Durington, Matthew

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/14440

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Civic Engagement and Gentrification Issues in Metropolitan Baltimore
(Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities, 2009) Durington, Matthew Slover; Maddox, Camee; Ruhf, Adrienne; Gass, Shana; Schwermer, Justin; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
Since the fall of 2006 a number of Towson University students concentrating in the discipline of anthropology have been part of a civic engagement and service-learning project focusing on an historic African-American community in Baltimore. While the focus of the research project concentrates on the processes of gentrification, individual student outputs center on a variety of topics that detail the history of the community and the contemporary efforts of residents toward urban sustainability.
Teaching Baltimore Together: Building Thematic Cooperation Between Classes
(Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities, 2017-05-17) Collins, Samuel Gerald; Durington, Matthew Slover; Fabricant, Nicole; Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
One year ago, Baltimore citizens took to the streets to protest not only the death of Freddie Grey, but the structural inequalities and structural violence that systematically limit the opportunities for working-class African Americans in Baltimore. The protests, though, were not just confined to Baltimore City. Borne on sophisticated understandings of intersectionality and political economy, the moral imperatives from the Baltimore Uprising resonated with students at our university in Baltimore County, where campus activists moved to both support the people of Baltimore while using the moment of critical reflection to critique racial inequalities on campus. Since students were displaying a holistic, anthropological understanding of race and inequality in Baltimore, we decided to structure our classes accordingly and brought together several courses in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice in order to examine the interrelationships between power, race, class, public space and urban development. We taught common texts, visited each other's classes, and planned events that brought students together with community leaders in Baltimore to discuss common concerns and to learn from each other. This paper reports on that experiment and suggests that a pedagogical model premised on drawing thematic linkages between existing courses is one way to address current events that impact us all while allowing students to direct the course of their own education.
Suburban Fear, Media and Gated Communities in Durban, South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University. Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
A disjuncture between the reality of crime and its perception has created a culture of fear within South Africa that bolsters gated community development and an accompanying fear industry that supports media, private security companies, and a number of other industries that provide security apparatuses. Is the establishment of gated communities an irrational response to perceptions of crime in South Africa in the twenty-first century? Or, are they deemed necessary in a perceived culture of violence that exists in the country? The article explores these questions through ethnographic research with residents of a gated community and the security company hired to provide security for the estate reflecting on the reality and perceptions of crime in the "New" South Africa.
Moral Panics in Suburban Texas
(EASA Media Anthropology Network, 2007-03-06) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
This paper details portions of an ethnographic study of a moral panic that surrounded the heroin overdose deaths of several teenagers in the American suburb of Plano, Texas. Media ethnography engages numerous individuals who represent different institutions who participated in various discussions and the creation of strategies that emerged throughout the tenure of the moral panic in the suburb. These forces acting in an interdependent fashion assisted in the creation of a new social subject, the suburban teenage heroin addict. Both the residents of Plano, Texas and the media that helped establish the moral panic relied on a representational history of the American suburb that conflates and entangles notions of race, class and space and demarcates this social space as white. I discuss the practice of media ethnography through a comprehensive content analysis of several forms of media, and the ethnographic reception and conveyance of that media among individuals within the context of fieldwork.
Anthropology By the Wire
(2012) Durington, Matthew Slover; Collins, Samuel Gerald; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
Anthropology by the Wire is a multi-media research project on urban and visual anthropology in Baltimore that is part of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates grant at Towson University. In this project, students will be conducting research on neighborhoods in Baltimore utilizing anthropological methods through the lens of a public anthropology with a variety of digital media. A sampling of chronological data in the form of videos, photos, audio, links and text posted to this site represent the outcome and mediation of those endeavors.
Teaching Somewhat Serious Games
(American Anthropological Association, 2017-11) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
Durington writes, "I am biased to the awkward moments in ethnography when anthropologists are put into sticky situations and ethical dilemmas. These moments are often the crux of fieldwork and their successful navigation can determine the success or failure of that endeavor. In addition, these often become epiphanies for the anthropologist and the reader. They are also great teaching moments. Why not move these uncomfortable situations and conversations into a game? Why not make Cards Against Humanity into Cards Against Anthropology? For the next several weeks we designed Anthropology Games and this teaching unit has become a permanent part of my curriculum".
"The Anthropology of Media" and "Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain"
(American Ethnological Society, 2004-02) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
Book reviews of "Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain". Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu‐Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press and "The Anthropology of Media: A Reader". Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk, eds. Anthropologists have often approached media as something haphazardly stumbled on while conducting fieldwork or as a basis of anecdotal comparison in discussions of more substantial issues. The topic is consistently approached uncritically, and the presence of various forms of media in different cultural settings is either considered exotic or disregarded as commonplace.
