A theory of life in the round

Abstract

This study addresses ways in which inmates at the only maximum‐security prison for women in Neuse City (in the northeastern United States) redefine their social world in order to survive incarceration. An aim of the project is to engage in theory building in order to examine the experiences of a world that is “lived in the round.” A life in the round is a public form of life. It is a lifestyle with an enormous degree of imprecision. Yet, it is this inexactitude that provides an acceptable level of certainty. This way of life sets standards by which one constructs everyday meaning from reality. It is a “taken‐for‐granted,” “business‐as‐usual” style of being. Relying on ethnographic research and interviews with 80 women at the prison, the findings revealed that a life in the round was sustaining a “normative” existence.

Sociospatial context and information behavior: Social exclusion and the influence of mobile information technology

“…In terms of the information behavior literature, sociospatial aspects of context have been dealt with by a small number of researchers. Our research emphasizes the focus provided by Fisher et al (2004), Pettigrew (1999), Chatman (1992Chatman ( , 1999, and others that deals with the sociospatial context of information behavior on the absolute significance of social relationships in information-seeking activities within a spatial context. Our work extends and develops this research, implying a form of spatial and temporal compression that occurs within ad hoc mobile information grounds.…”

“…Recent research has emphasized changes in spatial regularities enabled by technologies (c.f. Castells, 1998Castells, , 2007 leading, some have argued, to the death of place or a reconstitution of our existing understanding of the relationship between space and place (Graham, 1998) Within the field of information behavior, however, the approach has been primarily subjectivist and qualitative and developed by two key researchers-Chatman (Chatman, 1987(Chatman, , 1991(Chatman, , 1992(Chatman, , 1996(Chatman, , 1999 and Pettigrew/née Fisher (Fisher et al, 2004;Pettigrew, 1999;Pettigrew et al, 2001) -in the context every-day information behavior. Using a social constructionist approach, Fisher and colleagues have argued that the study of information cannot be considered outside its social context (Fisher et al, 2004).…”

“…Conversely, outsiders have a clear strategic role and tend to underplay themselves by preserving information that may be useful to those labelled as insiders. Chatman's (1999) description of 80 women in a highsecurity prison further illuminated the information behavior of underserved people in a complex environment. Respondents embraced a normative lifestyle that seemed to be typical of life in that social space and that led to a certain level of self-conformity: "What absorbs their concentration is a localized worldview, centered on everyday concerns.…”

“…Pettigrew, Fidel, & Bruce, 2001;Johnson, Case, Andrews, Allard, & Johnson, 2006), Savolainen's deconstruction of use of spatial, social (2009) and temporal (2006) of dimensions of context is particularly illuminating. In his 2009 article, he analyzed the work of Fisher and colleagues (Pettigrew et al, 2001;Fisher, Durrance, & Hinton, 2004, Pettigrew, 1999 and Chatman (1992Chatman ( , 1999, who focused on everyday information seeking. This article emphasized the significance of place constructed of both social and physical elements in influencing information behavior.…”

Assessing Internet access and use in a medically underserved population: implications for providing enhanced health information services

“…This suggests that the reasons for low health information seeking on the Internet may be related to the life experiences of this community such as the 'small-world' phenomenon identified by Chatman. 19,20 Research conducted prior to widespread use of the Internet examined the information-use environment of underserved populations such as the patients served by the centre and found that information seeking from sources outside the boundaries of the community is less prevalent than information seeking from perceived authoritative sources within the community. This phenomenon may affect patterns of information seeking, particularly in areas such as health-related topics.…”