Linguistic incompetence: giving an account of researching multilingually

This paper considers the place of linguistic competence and incompetence in the context of researching multilingually. It offers a critique of the concept of competence and explores the performative dimensions of multilingual research and its narration, through the philosophy of Judith Butler, and in particular her study Giving an account of oneself. It explores aspects of risk, justice, narrative limit and a morality of multilingualism in emergent multilingual research frameworks. These theoretical dimensions are explored through consideration of ‘linguistically incompetent’ ethnographic work with refugees and asylum seekers, in contexts of hospitality and in life long learning research in the Gaza Strip, and of early attempts to learn new languages. The paper offers a prospect of a relational approach to researching multilingually and affirms the vulnerability at the heart of linguistic hospitality

Loudly sing cuckoo : More-than-human seasonalities in Britain

This research was funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/E009573/1.Peer reviewedPostprin

More than a method? Organisational ethnography as a way of imagining the social

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The authors–two anthropologists and an organisational theorist, all organisational ethnographers–discuss their understanding and practices of organisational ethnography (OE) as a way of imagining and reflect on how similar this understanding may be for young organisational researchers and students in particular. The discussion leads to the conclusion that OE may be regarded as a methodology but that it has a much greater potential when it is reclaiming its roots: to become a mode of doing social science on the meso-level. The discussion is based on an analysis of both historical material and the contemporary learning experiences of teaching OE as more than a method to our students