Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of the partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-598.
Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. The Interpretation of Cultures (p. 3-30). New York: Basic.
Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and Truth (pp. 1-67). Boston: Beacon.
Marcus, G. & Fischer, M. (1986). A Crisis of representation in the human sciences. Anthropology as Cultural Critique (pp. 445-452). US: The University of Chicago Press.
Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In Richard G. Fox [Ed.] Recapturing Anthroplogy: Working in the Present (pp. 466-479). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
The authors of this week’s articles all address questions of epistemology, or how we come to know what we consider knowledge. Geertz, Rosaldo, and Marcus and Fischer approach this question from an anthropological perspective, while Abu-Lughod and Haraway add a feminist bent to similar theoretical claims. The scholars argue for a rethinking of classical approaches to ethnography, and shared issues of power, objectivity, subject position, culture, and dialogue bring these works in conversation with one another.
Haraway, writing in the elegant and metaphoric fashion we would expect from the Cyborg Manifesto author, questions our understanding of objectivity. She initially explores the dichotomy discourse of objectivity over which feminists have struggled. The first pole of the debate is radical constructivism, or the idea that all knowledge is created through positions of power. In this version of truth, “History is a story Western culture buffs tell each other; science is a contestable text and a power field; the content is the form. Period” (p. 577). The other pole of the objectivity binary is feminist critical empiricism, which attempts to elucidate a legitimate meaning of objectivity and create a “better” account of the world. Haraway believes both of these poles have been embraced in a feminist understanding of objectivity. She proposes a new project of feminist objectivity, however, that is dependent on her concept of situated knowledge. Objectivity can only be understood in terms of embodied experience, she argues. Situated knowledge privileges partial perspectives, split identity, and the multidimensional nature of subjectivity. Epistemology must account for specificity of location and positioning, and build knowledge from the body out as opposed to from above. Perhaps most interesting is Haraway’s philosophy of engagement with her subject matter; she explains that the object of knowledge must be viewed as an active subject or agent. In this way, real world accounts are not a discovery so much as a conversation between subjects. Is objectivity, then, just another word for finding a “truth”? And if so, are “truths” or “realities” of situated knowledges concepts that may be politically mobilized? Or is Haraway’s notion of situated knowledge just a middle ground (recognizing construction and reality) that ultimately leaves us nowhere?
Geertz, Rosaldo and Marcus and Fischer represent reactions to classical approaches of anthropology and its primary method, ethnography. Classical anthropology, as Rosaldo traces, has traditionally viewed culture as a static entity with structures and meanings that are to be unpacked through the imperialist project of Othering, ethnographic discourse. We have, however, reached an academic epoch in history in which these fixed notions of culture and their corresponding paradigms are being refashioned and reconstituted in anthropology’s new experimental moment (Marcus and Fischer). All authors problematize the notion of generalized metanarratives used to explain and predict behaviour within an object culture.
Geertz introduces us to the notion of the “thick description,” as the purpose of ethnography. This approach recognizes the impossibility of separating description from interpretation because all data is constructed by the ethnographer. This notion resonates with Haraway’s metaphor of visual processing; in both accounts, a reality is necessarily processed through seeing or writing and transformed into a situated knowledge or a thick description. Observation, recording and analysis, Geertz argues, cannot be separated. Furthermore, findings are contextually complex and specific, thus theory must penetrate the immediate observational level to determine structures of signification and import. Ultimately, he believes cultural analysis to be “intrinsically incomplete” and “essentially contestable.”
While Rosaldo agrees with Geertz that we need to complicate notions of fixed cultural patterns, he also questions a complete emphasis on thick description and thorough interpretation. Sometimes, he argues, we need to take conversations by the “force” of face value. Using the example of the Ilongot headhunters, he explains the importance of positionality of the ethnographer; it was not until his wife died that he fully appreciated the “rage through grief” justification for killing others. A corollary of this perspective on positionality is the necessity of recognizing emotion. Rosaldo notes that assuming a detached position (that is, divorcing the ethnographer from the subject as much as one believes this can be done) has the tendency to explain away emotion and thus not account for primary reasons behind human actions. Cultural rituals and patterns cannot explain the significance of all human behaviour. How might these current anthropological debates be similar or different to those occurring within cultural studies?
