Suchergebnisse

Petra Heyse – Departement Taalkunde (IPrA Research Center), Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium. Email: petra.heyse@gmail.com
This article draws on a broader research project that scrutinizes online / offline representational practices on transnational matchmaking websites featuring so-called 'Russian brides'. The central research question is: how are recurrent online representations related to gender (in intersection with other identity categories) co-constructed in the daily interactions between matchmaking staff and female clients on the floor of a marriage agency. To these aims, the researcher conducted participant observation in a transnational marriage agency in a Russian city and used linguistic ethnographic methodologies. The analysis for this article concentrates on the routine argumentative strategies that are used by matchmaking personnel to legitimate their intermediating role to Russian-speaking female clients in the case agency on the basis of in-depth interviews with agency staff and female clients. The analysis of discursive positioning in interviews with translators and female clients sheds light on the social order that is discursively created. This order is functional in defining and reproducing the commercial dependencies between matchmaking staff and female clients in a transnational globalized industry. This study demonstrates the way in which: (a) matchmaking personnel in the case study constructs subject positions in discourse – i. e. of transnational matchmaking experts and of female clients – by drawing on commonsensical public discourses of difference that encompass gender, age and nationality, and (b) matchmaking personnel affiliates with its clients by conceiving the matchmaking approach as an increasingly popular genre of self-improvement for Russian-speaking women.

Informed consent in ethnographic research practice. Deep waters between macro ethical regulation and micro ethical fieldwork dilemmas
Informed consent in ethnographic research practice. Deep waters between macro ethical regulation and micro ethical fieldwork dilemmas
Drawing on my experiences of nine months of ethnographical fieldwork in an international matchmaking agency in Saint-Petersburg (Russia), I show how the negotiation of 'informed consent' in practice differs from 'informed consent' procedures of universities' and research funds' ethical review boards. Evidence in my case study contributes to existing debates that question the applicability in ethnography of consent rituals that are common in (bio)medical and psychological sciences. These 'informed consent' protocols have been criticized to be insufficiently empirically grounded in the ethnographical fieldwork practice. My tale from the field offers empirical evidence for a further conceptual refinement of a process-based approach to consent negotiations. I both provide recommendations for an adaptation of ethical regulations on a macro level and for a more reflexive consent negotiation in the situated ethnographic fieldwork practice.

The ongoing popularity in some second and third generation migrants in Western Europe of marrying a partner from the countries of origin of their (grand)parents is considered to be problematic for micro and macro level societal integration of some migrant populations. Partner choice and marriage practices in migrant communities are problematized in public, media and political discourses by discriminating them from marriage practices in the 'native' population on the basis of three related dichotomies: (1) agency versus structure, (2) us versus them and (3) romantic versus instrumental marriage intentions dichotomies. By means of in-depth qualitative research methodologies on the partner choice processes of women and men of Turkish, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Punjabi Sikh, Pakistani and Albanian descent in Belgium and an intersectional theoretical approach, this article aims to deconstruct popular and simplifying dichotomous representations of partner choice processes in these migrant populations. Our study reveals how religious, gender and social class boundaries are stretched to meet personal/individual desires and preferences. Individuals do experience social restrictions when it concerns social group boundaries and the potential partners that they can look for. At the same time individuals are never fully determined by their social environment, they creatively develop strategies to by-pass certain restrictions and to some extent are able to meet their personal needs while being sensitive to the desires of their social environment.