Search

Copyright of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, & the Middle East is the property of Duke University Press 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 Ofsted Subject report series: Religious Education (2024) and the CoRE report (2018) critically evaluate the shortcomings of the current Religious Education (RE) curriculum in UK schools, highlighting a lack of depth and consistency that inadequately prepares students for a diverse and complex world. This paper proposes the integration of ethnographic and anthropological methods into the RE curriculum as a transformative solution to enhance pedagogical effectiveness and deepen students' understanding of religious practices. By employing these methods, the curriculum can offer a more immersive, reflective, and comprehensive educational experience, aligning RE more closely with the realities of a multicultural and multi-faith society. This integration not only enriches students' learning but also fosters greater empathy and a nuanced appreciation of religious diversity, addressing the educational challenges highlighted by Ofsted and CoRE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advocates the relevance of ethnography as a methodology for researching preservice teacher education. The research underpinning this paper demonstrates the importance and relevance of the ethnographic imagination for examining the formation and development of preservice teacher identity, offering a means of capturing the lived experience of learning to teach from the perspective of those entering the profession. The experience of learning to teach on three graduate-level teacher education pathways in the South of England is explored using ethnographic methods. The yearlong immersion in three different research sites and subsequent thematic analysis of the generated data gives insight into the formation of the teacher identity, foregrounding the importance of place in the experiential journey of the preservice teacher. The comprehensive data generated from this study give unique insight into how ethnographic practices can reveal the developmental process of teacher identity and have relevance for teacher educators and researchers internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores 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 study reviews existing scholarship on identity politics. It explores the preservation of cultural and national identity within Pakistani cultural institutions, examining how we collectively identify with or differentiate ourselves from others. Another important dimension is the state's function as a regulator in forming the identity for the population, especially in divisions based on ethnicity, culture, or religion. The study used a qualitative approach to analyze various resources, including books, internet sources, and interviewed nine senior staff members from cultural institutions and universities in Islamabad, as well as provincial officials in Sindh, to gain valuable insights into Pakistan's cultural preservation efforts. Study's findings, Pakistan has several cultural institutions tasked with preserving its cultural and national identity. However, these institutions frequently serve the cultural agenda, blurring the line between their respective objectives. This study suggests understanding the issues surrounding cultural and national identity in Pakistan, highlighting recent works on identity, becoming familiar with scholarship on these topics, and developing models for policymakers to incorporate these issues into provincial and national policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic research was conducted to investigate the transition processes of children from preschool to primary school. The data were collected through observations, interviews and document analysis over three phases (preschool, summer break, primary school) and analyzed through interpretive content analysis. The results revealed that the teachers did not create a preparatory and supportive environment for children to make a successful transition to primary school. However, using the concept of interpretive reproduction, it was documented that the children obtained information about primary school from their observations and communication with their older peers that was somewhat supported by their parents. From the interpretive reproductive view, it was discovered that they created various ways in their peer culture to resist structured academic activities to some degree which actually supported a smoother transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During colonial times, dioramas were commonly used to portray the diverse peoples of India. They depicted essentialised human types through plaster models in rural settings, engaged in typical activities, and dated back to the exhibition of human beings in universal expositions held in Calcutta, Delhi and London. Since Independence, there have been determined efforts to move away from colonial stereotypes and to decolonise government-funded museums in India. Meanwhile, Adivasi artists are finding their own way out of the curatorial confines of the museum. This paper describes how Indian museology still struggles to exorcise the ghosts of the Victorian museum and India's own internal colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the research integrity literature, funding plays two different roles: it is thought to elevate questionable research practices (QRPs) due to perverse incentives, and it is a potential actor to incentivize research integrity standards. Recent studies, asking funders, have emphasized the importance of the latter. However, the perspective of active researchers on the impact of competitive research funding on science has not been explored yet. Here, I address this issue by conducting a series of group sessions with researchers in two different countries with different degrees of competition for funding, from three scientific fields (medical sciences, natural sciences, humanities), and in two different career stages (permanent versus temporary employment). Researchers across all groups experienced that competition for funding shapes science, with many unintended negative consequences. Intriguingly, these consequences had little to do with the type of QRPs typically being presented in the research integrity literature. Instead, the researchers pointed out that funding could result in predictable, fashionable, short-sighted, and