Ethnographic Observations Research Articles

The Infrastructure of News: Negotiating Infrastructural Capture and Autonomy in Data-Driven News Distribution

The platformisation of news has triggered public and scholarly concern regarding the impact of platforms on the news industry and, more importantly, platforms’ potential threat to ideals of autonomy and economic independence. Despite ongoing debate and the increasing investment in technologies for automated distribution and artificial intelligence, the material infrastructures of the news media sustaining this artificial intelligence-driven news distribution remain understudied. Approaching the infrastructural relationship as spaces of negotiation this article investigates how the news media is negotiating their own autonomy vis-à-vis infrastructure capture by platforms. The analysis is grounded in a mapping of technologies sustaining the production, distribution, and commercial viability of the media. This is further combined with ethnographic observations from two large Danish news organisations and 19 in-depth interviews with news organisations and digital intermediaries from Scandinavia, the US, and the UK. The research shows how infrastructure capture is manifested and negotiated through three overall logics in the infrastructure of news: logics of classification, standardisation, and datafication.

How Age and Life Stage of Relocation Fosters Social Belonging: Comparing Two Groups of Older Migrants in the United States.

The presumed "ossification effect" of the past on older generations remains influential in the scholarship on aging and migration, orienting scholars to highlight the vulnerability of senior migrants in new societies. As a result, the ability of older generations to adapt to receiving societies has been underestimated and largely undifferentiated, and little is known about how age and life stage at arrival matter for how older individuals manage later-life transitions across borders. This article compares 2 groups of Han Chinese senior migrants: recent arrivals (who migrated to the United States later in life) and long-term residents (who migrated to the United States during adulthood). We draw on 112 qualitative interviews and 4 years of ethnographic observation in 2 northeastern cities in the United States. We argue that the life stage at arrival, coupled with class (dis)advantages, are central to analyzing the diverse ways older migrants stake claims to their belonging to American society. We offer the concept of "economies of belonging" to delineate the ways recent arrivals and long-term migrants anchor themselves socially and emotionally in the United States. Through examining the social relationships and state-provided resources that recent arrivals and long-term migrants use to cultivate social belonging and justify their social membership in American society, our analysis reveals that both groups of older migrants have preconceived American dreams before they emigrate, but their age at arrival offers differential opportunities to fulfill those dreams and influences how a sense of belonging unfolds later in life.

English and Co-Construction of Solidarity between Language Agents and Tourists in Tourism Information Service

A substantial number of studies have been completed with respect to the use of English and social solidarity in broader contexts of cross-cultural communications including tourist–host interactions in tourism settings, but little, if any, is understood about the use of English and solidarity in hectic and tightly scheduled international airport settings. This study fills the gap by explicating how English is used by Tourist Information Center (TIC) staffs and incoming tourists at Lombok International Airport (LIA), Lombok, Indonesia, to contextually symbolize solidarity among them. Data were collected in more than a year of intensive participant and non-participant ethnographic observations of real-time interactions at the TIC in the LIA. Recordings, introspective, retrospective, and prospective interviews with the staff and the tourist respondents, as well as note takings of the contexts and the situations of communicative events, were the main means of data collection, and these data were analyzed using integration of sociological analyses of solidarity and ethnographic analyses of communicative interactions. The study elucidates ideological views on the service and explicates how speech accommodation, style convergence, code switching, and kinship terms have been employed as strategies for creating symbolic solidarity.

Peer coaching, implementation support and organisational power

ABSTRACT This article looks at the effects of power (conceived as complex and multi-directional) on the collaborative, interprofessional relationships of peer coaches when delivering implementation support. The study conducted ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis to evaluate the dynamics of peer coaching during the implementation of an evidence-based programme, Patient and Family Centred Care (PFCC), to improve 24 end-of-life care services. The article draws on perspectives from critical management studies to offer insights on the effect of organisational power on collaborations during the administration of peer coaching. This article details the difficulties that organisational power structures posed to interprofessional peer-coaching collaborations. Many of the peer coaches found it difficult to place their advice in the existing ethos of organisations, existing organisational hierarchies, or collaborate in the midst of staff turnover and general time management outside of their control. These considerations meant that successful peer-coaching collaborations and the success of the implementation programme were often divergent.

