Ethnographic Interviews Research Articles

Applying relational autonomy in US special education: Educators’ role in supporting parents’ decisions for deaf or hard-of-hearing children

ABSTRACT The concept of relational autonomy is widely applied in bioethics research to elucidate how patients’ abilities in agentively making medical decisions are constrained within a complex structural system and set of relations; thus, rather than being individualistic in nature, autonomy is relationally and interdependently situated. While this perspective is thought-provoking, it is seldom explored in settings outside of healthcare. An equally critical site of decision-making processes is found in special education, where parents of children with disabilities must contend with information from both teachers and physicians to make choices that best support their child’s learning and development. Families of deaf or hard-of-hearing (D/HH) children in particular are uniquely positioned to encounter decisions that intersect educational, medical, and sociocultural levels – that is, in the earliest years of a D/HH child’s life, parents must make decisions about the child’s medical care and whether they will receive hearing technology or treatments, which in turn shapes the inherently cultural decision of linguistic choice, which in turn shapes educational decisions about the type of schooling environment for the child. This study broadly asks: In the field of special education, how do parents make decisions for their D/HH child? Data is drawn from semi-structured, ethnographic interviews with 16 educators of the deaf or hard-of-hearing (EODs) across public, private, and state levels in California. IMPACT STATEMENT The findings can help contribute academic research into conversation with social justice-oriented work to improve language and educational access for D/HH children.

The Ethnographic Interview: An Interdisciplinary Guide for Developing an Ethnographic Disposition in Health Research.

Interviews are central to the health ethnographers' toolkit. In this article, we offer a critical engagement with methodological literature coupled with reflective examples from our own research, in order to articulate the value of the ethnographic interview in health research. We contribute to literature on ethnographic interviews in two ways: by decoupling ethnographic interviews from the necessity of accompanying participant observation, and by outlining an ethnographic disposition towards interviewing. We define the seven key epistemic dispositions underpinning the ethnographic interview. These are humility, a readiness to revise core assumptions about a research topic, attentiveness to context, relationality, openness to complexity, an attention to ethnographic writing, and a consideration of the politics and history of the method. The strength of an epistemic understanding of the ethnographic interview is that it offers flexibility for developing a diverse array of interview techniques responsive to the needs of different research contexts and challenges. Ethnographic interviews, we show, contribute to the study of health through a richly explorative, responsive, contextualised, and reflexive approach.

Unearthing Stigma About Prostitution Among Indonesian State Actors: A Critical Narrative Analysis

ABSTRACT Prostitution has long been stigmatized in socio-political discourse. The mounting empirical evidence shows that stigmatization is discursively attached to sex workers’ occupations. Although much prior research has addressed this phenomenon, little evidence reports to which extent prostitution practice is institutionally stigmatized from a developing state-and-social-sanctioned perspective in which this prostitution stigmatization is viewed as a fundamental cause of social inequality. This study examines to which extent the narratives embedded in policy documents, news articles, and ethnographic interview reports frame ideologies, assumptions, and biases that shape governmental responses to prostitution. Data from policy documents, news articles, and ethnographic interviews were analyzed with a critical narrative approach. Three emergent finding themes presented in this article include knowledge of religious norms shaping government policy and public opinions, the discourse of governmental power, and female sex workers as the main target of government policy. The implication of the present study is how governments and state and social actors mitigate the adverse effects of stigma and promote social justice and equality for sex workers in Indonesia and other developing countries.

Strengthening the Voices of Hispanic/Latine Immigrants Managing Chronic Disease: A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Perspectives of Health.

Individuals who migrate from their home country face a variety of challenges while adapting to the culture in the United States. Immigrant communities are at a significantly higher risk for poor health outcomes; therefore, assessing healthcare treatment for diverse and resilient immigrant populations, including Hispanic/Latine communities, is crucial to preserving their health, culture, and spirit. A paucity of literature exists surrounding perceptions of well-being in immigrant, Hispanic/Latine adults managing chronic diseases. Past studies have shown a discrepancy between providers' and patients' perceptions of healthcare options for overall well-being. We aim to share varying perspectives found within our work geared towards improving the quality of life for Hispanic/Latine immigrants managing chronic disease, especially type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension. The primary objective of this article is to strengthen the understanding of intersections between social, physical, financial, and spiritual health within an (im)migrant Hispanic/Latine community using semi-structured ethnographic interviews. These interviews have highlighted community resilience, demonstrating that individuals can adapt to major life transitions while maintaining balance across dimensions of health. This knowledge could be implemented by actively listening to patient concerns regarding their health dimensions to improve individualized and patient-centric care.

