Reflexive Ethnography Research Articles

Using video reflexive ethnography to explore the use of variable rate intravenous insulin infusions

BackgroundThe use of variable rate intravenous insulin infusion (VRIII) is a complex process that has consistently been implicated in reports of error and consequent harm. Investment in patient safety has focused mainly on learning from errors, though this has yet to be proved to reduce error rates. The Resilient Health Care approach advocates learning from everyday practices. Video reflexive ethnography (VRE) is an innovative methodology used to capture everyday practices, reflect on and thereby improve these. This study set out to explore the use of VRIIIs by utilising the VRE methodology.MethodsThis study was conducted in a Vascular Surgery Unit. VRE methodology was used to collect qualitative data that involved videoing healthcare practitioners caring for patients treated with VRIII and discussing the resulting clips with participants in reflexive meetings. Transcripts of these were subjected to thematic analysis. Quantitative data (e.g. blood glucose measurements) were collected from electronic patient records in order to contextualise the outcomes of the video-observed tasks.ResultsThe use of VRE in conjunction with quantitative data revealed that context-dependent adaptations (seeking verbal orders to treat hypoglycaemia) and standardised practices (using VRIII guidelines) were strategies used in everyday work. Reflexive meetings highlighted the challenges faced while using VRIII, which were mainly related to lack of clinical knowledge, e.g. prescribing/continuing long-acting insulin analogues alongside the VRIII, and problems with organisational infrastructure, i.e. the wireless blood glucose meter results sometimes not updating on the electronic system. Reflexive meetings also enabled participants to share the meanings of the reality surrounding them and encouraged them to suggest solutions tailored to their work, for example face-to-face, VRIII-focused training.ConclusionsVRE deepened understanding of VRIII by shedding light on its essential tasks and the challenges and adaptations entailed by its use. Future research might focus on collecting data across various units and hospitals to develop a full picture of the use of VRIIIs.

A Reflexive Account of Microfinance Management Accounting: Ethnographic Experience in a Bangladeshi Village

The study employed the methodological approach of reflexive ethnography to analyse management accounting in microfinance. Research Objective: The study aims to present an illustration of reflexive ethnography and its application in investigating management accounting in an informal setting, specifically a rural village in Bangladesh. Method: The study used a reflexivity lens that presents a detailed account of the author’s personal doctoral journey in gaining access to and exploring the field, analysing field data, and overcoming challenges. Empirical Result: The study highlights how to overcome the barrier of ‘functional stupidity’ while examining (management) accounting, governance, and related issues in microfinance. Practical Implications: The contributions include enhancing the accounting and development literature which are dominated by functional paradigm. Moreover, alternative approaches were proposed, such as reflexive ethnography to recognise a more mundane form of management accounting and governance

HPV vaccination uptake among Somali American patients at an urban primary care clinic in Minnesota, USA: identifying and testing interventions to improve uptake using video reflexive ethnography

ObjectivesWhile there have been efforts to address common and culturally informed barriers to healthcare, Somali Americans have low rates of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. This study aimed to use video...

Music unites us: a teacher educator and teacher candidate comparative ethnographic narrative inquiry into the benefits of music education

ABSTRACT This study investigated the benefits of music education while providing a teacher educator and teacher candidate the opportunity to conduct collaborative research using comparative ethnographic narrative (CEN), a blend of narrative inquiry and reflexive ethnography. CEN relies on two researchers reflecting together and co-constructing knowledge with participants. Qualitative data from surveys (N = 116), and interview data from 12 participants, were combined with teacher candidate observations to synthesise a composite narrative story of lived experience. Through iterative coding and constant comparison, codes were collapsed and synthesised into major themes. A composite character, Jamie was created using representative constructions to capture, collate, and summarise all data. Jamie’s story provides insights into lived experiences of individuals, while highlighting significant findings. Narrative inquiry of participants’ lived experiences in a unique summer music programme, revealed many life-long benefits of music education including significant personal, social, and life skills such as creativity, leadership, teamwork, cooperation, responsibility, discipline and communication.

