Using institutional ethnography's ideological circle to portray how textually mediated disability discourse paralysed a Supreme Court of Canada ruling

Persons with disabilities created through texts as damaged goods are being ‘cured’ by workplace accommodation, a textually mediated work process. Prior to 1999, workplace accommodation in the Canadian federal public service signified the adjustments necessary to enable a disabled worker to fit into a workplace designed for able-bodied workers. In 1999, a Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruling known as Meiorin turned this accommodation provision on its head. Instead of being focused on individual-level fixes so that a disabled worker could be accommodated in an existing workplace, this legislation required employers to transform their workplaces so as to make them ready to receive as many different types of workers as reasonably possible from the outset. Using Dorothy E. Smith's institutional ethnography, I use my experiences as a disability rights activist employed in the Canadian federal public service to explicate how textually mediated disability discourse paralysed this groundbreaking SCC ruling.     

‘A place for men to come and do their thing’: constructing masculinities in betting shops in London

During fieldwork conducted with workers and customers in betting shops in London research participants consistently conceptualized betting shops as masculine spaces in contrast to the femininity of other places including home and the bingo hall. According to this argument, betting on horses and dogs was ‘men's business’ and betting shops were ‘men's worlds’. Two explanations were offered to account for this situation. The first suggested that betting was traditionally a pastime enjoyed by men rather than women. The second was that betting is intrinsically more appealing to men because it is based on calculation and measurement, and women prefer more intuitive, simpler challenges. I use interviews with older people to describe how the legalisation of betting in cash in 1961 changed the geography of betting. I then draw upon interviews with regular customers in order to show how knowledge about betting is shared within rather than between genders. Finally, I use my experience of training and working as a cashier to describe how the particular hegemonic masculinity found in betting shops in London is maintained through myriad everyday practices which reward certain kinds of gendered performances while at the same time suppressing alternatives. The article shows how particular spaces may become gendered as an unanticipated consequence of legislation and how contingent gendered associations are both naturalized and, at the same time, subjected to intense attention.     

The construction of South Texas masculinity: masculine space,the pico de gallo and the barbeque grill

I contend that masculinity formation in South Texas is linked to objects that have been deemed as ‘manly’. This study is significant because it examines a group in the US population that, according to census predictions, account for a large percentage of the fastest growing and largest Latino group in the United States. This autoethnography research examines how pico de gallo – a type of salsa – and the barbeque grill assist working-class Mexican American males in constructing a masculine identity known as macho. The data are based on observing 30 social events in the Rio Grande Valley. The findings reveal a pursuit for an apex status of macho through these objects and the cultural transmission of gender roles to the next generation of males. This study concludes by offering suggestions in examining how masculinity, for men of colour, might be linked to marginalisation practices within a social structure.     

Socialization into single‐parent‐by‐choice family life

This paper examines family interactions between mothers and children in single‐parent‐by‐choice (SPBC) families in Spain. The data is part of a larger multi‐sited ethnographic study focused on emergent family structures that examined families formed by women who began their family projects through adoption or assisted reproduction. Single‐mothers‐by‐choice formulate various socialization goals that are tied to the complexities of their non‐conventional family project. These goals are also realized in daily conversation, particularly when families talk about future events in their lives. Our findings expand existing family language socialization research in Western contexts, which has primarily focused on conventional two‐parent families, and invite developing a stronger dialogue between family language socialization research and current debates on changing kinship structures in post‐industrial societies. Este trabajo examina interacciones entre madres e hijos/as en familias de madres solteras por elección (MSPE) en España. Los datos provienen de una investigación etnográfica multi‐lugar más amplia centrada en modelo familiares emergentes que estudió a familias formadas por mujeres solas que han comenzado su proyecto familiar a través de la reproducción asistida o la adopción. La madres solteras por elección formulan varias metas de socialización que están ligadas a las complejidades y demandas de su proyecto familiar no convencional. Estos objetivos también se plasman en conversaciones cotidianas, especialmente cuando las familias hablan sobre eventos futuros en su vidas. Nuestros resultados amplían la investigación sobre socialización lingüística familiar en contextos occidentales, que se ha centrado principalmente en familias bi‐parentales convencionales, e invitan a desarrollar un diálogo más fructífero entre la investigación sobre socialización lingüística familiar y los debates actuales en torno a cambios en los patrones de parentesco en sociedades post‐industriales. [Spanish]     

How to Be a Good Alcoholic

Alcoholism is not one singular thing. It takes many forms, some more dignified and less destructive than others. This article explores how people drinking in the early hours of the day in bars present themselves and their relationship with alcohol and alcoholism. By means of ethnographic data, I analyze their strategies in dealing with the deviant use of alcohol. I find that the early morning drinkers use distinctions along three dimensions: managing drunkenness, taking breaks from drinking, and claiming certain motives for drinking. These distinctions are used in order to position oneself on a normative scale of different types of alcoholics.     

Friends and family: regulation and relationships on the locked ward

This ethnographic project explored the lives of women with learning disabilities on three locked wards. Aspects of these women’s lives were regulated by the service; in particular, relationships with family outside the unit, and peer relationships inside the unit. The women in this study valued these relationships, but they were treated with ambivalence by the service. Success in future community integration and accessing community resources can be dependent on the nature and quality of relationships with others, and therefore services should acknowledge that service-users need to forge relationships of their own choosing.     

Negotiating Illness in Medical Interactions: Narrative Styles of two Children with Leukaemia

The illness narratives presented in this paper were video‐recorded as part of child patient–staff interaction, during more than a year of ethnographic fieldwork at a paediatric oncology centre. The two children tended to ‘do illness’ differently, producing different types of narrative accounts. One of them presented accounts that invoked ‘fight’ metaphors, whereas the other one invoked patient identities. Also, the medical staff deployed different interactional strategies with different children in response to their narrative constructions of themselves and their leukaemia.     

Gang Leader for a Day: A Response to the Critics

This essay provides a response to Clampet-Lundquist, Charles, and Young's comments on my book Gang Leader for a Day :     

“Nyota Uhura is Not a White Girl”

This essay examines the online debate surrounding representation of the Black/African character of Lt. Uhura in the 2009 prequel film, Star Trek. Some fans, particularly those viewing the film from a gender/race intersection, applauded her portrayal, while others, including many “slashers” who espouse a homoerotic reading of classic Trek from an ostensible gender/sexuality standpoint, disapproved—especially of Uhura's romantic storyline. Virtual observation and appraisal of these discourses demonstrate the adaptability of Patricia Hill Collins' intersectionality framework to studies of media reception, especially in terms of hegemonic and interpersonal domains of power and cultural studies notions of articulation. Accordingly, the investigation finds the first fan faction's rhetorical efforts more authentically and pro-actively oppositional.     

Narrating Instability: Political detouring in Jerusalem

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ethnography of guided tours in politically contested spaces by interrogating their use for political advocacy by Palestinian guides in the Old City of Jerusalem. It advances the guided tour genre as a potentially transformative encounter for tourists, while offering reflection on its possibilities and limitations for solidarity. Analyzing the narrative framework of the tour vis-à-vis the cityscape shows that guides strategically employ both discourse and movement to convince tourists of the injustice of the Israeli occupation through a practice called political detouring. It reveals how guides manipulate the tour genre’s dynamic nature by spontaneously altering its trajectories to expose the corresponding instability of Palestinian lives in Jerusalem.