Search Results

Narrating the Crosscultural Encounter

Daniel Lefkowitz

in Words and Stones: The Politics of Language and Identity in Israel

This chapter seeks to operationalize the theoretical perspective described in Chapter 3 through a discussion of the relationship between theory and methods. The study relies on technical analyses of ... More

This chapter seeks to operationalize the theoretical perspective described in Chapter 3 through a discussion of the relationship between theory and methods. The study relies on technical analyses of linguistic detail and on a set of methodological procedures that are intended to play a role in the work of interpretation. Narrative forms a theme that joins together the strands of this chapter: the narrative (text) produced by the ethnographer is linked to the narratives (of personal experience) told in the course of ethnographic interviews and interpreted in the course of linguistic analysis, which, in turn, are linked to the narratives constituted by the semiotics of everyday life.Less

Being a Good Student

Diana G. Tumminia

in When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-Saucer Group

The status of a student depends on participation in the narrative production, specifically the retelling of past lives and recovered memories. Several examples are given. The ethnographer’s ... More

The status of a student depends on participation in the narrative production, specifically the retelling of past lives and recovered memories. Several examples are given. The ethnographer’s experience of the phenomenological lifeworld of Unarius takes shape as she participates in a past-life readings and momentary glimpses of member experience. The ethnographer explains the problems of fieldwork in the context of the balance between immersion and objectivity. Because of this issue, she restrains herself from contributing to the narrative.Less

In the Dreamtime

Diana G. Tumminia

in When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-Saucer Group

This chapter explains the Unarian practice of dream analysis as a fact-finding process that constructs reality. Dreams are used for healing, contact with Space Brothers, viewing past lives, and ... More

This chapter explains the Unarian practice of dream analysis as a fact-finding process that constructs reality. Dreams are used for healing, contact with Space Brothers, viewing past lives, and solving problems of interpretation. The narrative accounts from members show the ways they use dreams in their sense-making process. The ethnographer recounts her dream about Space Brothers as part of the challenge of interpretation in fieldwork.Less

Encountering the Dance

Sarah Morelli

in A Guru's Journey: Pandit Chitresh Das and Indian Classical Dance in Diaspora

This chapter introduces readers to North Indian classical kathak dance as developed and transmitted by Pandit Chitresh Das. After grounding readers in basic concepts relevant to kathak and the ... More

This chapter introduces readers to North Indian classical kathak dance as developed and transmitted by Pandit Chitresh Das. After grounding readers in basic concepts relevant to kathak and the related Hindustani music system, the chapter provides an overview of Pandit Das’s career, based in Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area. In his 1990 choreographic work, Impressions of California Goldrush, the gold rush symbolized his own westward journey, and explored themes of relocation and adaptation central both to Pandit Das’s immigrant experiences and kathak’s broader history. The chapter concludes with a reflexive account of the author’s involvement with this dance community as a student, unofficial disciple, ethnographer, and musician.Less

The Obligation to Receive: The Countertransference, the Ethnographer, Protestants, and Proselytization in North India

Leo Coleman

in Being There: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth

The practice of social and cultural anthropology has long been rooted in an attempt to account for persons and social forms on the basis of extended and extraordinarily intimate encounters. This ... More

The practice of social and cultural anthropology has long been rooted in an attempt to account for persons and social forms on the basis of extended and extraordinarily intimate encounters. This chapter suggests an exchange between one view of the countertransference in psychoanalytic work and anthropological theories of the gift, in pursuit of a heightened awareness of the unreciprocal emotional exchanges in which the ethnographer must engage in order to learn something. It draws the specific notion of countertransference from the work of D. W. Winnicott, where it encompasses the analyst's emotional responses to the patient and what within the analysis can be done with them. Finally, it presents an ethnographic case of negative countertransference, and tailors the psychoanalytic materials for ethnography by integrating anthropological understandings of reciprocity and obligation into the existing psychoanalytical framework.Less

How Do We Collaborate?: An Updated Manifesto

Douglas R. Holmes and George E. Marcus

in Collaborative Anthropology Today: A Collection of Exceptions

This chapter represents collaboration in a mode that describes a situation in which the dialogical encounter between two different research projects, such Douglas R. Holmes's European Far Right ... More

This chapter represents collaboration in a mode that describes a situation in which the dialogical encounter between two different research projects, such Douglas R. Holmes's European Far Right integralist movements and George E. Marcus's Portuguese aristocracy, prompted a joint reimagining of the scene of fieldwork. It focuses on the background of Holmes and Marcus's long-term collaboration that was conducted through a steady cumulative conversation. It also reflects on the value of a sustained process that is mundanely identifiable as friendship through a certain history of discipline. The chapter describes Holmes and Marcus's collaborative efforts that concentrated on aligning their work with the analytical endeavors of various epistemic partners who have created a series of unusual challenges. It mentions that refunctioned ethnography has a more complicated cast of characters than the conversations that are traditional between the ethnographer and native subjects or informants.Less