overpromising science. This was seen as highly problematic: scientists experienced that the ‘projectification’ of science makes it more and more difficult to do any science of real importance: plunging into the unknown or addressing big issues that need a long-term horizon to mature. They also problematized unintended negative effects from collaboration and strategizing. I suggest it may be time to move away from a focus on QRPs in connection with funding, and rather address the real problems. Such a shift may then call for entirely different types of policy actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Primary dental healthcare services are not accessible for a majority of Latino/a/e migrant farmworkers in the United States. Unmet dental health needs are well documented in larger states like California, Florida and New York, but the dental healthcare picture in smaller states is not well understood. The goal of this qualitative ethnographic study was to understand the delivery model of a free dentistry network serving Latine farmworkers in rural Vermont and specific barriers experienced at the network during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Methods: Semi‐structured ethnographic interviews were carried out with clinicians and transcripts were analysed using the constant comparison method to identify salient concerns and recommendations about barriers and delivery of care. Results: Clinicians highlighted structural issues including farmworkers' lack of time off work and absence of transportation to attend appointments, concerns about COVID‐19 safety, concerns about immigration surveillance and language barriers. Providers outlined steps for improved service delivery including mobile care at local farms, enhanced intercultural training for providers, recognizing dentistry as essential healthcare at the state level and the leverage of existing appointments for preventive health. Drawing on anthropological frameworks of place‐based care and deservingness of healthcare, our ethnographic findings emphasize the role of community dentistry in bridging gaps in migrant healthcare during and beyond the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to describe a methodology called Escucha Expandida (expanded listening hereinafter) as a way of conducting ethnographic research. This proposal stems from the field work of a doctoral dissertation in progress, which relates artisanal fishing and its roots to the territory in the village of la Boquilla, located in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. In the methodology section, three moments are outlined: i) the researcher's listening in the research setting, ii) the relational listening of the bodies, iii) the reflexivity. Fishers who carry out artisanal seine fishing in the territory participate in the research, this being the only criterion of inclusion of the people linked to the study. The research concludes that ethnographic expanded listening generates a condition of relationality understood as a possibility of listening to ourselves in the midst of a living and non-living space -territory-. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pilates is a commonly recommended exercise modality for the management of persistent low back pain. Whilst guidelines recommend the use of exercise for low back pain, research suggests that no one exercise is superior, creating a question over the mechanism of effect. The patient-practitioner relationship may be important in managing low back pain; however, the relationship between Pilates teachers and clients is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to identify the components of the relationship between Pilates teachers and clients with persistent low back pain, explore key influences on the relationship, and ascertain the nature of the relationship. We conducted a qualitative, ethnographically-informed study at eight sites in the South of England, observing 24 Pilates sessions and interviewing 9 Pilates teachers and 10 clients with persistent low back pain. Fieldnotes and interview transcripts were analysed thematically. The findings demonstrate a complex, multi-faceted interaction that occurs during Pilates sessions, grounded within certain health perceptions, and predicated on expectations of individuality, choice and expertise. A key finding reveals the perceived importance of mastery of prescribed movements with control and precision, in which clients particularly value the authority of the teacher in a directive learning environment. We contend that the role of the Pilates teacher in this study facilitated the alleviation of clients' distress through the application of ritual-like Pilates activity. We conclude that the relationship between Pilates teachers and clients with persistent low back pain may be considered a therapeutic relationship. • Pilates teachers may develop therapeutic relationships with clients with low back pain. • Clients value the Pilates teacher's authority in a directive relationship. • Activities within a Pilates encounter are ritual-like. • An ethnographically-informed methodology provides insight to therapeutic Pilates practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a regulatory context, it is important to understand how effective risk communication fits into the overall risk assessment, management, and decision-making process. This includes recognizing the intersections between risk analysis and the 3Ps: policy, politics, and publics, and understanding the barriers to effective communication. Risk communication is especially challenging when it requires the audience to follow and act on authoritative information or advice. Risk communicators must factor attributes such as risk perception, tolerance, and behaviors, and tailor the delivery of messages to diverse audiences. This paper captures the discourse from an intradepartmental workshop on risk communication with participants from Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. The workshop provided an opportunity to discuss and share references to existing frameworks, pertinent documents, and examples of effective risk communication strategies based on the authors' ethnographic and pragmatic experiences. The workshop aimed to strengthen risk communication by better understanding the value in collaborating with interdisciplinary teams, applying a systems thinking lens, and finding opportunities to experiment and evaluate risk communication strategies for regulatory purposes.

