Hashtags, ruling relations and the everyday: institutional ethnography insights on social movements

Meuleman, Bram; Boushel, Corra

doi:10.1080/21582041.2013.851410

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Ethnography as a method 2 is suitable for use in doubly engaged social science research because of one important feature: Researchers must embed themselves in the communities they study, and this immersive approach gives scholars a better, clearer, and more in-depth view of the particular policy challenges facing those populations. While structured and semistructured interviews may provide some insight into how these challenges may be better tackled, it is profound, engaged, and immersive ethnographic research that facilitates a deeper understanding of how communities work; how social relations are created, maintained, restored, and eroded; and how institutions evolve 3 (Billo & Mountz, 2015;McCauley, 2014;Meuleman & Boushel, 2013). Given that ethnography as a method was built around (and precisely for) understanding culture, it follows that we must attempt to use as immersive a technique as is realistic (McGranahan, 2014).…”

Section: Ethnography: a Doubly Engaged Social Science Research Methodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doubly Engaged Ethnography

Pacheco-Vega

Parizeau

2018

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

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Understanding the unique challenges facing vulnerable communities necessitates a scholarly approach that is profoundly embedded in the ethnographic tradition. Undertaking ethnographies of communities and populations facing huge degrees of inequality and abject poverty asks of the researcher to be able to think hard about issues of positionality (what are our multiple subjectivities as insider/outsider, knowledge holder/learner, and so on when interacting with vulnerable subjects, and how does this influence the research?), issues of engagement versus exploitation (how can we meaningfully incentivize participation in our studies without being coercive/extractive, and can we expect vulnerable subjects to become deeply in research design/data collection, and so on when they are so overburdened already?), and representation (what are the ethics of representing violence, racism, and sexism as expressed by vulnerable respondents? What about the pictures we take and the stories we tell?). Through the discussion of our research on the behavioral patterns, socialization strategies, and garbage processing methods of informal waste pickers in Argentina and Mexico, we ask ourselves, and through this exercise, seek to shed light on the broader questions of how can we engage in ethnographies of vulnerable communities while maintaining a sense of objectivity and protecting our informants? Rather than attempting to provide a definite answer, we provide a starting point for scholars of resource governance interested in using ethnographic methods for their research. We highlight the challenges we've faced in studying cartoneros in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and pepenadores in Leó n (Mexico) and engage in a self-reflective discussion of what can be learned from our struggle to provide meaningful, engaged scholarship while retaining and ensuring respect and care for the communities we study.

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Section: Ethnography: a Doubly Engaged Social Science Research Methodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doubly Engaged Ethnography

Pacheco-Vega

Parizeau

2018

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

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“…However, to assume that all DIY citizenship is politically progressive would be naïve. Ethnographies (Grimm and Pilkington 2015;Koronaiou et al 2015;Meuleman and Boushel 2014) can reveal how a feeling of rage and disillusionment over the economic crisis and the political system lead to racist, nativist, anti-immigrant protectionism and a disavowal of traditional forms of politics that lead to "consensus".…”

Section: Ethnography About Young People and Citizenshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Significance of Ethnography in Youth Participation Research: Active Citizenship in the UK after the Brexit Vote

Banaji

Mejias

Vélez

2018

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In comparison to questionnaires, statistical analyses, interviews and experiments, ethnography tends to be a neglected method in youth participation research and in understanding political socialization and citizen action. This, we suggest, is very unfortunate. Where the concerns and experiences of researchers do not match those of young people, it is usually the young people's perspectives which remain outside the frameworks and conclusions. Drawing on original data and insights from two ethnographies of youth active citizenship initiatives in the UK -My Life My Say and Momentum -collected during a politically tumultuous 8-month period in 2017, this article argues that ethnography has several advantages over other methods when it comes to understanding the depth and significance of youth civic participation and its links to peer groups and emotions. We contend that critical and reflexive ethnographies allow scholars and researchers to ask and probe young people's perceptions, opinions, actions and behaviours through the use of open-ended questions in settings where civic action is already taking place, thus triangulating findings in natural settings and building a sense of how communities of practice and activism function. In terms of ethics, voice and power, this ethnographic research approach gives young people more control over their own narratives about participation and affiliation in specific political or civic settings than surveys tend to do. KEY WORDS ethnography; youth active citizenship; brexit; civic participation; MomentumWe seek interlocutors, not admirers; we offer dialogue, not spectacle. Our writing is informed by a desire to make contact, so that readers may become involved with words that came to us from them, and that return to them as hope and prophecy. (Galeano 1992: 140) Sociální studia / Social Studies 2/2018. Pp.

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“…Applications of ethnography to the study of social movements have yielded keen insights on their interactions, reflecting upon the "'ruling relations' that are embedded in the definitions at play" (Meuleman and Boushel 2014) in light of the wider contexts of social movements (Smith 1990). (ii) Autoethnography to accommodate for the interplay of one's self engaged with "cultural descriptions mediated through ethnographic explanation" (Ellis 2003:38).…”

Section: The Social Ecological Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconceptualizing Social Movements and Power: Towards a Social Ecological Approach

2017

The Sociological Quarterly

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Existing social movement theories subsume protests into abstract conceptualizations of society, and current ethnographic studies of protests overburden description. Through a case study of London protests, this article transcends these limitations by articulating a social ecological approach consisted of critical ethnography and autoethnography that unearth the organizational strategies and symbolic representations exchanged among police, protesters, and third-party observers, whilst charting the physical and symbolic characteristics of space bearing on these interactions. This approach points to a conceptualization of power at work as transient, typological structures: (a) rooted in collective agency; (b) both mediating and mediated by symbolic representations; (c) whose sensibilities are determined by symbolic interpretations; and (d) thrown into binary opposition between protester power and police power, who mutually represent meanings to resist and be resisted by.

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Hashtags, ruling relations and the everyday: institutional ethnography insights on social movements

Cited by 7 publications

References 19 publications

Doubly Engaged Ethnography

Doubly Engaged Ethnography

The Significance of Ethnography in Youth Participation Research: Active Citizenship in the UK after the Brexit Vote

Reconceptualizing Social Movements and Power: Towards a Social Ecological Approach

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