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"Reciprocal spaces," such as windows and balconies, connect the vertical and the horizontal, enable the flow of meanings and feelings, and join with other material artifacts to unite emotionally and socially those who are spatially distant, and socially and emotionally distance those who are spatially proximate. Cairo's balconies reveal that reciprocal spaces allow the gaze to be reoriented, the meaning to be circulated, and the feeling to be shared. They blur the distinction between the subject and the object, the observer and the observed, and the high and the low. Drawing on long‐term ethnographic research in Cairo and informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Karen Barad, this paper shows that the balcony is entangled with other objects, spaces, and people in ways that materialize the socio‐economic hierarchies (especially class and gender), which structure daily practices and constitute urban subjects. Incorporating balconies in ethnographic research, this paper argues, enables us to be in the city while thinking of the city, undermining a dichotomy that has long troubled urban anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Central Asian Journal of Art Studies is the property of Central Asian Journal of Art Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Following Thurlow's (2020b) understanding of "wordsmiths," in this paper I document an underexplored and markedly high‐end area of language work: political speechwriting. Drawing on Macgilchrist and Van Hout's (2011) text trajectory approach to ethnographic discourse analysis I engage with two primary areas of scholarship: metadiscourse and entextualization (see Silverstein and Urban 1996), both of which facilitate a deeper understanding of the role of "elite" linguistic labor in contemporary markets. Ultimately, I demonstrate the ways in which political speechwriters come to claim skill and value – not only based on the unique "production format" (Goffman 1981) of the profession, but also related to the wider sociopolitical context of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of temporal coordination among multiple interdependent routines in a complex work setting that does not allow for up-front scheduling. We propose that when actors continuously have to prioritize their expected contributions to multiple interdependent routines, they address this challenge by orienting not just toward routines but also toward person-roles. Drawing on an ethnographic study of an agile consulting project team confronted with continued scheduling failures, we demonstrate how the dynamics of prioritizing enabled the actors to resolve what at first appeared to be an irresolvable and highly complex problem of temporal coordination. We add to the literature on routine dynamics and temporality by setting forth the dynamics of prioritizing as an explanation for the temporal patterning of complex work settings. We introduce the notion of role–routine ecologies as a novel way to conceptualize such complex work settings and contribute to developing a performative theory of person-roles and their significance for coordinating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this ethnographic study of firefighters we explore how routines are coordinated under high levels of temporal uncertainty—when the timing of critical events cannot be known in advance and temporal misalignment creates substantial risks. Such conditions render time-consuming incremental and situated forms of temporal structuring—the focus of previous research on temporal coordination—unfeasible. Our findings show that firefighters focused their efforts on enacting temporal autonomy or, as they called it, "getting ahead of time." They gained temporal autonomy—the capacity to temporally uncouple from the unfolding situation to preserve the ability to adapt to autonomously selected events—by relying on rhythms they developed during training in performing individual routines and by opening up to the evolving situation only when transitioning between routines. Our study contributes to literature on temporal structuring by introducing temporal autonomy as a novel strategy for dealing with temporal contingencies. We also contribute to research on routine dynamics by introducing the performance of temporal boundaries as a previously unrecognized form of coordination within and among routines. Finally, we contribute to process research a method that allows analyzing complex temporal patterns and thus provides a novel way of visualizing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of the tensor concept in ethnographic analysis. Topics include the limitations of applying algebraic tensors to cultural studies, the misapplication of the concept of endogeneity in African cultural change, and the relationship between structuralism and ethnographic data, especially in the context of state forms and societal organization.