This essay is an account of creating a learning encounter for other artists. We write our becoming together, finding our way to do justice both to the fluidity of (our) process and to the fluidity of processes of “making good practice” to creatively care for the health and wellbeing of artists in a context of precarity. Our “creative-relational” inquiry frames the learning encounter and co-exists in the planning-testing-doing process we used to design it and to create this essay. We explore how being well and making good practice as an artist in the world might be described as an emergent becoming—a creative-relational health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern schooling systems operate through normative and sedentary framings of childhood, within which migrant childhoods get constructed as outliers. This paper problematizes the discriminatory ways in which such a system operates. The inclusionary mechanisms adopted to 'mainstream' 'hard to reach' migrant children into formal schools do not address the fundamental spatio-temporal modalities of modern schooling. This complicates the relationship between migrant childhoods and presumed policy dichotomies such as inclusion and exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, this paper foregrounds how migrant children's lives, are spatio-temporally liminal and precarious in the city. It further explores how these modalities of migrant children's lives are in discordance with the spatio-temporal framing of modern childhood and schooling. Moreover, migrant children's own experiences of schooling and socio-spatial marginalization in the city bring out the contradictions of modern schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past years, the Northeast people linked the BJP with the principle of Hindutwa (a Hindu way of life) that made it unattractive for them. In recent years, the Party surprisingly takes the area like wildfire by dictating who is to rule in many states. Now, switching from old history to that of a fresher one, a historian may significantly raise a question in this transition: "Is the Hindu way of life entering the region with the emergence of the BJP?" One perception which robustly stands against this question is that the native inhabitants view the coming of the BJP in the Northeast as "a politics of convenience and expediency" to boost up their deprived economic situations. They do not perceive it as a politic of conviction to and assurance for the BJP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cooperation and prosociality are among traditional research issues in many scholarly disciplines, whereby they also have received attention in ethnology. In the text I address the complex relationship between forms of cooperation and kinship. My aim is to analyse particular types of cooperation recorded during ethnographic research and to show what mechanisms support its effective functioning. When resolving this research issue I apply the theoretical perspective of evolutionary anthropology, which is a powerful tool to explain how universal characteristics, such as cooperation, manifest themselves in different social and cultural contexts. The treatise is based on empirical data collected during ethnographic research in a rural setting in western Slovakia. Long-term ethnographic research based on the method of ethnographic interviewing and participant observation makes it possible to describe and analyse all the nuances of cooperation in a particular locality. The village in which the research took place is located in the White Carpathians near the border with the Czech Republic, and it features a scattered settlement. The treatise analyses specific mechanisms supporting the functioning and maintenance of cooperation in the locality: kinship, reciprocity (direct and indirect) and reputation. As resulting from the data analysis, the people do not limit cooperation to close or distant relatives. The choice of a cooperation partner depends on many factors, with the degree of kinship being only one of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chengguan, the Urban Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau, has been criticized for its dismal public image and poor job performance. Based on an ethnographic case study in Z City, we analyzed the type of leadership that results in passive work performance in Chengguan, and we examined whether any leadership style can be used to improve Chengguan's image and performance. We developed a new leadership ontology of CNP (Cognition–Normalization–Performance) on this foundation, and ethnographic research was conducted in three phases: leader's cognition, followers' normalization, and organization performance. Several implications were drawn. Leader selection should be cautious and can be improved by studying the leader's traits and behavior. This is done by investigating candidates' leadership career paths, trait characteristics, motive profiles, and other qualities. It is useful to change leaders by strengthening followers' unity and cohesion by setting up a labor union, youth federation, women's federation, and other groups. A leader should be selected among individuals who have completed leadership training as opposed to appointing one from outside the organization. On the one hand, the superior should help to improve the leadership environment (context), supervise problems in the organization's operation and performance, and track changes over time. On the other hand, the leader can also provide the followers with a flexible and adaptive place of work.

