites in the Indian city of Mumbai, which they call dhandha. Using ethnographic examples of two working-class, urban dhandhas—taxi-driving and vending—we suggest that thinking with the concept of dhandha and other conceptions of value and relationality that people associate with this kind of work helps us rethink and open up more abstract and universal conceptualisations of accumulation. We examine not just how much accumulation occurs but also who the various actors are in making accumulation possible; what gets accumulated and how; and why even burdensome accumulations are considered valuable and are intentionally pursued and embraced. As ethnographers who conducted our work in several of Mumbai’s many languages, we pay attention to the specific words and concepts used by our interlocutors to describe their work and their economic relations and argue that dhandha in Mumbai is not just work, it is also a way of making valuable lives and navigating the world.

The time of post-socialism: On the future of an anthropological concept

When accounting for changes in the post-socialist era, anthropologists were forced to carefully distinguish between what had remained the same, what had actually changed and what was emerging anew and on its own terms. As a sub-discipline, the anthropology of post-socialism has thereby contributed prominently to theories of time, change and temporal agency. It has also shown that the post-socialist present is, if at all, as determined by its socialist past as it is by its insecure futures. Based on a few ethnographic examples from a former socialist model city in East Germany, and my own experiences as both a post-socialist anthropologist and an anthropologist of post-socialism, I scrutinize the temporal logic of the sub-discipline’s defining concept. I do so by testing its applicability to three objects of anthropological inquiry, and by pondering upon its implications for a more sustained study of the future. The temporal multiplicity that this concept affords, I claim, is crucial for the discipline overall, but demands further scrutiny. Rather than abandoning it, as I and others have previously argued, it is time to rewrite the time of post-socialism with regards to the future.

Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project

Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project

The Uprooted Migrant: A Historical Depredation

Jorge Durand goes into great detail and ethnographic examples of the uprooted subjects that he sees as the protagonists of this 21st century. His emphasis on them seeks to position a new perspective of analysis on that hidden side of migration studies, the subjects that did not turn out to be "successful". And he is encouraged to tell us how he wishes to develop this line of research, to follow the threads of these "historically depredated people", abandoned, wandering and lonely, who challenge us.

A Freirean ecopedagogy or an imposition of values? The pluriverse and the politics of environmental education

ABSTRACT Ecopedagogy is a viable pathway towards a pluriversal education system that attends to both global ecological concerns and various local expressions of interests, working towards socioenvironmental justice and a Freirean critical (eco)pedagogy. Ethnographic examples of environmental education in rural Costa Rica emerging from my case study of Samuel, the creative, music educator in La Palma, demonstrate a variety of pedagogical tactics used to generate ecological awareness and create sustainability-minded citizens. Through lively and engaging activities with young students, ecopedagogy serves as a potential pathway between pluriversal education and normative environmentalism. This ethnographic analysis of ecopedagogy in practice within Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula illuminates the tension between an imposition of values and the generation of pluriversal education through dynamic pedagogical influence, structured play, embodied practice, and decentring the human.

Gods, games, and the socioecological landscape

The social sciences have long recognized a relationship between religion and social ecology. Upon closer inspection, religious systems not only correspond to important features of a society’s social ecology, but also appear to directly address these features. In this article, we examine the prospect that these salient features may be framed as game theoretical dilemmas and argue that contemporary approaches that emphasize cognition and/or social learning at the expense of social ecology are inadequate in accounting for cross-cultural variation in religious expression. Using ethnographic examples, we show that religions alleviate the costs of such dilemmas in a variety of ways by: 1) fostering beliefs that motivate and sustain beneficial practices; 2) incentivizing cooperative ventures; 3) encouraging ritual performances that minimize costly conflicts and bolster territorial conventions; 4) providing institutional forums to coordinate resource distributions; and 5) maintaining important resource and species diversity.

PERSPECTIVAS ANTROPOLÓGICAS MUNDIAIS SOBRE NACIONALISMOS ECONÔMICOS

Abstract As rising numbers of national governments promote economic nationalist policies and the withdrawal from (or renegotiation of) global political and economic relationships, the impossibility of disconnecting from global circulations is illustrated by the traveling discourse of economic nationalism itself, although conceptualized and implemented quite differently as refracted through specific historical and political contexts. Drawing on the possibilities of world anthropologies, the authors build connected analyses of the lived effects and contradictions of economic nationalist policies through their ethnographic examples from Brazil, India, Uganda, and the US. In comparatively analyzing these contexts, the authors emphasize the plural, transhistorical, transnational, gendered, and contested nature of economic nationalist policies and discourses worldwide, pointing to the need for further empirical investigations into diverse understandings and political deployments of economic nationalist projects.

