1,720,958 research outputs found
Teaching anthropology with and to designers: notes from the field
Get PDFThis article discusses the Author’s experience of teaching anthropology to and with designers at a Design faculty. Through the illustration of mutual false expectations and productive frictions, the article illustrates the progressive development of a methodology to teach anthropology to designers and to collaborate across disciplines. In so doing, the article also identifies the peculiarities of the ‘anthropological approach’ by emphasizing the importance of cross-scale interactions in the analysis of phenomena and the role of theory in making ethnography and, therefore, in supporting designers to make their work. The main argument is that theory and practice are not dichotomous, rather they are co-implicated because theoretical innovation is at the basis for design practices. The article concludes explicating the ways in which anthropology can be useful to design students, even if in forms that are different from those usually expected or imagined
Etica e progettazione europea. Uno studio di caso
Get PDFIn questo articolo vengono discussi gli aspetti etici, con particolare riferimento al GDPR, di un studio di caso (finanziamento ERC) di progettazione europea. Attraverso una ricostruzione etnografica del processo, delle negoziazioni, dei dubbi e delle frustrazioni, il tentativo è quello di decostruire l’etica come un campo che pertiene strettamente alla dimensione legale o amministrativa, ma mostrare come tali dimensioni dipendano da elementi socio-politici locali, nazionali, europei e globali. Nell’articolo viene data rilevanza a due aspetti principali. Uno è il significato da dare all’etica, come insieme di norme rigide oppure come un incoraggiamento ad aprire un discorso sull’etica, significato da cui deriva il posizionamento della comunità antropologica. L’altro aspetto è quello delle peculiarità della ricerca antropologica rispetto alla definizione normativa di ‘dati’.This article discusses the ethical aspects, with particular reference to the GDPR, of a case study (ERC funding) of European project. Through an ethnographic reconstruction of the process, negotiations, doubts and frustrations, the attempt of this article is to deconstruct ethics as a field that pertains strictly to the legal or administrative dimension, showing how these dimensions are intertwined with socio-political elements at the local, national, European and global level. The article emphasizes two main aspects. One is the meaning to be given to ethics, as a set of rigid rules or as an encouragement to open a discourse on ethics, from which derives the positioning of the anthropological community. The other aspect discusses the peculiarities of anthropological research with respect to the normative definition of 'data'
When experimental practice comes first
Get PDFThis article hosts a vivid discussion on Papadopoulos’ book Experimental Practice. Technoscience, Alterontologies and More-Than-Social Movements (Duke University Press, 2018). This is a speculative and politically engaged book. It crosses the boundaries of social theory, science and technology studies, feminist theory and autonomist thought. The following contributions explore and critically discuss an essential topic of the book: the role of movements and everyday practices in transforming eco-societies from below. Andrea Ghelfi situates the book in an historical contingency in which social transformation is primarily driven by material, ontological transformation. Luigi Pellizzoni offers an analysis of the ambivalences of experimentalism in a context marked by neoliberal governmentality. Roberta Raffaetà brings attention to three interrelated themes: practice, theory and the role of institutional power. Finally, Dimitris Papadopoulos’ response focuses on the complicate relation between practice and politics in more-than-social movements
Putting Belonging into Place: Place Experience and Sense of Belonging among Ecuadorian Migrants in an Italian Alpine Region
Get PDFThis paper explores the meaning and mechanics of belonging with a particular focus onthe role of place and place-making. It explores the ways people come to achieve a senseof belonging with reference to recent theoretical treatments of place, territory, andmobility. We ground our discussion in analysis of an ethnographic case of Ecuadorianfamilies who have migrated to Trentino in northern Italy. Most families miss the socialrelationships and places they left behind, but have decided to stay permanently in Italy,giving up the “myth of return” (Anwar 1979). Trentino offers more opportunities interm of employment, education, and access to services than Ecuador. Yet the decisionto stay in Trentino is based on more than a simple assessment of economic advantage.Participants spoke of a slowly unfolding sense of belonging to Trentino, with strongaffective dimensions born of a specific attachment to the very materiality of place inTrentino. This attachment may be regarded as an assemblage of social, material andaffective resonances, experiences and resources, revealing something of the place andfeeling of belonging. Hence, the Ecuadorian sense of belonging does not rely on anabstract conception of cultural affiliation, nor is it a purely psychological response.Rather, belonging accrues in particular practices and material attachments.We unpackthese practices by documenting the work participants put into inhabiting an unfamiliarplace as “their” place, while at the same time questioning the ontological status of space
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration between Anthropology and Nephrology
No full textWe illustrate how peritoneal dialysis (PD) is perceived and managed by people suffering
of chronic kidney disease as an alternative to hemodialysis (HD). PD can be performed
at home; HD requires hospitalization. PD is underused even if it seems to offer a number
of potential benefits, among which increased autonomy and quality of life. Our article
sheds light on how PD managment—including logistic, technical, social and emotional
aspects—is mostly a patient’s responsibility, while HD is carried out by health profession als at the hospital. The article, therefore, critically analyses the autonomy provided by
PD and reconsiders its susteinability and costs in light of people everyday experiences of
living with this technolog
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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