By: Richard Rhoads on September 20, 2013
In the spring of 1997 I married my college sweetheart Naomi. Like many newlyweds, our first few months were spent learning new an interesting details about your spouse. Not long into our second month, Naomi shared that she had a hedgehog by the name of Loofa, which she was keeping at her classroom at the…
By: Cedrick Valrie on September 20, 2013
Rick Warren recently preached a sermon comparing life to a game of poker, highlighting the types of cards life deals. The five he proposes are chemistry, connection, circumstance, conscience, and choices. I would like to highlight the latter card – choices. Choices can be unexpected game changers. When determining someone’s capacity for greatness, Jim Collins…
By: Richard Volzke on September 20, 2013
Using your five senses in Ethnography Pink, in her book Do Sensory Ethnography, encourages the researcher to move from just observing the culture or society they are studying to actively immersing themselves in the society. When the researcher experiences the culture through their own senses it gives them a greater sense of reality and understanding…
By: rhbaker275 on September 19, 2013
To the person who is new to the field of ethnographic practice, in the book Doing Sensory Ethnography, Sarah Pink presents a multi-dimensional approach to doing ethnography. Sensuality in ethnography is recognizing and encompassing the natural multisensory nature of the ethnographer and those participating in the research project (p.1). In both of her books, visual…
By: Ashley Goad on September 19, 2013
Ethnography continues to be such a new term and action for me, but as one of my classmates pointed out this week, I am now constantly looking to see what is in front of me in a different light. When first picking up Doing Sensual Ethnography, I was a little skeptical. How can you possibly…
By: David Toth on September 19, 2013
Doctorow’s book left my head swimming in a sea of I’s and O’s! I felt like he was trying to help me to grab hold of a wet greasy fish that was very much alive and wiggling to get free! I usually take some notes as I work through a book but at the end…
By: Deve Persad on September 19, 2013
For the last five years we sent teams to El Salvador. Short term teams, 8 days, with the specific purpose of building homes for those who have been displaced by earthquakes and hurricanes. Each morning, as the sun climbs above the mountain peaks, our team heads to the worksite, excitement and anticipation always accompany us…
By: Sandy Bils on September 19, 2013
In his book „Good to great. Why some companies make the leap and others don’t“ Jim Collins presents the results of an intensive research process. Joined by a large team, Collins studied why some average companies become major leaders and others fail. He looked at a period of 15 years and compared his selected companies…
By: Garrick Roegner on September 19, 2013
In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, business management researcher Jim Collins attempts to define what separates good organizations from great ones. By researching companies that have had strong success against those who have merely been good, or only had outstanding success for a season, or simply…
By: Liz Linssen on September 19, 2013
Pink’s book, Doing Sensory Ethnography, is a clever handbook for the traditional ethnographer who wishes to engage in new and additional multi-faceted methods of research. Or should I say, multisensory. For me, Pink exposes additional branches on the tree of research, which in turn provide the ethnographer with tools for producing greater fruit in one’s…
By: Chris Ellis on September 19, 2013
Good to Great examines what makes the difference between a good company and a great company. While I do think the church is not first and foremost a business, I do think there are many points that Collins touches on that can greatly help churches not necessarily be great but be faithful. For we are…
By: Phil Smart on September 18, 2013
After 8 years in the private sector I had returned to full-time ministry. One of the reasons I was excited about the church where I was going to serve was because of its professionalism – in other words, it was run like the business I had recently left. As part of our job descriptions, those…
By: Bill Dobrenen on September 18, 2013
Sarah Pink (2009) writes with emotion and humanness in her book Doing Sensory Ethnography. Her primary thesis is that to do ethnographic studies wisely, the ethnographer must be open to looking inside herself (reflexivity) as well as looking into the lives of others. Sensory Ethnography demands a commitment to hands-on research that dives beneath the…
By: Fred Fay on September 18, 2013
This last week I went to a conference called the Community Project presented by “the C4 group”. There practitioners who were involved with caring for their cities gave testimonials about how their efforts brought forth change for the good of their community. It began with a leader talking to us about the church being outward…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on September 14, 2013
Reading Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink is an interesting whole new area that I am introduced to in this book. It is interesting to realize the impact that images have in our lives. I found it fascinating when Pink says, “Images are ‘everywhere’. They permeate our academic work, everyday lives, conversations, our imagination and…
By: Sam Stephens on September 14, 2013
In his book The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, David Morgan connects art and religion. Morgan’s vision is to extend the horizons of our perception of religion to include a consideration of the influence and impact of images. The first part of his work contains descriptions of the convergence of the…
By: Raphael Samuel on September 14, 2013
Posted by Raphael Samuel A picture is worth a thousand words, not sure who said this but it could very well be Sarah Pink. Her book “Doing Visual ethnography” challenges the reader to think of the importance of visual images in the communication of messages. Her insightful discourse on the subject, provides a deeper understanding on a practice…
By: gfesadmin on September 14, 2013
By: Stefania Tarasut on September 13, 2013
As I was reading through Doing Visual Ethnography, I was reminded of a picture that was taken of me in Honduras this past summer. The picture was posted in a slide show, which was later shown to our congregation. It wasn’t long after the pictures were posted that people started commenting on how hard…
By: John Woodward on September 13, 2013
About fifteen years ago my history professor asked our graduate history class asked a very strange and confusing question: “When we research a moment in history, do we believe we can actually capture some reality that is out there…or are we doing something else?” I was totally baffled by what this professor was getting at.…