Making cultural and tourist attractions accessible and inclusive for people with disability through value co-creation amidst COVID-19: a critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT People with disabilities (PwD) are a COVID-19 vulnerable group, and globally they are experiencing even higher rates of social exclusion than before the pandemic. Value co-creation is a process whereby firms and their customers work together to develop service offerings and provides a tool for service improvement during disruptions such as health crises. Although many cultural and tourist attractions have access and inclusion as part of their strategic plans not all of them have turned to value co-creation to address access and inclusion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also have varying degrees of understandings about what facilitates social inclusion. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this study explores how museums have addressed access and inclusion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the degree of uptake, discourses of value co-creation, and how their responses can be categorised. The research design included semi-structured, participatory interviews with 15 managers from eight museums; and ethnographic observation and semi-structured, post-museum visit interviews with 12 PwD. Then, an iterative data analysis process using ATLAS-ti was undertaken. The results provide insight into the social inclusion of PwD in museums during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Resource Nationalism and Political Change: Mine Nationalisation and the 2021 Zambian Election

This article examines the failure of the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) government to secure the electoral support of Copperbelt mine communities in the 2021 Zambian election, despite its implementation of ‘resource nationalist’ policies. These policies, which ended foreign ownership of two of Zambia’s leading mine companies, were ostensibly designed to appeal to Copperbelt residents in general, and mineworkers in particular, who had since the mid 2000s expressed growing discontent at the failure of foreign owners to develop their mines, create secure jobs and contribute positively to the Zambian economy. While the articulation of such policies had secured PF electoral support in 2011, 2015 and 2016, their implementation by the Lungu presidency was followed by decisive electoral defeat, with Copperbelt voters swinging away from PF and towards the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND), which won the Zambian presidency in 2021. This article combines analysis of electoral data, extended ethnographic observation and interviews with mineworkers to explain the relationship and disjuncture between what the article characterises as popular ‘resource nationalism from below’ and PF’s ‘resource nationalism from above’. In doing so the article contributes to understandings of the relationship between resource nationalism, electoral competition and political change.

Understanding how value, power and expertise circulates in (creative) knowledge exchange programmes

This paper uses the South West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) in the South West, UK, as a case study to examine the diverse economies evident in knowledge exchange (KE) programmes delivering university-industry research and development (R&D). Counter to normative measures of success for KE programmes such as key performance indicators, and moving beyond evaluations that discount the diverse impacts of these programmes at interpersonal- or cross-sectoral- levels as ‘intangible’ or ‘spillover,’ this paper takes a cultural ecology perspective to deliberately make tangible the emergent dynamic relationships and multiple forms of value that KE programmes support and produce, and the wider implication of these for building regional creative sector capacity and cultural value. It highlights the multi-directional types of KE that happen between universities, creative industries and other sectors. It complicates linear models of innovation funding. The author draws on empirical data from interviews, surveys and ethnographic observation made possible through being embedded within the programme’s delivery team. The paper critically assesses the expertise and power that circulate, finding that the goals and ethos, as well as the economic and non-economic values in the programme created tensions, problems of inclusion, and contradictory notions of success for the delivery team and for participants.

Combining Worlds: A Mixed Method for Understanding Learning Spaces

Understanding student interaction in learning spaces is an ongoing challenge. The move away from didactic lecture delivery towards more active and hybrid learning renders this challenge ever more difficult. Researching pedagogic use of informal learning space, which is not formally timetabled or controlled, is always challenging because it is interacted with only transiently by both students and teachers. This paper introduces a mixed methods, phenomenological approach used in recent research to investigate campus learning spaces in face-to-face learning contexts. The full mixed methods approach combined space occupancy monitoring data with naturalistic ethnographic observation, field interviews and, where appropriate, more formal in-depth interviews to provide an effective way of understanding student and teacher engagement with learning spaces. Convergent use of these qualitative and quantitative methods yielded data which informed the application of subsequent methods, and the investment of researcher, pedagogic and infrastructural resource. In this paper we argue that as learning outside of formal teaching spaces increases, these mixed methods enable better, more efficient monitoring of pedagogic use of informal learning spaces. The mixed method can be adapted depending on the question being addressed and has the potential to inform resource allocation and investment into pedagogic and infrastructural change.

