Seeing culture through the eye of the beholder: four methods in pursuit of taste

When it comes to making aesthetic decisions, people commonly account for their taste with intuition. A cultural good, symbol, or object is simply right and respondents “know it when they see it.” This article investigates the cultural meanings professional tastemakers see as they make such deliberations, while also illustrating the problems sociologists have in seeing culture. Using the case of fashion model casting and scouting, I present four methods to trace how cultural producers recognize and value models’ looks in the global fashion market, demonstrating how each method results in a different emphasis on how culture is used to acquire and deploy aesthetic sense. First, interviews capture justifications of aesthetic decisions, as well as general processes about day-to-day work routines, which are next tested with network analysis, the second method, which emphasizes structural arrangements in taste decisions. The third method, ethnography, discovers taste as a situated form of knowledge production and emphasizes culture in interaction. The fourth and related method, observant participation, sees taste as phenomenological as culture becomes embodied and tacit consciousness. Each of these methods is an optical device that renders a particular and complimentary account of taste and affords researchers a certain way to see how culture works.     

Ethnography as Translation

Sociologists and anthropologists often struggle over how to accurately convey ethnographic data from the field setting to a final report. This paper examines ethnography as a form of translation in order to clarify what occurs between the acquisition of data and the formulation of a thesis about the data. The paper argues that the ethnographers mind should be seen as a transitional space which in the act of translating field data into an analytic report (1) poses unique challenges to ethnographys claims for providing an accurate account of field situations while (2) simultaneously offering paths to insight which quantitative and survey research can not.     

The changing importance of white women's economic prospects for assortative mating

Given recent changes in the labor force participation and economic standing of women, we ask whether a woman's position in the labor market has become a more important determinant of her position in the marriage market. Unlike much prior research on trends over time in assortative mating, we take an individual‐level approach to the analysis and rely on improved measures of labor market position, such as measuring wives' wages before marriage and considering multiple indicators of husbands' longer term economic standing. Our analysis relies on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women (N = 759) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 767). Our results are consistent with growth over time in the importance of women's earnings potential in determining their marriage prospects.     

Non‐understanding as a heuristic to hypothesizing cultural models: A meta‐oriented sociolinguistic strategy1

This article is concerned with the development of an analytic strategy to construct U.S. cultural models of war and terrorism, which are ‘mediatized’ or significantly shaped by the media. Central to that strategy are repair cues to non‐understanding as heuristics in intercultural encounters. These are applied to an inherently mediatized discursive ‘reality’ of war and terrorism. Theoretically, I synthesize sociolinguistic and anthropological perspectives into a ‘meta‐oriented sociolinguistics’, which analytically focuses on the meta‐dimension of discourse. The strategy is applied to a text on war and terrorism from the New York Times, to demonstrate its utility. Furthermore, I provide implications for enhancing validity in the ethnography of mediatized discourse. Specific to the findings of this article, I suggest that corpus studies of media discourse should be conducted on the metadiscursive keywords kamikaze, surprise attacks, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 in particular temporal frames.     

Asian Women,Job Training and the Social Organization of Immigrant Labor Markets

This paper examines the entry of Asian immigrant women into a gendered labor market via government-funded job training programs. The focus is on the intake processing of clients into an employment training program operated by a community based organization. The study reveals that women's family responsibilities and the cultural capital they bring function to screen them into or out of training programs and ultimately shape their location in the workforce. The study thus draws attention to how race, class, and gender enter into the organization of Asian immigrant women into the labor market. This investigation is based in institutional ethnography (Smith 1987), a research strategy which displays how activities in a particular setting are coordinated with more extended forms of social organization. The study shows that the overriding concern with successful placement in a job as mandated by government regulations is a critical factor in selecting the women for these programs.     

Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography

In this paper, we argue for a view of analysis as an embodied practice and review others’ testimonies of carrying out multimodal ethnography. This review suggests that metaphors are key for communicating what happens to us in the course of the research and our subsequent sense-making practices. We identify four metaphors for communicating data collection and analytic practices: composing, meandering, plundering and time travel. We then turn to our own multimodal fieldwork with children in middle childhood, to think about the experiences and emergent metaphors that shaped our practice on an international study looking at the relationship between childhood and public life. Children’s play was instructive in our own formation as multimodal ethnographers. We provide examples of the ways in which children recruited us into their play, the ways in which play taught us about what matters to children, and finally, how we took play into our own analytical practices.     

Social Work Education without Walls: Ethnography as a Lens for Transformative Learning

A call for innovation in social work has been put forth to address our society’s greatest problems. This call applies to social work education, which encompasses multiple functions including teaching, research, and practice. Yet, innovation in social work is constrained by the limits of current social work approaches and methods. Increasing social work’s impact in the real world requires illuminating the complexities of reciprocal forces between human lives and the environment. Understanding such complexities incorporates spatial and interdisciplinary approaches, such as ethnography. Ethnography, as method and metaphor, is a lens for transformative learning in social work education: It is the message. Ethnography illuminates real-world complexities and deepens social work education through its core contributions: methodological holism, methodological engagement, and methodological comparison. In deepening social work education, ethnography renders visible salient links in social work’s field of dialectics, invoking the systems perspective. Yet, ethnography extends beyond and expands on the systems perspective, emphasizing engaged integration. Engaged integration of social work’s dialectics forwards the discourse about the profession’s identity. Thus, ethnography is a tool for advancing knowledge and promoting transformative learning in social work education.     

Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom

This paper describes the development of 'linguistic ethnography' in Britain over the last 5–15 years. British anthropology tends to overlook language, and instead, the U.K. Linguistic Ethnography Forum (LEF) has emerged from socio- and applied linguistics, bringing together a number of formative traditions ( inter alia , Interactional Sociolinguistics, New Literacy Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis). The career paths and the institutional positions of LEF participants make their ethnography more a matter of getting analytic distance on what's close-at-hand than a process of getting familiar with the strange. When linked with post-structuralism more generally, this 'from-inside-outwards' trajectory produces analytic sensibilities tuned to discourse analysis as a method, doubtful about 'comprehensive' and 'exotic' ethnography, and well disposed to practical/political intervention. LE sits comfortably in the much broader shift from mono- to inter-disciplinarity in British higher education, though the inter-disciplinary environment makes it hard to take the relationship between linguistics and ethnography for granted.     

Social Movements and Ethnographic Methodologies: An Analysis Using Case Study Examples

This paper defines and discusses the viability and applicability of specific ethnographic methods for the study and theorising of social movements and related social mobilisation. Ethnographic methods are shown to be one tool in a box of available methods, but are perhaps especially suited for the in‐depth study of social movements and social networks. Pros and cons of such methods are identified, using examples drawn from an ethnographic narrative comprising over a decade of research; ethnography of UK environmental direct activists, and more recent ethnography of UK publics engaging with human genetic technologies. Ethnography enables developments in latent social interactions to be identified in the field, providing data sources that inform social analysis and the development of theoretical stakes. This ethnographic narrative has contributed to the theorising of complexity in movement collective identity and complex social mobilisation patterns; namely the theorising of social movement. Findings can be disseminated to a range of stakeholders, including the research participants. Thus, ethnography can be both a method for studying social movements and a means of ‘upstream’ public engagement, understanding what is happening at the grassroots, with the aim of enabling capacity building between all actors in the research process. This methodological rationale is defined as ‘action research’.     

Studying one's own in the Middle East: Negotiating gender and self-other dynamics in the field

This article uses examples of the experience I had in the field as an indigenous researcher in Turkey in order to problematize claims to knowledge. I contend that for researchers who are positioned as relative “insiders,” whether indigenous or bicultural, such aspects of the researcher identity as gender, class, professional and relationship status are made especially salient, perhaps even more so in Middle Eastern contexts. I also argue that while indigenous status can be both empowering and restricting, the insider/outsider position can be employed as a useful vantage point for “rethinking the familiar.” I discuss with examples how this position informed my researcher role and my perspective on what is traditional.     

