Ethnographic Understanding Research Articles

The Suspended States of Latinx Literature

Abstract This article lingers in the suspended time of Justin Torres’s We the Animals (2011), a story of loss, alienation, and an errant desire to remain underwater. Written in the long durée of US coloniality, Torres’s novel resists the narrative conventions of the bildungsroman to contend with the ways Latinx literature is bound to narratives of forestalled self-development and failed incorporation. Such uneven relations are traced back to the ethnographic frameworks emplotted in the Insular Cases—which are a set of Supreme Court decisions that have suspended Puerto Rico into statelessness since 1901. This article argues that Torres’s refusal of narrative convention reveals how the dictates of the Insular Cases have seeped into ethnographic understandings of Latinx as suspended from normativity at large. However, Torres’s tactical use of suspension refuses to move toward legible subjecthood or linger in despair. Rather, the novel tarries with the irregular conditions of Latinx life to posit shared alienation as the groundwork for a larger, vibrant brown sociality in the ongoing muck of the Insular Cases.

The feeling of destiny: taqdeer and ‘voluntary’ return in the everyday lives of irregularised Pakistani migrants

ABSTRACT This article inquires into how rejected asylum seekers and returning migrants feel and make sense of their (im)mobility. Focusing on the emic concept of taqdeer (destiny), it explores how Pakistani migrants affectively experience and interpret restrictive mobility regimes. The article contextualises the value of destiny in the lives of irregularised migrants, (rejected) asylum seekers with an order to leave, as well as those who return under such circumstances. It explores how perspectives, narratives and feelings of destiny form an integral part of their lived experiences: How a shared understanding of taqdeer primarily serves as a means to communicate affective states but also serves as an important way to accept or contest diverse situations of (im)mobility, experiences of irregularisation and return. I argue that taqdeer is an integral part of the affective economy of (return) migration and often aids people in meaning-making and provides them with a way to engage with the vulnerabilities and gendered burdens of irregularised migration and return. The concept of destiny furthers ethnographic understanding of the intimate entanglement of the bureaucratic and divine dimensions of (im)mobility in the lives of irregularised Muslim migrants.

For an ethics of generosity: Values for ethnography in a time of regulatory ethics

The paper recommends a values-driven regeneration of research ethics for ethnography. In contrast to the current regulatory version of research ethics we propose a more subtle, field-oriented and traditional version, grounded in ethnographic experience. The paper is in three parts. The first part highlights the tacit assumptions of current systems of ethical approval for social research and their unintended and even perverse effects. Ethnography is the focus of the second part, where we highlight the distinctive issues for ethnographic research of current practice. In the final part we argue for a culture of ethnographic work grounded in an ethnographic understanding of social conduct and an ethic of generosity. Defined as a key-value for social sensitivity, this implies abandoning a procedural logic in favour of a values-based research culture faithful to the spirit of ethnographic and qualitative inquiry.

The Work of Craft in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Lai Xá Photography Village in Vietnam

In Lai Xá Village, Vietnam, studio photography is the village handicraft. Counter to Walter Benjamin’s characterization of the click of a button, privileging eye over hand, but typical of many craft traditions, photographers there describe painstaking apprenticeships through which they learned to master the tools and materials of their craft. They learned to compensate for the shifting properties of light, climate, humidity, and irregular supplies of electricity, chemicals and printing paper, and adapted to changing regimes of technique and labor organization. As in many other craft traditions, apprentices often acquired their most valuable knowledge by stealth. We argue that studio photography belongs within contemporary discussions of craft as a handed, adaptive, engaged, small-scale social practice, and that craft awareness enables a richer ethnographic understanding of the work of studio photographers, both material and social.

Infrastructural politics: A conceptual mapping and critical review

The notion of infrastructural politics has been increasingly used in urban studies as it helps to explore urbanisation processes, the urban condition and urban life. Given its relevance, this article maps out and critically reviews the main analytical strands that inform its meanings, namely, conventional and popular infrastructural politics. These strands reveal the current tendency to demarcate infrastructural politics as two separate, antagonistic domains that associate the notion with particular hegemonic and subaltern actors, practices and processes. The article problematises this tendency and proposes a broader understanding of infrastructural politics as an ordinary and contentious political arena where diverse actors develop politico-infrastructural repertoires that co-exist in multifaceted, conflictive ways rather than as separate domains. Drawing on political ethnographic understandings of politics, infrastructural politics is conceived as a point of convergence where conventional and popular infrastructural politics meet and mesh. This suggests the possibility of cross-fertilising conversations between infrastructure studies and political ethnography that can refine our understanding of infrastructural politics, first, by promoting a more nuanced examination of the overlaps and interdependencies between hegemonic and subaltern politico-infrastructural actors and practices, and second, by addressing the critical role of infrastructures in enabling and materialising such overlaps and interdependencies.