The "Foreword to Special Issue, Journal of Ethnobiology Animacy of Plants: Indigenous Relationalities in Global Landscapes" discusses the concept of animacy of plants and its significance in various fields such as ethnobotany and social anthropology. The text highlights observations from Indigenous communities, like the Ka'apor of the Brazilian Amazon, regarding the personification of tree species with resin/sap/latex-producing properties. It also delves into the idea of relational personhood and botanical operationalism, emphasizing the interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. The articles in this issue provide well-argued insights into the complex relationships between humans and plant life, offering a unique perspective on the agency and identity of vegetational biota. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the challenges Norwegian anthropologists face owing to the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The authors' analysis reveals a tension between the need to comply with data protection regulations and preserve research autonomy and methodological integrity. The authors document how GDPR's bureaucratic control mechanisms have influenced researchers' conceptualization of ethics, leading to a split between legalistic adherence and critical responses within the anthropological community. This situation has necessitated negotiations with various stakeholders and re‐evaluating participatory observational methods, particularly in health research, where access has become increasingly difficult. The article highlights the anthropological community's efforts to navigate these regulations through national debates, establishing forums for ethics in ethnographic research and developing strategies to maintain methodological standards while ensuring GDPR compliance. The authors advocate vigilance against the colonization of bureaucratic logic and seek to secure anthropological representation in regulatory bodies to safeguard the discipline's interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the methodological and ethical challenges posed by the bureaucratization of research ethics in Eastern Europe, particularly as this impacts the practice of anthropology and fieldwork. It reflects on the authors' extensive fieldwork among Czech‐speaking Protestants in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, highlighting the discrepancy between Western and Eastern European academic norms regarding ethnography. The authors argue that increased formalization and ethical regulation favour more easily bureaucratically managed methodologies, to the detriment of traditional anthropological fieldwork, which is critical for deep cultural understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques the expanding influence of research ethics committees (RECs) on social research, emphasizing their adverse effects on ethnographic methodologies. It argues that the bureaucratization of ethics, emphasizing compliance over contextual understanding, fundamentally misunderstands and impedes the nuanced nature of ethnographic work. Drawing on personal experiences and broader critiques, the article proposes the need for an alternative system that better accommodates the ethical complexities of social research, advocating for a more tailored approach that respects disciplinary methodologies and fosters genuine ethical engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Managing Medical Authority: How Doctors Compete for Status and Create Knowledge" by Daniel A. Menchik is an ethnographic study that explores the concept of medical authority within the field of electrophysiology (EP) cardiology. The book goes beyond previous research on medical authority by examining a range of connected venues and stakeholders, and by emphasizing the importance of individual interactions in managing authority. The ethnographic vignettes provide valuable insights into interpersonal moments that are difficult to trace through historical research. However, the book has some limitations, such as limited discussion of doctor-patient interactions and the potential influence of the EP specialty on the findings. Overall, "Managing Medical Authority" offers valuable theoretical tools and rich ethnographic detail for researchers interested in understanding the dynamic processes that contribute to medical authority. [Extracted from the article]

James B. Waldram's book, "An Imperative to Cure," provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural practices and medical knowledge of the Q'eqchi' Maya community in Belize. Waldram explores the Indigenous knowledge and practices of Q'eqchi' iloneleb' (Q'eqchi' medical practitioners) and their understanding of medicine. Through ethnographic research conducted over 15 years, Waldram highlights the integration of Q'eqchi' language, cultural aspects, and social conditions in their medical practices. The book also examines the syncretic aspects of Q'eqchi' medical practices, which combine Western medical knowledge, Catholicism, and Mayan spirituality. "An Imperative to Cure" is a valuable resource for scholars in Mesoamerican studies, medical anthropology, and Indigenous studies. [Extracted from the article]

The educational aspirations of immigrants are often high, inspired by the hopes of newly gained opportunities available in the host country. This is also the case for students between 12 and 18 years old who have recently migrated to a new country (NAMS). However, they often perform below their non-immigrant peers and are overrepresented in vocational education. In Flanders (Belgium), the educational trajectory of NAMS starts in a separate programme that prepares them for their integration into regular education. This study aims to gain insight into how the interplay between pressures from the education system, the gatekeeping function of teachers and the agency of students and their parents unfolds. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted across two schools (2017–2019). The analysis shows how teachers in reception education try to align idealistic aspirations of NAMS with the options that the regular education system offers. We use Clark's concept of "cooling out" as an analytical tool to describe the incremental process that takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While conflict-related sexual violence has gained attention on international transitional justice agendas, conflict-related reproductive violence continues to be overlooked. The Colombian Truth Commission was the first truth-seeking transitional justice body worldwide to directly investigate these forms of conflict-related violence. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the Commission's work on reproductive violence, in this article I engage with the reproductive justice framework to argue that the Commission's work broadened understandings of both gendered victimhood and reproductive autonomy. Regarding gendered victimhood, I show that the Commission's work focused on gaining recognition for conflict-related reproductive violence as distinct from conflict-related sexual violence, identifying conflict-related practices of reproductive violence and offering recommendations for addressing such practices. Secondly, I show that not only was the Commission the first truth-seeking body to directly investigate reproductive violence, but it did so through an understanding of reproductive violence that does not revolve around the notion of autonomy as individual choice. I argue that by doing this, the Commission compelled us to comprehensively consider war as part of the conditions under which reproductive autonomy may be exercised. Following this line, the latter part of the article focuses on the Colombian government's use of glyphosate as a form of conflict-related reproductive violence that claimed ownership over the reproductive futures of entire communities by creating environmental devastation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies an emergent sociocultural phenomenon involving the construction of Hanoi's old town as a signifier of taste, tradition and identity. Starting with the insights gotten from ethnographic observation and analysis, it then draws on local literary works to provide an account of narratives having been put together around the old Hanoi's superior cuisine, prestigious tradition, and noble identity. In light of the Bourdieusian thesis of taste and social distinction supported by further theoretical developments from the perspective of post-modern culinary consumption, it wraps up by discussing the impacts of these narratives on the commodification of food and foodways in the old town and the construction of contemporary Hanoian identity. The results show that this phenomenon embodies a yearning for sociohistorical belonging, an appeal for identity status enhancement, and an elevation of cultural nationalism in post-reform Hanoi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using fieldnotes and headnotes from a study I conducted on African American viewers of Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta, this article evaluates the ethnographic potential of the focus group for audience studies researchers. In particular, I argue the focus group is a method that allows researchers to pursue "closeness"—a value ethnographers have long celebrated as essential for cultivating emic understandings of people and the lives they live. The article outlines two key strategies for achieving ethnographic "closeness" in focus group encounters – the construction of the focus group as a field site and recognition of the focus group as a point of access to the contexts audiences use to make sense of media texts. If properly executed, I conclude focus groups have the potential to effectively function as "safe spaces," allowing participants to push back against damaging media representations and define themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a historiographic and ethnographic analysis of how reflexivity, as a communicative practice and valued personality trait, has been understood, regulated, legitimised and used to control Chinese workers from the planned-economy era to the present. Using a Shanghai-based multinational company as a case study, I document how and under what conditions English-mediated reflexivity, with its stress on self-entrepreneurship, came to replace former Mandarin-mediated reflexivity supporting a notion of collective workerhood. Special attention is paid to reflexivity's changing roles in shaping, managing and evaluating workers and facilitating understandings of labour, power and agency. The paper argues that the emerging English-dominated reflexivity represents a required linguistic shift for the creation of a new worker type in the current globalised economy as it normalises managerial technologies of discipline, stratification and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sudden transition of Higher Education (HE) from predominately face-to-face to online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns placed many lecturers in unfamiliar situations. This study aimed to explore and represent the experiences of lecturers working in HE during this time. We used a storytelling approach to represent an amalgamation of experiences collated from lecturers. Data were collected using (i) a focus group interview, (ii) reflections on our experiences, and (iii) experiences alluded to by academics via online blogs. The data were presented using an ethnographic fiction. Salient experiences detailed throughout the ethnographic fiction include (i) challenges building a community between colleagues, academics, and students; (ii) concerns regarding the capacity of institutions and staff to deliver online; (iii) a lack of synergy between the expectations of staff to fulfil duties and the reality of being able to do so in time; (iv) the challenges of engaging students; (v) concerns regarding the accessibility of online learning for a diverse body of students; and (vi) challenges with work–life balance. The ethnographic fiction provides a voice for HE lecturers who candidly shared their experiences of working during the pandemic. Stakeholders are encouraged to develop their own interpretations of the story and apply these to policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the school choices made by upper-class parents in Brazil and Puerto Rico and how these choices reflect their aspirations for themselves and their children. Factors such as political and religious leanings, language ideologies, and intergenerational aspirations influence these choices. The article also delves into the role of friendships among upper-class parents and how these friendships are intertwined with moral distinctions about class and race. It examines the strategies used by wealthy parents to introduce their children to socially mixed contexts and the social envy that these strategies generate among urban Latin American elites. The text discusses the complexities and contradictions of social reproduction among Latin American and Caribbean elites, highlighting the influence of neoliberal approaches to education and social difference in these contexts. