Fearing fatness and feeling fat: Encountering affective spaces of physical activity

The intention of this paper is to reveal how emotional dynamics of girls' fear and repulsion of fat operate within spaces of physical activity including Physical Education (PE). Through engagement with girls' everyday embodied experiences, understandings and practices of physical activity this paper weaves dialogue between contemporary obesity and health discourses and girls' emotional embodied experiences of encountering material and non-tangible spaces of physical activity. This paper draws from PhD research of a feminist ethnographic study with PE teachers and female pupils in Scottish primary and secondary schools; the paper reveals girls encounters with both material objects – such as swimming pool water—and non-material, discursive spaces of school-based physical activity, rooted within contemporary health discourses which perpetuate a ‘fear of fatness’. Such intra-active encounters reveal new ways of understanding how girls and young women come to feel their bodies inside of contemporary obesity debates.     

(Dis)comfort in the city: How young travellers in London negotiate mobility within the city

Conflicting claims are made about the extent to which Travellers in Britain remain outsiders in urban society (McGarry 2017; Sibley 1981). This paper sheds light on this question by addressing a neglected aspect of Traveller mobility, namely the day-to-day traversing of urban spaces beyond their (typically segregated) trailer sites. Focusing on public transport, it draws on eighteen months of ethnographic research with young people from Traveller backgrounds from a London-based youth group to understand the nature of the encounters they have as they go out and about in the city. The paper is interested in the place of affect in these encounters, and more generally, affect's role in shaping – or failing to shape – young Travellers' behaviour. The paper considers discomfort experienced through the mobility of young Travellers; it argues that young Travellers are encouraged by their elders to discipline and regulate emotional responses in encounters with non-Travellers and that this constitutes evidence of their continuing outsider status.     

Memorializing the Sacred: Kristallnacht in German National Memory

This article uses field visits (including photographs) to examine the construction of religious memory in the commemoration of Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) in contemporary German society. Over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of Kristallnacht memorials to the synagogues that were destroyed during the pogroms of November 9, 1938. Based on research at 50 of these memorial sites, I explore the way in which violence against the synagogue (and Jewish sacred objects) has become the symbol of Jewish genocide in German Holocaust remembrance. The findings strongly suggest that the missing synagogue and its destroyed relics have replaced the murdered Jewish citizenry as the predominant subject of memory in public monuments and memorials throughout the country. However, this visual trope as a representation of the sacred is complicated by other attempts at humanizing (and thus implicitly Christianizing) the suffering and sacrifice of the Holocaust.     

Ethnography and Jewish Ethics

This essay offers a Jewish approach to ethnography in religious ethics. Following the work of other ethnographers working in religious ethics, I explore how an ethnographic account of reproductive ethics among Haredi (ultra‐Orthodox) Jewish women in Jerusalem enhances and improves Jewish ethical discourse. I argue that ethnography should become an integral part of Jewish ethics for three reasons. First, with a contextual approach to guidance and application of law and norms, an ethnographic approach to Jewish ethics parallels the way ethical decisions are made on a daily basis in Jewish communities. Second, ethnography bolsters the voices of those involved in ethical discourse. Third, ethnography facilitates the bridge between local ethical questions and global ethical discourse.     

GROUNDHOG ORACLES AND THEIR FOREBEARS

Groundhog Day animal weather forecasting ceremonies continue to proliferate around the United States despite a lack of public confidence in the oracles. This essay probes religio‐historical and original ethnographic perspectives to offer a psychological argument for why these ceremonies exist. Employing Paul Shepard's notion of a felt loss of sacred, intimate relationships with nonhuman nature, as well as Peter Homans's concept of the monument that enables mourning, this essay argues that groundhog oracles serve as monuments that allow humans experientially to attempt to heal lost sacred relationships with animals like weather forecasting bears, hedgehogs, and badgers.     

Points of Departure: Insiders,Outsiders, and Social Relations in Caribbean Field Research

In traditional ethnographies, it is customarily assumed that the field researcher is an outsider who seeks to acquire an insider’s understanding of the social world being investigated. While conducting field research projects on education and tourism in Trinidad (West Indies) we found that the standard distinction between insider and outsider became problematic for us. Our experiences can be understood in terms of two competing conceptions of fieldwork. One, rooted in classical ethnography, views fieldwork as a process whereby the researcher learns to translate the cultural practices of a little-known or misunderstood group into terms understandable to the ethnographic audience. The other, growing out of the institutional ethnography approach pioneered by Dorothy E. Smith, views fieldwork as a process of mapping the relations that govern an institutional complex. In the latter approach, local experiences provide the point of departure for exploring a wider set of social arrangements. In this article, we treat our own fieldwork experiences as points of departure for a reflexive examination of this alternative ethnographic strategy.     

