The kill programme: an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ in a slaughterhouse

It has been argued that ‘dirty work’ is characterised by strong occupational and workgroup cultures. This literature has mainly focused on direct workers, but this article largely attends to indirect ‘dirty’ workers, specifically meat inspectors, through ethnographic research conducted in a UK slaughterhouse. Four arguments are developed; the first is that ‘dirty workers’ may not all display group cohesiveness; indeed, individualisation may be more evident depending upon the technology used, internationalisation and employment conditions. Second, there is complexity and diversity within ‘dirty work’ and even single occupations can contain considerable variety, rendering generalisations problematic. Third, we argue that much greater attention needs to be given to the wider contextual issues affecting ‘dirty work’, specifically changing labour markets, itinerant labour, economic conditions and technologies. Finally, we argue that stigmatised work may become more so if it is equated with the low wage economy and/or undercutting conditions of employment through exploiting migrant labour.     

Credibility lost: attempting to reclaim an expert identity in an HR professional context

Professional insecurity is a long‐standing concern within HR, with claims to expertise seen as critical to credibility. Considering HR as an epistemic community and drawing on the identity work literature, we examine an identity threat to, and subsequent response by, a training and development (T&D) team. Based on ethnographic exposure to their practice, we explore how team members experience the threat and follow their attempts to re‐establish their position in the local epistemic community, the HR department. We examine both individual and collective identity work, considering how both the identity threat and subsequent responses are embedded within T&D and HR practice more broadly. Through this analysis, we offer academic insight on the nature of HR practice and the construction of claims to expertise.     

The British Airways Heritage Collection: an ethnographic ‘history’

This article develops an ethnographic account of the development and history of the British Airways Heritage Centre (BAHC). Responding to several observations throughout the literature, we report on our experiences of engagement with British Airways’ archives over a 25-year period. In doing so our focus is on the much-neglected history of archives as powerful influences on how corporate histories are written. The ethnographic account is rooted in ANTi-History, an approach to historiography, that focuses on the production of history as knowledge of the past by following a number of human (e.g. archive volunteers) and non-human (e.g. airline artefacts) actors to reassemble the elements that constitute an archive at a point in time. To that end, we trace the inter-relationships between histories of British Airways and the development of the BAHC. We conclude that a focus on the various human and non-human relationships that constitute an archive can help the researcher to identify the hidden influences on the production of history that can otherwise serve to enrol him or her.     

Working towards sincere encounters in volunteer tourism: an ethnographic examination of key management issues at a Nordic eco-village

This article explores host–guest dynamics at Sólheimar eco-village, Iceland to contribute to the conceptualization of transformative learning in volunteer tourism. At the eco-village, the host and volunteers come together to share similar goals and meaningful experiences. This interaction gets complicated, however: the eco-village exists within the global capitalist system and must operate using market norms. The idealist and educational expectations of the volunteers often clash with the practical short-term goals of the community: there are also cultural and experiential differences between the parties. This clash is used to discuss the importance of sincerity in volunteer tourism at the eco-village. Data were collected through fieldwork, primarily including participant observations and interviews, to help interpret the patterns of behaviors and perceptions of both parties in relation to the aim. Ultimately, the experience that binds host and guests cannot solely be about learning to do things alternatively and sustainably; it requires sincerity, using Taylor's 2001 sincerity concept, to tackle the difficulties in working alternatively and sustainably to attain this experience. It is argued that transformative learning during the volunteer experience in alternative spaces should be conceptualized to include the promotion of sincere encounters, and adjusted to concern both the host and its guests.     

