scholarly journals The influence of spatial attributes on users’ information behaviour in academic libraries: a case study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Ilako ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Makerere University ◽  
Information Behaviour ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Library Users ◽  
Spatial Attributes

Introduction. Information practices manifest differently among diverse library users, because space influences the different activities that library users engage in. Lefebvre’s spatial triad theory was used to illustrate how library spaces influence spatial activities and hence affect information behaviour of users. Method. A qualitative, ethnographic study method was applied. Participant observations and interviews with library users were conducted from May to December 2019 within Makerere University. Analysis. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results. Information behaviour appears as the central activity within the library spaces, within those spaces and academic and non-academic behaviour manifest as a result of user engagement within the different spaces. It was thus revealed that different attributes support users’ activities such as reading, discussionsamong users and therefore sharping their space preference. Conclusion. Space is both a physical and social object that has a direct influence on its inhabitants’ spatial activities, perceptions and experiences. The concept that space is socially constructed is empirically supported through the social relations that users create as they engage in different activities. The availability of space attributes such as enclosed spaces, noise levels, lighting and space attachment influence the spatial activities and experience of users in a positive or negative way.

‘It ain’t nothing like America with the Bloods and the Crips’: Gang narratives inside two English prisons

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coretta Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Mutual Support ◽  
Narrative Interviews ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Male Prisoners

This article explores recent concerns about the emergence of gangs in prisons in England and Wales. Using narrative interviews with male prisoners as part of an ethnographic study of ethnicity and social relations, the social meaning of ‘the gang’ inside prison is interrogated. A formally organized gang presence was categorically denied by prisoners. However, the term ‘gang’ was sometimes elided with loose collectives of prisoners who find mutual support in prison based on a neighbourhood territorial identification. Gangs were also discussed as racialized groups, most often symbolized in the motif of the ‘Muslim gang’. This racializing discourse hinted at an envy of prisoner solidarity and cohesion which upsets the idea of a universal prisoner identity. The broader conceptual, empirical and political implications of these findings are considered.

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.

Het zakenevenement als veldwerkplek?De auteur bedankt Tessel Jonquière, Geert de Vries en Fred Wester voor commentaar op dit essay. De eerste aanzetten ervoor kwamen tot stand tijdens de colleges kwalitatieve methodologie die de auteur doceert aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.

KWALON ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joost Beuving
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Business Economics ◽  
Business Elites ◽  
Direct Observations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Programs ◽  
Business Events ◽  
Field Schools

Business event as fieldwork site? A major methodological problem in the ethnographic study of international business elites is to make visible the social relations they draw and depend on. Business elites constitute a highly mobile social category and they mediate a growing portion of everyday social interaction via online, digital means. They are elusive, therefore, and that compromises the possibility of making direct observations of their social practices, which erodes the scope to ethnographically study this important group in the world economy. The essay shows how fieldwork on business events, such as conferences, expositions, and trade fairs, can help to overcome this problem. Such events constitute focal points and moments of crystallization in globally operating social networks, making visible a part of the international business ‘theatre’ that normally lags hidden. By presenting excerpts from recent fieldwork carried out in Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands, I give an impression of observables in this theatre, aiming especially at fostering an awareness of social behavior ‘backstage’ with a view to formulating further questions. The essay concludes with a plea to include business events as ‘field schools’ in study programs looking at international business elites, such as business schools and/or business economics.

Herds and Hierarchies: Class, Nature, and the Social Construction of Horses in Equestrian Culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Coulter
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Living Animal ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Nature

Abstract This study centers on equestrian show culture in Ontario, Canada, and examines how horses are entangled symbolically and materially in socially constructed hierarchies of value. After examining horse-show social relations and practices, the paper traces the connections among equestrian culture, class, and the social constructions of horses. Equestrian relations expose multiple hierarchical intersections of nature and culture within which both human-horse relations and horses are affected by class structures and identities. In equestrian culture, class affects relations within and across species, and how horses are conceptualized and used, as symbols and as living animal bodies.

scholarly journals Moral Money? LETS and the Social Construction of Local Economic Geographies in Southeast England

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (8) ◽  
pp. 1377-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Exchange ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Moral Economic

Local exchange employment and trading systems (LETS) have spread rapidly throughout the United Kingdom during the 1990s. Like all economic geographies, they are socially constructed and are more than a simple response to social exclusion. The economic activity generated by and conducted through LETS is based upon direct forms of social relations and a local currency which facilitate locally defined systems of value formation and distinctive moral economic geographies. Nevertheless, LETS take on some of the class and gender characteristics of the wider economy. Furthermore, the ways in which LETS are represented—not least in the media—may serve to stereotype them as exclusionary and marginal to the needs of those most in need and so to distance them from those excluded from the formal economy.

