scholarly journals POSTMODERN SOCIETY AND COVID-19 PANDEMIC: OLD, NEW AND SCARY

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
HANNA MAMZER
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Critical Events ◽  
Group Functioning ◽  
The Future ◽  
Desk Research ◽  
Time Type

Critical events of a dangerous progression, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may become the turning points in the functioning of entire societies. Such events obviously foster changes. They disrupt the sense of ontological security, generate fears and enforce change in the organization of social relations, also in a creative and positive manner. In addition to these effects, they also induce many others. They are a magnifier enabling you to see how modern societies are functioning. Therefore, a pandemic allows to see and describe more clearly the characteristics of postmodern human communities. Some of these characteristics (e.g. group functioning) are essentially constant and unchangeable for humans as a species. In turn, some features are very specific, characteristic for a given time, type of events and nature of participating communities. In this text, based on the desk-research methodology and non-systematic participant observation, I indicate the unchanging characteristics of human communities that emerge in the moments of crisis. I also present the specific features of postmodern communities that have been highlighted by the pandemic. I try to indicate the effects of the pandemic on social relations in the future.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

Ethnography

2020 ◽  
pp. 328-358
Author(s):  
Anthony Kwame Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Research Tradition ◽  
Field Note ◽  
Oriented Research

This chapter introduces ethnography as a distinct research and writing tradition. It opens with a discussion of ethnography’s current fashionability within transdisciplinary academic spaces and some of the associated challenges. The next section provides a historical overview of ethnography’s emergence as a professionalized research practice within the fields of anthropology and sociology. Focusing on ethnography as a research methodology, the chapter outlines several key attributes that distinguish it from other forms of participant observation–oriented research; provides a general overview of the central paradigms that ethnographers claim and/or move between; and spotlights three principal research methods that most ethnographers utilize—namely, participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing. The final section of the chapter introduces a research disposition called ethnographic comportment, defined as a politics of positionality that reflects both ethnographers’ awarenesses of and their accountabilities to the research tradition they participate in.

Differences in temporal reasoning

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ringel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Flexibility ◽  
Shrinking City

Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.

scholarly journals Client or Volunteer? Understanding Neoliberalism and Neocolonialism Within International Volunteer Health Work

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 233339361879295
Author(s):  
Oona St-Amant ◽  
Catherine Ward-Griffin ◽  
Helene Berman ◽  
Arja Vainio-Mattila
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Health Work ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Volunteer

As international volunteer health work increases globally, research pertaining to the social organizations that coordinate the volunteer experience in the Global South has severely lagged. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to critically examine the social organizations within Canadian NGOs in the provision of health work in Tanzania. Multiple, concurrent data collection methods, including text analysis, participant observation and in-depth interviews were utilized. Data collection occurred in Tanzania and Canada. Neoliberalism and neocolonialism were pervasive in international volunteer health work. In this study, the social relations—“volunteer as client,” “experience as commodity,” and “free market evaluation”—coordinated the volunteer experience, whereby the volunteers became “the client” over the local community and resulting in an asymmetrical relationship. These findings illuminate the need to generate additional awareness and response related to social inequities embedded in international volunteer health work.

Eula Bingham—Experience Bares “The Real World” and Smart Politics Saves Lives

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Mary Lee Dunn ◽  
Polly Hoppin ◽  
Beth Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Professional Life ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
The Real ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Future

Eula Bingham, toxicologist and former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is now at that place in her professional life where she can look back over her long career and identify its turning points and evaluate what worked and what didn't, what was important and what of lesser significance. In two interviews, she also looks at the present and the future and expresses concerns about the way we live now.