Why Reflexive Ethnography Matters to the Study of World Christianity

ABSTRACT This article outlines the importance of reflexive ethnography for the emerging discipline of World Christianity. Ethnographers study religion as it is lived in everyday life. This requires cross-cultural understanding, but that understanding is always shaped by the ethnographer’s own social, cultural, and intellectual locations and the perspectives they bring. Reflexivity highlights those perspectives so that we can account for their distortions. This does not undercut ethnography’s objectivity; it strengthens it. Knowing one’s own blinders helps one better describe what one can and cannot see. Ethnographers must, however, expand this social, cultural, and intellectual reflexivity to include a theological dimension. Social scientists seldom acknowledge their own theological standpoints, in part because these are more often hidden than on the surface. Scholars of religion, who are more used to recognizing their own theological assumptions, thus have something important to contribute to ethnographic reflection. The article uses examples from the author’s fieldwork.

Introduction

Introduction

Reflexive ethnography of Poland’s non-memory about Jews and the Holocaust: Revisiting fieldwork, revising assumptions

The authors present their experience of revisiting the in-depth interviews collected in 1988–1993 in the context of new research on Poland’s memories of Jews and the Holocaust conducted by them in 2013–2017. The revisit, carried out in a radically different intellectual and socio-political context, helped the authors: (1) to change their focus from the past to the present in which the interviews were conducted and in which the respondents constructed their remembrance; (2) to understand memory as a contingent and contextual image of the past, functional in relation to the identity-management of the remembering subjects; (3) to discover the previously neglected importance of the non-discursive attitudes to the past, located between amnesia and remembrance, which the authors have called non-memory.

Positive power: events as temporary sites of power which “empower” marginalised groups

PurposeThe importance of events for marginalised groups has largely been overlooked within tourism, hospitality and event studies. The purpose of this study is to address this gap, emphasising the positive outcomes of power relationships rather than the negative, which have traditionally been the focus in event studies.Design/methodology/approachThe study investigated eight events for indigenous and ethnic minority groups, rural women, disabled people and seniors in Australia and New Zealand. Qualitative data was collected via participant observation, reflexive ethnography, semi-structured interviews and in-the-moment conversations. An inductive thematic approach was taken to data analysis.FindingsEight themes around notions of power and empowerment were identified during the analysis: providing a platform, giving/taking ownership, gaining confidence, empowering with/through knowledge, respect, pride and affirmation, freedom to “be” and resistance. These were then viewed through the lenses of social-structural and psychological empowerment, enabling a deeper understanding of power at/through events.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper presents a framework for empowerment that enables event organisers to both understand and deliberately plan for the productive use of power, which can reaffirm important event aims, objectives and values. It can also be used by researchers as a framework through which to identify and assess the contributing elements of empowerment at events and by local government to guide policymaking around events.Originality/valueThis study is the first to highlight best practices for the positive use of power at events that “empowers” marginalised groups. Grounded in empowerment theory, the study offers a new lens to reframe notions of power and provides a theoretical framework that will be of value for both critical event studies researchers, event organisers and policymakers alike.

Seeing China’s social-cultural change through the eyes of tourists

ABSTRACT Our study scrutinises the personal and collective nostalgia that shapes the performativity of tourists, in order to analyse how tourism provides a space through which urban tourists understand rural China. By interrogating the social-cultural arena through which tourists experience the countryside, we examine how toured places are imagined and consumed. Our main purpose is to ponder, through the lens of tourism, the social-cultural change post-China’s economic reform that was started in 1978. We utilise reflexive ethnography to delineate the experiences of urban tourists, in light of their perceptions of the rural places. Our findings suggest that the past is remembered in terms of the grand narratives of a bygone era of socio-political coherence, which the tourists feel has been eroded against the changing urban landscape. Methodologically, we aim to explore the possibility of pushing tourism enquiries further, from a predominantly positivist spatial science that seeks objective facts, to a more humanistic field of research involving existential and phenomenological methods.