The Ethnographic Semiotics of a Suburban Moral Panic
(Taylor & Francis, 2007) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
This article describes Worth’s notion of ethnographic semiotics as part of an overall strategy employing the anthropology of visual communication in ethnographic research focused on media portrayals of a suburban community during a moral panic over a concentrated number of teenage heroin overdose deaths. While the full-length ethnography details multiple media events surrounding the moral panic, the central place of one piece of print media is described in detail. This article served as a catalyst for the moral panic that occurred within the suburb, facilitated community response, and became a template for further national media coverage in the United States. In addition, the article became an instrumental research tool for elicitation among informants during ethnographic research. The overall study and employment of Worth’s ethnographic semiotics serve as a bridge between foundational studies in the anthropology of visual communication and contemporary methodologies employed in media ethnography.
Principles of visual anthropology, review
(Wiley Blackwell, 1997-03) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
The importance of the original publication in 1975 of Paul Hockings' Principles of Visual Anthropology cannot be underestimated. Along with Karl Heider's Ethnographic Film (1976), Hockings' collection is regarded by people outside of the field as the best representation of visual anthropology. This is troubling at times. If one uses a keyword search on the two most popular terms in our field, visual anthropology and ethnographic film, the Hockings/Heider title domination always appears. While these texts serve as excellent historical markers in the field, their continued presence as contemporary standards is disheartening. The purported status of the second edition of Hockings' text as a new standard reflecting the development of visual anthropology is not fully reflective of the field over the last several years. It is this dilemma that will be addressed primarily in this review.
Dead birds: review
(Wiley Blackwell, 2006-09) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
Robert Gardner’s many contributions to ethnographic documentary film production are undeniable and problematic. The historical and critical discussions that have surrounded Robert Gardner, and Dead Birds in particular, are numerous and range from dissections of the film’s authenticity to larger ethical debates concerning the use of constructed voice-over. At the start of the 21st century, the question that must be asked is “what is the value of Dead Birds pedagogically and as a representation of visual anthropology?”
John Marshall's Kalahari family
(American Anthropological Association, 2004) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
Throughout his career and through his films, John Marshall has embodied many representational debates in anthropology and ethnographic media production. With "A Kalahari Family," Marshall has provided his most reflexive film to date as well as a comprehensive visual record of 50 years of transition among the Ju/'hoansi, from lingering, hunter-gatherer subsistence to problematic and often tragic contemporary living conditions. "A Kalahari Family" bears witness to the negative effects a racist ideology and varied development agendas have had on an indigenous group of people, and the transformative effects they continue to have. In the film, the audience also witnesses the evolution of John Marshall himself, from naïve, inexperienced teenager engaging an exotic other, with all the inherent cultural baggage of a Western perspective, to his eventual emergence as a filmmaker and a dedicated advocate for the people with whom he has become so involved.
Gated communities: perspectives on privatized spaces: review essay
(Wiley, 2011-01) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
Private Cities: Global and Local Perspectives (2006) and Gated Communities (2006) continue a trend in urban studies that focus on recent manifestations of these developments in a variety of global locales. As the editors of Private Cities note, ‘there is hardly another form of urban development that has received so much public attention since the late 1990s as privately organized and secured housing developments’ (Glasze et al., 2006: 1). The two volumes are a fantastic resource for researchers interested in these contemporary topics and they provide robust survey material for courses focusing on this type of housing. They also evidence a number of trends that typify this area of scholarship, both positive and negative. The two books share many of the same authors, and many of the chapters are products of a series of conferences on private residence and gated communities first convened in Hamburg in 1999 and of meetings held since then in Mainz, Glasgow, Johannesburg and, most recently, in Santiago. Questions that researchers have posed explore the rationale of individuals who decide to live in these environments, the historical precedents of privatization, the structural conditions that enable the construction of gated communities and the socio-economic consequences of these privatized residential spaces. Whether private neighborhoods are good or bad is left to the speculation of both the authors and the readership.
Introduction
(Modern Language Association, 2007) Durington, Matthew Slover; Green, Lesley J. F.; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
The articles collected for this issue of Critical Arts provide a number of different entrées into the practice of media anthropology while remaining true to the origins of this particular journal by providing a space where academics from a variety of backgrounds and positions may utilise an interdisciplinary approach. It is our position that through an interdisciplinary approach to media and culture some of the most novel approaches to understanding this relationship can occur. The studies collected represent journeys, experiments, and what we would like to offer as possible innovations in the study of media and culture from, or influenced by, an anthropological perspective.