Multicase Ethnography: Tracking the Demise of State Socialism

Michael Burawoy

in The Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations, and One Theoretical Tradition

This chapter reflects on the author's own attempts to grapple with the challenges of comparison and imputation in a journey that, in the 1980s, took him from workplace to workplace in Hungary and, ... More

This chapter reflects on the author's own attempts to grapple with the challenges of comparison and imputation in a journey that, in the 1980s, took him from workplace to workplace in Hungary and, then, in the 1990s, from workplace to community in Russia's market transition. He asks, what was peculiar to work organization and working-class consciousness in the “workers' state,” that is, under actually existing socialism, and with what consequences for the demise of the old order and the genesis of the new? And now he must also ask, what are the lasting lessons we can draw from socialism-as-it-was?Less

Woman on the Verge of a Cultural Breakdown: Zora Neale Hurston in Haiti and the Racial Privilege of Boasian Relativism

Eve Dunbar

in Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas

This chapter argues that despite Zora Neale Hurston's training under Boas and her work as an intellectual arm of his theoretical and methodological machine, her marginality to American anthropology ... More

This chapter argues that despite Zora Neale Hurston's training under Boas and her work as an intellectual arm of his theoretical and methodological machine, her marginality to American anthropology was no mere accident. When recounting the history of how American anthropology positively challenged and changed foundational notions about racial difference and diversity in the United States, one must also account for the erasure of Hurston's centrality to narratives of modern anthropology's methodological innovations around diversity. Through the use of archival materials and Hurston's own scholarly production, the chapter fleshes out a story that rests squarely within the tension created by Hurston's sense of the discipline's desire to write her out. It focuses on Hurston's Caribbean ethnography, Tell My Horse, paying special attention to textual examples where she attempts to distinguish herself from laypersons treating Haiti in order to textually frame herself as a trained ethnographer.Less

Conclusion

Magdalena Wong

in Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of Able-Responsible Men

The conclusion compares the main features of able-responsible man with representations of the ideal man in different cultural, and transnational, settings. The roles of physical strength and sex are ... More

The conclusion compares the main features of able-responsible man with representations of the ideal man in different cultural, and transnational, settings. The roles of physical strength and sex are considered. There is a critical review of the status of femininity and gender equality in Nanchong, and the culture of emulating exemplary norms in China. Filial piety and a general sense of duty to the nation provide the environment in which the able-responsible man is expected to carry responsibilities for the family, society and nation. Although the hegemonic model identified in Nanchong is coercive and denigrates marginalized men, the nature of the able-responsible man is shown to be essentially positive. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the extent to which the empirical discovery of the able-responsible man is influenced by the ethnographer herself.Less

Landscape, Race, and Faith

Steven M. Stowe

in Doctoring the South: Southern Physicians and Everyday Medicine in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

This chapter explores the identities physicians shaped for themselves against the larger backdrops of southern landscapes, race, and Christian faith. First, it describes the way in which physicians ... More

This chapter explores the identities physicians shaped for themselves against the larger backdrops of southern landscapes, race, and Christian faith. First, it describes the way in which physicians acted as social ethnographers and critics by writing medical topography, one of the canonical texts of orthodox medicine. This is followed by physicians' writings on slavery and orthodox generalizations about African American disease. Finally, the chapter describes how nineteenth century practitioners expressed their Christian faith through their writings, shedding light on the religious faith's importance in physicians' work.Less

“Look Deep in Your Hearts”: Making a Global Domestic Workers’ Movement

Jennifer N. Fish

in Domestic Workers of the World Unite!: A Global Movement for Dignity and Human Rights

This chapter sets the stage for the global domestic workers’ movement that is at the center of this book. It examines the landscape of household labor and highlights the key concepts necessary for an ... More

This chapter sets the stage for the global domestic workers’ movement that is at the center of this book. It examines the landscape of household labor and highlights the key concepts necessary for an understanding of domestic work in the global economy, highlighting the traditional power imbalances that exist between “maids and madams.” The chapter introduces key players in the struggle for domestic worker rights, and the challenges they faced in addressing widespread injustice. An overview of the scholar-activist framework, embedded ethnographic approach, and the author’s particular research journey is also included.Less

William A. Corsaro

Carmel Smith and Sheila Greene

in Key thinkers in childhood studies

Professor Bill Corsaro offers a potted history of his 30 year career as a children’s ethnographer and discusses some of the well-known figures who have helped shaped his work. He reflects on his ... More

Professor Bill Corsaro offers a potted history of his 30 year career as a children’s ethnographer and discusses some of the well-known figures who have helped shaped his work. He reflects on his research with children in the USA, Italy and Norway and his particular focus on children’s relationships with peers and adults. He rejects the idea that only the methods of the hard sciences are rigorous and discusses the approach he takes to ensure rigour and accountability in his qualitative research work. He argues that sometimes qualitative researchers must stand up for what they believe in and stay truthful to their assumptions.Less

