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1 – 10 of over 5000The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the ways in which actors may resolve the contradictions between the social and private aspects of accounting. It pursues…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the ways in which actors may resolve the contradictions between the social and private aspects of accounting. It pursues this aim by developing theory and knowledge of the roles of belonging in the politics of budgeting.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the paper develops a Latourian anthropological theory of belonging as a social practice. It shows how this makes a significant departure from actor-network Latourian studies, shifting the focus onto the emotional and cognitive capacities that may enable actors to work through and gradually overcome the socio-political conflicts that budgeting can provoke. Second, to identify such a practice, it studies a Spanish cooperative involved in collective responses to socio-economic and political instability.
Findings
The study finds that the emotional and cognitive work by which the actors assembled their collective practice of belonging was influenced by their interactions with budgets, and, in turn, mediated the way they dealt with budgets, giving rise to more enabling roles and effects. It traces, for example, how planning and cost reduction supported abilities to relate the actors’ problems and anxieties to broader social problems, fostering more positive emotions including empathy, enthusiasm, and respect.
Research limitations/implications
The findings offer a complementary, but alternative view of the socio-political character of budgeting techniques to prior studies, which advances understanding of how actors could shape more enabling roles and effects.
Practical implications
Involving budgets in discussions and meetings can increase the scope for work that leads to greater freedom, social cohesion, and wellbeing.
Originality/value
This is the first study to demonstrate how belonging can be actively assembled through budgeting. It has particular value for understanding how alternative organizations can use accounting to avoid fragmenting and degeneration.
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This article seeks to analyze retrospective and emergent narratives in a changing organization. It aims to uncover the emic meanings of resistance to diversity change.
Abstract
Purpose
This article seeks to analyze retrospective and emergent narratives in a changing organization. It aims to uncover the emic meanings of resistance to diversity change.
Design/methodology/approach
This article is based on interpretative research in a German high‐tech company, informed by the anthropological frame of mind.
Findings
The organization studied needs to cope with an increasing number of foreign employees. As narrative analysis showed, English language and diversity are associated negatively with an organizational dark age. In the past, a focus on sameness and on German language has been a successful counter‐strategy. Yet, in the present, this strategy forces German and non‐German employees into a dichotomist relationship that hinders diversity change. Through narrative analysis, other values of the past, such as caring for each other, and the metaphor of organization as family, are discovered. These concepts are highly adaptable to the new present and should be supported and facilitated in order to create trans‐cultural sameness.
Research limitations/implications
The contribution of this article is to show how to utilize identity‐based resistance for organizational change, in this case diversity change. Emergent and retrospective narratives of the self are a viable tool of analysis.
Originality/value
Identity‐based resistance to change originates in the inability to link the past collective self to present conditions. This is often seen as an obstacle to change. This article uncovers the emic meanings of resistance, thereby utilizing it for diversity change.
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The chapter introduces the reader to select language of human sexuality and the definitions and characteristics of some key terms related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender…
Abstract
The chapter introduces the reader to select language of human sexuality and the definitions and characteristics of some key terms related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer (LGBTQ+), identifies different theoretical perspectives of human sexuality and sexual orientation, and discusses select LGBTQ+ theories and concepts in a historical context that library and information science (LIS) professionals should consider while performing their roles related to information creation–organization–management–dissemination–research processes. It helps better understand the scope of what is LGBTQ+ information and traces its interdisciplinary connections to reflect on its place within the LIS professions. The chapter discusses these implications with the expectation of the LIS professional to take concrete actions in changing the conditions that lack fairness, equality/equity, justice, and/or human rights for LGBTQ+ people via the use of information. Important considerations in this regard include the need for an integrative interdisciplinary LGBTQ+ information model, growth of a diversified LGBTQ+ knowledge base and experiences, holistic LGBTQ+ information representations, LGBTQ+ activism, and participatory engagement and inclusion of LGBTQ+ users.