"Being My Own Pillar of Support": How Palestinian-Arab Women Citizens of Israel Cope With IPV.

Studies on the ways in which women implement coping strategies to recover from intimate partner violence have primarily focused on Western, non-collectivistic societies. To contribute to the scant literature on coping strategies among women in traditional-collectivistic societies, the current study applied the principles of Clinical Ethnographic Narrative Interview to analyze the experiences of 15 Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel as these women confronted violence within marriage. This exploration is situated within the backdrop of entrenched collectivistic traditional norms and the broader context of the enduring Israeli-Arab conflict. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis revealed three themes that translated into a transformative three-phase coping model. The first theme covers navigating violent relationships through avoidance, emotional encapsulation, and cognitive reframing. The second theme describes strategies to mitigate violence and its consequences, including escapist and immediate departure, sustained fulfillment of duties, and maintaining hope amid adversity. The third theme characterizes strategies aimed at achieving self-care and self-empowerment. The findings highlight the importance of acknowledging women's definition of coping and recovery within their cultural constraints as they chart their coping trajectories.

Spatial repertoires of power in the production of mining territories in northern Cauca, Colombia: Between imposition and negotiation

Territorial conflicts driven by the expansion of various forms of mining have escalated in the Global South. This article builds on the concept of territorialization, which often highlights the control of sociogeographical spaces by powerful through legal and coercive strategies. While existing literature addresses these power dynamics and resistance by less powerful actors, there is a gap in exploring the microscalar interactions that shape these territorial struggles. This study, based on ethnographic interviews and participant observation in the Afro-Colombian territories of the Quinamayó river basin, contributes to critical scholarship by decoupling the logic of territorialization from a top-down domination approach, emphasizing instead the everyday interactions and power relations that underpin territorial control. We explore the production of new mining territorialities from a quotidian and relational perspective, focusing on spatial repertoires of power, or a range of power strategies and relations that update extractive geographies in time. We find that territorial appropriation is defined and transformed through everyday moments of imposition and negotiation between multiple actors with different degrees of power. This microscale perspective deepens the understanding of territorial production, showing how daily interactions transform people’s connection to the territory, and highlighting the context-specific, agency-driven nature of these processes.

Changing diasporic identity and increasing global backlash: the Xi government’s tactics and challenges of engaging new generation overseas Chinese

ABSTRACT The transnational engagement between the Chinese communist government and first-generation overseas Chinese has been analysed extensively, but the academic analysis of interactions between the Chinese communist government under Xi Jinping and new generation overseas Chinese is scarce. Questions arise regarding how the rise of new generation overseas Chinese has changed the diasporic identity of the overseas Chinese community; what the Xi government’s tactics of engaging new generation overseas Chinese are; and how new generation overseas Chinese respond to the Xi government’s targeted campaign. By answering these questions, this article provides an important case study for the emerging scholarship on the relations between authoritarian states and new generation diasporas. Building on government archives, ethnographic interviews, media reports, and online and offline diaspora events, this article analyses the Xi government’s tactics and challenges of diaspora engagement targeting new generation overseas Chinese, and forecasts an uphill battle for the Xi government.

Mutual capabilities: digital platforms in unpredictable pedagogical encounters

ABSTRACT This paper examines the implications of platforms as a repertoire for knowing and relating the intensities of pandemic restrictions on teaching and schoolwork. Building on platformisation in education, what work platforms do in unpredictable everyday pedagogical encounters is investigated. Specifically, the paper explores a methodological potential with platforms’ capabilities to pull some things together while supressing others. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with teachers and students in Sweden in 2021, everyday platform practices such as handling assignments, requests to connect online, and repetitive notifications are analysed with actor-network theory. Tensions of discomforts, resistance, and trust unfold critical acknowledgements of digital platforms as more complex objects than shaping pedagogical encounters prior to their practices. Instead, capabilities emerge as mutually rendered. The analysis shows that platforming well-bounded domains for clearer and more flexible teaching and schoolwork incoherently make educational practices less so, highlighting crucial openings to surprise and curiosity of pedagogical encounters.