Culture, Cultural Competence, and Clinical Care.

Culture competence is a concept that can be traced back to health care considerations in the 1960s and 1970s, and in particular to nursing education. Critics of the concept have argued that this was not simple a listing of cultural facts, behaviors, and practices, but instead follow a more ethnographic understanding of culture. In this article, I recognize that culture is not simply about the other, but something we all possess, and is also always changing throughout our lives. Understanding and respecting diversity and culture is key to improving services, including lactation support.

Ethnographic understandings of sexual and reproductive health and HIV care for adolescents in Blantyre, Malawi

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care and support are provided to adolescents living with HIV, with the aim to build safer sex negotiation skills, sexual readiness and reproductive preparedness while reducing unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. We consider how different settings might either constrain or facilitate access to resources and support. Ethnographic research was conducted in Malawi in teen club clinic sessions at an enhanced antiretroviral clinic from November 2018 to June 2019. Twenty-one individual and five group interviews were conducted with young people, caregivers, and healthcare workers, and were digitally recorded, transcribed, and translated into English for thematic analysis. Drawing on socio-ecological and resilience theories, we considered the different ways in which homes, schools, teen club clinics, and community settings all functioned as interactional, relational, and transformational spaces to allow young people to talk about and receive information on sexuality and health. Young people perceived that comprehensive SRH support enhanced their knowledge, sexual readiness, and reproductive preparedness. However, their desire to reproduce at an early age complicated their adoption of safer sex negotiation skills and SRH care. Engaging and talking about SRH and related issues varied according to physical and social space, suggesting the value of multiple locations for support and resources for young people with HIV.

Tree Diversity and Regeneration in Sacred Groves and Nature Reserves in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China

Holy Hills, sacred groves protected by ethnic minority Dai people, have garnered great interest for conservation in Xishuangbanna—a region containing some of the world's northernmost tropical rain forests and China's richest biodiversity, though much of it has been threatened by deforestation from rubber cultivation. As some of the only remaining forest fragments outside nature reserves, Holy Hills have been documented to contain rare species and ecosystems underrepresented in protected areas. Although previous studies provided some insight into fragmentation impacts, they lacked data to examine population structures. Accordingly, this study uses continuous metrics of tree regeneration for the first time in sacred groves, while also drawing on ethnographic understandings of socioecological contexts of human disturbance, to examine biodiversity and regeneration in three Holy Hills and two nature reserves. Contrary to expectations that smaller area and fragmentation effects would decrease biodiversity in Holy Hills, we found no significant difference in diversity between Holy Hills and nature reserves, though we detected marginally significantly less diversity in seedlings, and certain Holy Hills displayed a shift towards light-demanding species. Common and dominant species varied by site, speaking to the importance of inter-patch beta diversity captured among Holy Hills that can support the maintenance of a regional species pool. Our results also indicated considerable regeneration opportunity in Holy Hills, though individual site conditions and histories had a strong influence. We recommend collaborating with communities and local institutions not only to safeguard existing forest, but also to regenerate and restore fragments whose protection is bolstered with cultural meaning.

The Age of Johnson, ed. Jack Lynch and J. T. Scanlan

<i>The Age of Johnson</i>, ed. Jack Lynch and J. T. Scanlan

Promoting migrant HL, good practice in adult education and lessons learned for other interventions

