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Ethnography Of The Library: Milner Library, Andrew Bartolone, Ana Fochesatto, Duncan Losacco, Scott Lambert

ISU Ethnography of the University Initiative

No abstract provided.

Liquor Store Theatre: Ethnography & Contemporary Art In Detroit, Maya Stovall, Ph.D.

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

LIQUOR STORE THEATRE:

ETHNOGRAPHY AND CONTEMPORARY ART IN DETROIT

by

MAYA STOVALL

2018

Advisor: Dr. Andrew D. Newman

Major: Anthropology

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Liquor Store Theatre is a study of the struggle for the city in contemporary Detroit. An ethnography completed over several years in an east side Detroit neighborhood called McDougall Hunt, the project exists in a variety of registers, working across contemporary art, performance, urban anthropology, critical geography, visual studies, film and new media, African American studies, and urban studies. The visual work of Liquor Store Theatre includes a four-volume, twenty-plus video episode meditation on city …

Going Gaga: Pop Fandom As Online Community Of Practice, John D. N. Carter

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Among various fan sites dedicated to pop stars, GagaDaily is one prominent online collective that centers around Lady Gaga. This study is a piece of ethnographic research focused on two claims – GagaDaily constitutes a Community of Practice (Eckert, 2006) in an online setting, and the regular use of humor by users fulfills social and pragmatic roles in the discourse. Communicative phenomena (both textual and graphic) that characterize the linguistic repertoire of GagaDaily members were catalogued from the first 100 pages of one thread within the forums. These data were grouped into categories corresponding to different dimensions of language use …

Gender Bias In Higher Education: A Case Study Of Rollins College, Zoe Mitchell

Honors Program Theses

This thesis uses ethnographic methods to examine gendered experiences of faculty on college campuses, using Rollins College as a case study. Specifically, I consider how gendered biases, norms, and identities influence the development of one’s career and one’s experiences working in academia and higher education. I examine if experiences of male and female faculty vary, and to what these differences in experience can be attributed. Through my research, I argue that though academia is a often considered a liberal environment, there are nevertheless serious problems relating to gender inequity that plague the experience of faculty members, and the denial of …

Aspiration, Attainment, And Assimilation : A Critical Ethnography Of Newcomer Youth In An American High School, Aaron Leo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As immigrants and refugees constitute an increasingly large proportion of public school students across the United States, much scholarly attention has focused on the variables which promote and hamper academic success of these students. Specifically, the high aspirations and optimistic attitudes towards schooling and the effects of assimilation pressures have been identified as two important features contributing to the academic performance of newcomers.

Bodylore And Dress, Amy K. Milligan

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

Bodylore includes the ways in which the body is used as a canvas for inherited and chosen identity. Bodylore considers the symbolic inventory of dress and hair, addressing a range of identities from conservative religious groups like the Amish and the Hasidim to edgy goth and punk devotees. The body is scripted in portrayals of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and politics, including such topics as tattoos, piercing, scarification, hair covering and styling, traditional and folk dress, fashion, and body modification. The central bodylore questions are whether individuals choose consciously or subconsciously to engage with their performative body, as well …

Too Much Of A Good Thing: A Look Into The Educational Climate Of Port Townsend Washington, Rebecca Stewart

Scripps Senior Theses

The concept of choice as it applies to the American educational system has been a topic of intense discussion in recent years. Since the development of this central institution, the freedom of scholastic choice has been an intricate part of the United States’ academic landscape. However, scholars have noted a recent shift as the country has started to take a more neoliberal approach to schooling. In order to better understanding of the concept of choice on a more individualistic level, I conducted a number of personal interviews with parents raising their children in the small rural town of Port Townsend, …

Embodying The Hyphen: An Ethnography On Korean Adoptees, Barbara Hammersberg

All Master's Theses

An estimated 150, 000 Korean children have grown up in culturally and racially different homes in the United States and other countries since the increase of transnational adoption in 1953. Due to the large number of Korean adoptees living in the U.S. the potential for ethnographic research is profound. Past studies have favored adoptive parents’ perspectives over that of Korean adoptees. This study aims to address that limitation in hopes of contributing to the growing trend of Korean- adoption ethnographic research led by Korean adoptees. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with six Korean-American adoptees living in the Seattle metropolitan area in …

Rocky Mountain High: An Investigation Of Downhill Snow Sports And Marijuana Use, Silas Phillips