An ethnographic study of Vietnamese-Ukrainian identity

ABSTRACT Vietnamese Ukrainians are a largely unstudied identity group that has recently attracted attention due to the impacts of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Our study examines Vietnamese-Ukrainian bicultural identity as experienced by 10 university student refugees of the war in 2022–23. Researchers conducted semi-structured ethnographic interviews in which each participant examined identity formation experiences as second-generation Vietnamese Ukrainians. Participants also reflected upon the impacts to ethnic identity self-awareness that resulted from their unexpected return migration to Vietnam as student refugees of war. The cohort of study participants created a tight-knit Vietnamese-Ukrainian return diaspora in an environment conducive to self-reflection and exploration of their ongoing ethnic identity journeys. In our study, we argue that the ethnic identity formation of young Vietnamese Ukrainians relies on the active construction of intercultural personhood as an adaptation to transnational mobility and change.

Bureaucratic and benign? The violent continuum of Home Office reporting in the UK

The border, the body, immigration reporting centres, and detention facilities, the violence of border regimes operates across these sites through a continuum, successively steering migrants towards subjugation, destitution and removal. Adopting a feminist framing of violence, which attends to the inherent interconnectedness between different sites and scales of violence, this paper focuses on immigration reporting to examine how its sites and practices enact various forms of violence over migrant bodies. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with asylum-seekers in Bristol and Salford, I argue that a host of spatiotemporal practices produce various forms of violence which become intimately inflicted and experienced, and yet which are inextricably tethered to the foundational logics of sovereign state politics. How reporting sites and processes function reflect the contemporary means through which violence is both imposed and concealed on those who have been categorised as ‘unwanted’ by the state.

Why Should One Study Anthropology?

Unlike the other social science disciplines, anthropology has a broader scope in terms of its theory and methods. It is a holistic discipline which covers all aspects of human being. Nepal has relatively short history of anthropology as teaching discipline. However, it has more than two hundred years of research tradition in Nepal. A score of foreign and native anthropologists have been carried out the research in Nepal. Compare to other disciplines, there are relatively getting research fund from the foreign universities and development agencies. Recent data of the central department of anthropology shows that employment rate of the pass out students in master’s degree in anthropology is higher. But why the number of students enrolled in graduate and undergraduate is low. Taking this issue into consideration, this paper answers the question of low number of student enrolment in the various constituent colleges of Tribhuvan University. The Paper is based on ethnographic interviews with some graduate/ undergraduate students and faculty of Tribhuvan University. There are some reasons to be a low number of students in anthropology: Anthropology demands rigorous and continuous study on the subject matter where original texts are taught. In Nepal, people not only common people but also intellectual including professionals have little knowledge about the distinction between sociology and anthropology due to a long experience of joint department, Tribhuvan University. Importantly, there is no realization from Tribhuvan University administration and Government of Nepal why anthropology is important for the development of the nation. Paper answers these issues.

Les Objets Religieux Des Immigrés Subsahariens à Casablanca : Un Usage Spirituel Et Culturel"

This article investigates the lives of Sub-Saharan immigrants in Casablanca, Morocco's economic capital, where many seek economic opportunities and safety. It explores the personal objects carried by these immigrants from their home countries, which hold significant religious and social importance and are integrated into their daily lives and ritual practices. Drawing on the works of sociologists such as Appadurai and Baudrillard, the study delves into the cultural meanings of these objects. Through ethnographic interviews, stories like those of Jean Noël, an Ivorian who values seawater for its healing and protective properties, and Amina, a Nigerian student who uses herbs to alleviate headaches, illustrate how these objects maintain a connection to their cultural and spiritual identities. Mamadou, a Senegalese trader in Casablanca, uses a silver ring engraved with "ALLAH" in his therapeutic practices, incorporating Quranic verses to soothe his clients' pain, highlighting the religious and cultural significance of these objects in their daily lives.

Curating 'the good story': Care as representative performance in Danish veteran rehabilitation.

