Session Information
SES D 06, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
The impact of the globalising cultural trends on diverse national cultures has become one of the central issues of the recent sociological debates. Globalisation is often seen as a hegemonic discourse that affects all possible cultural forms and their elements all over the world. However, the complex local-global dialectic has been creating social phenomena that can not be analysed only by a monolithic perspective.
Global Ethnographies start with the question: ‘How can ethnography be global? How can study of everyday life grasp lofty processes that transcend national boundaries?’ (Burawoy, et al, 2000: 1).The same author also state that ethnography, as an analysis about the world form the standpoint of participant observation, was design to understand a social process in bounded or in ‘negotiated order’ – a prison, a school, a street-gang – therefore it was not meant for the global. However, under late capitalism experiences we intent to stress the analytic potential of ethnography on the glocal dialogues in the 21st century.
This paper lies on an ongoing Ph.D. research project in which we analyse the emergence of a political agenda for education in cultural contexts, developed in the first decade of the 21st century at the global, regional and national levels of policymaking (Cortesão, et al 2001). That analysis is used as a framework to question how the same global and regional trends are translate into local educational strategies, programmes, disclosures and social-pedagogical practices in cultural institutions – how global trends are being negotiated in the local scapes (Appadurai, 1990). We have been developing a multi-site ethnography in three European contemporary art galleries – traditionally consider as cosmopolitan entities. Cultural institutions that are placed in European Capitals of Culture (2001, 2008 and 2009) and occupy heterogenic geopolitical positions (Wallenstein, 1974) were selected – the Fundação de Serralves (Porto), the Tate Gallery (Liverpool) and the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius).
By making use of ethnographic methods we have been built a research memory (field diary) based on participant observation, photography and video of the institutions’ daily life and educational activities and recorded interviews with the gallery staffs (directors, curators, educators) (Bodgan & Biklen, 1982).
Therefore our main aim, in this project, is to widen the research universe on the cultural and educational field, through the comprehension of the role of cultural institutions, as Stoer (2001) argues, in the construction of contemporary educational pathways in the European space.
Therefore, global ethnographies as a local and historical grounded research seems to be a concept that allows us to think beyond the local, from that point of view, illuminate a range of flows of people, information, objects - culture (Urry, 2000); and to register the geographical intersections between different sites and scales. However, all this intersecting textures, leaps and lops from space and time, from the singular to the general seem to add multiples challenges to the role of the ethnographer trying to acknowledge the living embodiment of the glocalised movements.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
ATKINSON, P. (1990). The Ethnographic Imagination – Textual Constructions of Reality. London: Rutledge. ATKINSON, P., et al (Ed.) (2001). Handbook of Ethnography. London: Sage. BERTAUX, Daniel (1997). Les récits de vie: perspective ethnosociologique. Paris: Éditions Nathan. BOGDAN, R. & BIKLEN, S. (1982). Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theories and Methods. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. BURAWOY, M., et al (2000). Global Ethnography: forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world. Berkeley: University of California Press. BUROWOY, M. (1998). "The Extended Case Method", Sociology Theory, 16:1, 4-33. BUROWOY, M. (1991). Ethnography Unbounded –Power and Resistance in the modern metro-polis. Berkeley: University of California Press. CARIA, Telmo (2002). Experiência Etnográfica em Ciências Sociais. Porto: Afrontamento. CRANE, D.; KAWASHIMA, N.; KAWASAKI, K. (ed.) (2002). Global culture. Media, arts, policy and globalization. New York: Routledge. FEATHERSTONE, M. (1991). Consumer Culture & Postmodernism. London: Sage. (originally appeared in Constellations Volume 11, No 1,) - Loïc WACQUANT, L. (2004)” Critical Thought as Solvent of Doxa” GEERTZ, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Basic Books. GIDDENS, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. HAMMERRSLEY, M. (1992). What’s Wrong With Ethnography? – Methodogical Explorations. Londres: Routledge. HARVEY, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. LASH, S. & URRY, J. (1987). The End of Organized Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. SASSATELLI, M. (2009) Becoming Europeans: Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies. Palgrave Macmillan. SILVERMAN, D. (1991). Qualitative Research: theory, method and practice. London: Sage Publications. SOUSA SANTOS, B. (1995). Toward a New Commom Sense, Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition. Londres: Routledge. STOER, S. (2001). ‘Desocultando o Voo das Andorinhas: Educação inter/multicultural crítica como movimento social’. In S. Stoer, L. Cortesão, J. Correia (Ed.), Transnacionalização da Educação – da crise da educação à ‘educação da crise’. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 245-292.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.