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This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing methodological discussions surrounding the adoption of ethnographic approaches in accounting by undertaking a comparative analysis of ethnography in anthropology and ethnography in qualitative accounting research. By doing so, it abductively speculates on the factors influencing the distinct characteristics of ethnography in accounting and explores their implications.

This paper uses a comparative approach, organizing the comparison using Van Maanen’s (2011a, 2011b) framework of field-, head- and text-work phases in ethnography. Furthermore, it draws on the author’s experience as a qualitative researcher who has conducted ethnographic research for more than a decade across the disciplines of anthropology and accounting, as well as for non-academic organizations, to provide illustrative examples for the comparison.

This paper finds that ethnography in accounting, when compared to its counterpart in anthropology, demonstrates a stronger inclination towards scientific aspirations. This is evidenced by its prevalence of realist tales, a high emphasis on “methodological rigour”, a focus on high-level theorization and other similar characteristics. Furthermore, the scientific aspiration and hegemony of the positivist paradigm in accounting research, when leading to a change of the evaluation criteria of non-positivist research, generate an impoverishment of interpretive and ethnographic research in accounting.

This paper provides critical insights from a comparative perspective, highlighting the marginalized position of ethnography in accounting research. By understanding the mechanisms of marginalization, the paper commits to reflexivity and advocates for meaningful changes within the field.

Is liberalism premised on an unrealistically individualist anthropology? In one regularly told story about modernity, the earliest liberals grounded their arguments for political liberty in a picture of human nature that centered on our moral autonomy, perhaps epitomized best in Kantian thought. However, a range of critics have now compellingly argued that such accounts of our agency are descriptively inaccurate, and that normative social projects beginning from such flawed foundations are thus unstable. While this paper accepts this criticism of individualist anthropologies, it proposes that this need not identify a problem with liberalism overall. To make this case, this paper turns to Adam Smith, who grounded his early advocacy of liberalism in an anthropology grounded in natural theology that depicts us as morally interconnected, rather than as autonomous, and as always morally impressionable. As it will explain, Smith presumed an account of character as integrally related to and influenced by the agent’s social context, for both better and worse. Furthermore, he wove his attentiveness to this complex interaction between the agent and their context into both his economic analyses and political proposals. Smith’s social vision thus illustrates how a strong regard for individual liberty is fully compatible with a sophisticated anthropology that recognizes our malleability as moral agents – and even with political proposals that capitalize upon this malleability. Smith’s thought thus offers useful resources for contemporary proponents of liberalism who wish to value the dignity of individuals without basing that valuation in unrealistic abstractions, or ignoring the responsibilities engendered by the fact of our ongoing moral formation by our social contexts.

The digital age requires people of all ages to communicate and organise their lives through digital technologies. The project EQualCare investigates how the growing population of older people living alone is managing this transition, how it shapes their (non-)digital social networks and what changes on a local level need to be brought about. This paper aims to give insight into the process of participatory action research (PAR) with older people in the community across four countries and reflects on experiences made by academic and co-researchers.

Following the emancipatory underpinnings of PAR, which aims to reduce inequalities through collaboration and co-design, EQualCare involved nine teams of co-researchers across Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden making older people the centre of policy development. Co-researchers were involved in formulating research aims, collecting data, reflecting on data, formulating and disseminating recommendations for local policy stakeholders.

Co-researchers’ motivation to invest considerable time and effort was driven by a desire to create a more equal future for older people living alone. Moreover, they were keen to involve marginalised older people and became frustrated when this proved difficult. Power dynamics played a role throughout the process but became productive as roles and responsibilities were renegotiated. Doing PAR with older people can be emotionally challenging for co-researchers when negative feelings around ageing are encountered.

The paper advances understanding on the process of PAR in ageing research by reflecting on the social, cultural and political contexts of doing PAR with diverse sets of older people.

The primary objective of this research is to chronicle how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other United States Federal Government Agencies (USFGA) agencies have played a role in shaping the trajectory of financial reporting for sustainability, with a particular emphasis on triple bottom line (TBL). This exploration extends to other indexes reporting sustainability data encompassed within financial, social and environmental reporting.

This study adopts an illustrative methodology, utilizing data sourced from governmental, business and international organizational documents.

Sustainability accounting predominantly finds its place within the framework of TBL. However, it is crucial to note that sustainability reporting remains voluntary rather than mandatory. Nevertheless, accounting firms and professional accounting societies have embraced it as a supplementary facet of financial accounting reporting.

The research highlights the historical evolution of sustainability within the USFGA and corporate entities. Corporations’ interest in accounting for sustainability performances has significantly contributed to the emergence of voluntary sustainability accounting rules, as embodied by the TBL.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the strategy and innovation of the Faculty of Adab and Humanities in developing the quality of education in digital era by using anthropology of education approach.

In accordance with the research purpose to demonstrate the strategy and innovation of the Faculty of Adab and Humanities in developing the quality of education in the digital era using an educational anthropology approach, the method used is descriptive qualitative, which refers to data in the form of interviews obtained from the field.