Ethical and Practical Reflections of Resident Anthropologists in Conflict Zones: Experiences from the Tokwe Mukosi Dam Project and Displacement at Chingwizi, Zimbabwe

This article is derived from the methodological experiences from a 1-year ethnographic study carried out at Chingwizi among the Tokwe Mukosi displaced persons in Zimbabwe. This followed the unexpected and ultimately contentious disarticulation of over 6,000 Chivi and Mushawasha families from their ancestral land, sources of livelihoods, and social well-being. This study was therefore carried out in the context of a volatile and unpalatable relationship between the state and its functionaries, on the one hand, and the Tokwe Mukosi residents, on the other hand. The protracted conflict between the said actors has unintentionally made the Chingwizi area a very sensitive and protected area in terms of academic research. In this article, we therefore reflect on the ethical and practical dilemmas in studying the marginalized and often traumatized ‘victims’ of this dam project and the subsequent displacement, albeit from an insider’s perspective. Central to our discussions are issues such as the politics of signing forms, gaining entry, informed consent suspicion, and balancing the insider–outsider dilemma in research. The article moves on to look at the practical solutions to the said ethical and practical impediments in studying the marginalized communities in conflict situations. We therefore place emphasis on the significance of reflexivity, identity, and the politics of belonging, which was engrained in the wematongo concept. In addition to a number of strategies used under reflexive ethnography is the significance of social capital.

Dungeons, Dragons, and Music

Since 1974, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has existed on the fringes of popular culture alongside many other tabletop roleplaying games. In recent years, however, D&D and other RPGs have emerged at the forefront of gaming culture. The allure of fantasy and magic draws players into creating and roleplaying characters in a mediated fantasy space through social interaction. Though largely untheorized, Dungeons & Dragons has been examined through sociological and philosophical lenses, though these studies often ignore the performative aspects of the game itself. During gameplay, Dungeon Masters (DMs) often exploit sensory detail, music specifically, in order to encourage roleplay in their players. The fifth edition handbook of D&D states that DMs can use “music, art, or recorded sound effects to help set the mood, and many players and DMs alike adopt different voices for the various adventurers, monsters, and other characters they might play in the game.” The following research explores the use of music within D&D as it relates to the players’ ability to immerse themselves within the game, drawing on research in ludomusicology and applying a lens of reflexive and close ethnography. Additionally, this research explicates a growing popularity of D&D on the internet through shows such as Critical Role and the live storytelling genre, as well as how it has altered ideas concerning the performance of voice. Based on interviews with players and observations of D&D games in person and via online streaming services, this article asserts that music allows players to immerse themselves within the setting of the game, which in turn creates a form of participatory performance for both the players and the Dungeon Master.

Reflections on Migration, Resilience, and Graduate Education

In response to the refugee crisis, it is important to invest in and support refugee education especially at the tertiary level. As displaced individuals rebuild their life upon resettlement, education opportunities are vital to equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to gain meaningful employment, especially since displacement often puts refugee’s education and careers on hold. Displaced girls and women, who might be unaccompanied, pregnant, or disabled, are especially vulnerable in the process of forced migration, education, and resettlement. In this chapter, we explore our personal and pedagogical narratives of migration and resilience as they relate to learning, teaching and mentoring in graduate education. Consistent with the principles of reflexive ethnography and cultural humility, we examine our experiences, beliefs, and cultural identities using semi-structured reflective processes to share and deconstruct our individual and familial experiences as displaced persons, graduate students, instructors, and mentors in the era of heightened economic and political uncertainty, global environmental crises, and the worldwide forced displacement of people. We highlight the importance of honouring the strengths and capacities of female graduate students with refugee backgrounds while creating safe spaces for listening to the women’s learning needs and desires. Finally, we discuss our engagements in labour intensive and time consuming mentorship that afforded academic coaching, skill training, and professional capacity building while supporting women’s sense of agency and socialization into academia and Canada.

Following Fatigue, Feeling Fatigue: A Reflexive Ethnography of Emotion

This article takes the emotion of fatigue both as its analytical object as well as a methodological tool to engage in a reflexive ethnography, to question the categorical borders of researcher, researched and the field, in the politicised context of migration studies. I do so by drawing on ethnographic material collected during my fieldwork between Athens, Hamburg and Copenhagen in 2019–2020. This article’s theoretical and conceptual framing is informed by feminist scholarship on emotions, as well as decolonial scholarship in migration studies. By bringing these theoretical threads into the conversation, I study the different qualities of fatigue, amongst others the collective; how fatigue circulates in and through the ethnographic field; and how it shapes relations between refugees, humanitarian aid workers, activists and researchers such as me. Following fatigue across and through its many different instances in this reflexive ethnography of emotions lays bare the uneven emotional geographies that exist and are (re-)produced in the encounters between actors in Europe’s migration control field.

