Here’s an overview of Chapter 2 from my book, Mindful Ethnography: Mind, Heart and Activity for Transformative Social Research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH7a98OJnOc&t=2s.  As with the other chapter summaries, it is set to music composed by Andrés Orellana (Abstract Apathy). This chapter takes us to the first day of a new field enterprise and offers mindful ways of entering a… keep reading →

  Here is a link to a blog about a new project I have been conducting since May (with Dr. Priscilla Liu and advanced graduate student Sophia Ángeles) – following the experiences of 33 families across the U.S. as we move through this global pandemic.  The project is part of a 10-country study (that includes Chile,… keep reading →

May I be a proud mama for a moment? I am filled with so many feelings as I contrast my personal joy with the pain I see in the world around me, and it’s all blurring together; I hope you will indulge me in sharing both. First, I’m brimming with admiration at the hard work… keep reading →

As part of my fall sabbatical, I had the opportunity to visit Tlatempo, Mexico, a small town in the hills above Cuernavaca that was partly destroyed in the recent earthquake. About half the houses in the town were located directly on an earthquake fault, and they were reduced to rubble. The community school also had crumbled…. keep reading →

In my last blog I had promised to begin unpacking a series of seeming  tensions between a “critical” stance (i.e. focused on naming and changing power relations in the world) and a more “spiritual” one (i.e. focused on compassion, love and acceptance). I don’t have it in me to do this right now. I’m not feeling balanced… keep reading →

Note: I’m blogging because it feels like something I can do in the face of the crises unfolding all around us, not because I think words are necessarily the medicine we most need right now.  But it helps me to have some sense of purpose, something that I hope could be helpful to others in… keep reading →

I’m re-posting my “word gap” essay that appeared on the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-faulstich-orellana/a-different-kind-of-word-_b_10030876.html here, as part of an effort to get alternative perspectives on this “gap” out into the world.  Google the term “word gap” and you get a slew of websites that treat the concept unproblematically, assuming and reinforcing deficit views. At the same time,… keep reading →

I was recently awarded the John J. Gumperz Lifetime Achievement Award from the Language and Social Processes SIG of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). I am sharing here the acceptance speech I gave, reflecting on my own journey in the field of language and social processes, and imagining the future. The words “honored and… keep reading →

There’s another question that has been nagging me this summer: Why travel?   Perhaps I don’t have to convince readers of this blog of the value of travel. There are already a gazillion blogs on the topic, offering 10 or 13 or 17 or 25+ reasons to leave the comfort of our homes. But why get… keep reading →

In the past ten years or so, in my life outside Academia, I have delved into a course of independent study: a search for a more heart- and spirit-centered way of thinking than the one that predominates within the walls of the Ivy Tower, or in the modern western world. (Like many before me, I… keep reading →