In Search of Sensitive Ethnography of Change: Tracing the Invisible Handoffs From Technology Developers to Users

It is suggested that the prevailing form of technology adoption and stabilization through the "handing-off" of technologies across multiple, discontinuous worlds relies on articulation work that is largely invisible. In this article, I discuss the possibilities of opening the black box, that is, finding out how the "invisible" in technology production and use can be traced. I suggest a research methodology that is sensitive not only to the processes of exclusion, but also to the emerging interactions and expansive efforts among technology developers and users. The challenge of such dynamic methodology is to trace online the emerging new pattern of activity when it does not have any center or clear material entity. The context of my doctoral research, the early implementation of an innovation, is a clear example of such an activity. It is a collaborative and potentially expansive endeavor in which both the innovation and the user activity are transformed as the innovation is adopted into use. I call this research practice, which follows activity theory, the ethnography of change. I elaborate on part of my doctoral research in which the ethnographer's sensitiveness to the participants' marginality enriched the activity-theoretical analysis and demonstrated a need for reflecting on the methodological strategies used in activity-theoretical research on work and organizations. I suggest that if the activity-theoretical analysis of work practices is further developed as an ethnography of change, able to reveal the multivoicedness that exceeds the expected or hypothetical categories, more attention needs to be paid to the sensitivity of ethnography and the interactive processes of the data collection.     

Talking with the Experts: A Social Justice Approach to Homelessness in Regina

Abstract

Homelessness is a difficult phenomenon to measure. At risk populations can view intrusion from government officials with scepticism and resistance. Also the fluid nature of a homeless population (as individuals move in and out of ‘homelessness,’ and/or homeless situations) makes it difficult to generate accurate understandings of homelessness and the circumstances associate to becoming homeless. In this study researchers engage in a series of consultations/conversations with Regina based respondents over the realities of homelessness. The consultations are heard from various degrees of ‘otherness,’ are representative of members of community, and span a diverse background of ethnicities, situations and ages. Promoting a social justice approach to homelessness the authors advocate that homelessness in Regina must be understood within, definable material and cultural specificities, inaction and inefficiencies on the part of state and community agencies, and neo-liberal management technologies which thwart meaningful redress. Within the highly racialized and classed realities of Regina life amelioration represents a serious policy response, one moving beyond existing mechanisms of remedy. Reformulation then must first examine the phenomenon of homelessness as dimensionally a community challenge petitioning a community response. The project examines avenues of action in focusing and implementing this response.     

Saving the Moral Capital of NGOs: Identifying One-Sided and Many-Sided Social Dilemmas in NGO Accountability

The literature on nonprofit management has embraced the concept of “accountability” to target urgent challenges related to NGO probity and integrity, and there have been attempts in the literature to use rational-choice-based governance approaches to solve them. Although the existing principal–agent frameworks provide important insights, they are limited to the analysis of financial relationships between NGOs and donors. We contribute to the literature in developing a comprehensive rational-choice-based governance approach to analyze all stakeholder relationships of NGOs. Applying the research program of ordonomics, we unpack two fundamental interaction problems: (a) the “stakeholder dilemma” between the NGO and a single accountability holder as a one-sided social dilemma and (b) the “competition dilemma” among rival NGOs as a many-sided social dilemma. We show that improving NGO accountability in relation to intended beneficiaries, peer organizations, and the general public also requires identifying the underlying governance problem as a competition dilemma focusing on collective self-regulation as a solution.     

社会保险权的历史发展:从工业公民资格到社会公民资格

伴随着现代社会保障制度的改革与发展,社会保险权的发展轨迹也愈加清晰:从德国《1881年帝国诏书》中面向劳工阶级的书面性权利,到美国1935年《社会保障法案》中较为丰满的法定权利,再到1942年《贝弗里奇报告》描画的国民普享式社会权利,并经受住了20世纪70年代末以来新保守主义及其政策导向的考验,经历了从工业公民资格到社会公民资格的螺旋式演进。在这个过程中,社会保险制度呈现出的全民化、福利化和私营化趋向,已经、正在、未来必将继续影响社会保险权的发展。     

A Holland Perspective on the U.S. Workforce From 1960 to 2000

The authors analyze civilian occupations and employment data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 with respect to 6 kinds of work (Holland's RIASEC [Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional] classification), employment, and gender. For the 1990 and 2000 censuses, kinds of work, gender, and income are analyzed, and for the 2000 census, kinds of work, age, and gender are examined. Past employment trends developed from census data are further analyzed with respect to Bureau of Labor Statistics employment projections through 2012. Implications for further research, employment policy, and career services are offered.     