Method as Border: Tuning in to the Cacophony of Academic Backstages of Migration, Mobility and Border Studies

This thematic issue is a collection of articles reflecting on methods as border devices of hierarchical inclusion spanning migration, mobility and border studies. It maps some key concerns and responses emerging from what we call academic backstages of migration, mobility and border research by younger academics. These concerns are around (dis)entangling positions beyond Us/Them (i.e. researcher/researched), delinking from the spectacle of migration and deviating from the categories of migration apparatuses. While these concerns are not new in themselves the articles however situate these broader concerns shaping migration, mobility and border studies within specific contexts, dilemmas, choices, doubts, tactics and unresolved paradoxes of doing fieldwork. The aim of this thematic issue is not to prescribe “best methods” but in fact to make space for un-masking practices of methods as unfinished processes that are politically and ethically charged, while nevertheless shedding light in (re)new(ed) directions urgent for migration, mobility and border studies. Such an ambition is inevitably partial and situated, rather than comprehensive and all-encompassing. The majority of the contributions then enact and suggest different modes of reflexivity, ranging from reflexive inversion, critical complicity, collective self-inquiry, and reflexive ethnography of emotions, while other contributions elaborate shifts in research questions and processes based on failures, and doubts emerging during fieldwork. We invite the readers to then read the contributions against one another as a practice of attuning to what we call a ‘cacophony of academic backstages,’ or in other words, to the ways in which methods are never settled while calling attention to the politics of knowledge production unfolding in everyday fieldwork practices.

Unsettling Place(s) at the end of life

Critical considerations of space and place at the end of life have been limited in the social science literature. To address this gap, we draw on empirical data from two interrelated but separate qualitative Australian data sets to critically examine dying in relation to considerations of space, place and affect. These studies share the primary aim to better understand and articulate end-of-life experiences, with one using video reflexive ethnography and the other semi-structured interviews with patients. Challenging the broader valorisation of particular places of dying and death (e.g. home, hospice, hospital), we critically explore the meanings and affects of space and place and how they are rooted in normative expectations. Drawing on participant accounts we interrogate simplistic concepts of home versus hospice, or hospital versus community, developing a critical social science of the intersections of space and place at the end of life.

ПОВСЯКДЕННЯ ОСВІТЯН УРСР У КОНТЕКСТІ АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНИХ СТУДІЙ

The article presents an analysis of the use of anthropological methods in the study of the everyday life of teachers in Soviet Ukraine. The author explains the adaptation of certain techniques of the humanities in the development of the image of a social group. The application of methods of visual anthropology is illustrated. Remarks on the adaptation of ethnographic film methods are made. The article illustrates the problem of “reflexive ethnography” in the use of visual sources in the study of the life of a closed group. The research appeals to the methods of visual anthropology as branch methods that help to study visible forms of culture: gestures, ceremonies, rituals, etc. The close connection between history and anthropology dates back to the middle of the twentieth century – from the time of E. Evans-Pritchard’s scientific experiments. In his lecture “Social Anthropology: Past and Present”, delivered in 1950, he drew attention to the fact that social anthropology was to be considered as a kind of historiography. One of the main requirements of anthropologism is the need to “get used” to the environment whose consciousness is being studied, to grow into the environment, to become part of the team. As the historian Mills Hills noted, this is done in order to reveal as little as possible their differences in locality, worldview. Photography can help in the interpretation of the functioning of a closed group of such phenomena as non-verbal communication, social rituals, ceremonies, no less vividly can be reproduced seemingly spatio-temporal arts such as dance and music. However, in the history of awakening, the most important thing for us to see in the visual source (first of all - photographs) is not so much its artistic value as its role in reproduction as a social artifact. Visual anthropology is based on the idea that a scientist is able not only to "see" the manifestations of culture, but also to study their fixation by audiovisual means. In recent history textbooks, there is a tendency to interpret the visual source as unbiased, objective. It is believed that the decoration of theoretical paragraphs on ambiguous or complex topics with photographic material helps to form a neutral point of view on the problem. In the history of everyday life of the Soviet era, the ideological component of the audiovisual component should be constantly kept in mind. Only random photos from family photo archives tend to be "transparent source". The work was carried out within the framework of the research theme of the Department of Culturology of the Poltava National Pedagogical University named after V.G.Korolenko “Polylogue of the global and regional in the formation of the socio-cultural identity of the individual” (state registration number 0120U103840).

