Fear of Disconnecting: Global Health Imaginations and the Transformations of the Taiwanese State

Global health scholarship concerning AIDS governance often regards the global either as products of translocal connections or as external forces that initiate local restructurings. As a state without a membership in major global organizations, Taiwan alternatively presents a case for conceiving of global health as grounded, competing imaginations which serve as the foundation both for a symbolic pursuit of Taiwan’s global membership and for the transformations of the Taiwanese state. Building on a global ethnography perspective, this study explores the idea of in-pursuit-of-globality nationalism by examining three AIDS projects in Taiwan that configured global and national imaginations simultaneously. It particularly looks into how sexuality and race became sites of transformative struggles in those projects, arguing that Taiwan’s marginality is not only a product of global geopolitics but also a standpoint on which multiple globalities are imagined and (re)produced. As such, this study contributes to global health scholarship by rejecting a monolithic view of the global and the national and by centering racial and sexual imaginations in processes of globalization.

Ethnographies of Global Policing

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented proliferation of ethnographies of policing in many parts of the world. Implicit in the body of this new work is the continuation of an old and perhaps irresolvable debate on what policing is: the extralegal subjugation of subordinate populations or an agency whose authority is highly restricted by the norms of civilian populations. I argue that the best way to tackle this debate is to further develop the incipient practices of global ethnography, that is, to understand local practices via their global histories.

Global–local imbrications in education policy: Methodological reflections on researching the sociology of Teach for Bangladesh

This article documents the methodological thinking that underpined a sociological study of Teach for Bangladesh ( TFB ), a globally mobile yet locally embedded education policy situated in a developing world context. In order to reassess education policy vis-à-vis spatialities–power, relationships–resources, culture– change and imaginations–flows of globalization, this methodological thinking has to be both flexible and innovative. Analysis (topological) has demanded a combination of global ethnography and network ethnography, the former allowing global forces to be understood as spatially and culturally imbricated within intersecting policy worlds ([g]local cases), and the latter mapping and analysing spaces (networks and relations) and places (cultural negotiations) that characterize power within such imbrications. Data were collected both online and on site, resulting in both empirical advantages and practical challenges. As a sociological attempt to study policy mobilities in education in a Southeast Asian context, this study offers an innovative methodology and a befitting set of analytical vocabulary.

Multi-Sited Global Ethnography of Elite Schools

Multi-sited global ethnography is a methodological contribution to educational research methodology, and more broadly, ethnography. This new methodological framework was designed specifically for the research project “Elite Independent Schools in Globalizing Circumstances,” which studied seven elite schools, one school in each of the following geographical locations: Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Australia, South Africa, Barbados, and England, over a five-year period from 2010 to 2014. The aim of this article is to give a detailed methodological rendition of the epistemologies, and theoretical and conceptual bearings that underpin multi-sited global ethnography. Drawing attention to how the methodology reinvigorates conventional ways of doing ethnography, “different strokes” is used to allude to the new methodological elements we introduced in multi-sited global ethnography. Overall, the article highlighted the insights, hindsight, and oversights gained during and after fieldwork, so that further research can enrich multi-sited global ethnography.

Researching the multinational corporation: contributions of critical realist ethnography

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the contributions that critical realist ethnographies can make to an understanding of the multinational corporation. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on a discussion of methodological challenges in researching the multinational corporation and the ways in which critical realist ethnographies can respond to these challenges. The example of research on the transfer of management practices is used to illustrate this. Findings Taking the example of researching the transfer of management practices within the multinational, the paper argues that the potential of critical realist ethnography including critical realist global ethnography to contribute to the field of International Business and International Management remains relatively untapped. Research limitations/implications Adopting the sociological imagination of the critical realist ethnographer has implications for the kinds of questions that are asked by the researcher and the ways in which we seek to address these methodologically. Researching from a critical standpoint fruitful empirical themes for further research relate to the experience of change for example in business systems, internationalization of organizations and “globalization”. Practical implications The critical realist ethnographer can contribute insights into the complex social and political processes within the multinational and provide insights into how social structures are both impacting on and impacted by individuals and groups. Ethnographic research located within a critical realist framework has the potential to address questions of how stability and change take place within specific structural, cultural and power relations. Originality/value At the methodological level, this paper highlights the potential of critical realist ethnography in researching the multinational, in addressing significant questions facing the critical researcher and in gaining a privileged insight into the lived experience of globalization.

PROCURANDO PELO GLOBAL

Tradução do texto originalmente publicado como “Introduction: Reaching for the global” (In: BURAWOY, Michael et al. Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), realizada por Flávia Ferreira Mendes e Elizardo Scarpati Costa.