THE IMPORTANCE AND SOCIAL MEANING OF THE CONCEPTS "KIELLI", "KASIETTІ" IN THE CONTEMPORARY KAZAKH RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE

The phenomenology of religion examines the concept of the "sacred" in different social and sociocultural contexts. These concepts refer to divinity, the power given to living people by the Creator, and are also often associated with nature (animals, plants, water, springs, springs, etc.). Also, the concept of "sacred" in traditional and post-traditional Kazakh culture and worldview can be considered as a special value given to humanity by the Creator, associated with theistic concepts of holiness. In the article, using some ethnographic examples, the role and meaning of the concept "sacred" in the worldview of modern Kazakhs is determined, its role as a national value and its continuity with religious beliefs, customs and traditions, the religious nature of the Kazakh culture is premodern. The development of these concepts to this day plays a role in our traditional religion, folklore, customs and rituals passed down from generation to generation.

Reinforcing Place Attachment Through its Disruption: An Ethnographic Example from the Solidarita Housing Estate in Prague

The Solidarita housing estate was built during the years 1946–1951 as one of the first post-war housing estates in Prague, former Czechoslovakia. Inspired by Scandinavian urban standards, architects designed Solidarita as an urban architectural experiment that combined innovative urban strategies, new technologies, collective approach, and cooperative financing. The socio-spatial structure of Solidarita was influenced by the ideology of socialism – the production of an egalitarian society through a centrally planned economy and collective ownership. As a result, the estate was self-sufficient and conducive to neighborly meetings, and it strengthened their relations through its form. The political transformation, commercialization, and privatization in the 1990s caused a gradual change of the socio-spatial image of the neighborhood. Some elements of the housing complex started to lose their original function and the community character of Solidarita could be jeopardized. Using the theoretical concept of place attachment and the concept of social production of place, the aim of this paper is to show how residents of the Solidarita housing estate in Prague are attached to the place of their home and neighborhood and how this attachment is reconceptualized through the post-socialist socio-spatial changes of the place.

Working for your own folks: the microeconomics of social media

ABSTRACT This paper uses a comparative ethnographic approach to explore the ways in which social media enables new economic strategies that capitalize on women's traditional forms of reliance within their local communities. We use ethnographic examples from northern Chile, southeast Italy, and south India to show how women are successful in establishing small but prestigious entrepreneurial activities by using social media to respond to local social and cultural needs. Women use social media to transform both conventional work practices and individuals' notions of work in ways that overcome important structural constraints they face in their respective communities. These findings contrast with optimistic analyses that suggest online platforms decrease global inequalities through bringing disadvantaged people into global economic flows. This article demonstrates the effective ways in which individuals use social media to gradually change local norms related to gender and work while making small but important gains towards economic stability. This process is related to important shifts in sociality that have resulted from social media use within local communities. By focusing on entrepreneurship and gendered aspects of online economic exchange, we develop an understanding of what happens when longstanding expectations for gendered work meet commerce made possible through new media.

Long-Term “Ethnicized Silences”, Family Secrets and Nation-Building

This article demonstrates the dynamic relationship between long-term ethnicized silences, family secrets and nation-building in Central and Eastern Europe. How have modern nation-states been imagined and formed on the basis of these long-term silences? In order to illustrate what we believe could be the contribution to anthropology (principally to nationalism studies) enabled by introducing this analytical category of silences, in this research we will focus on a close analysis of the life story and identity journey of a self-identified “Slovak woman with Hungarian-Roma roots” who settled in the Czech Republic in 2009. Through this ethnographic example, and in an attempt to go beyond particularities, some of the themes covered are: what meanings, uses and processes of silences can we find in Slovakia, and what is their relationship to the construction of minorities and to an ethno-cultural model of nation-building (an imagined community)? In which domains and under which power relationships have long-term silences and hidden family secrets prevailed in everyday life? To what extent have those silence frameworks been negotiated and used as intergenerational strategies of family unity and protection? And finally, within the context of migration and the complex processes of Europeanization and globalization, how have those long-term, in this case “shamed”, ethnicized Roma silences been contested and broken, and what is the meaning of this development (at micro and macro levels)? In other words, for nation-states that have long been imagined on the principle of ethno-cultural homogeneity, I ask what can long-term ethnicized silences tell us about the process of nation-building (from the bottom up) and the quality of our EU democracies? Where do we come from, where are we now and, at least in terms of a warning (due to the rise of xenophobic forms of populism and radical nationalism), where are we going?