Analyzing Healthcare Workers’ Perspectives on Healthcare-Associated Infections and Infection Control Practices Using Video Reflexive Ethnography (VRE)

Background: This study explores the perspectives of healthcare workers on the healthcare-associated infection (HAI) and infection control measures in a tertiary-care unit, through a self-administered questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and reflexive sessions based on video-recorded sterile procedures performed in respondents’ work contexts. Video reflexive ethnography (VRE) is a method that provides feedback to medical practitioners through reflection analysis, whereby practitioners identify problems and find solutions. Methods: Quantitative questionnaire data were used to assess the knowledge of HAI among 50 healthcare workers and their attitude toward practice of infection control measures. Semistructured interviews based on an interview guide were used to collect qualitative data from 25 doctors and nurses. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim immediately. Also, routine sterile procedures in the wards and intensive care unit were video recorded, and the footage was discussed by the infection control team and the personnel involved in the videos. This discussion was video recorded and transcribed. Both interview data and reflexive discussion of video-graph were analyzed using a thematic analysis. The quantitative data were analyzed using the Kruskal–Wallis test. Results: The quantitative data revealed no difference in the knowledge, attitude, and practice scores used to evaluate the infection control practices among the healthcare workers. We identified 4 themes from the qualitative data: (1) knowledge of HAI and infection control, (2) infection control measures in practice, (3) the shortfall in infection control measures and HAI, and (4) required implementation. Although the qualitative data indicated that the participants had excellent compliance with hand hygiene and personal protective equipment (PPE) use, the VRE and reflective sessions indicated otherwise. Some astounding lapses were revealed, like failure to engage in boundary maintenance between sterile and nonsterile areas, failure to observe proper hand hygiene measures, and use of traditional hijab face covers (used in an unsterile environment as well) instead of surgical masks. These findings demonstrate the advantage of combining VRE with qualitative and quantitative methodology to deduct the lapses in the practice of infection control among healthcare workers. Conclusions: Introduction of training programs focused on HAI and infection control measures in the educational system will help better inform medical and nursing students. Live video demonstrations of appropriate infection control practices during sterile procedures would be highly beneficial to educate the healthcare workers on correct infection control practices. Lapses in the use of PPE can be a possible reason for the outbreak of MERS-CoV, an endemic disease, in this part of Saudi Arabia.Disclosures: NoneFunding: None

Podcast ethnography

ABSTRACT This article introduces the method of podcast ethnography. The method encompasses three general stages: to explore a podcast from a particular social field, to engage with it through careful, ethnographic reflexivity and to examine the podcast by developing typologies and themes expedient for analysis. Podcast ethnography is beneficial due to its spatial and temporal flexibility; observing a podcast universe can be performed on the move and in parallel with other tasks. This advantage enables a much-needed breathing space for researchers inquiring vehement milieus, such as white radical nationalism. The article uses an example from this precise milieu in Sweden – the podcast Motgift [Antidote] – to illustrate and flesh out the potentials and challenges of applying the method’s three stages. In so doing, the article argues for inclusion of podcast ethnography into the extended family of ethnographic methods.

Reflexive Ethnography as “Data Science”? A Sociological Contribution to Praxeology

Reflexive Ethnography as “Data Science”? A Sociological Contribution to Praxeology

Notas introductorias a la obra de Ricardo Falla.

Estas notas de investigación sobre la obra de Ricardo Falla surgieron de las ponencias, las discusiones y el intercambio con el autor durante el Foro del Pensamiento Centroamericano realizado en octubre de 2019 en el CIMSUR-UNAM. En estas páginas elaboramos, como primer punto, un bosquejo biográfico de Falla, y después desarrollamos algunas líneas que sintetizan los temas abordados: la pertinencia de su obra para el estudio de la historia, la reflexividad etnográfica de y en torno a Falla y, finalmente, la liminalidad en búsqueda de lo humano.