Ethnographic Imagination Research Articles

Reading ethnography in the classroom

Abstract As the popularity of ethnographic research methods grows across and beyond the social sciences, it is of paramount importance that practitioners reflect on how to best teach participant observation to increasingly diverse and interdisciplinary audiences. While available literature stresses the importance of learning-by-doing to develop students’ ethnographic sensibility, I argue that these techniques neglect the development of students’ ethnographic imagination, which is necessary to prepare first-time fieldworkers to face the unpredictability of research. To remedy this training shortcoming, I then propose that we turn to reading ethnographies in the classroom as a collective, critical and participative practice that can help students picture ‘what really happens’ during fieldwork, inspire their research design, and prepare them for the unpredictability of participant observation.

The Suomen antropologi Ethnographic Reading Challenge

Each year just before the New Year, our hometown library—the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Library Network (Helmet 2024)—issues a curated 50-book reading challenge. To celebrate a new year, Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, presents an ethnographic reading challenge in a similar style. The challenge is an outcome of one recent Friday evening when we—middle-aged neighbours and colleagues who did not know what else to do with our free time—went for a walk to our local library. Woven into this reading challenge is a bid for something more. The categories in this challenge purposely extend across broad, or ambiguous, categories, at times bordering on the downright silly. Our intention is to encourage thoughtful reading of ethnographies and other books that inspire our ethnographic imaginations.

Examining the Relevance of Ethnographic Practices in Researching Teacher Identity in Preservice Teacher Education

This paper advocates the relevance of ethnography as a methodology for researching preservice teacher education. The research underpinning this paper demonstrates the importance and relevance of the ethnographic imagination for examining the formation and development of preservice teacher identity, offering a means of capturing the lived experience of learning to teach from the perspective of those entering the profession. The experience of learning to teach on three graduate-level teacher education pathways in the South of England is explored using ethnographic methods. The yearlong immersion in three different research sites and subsequent thematic analysis of the generated data gives insight into the formation of the teacher identity, foregrounding the importance of place in the experiential journey of the preservice teacher. The comprehensive data generated from this study gives unique insight into how ethnographic practices can reveal the developmental process of teacher identity and has relevance for teacher educators and researchers internationally.

Ritual <em>Penti</em> di Tanah Diaspora: Komunitas Manggarai di Kalimantan Barat

In order to unite the Manggarai people in West Kalimantan, the Manggarai community leaders on behalf of the “Manggarai people” invited all Manggarai people to discuss the Penti ritual. The meeting resulted in an agreement to hold the Penti ritual. They received support from the Dayak Mualang community, so that the ritual could be carried out. This study describes the similarities and differences of the Penti rituals practiced in Flores and in West Kalimantan. The Penti ritual is held as a form of gratitude for the Manggarai people to God (Mori Keraeng) and their ancestors for their success abroad. The methodology used in this study is the ethnographic imagination methodology introduced by Paul Willis. Concepts used in the analysis of this study are the concepts of crossing and dwelling from Thomas A. Tweed and of liminality and communitas from Victor Turner. This study shows that the Penti ritual practiced by Manggarai people living outside their West Kalimantan hometowns contains important aspects, namely giving thanks to Mori Keraeng (God) and ancestors, fostering family relationships, and introducing the ritual to the younger generation of Manggarai in West Kalimantan.

My brilliant city: Naples, urban poverty and the ‘ethnographic imagination’ of Elena Ferrante

ABSTRACT Elena Ferrante’s ‘Neapolitan Novels’, published in English between 2012 and 2015, tell the coming-of-age story of two women born in a poor neighbourhood in post-war Naples. The international success of this four-part series of novels – named in the Italian edition after the title of the first novel, L’amica geniale (‘My Brilliant Friend’) – testifies to the enduring popularity of the urban poor of Naples as a literary subject. This article discusses several key issues of urban poverty that emerge from the series (i.e. social exclusion, ghettoization, widespread illegality, endemic violence and women’s oppression) and analyses how they are narrated, drawing on two classic texts of ethnographic scholarship: Thomas Belmonte’s The Broken Fountain (1979) and Italo Pardo’s Managing Existence in Naples (1996). In doing so, it reconsiders Ferrante’s narrative from a socio-anthropological perspective and assesses her ‘ethnographic imagination’ vis-à-vis two opposing tendencies in the literature about the urban poor of Naples: one geared towards stigmatization and the other towards romanticization. The article thus argues that the ‘Neapolitan Novels’ offer a refreshing take on a deeply stereotyped subject, countering (at least in part) the process of ‘othering’ that traditionally affects the literary representation of Naples’ urban poor.

