Opinions: Ethnographic Methods in the Study of Business

For this issue of the Journal of Business Anthropology, I approached a number of people who have conducted research in, with, on, or for business organizations of one sort or another and asked them to reflect upon their ethnographic experiences. What follows is a series of essays by scholars and practitioners ‒ many of them extremely experienced, but one at the beginning of her career ‒ who between them have provided us with a collation of exemplary practices and insights. It isn’t just restaurant kitchens and home cooking that provide ‘food for thought’, but cruise ships, art museums, General Motors, and an Austrian electrical company. Bon appetit

Kommersiell mediekultur : En etnografisk studie av TV-producenter och TV-produktion

This dissertation examines a commercial media culture as articulated by a television production company in Stockholm, Sweden, and is based on nine months of extended fieldwork. The dissertation discusses the production process, its problems and constraints, and the role of the producer using a theoretical framework elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu. The TV producers are involved in a constant process of interpretation, evaluation and negotiation related to the symbolic and economic power relationships that determine the field. The practical production cannot be reduced to a one-way communication system. Commercial TV production involves more than supplying the channels with those programs they demand and attracting the desired target groups; programs produced at the company must be "good" and give a "value" to the viewers. The production process implies a tightly interwoven relationship between the producer and the audience, conceived of in terms of "the average person". The producers create an image of an audience based on statistical figures, reference persons, viewer ratings and of themselves functioning as surrogate audience. This constructed viewer wants something more than pure entertainment. The public-educator ideal that has been a reason for the Swedish public-service-television's authority and legitimacy, has come to be an important component of the television produced at the described television company. A public-service tradition is reformulated to fit into a modern, commercial context, at the same time as it legitimizes and gives meaning to its own enterprise. The created viewer's demand for entertaining knowledge and information is satisfied

Hela resan : En etnografisk studie för att skapa förståelse för komplexiteten av resenärens hela resa

Trafikverket vill bättre förstå hur och varför resenären kombinerar olika, delade färdmedel och hur bytespunkten kan främja ett användande av dessa tjänster. Många resenärer byter färdmedel under sina resor. Hur fungerar bytena? Vad fungerar? Vad fungerar mindre bra? Konsultföretaget Inculture AB har genomfört studien på uppdrag från Trafikverket.  Genom att studera hur resenärer kombinerar olika, delade färdmedel med en antropologisk metod kan man bättre förstå resenärens grundläggande behov. Att förstå människors reella behov är en förutsättning för att kunna designa så relevanta och användarvänliga tjänster och produkter som möjligt. Det handlar bland annat om att identifiera förväntansgapet, kartlägga kundens resa relaterat till tjänst/företag och relatera detta till befintliga tjänster. Genom metoden kan man dels få insikter för att utveckla befintliga tjänster, dels upptäcka helt nya behov som kan utvecklas till nya tjänster inom området mobilitet som en tjänst.

The media habits of young people in Sweden: The use of fictional texts in a school and a recreational context

This article is based on a questionnaire study of the media habits of Swedish youth aged 17–18. It examines the time they spend on using fictional texts through various media forms as well as in relation to mode (production/consumption), context (spare time/school), and gender (male/female). It further analyses these media habits and, using media ecology theory, discusses their effects on the learning process. The study shows that the participants spend more time using fictional texts, predominantly through audio-visual media forms, in their leisure time than in school, that they consume more fictional texts than they produce, and that the female participants spend more time producing fictional texts than the male participants – a result that is coloured by the amount of time they spend blogging, tweeting and writing diaries. The effects of such life-writings on teaching and learning processes, as well as on school performances are also discussed

Voices of freedom - Afghan politics in radio soap opera

© 2005 SAGE PublicationsThis article examines the creative labour of a group of Afghan radio soap opera writers scripting a popular social realist BBC World Service radio drama for broadcast in Afghanistan. Analysis centres on struggles over the political representation of the Taliban within the soap opera between 1996-8, a period in which they dominated politically and militarily. A tension is revealed in analysis between the individual political beliefs of writers and the simultaneous need to ‘realistically’ represent Afghan social and political lives. Production accommodations resulted in the active portrayal of a nostalgic and traditional vision of Afghanistan. It is suggested that these representations ultimately denied a conservative Taliban presence within the soap opera, the portrayal of tradition kept alive for these writers an acceptable sense of a future that held more liberal possibilities than Taliban alternatives