Technological socialities: The impact of information and communication technologies on belonging among deaf and hard-of-hearing people

This review article examines how different types of communication technologies, from the specialized medical to generic social devices, influence belonging and sociality among deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) people. The emphasis is on DHH adolescents and young adults who may be impacted differently across countries, given state-specific policies regarding the status of sign language and deaf education, and based on different availability, affordability, and accessibility of communication technologies. We introduce different perspectives on deafness, ranging from pathological to cultural, a heuristic on which we build to explore DHH socialities as complex and evolving. We then analytically review ethnographic research on how cochlear implants impact DHH people's belonging to the “deaf world” and/or the “hearing world,” and how they navigate between these worlds. Then we move on to technologies such as text messages and social media, which enable DHH people to extend their socialities beyond local communities. Belonging is a fluid phenomenon, and technologies which are in a constant process of innovation and development may influence it in complex ways. We argue that to explore questions of belonging, identity, and sociality among DHH people, and how they are shaped by technologies, (visual) ethnographic methods are particularly productive.     

Practices and Flows of Digital Photography: An Ethnographic Framework

This article develops a methodological framework for undertaking empirical studies of practices and flows, of doings and circulations, of digital tourist photography. The article outlines what might be termed a non‐representational approach to photography concerned with affordances, actor‐networks, hybridized practices and networked flows of photographs. The article falls in three parts. It begins with rethinking photography theory. Traditional dualisms between affordance and practice are challenged, and photography is conceptualized as a hybridized, embodied performance. How digital photography changes photography's traditional affordances is then discussed. The third part discusses various methods to describe how affordances of digital tourist photography are used, twisted and resisted in concrete hybridized practices. I suggest undertaking multi‐sided ethnographies with ‘busy photographers’ to craft non‐representational accounts of mobile practices of photographing and flows of photographic images across various sites and actor‐networks. In a broader sense, this article is a methodological contribution to ‘the new mobilities paradigm’.     

Constructing press releases, constructing quotations: A case study

This paper reports on empirical research into how press releases are being constructed. It starts from previous discourse-analytic work which has pointed to the 'preformulated' nature of press releases: in particular, it has been shown that through a number of metapragmatic features press releases can easily be copied by journalists in their own news reporting. In this paper we set out to subject one of these features, viz. pseudo-quotations (or so-called constructed direct speech), to a further empirical study, in which we scrutinize the process of constructing the press releases. We propose a detailed analysis of this process by combining ethnographic fieldwork with some of the methodology of cognitive psychology, including think-aloud protocols and on-line registration of the writing process. On the basis of this case study it is concluded that the design and functions of quotations in press releases are more complex than has been assumed so far. In addition, our preliminary results indicate that the combination of methods that we propose in this paper provides a sound starting point for both quantitative and qualitative analysis, allowing for a detailed analysis and interpretation of how press releases are being constructed.     

“I Don't Go By Sean Patrick”: On-Line/Off-Line/Out Identity and SeanPatrickLive.com

Web cams are cameras that are attached to a computer in order to send continuously updated pictures over the Internet. SeanPatrickLive is a Web cam site that documented the life of Sean, a gay man living in the Washington, D.C. area. This essay is the result of ethnographic interviews with Sean Patrick. It discusses Web cams within the context of the cyberqueer, examining how sexuality is presented on-line, using the Internet and the Web cam as a form of gay/queer politics, and performing identity on- and off-line.     

“抖音”上的个体形象建构与对社会价值观的呼应——兼论书写“抖音”微生活民族志的可能性

人们构建形象、呈现自我的方式在自媒体时代不断发生着转变,这是人类学家不得不关注的现象。赵旭东教授指出,“微信民族志”时代已经到来。本研究认为,“抖音”作为当代青年中最具影响力的短视频平台,可以拓展微信民族志研究,但怎样开展“抖音”微生活民族志研究尚无一些有创建的尝试。本研究首先分析了书写“抖音”微生活民族志的可能性,进而厘清了研究对象,且以此为基础,对“抖音”微生活民族志进行了一种探索性的书写,试分析“抖音”短视频对个体形象建构的主观和客观影响。研究发现,短视频内容文本的反复强化特点促使个体有效建构自我形象;在个体不主动避讳被熟人观看时,他们的线下形象与线上形象基本吻合;看似是网民共同主动筛选出来的网红,实则是当前社会价值观的反映。     