THREE‐PLAYER TRUST GAME WITH INSIDER COMMUNICATION

We examine behavior in a three‐player trust game in which the first player may invest in the second and the second may invest in the third. Any amount sent from one player to the next is tripled. The third player decides the final allocation among three players. The baseline treatment with no communication shows that the first and second players send significant amounts and the third player reciprocates. Allowing insider communication between the second and the third players increases cooperation between these two. Interestingly, there is an external effect of insider communication: the first player who is outside communication sends 54% more and receives 289% more than in the baseline treatment. As a result, insider communication increases efficiency from 44% to 68%. (JEL C72, C91, D72)     

Critical reflections on emancipatory partnerships in transition research: discerning perspectives of New Zealand Students on the autism spectrum

Transition from school involves different perspectives. Those most silenced in the process are transitioning students with significant disability, and similarly, they are alienated from the conduct of research. In this empirical project, three young men with complex autism conditions in Aotearoa New Zealand reclaimed their position as experts on their own transitions, and moreover, their contributions to research on the subject. Over a six-month ethnography, unique methodological adaptions were used to access personal insights and capabilities through emancipatory partnerships. The research forged collaborations that have the potential to be mirrored in future practices applicable to a transition with dignity.     

Young Adult Daughters' Relationships With Their Fathers: Review of Recent Research

In “Something More”: The Meanings of Marriage for Religious Couples in America, Dollahite, Hawkins and Parr (2012) present a qualitative study that includes interviews with religiously observant married couples to investigate marriage. The current paper reviews the aforementioned study with respect to its trustworthiness, through dependability, credibility, confirmability and transferability, to encourage the elevation of qualitative work in our field. We discuss a number of challenges in the study design, methods, interpretation, and conclusions. In sum, our reading of the study left us wanting “something more” scholarly rigorous for the field of marriage research and qualitative work.     

Practices of exclusion and injustices within social work education

Despite being a major influence, there are few studies investigating the impact of accreditation on the social justice remit of social work education. This article is guided by two questions: What are the social justice responsibilities of professional associations regulating social work education via accreditation? and What contribution can institutional ethnography make to understanding and change in this area? Drawing on a data-subset from a larger institutional ethnography, selected narratives of two informants, a social work student and a social work lecturer, are discussed. These narratives reveal how key documents of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) used to re-accredit social work courses influence how the study and work of the informants happens. Analysis of the narratives and documents bring the textually organised process of the re-accreditation of social work programmes into view. While this article reports on an Australian context, the issues raised concerning social injustice, epistemological equity and the implicit curriculum are relevant for social work education across many parts of the world. The contribution of this article is to recommend institutional ethnography as a research approach to generate understanding and transformation of organisations with social justice objectives, to redress exclusion and injustice.     

Uncompensated emotional labor,racial battle fatigue,and (in)civility in digital spaces

Emotional labor was originally theorized by Arlie Hochschild in the context of domestic labor. Since her early theorization, popular culture and social scientists have adopted the term to refer to emotion work that is exhibited in a manner of financially compensated social settings. Emotional labor refers to the process by which individuals are expected to conform to a set of societal guidelines, ensuring that their emotions conform to that performance. As the use of social media grows, emotional labor plays an increasing role in the lives of people of color—across media platforms. We frame the ever‐present negotiation involved in racialized interactions online as a type of uncompensated emotional labor that results in racial battle fatigue. Next, we position emotional labor as an intrinsic part of the experience for social media users of color because digital media is by default a White, racialized space. Lastly, we argue that current research on civility does not account for the emotional labor of people of color. We offer an original view of uncompensated emotional labor that is inclusive of cross‐platform, racialized emotional labor that can result in racial battle fatigue.     

