In his book “Body and Soul”, Loic Wacquant discusses the way he approached his research on boxing and the ‘universe’ around it:
“The other virtue of an approach based on participant observation (which in this case, is better characterized as an “observant participation”) in a run-of-the-mill gym is that the materials thus produced do not suffer from the “ecological fallacy” that affects most available studies and accounts of the Manly art. Thus none of the statements reported here were expressly solicited, and the behaviors described are those of the boxer in his “natural habitat”, not the dramatized and highly codified (re)presentation that he likes to give of himself in public, and that journalistic reports and novels retranslate and magnify according to their specific canons.” (Wacquant 2004:6)
Part of ‘being there’ is to engage people in a more natural setting. More natural than say, sitting directly in front of a microphone. The day to day interactions can ‘correct’ or balance out representations based on ‘solicited questions’. Boxers, he argues, play up to stereotypes when interviewed (surveys won’t cut it, he is pushing ethnography to sociologists). His engaged long term participation allowed him another position – that of the apprentice. As an apprentice, there is less emphasis on general ‘otherness’ which avoids numerous issues of representation. He is a boxer, not an academic studying boxing from ‘afar’. Also a key point is that people can be represented, and can represent themselves, differently in the context of public media.
Applying these ideas to this research project – and to other ethnographic studies done online, we can ask, “is the blogsphere both public and natural?” A well disciplined ethnographer might argue that it is impossible to observe online interactions in person, without invading their homes and watching them type. Who are they? How old? What gender? Without knowing these things the interactions will lack necessary context. Following Wacquant’s argument that people represent themselves differently in public media, we can also ask what ways people represent themselves differently online. [link to studies on identity formation online]
This ties in to my chapter on “new ways of speaking”, and on knowing ones audience. I found I represented myself quite strangely on an academic list serv. Writing to hundreds of Ph.D’s somehow motivated me to write very differently, with more attitude, than I might normally. The language I used, call it pretentious, changed and to date I can barely re-read it.
Similarly, when I first started the blog, I would allow myself to comment on other peoples blogs more freely. The comment’s I would leave would be immediate gut reactions to posts. Sometimes I’d just be trying to make a joke, some stupid one-liner. And guess what, later on it stayed there as a stupid joke. It would have been fine in passing, but dumb jokes stick around forever in the blogsphere.
On many of the academic listservs I participate on, emotional outbursts frequently occur. I was relieved to see other people embarrassing themselves as much as I had, and eventually I got used to it, realizing we are all human beings who spazz out, act irrational, miss our morning coffee etc. Being able to send messages instantly means that those spazzy emotional outbursts are bound to get archived. So be it. Does this change the way I present myself? Absolutely. Can I avoid future embarrassment online? I doubt it. It’s a different place, but it’s still real life. I have no doubt that after going through such experiences, that online actions are every bit as real and embodied as offline ones.
Going back to Wacquant’s introduction, he discusses the first chapters goals:
“A reflection on an experience of apprenticeship in progress, this first part of the book pursues a triple objective. The first is to contribute precise and detailed ethnographic data, produced by means of direct observation and intensive participation, on a social universe that is all the more unknown for being the object of widely disseminated representations.”
I am an apprentice anthropologist, a student-researcher if you will, engaging myself online. Cultural anthropology is widely mis recognized, misinterpreted, and basically misunderstood outside the discipline. Anthropology bloggers are a new public face of anthropology, (as are the Human Terrain military anthropologists). That cultural anthropology is not well understood reflects a poor relationship between mass media and anthropologists. Perhaps anthropologists were irrelevant and uninteresting, or perhaps they were ignored because they were saying something unpopular. Thankfully Anthropology bloggers are playing a role in re-representing anthropology in the mass media, as the chapter, “Human Terrain System meet the Blogsphere” will detail.
The blogsphere is so widely disseminated, that it too can ‘mis-represent’. The blogsphere is filled with unedited drafts, drunken rants, emotional outbursts, passionate engagement, and yes bias. Already I am guilty of misrepresentation to some extent. When I blogged Johannes Fabian’s conference at Concordia, who would have guessed I would dominate Google’s index for a period of at least three weeks. As one discussion among many its contribution would be great, but as the only discussion available it can cause trouble. In other words, you need to be tapping into a crowd.