Ethnography and Everyday Life

Nicole Constable

in Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor

This chapter describes my approach to ethnographic research and writing, including the importance of “stories” and my evolving relationships with mothers and babies. It describes my first eye-opening ... More

This chapter describes my approach to ethnographic research and writing, including the importance of “stories” and my evolving relationships with mothers and babies. It describes my first eye-opening meeting with a group of migrant mothers and their babies, and it illustrates how my relationships with them unfolded over the course of two years. It also points to the challenges of research that combines public anthropology—with its critical policy implications—with concerns that I call “micro-feminist-ethnographer-activism.” As a scholar-activist, I am keenly attuned to the exploitative conditions of work and migrant life but also attentive to the creative ways in which people make lives and find ways to survive despite the odds. As a humanist anthropologist, my goal is to convey the experiences of migrant workers as living, breathing human beings—not simply as victims. This is not to glorify their existence but to acknowledge their strength and resilience, while also pointing to where “the system” has failed them.Less

Songs of Our Fathers: The Advocacy of Henry Cowell and the Appeal of the American Past, 1927–1947

David C. Paul

in Charles Ives in the Mirror: American Histories of an Iconic Composer

This chapter focuses on Henry Cowell's advocacy of Charles E. Ives and his music between the years 1927 and 1947. Cowell's ideas about Ives can be grouped into two periods: those produced prior to ... More

This chapter focuses on Henry Cowell's advocacy of Charles E. Ives and his music between the years 1927 and 1947. Cowell's ideas about Ives can be grouped into two periods: those produced prior to the sentence he served at San Quentin State Prison for a 1936 conviction on a morals charge, and those produced after his release in 1940. This chapter first considers Cowell's portrait of Ives as a New England musical ethnographer before discussing the views of anthropologists, folklorists, and musical modernists about folk music. It then examines how Cowell became interested in folk music, along with his influence on Ives. It also looks at the notion of a usable past, advanced by Van Wyck Brooks in his essay “On Creating a Usable Past,” in which he called for a rewriting of the history of American literature. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Ives's “Concord” Sonata and Ives's commitment to freedom (in the sense of refusing to impose a fixed final form on his works).Less

Maps, Dreams and the Presentation of Ethnographic Narrative

in Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies

This chapter examines the role of anthropologist as author — a professional ethnographer whose alertness to the rhetorical impact of his work is demonstrated in the unconventional but persuasive ... More

This chapter examines the role of anthropologist as author — a professional ethnographer whose alertness to the rhetorical impact of his work is demonstrated in the unconventional but persuasive presentation of his ethnographic narratives — and the role of author as anthropologist — a professional storyteller and travel writer who skilfully transcribes personal experience into the contours of pseudo-ethnographic fiction. Two works in the 1980s are responsible for blurring the lines between anthropology and fiction, namely, Hugh Brody's Maps and Dreams (1981) and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987). These two works provide good examples of the anthropologist as author and the author as anthropologist, respectively. In studying these two works, evidence can be found of their condemnation of Western materialism and their questioning of ethnographic discourse.Less

Managing the Fears of Studying Technical Work

Stephen R. Barley and Diane E. Bailey

in Work and Technological Change

Technical work differs significantly from most other forms of work. This chapter explores those differences and how the differences pose important challenges for ethnographers who seek to study ... More

Technical work differs significantly from most other forms of work. This chapter explores those differences and how the differences pose important challenges for ethnographers who seek to study engineers, scientists, and other technical workers. The chapter summarizes the experience of thirty-five years’ of studying technical work to capture the social dynamics of technical worlds in the way that an earlier generation of scholars captured the social worlds of industrial, craft, and clerical work. The discussion revolves around how to handle six fears that ethnographers face when studying technical work: the fear of looking stupid, the fear of mishearing, the fear of failing to understand what technical terms mean, the fear of not capturing the complexity of the work, the fear of not finishing the study, and the fear of not being able to make sense of one’s data.Less

Plain Tales from the Plains: A Personal Account of Researching in Rural Bijnor over Three Decades

Patricia Jeffery

in The Changing Village in India: Insights from Longitudinal Research

This chapter discusses long-term ethnographic research in western Uttar Pradesh that has focused largely on gender issues, especially in relation to childbearing and women’s health. The chapter ... More

This chapter discusses long-term ethnographic research in western Uttar Pradesh that has focused largely on gender issues, especially in relation to childbearing and women’s health. The chapter addresses difficulties in gaining villagers’ trust after the family planning drive associated with the Emergency, and challenges of researching topics that villagers regarded as ‘natural’ and taken-for-granted as well as sensitive and shameful. Furthermore, ethnographic revisits raise particular ethical issues, whilst analysis and interpretation of data collected over time highlight the complexities of villagers’ changing lives within a wider context in which the state, the market, and communal politics have played crucial and ever-changing roles. Finally, the chapter considers the ethnographer’s impact on villagers’ lives and whether and in what situations an ethnographer can or should be a detached and neutral observer.Less