Atmospheres of street performance in Taipei: Affect and emotion as dynamic,simultaneous, more-than-representational experiences

Studies of street performance have highlighted its potential for creating vibrant and inclusive urban places, yet have largely neglected its atmospheric, affectual and emotional dimensions. Building on a growing body of work on atmospheres and dynamics of affect and emotion, I examine the formation of atmospheres by street performances in Taipei and its affectual and emotional resonance on space and people. I used an experimental more-than-representational methodology, including implementing a live survey questionnaire through the audience's smartphones during a performance. An atmosphere of street performance is generated through the lively interactions between the street performer, members of the audience, performance objects and the wider urban environment. Performance objects and the urban streetscape are vitalised as part of street performance, and have excessive potential in producing atmospheres. The spatio-temporal dimension of performance atmosphere is significant in generating memories and creating a therapeutic atmospheric space, experienced affectually and emotionally. I suggest that it would be helpful to see atmosphere and its affectual and emotional impact as dynamic, simultaneous experiences that people encounter as they are enmeshed within an atmosphere, such as in more-than-individual experiences or unexpected events. Within a changing atmosphere, there are multiple layers of affective and emotional outcomes, whether felt and emerging individually, and/or felt and emerging collectively.     

Resilience and Protective Factors in Adolescence: An Autobiographical Perspective From Disadvantaged Youth

This article focuses on the development of adolescent resilience and protective factors within a sample of 86 inner-city high school students in Chicago. Resilience was considered present when (a) children living in conditions of risk (b) show better-than-predicted outcomes (c) presumably due to some intervening process. Conditions (a) and (b) were met using quantitative comparisons. Condition (c), the intervening process, was examined using autobiographical essays to begin to understand protective factors youth consider salient in overcoming adversity. Internal attributes such as perseverance, determination, and having the awareness to learn from the risk-attrition process surfaced in the content analyses. Motivational support from family members and teachers was also highly valued for promoting successful adjustment.     

Observer,percevoir, partager : réflexions épistémologiques à partir d’une enquête ethnographique dans cinq établissements d’enseignement secondaire

For our research on “Gender practices and violence between peers: the stakes of mixed education” (ANR-09-ENFT-006), two researchers observed interactions between students within five schools during the 2011–2012 school year in an large French city. This paper focuses on the challenges of ethnography, the validity of the results produced by such a methodology, and the opportunity to intersect clinical (notably transference and counter-transference) and socio-anthropological concepts. Our analyses center on questions related to social class and the sex-gender system.     

Learning from parents' stories about what works in early intervention

Using a multiple case study approach, this ethnography examined the experiences of parents of children deemed at risk for developmental delays or disabilities who had received early intervention (EI) services (birth to age 3 years) in a large urban location in Western Canada. Participants (11 adult parents and 7 children) were drawn from six families. Methods of data collection included focus groups (FG), face‐to‐face interviews and file reviews. Member check and expert reviews were conducted throughout data collection and data analyses as part of the validation process in this ethnography. Qualitative content analyses followed by thematic analyses highlighted the implementation of family‐centred practices (FCP) as a main theme. Parents identified how EI professionals using FCP embraced collaborative practices. FCP resulted in parents leading the EI process for their children. More specifically, EI professionals shared strategies and information to support parents in gaining a deeper understanding of their children's individual developmental characteristics. Parents expressed how empowering this level of understanding was for them as they learned to articulate what were their children's needs for developmental, health and educational services. Recommendations for future research include inquiring about parents' experiences for families of diverse constellations and/or residing in smaller urban or rural communities.     

