To examine how art is shaped by war, outside of the official commemorative projects of the First World War. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experience of a…
Abstract
Purpose
To examine how art is shaped by war, outside of the official commemorative projects of the First World War. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experience of a surgeon/artist who knew first-hand the horror of industrial scale of destruction. It speculates on how his medical education and surgical knowledge in the treatment of the casualties informed his art and considers how such scientific discourses may have contributed to a new modernist language.
Design/methodology/approach
The double career of J.W. Power – a surgeon then an artist – provides a case study to probe such questions. The paper speculates about the connections between these different careers, and considers the implications of becoming an artist for someone who had pre-war university-training, medical expertise and experience as a war surgeon. In particular, consideration is given to how surgical knowledge and contemporary medical debates may have informed a group of later paintings.
Findings
A group of J.W. Power’s late paintings stand apart from his other subjects as they suggest states of physical or psychological damage. Indeed by the 1930s shell shock was recognised as a war-related psychological injury. These paintings then may not only be an act of remembrance, but also potentially a reflection on that new discourse.
Research limitations/implications
It remains a compelling idea that by the 1930s Power had found a modern abstract language capable of revisiting the traumatic subject of his hospital sketches. The implications of the war-time surgery on his art was delayed and remains highly ambiguous, however it invites, indeed encourages, such speculation.
Originality/value
The paper is the first to examine the cultural impact of the medical career of the artist J.W. Power. His medical training and experience as a war-time surgeon is shown to have been significant to his later painting, for he knew the regenerative powers of modern surgery, of how such knowledge had the power to repair and to heal.
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Sarah Kleihauer, Carrie Ann Stephens and William E. Hart
Understanding one’s personal journey provides for effective learning, growth, and development (Madsen, 2010). Reflection on the influences and experiences of successful women…
Abstract
Understanding one’s personal journey provides for effective learning, growth, and development (Madsen, 2010). Reflection on the influences and experiences of successful women leaders is essential to understanding the factors that have enabled them to obtain and sustain leadership positions in nontraditional career fields. The purpose of this qualitative study was to conceptualize and describe the personal journeys of women who became deans of agriculture. The central research question was, “Describe your personal journey to becoming a dean of agriculture?” Six women deans of agriculture were interviewed and observed in an attempt to recognize the impact their personal journeys have had in developing their leadership styles and sustaining their leadership role. Conclusions were (a) they were first born children, (b) influenced by parental qualities and spousal support, and (c) mentors recognized their gifts and talents and encouraged them to pursue advanced degrees and leadership positions.
Stephen A. Osiobe, Ann E. Osiobe and J.D. Okoh
A random sample of 216 primary schoolchildren in Port Harcourt,Nigeria, was interviewed with a view to finding out the influence oftheme and illustrations on their literature…
Abstract
A random sample of 216 primary schoolchildren in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, was interviewed with a view to finding out the influence of theme and illustrations on their literature preferences. Results of the study indicated that children preferred books written by Nigerian authors with local themes to western books with alien themes. The influence of illustrations, however, seems to be dominant among primary 1 and 2 pupils (aged 5‐7 years) with a decreasing effect on primary 3 and 4 pupils (aged 7‐9 years) and a minimal effect on primary 5 and 6 pupils (aged 9‐11 years).
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Rhys H. Williams, Courtney Ann Irby and R. Stephen Warner
The sexual lives of religious youth and young adults have been an increasing topic of interest since the rise of abstinence-only education and attendant programs in many religious…
Abstract
Purpose
The sexual lives of religious youth and young adults have been an increasing topic of interest since the rise of abstinence-only education and attendant programs in many religious institutions. But while we know a lot about individual-level rates of sexual behavior, far less is known about how religious organizations shape and mediate sexuality. We draw on data from observations with youth and young adult ministries and interviews with religious young adults and adult leaders from Muslim, Hindu, and Protestant Christian groups in order to examine how religious adults in positions of organizational authority work to manage the gender and sexual developments in the transition to adulthood among their youth. We find three distinct organizational styles across the various religious traditions: avoidance through gender segregation, self-restraint supplemented with peer surveillance, and a classed disengagement. In each of these organizational responses, gender and sexuality represent something that must be explained and controlled in the process of cultivating the proper adult religious disposition. The paper examines how religious congregations and other religious organizations oriented toward youth, work to manage the gender and sexual developments in their youth’s transitions to adulthood. The paper draws from a larger project that is studying the lived processes of religious transmission between generations.