THE RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE OF RAMADAN AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

We investigate experimentally the impact on prosocial behavior of the religious observance of Ramadan. Our sample consists of male factory workers in a manufacturing facility in a Muslim country. In our between‐subjects' design, each worker is asked to allocate an amount of money between himself and a stranger. Specifically, we examine behavior of observants and nonobservants before and after the daily break of the Ramadan fast. We also examine behavior outside of Ramadan, where we treat alimentary abstention as akin to a long fasting period. We hypothesize and confirm that outside Ramadan, decision makers who abstain from any alimentary intake transfer less money to recipients relative to decision makers who do not abstain. Strikingly, this effect is reversed during the month of Ramadan. Specifically, observant workers who are in the midst of their Ramadan fast are far more generous to recipients than workers who have had their evening meal. Interestingly, observant and nonobservant workers after the daily break of the Ramadan fast and workers outside Ramadan that consumed aliments make statistically similar transfers. Our findings suggest that it is the interaction between alimentary abstention and religious observance that amplifies prosocial behavior during Ramadan, where fasting is part of the ritual. (JEL C91, C93, C72)     

From Bricolage to Collage: The Making of Decisions at a Weather Forecast Office

This article elaborates the process of decision making in organizational environments characterized by disciplined improvisation. Building on an ethnography of forecasting operations at the National Weather Service, it introduces “collage” as a mediating concept between information bricolage and the forging of a decision. The concept of collage serves to (1) heuristically frame decision making as a process of assembling, appropriating, superimposing, juxtaposing, and blurring of information; and (2) externalize into digital practices of screenwork the cognitive labor of merging and distilling complex data into a provisionally coherent decision.     

Vocatives as rationalized politeness: Theoretical insights from emerging norms in call centre service encounters

This study offers an extension of existing politeness theories by illuminating how changes in politeness conventions come about as a result of contextual specificities. Despite a surge in mediated service encounters, few studies to date have considered the linguistic enactment of politeness in call centres, mainly due to restrictions on access. Drawing on a linguistic ethnography of an onshore call centre in Scotland and data in the form of authentic service interactions, interviews, on‐site observations, and institutional documents, the study combines quantitative and qualitative discourse analytic techniques to explore how the call centre‐specific tension between efficiency and customer care is managed in theory and practice. It is found that while the institution accords equal importance to efficiency and customer care, in actual service interactions, agents prioritize efficiency. Furthermore, in the few cases where agents do orient to customer care, vocatives appear to be used as a shortcut evidencing the emergence of a novel – rationalized – type of politeness. The study contributes the theoretical insight that new politeness conventions may emerge, not so much because of the imposition of one culture on another, but because they are shaped by the particular context in which they arise.     

Doing a transversal method: developing an ethics of care in a collaborative research project

Beck and Sznaider call on ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ to transcend methodological nationalism and account for an increasingly cosmopolitanized reality. We take up their challenge by drawing on our experiences of conducting a collaborative ethnography of methodological changes in the production of population statistics within and between European national and international statistical institutes. Drawing on debates in science and technology studies, we depart from some conceptual presuppositions of methodological cosmopolitanism to define a ‘transversal method’. Referring to this method as performative and ontopolitical, we reflect on how it requires collaboration and, in our ethnography, gave rise to three practical challenges – (1) going beyond the individual project; (2) using each other's field notes; (3) and working against the national order of things. To meet these challenges, we reflect on how this method required us to practise three modes of care – thinking with others, tinkering with field notes, and dissenting within.     

Beyond Indigenous Authenticity: Reflections on the Insider/Outsider Debate in Immigration Research

The insider/outsider debate in field research has recently been identified as one of the more important areas of needed research in immigration scholarship. My fieldwork as a native ethnographer among Somali immigrants to Canada is used to further that argument by showing the insatiability of categories such as native ethnographers and that the insider/outsider roles are products of the particular situation in which a given fieldwork takes place and not from the status characteristics per se of the researcher.