Muslim Ethics and the Ethnographic Imagination

ABSTRACTTheoretical and methodological discussions of ethnography and ethics have appeared regularly in the Journal of Religious Ethics for at least the past 13 years. Many of these conversations have been preoccupied by the relationship between “normative” work in religious ethics and “descriptive” work on moral worlds and patterns of reasoning. However, there has often been a perceived impasse when it comes to drawing “normative” ethical arguments from fine‐grained ethnographic study. This paper begins by assessing significant contributions to religious ethics made by ethnographers of Islam, focusing on the way they render a stark descriptive/normative binary irrelevant. I then turn to an example from my own fieldwork that expands our understanding of the relationship between ethnography and ethics. Through this example, I argue that ethical thinkers working outside the academy—theologians, activists, and cultural producers—also draw on an “ethnographic imagination” to make moral arguments. I end by reflecting on how the “ethnographic imagination” situates religious ethics as part of broader humanistic inquiry, showing that careful accounts of how people do live are always enmeshed with visions of how we should live.

Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs Book Review

British author Paul Willis is well-known for his work in sociology and cultural studies. His writings, which place an emphasis on consumerism, socialization, and popular culture, are particularly well-liked in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and education. Currently a lecturer at Princeton University’s sociology department, he also founded and serves as editor of the worldwide magazine ethnography of stage publication. His best-selling books include the ethnographic imagination, Profane Culture, and Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs.

Sampling as ethnographic method/remixing Gulu City

AbstractThis article describes the process of producing Gulu SoundTracks, a digital sonic ethnographic project accessible at gulusoundtracks.org, with four Ugandan music producers based in Gulu. The album comprises eight digital audio tracks that tell stories about Gulu musically through the compositional mixing of field soundscape recordings. Using field recordings as samples opened up sampling as a multimodal method for ethnographic storytelling which entails listening that is “vexed” (Weheliye 2005), archival, multiple, and generative. Pointing to insights from the project's creative process, the author explores sound praxis as a modality for amplifying fruitful connections between ethnographic and Afrodiasporic arts traditions. In conversation with others using sound methods in anthropology, ethnomusicology, and digital sound studies, this article stages a dialogue between sound‐based work, critical treatments of Black and Afrosonic cultural production, and experimental ethnography. Sampling as method centers ethnographic imagination and points to critical possibilities field recording holds for anthropological knowledge production.

Enacting aspirational rural schooling towards sustainable futures: exploring students’ ethnographic imaginations implications for place-based pedagogy

ABSTRACT Place-based pedagogy (PBP) has become an emerging strategy for improving educational relevance for low-income communities. This article investigates children's learning aspirations to motivate broader theoretical discussion about opportunities for enacting PBP for rural schooling success in Ghana. Using an ethnographic case study design, collaboration with a rural school supported data collection on children's home cultural capital shaping teachers’ pedagogy. Using PBP theorisations, thematic analysis of qualitative data found rural students’ aspirations were less diversified and heavily shaped by their immediate environment. The article concludes that inspiring higher aspirations in the rural children researched would require geographically sensitive teachers who stretch their learners’ inculcated images about their community into global opportunities. The article proposes integration of Ghanaian rural indigenous place-sensitive, apprenticeship-based, collectivist learning approaches and traditionally valued skills, through PBP, as a key re-positioning strategy to improve educational outcomes for Ghanaian rural children through greater harnessing of home cultural capital.