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

What comes to mind when you imagine a ‘stoner?’ Most stereotype the term– some couch-bound, chip-munching slouch with a foggy gaze (and perhaps a goofy grin). Marijuana and its chemical effects hold an increasing presence in American minds. With full legalization of recreational use in 8 states and various degrees of medical legality in 18 others, the substance is caught up in a cultural shift. Our society is tackling the ethicality of marijuana, and the stigmas built around the drug are changing. What was once cited for ‘reefer madness’ is becoming (to some) a medical treatment, or just another way …

Renouncing Citizenship As Protest: Reflections By A Jewish Israeli Ethnographer, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

The events of summer 2014 and the painful realizations that they invoked have led me to consider renouncing my Israeli citizenship. Contemplating what may seem like a straightforward stance of resistance, I have come to realize how complex it actually is. This short essay considers renunciation as an act of protest from the standpoint of a Jewish Israeli legal ethnographer and geographer... [The essay] foregrounds the following questions: aren’t all modern states founded upon bloodshed? And, if so, shouldn’t all citizens be renouncing their citizenship? Or from the opposite angle: why bother replacing one flawed citizenship with another? In my …

Words To Cook By: Changing Meanings Of Eating Local In Humboldt County, Nora E. Mounce

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Humboldt County has an active food system of small, sustainable farms and a vibrant cottage food industry. Yet, this system fails to address the needs of a diverse population that struggles with a disproportionate degree of poor health outcomes. In order to understand the unique challenges facing the region’s food system – and how local government and advocacy groups should begin to address healthy food policy - this research thesis analyzes key texts about food, which illustrate the language and ideologies of eating local in Humboldt County. This research thesis found that the concept of eating local – consuming foodstuffs …

Corporate Governance In The Nonprofit Sector: A Grounded Theory Approach To Studying The Trustee Board, George Dexter

Plymouth Business School Theses

This thesis uses a constructivist grounded theory approach to investigate nonprofit corporate governance in the UK; using data obtained from participatory observations of board and associated meetings, workshops, and unstructured elite interviews. Open codes are generated and brought together as concepts, which are then iteratively compared and grouped in open categories. These categories are then reassembled using the paradigm model into five axial codes: the clash of orthodoxies; clash of motivations; regulator versus board power; clash of rationalities; and effective board duality. A dialectical approach is then used to create the core category of the ‘clash of neoliberal and public …

Becoming A Decolonial Feminist Ethnographer: Addressing The Complexities Of Positionality And Representation, Jennifer Manning

Articles

Abstract Organisation and management scholars are often preoccupied with developing, refining and advancing knowledge, and in so doing, the empirical process through which knowledge is advanced can be ignored together with the impact this process can have on participants and scholars. This article draws attention to how management scholars might negotiate the complexities of positionality and representation through an illustrative case: my experience of becoming a decolonial feminist ethnographer. Drawing upon my doctoral research, I share the experience of my ethnographic journey to become a decolonial feminist ethnographer. Developing a decolonial feminist approach to ethnography enabled me to identify positionality …

Mapping Student Days: Collaborative Ethnography And The Student Experience, Andrew Asher, Jean Amaral, Juliann Couture, Barbara Fister, Donna Lanclos, M. Sara Lowe, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Collaborative Librarianship

Research on students’ educational experiences demonstrates the importance of a holistic understanding of the complexity of students’ lives to developing library programs, services, and resources that effectively address undergraduate needs. The “A Day in the Life” (ADITL) project investigated a typical day for over 200 students at eight diverse institutions in the US. Examining the local and individual expressions of student taskscapes – the ensemble of interrelated social activities across time and space – placed each student’s relationship to their library in a larger description of their academic and personal lives. By exploring the whole student experience, this multi-site ethnographic …

A Critical Ethnographic Study On Betel Quid Dependence Among Young Men In Mandalay, Myanmar, Thida Moe, Pimpawun Boonmongkon, Xiaochuan Wang, Darunee Phukao, Timo T. Ojanen, Thomas E. Guadamuz

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

Betel quid is a carcinogenic psychoactive preparation, often containing tobacco, which is widely consumed in Myanmar. Studies on betel quid dependence have illuminated betel quid chewers’ demographics and reasons for chewing, but dependence formation is not fully understood. This study aims to describe the social context, patterns of use, and subjective experiences of betel quid chewing among novice and dependent chewers, and to analyze the hidden structural factors that contribute to the emergence of betel quid dependence. Data on the subjective and objective aspects of betel quid chewing were collected through a five-month ethnographic study in Mandalay, Myanmar. Betel quid …

