Ethnography (Research Methodology)

Свистопляска (Свистунья) – это старинный календарный обряд, ежегодно проводившийся в г. Вятке в 4-ю субботу после Пасхи. Согласно местной легенде, когда-то давным-давно вятчане по нелепой случайности перебили союзную рать из г. Великого Устюга, подошедшую к ним ночью на помощь против осаждавших город врагов. В этот день в том месте, где когда-то располагалась вятская божедомка и где погребали «заложных» покойников, проходила панихида по убиенным устюжанам. Затем разворачивалось весёлое гулянье и ярмарка, по всему городу звучали свистульки. К этому дню в соседней слободе Дымкове изготавливались знаменитые дымковские игрушки и свистульки из глины. На архаические черты праздника обращал внимание Д. К. Зеленин, об этом писала также И. Я. Богуславская.

This article proposes a three-part conceptualisation of the use of Facebook in ethnographic research: as a tool, as data and as context. Longitudinal research with young adults at a time of significant change provides many challenges for the ethnographic researcher, such as maintaining channels of communication and high rates of participant attrition. Facebook offers a resolution to such challenges as a measure of maintaining research interest and relationships, alongside its potential as a unique research tool and rich source of data on students' reading and writing practices. Despite significant methodological and ethical issues arising from the use of Facebook in the research study presented, this article argues that the benefits of using Facebook, such as its potential for maintaining communication, providing context and generating data, override any such issues and offers valuable insights and commentary on facilitating online–offline longitudinal research with young people.

Contemporary social science research is often concerned to engage with and promote particular forms of postmodern and innovative data production, such as photo-elicitation, autoethnography or free association interviews. This fascination with the latest and greatest techniques has been accompanied by an ever more fragmented range of research methods training for students where the week-by-week shift between approaches engenders a disjointed view of becoming the researcher. This individualisation of techniques has set up rival camps and critiques where the common ground of being embedded in traditional ethnography is often forgotten. For researchers, who began their academic careers in the ethnographic tradition, there is an appreciation of the holistic base of enquiry from which a family of methods can be effectively employed. However, more recently qualitative researchers have been distracted by ‘the technique’; a distraction that can blind them to the occupation of ethnography. Concurrently, there have been shifts in the social and economic expectations placed on qualitative inquiry that have acted to close down spaces of ethnographic teaching and practice. In response, this article focuses on the importance of the ‘waiting field’; an opportunity to explore the times where real lives carry on before they make room for the intrusion of the data production of ‘the technique’ and remind us that much qualitative research is, in fact, an ethnographic undertaking: one that encompasses the researcher within and beyond the field.

"Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.
"

"There is a growing emphasis in many countries on matters such as participation in e-government, e-democracy, the provision of forums for online debate, and so on. A critical issue in all of these cases is one of encouraging engagement across a broad spectrum of potentially interested parties and stakeholders. In this paper, we use an ethnographic study of an online event, designed to encourage debate, to explore some critical issues in how the mechanisms productive of debate have shifted in company with the Web 2.0 phenomenon. By contrasting this with a prior study of how players managed their gameplay in a multiplayer pervasive game, we focus upon how different ways of constructing games and events can have serious implications for their ordinary everyday reportability in routine face-to-face interactions. We conclude that designing for reportability should be an active consideration when designing the resources for online debate and consider some ways in which that might be accomplished.

Keywords:
Ethnographic studies e-Democracy Online debate Web 2.0 Pervasive games Reportability Ethnomethodology"

"Engendering objects explores social and cultural dynamics among Maisin people in Collingwood Bay (Papua New Guinea) through the lens of material culture. Focusing upon the visually stimulating decorated barkcloths that are used as male and female garments, gifts, and commodities, it explores the relationships between these cloths and Maisin people. The main question is how barkcloth, as an object made by women, engenders people’s identities, such as gender, personhood, clan and tribe, through its manufacturing and use.

This book describes in detail how barkcloth (tapa) not only visualizes and expresses, but also materializes and defines, people’s multiple identities. By ‘following the object’ and how it is made and used in the performance of life-cycle rituals, in exchanges and in church festivities, this interaction between people and things, and how they are mutually constituted, becomes visible. How are women’s bodies and minds linked with the production of barkcloth? How do cloths produced by women both establish and contest clan identity? In what ways is the commodification of barkcloth related to gender dynamics? Barkcloth and its associated designs show how gender ideologies and the socio-material constructions of identity are performed and, as such, developed, established and contested.

