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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.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a shift from the ideal of immersion to a practice of “committed localism” in the ethnographic study of relational work in the post-bureaucratic and service-based economy.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork following management consultancy projects in a hospital and a manufacturing company in Denmark. The approach was predicated on committed attention to the everyday of consultancy work activities and associated relational dynamics. This involved being present at the client sites, observing and listening in concrete situations of interaction and engaging in conversations with the multiple actors involved, both external consultants and members of client organisations.

The paper shows how “committed localism” was practiced in the ethnographic study of management consultancy as it is relationally accomplished in and through concrete situations of interaction between consultants and different actors in client organizations and the associated meaning production of the involved actors.

The paper develops the notion of “committed localism”, originally introduced by George Marcus, into a methodological concept to challenge the conventional ideal of immersion as the hallmark of “proper” ethnography. Such a shift is particularly pertinent for the ethnographic study of relational processes involving multiple actors occupying different positions in the temporary social spaces of contemporary workplaces.

This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge to established political norms and the obstacles to the fullest expression of a radical imagining.

Laclau and Mouffe's theory of hegemony and discourse is used to frame the movement's success in challenging the prevailing system of urbanised healthcare delivery. Empirical materials were collected through extensive ethnographic fieldwork.

The findings from this longitudinal study identify the factors that predominantly influence the transformational success of an Yaṉangu social movement, such as the institutionalisation of group identity, articulation of a discourse connected to Aboriginal rights to self-determination, demonstration of an alternative imaginary and creation of strong external alliances.

This study offers a rich empirical analysis of counter-accounting in action, drawing on Aboriginal governance traditions of non-confrontational discourse and collective accountability to conceptualise agonistic engagement. These findings contribute to the practical and theoretical construction of democratic accounting and successful citizen activism.

This study aims to show the complexities of engagement between students - Venezuelan and Brazilian - and their teachers. This qualitative ethnographic study documents the everyday pedagogies and practices that take place in elementary schools with high levels of refugee and immigrant children. While Brazilian law ensures the basic right to public education, forbidding discrimination based on nationality or immigration status (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação, 1996), the barriers remain. Through the frameworks of multicultural (USA) and intercultural (Brazil) education, this paper shows how Brazilian teachers and students of Venezuelan and Brazilian backgrounds engage, learn from one another and build welcoming spaces, but also how stereotypes are reinforced inside classrooms and schools.

This qualitative study uses ethnography to understand how recent Venezuelan migratory flow influences Brazilian and Venezuelan children’s educational experiences in elementary education. Participants were Venezuelan (N = 57) and Brazilian (N = 76) children in two elementary schools in the city of Boa Vista. Data sources for the study are school observations in four elementary classrooms (1st and 2nd grade) and semi-structured interviews with caregivers, teachers, administrators and other educators. This paper also collected children’s drawings and writings and documents like curricula, strategic planning, guidelines, policies, grades, reports and any other textual or photographic material made available at the city level.

In the field of education, there is a critical need for understanding children’s education experiences. This paper focuses on the experiences of teachers and students in two elementary schools in Brazil. This paper focus on two findings: first that teachers promote the learning of Portuguese to show care toward their Venezuelan students. Second, children in the classroom show solidarity with one another and resist some of the more rigid Portuguese-only practices enacted by teachers. This work uses the frameworks of intercultural (more commonly used in Brazil) and multicultural education to inform the analysis.

In this study, this paper puts these frameworks of interculturalism, multiculturalism, language use and solidarity into conversation to understand the dynamics of two elementary classrooms in the city of Boa Vista, Brazil. While this paper shows the shortcomings of a seemingly multicultural and multilanguage classroom, it also shows how children actively resist the rigidity of teaching and learning in elementary schooling.

This study is a response both to the increasing South–South migration trend in Latin America and its consequences on public education systems. Through multicultural and intercultural lenses, this research highlighted the complexity of interactions within multicultural classrooms by delving into a two-year ethnographic study conducted in Boa Vista, Brazil, focusing on Venezuelan and Brazilian children in two local elementary schools. This paper focused on two main observations this paper refers to as “Teaching Portuguese as a Way of Caring” and “Children's Solidarity Work.” Teachers primarily centered their instruction on teaching Portuguese to migrant children, believing it to lead to quicker integration in the classroom and beyond – thus as a way of caring for their migrant students.

This paper aims to shift from the male offender perspective in attempts to explore the stories and lived experiences of five females on parole in Nelson Mandela Bay, as most correctional research in South Africa focuses on the male offender experience. The experiences of females are largely ignored both in terms of reform and in research, and while only a few South African studies on female criminality have emerged, little is known about the impact of incarceration and reintegration on their livelihoods.

This paper makes use of an ethnographic approach as the narrative follows the complex realities of females on parole to include their voice, depth and experience in the debate within the parole experiences measure framework. This study made use of five individual interviews and observations, which were complemented by existing literature.

This paper provides insights on the experiences, vulnerabilities, challenges, fears and concerns of females on parole and the relative social costs of their incarceration. The experiences allow for a deeper understanding of the shades of their experiences of powerlessness, gender-specific sexualisation and exploitation, economic vulnerability and destitution and social alienation and exclusion which uniquely influences behavioural and emotional deficits.

Because the number of females on parole in Nelson Mandela Bay is few, this study could only interview five female offenders. Yet, as this study is ethnographic in nature, it offers a deep understanding of these five female offenders.

This research offers an insight into the social ills faced by female on parole. This work highlights the effects of incarceration are often felt by females long after their release since their experience of imprisonment affects their future prospects, damaging and debilitating. This paper suggests self-reclamation that could lead to positive reactions towards rehabilitative and reintegration. This research opens up the larger debate and does not offer tangible recommendations.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study parole amongst female offenders.

