Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

Drawing on data from a three-and-a-half-year ethnographic study of Gypsy life in England, this article explores the orientations of Gypsy children toward play and the way in which play operates to affirm a separate identity and enforce boundaries. The apparently uncontrolled, and at times destructive, behavior of Gypsy children in a social/play context has been perceived by some observers as a barrier to educational progress. To illustrate and explore some of these themes, a number of vignettes are provided, through which patterns of play behavior are considered in different contexts, structured and unstructured, in home and school settings. Throughout the discussion, there is a search for sociocultural interpretations of play patterns that appear to differ from norms of the mainstream group, and an attempt is made to consider ways in which such patterns might fill a vacuum created by the erosion of traditional identity markers.

The recent global renaissance of tango dancing has been accompanied by the emergence of a thriving tango economy in New York City (NYC) that has encouraged the arrival of Argentine tango dancers and amateurs artists (tango immigrants) in recent years. This article builds on social capital theory to examine the importance of the Manhattan tango world as a reservoir for social resources (e.g., health information, contact for jobs, referrals) to satisfy their members’ social and health needs. Tango immigrants seek informal access to health care through the assistance of health practitioners belonging to their tango networks (tango brokers), a relevant issue given the fact that many artists are uninsured and depend on their physical labor to perform. This article’s ultimate goal is aimed at providing a theoretical contribution to our understanding of contemporary entertainment forms as ethnic social niches for immigrants’ informal access to valued resources via interpersonal relationships.

Through the use of a layered account format, the author sketches, through a juxtapositioning of vignettes and impressions, an autoethnographic portrait of her grandmother. Derrida’s concepts such as the “mystic writing pad,” “differance,” and “sous rature” serve as frames through which to gaze at the emergent nature of identity formation across time. Various aspects of the author’s grandmother’s character, positive, negative, and shades of gray, are illustrated through descriptions of drawing. Through reflexivity, she will show how some of the impressions her grandmother left with her manifest in her. Derrida’s concepts, the layered account format, and drawing, serve individually as viewfinders that offer snapshots of her grandmother and her but, taken together, build up traces and impressions that merge and blend into an illustration of identity as a process and thus an autoethnographic portrait.

Research introduced here examines the impact of social and structural transitions during the past three decades on middle-class working families in the United States. Through the telling narrative of an especially iconic case of urban-to-rural migration and career change, this article explores the meaning of relocation away from metropolitan areas and corporate careers to growing ex-urban, small-town communities. The author interprets this life-style migration as a manner of personally negotiating tension between experience of material demands in pursuit of a livelihood within the flexible New Economy and prevailing cultural conventions for the good life that shape the moral narratives that define individual character. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research involving interview and observation of recent migrants to Northern Michigan, this article contributes to our understanding of noneconomic migration and its part in the changing moral meanings of work in postindustrial America.