668 research outputs found
âSavages Who Speak Frenchâ: Folklore, Primitivism and Morals in Robert Hertz
Hertz's analysis of the Alpine cult of Saint Besse apparently marks a break from his studies of death, sin and the left to folkloric studies. This analysis helps one to understand the personality of Robert Hertz. His sociological curiosity about folklore reveals his ambiguous position in social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century. His text appears to be a variation from the Durkheimian norm, but another reading could suggest that Hertz continued and went beyond Durkheimian thought to something between sociology of the modern world and engaged socialism. Through this study, Hertz linked his political ideals, his work in ethnology and his desire for social involvement. The cult of Saint Besse perpetuated as much religious tradition as local identity. The Alpine people were presented in the text as wilful perpetuators of an ideal social order, whose loss for his contemporary city dwellers Hertz feared. The alpine Other, marked by a material and moral backwardness, represented for activist and socialist Hertz one of the paths of balanced social organization that stabilized the identity of a group across time if it fit rather well into the folkloric stereotypes of the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, by linking events in Herz's life (e.g., the accidental Alpine death of his father), this article suggests that the legend of Saint Besse embodied several recurring motifs in Hertz' career: the accidental deaths of saint and father by falls, the military role of the saint and of Hertz himself
The sound of violets: the ethnographic potency of poetry?
This paper takes the form of a dialogue between the two authors, and is in two halves, the first half discursive and propositional, and the second half exemplifying the rhetorical, epistemological and metaphysical affordances of poetry in critically scrutinising the rhetoric, epistemology and metaphysics of educational management discourse.
Phipps and Saunders explore, through ideas and poems, how poetry can interrupt and/or illuminate dominant values in education and in educational research methods, such as:
âą alternatives to the military metaphors â targets, strategies and the like â that dominate the soundscape of education;
âą the kinds and qualities of the cognitive and feeling spaces that might be opened up by the shifting of methodological boundaries;
âą the considerable work done in ethnography on the use of the poetic: anthropologists have long used poetry as a medium for expressing their sense of empathic connection to their field and their subjects, particularly in considering the creativity and meaning-making that characterise all human societies in different ways;
âą the particular rhetorical affordances of poetry, as a discipline, as a practice, as an art, as patterned breath; its capacity to shift phonemic, and therewith methodological, authority; its offering of redress to linear and reductive attempts at scripting social life, as always already given and without alternative
From paradox to pattern shift: Conceptualising liminal hotspots and their affective dynamics
This article introduces the concept of liminal hotspots as a specifically psychosocial and sociopsychological type of wicked problem, best addressed in a process-theoretical framework. A liminal hotspot is defined as an occasion characterised by the experience of being trapped in the interstitial dimension between different forms-of-process. The paper has two main aims. First, to articulate a nexus of concepts associated with liminal hotspots that together provide general analytic purchase on a wide range of problems concerning âtroubledâ becoming. Second, to provide concrete illustrations through examples drawn from the health domain. In the conclusion, we briefly indicate the sense in which liminal hotspots are part of broader and deeper historical processes associated with changing modes for the management and navigation of liminality
Understanding young people's transitions in university halls through space and time
This article contributes to the theoretical discussion about young people's transitions through space and time. Space and time are complex overarching concepts that have creative potential in deepening understanding of transition. The focus of this research is young people's experiences of communal living in university halls. It is argued that particular space-time concepts draw attention to different facets of experience and in combination deepen the understanding of young people's individual and collective transitions. The focus of the article is the uses of the space-time concepts 'routine', 'representation', 'rhythm' and 'ritual' to research young people's experiences. The article draws on research findings from two studies in the North of England. © 2010 SAGE Publications
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Liminal Roles as a Source of Creative Agency in Management: The Case of Knowledge-Sharing Communities
Studies suggest that the experience of liminality â of being in an ambiguous, âbetwixt and betweenâ position â has creative potential for organizations. We contribute to theory on the link between liminality and creative agency through a study of the coordinators of âknowledge-sharing communitiesâ; one of the latest examples of a âneo-bureaucraticâ practice that seeks to elicit innovative responses from employees while intensifying control by the organization. Through a role-centred perspective, our study found that both the structural and interpretive aspects of coordinatorsâ role enactments promoted a degree of creative agency. âFront-stageâ and âback-stageâ activities were developed to meet the divergent expectations posed by senior management and community members, and the ambiguity of their roles prompted an array of different role interpretations. Our findings contribute to theory by showing how the link between liminality and creative agency is not confined to roles and spaces (consultancy work, professional expertise) that are positioned across organizational boundaries, or free from norms and expectations, but may also apply to roles that are ambiguously situated within organizational contexts and which are subject to divergent expectations. This shows how neo-bureaucratic forms may be both reproduced and renewed through the creative responses of individual managers
Muddled Boundaries of Digital Shrines
International audienceBased on an online ethnography study of 274 YouTube videos posted during the Virginia Tech or the Newtown massacres, this article discusses how users resort to participatory media during such mediatized events to create a digital spontaneous shrine. The assemblage of this sanctuary on a website hosting billions of user-generated contents is made possible by means of folksonomy and website architecture, and a two-fold social dynamic based on participatory commitment and the institutionalization of a collective entity. Unlike âphysicalâ spontaneous shrines erected in public spaces, these digital shrines connect the bereaved with provocative or outrageous contributions, notably tributes from school shooting fans using participatory media to commemorate the killerâs memory. This side effect, generated by the technical properties of the platform, compromises the tranquility of the memorial and muddles the boundaries and the contents of such sanctuaries
Liminal entrepreneuring : the creative practices of nascent necessity entrepreneurs
This paper contributes to creative entrepreneurship studies through exploring âliminal entrepreneuringâ, i.e., the organization-creation entrepreneurial practices and narratives of individuals living in precarious conditions. Drawing on a processual approach to entrepreneurship and Turnerâs liminality concept, we study the transition from un(der)employment to entrepreneurship of 50 nascent necessity entrepreneurs (NNEs) in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. The paper asks how these agents develop creative entrepreneuring practices in their efforts to overcome their condition of ânecessityâ. The analysis shows how, in their everyday liminal entrepreneuring, NNEs disassemble their identities and social positions, experiment with new relationships and alternative visions of themselves, and (re)connect with entrepreneuring ideas and practices in a new way, using imagination and organization-creation practices to reconstruct both self and context in the process. The results question and expand the notion of entrepreneuring in times of socioeconomic stress
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