Ethnographic Imagination as an Interpretative Approach to the World of Infants and Children with Developmental Disabilities

Reflections on children’s agency have become popular in anthropological and sociological studies of childhood. Scholars tended to treat children as independent and active social members, rather than individuals still undergoing maturity. To guarantee their right to information and participation, researchers have constantly refined their methods in hopes of involving children in research projects as much as possible and empowering their voices. Yet, because of our technological and cognitive restraints, these innovative efforts have not helped us comprehend the thoughts and experiences of infants and children with developmental disabilities. This article proposes ethnographic imagination as an alternative approach. Based on 11-month fieldwork in a Chinese orphanage, I suggest that we could utilize the clues drawn from our participatory research and caregivers’ experiences to untangle children’s ‘messy’ behaviors in an ethnographically imaginative way. Rooted in specific contexts and reliant on the collective experience of stakeholders, while also connecting broader perceptions of everyday life and the sociocultural insights of participatory observation, this interpretative approach may provide observers with a justifiable explanation to the world of nonverbal and minimally verbal children.

The Other's Tongue: Place, Perspective, and the Desire to Speak Portuguese among the People of the Xingu Indigenous Territory

AbstractThis article examines the frequently expressed desire among people of the Xingu Indigenous Territory living in the city of Canarana, Brazil, to learn Portuguese. It examines such statements of intent, which are typically presented as a reason for indigenous urban migration. I argue that the desire to learn Portuguese is itself in need of investigation, to which end I turn to two Upper‐Xinguan Carib myths and a conversation at the headquarters of the Xingu indigenous land association. The indigenous presence in urban spaces offers evidence of the ways in which place serves as a perspectival stabilizer for them, in a world where perspective determines the body's form and, by extension, ontology. Based on long‐term fieldwork and the application of a technique of ethnographic imagination, adapted from Strathern, the article demonstrates how modulation of the tongue is a means of preserving autonomy in relations with Whites and a survival strategy.

Identity Expression—the Case of ‘Sakawa’ Boys in Ghana

Internet fraud remains a problem in Ghana and thus attracts the attention of teachers, researchers, civil society organisations, the state and policymakers. Existing studies on Internet fraud focused on the reasons, combat strategies, cyber spiritualism, the impact of Internet fraud on individuals and the country, and the inadequate legal frameworks for handling such cybercrimes. Despite efforts by the government and other interest groups in fighting the menace, the phenomenon continues to increase among youth in Ghana. Applying Paul Willis’ theory of ethnographic imagination, this study examined how Internet scammers—Sakawa boys—in the northern region of Ghana use their bodies and other cultural materials to express their identity and make meaning. The study reveals that Sakawa boys express their identities and make meaning using language—slang and jargon; conspicuous consumption of material goods; ostentatious lifestyle; techno-religiosity; and gender cyber-fraud collaboration. Thus, it offers a basal understanding of emic dimension of relationship between children and youth in cybercrime, unsuspected victims, and preventive measures. The study also gives theoretical contributions to research in understanding the broader socio-cultural milieu of children and youth in crimes and possible practical measures towards containment.

KARAKTER ORANG MADURA, NASIONALISME, DAN GLOBALISASI

This paper is an essential part for those who are interested in Madurese Studies, which have been mostly written from outsiders’ point of views, mainly Western researchers. This paper aims to produce a counter-discourse to the writings of outsiders who tend to position the Madurese as a violent and destructive ethnicity. By utilizing the method of ethnographic imagination, it is shown that the honourable character of the Madurese is unlike what has been imagined in various Western or Colonial literature. The Madurese have a vital contribution to the nationalism of anti-colonial for the development of Indonesian culture after the independence period. The spirit of Islamic values and culture respects human dignity as the locomotive of the development of the noble character of the Madurese. After the New Order regime, the true character of the Madurese begins to scatter. Intolerant Islamic groups in Madura tried to use the momentum of democracy in Indonesia to oppose all forms of globalization products and Chinese minority groups that were considerably not aligned with their political agenda. Their presence could potentially threaten not only the development of the noble character of the Madurese, but also the integrity of the Indonesian nation.