In this article, we explore the intricacies of veteran care and show how care practices come to incorporate veterans' 'self-performances' to raise political attention and funding for future rehabilitation activities. By bringing into dialogue theories of care and theories of performance and representation, we illustrate how a seemingly classic form of care-veteran rehabilitation-takes the form of representative performance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with the Danish Invictus Games team, we demonstrate how politics, research and TV documentaries are integrated into veteran care practices. Through this integration, mentally wounded veterans, while performing 'themselves' for shifting audiences with shifting agendas, come to assume the roles of both caregivers and care receivers. Crucially, we highlight that wounded veterans, while undertaking their personal rehabilitation journey, are curated into and (un)willingly positioned as representatives of others. By showing how caring for wounded veterans goes hand in hand with caring for fictive, future wounded veterans and for political, research and media agendas, this article offers new ways of thinking of and with care.

Environmental Care: How Marine Scientists Relate to Environmental Changes

AbstractMarine scientists have reported drastic environmental changes in marine and polar regions as a result of climate change. The changes range from species compositions in coastal regions and the deep-sea floor, the degradation of water and ice quality to the ever-growing plastic pollution affecting marine habitats. Marine scientists study these changes in their fieldwork, and communicate their findings in scientific publications. Some also rally in protests for the necessity of political programs to tackle changes. Based on ethnographic visits and interviews with marine scientists, this study examines how marine scientists experience and act on environmental changes as individuals and as collectives. In order to analyze their experiences and actions, I use the notion of care and portray care in different times and spaces, from work to protest. I demonstrate how care needs to be situated in different times and spaces, how care is embedded in a complex relationship of institutional requirements and structural demands that researchers experience, but also how care receives institutionalization and has an impact on research interests and agendas. In doing so, I show the social and epistemic consequences of care, opening up a view of individual and collective care in the marine sciences.

A thematic analysis of social work students’ assignments of reflection on interviews with older adults

ABSTRACT There is an increasing need of gerontological education in social work to enhance the knowledge of aging and interests in senior care among students. This study is conducted based on an experiential-learning strategy with a combination of having an ethnographic interview with an older adult and writing a reflection paper afterward as an assignment embedded in a Gerontology course of the Bachelor of Social Work program in western Canada. Thematic analysis was applied to eight reflection papers in which a consent was obtained from 2020 to 2021 cohorts of social work students. Three key themes emerged: connection between learned knowledge and interview topics, resonation interview content with personal experiences, and a positive perception of aging and a positive attitude toward working with aging populations. The findings support the combination of ethnographic interview and reflection paper as a pedagogical approach in gerontological education not only for improving students’ learning experience and knowledge but also for establishing a positive perception of aging and older adults. The study also reveals the necessity of more interaction between students and older adults to enhance a better understanding of aging-related issues and promote willingness to work with older adults.

Assisted Dying as Intimate Care

How does asking loved ones to help you die, to help you commit suicide, bend the limits of our relationships and perhaps of care itself? This paper traces the aesthetic and affective considerations of those deciding to die resist against depersonalizing experiences of medical care. Focusing on ethnographic interviews with members of the British right-to die group My Death My Decision, I explore how individuals recruit loved ones and doctors to actively participate in their death through “assistance”. This paper will specifically focus on what this assistance looks, or perhaps more accurately, feels like. It will question if the desire for an assisted death in which bodies, actions, and decisions touch and are touched by one another is a demand which exceeds the boundaries of “care”. My Death My Decision is campaigning to legalize assisted suicide based on a belief that the individual knows when it’s their time to die, regardless of a terminal diagnosis. One member, Pat, has decided that when the time comes, she will travel from London to a euthanasia center in Switzerland where, surrounded by loved ones, she can receive a “kind death” from doctors that care. Unlike colloquial uses of care, here, Pat references a relationship which is not defined by medical interventions to elongate life. This paper argues that presence and touch – both physical and emotional – can produce communal practices and ethics of care which challenge traditional expectations of biomedicine.

Social, environmental and territorial consequences of the agribusiness model in the Chaco region in Argentina

ABSTRACT Since the mid-19th century, the unequal distribution of and access to land and common goods such as water have exacerbated the socio-economic differences to land and common goods such as water have exacerbated socio-economic differences between the inhabitants and agro-industrial entrepreneurs in the province of Chaco, Argentina. In this scenario, relations based on socio-environmental injustice have meant that the main people affected are the members of the indigenous and peasant communities who have historically lived in these territories and whose ways of knowing and living in these spaces have been violated on a daily basis. From an anthropological perspective, this article aims to describe and analyse the scenario in which these differences emerge, configuring spaces of power and contestation in which heterogeneous interests converge. where heterogeneous (and often contradictory) interests converge. This article, based on more than a decade of fieldwork, recovers ethnographic interviews, as well as a review of specialised literature and analysis of sources, from which the aforementioned scenario will be described.