In Memoriam: Mats Morell

In Memoriam: Mats Morell

Law and Famine: Learning from the Hunger Courts in South Sudan

AbstractActivists and scholars are seeking to end famine by promoting international legal accountability for starvation. This article deepens our understanding of the relationship between the politics of famine and law by observing the ongoing prevalence and power of legal norms and institutions during times of famine. It reveals the widespread use of hunger courts in famine‐prone South Sudan and their role in legally enforcing social networks that provide for the most vulnerable. Based on analysis of country‐wide survey data from 2018 and 2019, qualitative interviews from 2019‒22 and in‐depth ethnographic observations of hunger courts in one chiefdom in South Sudan during a period of famine‐level hunger in 2018 and 2019, the article argues that hunger courts have played a key role in enforcing social networks. These courts have also supported continuity of chiefs’ authority despite crisis. The article concludes by addressing two issues: whether law is necessarily emancipatory in times of famine, and whether legal norms have shifted responsibility for hunger away from the political economies and conflicts that cause famine, instead placing blame and shame on the families of the most vulnerable.

Maintaining, relinquishing, and adapting bonds in bereavement: A qualitative study of grave sweeping in China

BackgroundContinuing bonds with the deceased are essential and ongoing aspects of bereavement. In China, the annual ritual of grave sweeping involves family members visiting the graves of their loved ones to offer items and conversation. However, the connections between the specific practices and bereavement have not been thoroughly investigated. PurposeThis article explores how continuing bonds may be maintained through the ritual of grave sweeping, which is part of the communal religion that is practiced by a majority of the population in China. MethodsUtilizing a multiple case study design, we examine the ritual activities of grave sweeping with four ethnographic observations and two in-depth interviews conducted in 2014–2015 in western, southern, and northern regions of China (Sichuan, Xiamen, Harbin, and Qiqihar). Our analysis focuses on qualitative data collected on objects, affect, language, and interactions between participants to better understand the activities involved in the ritual. ResultsThe acts of offering food, gifts, and engaging in conversation with the deceased during the ritual of grave sweeping provide family members with opportunities to maintain and transform their relationship with the deceased. This practice involves a combination of familiar gestures, such as offering food, as well as differences in the way they interact, such as the food being not consumed together. The actions establish an experience of social exchange between family members and their deceased loved one. ConclusionsGrave sweeping provides an interactional setting for survivors to maintain, relinquish, and adapt bonds to the deceased. Other ritual practices in different settings may offer similar opportunities for continuing bonds.

The global value chain of second-hand cars and scraps: an ethnographic account of on-the-ground practices, labour and regulations in Ghana

The article draws on ethnographic observations of second-hand car and spare-parts traders in Ghana to analyse how these goods are traded over continents and how the value of a car is shaped by grounded practices and categories that I describe. The position of Ghana in this global valuechain relies on regulations forged by the alliance between politicians, traders and mechanics of the informal sector, now challenged by manufacturers who promise to contribute to the country’s industrialisation; and the availability of skilled and cheap labour. This renders viable operations impossible elsewhere. I hypothesise that as these wastes are revalued in West Africa, they sustain the production cycle and automotive industry in rich countries.

Artifak Sakral dalam Budaya Iban di Sarawak

This article focuses on social hierarchy and ethnographic observation research based on cultural artifacts that are considered to have sacred value in Iban culture in Sarawak. Sacred artifacts are cultural objects that are believed to have spiritual values and mystical powers that are capable of protecting and bringing harmony to their owners if executed according to customs and rituals. This belief is driven by the ancestral religion of Pengarap Lama and the habitat that has been home to the Iban community since time immemorial. In proving the critical findings, qualitative-based research methods have been implemented based on in-depth observations, interviews, and documentation. The research findings found that sacred artifacts are still important in the culture of the Iban community even though they have embraced new religions such as Islam and Christianity. Therefore, in preserving the significant value of sacred artifacts in Iban culture, this article is an effort to archive the cul

​​Nested Ethics: The Management of Young People’s Goals in Alternative UK Mental Health Services

Youth mental health interventions in the UK increasingly use goal-setting procedures to shape services and measure outcomes in ways that are intended to be meaningful to service users. This research article questions this premise, departing with the ethnographic observation that many young people do not seem to welcome the invitation or requirement to direct their therapeutic aims and set the terms for service evaluation in the form of goals. I will show that goal-setting procedures are examples of a broader field of complex ethico-political dilemmas navigated by mental health service staff. While wanting to enable young people to be healthy agents, staff are simultaneously critically aware of the risk of imposing normative, unrealistic and unfair expectations onto young people. I propose that these staff are engaged in a specific form of ethico-political practice, which I call ‘nested ethics’. I use this term to describe instances where staff ethically evaluate their own conduct in line with the capacity to enable the ethical life of another person (youth, in this case). Viewing goal-setting processes as an example of an uneasy politics of nested ethics enables a new perspective from which to advance debates about the enablement of service user choice within care provisions.