Rosaldo also emphasizes the necessity of critically engaging in dialogue with the subjects of research. Often, reciprocal reflections can shed significant light on the way “we” (as ethnographers, researchers, etc.) live our lives. Marcus and Fischer extend this line of thought when they note that cultural critique should be balanced and be understood as an intersection of different cultures, in which each constructs a new understanding of the other. I wonder, however, what the potential is for this “conversation” to occur between equal powers? Given the traditionally imperialist project of ethnography, can these dialogues emancipate the Other through discourse that has been typically Orientalist?
Abu-Lughod says no. She believes that the very notion of culture creates discourses of difference between the researching self and the object of knowledge Other, which serve to subjugate the latter. Culture has merely replaced race in Orientalist discourse that defines the self through the Other. She states that dialogic approaches are still dominated by the institutional resources and the political, economic, and social position of the powerful West. Is her case against polyvocal texts more compelling than the arguments for dialogues promoted by Geertz, Rosaldo, and Marcus and Fischer? Abu-Lughod shares Haraway’s notion of split selfhood to explain how feminist and halfie (that is, those of mixed national or cultural identity) anthropologists occupy a positionality at the intersection of systems of difference. Because of this positionality however, they are in an advantageous position to advocate for the importance of partial truths, a notion consistent with Haraway and Geertz. She states that because the very idea of culture creates systems of difference, we must learn to “write against culture.” She mobilizes Geertz’s notion of writing as fiction to advocate for “ethnographies of the particular.” This methodology and theoretical perspective recognizes the manifestation of long term, extra-local processes within the local and specific context.
Conversation and dialogue are of central import to these texts. Is Haraway’s notion of engagement with the world as active agent the same as the dialogues between researcher and researched that the other authors promote? Are these categories (of researcher and researched) even valid anymore? Can Abu-Lughod’s writing against culture be reconciled with the other authors’ expansion of the notion of culture or Haraway’s situated knowledge? If so, in what ways may this be achieved? Can we even expect a singular notion of culture in a postmodern era such as our own? Finally, how has an understanding of these issues changed your relationship with the subject matter you wish to study?
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The idea that objectivity can be achieved through both social constructivism and the pursuit of some sense of reality seems only possible in the realm of a fantastic piece of science fiction. Thank goddess for Donna Haraway who not only reconciles this paradox but I think also elucidates the possibility of research within cultural studies. Haraway puts forth the notion of situated knowledge, the ability for the researcher to locate oneself within a particular phenomenon of interest in order to gain insight into its meanings, the ‘particular and specific embodiment” of a researchable experience (582). Situating knowledge to the researcher’s particular vision and place enables the researcher to lend (a limited) meaning to an experience while maintaining the possibility for that experience to be shared and critiqued. Haraway argues that meaning is necessary to develop an awareness of a particular idea so that awareness can grow and be improved upon.
ReplyDeleteWe saw evidence of this type of insight within Rosaldo’s account of his experience amongst the Ilongot headhunters. While Rosaldo’s ethnography may have initially been methodical and empirically ‘othering’, his personal experience with death and the Ilongots’ mocking reaction to his ethnography gave him a shared insight and better understanding of the sameness between cultures as much as the difference. To answer your question Carolyn, situated knowledge can be politically mobilizing. Even though, the headhunters’ rituals were misconstrued by the media, Rosaldo’s reflections of his ethnographic experience are evidence that assumptions of the ‘other’ can be affected and changed by reciprocal insight and shared experience.
Does this form of situated knowledge then not mirror the objectives in researcher reflexivity? Recently, I have struggled with exactly how as a researcher I will be able place myself within my project that would allow for some semblance of objectivity, or at least integrity. While Haraway notes that polar views claim objectivity, I do not believe that either approach to research is truly impartial or detached but climbing up the middle of the pole as Haraway would come to symbolize, seems like the most viable means of best research practice. To place oneself along with the object of study and to maintain a ‘passionate detachment’, an openness and willingness to explore alternate viewpoints, seems like the most ideal location for a cultural study.
And just when I thought things were starting to fall into place, Abu-Lughod suggests that we should ‘write against culture”, more specifically eliminate the idea of the subject as the ‘Other’ by valourizing culture in it’s multiplicity as opposed to criticizing it for its difference. Abu-Lughod considers the notion of admiring Muslim devoutness to religion in respect to Western materialism as an example of how we can turn difference on its head. In one of my undergraduate child studies classes we read parts of Said’s Orientalism and discussed how children and adolescents are ‘Othered’ given their subordinated status within many societies. Considering that a few of our classmates will be doing research with children and youth, can you help me create an idea of how we ight go about valourizing the “Othered” child?