Socially Constructing Pacific Salmon

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik Scarce
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Pacific Salmon ◽  
General Question ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Construction Of Nature ◽  
Historical Comparative

AbstractWhat does "nature" mean? This general question, central to the social construction of nature, is addressed here by examining one of nature's particulars, Pacific salmon, and by looking at how one group of people, salmon biologists, imbue the fish with meaning. Based upon historical, comparative, and qualitative data, it appears that nature is socially constructed through both cognitive and physical processes. "Salmon"- and indirectly nature - emerges not as a monolithic, timeless, certain entity, but rather as one that is manipulable, fleeting, and the product of a variety of social relations. In particular, public policy and economics appear to have profoundly influenced salmon biologists' cognitive and physical constructions of salmon.

scholarly journals The Social Relations of a Health Walk Group: An Ethnographic Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (11) ◽  
pp. 1701-1712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Grant ◽  
Nick Pollard ◽  
Peter Allmark ◽  
Kasia Machaczek ◽  
Paul Ramcharan
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Social

The critique of Sociology of Childhood: Human capital as the concrete ‘social construction of childhood’

2021 ◽  
pp. 175774382110116
Author(s):  
Stefano Ba’
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociology Of Childhood

The ‘New Paradigm’ of Sociology of Childhood famously maintains that childhood is socially constructed and supposedly places a much greater emphasis on the agency of children: children should not simply be framed as the passive receivers of socialisation. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that such a ‘social construction’ of childhood is not concretely articulated and that the theoretical understanding of the ‘social construction’ of childhood is simply delegated to historiographical or ethnographic accounts. In doing so, it advances a new criticism of the New Paradigm and radicalises previous ones. Here, key is the theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘human capital’: foregrounding its critique, this article proposes the link between ‘human capital’ as a neoliberal version of labour power and the concept of socialisation. The aim is to show that the ‘social construction’ of childhood is central, but the New Paradigm uses categories that are at the same time founded on neo-liberal views and abstracted from concrete social relations. This article maintains that a concrete critique of processes of socialisation (which is here understood as the socialisation of childhood as human capital) is needed instead of abstract critique of reified childhood. Two alternative pedagogical practices are used to provide an example of such a concrete critique.

scholarly journals O “corpo-migrante” e Bourdieu: corpo e incorporação no contexto migratório / Bourdieu and the ‘migrant-body’: embodiment in the migratory context

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Alario Ennes
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
The Body ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social

O presente artigo tem como objetivo central a análise de algumas obras de Pierre Bourdieu tendo em vista sua contribuição para o desenvolvimento de uma agenda de pesquisa em torno da ideia do “corpo-migrante”. Esta agenda visa compreender como o corpo é socialmente produzido no contexto migratório e como isto resulta nas relações sociais e de poder das quais o imigrante é parte. O artigo foi elaborado com base em (re)leituras de obras de Bourdieu com foco na ideia de incorporação e corpo e a partir de um levantamento bibliográfico por meio do qual foram identificados alguns artigos que já fazem o diálogo entre conceitos bourdieusianos e a questão migratória, e outros que tratam do corpo no contexto migratório mas sem problematizá-lo teoricamente. Como resultado, sugiro que Bourdieu nos oferece elementos suficientes para apreender e compreender o “corpo-migrante” como resultado de relações de força e poder que geram a inserção, o posicionamento e o reposicionamento de imigrantes em campos específicos em que atuam. This article sets out to analyse a number of works by Pierre Bourdieu, focusing specifically on his contribution to the development of a research agenda surrounding the ‘migrant-body.’ This agenda aims to understand how the body is socially constructed in the context of migration, and how this results in the social and power relations in which the migrant becomes embedded. The article is based on (re)reading Bourdieu’s books with a focus on his ideas of embodiment and the body. Additionally, a review of the literature enabled two groups of articles to be identified, the first comprising texts that already develop a dialogue between Bourdieu’s concepts and the topic of immigration, while the second group studies the body in the migration context without problematizing the issue theoretically. In the conclusion, I suggest that Bourdieu offers us enough elements to understand the ‘migrant-body’ as an outcome of power and social relations that generate the insertion, positioning and re-positioning of migrants within the specific fields in which they act.

scholarly journals The Power of Place: Tourism Development in Costa Rica

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Nost
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Resource Use ◽  
Tourism Development ◽  
Print Version ◽  
Tourist Destinations ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Southern Caribbean ◽  
The Social

Full-text, in-print version here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616688.2012.699090Citation: Nost, E. 2013. The Power of Place: Tourism Development in Costa Rica. Tourism Geographies. 15(1): 88-106.In this paper, I question how representations of tourist destinations color and are colored by development. Presenting the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, I find that the authenticity of portrayals of place is important not for its veracity, but for the social work it performs. Authenticity is not merely socially constructed but expressive of social relations which value people and places. Tourist perceptions of the caribe sur as genuinely underdeveloped—gauged by an analysis of photos and guidebooks as well as surveys—produce an approach to resource use within the community that is limiting. Because the value of the place is its underdevelopment, development itself constrains the possibility of sustaining further growth. Ultimately, reading development via place can be a guide for critically appreciating contemporary patterns of tourism and sustainable development in the caribe sur and elsewhere.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document