Once More With Feeling: Ethnographic Reflections on the Mediation of Tension in a Small Team of Call Centre Workers

This article explores the labour process of a team of call‐centre workers based in a multi‐client call centre in the West Midlands. Founded on the basis of a 13‐month ethnographic study into workplace resistance in call‐centre environments, this article provides insights into control in call centres, focusing on sexuality, internal team dynamics and discipline. It is argued that control is exerted through management and information technology but it is crucially exerted laterally in the team and sexuality is an important medium of such control. This article focuses specifically on how worker sexuality is deployed to regulate the tension between contradictory imperatives faced by workers. The article then considers the emotional content of the call‐centre labour process, arguing that the apparent resolution of potentially contradictory logic, in fact, depends upon the development by call‐centre workers, encouraged by more senior employees, of informal, pseudo‐sexualized client relations at the point of production. Crucially however the fieldwork reveals that the demands placed upon customer service representatives are subtly gendered.     

Now and again: Eventful experience as a resource in senior activism

ABSTRACT

Shared memories shape relations among social movement participants and their organizations. However, scholars often ignore how experience operates as a means of solidifying attachment in group contexts. In contrast, I argue that activism depends on how participants publicly recall events. In this, I integrate a social memory perspective with the examination of activist movements. Through narrative, participants build engagement by presenting the self-in-history as a model for collective action. I refer to this as eventful experience, utilizing memorable moments as a resource for generating commitment. Movements depend upon members communicating the critical moments of their lives, embedding personal timelines in group culture. The linkage of personal experience and public events is a strategy by which individuals motivate collective action. Drawing on a thirty-month ethnography of a progressive senior citizen activist group in Chicago, I examine how members use an awareness of temporality to build a culture of action. Each movement group uses the past experiences of participants to build their culture – what Jasper refers to as taste in tactics, incorporating past successes, present plans, and imagined futures into a call for direct action.     

From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation1

This article investigates the indexical relation between language, interactional stance and social class. Quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of a linguistic variable (the first person possessive singular) is combined with interactional analysis of the way one particular variant (possessive ‘me’, as in Me pencil's up me jumper) is used by speakers in ‘stylised’ interactional performances. The aim of this analysis is to explore: (1) how possessive ‘me’ is implicated in the construction and management of local identities and relationships; and (2) how macro‐social categories, such as social class, relate to linguistic choice. The data for this analysis comes from an ethnographic study of the language practices of nine‐ to ten‐year‐old children in two socially‐differentiated primary schools in north‐east England. A secondary aim of the article is to spotlight the sociolinguistic sophistication of these young children, in particular, the working‐class participants, who challenge the notion that the speech of working‐class children is in any way ‘impoverished’.     

论批判民族志研究的困境及对策

20世纪70年代以来,批判民族志的研究方法逐渐受到西方教育研究领域的重视,并被广泛应用于社会弱势群体的教育问题研究。但同时,批判民族志也面临着声音的合法性危机和研究者与被研究者的不平等关系的问题。鉴于此,批判民族志提出了自我反思、建立与研究对象的平等、互动、信任的关系以及主动帮助他们寻求公平等三条解决途径。批判民族志研究的问题及其对策对我国的教育民族志研究的深入开展具有重要的参考价值。     

新时期少数民族长篇小说民族志书写特征管窥

新时期少数民族长篇小说创作者多用于寻根之笔,深入挖掘民族历史文化遗存,并且予以当代观照。他们在展示民族物质文化的同时,努力寻找民族精神文化并将之作为自己的"朝圣之旅",而精神文化方面的信仰崇尚文化常成为民族作家在长篇小说中的重要书写对象之一,透过这些作为民族"文化信息综合体"的长篇小说,可以洞见其精神文化方面的民族志书写特征。