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the experiences of two high school newcomers who chose to participate in an internship program, assisting elementary school students, some of whom were also emergent bilinguals. This study used ethnographic and visual methodologies to explore young people's evolving understanding of teaching, learning, and languaging as members of a community of practice within the internship. Both students rooted their practices in their work with children in their critiques of language policies that they had experienced. The narratives that the interns shared highlighted how the set of linguistic and cultural-historical repertoires of practice that they entered with shaped how they engaged with and contributed to the classroom communities in which they were placed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methodology paper aims to offer useful guidelines for adopting social media in ethnography by reflecting on the two authors' fieldwork experiences of using WeChat to investigate Chinese outbound tourists. The paper suggests social media as an effective tool to support data collection and analysis in ethnographic studies. Particularly, it helps to establish rapport with informants, collects various forms of data, assists in gaining a holistic understanding of the travel experience, makes good use of the fragmented time of participants to collect data, and improves the researcher's wellbeing and effectiveness during fieldwork. In addition, the paper highlights the importance of reflecting on the embedded culture while adopting social media in ethnographic fieldwork. Barriers and challenges to using social media in ethnographic fieldwork are also discussed. We propose six recommendations and suggestions for researchers who may consider using social media in ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the significant emphasis in Scandinavian cities on vital urban spaces and creative unfolding in urban development, there is a tendency towards designing for "finished" urban spaces with a pre-defined conclusion. The result is often standardised design and staged play, ignoring the diversity of lived experiences taking place in the here and now. How can urban spaces be generated to accommodate unforeseen encounters fostering moments of intensity, affect, and disorder? In this article, we explore the potential of improvisation in urban spaces by examining how urban public spaces facilitate improvisation in interactions between places, senses, materials, and participants. Improvisation is understood as a productive force in urban development that gives space to what occurs in urban encounters. The article draws on Richard Sennett's concept of "disorder" and Jennifer Mason's concept of "affinity." By using design experiments and sensory and visual methods inspired by ethnographic methodology the article analyses two improvisational practices occurring in public spaces in Norway and Denmark, which emphasise the performative, affective, and sensory elements of urban life. The analysis brings forth a discussion of how improvisation unfolds in multimodal urban encounters, between order and disorder, and sensory and emotional connections. The authors argue for a more place-sensitive form of city-making and more improvisatorial urban designs that stimulate varied, spontaneous, and changeable use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a considerable body of literature on symbolic boundaries that engages with long-established/newcomer configurations, work on conviviality has only rarely taken this angle, despite its general focus on contexts of immigrationrelated diversity. This article connects these works of literature by examining insider-outsider configurations between long-established residents and newcomers in two very different contexts of rapid demographic change, where the established population is already marginalized and feels further threatened by newcomers. Drawing on ethnographic research in Newham, UK, and Mshongo, South Africa, we advance debates on conviviality by revealing how perceptions of inequality, lack of civility, and lack of reciprocity shape symbolic boundaries against newcomers, which may, in turn, be softened by convivial practices. We also consider what the differences between the sites might reveal about the enabling conditions for conviviality in such neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study on participation in civil society organisations in Peru, which adopts a gender perspective to understand the dynamics of social welfare production in a family model, and in which there is also a preponderance of community intervention in the field of social protection. The study uses a qualitative methodology and an ethnographic analysis based on 21 organisations. The results indicate polarity of discourses between those who recognise gender differentiation and those who consider that there is gender equality. Despite the polarity, differences in roles, quantity and quality of services, leadership, involvement and motivation are shown. The differences identified vary according to the type of organisation, which shows the relationship between the organisations and the intervention in territories‐regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are being developed to assist with increasingly complex diagnostic tasks in medicine. This produces epistemic disruption in diagnostic processes, even in the absence of AI itself, through the datafication and digitalization encouraged by the promissory discourses around AI. In this study of the digitization of