The narratives of both men and women reveal the ways in which barkcloth provides a link with the past and dreams for the future. The author argues that the cloths and their designs embody dynamics of Maisin culture and in particular of Maisin gender relations. In contributing to the current debates on the anthropology of ‘art’, this study offers an alternative way of understanding the significance of an object, like decorated barkcloth, in shaping and defining people’s identities within a local colonial and postcolonial setting of Papua New Guinea.

“Engendering Objects is among the most comprehensive and innovative new works emerging from Melanesia examining the intimate connections between material culture, cultural identity and gendered personhood. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork, archival research and examination of museum collections, Anna-Karina Hermkens traces the enduring yet innovative place of tapa (barkcloth) among the Maisin people. Written with warm compassion and immediacy, the book is a theoretically provocative, accessible and compelling portrait of changing life in a Papua New Guinean village society.” – John Barker, University of British Columbia

“This book makes a most welcome contribution to the study of the materiality by showing how gender is performed in the sensuous terms of clothing, food, and the exchange of objects. Anna-Karina Hermkens accomplishes this with enviable care and intellectual resources, and a prose and ethnography that make the book a pleasure to read.” – David Morgan, Duke University

“Anna-Karina Hermkens takes us to look at designs on bark cloth from Papua New Guinea through a magnifying glass. A fascinating perspective on material culture evolves. Beyond the art work we discover individuals – mainly women – painting their stories about who they and their beloved are as women and men, as traditional members of a clan, and also what they head for as strugglers in a new economy driven world.” – Christian Kaufmann, Honorary Research Associate, Sainsbury Reseach Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich UK, former curator for Oceania at the Museum der Kulturen Basel
"

A spectre is haunting contemporary archaeologies – the spectre of the present. That is to say, one has recently been witnessing a shift in archaeological approaches: a new, ‘neo-materialistic paradigm’ (so-called return to things) is slowly emerging on the scene. It indicates weak aspects of post-processual perspective with its emphasis on the social, meaning, sings and analyses of discourse, among others. On the contrary to post-processual approaches, here attention is mostly paid to materiality of things. What has also been clearly pointed out is the fact that, more than ever before, the present slowly becomes more important and interesting for archaeologists than the distant past (e.g. the Neolithic) (fig. 1). It is rather the materiality of things than constitutes archaeology than the focus on the distant past (e.g. Lucas 2004).

"How do divergent, competing and collaborating human and non-human actors - the socio-materialities - present at any educational setting affect the process and outcome of a design process? How do the affordances of the technology being developed interact with these socio-materialities present in the setting? Usually our attention is on the final outcome of a design process, while the trials and tribulations designers and researchers face during the process of design are faded out of the picture as irrelevant. It is this mundane minutiae that this presentation delves into.
In this presentation we will focus in detail on one instance of technology design, the development of a prototype for use in archaeology teaching. The presentation draws upon a longitudinal ethnographic case-study of Ensemble (2008-11), an interdisciplinary research and technology development project between education and computer sciences (see Rimpilainen 2012). We will examine how a prototype for a Data Aggregating Document (DAD), a piece of semantic educational software, emerged through interdisciplinary practices engaged by the Ensemble, and how the socio-materiality of the archaeology setting and the affordances of the semantic technologies mutually affected the technology development process. We will also see how the designers often worked at the “mercy” of the socio-materialities involved in the process, and guided by them, rather than the other way round. Theoretically the presentation pertains to the broad field of sociomaterial theories (Pickering 1995) and Actor-Network Theory (e.g. Law 2004, Latour 1987, Latour 2005, Mol 2002).
"

"Full citation:  Frank, Roslyn M. and Marianna Ridderstad (2013) Conflicts over masks, museums and tourism: Comparing European and Native American Traditions and Solutions. Presentation at the 34h Annual American Indian Workshop: Art of Indians – Indians of Art, May 14-17, 2013, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract
Roslyn M. Frank
Marianna Ridderstad

Conflicts over masks, museums and tourism: Comparing European and Native American Traditions and Solutions

The presentation begins by comparing certain contemporary conflicts and debates that have arisen in both Europe and N. America concerning the way that traditional masks worn by performers are carved and cared for, or, better stated, should be carved and cared for. The discussion will examine the impact of tourism and subsequent commercialization of the artifacts on the performances themselves and the way these pressures have impacted the production and sale of the masks, giving special attention to the ongoing debates over whether these masks should be commercialized at all and/or kept in a museum. The two study groups consist primarily, although not exclusively, of the masks and performances associated with the False Face Society of the Iroquois, on the one hand, and a kind of Alpine equivalent, the Tschäggättä performers of Switzerland, or stated more explicitly, the masked performers from the Löchtental of the Canton Valais in the Rhône Valley whose ritual activities are understood to bring good luck and health to those visited. Interviews with traditional carvers and performers will be discussed.

