re:think - a journal of creative ethnography
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Talking About Tiny Houses: An Interviewing Profile of Erin and Chris
Get PDFThis piece is a snippet of an interview from a larger research project titled: “The Social Practice of Living and Travelling in Small Mobile Living Structures”. Using a style popularised by Studs Terkel in his book ‘Working’ (1974), I have used the interviewee’s own words but manipulated the order of the sections to make a cohesive narrative about living in a Tiny House. Erin and Chris talk about life in their tiny house under the framework of Social Practice Theory, informing the reader about the skills, materials and meanings that have contributed to their current living situation
(dis)connection: In a connected world, all we miss is each other
Get PDFMobile phone use and social media have become the norm in modern societies around the world. In an attempt to connect with the world out there, people sometimes neglect present time and immediate environments. For some, this is a way \u27in\u27 and for others a way \u27out\u27. This photographic ethnography investigates the contradiction between connection and disconnection in people\u27s desire to maintain relationships, stay informed or be entertained. 
Who Needs a Man When You Got a Gun? Women and their Firearms in Midwestern America
Get PDFWhat does gun ownership mean to armed women in a city in the Midwestern United States? Gun culture is an aspect of American life which has been neglected in anthropological literature. I examine how armed women I met and shot with told me how carrying guns ‘empowers’ them. Firearms allow them to break culturally produced stereotypes concerning their capacity for violence, allowing self-defence and facilitating empowerment. However, I argue that female gun ownership simultaneously reproduces heteronormativity as is relies on the assumption that women are inherently vulnerable, needing protection. Guns, a symbolically masculine object, are ‘the equaliser’ for women
The Leith Project: Industrial Ruins and Maritime Heritage
Get PDFThis essay reflects on the politics of abandoned buildings juxtaposed with memorials to a thriving industrial past whilst walking through Leith. I argue that these abandoned buildings reveal capitalism\u27s inherent obsolescence and counteract its teleological version of time. Drawing on Ingold’s notion of a “taskscape”, I show how multiple temporalities are enfolded into these decaying structures, and how they provide a canvas for contemporary political critique. These ruins provide a counterpoint to the view of Leith that is crystallized in the public artwork, or lieux de memoire (Nora 1989) valorizing its maritime history
From ‘Taroosh’ to ‘Tom Jones’: Mediating ‘Local’ and ‘Global’ Queer Discourses through Filipino ‘Gay Lingo’
Get PDFThis essay explores how student members of an LGBTQ+ rights organisation discursively navigate queer identifications and concepts of belonging, based on fieldwork conducted in Quezon City, Philippines. I argue that elements of ‘gay lingo’, one of many Filipino LGBTQ+ argots, establish interlocutors as members of both LGBTQ+ communities and ‘post-colonial’ Philippines at large, amidst prevailing cultural logics that situate them as external Others. Appropriating and subverting hegemonic structures of language, they utilise ‘local’ linguistic patterns and reference ‘global’ queer connectivity in their endeavour to embed themselves within both spheres, illustrating that global concepts are inevitably syncretised through local contexts
Ruination and the Affective Presence of the Past in relation to the Beit Beirut in Lebanon
Get PDFThe following essay is based on fieldnotes I took during my dissertation fieldwork in Beirut, Lebanon. It focuses on Beit Beirut, a building used by snipers during the height of the Lebanese Civil War, but that has now been repurposed as a museum and symbol of remembrance. The essay highlights that this renovated building that purposefully still bears the scars of war on its walls, results in a tension between moving forward whilst making sure future generations remember the past. This is made all the more uncomfortable as for some this is a reminder of a past that is impossible to forget anyway
The Power of Cough Syrup: How Suffering is Controlled and Regulated in a Rural Haitian Clinic
Get PDFDuring my time working at a clinic in rural Haiti, I noticed one of the doctors was engaging in a rather odd practice: prescribing cough syrup at completely inappropriate times. I attempt to analyze such a practice, revealing how it can control how pain is experienced and expressed. I also discuss the histrionic nature of this practice and how it helps perpetuate trust when combined with other situational nuances. To conclude I discuss how it reflects medical humanitarianism on a global scale and the implications of power that come with it
Producing Truth? Some Reflections on Ethnographic Research
Get PDFAn extract of fieldnotes is presented from the first ethnographic research I participated in: a transect walk with Mormon missionaries on Middle Meadow Walk. In a short reflection I look at some of the issues that arose when leaving the books and lecture halls behind, and instead being confronted with human beings. In particular, issues around the self in the field are discussed, and some further questions raised concerning the nature of anthropological interpretation.
 
Work Bitch: The labour of redefining kinship within Ballroom culture
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Ballroom culture (created by queer, transgender, black and latinx communities in America) has gained popularity throughout Europe in past decades. These photographs depict the community currently growing ballroom culture in Scotland. This queer community destabilises gender and kinship norms, before redefining gender and kinship as collective processes requiring labour. The formation of kinship bonds through labour ‘queers’ notions of family and enables the Scottish community to feel they are maintaining ballroom culture in an appropriate way. Their commitment to ‘authentically’ growing the ballroom scene provides insight into the use of ‘culture’ by marginalised people as a socio-political tool, suggesting its potency out with anthropological discourse.
 
Spectral Beings and Being Spectral: Ghostly Enchantment within Edinburgh’s Ghost Tours: An investigation of the embodied performance of spectrality and the generation of enchantment within Edinburgh\u27s ghost tourism.
Get PDFGhost tourism is big business in Scotland and in Edinburgh specifically. This paper is based off ethnographic fieldwork conducted with a number of the Scottish capital’s ghost tour companies. It is concerned primarily with the performance and embodiment of spectrality by ghost tour guides, which is achieved through the use of theatrical techniques meant to immerse tour-goers into the ghostly. It is this immersion that marks ghost tours out as enchantment; a more special experience than the mundane manner of everyday existence, which goes some way to explaining the popularity of ghost tourism