Limits Of Liberation: Youth And Politics In Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement, Melinda Gurr

Dissertations - ALL

This thesis examines the forces that strengthen and weaken young people’s involvement in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, the MST, during the twilight of the PT years, 2012-2014. The MST responds to displacement, environmental devastation, and capital- intensive development by fighting for land reform and socialist transformation. Although the MST’s politics of redistribution have attracted significant attention from activists and academics worldwide, little ethnographic attention had yet been paid to the experiences and subjectivities of rural youth affiliated with the movement. By attending to structural conditions, dynamics of family, sexuality, and gender, and political socialization in three regions of Brazil, …

Contemporary Trends In Management Education Versus Student Expectations, Agnieszka Postuła

Studia i Materiały Wydział Zarządzania Uniwersytet Warszawski

Modern universities are experiencing constant changes which are extremely meaningful nowadays. These changes reflect on the further directions of the management education development in a broad context. This paper presents the results of research on the condition of management education in the students’ perception. The methodology of this research was inspired by ethnography and based on anthropological interviews (12 conducted with first-year students and 13 with last-year students). They pointed out some university domains insufficiently supervised by the academic authorities both financially and mentally. The conclusions presented in the text are based on the expectations of students confronted with the …

An Ethnographic Exploration Of Pokémon Go, Ketzia Abramson

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The mobile app game, “Pokémon GO” became a worldwide phenomenon immediately following its initial release in the summer of 2016. Now, more than a year later, despite its fall from social domination and decline in popularity, POGO is still at the forefront for better understanding the future of communication and socialization in today’s ever growing digital age. This ethnographic study, aided by field research, observations, and literature review of both the app itself as well as the ‘Poké-verse,’ provides an in-depth analysis of how and why a mobile gaming app that utilizes no new forms of technology (augmented reality combined …

Charting Constellations Of Power: Texas Public Education Policy, Hollie Wright

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

For decades, public education in Texas has been entrenched in neoliberalism-inspired policies that research shows largely fail to produce promised results and have a tendency to perpetuate the very problems advocates claim the policies will solve. This raises questions about the decision-makers and what is happening in the public education policy process. In line with Laura Nader’s directive for more anthropologists to make those in power the subject of their research, I used both ethnographic and social network analysis methods to ‘study up’ in Texas public education. This study describes some relationships of members of the Texas State Board of …

Setting The Childless Free: An Ethnographic Study Of The Practice Of The Childfree Identity, Shelly Volsche

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Heeding Sherry Ortner’s call to turn anthropological analysis inward, toward one’s own culture, the following dissertation seeks to understand the identity and practice of the voluntarily childless (hereafter “childfree”) movement in the United States. How do these individuals practice their identity, and how does the identity of “childfree” interact with other roles in their lives? How do they build meaning in a society that emphasizes children as a hallmark of adulthood? What other outlets do childfree individuals have for the “nurturing” tendencies of our species?

Combining sociohistoric analysis with identity and feminist theories, I embarked on nearly two years of …

The Smuggler Journals: Transgressing And Policing The Border In The Rio Grande Valley, Lupe Alberto Flores

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis summarizes recent human smuggling scholarship and provides ethnographic insights into migrant smuggling in a border zone that is my home. Through exploring my own experiences and observations of smuggling and militarized border policing, and those of other interlocutors in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, I advance nuanced understandings of the symbiotic processes of irregular migration and of the people who brokerage a great deal of these journeys across militarized borders. I analyze fieldnotes that highlight the quotidian realms in which gender and power play out when irregular migration takes place and argue that acts of border …

Introduction: Ethnography, Moral Theory, And Comparative Religious Ethics, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

Representing a spectrum of intellectual concerns and methodological commitments in religious ethics, the contributors to this focus issue consider and assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift in recent comparative religious ethics away from a rootedness in moral theory toward a model that privileges the ethnography of moral worlds. In their own way, all of the contributors think through and emphasize the meaning, importance, and place of normativity in recent comparative religious ethics.

