Gay neo-tribes: Exploration of travel behaviour and space

This research seeks to understand space as a point of coherence around which neo-tribes form. In doing so, it draws upon neo-tribalism as a way to conceptualise belonging, connectedness, and affinity. Using ethnographic methods including semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this research investigates whether gay travellers experience a sense of connectedness to other gay travellers, certain spaces, and specific activities in relation to their sexual identities. Space becomes a connective thread and a point of coherence around which neo-tribes form. Findings reveal that space acts as a performance site, where the collective neo-tribal identity can be manifested.     

Researcher’s guilt: confessions from the darker side of ethnographic consumer research

A reflexive approach to qualitative research seeks to uncover structures of inequality in the research encounter. On the surface, it would seem that ethnographic methods provide the conditions to alleviate this methodological instrumentalism. By employing a confessional account, this paper demonstrates how the paradox of asymmetrical rapport prevents ethnographic work from reaching its collaborative potential. Drawing from insights in an ethnographic enquiry in an arts charity, the author narrates the guilty experiences that arise when researchers reproduce a culture of commodifying informants. This is exemplified through impression management tactics that generate an illusion of mutuality, alternating with more authentic instances of co-participation. The implications of this self-perceived moral violation are discussed for the researched, the researcher and ethnographies of consumption more broadly. The paper contributes to the methodological literature by explaining the potential of confessional accounts as a tool to operationalise reflexive, reciprocal practice, counteracting the demands of a knowledge economy.     

An ethnographic study of culture and performance in the UK lingerie industry

This paper examines a particular case of organizational culture, its nature within the work environment, the impact it has on motivation and its interaction with a novel framework of performance measurement. It extends the extant empirical domain of such studies to include a retail unit in the UK lingerie industry. The work is an ethnographic study, and uses participant-observation to focus on the performance framework used and the culture in the unit examined. The evidence shows that a strong culture, in tandem with the innovative package of performance measures in this organization, together lead to enhanced performance. The paper makes an empirical contribution to the literature by using ethnographical evidence on accounting practice, as moderated by organizational culture in this unique setting. From a practical standpoint, it proposes that managers pay more attention to the influence of accounting on organizational culture (and vice versa), when setting performance targets and goals.     

Acts of Solidarity: Crossing and Reiterating Israeli–Palestinian Frontiers

In academic and public discourse on the Zionist–Palestinian conflict, there still prevails a ‘methodological nationalism’ based on a separatist imagination overshadowing the existence and role of Israeli–Palestinian forms of communality and solidarity. This article analyses micro‐political practices that cross existing frontiers, both within Israel and between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. Through recent conceptualizations of ‘acts’, I read these ethnographic episodes in their intentional and performative dimension. What is the role of these ‘acts’? What are their effects, both on participants and the wider public? Through two interconnected cases, different functions of acts are explored. The first case relates to encounters between Israelis and Palestinians in the embattled city of Hebron in the occupied Palestinian territories; the second investigates moments during a Gandhi‐inspired peace march at the ‘internal’ frontier of the Israeli Negev desert. The ethnographic perspective reveals what lies behind and beneath the acts, going beyond the conflict's obvious structures of power. Acts function primarily as a valve of catharsis for the participants themselves, both overcoming and reproducing hegemonic discursive elements of the conflict. Paradoxically, acts of solidarity are often crucial in shaping public knowledge about the conflict in more sectarian terms.     

Social Dependency: The Impact of Adolescent Female Culture

The purpose of this study is to identify the critical elements of adolescent girls' culture and to identify the impact of this culture on leisure behavior within an adventure education setting. Qualitative methods, specifically ethnographic focus groups and participant observation, were chosen as the most appropriate means to accomplish the goals of the study. The results suggest that adolescent girls see their world in terms of absolutes. Further, of the three innate psychological needs serving as the basis for intrinsically motivated behavior (Deci & Ryan, 1991), relatedness is the most critical concern for adolescent girls. Until this relatedness is achieved, it is unlikely that the goals of adventure and other recreation programs will be addressed or that girls will truly experience leisure. This overriding desire for status and acceptance, which was established as the theme of adolescent girls' culture, can be most accurately described as "social dependency."     

