scholarly journals Ethnographic toolkit: Strategic positionality and researchers’ visible and invisible tools in field research

Ethnography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Demographic Traits ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Sociological Work ◽  
Qualitative Methodologies

For many, reflexivity is a core tenet in qualitative research. Often, scholars focus on how one or two of their socio-demographic traits compare to their participants and how it may influence field dynamics. Research that incorporates an intersectionality perspective, which brings attention to how people’s multiple identities are entwined, also has a long history. Yet, researchers tend to pay less attention to how we strategically draw on our multiple social positions in the course of field work. Drawing on data I have collected over the past several years and extending recent sociological work that goes beyond a reflexive accounting of one or two of researchers’ demographic characteristics, I argue that each researcher has their own ethnographic toolkit from which they strategically draw. It consists of researchers’ visible (e.g. race/ethnicity) and invisible tools (e.g. social capital) and ties qualitative methodologies to research on how culture is strategically and inconsistently used.

scholarly journals Ethnographic Toolkit: Strategic Positionality and Researchers’ Visible and Invisible Tools in Field Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Reyes;Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Demographic Traits ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Sociological Work ◽  
Qualitative Methodologies

For many, reflexivity is a core tenet in qualitative research. Often, scholars focus on how one or two of their socio-demographic traits compare to their participants and how it may influence field dynamics. Research that incorporates an intersectionality perspective, which brings attention to how people’s multiple identities are entwined, also has a long history. Yet, researchers tend to pay less attention to how we strategically draw on our multiple social positions in the course of field work. Drawing on data I have collected over the past several years and extending recent sociological work that goes beyond a reflexive accounting of one or two of researchers’ demographic characteristics, I argue that each researcher has their own ethnographic toolkit from which they strategically draw. It consists of researchers’ visible (e.g., race/ethnicity) and invisible tools (e.g., social capital) and ties qualitative methodologies to research on how culture is strategically and inconsistently used.

scholarly journals Imagining a Maya Archaeology That Is Anthropological and Attuned to Indigenous Cultural Heritage

Heritage ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia McAnany
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Maya Archaeology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unequal Access ◽  
Descendant Communities

Taking an aspirational approach, this article imagines what Maya Archaeology would be like if it were truly anthropological and attuned to Indigenous heritage issues. In order to imagine such a future, the past of archaeology and anthropology is critically examined, including the emphasis on processual theory within archaeology and the Indigenous critique of socio-cultural anthropology. Archaeological field work comes under scrutiny, particularly the emphasis on the product of field research over the collaborative process of engaging local and descendant communities. Particular significance is given to the role of settler colonialism in maintaining unequal access to and authority over landscapes filled with remains of the past. Interrogation of the distinction between archaeology and heritage results in the recommendation that the two approaches to the past be recognized as distinct and in tension with each other. Past heritage programs imagined and implemented in the Maya region by the author and colleagues are examined reflexively.

The Beginnings of A Geological Naturalist: Desmarest, The PrintedWord, and Nature

2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Industrial Arts ◽  
Histoire Naturelle ◽  
The Past ◽  
Archeological Evidence

Nicolas Desmarest (1725-1815), one of the great pioneering field naturalists of the eighteenth century, began to pursue geological field work only in the later 1750s, Well past the age of 30. Until that time, the patterns of Desmarest's scientific interests and thinking resembled those of a scholarWhose range of experienceWas defined mostly by books. In this essay I attempt to characterize Desmarest's intellectual orientations, prior to his conversion into an investigative naturalist. Before his first efforts in active field research, Desmarest became committed to an empiricist epistemology of a phenomenalist type, emphasizing know ledge of natural regularities in a fashion parallel to views expressed in the early volumes of Histoire Naturelle, by Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte du Buffon (1707-1788). Through his close linksWith antiquarian scholars, Desmarest formed critical mental habits regarding use of historical and archeological evidence in interpretations of the past. These early scholarly experiences helped shape his approach to work as a field geologist. I suggest also that Desmarest's employment as a government analyst of practical and industrial arts, at the very time he began active scientific field work, contributed to his rapid and successful embrace of empirical procedures in science. Let us consult nature herself, who ordinarily leaves recognizable marks of her operations, even if she likes most often to cloak them in disguise, to hide them from minds unfamiliar with her tricks, or heedless in following their solution. Nicolas Desmarest, Dissertation sur l'ancienne jonction de l'Angleterre à la France, 1753