Review of “Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism”

Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism is an extraordinarily well researched and highly readable historical and ethnographic book that situates the suburbs as central sites for development of racial and political identities in the United States. Drawing on ethnographic observations, 50 interviews and archival research, Gregory Smithsimon argues that the landscape of Black suburbanization was produced by dualling forces of everyday activism for greater housing opportunities and everyday neoliberalism seeking to tear down the advances of the Civil Rights movement. In doing so, he centers Black agency in the process of expanding housing choices for African Americans and acknowledges how structural racism continues to shape those choices as well, even for more economically advantaged African Americans. In the first chapter, Beyond Blockbusting, Smithsimon uses archival research to show how the image of the blockbuster was created in the popular press and reproduced in academic literature with little basis in actual events. The blockbuster narrative that profit hungry real estate agents scared white residents in transitioning neighborhoods into selling their homes at a loss, which they then sold to unwitting Black families at a huge markup took the blame off of white residents who left and ignored the agency of Black homeseekers and Black integration activists. Instead, Smithsimon develops a fuller account of how racial transition actually happens, particularly in the suburbs, through a conscious effort on the part of multi racial constellation activists who included real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and political actors who sought integration for varied reasons and ultimately did manage to secure increased and improved housing options for Black households.

Exploration of the Burning Question: A Long History of Fire in Eastern Australia with and without People

Ethnographic observations suggest that Indigenous peoples employed a distinct regime of frequent, low-intensity fires in the Australian landscape in the past. However, the timing of this behaviour and its ecological impact remain uncertain. Here, we present detailed analysis of charcoal, including a novel measure of fire severity using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, at a site in eastern Australia that spans the last two glacial/interglacial transitions between 135–104 ka and 18–0.5 ka BP (broadly equivalent to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6-5 and 2-1, respectively). The accumulation of charcoal and vegetation composition was similar across both periods, correlating closely with Antarctic ice core records, and suggesting that climate is the main driver of fire regimes. Fire severity was lower over the past 18,000 years compared to the penultimate glacial/interglacial period and suggests increasing anthropogenic influence over the landscape during this time. Together with local archaeological records, our data therefore imply that Indigenous peoples have been undertaking cultural burning since the beginning of the Holocene, and potentially the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. We highlight the fact that this signal is not easily discernible in the other proxies examined, including widely used charcoal techniques, and propose that any anthropogenic signal will be subtle in the palaeo-environmental record. While early Indigenous people’s reasons for landscape burning were different from those today, our findings nonetheless suggest that the current land management directions are based on a substantive history and could result in a reduction in extreme fire events.

Pesticide Take-Home Pathways, Storage, and Application Methods Among Hmong Farmers in Central Valley, California

ABSTRACT Objective Pesticide exposure via take-home pathways is a major health concern among farmers. However, little is known about the effects of pesticide take-home pathways on small-scale Hmong farmers in the Central Valley. This study explored factors that contribute to pesticide exposure via the take-home pathway among small-scale Hmong farmers in the Central Valley. Methods Detailed ethnographic observations of small-scale farms and corresponding homes were coupled with in-depth qualitative interviews with Hmong farmers to assess the extent of the pesticide take-home pathway. Results The study found daily challenges and numerous ways that pesticide particles may be introduced into farmers’ homes. Given the paucity of research about Hmong farmers’ pesticide take-home pathways, the study’s findings advance the scholarship on pesticide exposures in the Hmong farmer community. Conclusion This study advocates for more culturally and linguistically appropriate pesticide exposure training and educational programs tailored to Hmong farmers in the United States.