Introduction: the stakes of whiteness studies
(Wiley Blackwell, 2009-04) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
An introduction to a series of essays about racism and whiteness in the U.S. Included are information on anthropology's contribution to critical whiteness studies, the complexity by which whiteness in its various manifestations intersects with other identity formations, the continued strength of anthropological sensibilities in relation to the interrogation of interpretive repertoires of social life and their entanglement with rhetoric/realities of race, and a critique of racism in the U.S.
Picturing addiction: book review of Righteous dopefiend
(Wiley Blackwell, 2012-10) Durington, Matthew Slover; Demyan, Natalie; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
Book review for Righteous Dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg, published by University of California Press in 2009.
Conference review: AnthropologyCon 2017
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2018) Collins, Samuel Gerald; Durington, Matthew Slover; Gonzalez-Tennant, Edward; Lorenc, Marc; Mizer, Nick; Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
AnthropologyCon 2017 transpired across multiple sites at the annual American Anthropology Association meeting in Washington, DC. The first event included a workshop on “Anthropology of/through Games” on Thursday afternoon, November 30, where participants learned about, brainstormed on, designed, and prototyped table-top games under the tutelage of Dr. Anatasia Salter, a game designer and games scholar from the University of Central Florida. In the second event, workshop participants and other interested attendees played games at the “#AnthropologyCon Salon” on Saturday afternoon, December 2, including a couple of the table-top games prototyped during the first workshop. Finally, participants adjourned to the Board Room, a nearby gaming pub in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC, to play card games and role-playing games (Figure 1). In lieu of a single-authored review of AnthropologyCon, the organizers have asked themselves key questions about their goals and future plans.
Divergent and similar experiences of 'gating' in South Africa: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town
(Springer Nature, 2008) Lemanski, Charlotte; Landman, Karina; Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
The last 20 years has witnessed an explosion not only in the growth of private residential territories throughout the world, but also in the literature addressing them. The majority of research is centred on experiences in the United States and Latin America (although studies elsewhere are increasing) and suffers from a tendency to homogenise the processes and consequences of gating as synonymous whether experienced in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City or São Paulo. Whilst axiomatic to state the unlikelihood of identical trends in such differing contexts, the absence of such a statement in the literature is significant. This paper addresses the social and spatial phenomenon of residential gated communities in three of South Africa’s major cities: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Detailed background and discussion regarding the development and experience of ‘gating’ in each city is analysed, emphasising the uniqueness of each city’s gating experience. These indications, that gating is not a universal experience despite some common themes, serve to counter the homogenous discourse in both popular and academic parlance throughout the world and within South Africa. In addition, particular concerns related to the growth of residential forms based on exclusion and privatisation within the South African context, are considered. In essence, we conclude that while ‘gating’ may be an individually rational decision in the context of South Africa’s growing crime, its collective consequences produce a divided city, at odds with post-apartheid ideals of unity and equality.
Race, space and place in suburban Durban: an ethnographic assessment of gated community environments and residents
(Springer, 2006) Durington, Matthew Slover; Towson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
This paper explores gated community culture and development in the suburbs of North Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Using perspectives from the anthropology of space and place as a theoretical and methodological framework, ethnographic fieldwork in one community in this area explores the cultural reasoning behind the movement to a fortified suburban enclave in South Africa by problematizing why, in a newly democratic society based on an ethos of desegregation, do individuals feel the need to segregate themselves along class and racial lines in fortified developments in a fashion reminiscent of homeland demarcation during apartheid? And, is the movement to gated communities within post-apartheid South Africa solely a white cultural and class phenomenon? While these questions are necessary, and perhaps commonsensical in terms of the unique social history of South Africa, research also attempts to complicate these lines of inquiry to apprehend the cultural reasoning and lifestyles of gated community residents to move past racial and class stereotypes and delve into the complex culture of these environments and the different rationalizations that individuals work with to justify their surroundings.
Baltimore steel stories
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2015-11) Durington, Matthew Slover; Collins, Samuel Gerald; Rines, Cameron; Towson University. Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
The article offers information on the efforts to chronicle the economic and personal changes people have endured in Baltimore, Maryland, to make sense of their lives and represent the contradictions of capitalism which resulted in the media project entitled "Anthropology by the Wire." Topics include the fallout from the closure of one of the last remaining steel plants in the U.S., the contradictions within capitalist logic, and the structural violence that emerges from neoliberal practices.
Multimodality: an invitation
(American Anthropological Association, 2017-01-12) Collins, Samuel Gerald; Durington, Matthew Slover; Collins, Samuel Gerald; Towson University. Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice

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