Abstract Problem Migration is a global phenomenon, and migrants face myriad challenges, e.g., building context-specific health literacy (HL). To sustainably promote HL, translations, interpreters, or programs in other languages are insufficient. Courses that promote HL holistically are needed, e.g., second language courses. In the SCURA research project, part of the HLCA Consortium, we ethnographically studied language courses and developed interventions. The insights gained are relevant not only for courses promoting HL of migrants or in Germany but also for other target groups and countries. Description Based on extensive ethnographic research, we participatory created interventions to promote HL. As language courses promote HL to varying degrees but are severely limited by the rigid conditions and support, we identified strategies to improve HL therein and ensure uptake and sustainability: add-in, pimp-up, dive deeper. The multimodal intervention consists of an extensive collection of teaching ideas, materials to prepare and reflect on sessions, and a 6-part teacher training (in-house, online, and self-study course, based on adult learning principles). The 90-minutes sessions address Health in Language Courses, Health and Me, Using materials, Critically Analyzing Materials and Developing Empowering Activities, Promoting Family HL, and Mental HL. A hands-on tool was developed to help teachers intentionally promote the seven components of HL. Results The preliminary results of the ongoing evaluation showed that the flexibly adaptable and applicable offerings, the online workshop, and self-study courses, were well received. The teachers liked the choice of topics and the combination of short inputs and many recommendations for practice. Lessons The project’s success relies on knowing the context and setting, considering the needs of all stakeholders, and developing offerings that are a relief but not an additional burden, and that can be easily integrated into the program. Key messages • A thorough ethnographic understanding of the course is key to developing interventions that will be perceived to be appropriate and relevant. • HL promotion should integrate teachers’ HL, informal occasions on health information exchange, diverse and multilingual ways to engage with health information and a systematic, deliberate development.

Formative Research to Tailor Maternal Nutrition Services Introducing Multiple Micronutrient Supplements (MMS) for Pregnant Women in Rural Madagascar

ObjectivesTo develop tailored social marketing approaches for introducing multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS) to pregnant women in rural Madagascar. MethodsDesign. This formative study utilized a Rapid Assessment Procedures approach conducted over two iterative phases in Itasy and Vatovavy Fitovinany, Madagascar from October 2020 – March 2021. Data collection and sampling. Phase 1 utilized community workshops, focus groups, and market observations to generate community inputs for developing culturally appropriate and tailored MMS programming. Phase 2 included free lists and semi-structured interviews among pregnant women and health workers for an ethnographic understanding of pregnancy-related practices in this setting. Analysis. Textual data from interviews were thematically analyzed using Dedoose software. Numerical data from market observations and community workshops were summarized using descriptive statistics. Findings were grounded in a social marketing framework and triangulated across methods and participant types to enhance data credibility. ResultsFormative findings can be conceptualized using the ‘4ps’ of social marketing: Product. In this setting, women voted for an orange-colored MMS box design because the color reflects locally-available fruits such as mangoes and oranges. Red and white colors were secondary preferences. Price. Pregnant women explained some willingness to pay for MMS, suggesting that 500 to 600 Ar/30-day supply may be appropriate, but emphasizing the need for free provision to increase coverage among more vulnerable groups. Placement. Distributing MMS using a combination of both facility-based and community-based approaches was suggested by participants for ensuring optimal program coverage and reach. Promotion. Pregnant women suggested the need for community-based, interpersonal communications using health agents and health workers as the primary communication channels to promote MMS compliance. Several local language (Malagasy) phrases were generated through participatory workshops to promote MMS specifically to pregnant women in this setting. ConclusionsParticipatory formative research in rural Madagascar provided context-specific, social marketing inputs that may help improve MMS acceptability and compliance in Madagascar. Funding SourcesSight and Life Foundation.

Diet, economy, and culinary practices at the height of precolonial Swahili urbanism

• Combined ethnographic, historic, and biomolecular approaches to Swahili cuisine. • Pottery lipid residue analysis revealed mixing of C 3 plants, milk, and meats. • Isotope results underscore C 4 plant and cattle/chicken consumption. • Informative contrasts among residue, stable isotopic, and zooarchaeological results. • Multiproxy approach provides a nuanced picture of precolonial urban cuisine. Swahili cuisine is known across Africa and globally as a highly distinctive product of a cosmopolitan, coastal, urban society. Here we present a comprehensive study of precolonial Swahili diet and culinary practices at the coastal town of Songo Mnara, positioning archaeological and ethnographic understandings of cuisine in a long-term coastal tradition. We explore contemporary food cultures and then present the first direct evidence for precolonial cuisine by combining ceramic lipid residue analysis with archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and faunal and human stable isotopic data. Integrating these datasets produces a detailed picture of diet at the site of Songo Mnara during the peak of precolonial Swahili urbanism. Lipid residue analysis demonstrates how plant and animal products were consumed and valued in ways not discernible from plant and animal remains alone. We also note special treatment for particular foodstuffs, including an association of fish consumption with high-status spaces and vessels, and preferential management of cattle for milk. A more complex picture of urban life emerges, recognizing influences of taste, class, and culture. Our findings demonstrate the potential of multi-layered anthropological studies for exploring cuisine and urban life in coastal contexts across the globe.