谈如何提高修志队伍的素质

一部志书质量高低取决于修志队伍的素质水平,提高修志队伍的素质是二轮修志工作的基础工程和首要任务。文章从修志队伍人员类型的介绍入手,论述了修志队伍建设存在的问题,分析了修志人员应具备的素质,并研究了提高修志队伍素质的方法。     

Q method and ethnography in tourism research: enhancing insights,comparability and reflexivity

Whereas other writers have recently presented Q method as an option for use in combination with traditional surveys, I employed the mind-mapping technique within a deeply qualitative approach. Showing how the Q method adds value to reflexive ethnography, I highlight the extended possibilities for its application in tourism studies. The method allows qualitative researchers’ novel entries into the perspectives and lived experiences of hosts as well as guests, providing enough rigidness to enhance their systematic handling and comparability, while being flexible enough to do justice to their complexities and nuances. The Q method can successfully be embedded in ethnographic fieldwork practices and used even with illiterate people. By adding themselves as a research participant, researchers can reflect intensely on their own subjective understandings and positions, as well as on their methodological approaches. This is of special value in tourism studies where extended reflexivity is especially urgent, because researchers are often placed in the same category as tourists by their research participants.     

Socio‐economic transitions and everyday life changes in the rural world: Pyrenean households and their contemporary economic history

This article focuses on understanding rural life and how agrarian everyday life changes as a consequence of the radical socio‐economic transformations that, across the world, have accompanied rural communities in their transition from economies of subsistence to industrial production, and, in some areas, from there to providers of service to the tourism‐oriented leisure economy. In the last century in the Alt Urgell District (Spanish Pyrenees), many communities went from a production model based on subsistence farming and livestock breeding first to a specialization in milk production and later to tourism. The industrialization of milk production, the radical transformation of the scale of their operations, and the monetization of life transformed the identity and structure of these communities. The subsequent transformation of many of these farms to accommodate the leisure industry changed the shape of these households again. This paper reflects on how science, governance, commodification, and technology played a role on the transformation of the rural mountain areas, their people, and their everyday life.     

Cross-cultural competence in the context of NGOs: bridging the gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’

Abstract

International human resource management research in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is scarce and it predominantly focuses on the recruitment and retention of volunteers. The context of NGOs is different from conventional for-profit international business settings with different kinds of challenges, especially in terms of providing appropriate training on managing multi-cultural teams and working with local project partners and communities. The literature also tends to focus on expatriate perspective and not on a host country perspective. We address this gap by examining how project managers and hosts experience cross-cultural issues on overseas assignments. We study volunteer project managers leading international and local youth volunteers during the Raleigh International programme in Malaysia. We use a qualitative methodology and data collected at 3 case locations via participant observation during 120 days contact with the respondents as well as interviews and surveys. We propose the CPACE (Curiosity, Passion, Adaptability, Communication and Empathy) framework describing competences needed in cross-cultural encounters and based on respondents’ actions as well as their words and it is relevant to a NGO context. The framework is intended to lay the foundation for future research and in particular to demonstrate the need for cross-cultural competence to be more grounded in particular contexts.     

Narratives of irony and failure in ethnographic work

Organizational ethnography is one of the most valued approaches to qualitative studies of organizations. Much attention has been given to the development of the research process, of which the researcher's identity is an integral part. However, we believe that the analysis of research failures has been much less developed in the discourse of ethnographic methods for the study of organizations. Therefore, we have explored some of the “slips” in ethnographic work, as described in accounts of fellow organizational anthropologists. As the study is qualitative, we have adopted a narrative research method. We have divided the “slips” (i.e., errors) into four categories important for the ethnographer's identity: (a) one's role; (b) one's project, (c) one's relation to “the Other”; and (d) the social context of the slip. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Faith,hope and love: doing family through consuming pilgrimage

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the consumption of Lourdes, a Catholic pilgrimage site in France. Based on a three-year ethnography, our findings focus on respondents’ ‘Lourdes stories’. Discussing themes of faith, hope and love, we illustrate the importance of the family in consuming Lourdes. Family members act as influencing agents in the initial and sometimes continuous consumption of Lourdes. Our findings differ from consumer research to date in that rather than furthering discussion of family structure or furthering discussion on family identity we suggest a new focus is the actual building of intimate family bonds and relationships – the ‘doing’ of family or ‘familying’ – with the context of the Lourdes pilgrimage offering consumers a unique setting comprising faith, fun and family.