I Can Protect His Future, but She Can’t Be Helped: Himpathy and Hysteria in Administrator Rationalizations of Institutional Betrayal

ABSTRACT It is well-established fact that sexual assault survivors who report the violence they endured are retraumatized by the reporting process, but there is limited research on how these institutional betrayals are enacted. The current study draws on ethnographic observation and interview data to explore how 24 administrators use gendered rationalization frames to justify betrayal in Title IX cases. Specifically, administrators invoke himpathy to define their primary role as protecting the futures of young men. To defend this view from critique, they condemn how survivors use Title IX by casting them as hysterical women who are either mistaken in labeling an experience as sexual assault or suffering from trauma too severe for a Title IX process to repair. Taken together, these frames portray institutional betrayal as moral, even as these ideologies reinforce gender inequality.

On leaving: Coloniality and physician migration in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico (PR) has a growing physician migration problem. As of 2009, the medical workforce was composed of 14,500 physicians and by 2020 the number had been reduced to 9,000. If this migration pattern continues, the Island will not be able to meet the recommended physicians per capita ratio proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO). Existing research has focused on the personal motivations for movement to, or permanence in, a particular setting, and social variables that encourage physicians to migrate (e.g., economic conditions). Few studies have addressed the role of coloniality in fostering physician migration. In this article we examine the role of coloniality and its impact on PR's physician migration problem. The data presented in this paper stem from an NIH-funded study (1R01MD014188) that aimed to document the factors associated with physician migration from PR to the US mainland and its impact on the Island's healthcare system. The research team used qualitative interviews, surveys, and ethnographic observations. This paper focuses on the data from the qualitative interviews with 26 physicians who had migrated to the USA and ethnographic observations, which were collected and analyzed between September 2020 and December 2022. The results evidence that participants understand physician migration as a consequence of three factors: 1) the historical and multidimensional deterioration of PR, 2) the idea that the current healthcare system is rigged by politicians and insurance companies, and 3) the specific challenges faced by physicians in training on the Island. We discuss the role of coloniality in fostering these factors and how it serves as the backdrop for the problem faced by the Island.

The social impact of distance learning in Roman schools: "Success," social innovation, teaching practices.

Faced with the national emergency linked to the spread of COVID-19 in Italy, digital technologies have made it possible to carry out the ordinary activities of the various educational agencies through the main tool of Distance Learning (DaD). The intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the guarantee of accessibility represent an enabling prerogative for current education systems, enriching training in a variety of ways and opportunities which must be accessible to all. ICTs take on a propulsive function for change in schools because they make it possible to affect the school setting, to transform the learning environment by redesigning space, reorganizing time, modifying communication and socialization processes, encouraging, in students, the development of key competencies in digital literacy and media education. Considering the context of a school transformed and renewed by the teaching and training potential of ICT, it becomes central to reconstruct the requests and needs developed by the practitioners of educational policies to cope with the reorganization of teaching methods and times at the time of DaD. Starting from these premises, the paper focuses attention on the social impact (Stern, 2016) of DaD to evaluate: the extent and intensity of the methodological-didactic innovation required of teachers for the organization and conducting remote lessons; the increase-in students-of transversal and digital literacy skills (team working, problem solving, etc.) potentially associated with the use of ICTs; the involvement and collaboration of families in the process of assessing and verifying learning. The reflection is part of a broader research project by the University of Sapienza University of Rome entitled "The social impact assessment of DaD after COVID-19"; a 3 year evaluation research addressed to a typological sample of upper secondary schools in Rome classified on the basis of the Infrastructure and Equipment indicator of the Rav and the social effect of the school (school effect) on the academic performance of students in the tests Invalsi. The evaluation aimed to identify-from the DaD experience-indications useful in re-designing the school's intervention strategy in the phases following the pandemic; for this reason it adopted an analysis perspective that valorized the positive and most successful aspects in the testimonies of the teachers and students involved in the first phase of the research (conducted in May-June 2021). Within the framework of the Positive Thinking Evaluation, the empirical evidence-collected through the administration/conduction of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, online ethnographic observation of the lessons in DaD-will allow us to reflect on some dimensions of success and of particular social innovation for the teachers' teaching practices and the students' learning processes in DaD. In the Positive Thinking Evaluation, success is a positive effect (not just a "good practice"), even an unexpected one, of an activity that has produced a positive change in the context of program implementation.