[link to online community and personal networks -> "tapping into wisdom of the crowds", and filtering information].
[moving all these undeveloped crap posts to Diigo if it works out]
References:
Wacquant, Loic. 2006. Body & Soul. Oxford University Press.
25 Oct
More Commentary on “Ethnography as Commentary”
Posted by o.w. in Doing ethnography online, What is anthropology?. Tagged: blogging research, Ethnography as Commentary, is anthropology a science?, johannes fabian, online ethnography. 7 Comments
Will anthropology find renewed passion and direction with the help of the internet? According to Johannes Fabian, yes it will, and obviously I agree!
Johannes Fabian’s recent book, Ethnography as Commentary, sets the stage for an internet invigorated ethnography. In it he argues that the co-presence of author and reader, text and commentary, will develop into an ethnographic genre. His study, like mine, is based on the idea that internet technologies change the way anthropology is being presented. Specifically, he focuses on the use of internet archives and the ability to have a group of interested people interact with a text.
He provides valuable support to my own attempts to create an “ethnographic text” in a public space to promote collaboration and feedback. I’m not sure how close the discussions on this blog are to the kinds of commentary Fabian seeks, but I think it’s pretty darn close! He also pushes the idea that ethnographic research should be confrontational and engaged. I’ve been playing with a confrontational/engaged style and I’ve found it works to bring out discussion. It also lets me be honest.
I hope this research project will contribute to the “ethnography as commentary” genre. It can build on what Fabian has presented by showing how one can use a blog to develop the kinds of commentary, interactions, and confrontations that Fabian seeks.
When Fabian gave a talk at Concordia, I did my best to write it up and give some critique. Of course, having not read the book I could have been less critical of some of his points for I now have to dedicate a post to correcting my errors!
I said,
“So without having read the book, I am a bit disappointed that his talk was oblivious to so much that is going on online.”
and in the book he says,
“One could also point out that setting up virtual archives can be a step toward meeting not only demands and expectations to “return” our research results to the people we study but to initiate discussion of our work as well as additions to the corpus. That documents created by blogs and chat groups devoted to themes anthropology is interested in deserve our attention is by now widely recognized; Internet based ethnography has become accepted as a legitimate alternative or compliment of, traditional fieldwork…” (p122)
While trying to put together a decent proposal for this research project, it was made clear to me that I needed to defend how the research will be “ethnographic” [I'm in a program where it MUST be ethnography]. Can I just quote Fabian on this one when asked how online research can be ethnographic?
Further, I can critique myself using Fabian’s words:
“… [the] audience may read a commentary such as this one without consulting the text on the internet. All this can put a damper on the enthusiasm for the “new kind of presence” of ethnographic texts that made me conduct this experiment.” (p122)
Or in my case, without consulting the book. At least I’m committed to correcting my errors, and now that I’ve read the book I realize just how well Fabian set the stage for justifying online ethnography to more “traditional” anthropologists. However I didn’t get much out of the online archive… The book’s main purpose is to discuss how such archives can reinvigorate ethnography, and less about the actual ethnographic text he put online. In this way, I found the book wandered a little and the short linguistic discussion really flew by me. Perhaps if I had a stronger linguistics background it would have been more grabbing.
Finally to all my teachers who continue to define anthropology as a science, I will from now on quote Fabian, where he discusses the difference between an archive and a database. He writes
“Databases, conceived and established long before the advent of the computer and the Internet, belong to the conceptual arsenal of a positivist and essentially ahistorical (some would call it “modernist”) view of anthropology as a science, that to put it mildly, is no longer generally accepted.” (p122)
take that science nuts! [and for those not aware of the debate, it's not about science being good or bad, but about imposing scientific goals and methods where they aren't needed and don't belong. It's also about using scientific rhetoric to turn opinion into fact, camouflaging bias. And it's about science bent anthropologists working against/blocking other means of inquiry and presentation. Woops, I need to buff up my answer to this question someday. Possible future blog post...]