Men's passage to fatherhood: an analysis of the contemporary relevance of transition theory

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of men's experiences of pregnancy, birth and early fatherhood. It does so using a framework of ritual transition theory and argues that despite its earlier structural-functionalist roots, transition theory remains a valuable framework, illuminating contemporary transitions across the life course. The paper discusses the historical development of transition or ritual theory and, drawing upon data generated during longitudinal ethnographic interviews with men undergoing the transition to fatherhood, analyses its relevance in understanding contemporary experiences of fatherhood

We came here to remember’: Using participatory sensory ethnography to explore memory as emplaced, embodied practice

Memory can be seen as an emplaced phenomenon rather than as an internal, psychological archive. Approaches relating to cognition and memory as practice, seeing cognition as an extended, distributed phenomenon, will be considered in theoretical and empirical contexts in this article. Theoretical approaches to emplaced, embodied memory will be explored in the context of my sensory ethnographic research on place perception. I curated a series of sensory ethnographic engagements to explore how three international students from Tunisia, Indonesia, and Germany used emplaced knowledge and memories of their city and of their previous homes. Using a participatory sensory ethnography, involving walking interviews, my collaborators devised unique memorial responses to evoke their new and previous places of residence. The collaborations presented here illustrate the embodied, emplaced nature of memory. The use of sensory ethnography has enabled me to construct memory as an emplaced, embodied, multisensory phenomenon, rather than an internal archive

Living with the dead:emergent post-mortem digital curation and creation practices

This chapter explores the emergent digital dimension of contemporary Western mourning, by utilising a historical framework and a postmodern, post-disciplinary and practice theory lens, in order to critically discuss how the ruptures of loss and the presence of the dead are radically manifesting in the digital age. We begin with a contextual overview of the historical landscape of mourning, its perceived decline and the twentieth century gaze toward private grief, before proceeding to introduce the paradigm of continuing bonds and the social presence of the dead. From this contextualisation, the chapter then introduces twenty-first century digital mourning through a discussion of the emergent practices which curate and create the spectral presence of the dead online. We argue that mourning has not collapsed, but is radically manifest in ways currently unaccounted for and invisible within the dominant filter of memorialisation. Finally, we introduce a range of potential implications and challenges that will be faced by HCI researchers and designers of systems supporting the ‘End of Life’, by highlighting the emerging socio-cultural complexity in need of consideration when designing technologies for bereavement support

Everyday multiculturalism : transversal crossings and working class cosmopolitans

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