Visualising intimacies: The circulation of digital images in the Trinidadian context

This article examines images circulated through mobile media to emphasise the emotion work invested into familial relationships that are defined by place. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Trinidad, the article contributes a cross-cultural perspective to literature in digital visual communication and digital media in family relationships that has typically focused on peer-to-peer relationships between youth or that has focused on nuclear households in predominantly Western contexts. The consequences of uses of digital media platforms are strongly intertwined with the category of relationship (mother and daughter, or couples for example), their cultural inflections, relationship hierarchies and the life-stages of individuals. Digital visual communication functions to navigate, maintain and acknowledge relationships that varies across different platforms. The more public uses of images over Facebook to the more private circulation of images over WhatsApp provide examples that illustrate positive aspects of intimacy through constant contact as well as ambivalent feelings of obligation to reciprocate communication compelled by the availability afforded by mobile media. This article advances the understanding of the relationship between emotions, intimacy and mobile media by revealing how norms, ideals and expectations of familyhood and digital practices that are often essentialised are context-driven and specific.     

Ethnography in Community Psychology: Promises and Tensions

Community psychology recognizes the need for research methods that illuminate context, culture, diversity, and process. One such method, ethnography, has crossed into multiple disciplines from anthropology, and indeed, community psychologists are becoming community ethnographers. Ethnographic work stands at the intersection of bridging universal questions with the particularities of people and groups bounded in time, geographic location, and social location. Ethnography is thus historical and deeply contextual, enabling a rich, in-depth understanding of communities that is aligned with the values and goals of community psychology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the potential of ethnography for community psychology and to encourage its use within the field as a method to capture culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities. We discuss the method of ethnography, draw connections to community psychology values and goals, and identify tensions from our experiences doing ethnography. Overall, we assert that ethnography is a method that resonates with community psychology and present this paper as a resource for those interested in using this method in their research or community activism.     

History and time in Nichiren's Senji-shō

This present study is a reflection upon a case study of an Independent Charismatic Church in the light of Harvey Cox's book, Fire From Heaven. In particular, it seeks to re-examine the theory of Cox that within the emergence of postmodernity religious expression is becoming polarized into the forms of ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘experientialism’. Cox applies this analysis to Pentecostalism and suggests that even now the battle lines are drawn between these polarities. He speculates that glossolalia could be the focus of such a debate between belief and experience within postmodernity and may provide a resource which meets the current ‘ecstasy deficit’ in human spirituality. Evidence from this case study suggests that there are some indications of a cultural shift to postmodernity and that the tensions which Cox highlights are present within the case study. However, it is unclear whether the role of glossolalia in postmodernity will be as important as Cox anticipates. Rather, this study suggests that glossolalia will become merely one symbol among many which form the ‘spiritual bricolage’.     

Sexuality and power on South African game farms; reflections on positionality and emotions in ethnographic research

The taboo around researchers' sexualities and sexual experiences in ethnographic field work persists. We found that our sexuality, alongside physical and emotional experiences, were pivotal to how we shaped research relations and processes. This evokes questions around how we reflect on our positionalities and the knowledge we generate. We argue that ethnographic accounts are strengthened by inclusive reflexivity, that acknowledges sex and sexuality. This article presents empirical material from field experiences on South African game farms. These spaces tend to represent a particular image of wilderness, constructed according to patriarchal and racist hierarchies, which heighten contestations over belonging. As such they become spaces of violence, seduction, and power, and we found ourselves (neither minds nor bodies) unable to detach from these spatial and emotional dynamics. Our strategies for ‘being in the field’ came to evolve around negotiations of power, sex and complicity. The emotional dynamics made us feel confused, bewildered and sometimes scared. We seek to share our experiences and feelings, and to contribute to discussion on the role of sexuality in ethnographic research, and the epistemological, methodological and practical advantages of reflecting on the ways we engage in the field.     

Trying on and Trying Out: Participatory Action Research as a Tool for Literacy and Identity Work in Middle Grades Classrooms

This article explores the role of collaborative, ethnographic, participatory action research (PAR) with eighth grade students as a set of possible literacy practices for involving students with issues connected to their lives, resources, language(s), and communities. Findings are based on a year of fieldwork conducted as part of shared inquiry into one public school community’s experiences with gentrification and meeting the complex needs of diverse learners. Findings bring to life the ways in which PAR facilitates the redefining of reading, writing, and research; the reconsideration of languages; the rethinking of literacy practices; and the repositioning of participants within and beyond given research endeavors.