From Famine to Feast. A Review of the Foster Care Research Literature

Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioural problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non‐governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK. Copyright © 2006 National Children's Bureau.     

Priority: Home! A true priority? An analysis of the Federal Plan to Break the Cycle of Homelessness

Homelessness pervades every fabric of American society: it has plagued individuals and families, young and old, males and females. This paper analyzes and discusses the feasibility of a current proposal, Priority: Home? The Federal Plan to Break the Cycle of Homelessness, and the intended effects of its policies pertaining to the homeless. Specifically, the plan outlines the need for a continuum of care, a concept which promotes three stages to attain self-sufficiency: emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent housing. Providing support services and follow-up care are contingent on the success of the continuum. The plan therefore describes a comprehensive solution to address homelessness and requires that all levels of government participate in the process.     

金融危机下制造业的困境与对策——以东莞为例

东莞是全球著名的“制造工厂”,经过改革开放30年的发展,制造业企业已经成为东莞经济增长的引擎。近年来,随着原材料、劳动力成本上涨,人民币升值,特别是2008年受全球金融海啸影响,东莞制造业出现了前所未有的危机,市场萎缩、成本上涨、利润下滑、融资困难。文章在系统分析30年来东莞经济和产业结构特征的基础上,剖析目前东莞制造业企业的困境及原因,探究其摆脱困境的对策,旨在为政府和企业决策提供参考。     

在新的历史起点上培育世界文化名城

建设文化强市,培育世界文化名城,广州应首先在培育世界商贸文化名城上下功夫。南京已举办了四届世界历史文化名城博览会,推动了世界历史文化名城之间的交流。     

Claimsmakers and Contexts in Early Constructions of Homelessness: A Comparison of New York City and Washington,D.C.

This study compares the emergence of homelessness as a “new” social problem from 1977 through 1981 in New York City and Washington, D.C. The two cases illustrate a comparative constructionist method that analyzes evolving claimsmaking activities, the context in which they were embedded, and the interplay between claimsmaking and context. The method aided in identifying why homelessness became primarily a problem of deficient and pathological individuals requiring rehabilitation rather than a problem of poverty and inadequate housing. Resources at stake in New York caused city‐ and state‐level government officials, who advocated a medicalized view, to become central claimsmakers. This typification eventually became dominant nationally. Washington's lack of similar resources allowed advocates framing homelessness as a problem of social justice to take the lead. This proved to be a less durable typification. Both groups were also embedded in different relevant histories and cultures, which also influenced claims‐making and its resonance with the public.     

Ethnography and anxiety: Field work and reflexivity in the vortex of U.S.-Cuban relations

This paper explores the ways in which geo-political forces can shape doing, interpreting, and representing ethnographic field work. Using my field work in a law collective in Havana, Cuba between 1989 and 1994 as a starting point, I consider how macro-social relationship—in this case 30 years of political hostility between the U.S. and Cuban governments—can inscribe themselves on the micro-social relations between ethnographers and informants in the field, and ethnographers and their audiences at home. The combination of geo-political tensions and reflexive attempts to discern the impact of these tensions on my field work generated, what I term, disciplinary anxietyand discursive anxiety.I consider how anxieties became part of my reflexive routines in the field, shaped my interactions with Cubans, colored my attempts to interpret those interactions, and affected my framing of those interpretations for audiences at home. I suggest that reflexivity in fieldwork must be sensitive, not only to the standpoints imbedded in the field worker's biography, but also to the way in which macro-political processes enter into the biographies of field workers, their informants, and their audiences, and influence the interactions among them.     