The Time To Love: Ideologies Of "Good" Parenting At A Family Service Organization In The Southeastern United States, Anna Davidson Abella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to understand definitions of what it means to be a “good” parent as described by parents and child development specialists at a family service organization in the Southeastern United States. Previous research on social reproduction and concerted cultivation have opened up pathways to understanding how social and economic inequality manifest in family life and the social structures of which they are a part. This ethnographic study is an effort to contribute to an anthropology of parenting by unveiling the ways that definitions of “good” parenting in middle-class and wealthy communities reflect time-intensive, attachment-based ideologies …

The Time To Love: Ideologies Of "Good" Parenting At A Family Service Organization In The Southeastern United States, Anna Davidson Abella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to understand definitions of what it means to be a “good” parent as described by parents and child development specialists at a family service organization in the Southeastern United States. Previous research on social reproduction and concerted cultivation have opened up pathways to understanding how social and economic inequality manifest in family life and the social structures of which they are a part. This ethnographic study is an effort to contribute to an anthropology of parenting by unveiling the ways that definitions of “good” parenting in middle-class and wealthy communities reflect time-intensive, attachment-based ideologies …

From The Womb To The Tree; Child-Rearing Practices And Beliefs Among The Toraja Of Sulawesi, Toke Hoppenbrouwers, Stanislaus Sandarupa, Aurora Donzelli

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article documents beliefs about pregnancy, birth, infant, and maternal health and infant death in Toraja, Sulawesi. We interviewed 42 mothers of babies between one week and six months old, a dozen traditional and contemporary midwives, the ritual specialist to minaa Tato' Dena', a physician and two traditional healers. We performed a cursory examination of the extent to which mothers and health professionals still adhere to the beliefs of to dolo (the ancestors or the people from before). Examples of rejected beliefs are that intercourse adversely affects breast milk and that it should await the end of the recommended two-year …

Grassroots Branding: An Exploration Of Grassroots Businesses Within The Florida Skateboard Community, Lawrence M. Shaw

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Why do original/grassroots branding efforts occurring on a local level continue to proliferate despite the existing market saturation created by larger corporate entities? Using existing theoretical frameworks associated with “do it yourself” (DIY) culture, this thesis explores cultures and themes associated with skateboarding, including the production and consumption of brands of skateboarding products; the use of space and spatiality by skateboarders; and, finally, changes in skateboarding. I conducted ethnographic interviews within a network of skateboard entrepreneurs in the Florida skateboard community, seeking to understand why they start brands, their perceptions of their entrepreneurial efforts, and how these businesses operate. Drawing …

Documenting An Imperfect Past: Examining Tampa's Racial Integration Through Community, Film, And Remembrance Of Central Avenue, Travis R. Bell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the Civil Rights Movement in Tampa, Florida through documentary film to recognize an imperfect past and visually reconstruct Central Avenue as a physical and Thirdspace site of remembrance located at an intersection of race and community. Motivated by an ethnographic approach and through community engagement, Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue is a 54-minute film that explores Central Avenue’s rise to prominence through segregation, its physical and symbolic demise as a racialized site of communal space, and how it is remembered through collective and public memory in the location it once occupied. Documentary film …

Mourners In The Court: Victims In Death Penalty Trials, Through The Lens Of Performance, Sarah Beth Kaufman

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Research

This article presents findings from ethnographic research in death penalty trials around the United States, focusing on the role of victims and their supporters. Victim impact testimony (VIT) in death penalty sentencing has received intense legal scrutiny during the past thirty years. The ruling jurisprudence allows VIT with the explanation that it deserves parity with testimony about the defendant's background. Drawing on observations and interviews with participants in 15 death penalty trials, I demonstrate that this framing confuses the central role of victim supporters in the courtroom. Victim supporters function as mourners, which grants them a socially elevated position in …

The Song (Does Not) Remain The Same: Re-Envisioning Portraiture Methodology In Educational Research, Spirit D. Brooks

The Qualitative Report

This conceptual paper explores how portraiture methodology re-envisioned was used in an educational research project with white teachers. What qualifies as authentic voice and an appraisal of how portraiture and auto-ethnography hold up against the critique of voice-centered research made by Lather (2009), Mazzei and Jackson (2012a) and English (2000) are discussed in the context of the author’s personal narrative journey to the use of portraiture methodology. Next, the trail blazing methodological contribution portraiture makes by allowing an expansion of creative research methods in education is discussed.

Curricular Analysis Of The University Of Arkansas Composition I Pilot Course: Engl 1013, Community Ethnography, Morgan Lindsay Scholz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes a new first-year writing course that is under consideration for implementation as the standard Composition I course at the University of Arkansas. The course utilizes an ethnographic approach to teaching critical writing skills to students. This thesis presents evaluation through a metacognitive lens and explores the course through a case study approach. This thesis also examines the expectations and concluding reflections of three stakeholder groups: students, instructors, and administrators.