The results of this research indicate that there are strategies and innovations to develop the quality of higher education at the Faculty of Adab and Humanities in the digital era. These include adjusting the curriculum with the context of the era, implementing the learning process based on research and reinforcing on aspects of digital literacy among students through the innovation of the library based on digital.

This study can be considered in the process of evaluating policies related to quality reinforcing strategies and innovations at the Faculty of Adab and Humanities in facing the challenges of the times. The study is only limited to tracing and analyzing strategies and innovations to reinforce education in the Faculty of Adab and Humanities and their impact on human resource development. For further research, it can be done in more detail and depth and on a larger scale.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an accessible and interdisciplinary research strategy in organisational ethnography, called action ethnography, that acknowledges key concepts from action research and engaged and immersive ethnography. It aims to encourage methodological innovation and an impact turn in ethnographic practice.

A working definition of “action ethnography” is provided first. Then, to illustrate how an action ethnography can be designed by considering impact from the outset, the author draws on a study she is undertaking with a grassroots human rights monitoring group, based in England, and then discusses advantages and limitations to the approach.

The author suggests three main tenets to action ethnography that embrace synergies between action research and ethnography: researcher immersion, intervention leading to change and knowledge contributions that are useful to both practitioners and researchers.

This paper provides researchers who align with aspects of both action research and ethnography with an accessible research strategy to employ, and a better understanding of the interplay between the two approaches when justifying their research designs. It also offers an example of designing an action ethnography in practice.

Whereas “traditional” ethnography has emphasised a contribution to theoretical knowledge, less attention has been on a contribution to practice and to those who ethnographers engage with in the field. Action ethnography challenges researchers to consider the impact of their research from the outset during the research design, rather upon reflection after a study is completed.

The main purpose of the study is to detect, monitor the mythology field and make predictions of the development of it using social network analysis metrics. Mythology, which is the subject of many disciplines, is an area with extensive working potential. In addition to basic bibliometric indicators, the relationships of this field, which cannot be seen by other methods, were analyzed using measures such as centrality, between, eigenvector, modularity and silhouette coefficients.

In this study, social network analysis of the field of mythology, which has an interdisciplinary structure, was made. Within the scope of the study, 28,370 publications were selected from the publications in the field of mythology in the Web of Science (WoS) citation database between 1900 and 2019 using the probability-based stratified sampling method (5%), and detailed analyzes were made on these publications. The aforementioned publications were analyzed in terms of publication and citation numbers, publication types, subject categories, keywords used, co-authorship, researchers with the highest number of publications, institutions and countries with the highest number of document co-citations.

The findings show that the field of mythology gathers around four main subjects (sociology, folklore, politics and anthropology). When interpreted in terms of centrality metrics in more detail, the symbiotic or complementary relationship between anthropology, folklore, politics, sociology and mythology can be easily observed.

The findings of this study are seen important for scientists, decision-makers and policymakers. In addition, the findings of the study can be used to create the curriculum of the field.

There have been a plethora of social science studies of diasporas and immigrants in the USA. Research on Bosnian-Americans, however, has been relatively sparse. The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between the first-generation Bosnian American's trauma and its transgenerational effects on the second generation.

Bosnian-Americans are a relatively recent immigrant community in the USA, as most of the first-generation immigrated between 1993 and 2002 due to the Bosnian War and its aftermath. This research paper studies second-generation Bosnians to understand transgenerational trauma and emotions carried from the Bosnian War. Through archival research and extended interviews, second-generation Bosnian-Americans were asked questions about Bosnian-American identity and their psychosocial adjustment including transgenerational trauma.

Analysis of the data shows that in the second generation, the psychosocial effects of the Bosnian War have partially been transmitted from the first generation. Understanding the complex constitution of diasporic second-generation identity is facilitated by connecting it to the traumatic backgrounds, life experiences and struggles of the first generation.

The main observation is that there is a transmission of trauma and emotions from the first generation to the second-generation Bosnian Americans, which can be clearly seen in the participants of this research. Forms of transgenerational trauma (e.g. silence) and transmission of emotions (e.g. trust, anger and emotional unavailability) have been a part of the second generation’s lives, which, in fact, shaped their identities and personalities (From my conclusion section).

The purpose of this study is to identify LGBTQ+ perceptions of and experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters in the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA and to co-develop applied projects to “queer” disaster knowledge production and risk reduction activities in the region.

This is a community science project in which we collaborate with community members to enhance both community and scientific knowledge with the goal of utilizing it to produce a positive change to pressing social issues and their underlying causes. We do this through a series of four focus group workshops to identify community priorities, hazards, vulnerabilities and local action. We follow this with further ethnographic research and projects to apply findings from phase one.

The authors have found that: LGBTQ+ people in the Bay Area have unique experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters; there are significant gaps in the representation of LGBTQ+ hazard exposure in local scientific models that we can address through alternative methodologies; and tabletop exercises, learning modules and podcasts help orient and train disaster response agencies and personnel on LGBTQ+ inclusive operations.

This initiative entails novel approaches to community science for disaster risk reduction and creative collaboration with community-based organizations to foster the development of LGBTQ+ inclusive disaster risk reduction and response.