In the second part of the presentation other contemporary masking traditions in Europe and N. America will be examined, specifically, the masks and costumes of ‘bear performers’, including variants such as the Finnish Nuutti/Kekripukki. The accoutrements of these European 'bear maskers' will be compared to those found in N. America. At the same time, the comparative approach will serve to bring into focus the archaic pan-European belief that humans descended from bears since in many locations in Europe we still find a wide variety of bear-human performers, actors who dress as bears or bear-men and whose function is prophylactic, to confer good luck and health on those visited, masking traditions that have striking parallels among N. American indigenous peoples.

Roslyn M. Frank, Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa, has done extensive fieldwork in the Basque Country, studying the language and beliefs of the Basque people, including the folk belief that holds Basques descended from bears. This led to subsequent investigations into circumpolar bear ceremonialism and to documenting residual evidence of the same in European traditional performance art. Her publications are in the area of Basque studies, cultural cognitive linguistics, and anthropology. For further information, cf. http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank.

Marianna Ridderstad has a Lic.Phil. in astrophysics and M.Sc. in theoretical physics, and is currently preparing her Ph.D. at the University of Finland on the archaeoastronomy of Neolithic stone monuments in Finland. Her research explores the archaeoastronomy of Finnish monuments from the Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages, as well as ancient Finnish and Finno-Ugric folklore and traditions related to astronomical subjects, including the calendrical and ritual significance of the Bear. For further information, cf. http://helsinki.academia.edu/MariannaRidderstad.
"

"*This is a working paper and not yet published. Please do not cite without author permission.

The individual production of discourse is creative; creativity is not an essence within individuals, but an experience through which subjects are located in the world. Discourse is thus tethered to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenal field, and becomes a spatiotemporal site for the affective and intersubjective “laying down of being”. Drawing on first-hand interview data on music consumption, I suggest an analytics of discourse as a phenomenological mediation of subjectivity vis-à-vis media and culture.

Media and cultural studies today is held captive by the power-agency doublet, a zero-sum framework between dominative, codifying strategy and improvised, empowering tactics. I propose an analytics of creativity, a real-time unfolding of collaborative and conflicting improvisation amongst subjects and discourse. This puts Foucault’s discourse as event in conversation with phenomenology; discourse is an incorporeally material site wherein subjects relate to their bodily positions. Thus individuals cobble together discourse to bring themselves into being in the world – often by calling upon others’ words, which themselves introduce new discursive regimes into the conversation. Meanwhile, one’s interlocutors intervene to give meaning to that enactment. Everyday discourse thus constitutes Bakhtinian polyphony, a fundamental entanglement of individual agents and discursive regimes whereby every performance works with and reconfigures the ‘rules of the game’."

En los últimos veinte años, la obra del antropólogo holandés Antonius C. G. M. Robben se ha convertido en uno de los aportes más importantes, originales y de obligada referencia en temas como la violencia, la memoria y el trauma colectivos. A diferencia de muchos de quienes han estudiado estos tópicos, Robben ha producido una perspectiva analítica sustentada en investigaciones empíricas –no en especulaciones o declamaciones–, cuyo propósito ha sido aprehender los modos mediante los cuales las personas experimentan, practican y dan sentido a sus vivencias vinculadas a la violencia o al dolor social. Este enfoque le ha permitido generar un conocimiento alejado de los apriorismos sociológicos, psicológicos, ideológicos y morales, que conducen a visiones prescriptivas  de la realidad social. Sin embargo, no hay que confundir esta posición con un retorno a las epistemologías objetivistas, ni con la neutralidad valorativa: en lugar de ello, Robben nos proporciona una visión problemática de la construcción del conocimiento en las ciencias sociales en general, y de la etnografía en particular.

Time concepts in a given culture are the reflection of social order maintained by that culture and it is very difficult for a culture to adapt a new conceptualization of time that opposes its social order. Change is an inevitable phenomenon and is part of the culture dynamics. A community accepts the change in socio-cultural sphere only if it is provided with a great incentive. Studying temporal organization of a culture not only provides knowledge about the socio-cultural scenario but also indicates the nature, direction and strength of change taking place in that culture because time provides ground for change to takes place. The current study aims to analyze the time concepts in a Pakistani village Sarwar Aali with reference to its social order and tries to explain how time and change are interconnected in the socioeconomic set up of the community.