Researching consumers in virtual worlds: a cyberspace odyssey

Following Belk's (1991) Consumer Behaviour Odyssey, the authors suggest the need for a new odyssey, one that focuses on consumers in virtual worlds. In this paper the authors discuss the relevance of virtual communities for marketers and how ethnographic research methods can be adapted to the online environment. The unique methodological problems, opportunities and ethical dilemmas for researchers are considered that online ethnography raises before an exploration of how discourse analysis can assist in the interpretation of data collected online. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

The kotel: Toward an ethnographic portrait

An ethnographic portrait of the ‘Western Wall’ (kotel) in Jerusalem, is presented. The kotel is viewed as a pilgrimage site, a ‘place of memory’, and a location linked to a story. Most discussions of the kotel stress its history and archaeology, while this study utilizes ethnography to understand the meanings of the site to a range of social categories. The challenge faced by ethnography is that the social context of the kotel is constituted by Jewish groups all over the world and by cultural distillates stemming from millennia of history. By providing both an overview of kotel activities, and a more detailed examination of several kotel occasions, the paper points to the potential contribution of ethnography to understanding national‐religious shrines.     

SCIENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE: WESTPHAL,DERRIDA, AND RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract. On the naive reading, “radical social constructivism” would be the result of “deconstructing” science. Science would simply be a contingent construction in accordance with social determinants. However, postmodernism does not necessarily abandon fidelity to the objects of thought. Merold Westphal's Derridean philosophy of religion emphasizes that even theology need not eliminate the transcendence of the divine other. By drawing an analogy between natural and supernatural transcendence, I argue that science is similarly called to responsibility in the encounter with that which lies outside its horizon of expectation. Science's rational autonomy is overcome by the heteronomy of realities that precede it. Understanding species as homeostatic property clusters is an example of nonessentialist, postmodern, and scientific realism. Science is still a vehicle for encountering natural alterity, thus decentering the relativism thought to characterize postmodernism. However, natural science must not attempt to place the whole of being at human disposal if it is to fulfill the potential of Westphal's philosophy of religion.     

Facebook as a Site for Inter-religious Encounters: A Case Study from Finland

The aim of this article is to analyse the social networking site Facebook as a possible platform for inter-religious dialogue. Building on a case study—an attack on a Buddhist temple in Turku, Finland, and the consequent interaction that took place online immediately following the attack—the article investigates the strengths and limitations of social networking sites such as Facebook for encountering and connecting with religious others. The ethnographic material—consisting of both Internet material and interviews with concerned parties—is discussed in close connection with current research on religion, social media, and discussions online. Themes that are highlighted include stereotypes and superficiality as assumed aspects of online conversations, the role of power in dialogue—both offline and online, and symbolic communicative actions and social networking sites.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

There are many brief, demanding, aborted cases that no one ever writes about. The typical psychoanalyst or psychoanalytic psychotherapist, however, has many outpatient cases that are shortlived, intense encounters with very disturbed patients. Rather than ignore these encounters as non-analytic or non-instructive, I think these cases add to our knowledge about the mind and its functions. In addition, it is unrealistic to think we can always help a very anxious and disturbed person to enter the treatment process with immediate success. It is more instructive to apply the analytic method and offer the patient what we can and have both analyst and patient learn as much as they can in the time they are able to stay together. Using case material, I show the Kleinian approach to working analytically with these difficult patients. Whether focusing on transference or extra-transference material, the analyst interprets the patient's internal phantasies and anxieties regarding the self and the self's important objects. This analytic stance tends to relieve the immediate anxiety and set the stage for potential self-reflection and the start of basic working-through processes.     

No Sympathy for the Devil: Narratives about Evil

Christian religious experiences usually take place within the context of a religious group or community. Some of these experiences play a central role in propagating and sustaining group identity and belief. In many Pentecostal and charismatic communities, the most conspicuous experiences of this kind are those orchestrated by the devil, including 'demon possession' and 'supernatural assault'. Often, these encounters are thought to be part of an ongoing 'spiritual war' between the forces of good and evil. Christian victory in this war clarifies and strengthens community identity. Employing an ethnographic approach, this article examines the importance of storytelling in relation to this process. Through an analysis of three oral stories, it is suggested that storytelling is the means through which experiences of evil are interpreted and understood and that it is the essential way in which these experiences are communicated by members of a community to one another.     

Corporeal Reflexivity and Autism

Ethnographic video recordings of high functioning children with autism or Aspergers Syndrome in everyday social encounters evidence their first person perspectives. High quality visual and audio data allow detailed analysis of children’s bodies and talk as loci of reflexivity. Corporeal reflexivity involves displays of awareness of one’s body as an experiencing subject and a physical object accessible to the gaze of others. Gaze, demeanor, actions, and sotto voce commentaries on unfolding situations indicate a range of moment-by-moment reflexive responses to social situations. Autism is associated with neurologically based motor problems (e.g. delayed action-goal coordination, clumsiness) and highly repetitive movements to self-soothe. These behaviors can provoke derision among classmates at school. Focusing on a 9-year-old girl’s encounters with peers on the playground, this study documents precisely how autistic children can become enmeshed as unwitting objects of stigma and how they reflect upon their social rejection as it transpires. Children with autism spectrum disorders in laboratory settings manifest diminished understandings of social emotions such as embarrassment, as part of a more general impairment in social perspective-taking. Video ethnography, however, takes us further, into discovering autistic children’s subjective sense of vulnerability to the gaze of classmates.     