an academic pathology department, we mobilize Barad's agential realist framework to examine these epistemic disruptions. Narratives and expectations around AI-assisted diagnostics—which are inextricable from material changes—enact specific types of organizational change, and produce epistemic objects that facilitate to the emergence of some epistemic practices and subjects, but hinder others. Agential realism allows us to simultaneously study epistemic, ethical, and ontological changes enacted through digitization efforts, while keeping a close eye on the attendant organizational changes. Based on ethnographic analysis of pathologists' changing work processes, we identify three different types of uncertainty produced by digitization: sensorial, intra-active, and fauxtomated uncertainty. Sensorial and intra-active uncertainty stem from the ontological otherness of digital objects, materialized in their affordances, and result in digital slides' partial illegibility. Fauxtomated uncertainty stems from the quasi-automated digital slide-making, which complicates the question of responsibility for epistemic objects and related knowledge by marginalizing the human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the notion of identity in an indigenous setting of the Taniis in Arunachal Pradesh. The role of culture assumes greater significance in constructing the identity and position of Taniis over a period of time. This article is based on ethnographic methods of data collection, such as in-depth personal interviews and participant observation. The focus is primarily on the cultural practice of tattooing among the Taniis of Arunachal Pradesh, India, which was put an end to in the 1970s. By analyzing this practice, we aim to narrate the story of changing identity markers among the members of the community. It was found that change in one cultural identity can impact aspects of the indigenous life. Such loss of identity markers portrays the diplomacy and dialogues that might re-enforce existing urges to homogeneity and monism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze in ethnographic terms (Rockwell 2008, 2013; Woods, 1987) certain aspects of a school experience carried out from the subject Language and Literature Practices in a second year of high school in Argentina. The main purpose of this experience was to gradually improve students' writing practices. It was a project in which students had to design an audiobook. This project presented distinctive moments: reading the genre, writing and production. Although we will mention each of these moments, in this paper, we will focus on the writing moment to corroborate the effectiveness of a method (of our own invention) called fragmented slogans and a particular way of working called collaborative writing (CD) (Álvarez & Bassa, 2013). In order to account for the proposed method and way of working, we will analyze the teaching and learning strategies and highlight certain roles established by the students and the teacher during the activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this ethnographic study, I present a single school's practice of registering and analysing absence from school. I show that teachers use various "dirty," interpretational contexts for understanding absence and make it classifiable in "clean" attendance categories – a move that decontextualises the meaning of absence. When others in turn handle absence using such "clean," decontextualised data, they treat the many various absences as a single, compressed "absence pattern," a pattern which is explained in terms of a single reason derived from recontextualising the absence. I show that this process effectively excludes parents' and youths' own ways of interpreting absence. I argue from this that research should be mindful of the political nature of absence data, and that negotiating and gaining familiarity with children is a positive contribution to understanding absence and not unwanted dirt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of BMS: Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique (Sage Publications Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Normative liberalism has promoted the freedom of privileged subjects, those entitled to rights – usually white, adult, heteronormative, and bourgeois – at the expense of marginalized groups, such as Black people, children, LGBTQ people, and slum dwellers. In this ethnographic analysis of Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I explore what happens when liberalism is challenged by people whose lives are impaired by normative understandings of liberty. I call such marginalized visions of freedom “minoritarian liberalism,” a concept that stands in for overlapping, alternative modes of freedom. In this piece, I introduce Natasha Kellem, a charismatic self-declared travesti (a term used in Latin America to indicate a specific form of female gender construction opposite to the sex assigned at birth). Through interconnected experiences, I offer ethnographic evidence of non-normative routes to freedom for those seeking liberties against the backdrop of capitalist exploitation, transphobia, racism, and other patterns of domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnographic place-based essay explores the ecological space the author grew up in the desert state of Gujarat, in western India.1 Simultaneously, it is also an exploration of the inner journey of discovery, joy, and belonging that a child enacts in discovering the outdoors, his /her/their Duniya,2 or to put it more formally, comes into an environmental consciousness. The essay is a contribution to autoethnographic scholarship in the evocative tradition, focused on the role of memory.3 Written in nonlinear story segments, the narrative mirrors the ways in which memories surface—fragmented, disconnected, nebulous but also (on occasion) brilliantly clear and saturated with the sensorial world in which they originate. End notes identify key readings from the fields of autoethnography,4 cultural anthropology,5 memoir writing,6 narrative nonfiction,7 and environmental studies8 that influenced the form, scope and intent of the stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article narrates the long journey we have traveled