scholarly journals ,,Na sałasie ni ma pani lekko“. Życie codzienne pasterzy wołoskich na szałasach na pograniczu polsko-słowackim w XXI wieku jako dziedzictwo kulturowe regionu Karpat (wybór zagadnień)

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 269-295
Author(s):  
Ewa Maria Kocój
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Global Solutions ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Space

The purpose of this article is to present the preliminary results of the research on the shepherds' everyday life that I have been conducting since 2015 in the field of history, migration, and cultural heritage of the Vlach minority inhabiting the areas from Albania to the northern Carpathians. One of the research stages entails the studies of the daily life and rituals of the highlanders living in the huts on the Polish side of the Carpathians. The article describes the issues concerning the organization and the time-space symbolism of a modern hut, including their daily life and schedule of activities. The research was conducted in the selected huts of Spiš, Orava, Podhale, Żywiec region, and Silesian Beskids in Poland in 2015-2018. In all cases, I applied qualitative research, mostly structured and unstructured interviews with senior and young shepherds working in the huts, as well as covert and overt participant observations conducted during selected pastoral holidays and meetings in various spaces—in temples, during highlander's and Vlach conventions, in theme meetings, and in the huts. I supplement these techniques with the analysis of the visual sources that I made during the field research, received from the enthusiasts of this topic, or found on the Internet. The research has shown that modern pastoralism oscillates between two poles: the traditional, which has made it possible to retain many elements from the past (cultural heritage), and the modern, thanks to which shepherds introduce global solutions to their huts and traditions.

scholarly journals Catching the “Tail/Tale” of Teaching Qualitative Inquiry to Novice Researchers

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thalia Mulvihill ◽  
Raji Swaminatha ◽  
Lucy Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
State Universities ◽  
Inquiry Teaching ◽  
Critical Friends ◽  
The Past ◽  
Analytic Process ◽  
Qualitative Methodologies

This article responds to the call for deeper examination of qualitative inquiry teaching practices by presenting representative examples from the pedagogies of three teacher-educators who have taught Qualitative Research Methods courses for the past 15 years. We focus in particular on the pedagogical complexities of teaching data analysis, which is a topic that remains under-theorized and under-represented in contemporary scholarship on qualitative methodologies. Using a critical friends framework, we analyze and synthesize our pedagogical responses to key dilemmas we have encountered in our respective contexts, all state universities, to introducing qualitative inquiry to novice researchers who often enter the analytic process with positivist notions of knowledge creation. They sometimes enter the analytic process with the belief if they can only “catch the tail” of this thing called qualitative research they will be able to “do it right.” Yet, as the metaphor implies, catching a fierce beast by the tail, thinking you can control its actions, can intrude on the inductive and holistic character of the qualitative inquiry process.

Research on Research: A Decade of Quantitative and Field Research on International Organizations

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chadwick F. Alger
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Research On Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Collective Activity ◽  
Systematic Inquiry ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Organization Research

Writing in 1966, I examined the degree to which changes in research methods in political science are affecting research on international organizations and made some suggestions for extending the use of more rigorous empirical methods in international organization research. This effort stimulated a desire to make a more systematic inquiry. Reported in that paper are the results of a systematic survey of fourteen journals and eleven international relations readers which have been published over the past decade. The survey identified some 300 works on international organizations, 61 of which are based on quantitative analysis and field work. This study reports data obtained from coding these works on nine characteristics and provides examples of major findings. The purpose is to help the community of scholars engaged in this work to see where our collective activity is heading in the hope that this will enable us to make more effective use of the limited skills, time, and money available.