Digging into “Resource War” Beliefs

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Le Billon
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Resource Control ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Water Wars ◽  
The Future ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Multiple Causes

Water wars, oil conflicts and blood diamonds. Three terms reflecting a widespread belief that people fight over resources. Is this belief backed by evidence? What power relations does such a belief reflect and shape? If natural resources have a conspicuous presence in accounts of armed conflicts, the term ‘resource wars’ represents a gross oversimplification. Strategically deployed to prepare for ‘the wars of the future’ or to shame belligerents by exposing their ‘greedy’ motives, ‘resource war’ narratives often overlook the multiple causes of conflict and alternative options to militarized resource control. A main threat from ‘resource wars’ narratives is that they become self-fulfilling prophecies. As such, ‘resource wars’ studies should first be self-reflexive, and then strive to encompass the broad causes, specific historical contexts, and wide variety of effects that resource sectors have on the environment and social relations.

scholarly journals COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Sara Sarwari ◽  
Samina Huq ◽  
Tanvir Ahmed Minar
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Hotel Industry ◽  
Employment Opportunity ◽  
Secondary Research ◽  
Luxury Hotels ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Catastrophic Impact

The recent pandemic named COVID-19 has led to a worldwide panic as a consequence of its deadly nature. This pandemic has a catastrophic impact on the hospitality area, one of the world’s largest sectors that changed the employment opportunity of relevant people. The research investigates the impact of COVID 19 on the hotel industry, more precisely, on luxury hotels both in the global and Bangladesh perspectives. Furthermore, the research also examined the business recovery possibilities with the sustainability of this hotel industry in a dramatically changed world of post-COVID-19. Secondary research methodology as well as content analysis are used here to compile various information from published sources. In conclusion, this study will help to take precautions and apropos plan to recuperate any unavoidable circumstances in the future.

scholarly journals Srebrenica is not a Metaphor

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-64
Author(s):  
Sarina Bakić
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
Further Development

The author will emphasize the importance of both the existence and the further development of the Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center, in the context of the continued need to understand the genocide that took place in and around Srebrenica, from the aspect of building a culture of remembrance throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). This is necessary in order to continue fighting the ongoing genocide denial. At first glance, a culture of remembrance presupposes immobility and focus on the past to some, but it is essentially dynamic, and connects three temporal dimensions: it evokes the present, refers to the past but always deliberates over the future. In this paper, the emphasis is placed on the concept of the place of remembrance, the lieu de memoire as introduced by the historian Pierre Nora. In this sense, a place of remembrance such as the Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center is an expression of a process in which people are no longer just immersed in their past but read and analyze it in the present. Furthermore, looking to the future, they also become mediators of relations between people and communities, which in sociological theory is an important issue of social relations. The author of this paper emphasizes that collective memory in the specific case of genocide in and around Srebrenica is only possible when the social relations around the building (Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center) crystallize, which is then much more than just the content of the culture of remembrance.

scholarly journals A Solutions to 'Too Few' Working Down on the Farm - The Human Capability in Agriculture and Horticulture Initiative

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupert S Tipples
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Primary Industry ◽  
Skills Shortage ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Capability ◽  
Skills Shortages

This paper des cribes and analyses how a labour and skills shortage in agriculture (used in the generic and inclusive sense) emerged here in New Zealand towards the end of the twentieth century and how it has been responded to by the industry and government. It delineates a collaborative response to a type of problem affecting many sectors of the New Zealand economy at the present time. A serendipitous conjunction of improved industry economics, productive policy provision, and ministerial and industry will facilitated the creation of a new pan primary industry organisation with the somewhat unwieldy title Human Capability in Agriculture and Horticulture. A picture of what happened has been built up using a range of methodologies (historical- both documentary and oral; case studies; participant observation: and action research) to explain what led to its formation and sub sequent progress. Prospects for the future are reviewed with a view to isolating critical features which may be of benefit to other industries experiencing similar labour and skills shortages.

Railway Territorialities

Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 230-249
Author(s):  
Mateusz Laszczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
High Speed Rail ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Traffic Corridor ◽  
Transnational Space

This article examines transportation infrastructures’ capacity to produce and transform social space through a focus on the contested history of railway development in Valsusa, Italy. I draw on participant observation and interviews with local residents and activists during ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015. I first describe how railways helped form modern sociality in Valsusa in the twentieth century. Subsequently, I explore contrasting topological effects of a projected high-speed rail through the valley. For planners envisioning a trans-European space of exchange, the railway is a powerful way to “shrink” space; for local residents, this implies reducing Valsusa to a traffic “corridor.” Yet their protest generates new social relations and knowledges, giving rise to a notion of “territory” as unbound and connected to a transnational space of resistance to capitalist expansion.

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