World Christianity and the Ethnographic Imagination

ABSTRACT The ethnographic imagination links the big stories of broad historical forces and the small stories of individual lived experience. In the study of world Christianity, it links church movements with individual participants, texts with oral traditions, creeds with practices. In this article the author examines the role of migration in the Christian story of the Lisu of southwest China. The author tells the big story of how migration across borders greatly impacted the resilience of Lisu Christianity, allowing it to transcend the political turmoil of particular countries. But she also tells a small story, showing migration as a lived experience that greatly impacted one Christian family. The ethnographic imagination seeks truth in the frayed edges where big stories and small stories meet. Ultimately, the ethnographic imagination is an appropriate research posture for world Christianity because it requires that scholars approach the subject less as a corpus of texts and more as a community of souls.

Introduction

Introduction

Ethnographic Imagination of Korean-Chinese Female Characters in South Korean Popular Films

Ethnographic Imagination of Korean-Chinese Female Characters in South Korean Popular Films

Aftershocks of Relativity

The essay pursues a rereading of Benedict's Patterns of Culture as her probing experiment in search of a temporality appropriate to her aspirations for ethnography. Read between the lines of various of her sources—works by Durkheim, Boas, Einstein, and Bergson—the originality of Patterns is its unfolding of relativity as a series of temporal formulations. In this regard, she brought her powerful ethnographic imagination to bear on the question of what time it is that sustains relativity's ethical and intellectual promise. The purpose of my own experiement with Patterns is not to establish definite connections between her readings and writings, questions and answers, but to grasp something of the bold creativity of her engagement.

Review of L. Török, Herodotus in Nubia

Laszlo Torokâ??s Herodotus in Nubia represents a notable and highly welcome addition to the steadily-burgeoning field of Herodotean studies. Classicists and historians working on Herodotus will have ample cause to thank Torok for providing such a thorough introduction to a topic largely beyond their ken, namely the history and archaeology of ancient Kush. The latter forms the backdrop for the two ancient Ethiopias which Torok identifies within the Histories in Books 2 and 3 respectively : the first a historical kingdom situated in the Middle Nile Region which encompassed Egypt under Nubia's Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, and the second the semi mythical utopia already familiar to Homeric audiences and thus firmly entrenched in the Greeks' ethnographic imagination by the time Herodotus embarked on his enquiries. As a leading light in Nubian studies Torok is ideally placed to comment on the largely overlooked sections of Herodotus' Histories relating to ancient Ethiopia (Torok follows Herodotusby referring to the latter throughout as 'Aithiopia').

Islands as the Origin/End of the World: Ethnographic Imaginations from the Penghu (Taiwan) and Yaeyama (Okinawa) Islands

Abstract This paper conducts a contrapuntal reading of literary texts by Lu Ze-zhi (Penghu) and Sakiyama Tami (Yaeyama), and explores how ethnographic representations of folk beliefs, rituals, and customs are appropriated to expose the barren realities of the remote islands. Analyzing these literary productions as social criticism and social practice, I explore how the literary experiments of the authors function to challenge both the orientalist gaze of modernized societies and the self-orientalizing inclinations in local cultural movements. Defining the two works as counter-narratives of the linear progressive discourse of modernity, I discuss how modernist/postmodernist representations of auto/anti-ethnographic imagination from the islands can help us to interrogate the humanist fantasies of disembodiment and autonomy by exposing the wretched bodies of the islanders.

Generating ethnographic research questions: an anthropological contribution to the study of higher education

ABSTRACTAs part of recent complex transformations, it seems that higher educational organisations are being forced to reorganise, standardise and streamline in order to survive in the new political and economic context. How are ethnographers in general going to approach these contemporary phenomena? By drawing on the conceptual history of anthropology, the aim of this article is to generate ethnographic-oriented research questions concerned with higher education. The first part of the article provides an ethnographic background, while the second part focuses on Paul Willis's reasoning on ethnographic imagination, as a prerequisite for generating alternative research questions. The third part makes explicit anthropologist Maurice Godelier's theoretical imagination, carving out some specific theoretical parts which may be used in the generating process. The conclusion then suggests a number of questions to be asked by future ethnographers of higher education. The questions are followed by a reflection upon the consequences of doing ethnography within contemporary higher education settings, which are increasingly dominated by policy-makers; ethnography is thus to be seen as an intervening instrument.