The Cosmopolitan Servicescape

Marketing scholars have developed a solid literature on servicescapes, the physical environments where services are performed, delivered and consumed, with a particular interest in themed retail environments. Themed servicescapes rely heavily on signs and symbols and emplaced ideologies to build brands, attract consumers, and increase sales. We extend this literature by introducing, defining and theorizing the cosmopolitan servicescape, one that emplaces the cosmopolitan ideology by supporting performances of consumer cosmopolitanism. By drawing on an ethnographic examination of a quintessential cosmopolitan servicescape, Red Rooster Harlem, and applying an analytical lens grounded in the cultural understanding of retail spaces, we conceptualize the cosmopolitan servicescape in relation to other themed environments. Cosmopolitan servicescapes provide consumers a playground for encounters with cultural difference through enlisting cultural resources that shift out in time, place, and identity, thus enabling the performance of cosmopolitan competence. In addition, cosmopolitan servicescapes juxtapose cultural resources to create incongruent meanings, promote heteroglossia, and appeal to different levels of cosmopolitan competence. Finally, cosmopolitan servicescapes use decoding cues to facilitate cosmopolitan engagement and recognition cues to frame the environment as cosmopolitan. These findings contribute to the themed retailing literature and provide guidelines for managers and servicescape designers interested in creating an emplaced strategy for attracting cosmopolitan consumers.     

Unravelling the dynamics of access to farmland in Tigray,Ethiopia: The ‘emerging land market’ revisited

This article uses ethnographic evidence from Tigray to revisit the debate on informal rural land markets in present-day Ethiopia. It explores informal farmland rental from a historico-anthropological, micro-analytical perspective in relation to the formal allocation of land use rights and to other informal land transfer practices. It shows how different rationales for land rental give rise to different socially embedded tenancy configurations. On the basis of this empirical evidence, the paper questions the appropriateness of the common idea that in Ethiopia ‘the land rental market is expanding’. It argues that research and policy thinking on land in Ethiopia could gain analytical power and relevance by adopting a less monolithic and abstract view on people's informal land transfer practices.     

Focusing ethnography: theory and recommendations for effectively combining video and ethnographic research

ABSTRACT

Building theory with ethnography and filmic research increasingly requires focussing on key practices or settings, instead of painting a broad panorama of a culture. But few authors discuss why and how to focus. This article provides a systematic discussion of the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of focusing ethnographic research by comparing different schools of thought and suggesting a practice theory-based approach. It argues that many research projects are focused but do not reflect on the process of focusing, describes how to identify focal settings or practices, and introduces sequential analysis as a tool for studying them. Analysing videos, documents and language are discussed in turn, and methods for ensuring quality in focused ethnography are suggested. Finally, the article provides recommendations for publishing focused ethnography as text or film.     

Sustainability of mobile IT sector in industrially developing countries by supporting repairability

This article aims to provide a design intervention to support the repairability of mobile phones and, in turn, promote sustainability. Typically, mobile phones are designed with a view towards obsolescence for users in industrially developed countries, as the expected repair in these circumstances is minimal. In contrast, in developing countries, such as India, these phones are constantly repaired and are owned several times by different people before their final demise. Therefore, to support repairability, a field study based in Mumbai, India, was conducted to understand the cognitive basis of repair. The results were further analyzed using a cognitive work analysis framework that provides insight into the possibilities for informational requirements for design. The findings indicate that small-scale repair shops (3–4 repairmen) and the hole-in-the-wall shops (1 repairman) can benefit from the intervention in terms of informational support for the repair activity. If the cognitive dimension of repair is supported for these low-cost repair shops, we can expect an increase in the capability and efficacy of the repairmen, resulting in fewer phones ending up as e-waste. Thus, due to its low cost, informational diagrams that support the repair activity can be incorporated by the manufacturer without any radical changes in existing proprietary technology, resulting in the possibility for the long-term growth of the repair ecology in a country such as India.