Methodology/approach
Data were extracted from (a) ethnographic observations of youth programming at religious organizations; (b) ethnographicobservations with families during their religious observances; (c) interviews with adult leaders of youth ministry programs. The sample includes Protestant Christian, Muslim, and Hindu organizations and families.
Findings
The paper presents three organizational approaches toward managing sex and instilling appropriate gender ideas: (a) prescribed avoidance, in which young men and women are segregated in many religious and educational settings and encouraged to moderate any cross-gender contact in public; (b) self-restraint supplemented with peer surveillance, in which young people are repeatedly encouraged not only to learn to control themselves through internal moral codes but also to enlist their peers to monitor each other’s conduct and call them to account for violations of those codes; and (c) “classed” disengagement, in which organizations comprised of highly educated, middle-class families do little to address sex directly, but treat it as but one aspect of developing individual ethical principles that will assist their educational and class mobility.
Research limitations/implications
While the comparative sample in this paper is a strength, other religious traditions than the ones studied may have other practices. The ethnographic nature of the research provides in-depth understandings of the organizational practices, but cannot comment on how representative these practices are across regions, organizations, or faiths.
Originality/value
Most studies of religion and youth sex and sexuality either rely on individual-level data from surveys, or study the discourses and ideologies found in books, movies, and the like. They do not study the “mechanisms,” in either religious organizations or families, through which messages are communicated and enacted. Our examination of organizational and familial practices shows sex and gender communication in action. Further, most existing research has focused on Christians, wherein we have a comparative sample of Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Hindus.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological practice of shadowing and its implications for ethnographic fieldwork. Furthermore, the paper challenges the label of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological practice of shadowing and its implications for ethnographic fieldwork. Furthermore, the paper challenges the label of “shadowing” and suggests a new label of “spect‐acting.”
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based in a feminist and interpretive‐qualitative approach to methods, and uses the author's experience with shadowing as a case study. The author argues that fieldwork is always intersubjective and as such, the research site emerges out of the co‐construction of the relationship between researcher and participant.
Findings
The author argues that reflexivity is a required but neglected aspect of shadowing, and that spect‐acting as a new term would require the researcher to take reflexivity more seriously, thereby opening up emancipatory possibilities in the field.
Research limitations/implications
Findings are based on a limited time span of shadowing.
Originality/value
The paper is original in that it imports “spect‐acting” from performance studies into the organizational methods lexicon. The value of the paper is that it provides reflection and discussion of one‐on‐one ethnography, which is a relatively underutilized method in research on organizations and management (but beginning to grow in popularity).
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Gail Whiteman, Thaddeus Müller and John M. Johnson
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the emotional experiences from qualitative research can enrich organization and management studies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the emotional experiences from qualitative research can enrich organization and management studies.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper's approach includes a review of the literature in sociology, anthropology, psychology, and feminist studies, in which scholars have argued convincingly for the explicit need to acknowledge and utilize the emotions of researchers as they study social and organizational phenomenon. Also, past research is emotionally re‐written as reflexive examples.
Findings
The use of emotions as qualitative researchers can enrich the understanding of organizational and social life by offering new questions, concepts, and theories. At the level of methodology, this leads one to develop and reflect upon an emotional and cognitive orientation of the field.
Originality/value
The majority of narratives in organization studies remain sanitized, emotion‐less texts. While a discussion of researcher‐emotion can remain a back‐stage activity between colleagues over dinner, It is believed that much can be gained by a more explicit discussion.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide guidelines for reflexive ethnographic writing that transports the researcher's claims of having conducted participatory reflexive research…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide guidelines for reflexive ethnographic writing that transports the researcher's claims of having conducted participatory reflexive research to her audience.
Design/methodology/approach
Auto‐ethnographic vignettes from the author's own ethnographic research are used to establish five levels of reflexivity for writing organizational ethnography.
Findings
The author argues that the audience needs to be able to judge a researcher's claims to reflexivity through his/her writing. Yet, due to the participation mode of reflexivity while doing ethnographic research, the researcher is not in control over his/her own reflexive writing. Therefore, processes between three groups of stakeholders, namely researcher, field and audience, and their power relations need to be considered in reflexive writing. The author calls this process ethnographic triangulating and derives a five‐tiered model of reflexive writing from it.
Research limitations/implications
The paper offers a perspective on how to write organizational ethnography. Others will have to put this perspective into practice.
Originality/value
The paper moves the participation mode of reflexivity to the level of writing, thereby offering a fully conceived view on reflexivity that acknowledges the influence of field and audience on ethnographic writing.