The odyssey of the immigrant in American history: From the changed to the changer. A bibliographic essay

This essay examines the work of nine contemporary historians who have reacted to the model of immigration associated with the work of Oscar Handlin. Some of these writers have composed variations on Handlin's work: others have opposed it. Their findings and interpretations have profoundly altered the historiography of immigration into America.     

现代大伦敦的空气污染成因与治理——基于生态城市视野的历史考察

19世纪以来英国的工业化和城市化进程,既创造了巨大的物质财富,也给人类社会带来沉重的负面效应,其中空气污染就是代价之一,成为生态城市建设的重大障碍。伦敦首先对以烟雾型的空气污染成因进行分析与治理,接着对汽车尾气中的二氧化硫和铅污染进行治理。新世纪以来,则着重开展对二氧化氮和可吸入悬浮颗粒的监测与治理。从空气立法到大伦敦市长的空气质量策略,从拥堵费到低排放区,从以自行车为代表的绿色出行到对工地街道扬尘的治理,表明了伦敦市政府对空气污染的治理越来越深入全面,治理空气污染的手段也在推陈出新。     

课堂德育：中西德育个案移植研究

美国教师讲授《灰姑娘》一文的过程,使我们看到中西课堂德育方式确实存在相当大的差距,怎样来突破和缩小这种差距?我们试将这精彩的一课移植到中国课堂,结果却并不成功。这是由于多方面的德育环境的不同造成的。因此,我国的课堂德育不能仅从形式上模仿,而应该综合考虑自身独特的环境,找到属于自己的出口。     

Spaces of Pride: A Visual Ethnography of Gay Pride Parades in Italy and the United Kingdom

Gay pride parades represent an active site of production of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), intersexual and queer identities, featuring a spatial and social articulation of political and human rights claims. While the multiplication of these events in different countries suggests the existence of a coherent and cohesive community which shares the same collective identity beyond national borders, different patterns in the organisation, part-taking and social and political connotations given to these events can be observed in different contexts. By means of a comparative visual ethnography of Italian and British Gay Pride Parades, this article investigates how the creation, mobilisation and challenge of quasi-normative LGBT identities occur within the spatial context of gay pride marches. It is argued, in particular, that while gay pride parades are sites in which the socio-political status quo can be successfully challenged, participants are also faced with the possibility of falling prey to dynamics of identity commodification and homonationalism which may ultimately deprive their claims of their subversive potential.     

The Problematic Progress of ‘Integration’ in the Chinese State's Approach to Xinjiang, 1759 – 2005

The statement that Xinjiang is an integral province of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is not as banal as it would first appear. The primary question that arises from this statement is how—by what processes and strategies—was Xinjiang brought to its contemporary situation as a province of the PRC? This paper seeks to highlight that, although Xinjiang's history since the eighteenth century has been one of great turbulence and dynamism, underlying continuities in both the practice of Chinese power and perceptions of Xinjiang impact profoundly on contemporary China's rule of Xinjiang. Therefore, this study attempts to chart the transition of the Qing goal of territorial incorporation of the region based upon a system of indirect rule c.1760 to the post-imperial Chinese state's goal of territorial incorporation based on the extension of direct, modern strategies of government and control.     

Exploring the Relationship Between Homelessness and Delinquency: A Snapshot of a Group of Homeless Youth in San Jose, California

This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study examining the relationship between homelessness and delinquency in adolescents. Researchers collected data from interviews of 42 homeless youth contacted through a drop-in center in San Jose, California. Participants responded to a structured interview as well as two vignettes describing situations in which crimes were committed. The most striking findings are that (1) reported rates of delinquency are higher than expected based on past research, and (2) despite the high rates of delinquency, answers to a “three wishes” question describe wishes and ideals that are largely consistent with mainstream societal values. This paper provides a survey of existing research on homeless youth and delinquency, a comparison of our findings to those of previous studies, and two detailed case studies that highlight the patterns we observed in the broader survey.