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This longitudinally informed ethnographic work explores the interlocking socioeconomic and cultural roles, changes as well as effects of home-brewed alcoholic beverages in…
Abstract
Purpose
This longitudinally informed ethnographic work explores the interlocking socioeconomic and cultural roles, changes as well as effects of home-brewed alcoholic beverages in Maragoli society of western Kenya. The informants’ emic perspectives enhance existing knowledge and understanding of the commodification of home-brewing of alcohol. The participants’ experientially anchored views provide refined insights into how home-brews are influenced by the disintegration of livelihoods and women brewers’ need to earn money independently from men’s income to meet their financial needs. This work also documents alcohol-related maladaptive aspects including men’s misappropriation of funds, malnutrition, domestic violence, sexual promiscuity, rape, prostitution, and disposal of agricultural inputs and produce to obtain money to buy brews.
Methodology/approach
This study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to enhance data quality, validity, reliability, and deep learning of the dynamics and ramifications of home-brewing of alcoholic products.
Findings
This study’s empirical results show Maragoli brewers’ ingenuity in their risk-aversive efforts to: (1) optimize positive benefits and (2) reduce the unintended maladaptive consequences of home-brews.
Practical implications
This work demonstrates that brewers are not passive victims of their productive resource constraints. They exercise ingenuity in producing and selling alcoholic beverages to earn a living even though this venture generates unintended harmful outcomes. This calls for interventions by governmental arms, nongovernmental organizations, and community-based support networks to empower brewers and their clientele to venture into alternative enterprises and consumption of less harmful refreshments. Safety-nets should also be in place to minimize vulnerability and social fragmentation attributable to home-brewed alcohol.
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Purpose – To consider why, although it does maintain a distinct presence, ethnography still remains very much on the fringes of international business (IB…
Abstract
Purpose – To consider why, although it does maintain a distinct presence, ethnography still remains very much on the fringes of international business (IB) studies.
Methodology/Approach – This chapter involves a literature review comparing ethnography in IB studies with its position in the related disciplines of industrial relations and Japanese studies, in both of which the ethnography of business is much more prominent, and both of which have close relationships with mainstream anthropology.
Findings – The author argues that a crucial factor in achieving greater prominence for ethnography in IB studies is in fact to encourage more studies of international organisations in mainstream anthropology.
Research limitations/Implications – The review of literature is necessarily brief and should be expanded to include more disciplines to test its conclusions; however, developments in the anthropology of China and India may add further data.
Practical implications – There are a number of ways in which the three disciplines can learn from, and contribute to, each other through the medium of ethnography, which are discussed.
Originality/Value – The value of the chapter is in considering ways in which IB studies and industrial relations can learn from each other and can make more effective use of ethnography, and how mainstream anthropology can benefit from incorporating perspectives from business-focused disciplines.
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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the notion of “responsibility”.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the notion of “responsibility”.
Design/methodology/approach
Discussing the notion of “responsibility” according to two main philosophers (Paul Ricoeur and Hans Jonas) and its legal conception.
Findings
In philosophy, the issue of responsibility appears as a second‐level question, thus pointing up the first‐level ones (e.g. action, liberty, causality, autonomy). As such, responsibility necessarily reduces the philosophical field, otherwise the issue becomes unmanageable – if the issue ever was manageable! The concept of responsibility is both recent and fuzzy. The most commonly associated word is obligation. The notion of responsibility raises the problem of its conditions of possibility with the issue of imputation and the binary: imputation and sanction. Self‐referentiality and the circumstances surrounding calculation (of sanctions) are key aspects.
Research limitations/implications
The question arises: What is hidden behind the notion?
Practical implications
Beware of the performative aspects linked to the notion of “responsibility”.
Social implications
The current meaning of responsibility is embedded in today's political ideology (the “liberal moment”).
Originality/value
The paper takes into account the philosophical background of a notion currently used in management.