Hajj health examination for pilgrims with asthma in Malaysia: An ethnographic study.

BackgroundAsthma was one of the top causes of hospitalization and unscheduled medical attendances due to acute exacerbations and its complications. In Malaysia, all pilgrims must undergo a mandatory health examination and certified fit to perform pilgrimage. We studied the current organisational and clinical routines of Hajj health examination in Malaysia with a focus on the delivery of care for pilgrims with asthma.MethodsWe conducted non-participant observation to obtain ethnographic understanding of Hajj health examination activities for 2019. Observations were guided by a checklist and recorded as notes that were analysed thematically. The study was conducted at 11 public (from each region in Malaysia, namely, North, South, East, West of Peninsular Malaysia, and Sabah and Sarawak of East Malaysia) and two private primary care clinics.ResultsWe observed considerable variation in the implementation and practice of Hajj health examinations among the 11 public clinics but no marked variation among the private clinics. The short time span of between three to four months was inadequate for disease control measures and had put pressure on health care providers. They mostly viewed the Hajj health examination as merely a certification of fitness to perform the pilgrimage, though respiratory health assessment was often inadequate. The opportunity to optimise the health of pilgrims with asthma by providing the appropriate medications, asthma action plan and asthma education including the preventive measures was disregarded. The preliminary health screening, which aimed to optimise pilgrims’ health before the actual Hajj health examination was not appreciated by either pilgrims or health care providers.ConclusionsThere is great potential to reform the current system of Hajj health certification in order to optimise its potential benefits for pilgrims with asthma. A systematic approach to restructuring the delivery of Hajj health examination could address the time constraints, clinical competency of primary health care providers and resources limitations.

Studying WeChat Official Accounts with novel ‘backend-in’ and ‘traceback’ methods: Walking through platforms back-to-front and past-to-present

The paper presents a methodology to understand WeChat Official Accounts (WOAs) from their backend to their frontend, and from tracing the platform's history to its present. Our ‘Backend-in method’ proposes to study platform governance in the meso – between macro political economic concerns and the micro (and usually mobile) user-interface mediation. It shows how including backend platform media practices deepen ethnographic understandings of platform use. The ‘Traceback method’ uses researcher-informant collaboration to document and reflect on the shifts of platform affordances that have reconfigured media practices, organisational structures, and economic incentives over time. We show how these methods proved useful in mapping Chinese-Australian media organisations’ deployment of WOAs for news production. Together these methods contribute ways to understand previously hidden aspects of media practice and platform governance in a novel methodological design, which may have wider application for future research.

“Tristezza Siderurgica”

This essay emerges from conversations between an anthropologist and a performance artist from the industrial city of Taranto, in southern Italy—known today to be one of Europe’s most polluted cities due to the continent’s largest and most hazardous steel factory. By focusing on artist Isabella Mongelli’s photographic and theatrical work conducted upon returning to her hometown after years lived abroad, this essay locates the expression of a specific affect coined by Taranto sound artist Alessandra Eramo: la tristezza siderurgica, the sorrow of steel. Tristezza siderurgica yields an ethnographic understanding of the perceptions and representations of homes that have become homely, uncanny, estranged because toxic or otherwise inhospitable. The article shows that the naming of affects contributes to forging specific, perhaps even untranslatable, emotional landscapes. What does it mean to be emotionally laced by the poison of steel? While contemporary texts on the experience of environmental toxicity tend to waver between the material and semiotic/metaphorical as distinct poles, this essay proposes that we braid these oft-polarized terms through the work of ethnography. Through this dialogic process between aesthetics and anthropology, we encounter the ways in which artists have sought to understand ecological crises through a mobilization of the senses, which are crucial for understanding toxicity as it vacillates between visibility and invisibility.

The Challenge of Indigenous Healing for Global Mental Health.