scholarly journals Triangulation and Dealing with The Realness of Qualitative Research

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-28
Author(s):  
Krzysztof T. Konecki
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Research Report ◽  
Analytical Process

This paper provides a sociologists’ reflection of a sociologist on qualitative field research. Reflections will include some methodological and epistemological considerations that are connected with field work, while building the realness of the description and conclusions, i.e. constructing the quality of qualitative research. The intellectual process of doing research will be characterized by analysis of: description of investigated reality (tales of the field), analytical process, usage of commonsense research procedures (so called triangulation procedures), which are used in the field by the researcher and during analysis or writing a research report to adequately “re – present” researched reality. The three above mentioned stages of representation of reality are interwoven to create one complex intellectual process, which is called “field research”. The quality of qualitative research is the intellectual process where some procedures are used to create the accountability of research conclusions.

Symposium: "Habits of Thought and Work": The Disciplines and Qualitative Research

2000 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reba Page ◽  
George Spindler ◽  
Lorie Hammond ◽  
Shirley Brice Heath ◽  
Mary Haywood Metz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
General Area ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
Qualitative Methodologies ◽  
Do So

As George Marcus notes in Ethnography through Thick and Thin, the academic disciplines are built on particular "habits of thought and work."1 While Marcus was referring specifically to anthropology, the same can be said of other disciplines: each has its own epistemology, conventions, and sets of questions. Among the many disciplines influencing the study of education are anthropology, pedagogy, linguistics, psychology, and sociology. Each has brought rich perspectives and methodologies, including qualitative methodologies, to educational research. Their intersection and their entry into the mainstream of educational research at varying points can lead to a complex and ongoing conversation about the past, the present, and the future of qualitative research on education. Our goal as editors of this Symposium is to encourage and spark that conversation among those who read, write, and do qualitative research. To do so, we posed the following questions to five researchers, each of whom represents one of the above disciplines: What has been your field's most important contribution to the general area of qualitative research? How has your field influenced the methods of qualitative research? How has your field influenced the central questions of qualitative research? Because qualitative research is an evolving area, how do you see that evolution occurring? Where do you see that process of change leading? We also invited a response to these articles, which reaches across the disciplines with a conversation we hope continues among you, the readers, writers, and doers of qualitative research.

The zoonotic potential of bat-borne coronaviruses

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-381
Author(s):  
Ny Anjara Fifi Ravelomanantsoa ◽  
Sarah Guth ◽  
Angelo Andrianiaina ◽  
Santino Andry ◽  
Anecia Gentles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Material ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Sympatric Species ◽  
Animal Origin ◽  
Mammalian Host ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Novel Host ◽  
Horseshoe Bat ◽  
Human Infections

Seven zoonoses — human infections of animal origin — have emerged from the Coronaviridae family in the past century, including three viruses responsible for significant human mortality (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2) in the past twenty years alone. These three viruses, in addition to two older CoV zoonoses (HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63) are believed to be originally derived from wild bat reservoir species. We review the molecular biology of the bat-derived Alpha- and Betacoronavirus genera, highlighting features that contribute to their potential for cross-species emergence, including the use of well-conserved mammalian host cell machinery for cell entry and a unique capacity for adaptation to novel host environments after host switching. The adaptive capacity of coronaviruses largely results from their large genomes, which reduce the risk of deleterious mutational errors and facilitate range-expanding recombination events by offering heightened redundancy in essential genetic material. Large CoV genomes are made possible by the unique proofreading capacity encoded for their RNA-dependent polymerase. We find that bat-borne SARS-related coronaviruses in the subgenus Sarbecovirus, the source clade for SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, present a particularly poignant pandemic threat, due to the extraordinary viral genetic diversity represented among several sympatric species of their horseshoe bat hosts. To date, Sarbecovirus surveillance has been almost entirely restricted to China. More vigorous field research efforts tracking the circulation of Sarbecoviruses specifically and Betacoronaviruses more generally is needed across a broader global range if we are to avoid future repeats of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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