Hunting Equipment of Russians Living near Tara on the Irtysh in the 17th and 18th Centuries

This article describes Russian hunting tools unearthed from several sites near the town of Tara on the Irtysh: Ananyino I, Izyuk I, Tara, and Fort Bergamak. The functions of tools are assessed on the basis of archaeological parallels from the Baraba forest-steppe, ethnographic examples relating to the culture of the Irtysh natives, materials from Fort Albazin and Fort Sayansk, and much earlier burials dating to the Xianbei-Rouran time in the Altai Mountains. The variety of 17th–18th century hunting tools is best represented at Mangazeya, Fort Alazeya, and Fort Stadukhin. Apart from typological comparisons, technological analysis was carried out for several wooden and metal artifacts. Results are helpful for revealing continuities between the 17th–18th century Russian hunting tradition at Tara and that practiced in Old Rus and in the 15th–17th century Russian state, as well as for comparing it with the Siberian native traditions.

The Sheep Mountain Animal Net Revisited

A juniper fiber net discovered in a cave near Cody, Wyoming, had been radiocarbon dated at 8860 BP (6910 ± 170 BC; RL-396) in 1986. Reanalysis and four additional AMS radiocarbon dates indicate an age younger than 1300 cal BP. Net metrics are consistent with archaeological and ethnographic examples identified as rabbit nets.

Caminhar(es): Movimento e aprendizagem em Tim Ingold

The essay aims to discuss the ecological implications of walking, considering Tim Ingold’s perspective. Namely, the implications in the organism-environment relationship along the context and flow of walking. Evoking an ethnography of Van Gujjar walking and, another, about the paths and histories of the Tlichǫ, the essay contrast them with the urban walking described by Goffman and Kawada. The emergence of modern cities and the accelerated rhythms of contemporary urban life led to several inversions in the logics and ways of walking of the mentioned ethnographic examples, the essay argues that such processes had a damaging impact not only on the 'procedurality' of walking but, consequently, the understanding of what it is to ‘dwell’.

Digital Encounters of Surrogacy: Nodes of a Fictional Ethnography

The article addresses the question of alternative ways to writing ethnography and more specifically, the ethnography of surrogacy. It focuses on the example of a digital ethnographic artifact that was created in order to host fictional representations of surrogacy practices. The article presents ethnographic material from a recent research project that focused on experiences of surrogate parenthood of Greek and Cypriot intended parents. The digital artifact demonstrates how multimodal anthropological narrations may represent, and simultaneously evoke, sensory experience through the temporal and spatial digital unfolding of interlocutors’ stories. Indeed, the article explains the structure of the artifact and discusses specific digital nodes which depict interlocutors’ testimonies of longing, waiting, uncertainty, vulnerability, pain, loss, joy, and safekeeping before, during, and after surrogacy procedures. In the context of the ethnographic artifact narratives and non-narratives of motherhood, fatherhood, and pregnancy refer to a variety of precarious contexts of placeness/emplacement, legality/illegality, and connectedness/disconnectedness without relying on conventional textual ethnographic writing. Drawing from selected ethnographic examples as they relate to the literature of assisted reproduction, the authors argue that digital nodal narration enables both the cultural contextualization of individual experience as well as its affective and intellectual correlation with similar and antithetical experiences of other field interlocutors.

Freedom of Speech

Free speech is a familiar concept. It is an established ideal of liberalism and democratic politics, and the subject of political debate and conflict across diverse historical and cultural contexts. Free speech has not primarily been considered, however, as a set of lived, valued, and contested practices, mediated by various linguistic, ethical, and material forms. While anthropology has not traditionally occupied itself with free speech, it has extensive tools for bringing free speech into view beyond its quality as an abstract ideal or legal category. This entry borrows theoretical perspectives, as well as ethnographic examples produced by anthropologists, to shed light on free speech within a broader comparative frame. It begins by focusing on free speech as a dynamic value or virtue, asking: what is it about ‘free’ or ‘direct’ speech that people value when they value it? Secondly, the entry casts critical light on the idea of an individual as the universal ‘free speaker’, demonstrating how collective or disaggregated subjects can also practice free speech. Thirdly, it explores the material settings, contexts, or technologies through which free speech is curtailed or realised. Finally, the entry considers the idea of ‘voice’ as signalling modes of embodiment, and auditory phenomena such as noise, sound, and silence, which are not spoken language but can inform and expand our understanding of free speech.