in our attempts to feel part of a community. Using collaborative autoethnography, we trace the labyrinths we have traversed, first in academia and then in Al-Anon. After years of trying to develop a sense of belonging within university life and through the changes of residence that were associated with it, we both found ourselves in Al-Anon as we tried to cope with our family members. The seemingly unrelated paths in our lives came together as we realized that academic life—particularly in this contemporary neoliberal context—was often the very opposite of community building. At the same time, while we had initially attended Al-Anon in a desperate search for help with our loved ones, we unexpectedly learned that we were on the right path for becoming part of something. As a result of these experiences, both of us have developed a better sense of belonging as we have learned and practiced the Al-Anon principles and applied these principles to other areas of our lives, notably the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horyzonty Wychowania is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of this article is to highlight meta-ethnography—the interpretive synthesis of ethnographic studies on a given theme—as a useful tool in the study of social policy and public administration. We claim this approach can maximize the impact of rich idiographic research to enable theory-refining and evidence-building efforts in the field. We illustrate these benefits through reference to a worked example focused on public encounters with social security in advanced liberal democracies. We show how we drew together 49 ethnographic studies from a variety of disciplines to identify repertoires of response that citizens exercise in their encounters with the contemporary welfare state. Through this analysis, we demonstrate how meta-ethnography can shed new light on topical contemporary debates about administrative burden. We conclude by reflecting on the prospects and limits of this technique for broader use in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of indians of Tlalhuacpan is an inquisitorial document of the early sixteenth century, where it is narrated to have found a pair of otomíes indians by the colonial authorities, making self-sacrifices to their ancient pre-hispanic deities. The purpose of this article is to analyze the personages and actions that were carried out in this ritual to understand its importance among the otomíes populations, an area that is currently known as Valle del Mezquital. This document is examined through an ethnohistorical analysis, in which different written sources such as ethnographic, archaeological and historical are confronted, in order to understand the relation that this ritual had for social maintenance, with the hope of having good harvests and propitiating the rains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers how queer Latinx recreational sporting communities construct homosocial environments through their occupation of public spaces in Los Angeles. Field observations and ethnographic analysis identify how soccer communities provide Latinx women access to homosocial spaces through the social networks they create on and off the fields. The relationships and interactions of the participants in women's leagues serve as case studies of the radical homo-intimate formations within the Latinx community. The amalgamation of homonormative and heteronormative identities within women's teams alludes to the tacit treatment of sexuality within leisure sporting community spaces. The narratives of league women grant an auxiliary conceptualization of Latinx identity formation and negotiations of belonging outside the frameworks of the traditional Latino community and the hegemonic gender and sexual body politics of the US state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genome has become a crucial component in precision medicine aimed at tailoring medical treatment to the individual. To the extent that social science studies of genomics have explored questions related to the individual, these studies have focused on how the governance regarding genomes facilitates individuals' rights, choices, and responsibilities. By contrast, we approach genomic governance by investigating how enactments of the person in precision medicine actualize practices of reciprocity and belonging in a national collective. Based on document analysis and ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark, we show that genomes are treated simultaneously as digital representations of individuals, social resources for a welfare state population, and emblems of public trust. By drawing on classical and contemporary anthropological theories of personhood, we unfold how Danish precision medicine prescribes a moral continuity between person, state, and territory. We argue that Danish precision medicine revitalizes a national politics of belonging and generates socio-spatial orientations through which the "me" of the person shares origin and place with the "we" of the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mongolia the cat is viewed ambiguously. It is seen either as a good, a bad or an ugly creature, or as a mix of all these. This ambiguity stems from the cat's function as a mirror of Mongolian society, where the transition to socialism and post-socialism was traumatic, interrupting the cosmological order. This paper explains these diverse images by analysing old legends and modern folk stories about felines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a growing anthropological engagement with and interrogation of the multiple forms and meanings of activism, this article—based on over 20 years of activist engagement and ethnographic interviews spanning 11 years—offers ethnographically grounded understandings of solidarity activism. The rich and at times messy (auto)ethnographic data suggest that contradictions inherent to liberal humanism can increase hierarchies and social distance between groups across national boundaries. Further, new social media technologies notwithstanding, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) remain hegemonic vehicles for this transnational exchange. The experience in Haiti, dubbed the "Republic of NGOs," highlights