Jess, I wish that I'd not already composed my blog when I read your post: I am very keen to discuss the issues that arise when working with young people.
ReplyDeleteSince we started our discussion last week wondering how, precisely, we were to define “objectivity,” I was really excited when I began reading Haraway’s essay. I’ve been struggling as of late with accounts—anthropologic and otherwise—of “traditional medicine” and “Indigenous knowledge” among Zulu people. One recent article I’ve been reading states that “Indigenous belief systems are based on one of a variety of different worldviews, from the rational to the animistic” (Liddell et al., 2006). Embedded in this quotation is, I believe, a good example of the problem in anthropology that Abu-Lughod articulates in the section of her chapter entitled “Ethnographies of the particular”: namely, that since anthropologists are in the business of textual representation, their writing is at least partly responsible for the extent to which people in studied communities appear as “other” (p. 473). I suppose that it hardly goes without saying the term “Indigenous belief systems” sets up a category posited as somehow different from any other, non-indigenous belief system. Also, as Abu-Lughod stresses (following from Appadurai’s insight about “natives,” (p. 471)), indigenousness is itself a form of entrapment. The term is, after all, employed figuratively to mean “innate” (OED, 1b). What I notice most of all about the above-cited quotation, however, is the linguistic trick that denies any equation between “rational” and “animistic.” They are presented as polar opposites in a range of possible worldviews; it is precisely this (presumably commonsensical) assumption that Haraway challenges by suggesting that an acceptance of, and a relationship with, the Trickster may in fact be the best hope for objectivity. I’d love to hear what everyone thinks of the final movement of Haraway’s essay, and this scary, but elating possibility.
After all, what is at stake is the definition of objectivity. When you ask, Carolyn, if “objectivity” is just another word for “truth,” I notice that you lean towards a definition of the latter as meaning reality, something actual, genuine. Truth can also denote accuracy, especially in representation. It can also mean a type of mental apprehension. Knowledge. I look forward to talking more about conceptions of truth and truth claims, and to get a better sense of what you mean in your question. To me, objectivity for Haraway is explicitly about what it is always implicitly about: the relationship with, and attributes of, an object. Detachment is actually a contextualized relationship; impartiality is actually an always necessarily partial view (and I mean this in both senses of the term); unlocatability is positionality. This epistemology calls for knowledge that is not a product, but rather a process, and I think that this point is worth keeping in mind when we think about whether (to quote Carolyn) situated knowledges are concepts that may be politically mobilized. “Embodiment is significant prosthesis” (p. 588), Haraway writes, and I am reminded that prosthesis indicates a defective or absent part: both of these things are true of specifically privileging constructions of knowledge. A prosthetic devise offers a wonderfully impermanent, contingent, mediated contact with the world via an enhancement to the mechanism already in use. Sounds potentially political to me...
I think Carolyn has hit the nail on the head in her final question:
ReplyDelete“…How has an understanding of these issues changed your relationship with the subject matter you wish to study?”
I see this as the goal of writing on epistemology and of the self-reflexive lens utilized by each of these authors. This reflexivity is marked by the breakdown of the dichotomy of self/other. In feminist studies (Haraway and Abu-Laugod) away from “…masculinist scientists and philosophers replete with grants and laboratories,” i.e. the binary of man/woman (Haraway 1988:575); in the case of anthropology (Geertz, Rosaldo, Marcus and Fischer) away from the role of the “Lone Ethnographer,” i.e. the binary of anthropologist/native (Rosaldo 1993:30-31) and towards a critical perspective (Ladson-Billings), such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), critical legal studies or other countercultural endeavors (against hegemonic normative frameworks such as patriarchy, the ‘Occident’ and heteronormativity to name a few).
I found that the final (recommended) piece was what finally brought to light the tools in which an individual (us!) can possibly implement these strategies. Ladson-Billings introduces theories of critique as a means by which the ‘self’ can be interrogated through the embodiment of a ‘double consciousness,’ which is the combination of the self/other – the “halfie” from Abu-Lughod’s piece. For example, a major critique of second wave feminist initiatives was the exclusion – which some would call a ‘necessary fiction’ of strategic essentialism (Spivak) – of the ‘othered’ female experience. This ‘other’ includes not only black politics but also the lived-experiences of the working-class female, and all other minority women who were disinterested in the white middle-class experience with the ‘chains’ of domesticity (Friedan’s ‘the problem that had no name’); but nonetheless felt their subordinate position within mainstream society. It is therefore the recognition of a privileged position – often being the ‘othered’ viewpoint, which becomes necessary in the social sciences.
