re:think - a journal of creative ethnography
Not a member yet
40 research outputs found
Sort by
Coming to One’s Senses: Decolonising Artefacts at the Museum of Anthropology
Get PDFMy paper is concerned with decolonising contemporary museological practice, specifically in relation to ethnographic collections at the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver. I propose that display practices can be reformed through Indigenous collaboration with artefacts and visitors critically engaging with their display. I recognise that decolonisation must happen on a structural basis with institutions revoking their authority to Indigenous groups. Reclaiming this power grants the autonomy to decide how their collections are displayed and represented. I also explore ways for visitors to decolonise the space introspectively, by becoming critically aware of their own colonial gaze – how they perceive, critique and analyse museum spaces
Karma as Payment, and Labour as Spiritual Exchange
Get PDFThis piece of ethnography focuses on extrapolating ideas on the inherent value of labour as a form of exchange in Buddhist religious and material economy. From drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre, I explore how lay residents redefine socioeconomic structures by using different Buddhist doctrines to create their own value of labour.
Keywords: Buddhism, labour, work, exchange, the gift
It\u27s Not Me, It\u27s the OCD: an Autoethnographic Reflection on OCD, the Self and the Blurred Lines Inbetween
Get PDFFundamentally, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) forces sufferers to question, and fear, who they really are. Furthermore, when treatment requires a level of differentiation between ‘normal thoughts’ and ‘OCD thoughts’, this effect can be exacerbated. Even if treatment is successful in reducing symptoms, it is possible to end up feeling lost, when the gaps left by OCD are not automatically filled with a secure sense of self. Indeed, OCD is not necessarily experienced as an entirely ‘external’ illness, and can be conceptualised by sufferers to be part of their personality. Therefore, OCD treatment should not only seek to reduce symptoms but also help patients to engage with and shape the new ‘self’ that may emerge
Sharing Songs: A seaside bar, open music sessions and the nuances of a community
Get PDFThe open live music session is the essense of Dalriada. Aiming to explore and analyse how a niche societal group (or groups, as will be shown) has been formed and evolved throughout the years in this specific locality, this essay investigates how communities emerge and relationships flourish within wider urban landscapes, as a result of cultural exchange and symbolic rituals within intimate shared spaces. This examination emphasises on the commonalities, contradictions and conflicts that are inherent in the process of community-building, evolution and preservation, based on the authors\u27 perspectives illuminated by the lived experiences and testimonies of interlocutors
The power of the object and activity
Get PDFShort article exploring the potential of using objects or activity to enhance ethnography. Also uncovers the inherent value of shared objects and activities
The Performance of Power: An Ethnographic Analysis of ‘the State’ within Edinburgh’s Sheriff and Justice of the Peace Court
Get PDFThroughout the development of anthropological thought, the concept of ‘power’ has dynamically evolved theoretically and ethnographically. As preliminary explored within works of anthropologists such as; Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes and Evans-Pritchard in predominately the 1940s, anthropologists have consequently debated the origins and foundational context of power in society. As suggested by Radcliffe-Brown (1940); ‘the State, in this sense, does not exist in the phenomenal world; it is a fiction of the philosophers’ (Radcliffe-Brown, in Fortes et al., 1940:23). Although the anthropology of the state remains underpinned by vast ethnographical predicaments of location, scale, variability and access – intrinsically conceptualising the state and power remains contestably debated and valued within contemporary anthropology. Therefore, this essay will seek to discuss the works of Foucault (1977), Rock (1991), Mitchell (1991) and Weeden (2003) in addressing the theoretical and ethnographical debate of power. Fundamentally, this essay will seek to analyse how the power of the state is performed and enforced through an ethnographic lens of the Sheriff Court and Justice of the Peace Court of Edinburgh
Social Anthropology Dissertation Photographs 2017
Get PDFA collection of photographs submitted to the Social Anthropology Undergraduate Dissertation Photo Competition 2017 complete with short reflections and commentary from authors
Drowned Histories: Collective Memory in an Edinburgh Ghost Story
No full textThis essay was originally submitted as an assessed short essay for The Invention of History course taught to 3rd/4th year undergraduate Anthropology students at Edinburgh University. It draws on one specific Edinburgh ghost story to explore the relationship between ghosts and collective memory, as well as oral histories and community belonging. In it, I argue that the ghost story represents an ‘unpacified remainder’ in Edinburgh’s social memory. Furthermore, it’s exclusively oral retelling generate a sense of ‘belonging’ through time and render it inseparable from the wider community networks it is transmitted in
Can we touch the past? The Sensory Experience of a Black Leather Ball
Get PDFThis ethnographic essay reflects on the process of the past coming into the present. In particular, it questions the ethics and politics of which pasts are appropriate to encounter. It creates tensions between which pasts are considered real or authentic, which questions the ownership of pasts we are not permitted to feel. It suggests that when we encounter and touch things that are not ours, we feel a connection to an Othered past. This “Othering” risks prescribing an Orientalist, colonial narrative. It concludes that perhaps to meaningfully encounter the past, we must recognise that the only authentic pasts are our own. 
The Abandoned Lighthouse: The Liminal Experience of Ruins
No full textSummary: Ruins can play a particularly poignant role in modern capitalist society, and exist in a liminal, marginal state between the past and the future. Western Harbour Lighthouse in Leith, Edinburgh is an example of this kind of ruin, separated from the rest of the city by a physical and metaphorical boundary. Ruins also have affective presence, inciting a particular feeling in those who enter. This essay explores how the liminal status of the Lighthouse disrupts the usual ‘order’ of the modern city