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Multisited ethnography has primarily been portrayed as a challenge for the following field-worker, with the researcher taking the central role and neglecting research participants also experiencing a multisited nature of their work. The authors argue that literature on multisited ethnography merely discusses multisitedness as a methodological theme. In correspondence, the authors propose to think of multisitedness not just as a methodological theme but also as an empirical theme.

The authors contend etic and emic perspectives to address multisitedness empirically, which enables researchers to compare and contrast the multisited topic of inquiry in academic “outsider” terms with the etic analysis and considering the perspective of the research participants' multisited experiences using the emic perspective. To show the fruitfulness of discussing multisitedness using the complementary etic and emic analysis, the authors present the example of Mennonite entrepreneurial activities in Belize, a heterogeneous group of migrants that established themselves as successful traders and entrepreneurs.

Through an etic multisited ethnographic perspective, the authors compare and contrast four communities of Mennonites in terms of their entrepreneurial activities, technology and energy use. Through an emic perspective, the authors demonstrate how Mennonites, while preferring an in-group focus, navigate their multisited entrepreneurial activities, which require interaction with the outside world.

The authors highlight the value of combining etic–emic reflections to acknowledge and include the multisited nature of many social phenomena as experienced by the research participants.

A central theme in the literature on entrepreneurship in remote communities – be they religious, indigenous, rural or migrant communities – is the balance between continuity and change or tradition and modernity and the role of entrepreneurship in maintaining or uprooting this balance. The purpose of this paper is to examine this dynamic in the context of Springfield, a small settlement of Old Order Mennonites in Belize, Central America.

This study draws on ethnographic research conducted in the Mennonite settlement of Springfield, Belize, between 2002 and 2019, as well as written correspondence with key stakeholders from Springfield.

This paper identifies three issues of contention between the Springfield Mennonites and the Belizean state: the agricultural census issue, the buying land issue and the cow tagging issue. Each of these revolves around state demands for assimilation into (digitalized) administrative systems and Mennonite resistance to these demands based on their religious-moral code. This study describes the negotiations around these issues.

The focus in most literature on entrepreneurship in remote communities is on how internal community dynamics shape the balance between continuity and change and, in extension, the space for entrepreneurship. The originality of the paper lies in shifting the focus to the relationship between the community and external stakeholders, especially the state.

Literature on immigrant and ethnic minority entrepreneurship almost exclusively focusses on the west, while neglecting other world regions. This neglect is problematic not only because international migration is on the rise outside the west, but also because it reveals an implicit ethnocentrism and creates particular presumptions about the nature of ethnic minority entrepreneurship that may not be as universally valid as is often presumed. The purpose of this paper is to examine ethnic minority entrepreneurship in non-western contexts to critically assess two of these presumptions, namely that it occurs in the economic margins and within clear ethnic community boundaries.

The authors draw on academic literature (including the authors’ own) to develop two case descriptions of ethnic minority entrepreneurship outside the west: the Mennonites in Belize and the Chinese in Cambodia. For each case, the authors describe the historic entrepreneurial trajectory, i.e. the historical emergence of entrepreneurship in light of relevant community and society contexts.

The two cases reveal that, in contrast to characterisations of ethnic minority entrepreneurship in the west, the Mennonites in Belize and the Chinese in Cambodia have come to comprise the economic upper class, and their business activities are not confined to ethnic community boundaries.

The paper is the first to elaborate the importance of studying ethnic minority entrepreneurship outside the west, both as an aim in itself and as a catalyst to work towards a more neutral framework.

This paper seeks to highlight issues surrounding ownership and copyrights relating to intangible cultural heritage and to raise potential concerns for local (rural, remote, smaller) communities involved in cultural heritage tourism.

The objective of the paper is to provoke reflection and further discourse on how local culture in smaller rural communities has been appropriated for tourism and related issues and concerns. Selected literature, other relevant documents and data from personal observations, derived from previous research, were examined to provide insights on the subject and to help achieve this objective.

Findings suggest that an inequity gap exists in benefits distributed to many rural communities whose cultural heritages are being appropriated and exploited by multiple commercial entities for tourism purposes and personal gain. Little, if any, of the profits realized benefit the local community – the actual creators and owners of the local culture.

With a new awareness and understanding of this phenomenon, developing and implementing a new and alternative approach is possible – an alternative approach that may help narrow this inequity gap while also ensuring significant sustainable benefits to all the stakeholders.