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Anthropologists who study disasters share the widely acknowledged understanding that the effects of disasters tend to be more severe among economically and socially marginalized…
Abstract
Anthropologists who study disasters share the widely acknowledged understanding that the effects of disasters tend to be more severe among economically and socially marginalized communities than others. Moreover, while poverty intensifies the effects of disasters, it also places survivors at the mercy of policies they have little control over because they often tend to be socially and politically marginalized on account of their poverty. Social vulnerability in other words is a determining factor in shaping the vulnerability of populations to catastrophic events. While scholars tend to focus on the catastrophic event itself as the locus of analysis, it has also become amply clear that such studies need to be in conversation with those that explore the long-term trajectories and effects of social inequality. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in southern India among artisanal fisher communities affected by the tsunami of 2004, this paper argues that the conceptual aims and claims of the vulnerability concept ought to be extended beyond the confines of the disaster (conceptualized as event), to the broader historical sweep of unequal social relations of production, exchange and consumption within which such communities find themselves. Positioned at a disadvantage in relation to powerful players such as the state, multilateral entities and private big capital, such communities nevertheless might also become important loci of possibility, as they bring to bear their own critiques of power, and fashion political strategies that often frustrate and undermine the conceptual frameworks and goals of contemporary capitalist-led development.
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Manuel Tironi, Katherine Campos-Knothe, Valentina Acuña, Enzo Isola, Cristóbal Bonelli, Marcelo Gonzalez Galvez, Sarah Kelly, Leila Juzam, Francisco Molina, Andrés Pereira Covarrubias, Ricardo Rivas, Beltrán Undurraga and Sofía Valdivieso
Based on the research, the authors identify how four key concepts in disaster studies—agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability—are interrupted, and how these interruptions…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the research, the authors identify how four key concepts in disaster studies—agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability—are interrupted, and how these interruptions offer new perspectives for doing disaster research from and for the South.
Design/methodology/approach
Meta-analysis of case studies and revision of past and current collaborations of authors with communities across Chile.
Findings
The findings suggest that agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability, as fundamental concepts for disaster risk reduction (DRR) theory and practice, need to allow for ambivalences, ironies, granularization and further materializations. The authors identify these characteristics as the conditions that emerge when doing disaster research from within the disaster itself, perhaps the critical condition of what is usually known as the South.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to a reflexive assessment of fundamental concepts for critical disaster studies. The authors offer research-based and empirically rich redefinitions of these concepts. The authors also offer a novel understanding of the political and epistemological conditions of the “South” as both a geography and a project.
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This chapter explores expert witnessing in anthropology and the raison d’être of cultural expertise as an integrated socio-legal concept that accounts for the contribution of…
Abstract
This chapter explores expert witnessing in anthropology and the raison d’être of cultural expertise as an integrated socio-legal concept that accounts for the contribution of social sciences to the resolution of disputes and the protection of human rights. The first section of this chapter provides a short historical outline of the occurrence and reception of anthropological expertise as expert witnessing. The second section surveys the theoretical reflections on anthropologists’ engagement with law. The third section explores the potential for anthropological expertise as a broader socio-legal notion in the common law and civil law legal systems. The chapter concludes with the opportunity and raison d’être of cultural expertise grounded on a skeptical approach to culture. It suggests that expert witnessing has been viewed mainly from a technical perspective of applied social sciences, which was necessary to set the legal framework of cultural experts’ engagement with law, but had the consequence of entrenching the impossibility of a comprehensive study of anthropological expert witnessing. While this chapter adopts a skeptical approach to culture, it also argues the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach that leads to an integrated definition of cultural expertise.
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David E. Avison and Michael D. Myers
Considers the potential role of anthropology as a source disciplinefor information systems. Although anthropology has been largelyneglected in the IS research literature, it is…
Abstract
Considers the potential role of anthropology as a source discipline for information systems. Although anthropology has been largely neglected in the IS research literature, it is argued that important insights can be gained by adopting an anthropological perspective on information systems phenomena. Illustrates the value of an anthropological perspective by looking at the relationship between information technology and organizational culture. Shows that the concept of culture has generally been used rather narrowly in the IS literature, and argues that a more critical, anthropological view of the relationship between IT and organizational culture is required.
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