contradictions within solidarity activism, generating a useful set of questions for other activist anthropologists and solidarity activists who work elsewhere. Moving beyond the discussion of what anthropology brings to activism, or the reverse, this article offers insights from ethnographic analyses of NGOs, or NGOgraphy, to critically understand and assess anthropological activism. Specifically, building off insights of "NGOing" as a verb, this article interrogates the (micro)politics, structures, and consequences of intervention. Further, international solidarity activism often operates on logics of projects and deliverables, and therefore NGOing can eclipse other "metrics," disrupting and dividing local communities. Like NGOs, anthropologists function within a hierarchical transnational political economy and division of labor. [activist anthropology, Haiti, NGOs, solidarity, autoethnography] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review of Frances Hasso's new book, Buried in the Red Dirt: Race, Reproduction, and Death in Modern Palestine, Nadim Bawalsa highlights the book's contributions to multidisciplinary areas of study of Palestine and Palestinians. At once a historical investigation of British and Zionist health, life, and death records during the Mandate, Hasso also offers analysis of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish legal positions on reproductive practices, including abortion practices, as well as unprecedented access to Palestinian women's intimate sexual, reproductive, and non-reproductive desires through her ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine and neighboring countries. Bawalsa stresses how Hasso's methodological and analytical ingenuity brings to light hitherto unchallenged assumptions about Palestinian women's past and present reproductive choices, refuting in the process the idea that Palestinians have been engaged in demographic competition with the Jews - an anxiety, Hasso argues, that was in fact manifested in British and Zionist racist eugenicist obsessions during the Mandate period and throughout the Israeli Zionist settler colonization of Palestine. Drawing on a multitude of sources, including archival records, interviews, literary and artistic analysis, as well as on African diasporic, Black feminist, and queer scholarship, Hasso's book offers altogether new approaches to studying Palestine and Palestinians, both past and present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork among people with Alzheimer's disease living in Denmark, I argue that the loss of a sense of time caused by Alzheimer's is not a subjective loss, but rather an intersubjective one. Alzheimer's disease entails living with desynchronized rhythms, time that can be made painfully explicit, and numbers becoming increasingly tricky to manage. Drawing on Thomas Fuchs' theory of how individuals live in "basic contemporality," I explore moments of temporal rupture, and how people with Alzheimer's challenge their social relations due to their different sense of time. The article contributes to ongoing discussions about belonging. Taking inspiration from Tine Gammeltoft's description of how belonging entails fragile attempts at being part of something larger, and is thus a joint social practice, I show how one dimension of belonging's fragility is the inability to be in synch with social time. By proposing the notion of temporal belonging, I suggest that sustaining a sense of belonging is also about being able to participate in the rhythms and tempo of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I address the experiences of family members of people with dementia, as they expressed the sensation of gradually losing the person with dementia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in nursing homes in the Netherlands, and contributing to the anthropology of grief, I explore the co-existence of experiences of anticipatory grief and manifestations of care to maintain meaningful relations. I show how my interlocutors adapted to changing circumstances as the disease progressed, and in so doing found new ways to relate, as well as prepared for future losses and the expected end of life. I argue that anticipatory grief is temporal and relational, encompassing both present and future losses, and involving a continuous negotiation between the loss and the continuing relationship. I underscore the entanglement of loss and connection, showing how both exist parallel to, and may emerge from one another, and demonstrating how an anthropological approach to anticipatory grief can reveal the nuanced and equivocal character of experiences of illness and at the end of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnography looks at the indexical function of several brief utterances, routinely employed by a Palestinian speechmaker, in the Sheikh Jarrah protest in East Jerusalem. Following Silverstein's contributions to the indexically based theory of (meta)pragmatics, "creative" and nonreferential utterances are examined at the utterance event level, in relation to the speech event level, and more generally to verbal rituals. The political speeches I study have been delivered weekly, in Hebrew, by a Sheikh Jarrah resident and activist, for over a decade. The ethnographic analysis depicts how the utterances create a physical and symbolic (rhetorical) space for the performance of the speeches, routinize and ritualize their recurrence, and secure their endurance in a hostile environment. This is accomplished by spatially disassembling and reassembling the protesters, modifying the participation structure, and establishing a host–guest relationship. The speaker is repositioned as a resident, activist, and political rhetor‐in‐the‐becoming, and the protestors are repositioned as his audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how revolutionary activists or counterrevolutionary promoters of the December Revolution in Sudan used language for political and economic purposes based on ethnographic analysis of oral and written language practices. Also cited are how language was embedded within local sociocultural patterns during the Sudanese uprising and how a political crisis could produce metasemiotic reconfigurations of revolutionary linguistic resources.