In children's geographies of the rural milieu, little is known about the geography of the outdoor environment in coastal areas, especially in rural fishing villages. This study explores affordance levels of the outdoor environment in a rural coastal area, with specific reference to young children's play behaviour. This study used an ethnographic approach together with direct participant observations, auto photographs, go-along interviews, and focus group interviews, to elicit the numbers of affordances experienced by 45 respondents, aged 3–13, in Bum Bum Island, Sabah, Malaysia. Hot Spot (Getis-Ord Gi*) spatial statistical and content analyses revealed that perceived affordances are the highest levels of affordances accumulated, followed by utilized and shaped affordances. The most frequent hot spots for the perceived, utilized and shaped affordances occurred in the transitional zone compared to the land and sea zones. This zone was the nucleus for actions of daily play-based experiences for the children in the coastal community based on the natural phenomena of the tides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music remains a fundamental aspect of sociocultural traditions and environments. In this article, I explore a sierreño band of translingual youth artists and their appropriation of norteño music in their designing of new forms of expression. Employing the concept of communities of practice, I examine three youth musicians' experiences as members of a grupo sierreño (sierreño band) to highlight the nature of learning, sharing, and collaborative cultural action taking place in the membership of this collective. I use translingual literacy and translanguaging as sociocultural frames for understanding how the focal bilingual youth leverage their full semiotic and linguistic repertoires for productive musical and cultural practice and literacy. Drawing from ethnographic methods, the findings highlight the translingual ingenuity and power of the focal youth musicians as active agents in the construction of their musical and linguistic lives and their families' financial stability through the formation of their own creative translingual economy. Attending to these cultural activities can shed light on how transnational and translingual young people negotiate and make decisions, sophisticatedly employ literacies to communicate and solve problems, and come to make sense of their social worlds. Thoughtfully considering the musicality of young people can help educators better understand them as agentic constructors of their own creative capacities, skills, knowledge, and cultural lifeworlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogic pedagogy, in which students and teachers voice thoughts, co‐construct meanings, and generate multiple interpretations of texts, can promote literacy skills and reasoning. Yet, such teaching is challenging and requires, among other changes, adopting dialogic stances. In the language arts, expressive and critical reading stances have been shown to encourage and support dialogic discussions. How can teachers develop such dialogic reading stances? In this study, we investigated the processes through which teachers negotiated reading stances in a professional development program. Specifically, we studied teachers' participation in rereading discussions designed to open texts to multiple interpretations as preparation for leading productive dialogue in language arts lessons. We used systematic observation and microethnographic methods to analyze nine rereading discussions among 17 teachers, coaches, and researchers. Five reading stances emerged in the discussions: expressive, critical, instrumental, moralistic, and historical. Focusing on three case studies, we investigated the interactional conditions under which dialogic stances did and did not emerge and the opportunities and limitations of different reading stances for opening texts to dialogue. Our analysis shows that dialogic stances gained legitimacy during discussions in which leadership and facilitation supported gradual elaborations of the text. In contrast to our initial assumptions, we found that expressive and critical stances sometimes narrow interpretive possibilities, whereas instrumental and moralistic stances can be generative of dialogue during rereading discussions. We show the potential of cultivating dialogic stances for the promotion of dialogic pedagogy in the language arts and discuss the advantages and limitations of rereading discussions as professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I use narrative portraiture as a methodology to inquire into the ways that two Asian American (AsAm) girls used their time in an after‐school writing collaborative for girls of Color to explore and express their identities and political commitments through multiple literacies. Building on theoretical foundations of AsianCrit, women of Color, and AsAm feminisms, and sociocultural understandings of literacies, I argue against the flattening of AsAm girlhood, rooted in the harmful intersection of sexism and stereotypes such as the model minority and forever foreigner tropes. Three learnings emerged from this study: (1) AsAm girls' relational literacies are used to explore and express AsAm girlhood, (2) AsAm girls use multimodal literacies to inquire into and story their identities in ways that resist dominant definitions of AsAm girlhood, and (3) AsAm girls are holders of emerging political identities that can be supported through supportive literacy curriculum. The work of the girls featured in this article has important implications for the ways the field understands AsAm girlhood and AsAm girl literacies. I put forth a necessary call for more AsAm feminist scholars to work alongside AsAm girls to create richer understandings of their needs and desires and how we might support them through literacy pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]