Little is known about gender relations in young African migrant families residing in Hong Kong (HK). This study aims to present a first-hand account of daily lived experiences of African international doctoral student couples residing in HK, with special emphases on their Africa–HK migratory motivations, perceptions of female-breadwinning status, the effects of HK Immigration policy on marital power structures and the influence of spousal relative statuses (“breadwinner” versus “dependent”) on couples gender role performances and decision-making participations.

This study used ethnographic method involving several indoor family visits, non-participant observations and 21 in-depth interviews in six African student families. Fieldnotes were taken and interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis.

Couples, especially dependent men, had a hard time deciding to migrate to HK for family reunion, unlike dependent women who willingly resigned to join their husbands in HK. Among the male dependents, the main reasons for migrating included anticipated economic returns, while women migrated in response to neolocal cultural expectations. Overall, patriarchy persisted – while men had the final say over key household decision-making domains, women remained primary performers of household chores, but manifested little bargaining power, restraining husband’s ability to spend family income when they are the family’s sole-earners. Women’s relative breadwinning status had very minimal significant impact.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of HK’s immigration policy on married African students’ migration motivations and the effects of female-breadwinning status on spousal gender relations in HK’s African student migrant households.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three core elements of critical management studies (CMSs), “de-naturalisation”, “reflexivity” and “(non)-performative intent”, can help expand the current debate in the supply chain management (SCM) field.

The authors used a systematic literature review to select 103 articles published in 12 high-ranking journals in the SCM field based on the Academic Journal Guide of the Chartered Association of Business Schools.

The findings of this study suggest that SCM studies can be narrowed down into four major CMSs themes: “power”, “ethics and environmental issues”, “diversity” and “working conditions”, but even these themes are still under-discussed and undertheorized in SCM. The literature the authors reviewed is more concerned with explaining these phenomena than questioning them and proposing new agendas. This paper, therefore, will discuss how these three core elements of CMS can help transform the “hidden” issues of SCM, which it will do by illustrating it in the context of buyer–supplier relationships and lean manufacturing.

This research will encourage SCM scholars who are interested in conducting more critical studies and teaching the harmful effects of global supply chains.

This paper highlights that a combination of SCM and CMS approaches is important when we decide to adopt a more critical “constructive” view of supply chain challenges and engage practical and critical views, respectively, to generate knowledge that not only increases (corporate) performance but also highlights social needs and values.

The outcomes of information behaviours have traditionally been conceptualised as use or effects. The adoption of a sociological stance, based on a practices approach, provides the opportunity to challenge these understandings. The non-Western setting further enhances the possibilities for conceptualising the outcomes of information practices as forms of capital.

This ethnographic study uses a Bourdieusian approach to investigate the information practices of diasporic devotees and monks of a Theravada Buddhist Temple in Sydney, Australia. The insider position of one researcher brought strong insights into the data, while the theoretical approach shared with the other researchers reinforced an outsider perspective.

The Temple’s online sources and personal communication with other devotees provide a diverse range of sources that devotees use in information-based cultural practices and everyday life information practices. These practices lead to outcomes that can be identified as economic, social and cultural capital. Pin or merit emerges as an important outcome of practices which is not easily accommodated by the concept of outcome, nor by Bourdieu’s categories of capital.

Adding to the small number of studies concerned with information practices in a spiritual context, this study shows the value of a Bourdieusian approach in identifying the outcomes of information practices as capital, but highlights the shortcomings of applying Western concepts in non-Western settings. It proposes the possibility of a new form of capital, which will need to be tested rigorously in studies in other spiritual settings.

This chapter draws on an ethnographic study with children aged 10–14 and their parents from heterogeneous socio-economic backgrounds in Türkiye. Building on a relational approach, it employs parental surveillance and children's individual privacy management in their intrafamilial relationships as a point of entry to reflect on childhood masculinities. From the perspectives of boys, girls and their parents, it illustrates how children's experiences of achieving privacy emerge as a gendered and age-related cultural phenomenon. Looking particularly at family negotiations around personal spaces and time at home and outside, it suggests that privacy regulation is a significant aspect of everyday family lives through which childhood masculinities and femininities are constructed, reproduced and performed. It further argues the ways that Turkish parenting culture may view intergenerational dialogue as a hierarchic category, rather than a relational category, contribute to a generational divide in boys' and girls' access to individual privacy.

Vadderas are an indigenous community, from the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, India, and are basically soil-diggers and stonecutters by occupation. As per folklores, they were king’s men once upon a time who lost their glory eventually. Their women enjoyed an affluent lifestyle and were reportedly physically active and went for small game very often. Men were a warrior class, and the folklores prove that they fought with valor but moved to forests after they lost wars and were at the mercy of their enemy. To save face, they became forest dwellers and gradually became construction-site laborers which brought transitions in their family structures. In earlier times, they had good progeny, but with lapse of time and over generations, they are conscious of family planning. In this chapter, the authors discuss the transitions in family structure as observed from the field among the Vadderas. A narrative style of discussion is adopted wherein first the family and its importance and reasons for its disintegration are discussed followed by approaches of study of prominent anthropologists/sociologists. Focus is drawn on Vadderas, and the granularities are discussed in a deconstructive manner, that is, going in detail and linking of current practices to the ones in the past and as mentioned in the folklores so as to understand the transitions evident in family structures of Vadderas. Ethnographic account has been knitted with this deconstructive approach as the authors observed the Vadderas from close corners. This chapter ends with summing of current trends as evident in the field.