There does not seem to be a singular, all-defining factor justifying the poor performance of students across the globe, but what is indisputable is that many scholars have attributed the poor performance of students to teacher quality. This suggests a clear correlation between teacher quality and student performance. The researcher implemented a contingency theory that centres on creating a relationship between schooling processes and outcomes. An ethnographic design grounded in the interpretative paradigm and premised on the qualitative research approach was adopted to explore how societies and individuals function in their natural environment to facilitate learning. Through purposive sampling, 12 participants were drawn from two local municipalities in a district of South Africa to take part in individual interviews. The analysis was done concurrently using ATLAS ti and thematic analysis. The findings suggest that claims of the impact of teacher quality on students' academic performance are indeed not overemphasised. However, they also show a systematic correlation between learner performance and teacher professional development rather than teacher quality alone. The study concludes that stakeholders must take full responsibility for learning by making holistic efforts towards teacher development and professionalism which are vital as long as teaching and learning remain an evolving practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of colonial fragmentation and genocide, Indigenous 'Khoisan resurgence' movements in South Africa have mobilised subversive forms of authenticity, including heteroglossic and inventive translanguaging from fragments of Khoekhoegowab. In our analysis of video ethnographic texts produced in collaboration with the Gamtkwa Khoisan Council (GKC) in Hankey, the birthplace of Sarah Baartman, we explore how memory, language politics, and environmental activism are interwoven in acts of linguistic citizenship that constitute the 'rememorying' of a history that has remained persistently obscured. We argue that rememorying advances a politics of reminding which counters the Rainbow Nation's institutionalised politics of forgetting, as well as anthropological accounts that consider Indigenous activist invocations of history as merely 'therapeutic'. Through an engagement with the memory activism of the GKC, we identify how reconstructing word-histories, reliving historical traumas, retelling histories of sites of memory, seeing oneself mirrored in one's ancestors, and the nexus of land, memory, and time form the basis for shared meaning-making, bringing impetus, focus, and intergenerational continuity to struggles for environmental and land justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syrian refugee women face many obstacles when accessing health services in host countries that are influenced by various cultural, structural, and practical factors. This paper is based on critical ethnographic research undertaken in Canada, to explore Syrian refugee women migration experiences. Also, we aim at critically examining how the intersection of gender, trauma, and violence, and the political and economic conditions of Syrian refugee women shapes their everyday lives and health. The study also investigates the strategies and practices by which Syrian refugee women are currently addressing their healthcare needs and the models of care that are suggested for meeting their physical and mental health needs. Findings show that these women experienced constant worries, hardship, vulnerability, and intrusion of dignity. These experiences and challenges were aggravated by the structure of the Canadian social and healthcare system. This study offers a better understanding of the impact of migration and trauma on Syrian refugee women's roles, responsibilities, gender dynamics, and interaction with Ontario's healthcare system to improve interaction and outcomes. Healthcare models should address these challenges among Syrian refugee families in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the social, cultural, and physical transformations—referred to as immigrantrification (gentrification by immigrants)—initiated by Korean immigrants in Palisades Park, a well-known Koreatown in New Jersey, in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It draws on data collected from ethnographic field research conducted in 2019–2020, including 67 interviews. Gentrification initiated as a profitable investment strategy of middle-class, entrepreneurial Korean immigrants has followed the town's revitalization brought about by the population and economic growth and the expansion of amenities during the establishment of the Korean ethnoburb. While many residents complain about overcrowding, pollution, land-use intensity, and parking problems, Guatemalan immigrants—active participants in labor-intensive gentrification who have established their sub-enclave, gradually supplanting White residents—express fear of being priced out of the immigrantrified town. Thus, this study addresses two issues underrepresented in the gentrification discourse — third-world immigration and ethnic minority gentrification — by expanding the research on Korean gentrifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toy unboxing videos are a popular and lucrative form of children's entertainment on YouTube. This essay undertakes a media (auto)poetics of these videos and their relationship to children's play through an integrated analysis of technology (media ecology), text (rhetorical criticism) and participant experience (autoethnography). Based on this analysis, I argue that toy unboxing videos foster and promote a form of 'play as advertising' via three key structural features: (1) repetition of the interest-excitement affect, (2) object fetishization and (3) direct address. In a concluding section of the essay, I reflect on the implications of the preceding analysis for digital media criticism, online advertising and children's play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1995 and until it apparently eased with the coming of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, ethnicity has become the dogmatic principle of the country for its social and political policies. Consequently, it has permeated through university campuses and affected relationships among students belonging to different ethnic groups. This study makes a micro-sociological ethnographic description and analysis of different "sites" of student interactions in curricular activities such as in classroom learning, extracurricular activities such as sporting, and service deliveries such as common residential compounds and dining halls at Addis Ababa University's Main Campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]