Psychiatry and anthropology have a long relationship, and it is worth examining aspects of how that relation is carried over into the developing field of Global Mental Health (GMH). One place at which the two disciplines overlap significantly is in addressing religious phenomena and ritual performance in relation to mental health, and one of the greatest challenges for GMH is how productively to take into account forms of indigenous healing based on religion and ritual. In this paper I compare recent texts in GMH written from the standpoint of psychiatry and anthropology, observing that the psychiatric texts emphasize evidence-based determination of treatment efficacy, while the anthropological texts emphasize ethnographic understanding of treatment experience. Reconciling these two emphases constitutes a challenge to the field, attending to contextual variations in treatment events, illness episodes, phenomenological factors both endogenous and intersubjective, and sociopolitical factors both interpersonal and structural. In addressing this challenge, I propose an approach to therapeutic process that on the empirical level can facilitate comparison across the diversity of healing forms, and on the conceptual level can constitute a bridge between efficacy and experience. This approach is predicated on a rhetorical model of therapeutic process including components of disposition, experience of the sacred, elaboration of alternatives, and actualization of change that highlights experiential specificity and incremental change. Deploying this model can help meet the challenge of understanding efficacy and experience in indigenous healing, and prepare the ground for the further challenge of how practitioners of GMH relate to and interact with such forms of healing.

Spending Time Together Outside of the Clubs: Cross‐gender Rapport Building and Interview Recruitment in Music Scene Ethnography

This article examines the politics of cross‐gender interview recruitment in popular music scene ethnography. It specifically focuses on how complexities surrounding gender, race, and presumed intention impact efforts to build rapport and recruit interviewees. To do this, I present a series of accounts from my dissertation research—conducted twenty years ago—and reflect on the challenges I faced as a straight, cisgender, Black male researcher interacting with (non‐Black) women within various hip‐hop nightlife settings. In the process, I introduce the concepts of intimate counterpublics and aggregate counterpublics as means to spatially mapping different degrees of subcultural investment (based on levels of familiarity, intimacy, and trust) and the types of connections they enable. I conclude by offering suggestions, for researchers working within popular music scenes or other youth‐oriented spaces, on how to negotiate such challenges. I also propose that ethnographers should be more attentive to nuances of interview requests and how embodied situational research transactions can serve as bases for ethnographic understanding.

Who alone can ‘see’? Christian humanitarianism, aspect-perception and political critique

This article offers a critique of Christian humanitarianism in Zambia. But it does so by engaging with the arguments of anthropologists who have begun to question the status of political critique within the discipline. These anthropologists argue that critique often undermines ethnographic understanding because it problematically positions the anthropologist as an actor who is able to ‘uncover’ political realities that remain invisible to others. In this article, I take these concerns seriously and attempt to reconsider the practice of critique by drawing on an ethnographic description of the work of Christian medical missionaries in Zambia. Focusing on how these missionaries encouraged one another to ‘see’ their Zambian patients as ‘Christ-like’ and ‘faithful’ in moments of suffering, I argue that these practices of ‘seeing’ and ‘showing’ resemble certain forms of political critique. Rather than an exercise in ‘uncovering’ hidden realities, critique can also be understood as an act of ‘aspect-showing’ – the aim of which is to encourage others to ‘see’ the same things in a different light. The critique of Christian humanitarianism I offer here is therefore itself an act of aspect-showing that partially resembles that which missionaries themselves engaged in.

Telling Tales?

The ethnographic representation of violence is a controversial issue, involving debates about (avoiding) sensationalism or (acknowledging) emotionality, for example. Less considered is how the subjective nature of ethnography and the fact that ethnographic narratives are always situated can have ramifications for both interpreting and representing violence, particularly in the context of longitudinal ethnographic research. Drawing on my investigations into Nicaraguan gang dynamics begun in 1996, this article explores the subjectivity of the longitudinal ethnographic experience of violence both in and out of “the field” through three specific examples. These highlight in different ways how ethnographic understanding is highly situational and time-bound, meaning that longitudinal research is particularly prone to episodes of discomfiting conceptual disjuncture. At the same time, it is precisely this that arguably imbues it with exceptional power and insight.

Fieldwork’s Return: Troubled Steps Towards A Multispecies Imaginary

For many anthropologists, longterm ethnographic fieldwork does not end when they leave the field, as the journey towards ethnographic understanding evolves for years after physically returning from the field. In an auto-ethnographic mode, this paper traces the author’s return journey from the field, through transformations in their understanding of soul abduction and spirit-revenge among upland members of the Nyishi tribe in the Eastern Himalayas. The paper traces the author’s journey from initial ontological immersion in fieldwork materials, through a reductionist withdrawal from the data, to the “redemptive symmetry” of a multispecies approach: one which recognizes the human and more-than-human origins of such spirit phenomena.