The Subcultural Imagination: Critically Negotiating the Co-Production of ‘Subcultural Subjects’ through the Lens of C. Wright Mills

This article interrogates the following two concepts: the ‘subcultural imagination’ and the ‘subcultural subject’. We explore debates surrounding the ways in which interactions between the researcher and participant produce knowledge, in order to further establish the critical contribution of subculture within sociology. This article draws upon the notion of critique and ideas of C. Wright Mills (1959) in order to demonstrate the potential of new forms of ‘imagination’ within subcultures research. We seek to show through ethnographic examples how researchers and participants can be engaged in co-production of fieldwork, analysis and writing within research at different levels of engagement. The article will cover four areas, all focused on placing ‘imagination’ at the centre of subcultures research: first, it critiques the postmodern post-subcultural position within youth cultural studies; second, it defines the subcultural imagination and third, it explores specific empirical examples of subcultural subjects and, finally, we shall address the potential for micro co-production.

Assessing Creditworthiness in the Age of Big Data

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, we show how algorithms have become increasingly central to financial credit scoring; second, we draw on this to further develop the anthropological study of algorithmic governance. As such, we describe the literature on credit scoring and then discuss ethnographic examples from two regulatory and commercial contexts: the US and Denmark. From these empirical cases, we carve out main developments of algorithmic governance in credit scoring and elucidate social and cultural logics behind algorithmic governance tools. Our analytical framework builds on critical algorithm studies and anthropological studies where money and payment infrastructures are viewed as embedded in their specific cultural contexts (Bloch and Parry 1989; Maurer 2015). The comparative analysis shows how algorithmic credit scoring takes different forms hence raising different issues in the two cases. Danish banks seem to have developed a system of intensive, yet hidden credit scoring based on surveillance and harvesting of behavioural data, which, however, due to GDPR takes place in restricted silos. Credit scores are hidden to customers, and therefore there has been virtually no public debate regarding the algorithmic models behind scores. In the US, fewer legal restrictions on data trading combined with both widespread and visible credit scoring has led to the development of a credit data market and widespread use of credit scoring by ‘affiliation’ on the one hand, but also to increasing public and political critique on scoring models on the other.

When Legends Fall Silent Our Ways Are Lost: Some Dimensions of the Study of Aging among Native Canadians

This discussion of some of the dimensions of the study of aging among Native Canadians leans heavily upon Holzberg (1981). I refer to two dimensions that she has identified (lack of homogeneity in ethnic categories and the situational environment) and indicate how these are relevant in regard to Native people. I discuss urbanization as a third dimension, and present an ethnographic example that can be related to all three dimensions. This example is also shown to be relevant to the modernization theory of aging.

Smelting Experiments with Chalcopyrite Ore based on Evidence from the Eastern Alps

In order to assess the fractionation of copper isotopes during smelting under reconstructed conditions, smelting experiments with chalcopyrite ore were conducted in built furnaces based on archaeometallurgical evidence from the Bronze Age Eastern Alps and ethnographic examples from Nepal. Two experimental series, S2 and S4 were chosen for analysis. Each series consisted of a number of roasting and smelting experiments with different experimental parameters, and both series yielded metallic copper. Each type of experiment, their outcomes, and observations made during them are described in detail to facilitate future experimental work. Both series differ significantly in their outcome. XRD analyses and chemical analyses were carried out to reveal the reasons for the observed differences. The chemistry of the obtained matte shows that roasting is pivotal for a successful smelting process and that two cycles of matte roasting and subsequent smelting can be sufficient to remove most of the sulphur and iron from the matte. Furthermore, different conditions in the shaft furnaces resulted in a more efficient oxidation of iron in series S4. During the subsequent smelting of the matte in the pit furnace, it was possible to extract larger amounts of metallic copper and sponge copper, as well as to produce a thin well-melted plate-like slag. The pit furnace did not always show clear traces of metallurgical activity and thus might not be identifiable in the archaeological records without chemical analysis of the pit lining and surrounding soil. Although more trials are needed to replicate the process, these experiments give a strong hint towards the reconstruction of the matte smelting process in the Bronze Age alpine area.