This paper presents new perspectives about the value of intangible cultural heritage when used for tourism. This paper should be of interest and importance to community tourism planners and policy makers, industry operators/suppliers dependent on local cultural tourism products, and consumers of local intangible culture who seek unique cultural experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the transforming effect of pursuing person centered ethnography using contemporary reflexive methods and a cultural traditions model on a researcher in late life. It attempts to show the usefulness of life history research as a lens through which to examine the complex ways people age. It adds to literature dealing with ethnographic studies of aging women and demonstrates personal narrative as a way to convey information. Lastly it demonstrates the value of studies pursued by researchers in old age, and illuminates aspects of ethnographic work when women interview women.

Using a journey format, the paper uses personal narrative as a way to achieve its goals. The personal account is complemented by noting other ethnographic studies that have contributed to age studies literature, and it draws attention to the value of reflexivity in good ethnographic work as proposed by anthropologists Barbara Myerhoff and John Caughey.

The paper points toward research institutions who study aging valuing ethnographic findings and making use of researchers in old age to engage in ethnographic studies. It points to the possibility that elders engaged in such research may strengthen their sense of self and empower them as they make a contribution to age studies.

This paper deals with the transformative power of engaging in reflexive life history research, especially as it is done by an ethnographer in late life. This freeing from customary cultural ways of thinking may be as beneficial to the researcher as life review or reminiscence. This should be explored further.

The paper points to the idea, implicit not explicit, that an elder who engages in reflexive life history research that involves doing a self-ethnography, can benefit in ways similar to having engaged in life review or reminiscence. This is original.

Whatever happened to retail trade area analysis? Some may recall that through the late 1950s and middle 1960s, location scholars seemed to be organising and expanding an interesting body of literature. However in the recent past, the central thrust of economic analysis seems to have stalled, with research dispersing in numerous directions.

Legal and philosophical scholarship on religious education typically focuses on religious schools that challenge core liberal values. Religious schools that offer their students quality secular education, and whose religious character is mild, do not raise these concerns and have therefore evaded scrutiny thus far. This chapter argues that the latter kind of religious schools, which I call “creaming religious schools,” may have a negative effect on educational equality and should therefore be subject to restrictive legal regulation. The negative effect on equality is caused by the fact that when successful, these schools appeal not only to members of the religious community but also to non-member high-achieving students who leave the public schools (a process called creaming) thus weakening them. The chapter argues that the harm caused to public schools cannot be redeemed by alluding to the right to religious education because the religious justification for creaming religious schools is relatively weak. The chapter then examines several potential legal measures for contending with creaming religious schools: the antidiscrimination doctrine, which the chapter rejects, showing that it actually aggravates creaming, locating schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods, restricting tuition, reflective enrollment policy, and finally, the total prohibition of establishing creaming religious schools.

The purpose of this paper is to cover a 10-year period in ten of Ontario’s 72 school districts on the nature, origins and importance of “leading from the middle” (LfM) within and across the districts.

The research uses a self-selected but also representative sample of ten Ontario school districts. It undertook three-day site visits in each of the districts, transcribed all the interviews and compiled an analysis into detailed case studies.

LfM is defined by a philosophy, structure and culture that promotes collaboration, initiative and responsiveness to the needs of each district along with collective responsibility for all students’ success.

To be sustainable in Ontario, LfM needs support and resourcing from the top. The current environment of economic austerity therefore threatens sustainability. Globally, examples of LfM are emerging in at least three other systems. The analysis does not have identical questions or respondents in phases 1 and 2. Ontario’s version of LfM may differ from others. The collaborative design may downplay criticisms of LfM.

LfM provides a clear design for leading in complex times. Compared to top-down leadership the whole system can address the whole of students’ learning and well-being. LfM is suited to systems and cultures that support local democracy, community responsiveness and professional empowerment and engagement.

LfM is an inclusive, democratic and professionally empowering and responsive process that differs from other middle level strategies which treat the middle merely as a way of connecting the top and bottom to get government policies implemented more efficiently and coherently.

In this paper an analysis is offered of the history and, more briefly, present situation, of an Anabaptist movement as it manifested itself in the form of the French Anabaptist Mennonite Assemblies. The paper is divided into a consideration of political, legal, economic and social aspects of French Mennonitism on the one hand, and of religious and ethical aspects on the other.

Are you at peace with God and your neighbor? This simple question, as it relates to a life of business, may seem curious to most entrepreneurs and probably even irrelevant. However, for the Mennonite entrepreneur this question is very relevant to their faith, to their relationship with their ethnic community, and to their daily lives as business people. This question probes at the hearts of Mennonite entrepreneurs who struggle to reconcile the dilemma of faith, culture, and economic opportunity.