Overlapping Areas Used for Artisanal Fishing and Populations of Franciscana Dolphin (Pontoporia blainvillei) in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean

This study identified the overlap between artisanal fishing areas and the Franciscana dolphin (Pontoporia blainvillei) in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean (SWAO), Brazil, to identify areas where the species was incidentally captured from the perception of artisanal fishers. Using a semistructured questionnaire, ethnographic interviews (n = 330) were carried out from 2012 to 2018 with fishers from ten communities in southeastern (ES and RJ) and southern (PR) Brazil. After the interviews, the fishers presented their fishing routes, locations and areas of incidental capture and occurrence of the Franciscana dolphin. Ninety-five fishers (29%) identified the species: 23 in northern ES, 1 in southern ES, 20 in northern RJ, and 51 in the PR. Among the 235 fishers who could not identify the species, approximately half worked in the distribution gaps. The areas of occurrence noted by the fishers coincided with those described in the “National Action Plan for the Conservation of the Toninha,” an official document from the Brazilian Government and scientific literature. The results indicate that the information provided by fishers is useful for understanding the distribution of the Franciscana dolphin and can be used in the development of management strategies to mitigate the incidental capture of the species.

‘Hands on’, ‘hands off’ or ‘hands poised’? Exploring intrapartum midwifery decision making through ethnographic research

IssueInjury to the perineal tissues during childbirth is a frequent occurrence with most women likely to experience perineal injury during a first birth which, in some cases, can lead to significant long-term morbidity. The techniques used to minimise perineal injury are frequently termed ‘hands on’ and ‘hands poised’ or ‘hands off’. These terms are often undefined and used inconsistently in the literature, making it difficult to identify the best available evidence to inform midwifery practice. AimThis study aimed to answer the research questions: What do midwives do to minimise perineal injury during birth and what influences their decision-making? MethodsAn ethnographic study was undertaken during 2016 in a maternity unit in the southeast of England. Data were collected through participant-observation, ethnographic and semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis, informed by the pedagogic theory of threshold concepts. Findings31 midwives participated in the study. Evidence-based decision-making to minimise perineal injury during birth was identified as a complex concept. Within the context of threshold concept theory, three main themes were identified that contributed to the complexity: troublesome language, troublesome knowledge, and troublesome environments. ConclusionsMidwifery decision-making in the context of minimising perineal injury during birth is more varied and conceptually complex than has been previously described. Identification of the various aspects of troublesomeness in this context suggests that this element of practice is a midwifery threshold concept. Addressing this within midwifery curricula and practice education to enable evidence-based decision-making is important.

In Dabouki Land: Interdisciplinary notes on the cultural history of a landrace grape cultivar in Israel

Cultivated for millennia, the grapevine held a special status as one of the most important fruits in the historical Levant and the Mediterranean world. However, since past farmers typically did not leave written accounts of their activities, viticulture history is often shrouded in ambiguity, especially concerning the classification of grapevine landrace varieties. Hence, the study of archaic viticulture relies heavily on methodological fusion to unravel its more readily discernible biological and oral traditions. We therefore merged archaeological fieldwork, historical archival analysis, field geography and ethnographic interviews to collect multifarious data on the Dabouki grapevine. Our analytical synthesis enabled us to depict how, over the course of history, diverse communities variously grew this cultivar in dryland vineyards. The cultural history of the Dabouki stretches from at least the Ottoman era, when it was widely planted throughout the region under various names, to its current revival by enterprising Israeli and Palestinian winemakers. The majority of our research was conducted within a unique environmental corridor in the western Negev of Israel where dense concentrations of relic Dabouki grapevine survive. Our paper surveys the cultural history of the Dabouki grape as a flagship cultivar in the intergenerational horticultural regimes of arid land farmers in the western Negev of the southern Levant. Remarkably, archaic Negev viticulturalists used the same cultivars across successive historical periods and varying socioeconomic contexts. As such, the paper illustrates that arid regions with longstanding winegrowing traditions are ideal for locating endemic grapevines that apparently can withstand challenging growing conditions. Focusing on the enduring legacy of the Dabouki, we suggest how historical knowledge of ancient dryland farming systems and landrace cultivars can bolster the sustainability of contemporary viticulture.