A theology of pastoral multiplicity

The contemporary moment is characterized by liquidity and difference. “Liquidity” means rapidly changing social structures, accelerations in consumption, and constantly changing personal and group identities. In this increasingly diverse context, encounters with difference are not only inevitable, they are essential—and can be transformative for our understandings of our multiple selves, for our pastoral encounters with others, and for our theological imagination, as well. Viewing the self, especially the pastor's self, as a collection of multiple selves, identities, and performances illumines pastoral leadership; pastors who claim their multiplicity more wholly meet “others” when encountering difference. The triune God reveals divine multiplicity, so pastors who claim their multiplicity as their identity thereby make a theological claim.     

Sketches of Sikhs in the 1880s

Between 1883 and 1885 the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway commissioned a sailing expedition around the world with the frigate Vanadis. On board was the Swedish archaeologist and ethnographer Hjalmar Stolpe who during land excursions collected no less than 7500 cultural specimens for an intended ethnographical museum in Sweden. When reaching India in late 1884 he travelled through the northern British territories, including Punjab, for almost three months. This article gives an overview of the Indian and Sikh ethnographical objects preserved in the Vanadis collection and how the material entered the collection through Stolpe's travels, scholarly networks, and encounters with Sikhs in Punjab.     

Heritage space,multiple temporalities,and the reproduction of Guangzhou Overseas Chinese Village

This paper investigates the everyday experiences of long-term residents during the urban heritage revitalization process of Guangzhou Overseas Chinese Village (GOCV) as China's first overseas Chinese village. Drawing upon insights from the recent theories of multiple temporalities, this paper argues that the everyday sensory experiences of long-term residents during the urban heritage revitalization process can be understood through three interconnected temporal modes (past, present, and future). These modes reflect the sociopolitical context of different periods and influence the everyday rhythms and practices of community residents. Specifically, regarding the past, patriotic fervor, a shared identity, and the experience of living collectively have created a “happy home for returned overseas Chinese”. In terms of the present, the market-oriented reform and commodification of housing has had a profound impact on the built forms and meaning systems of the neighborhood, leading to long-term residents' nostalgia for the past and resistance to present changes in the everyday rhythms. Lastly, based on an envisioned future, long-term residents carry out specific preservation practices to maintain and enhance their place identity. This article explores the approaches to enrich the urban heritage research by illuminating the importance of temporality for understanding the spatial (re)production of living urban heritage.     

Children's right to be hostile: Emotions and agency through psychodynamic lens

This paper explores children's hostility towards adult researchers and shows how individual acts of hostility might be linked to wider contexts in children's lives and to their relationships with others. Drawing on ethnographic research with children in Slovakia and psychodynamic theories of Alfred Adler and Anna Freud, the paper argues for hostility to be seen as a legitimate form of children's political agency and one which might require escape from adult logics and interpretations. It suggests that children's hostility towards the researcher should be seen as a right before it is considered a problem, and it should not on its own exclude children from participation in research. Tracing the emotional dynamics of research-participant encounters and their links to other social relationships, personal histories and emotional materials, the paper suggests that recognising children's agency as too elusive for adult interpretations might facilitate new forms of research participation, one which would not rest as heavily on the adult conceptions of childhood.     

“Everyone always did the same”: Constructing legacies of collective industrial pasts in ex-mining communities in the South Wales Valleys

Understanding post-industrial places requires an engagement with how these communities construct identities around a sense of a shared or common industrial past, particularly in areas that have struggled to adapt to the loss of community-defining industries (Beatty et al. 2007). This paper draws on ethnographic data, non-directive interviews, and auto-ethnographic reflections collected in an ex-coal mining town in a South Wales valley in the UK. The paper seeks to better consider post-industrial collective identities by attending to concepts of collective memory and imaginaries of industrial pasts. Conceptualising memory as rooted in the material and immaterial; affective, emotive and discursive; shared and imagined; this paper discusses how everyday relationships are inextricably linked to an assumed shared history within an ‘typical’ active mining community. By engaging the everyday lives, practices, and discourses of contemporaneous residents this paper outlines the ways in which the past is constructed as universal and homogenous. It also extends this discussion to consider how these imagined shared pasts, and the enduring values routed in these collective memories, are mobilised to construct senses of inclusion, difference, and othering; imagined industrial pasts have enduring impacts for the construction of contemporary communities.