When we discuss ‘truth’ I think we are discussing ‘reality,’ and furthermore ‘objectivity.’ Because of these unattainable goals of the Enlightenment era, I believe subjectivity is necessary in research, otherwise are we not just deceiving our ‘selves’? It is stated best by Ladson-Billings, “My research is part of my life and my life is a part of my research” (2000:268). I, personally, would never have gotten into disability studies had I not sat in a wheelchair, and tried to get around Queen’s Campus after my surgery – so why do we need to strive for objectivity? I do agree with Jess that we must allow for flexibility, and avoid the dogmatism of aligning ourselves solely with one position, but isn’t it our responsibility as researchers/theorists/ethnographers etc. to both comprehend and engage with these identities (of self/other)? Furthermore is this not the premise of the ‘post-modern’ condition that we are to embody the role of the ‘public intellectual’ versus the archaic ‘armchair theorist.’ In sum, I believe, it is through this privileged emic that we can gain a more nuanced understanding of the cultures in which we are immersed.
Great connections by the way Carolyn!
Last week, we spoke with a certain uneasiness regarding how to insert ourselves and our experience into the work “we” do. I think many of us were hesitant to undertake such an endeavour, fearing its potential to be essentialist, self-serving, and self-referential. These reservations, I think, have run throughout the term as we are all seemingly struggling with the ideological and practical foundations of truth claims, positionality, and objectivity. Last week, I was somewhat pessimistic regarding these topics: I think many of you will agree with me, however, that the epistemological critiques presented by Haraway, Geertz, Roslado, Marcus & Fishcer, and Abu-Lughod, provide a more encouraging approach.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn, you asked if objectivity is synonymous with truth, and if political mobilization can be achieved through situated knowledges. I think what your questions gets at it is the crux of Haraway’s article. Haraway (1988) argues that objectivity only exists in partial, situated perspectives. Through a feminist lens, she sees objectivity as a means to approaching research through localized and limited aims so as to embody knowledge and to operate against of unlocatable, generalized knowledge claims. She argues that “we” should strive to make knowledge claims while critiquing our practice by recognizing our own “semiotic technologies for making meaning”. Haraway elaborates: “We need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meaning and bodies that have a chance for life” (p.580). It is here, I think were objectivity and truth intersect, and hold potential for political intervention. It is through such objectivity, via situated knowledges, that contestation, deconstruction, and transformations of “systems of knowledge and ways of seeing” can be practiced and politicized.
All of the authors we read this week, in one way or another, spoke of the need for “rich” or “thick” description that would allow for comprehensive, yet localized, truth claims. Haraway (1988) argues that the goal of many feminists is a “successor science” that offers a richer and better account of the world. This approach encompasses a reflexive relation to our own and others’ practices that make up all positions. Similarly, Geertz (1973) argues that ethnographers seek “thick descriptions” that convey a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, that one must try to grasp and explain. Ultimately, the point of such subjectivity, as Geertz argues is to contribute to the enlargement of the universe of human discourse, to bring a voice to differing and localized truth claims.
Finally, in the bit of space I have remaining I was hoping to discuss Rosaldo’s piece. For me, this was a better example of how to insert your experiences into your work than what we read last week. However, I couldn’t help but questions what this means for those who don’t share similar experiences to the groups that we research. While Rosaldo (1993) recognized that his previous work was problematic because he did not understand the true experience of grief, is this/must this always be the case?
Carolyn, you ask how some of the current anthropological debates that are unfolding in this week’s articles are similar or different to those in cultural studies? My first question is: are these debates current? This week’s articles were written 10 to 30 years ago and I question whether the issues represented remain prominent? I don’t question whether a certain degree of objectivity remains important to current-day researchers, but according to Denzin and Lincoln (2005), the concerns during the historical moments in which these articles were written were quite different from the present historical moment.
ReplyDeleteComing back to your question on cultural studies; the themes that emerged this week, such as power, agency, subjectivity, and context, are common to cultural studies as well as anthropology and feminist studies, so I assume that the issues faced by the differing disciplines are similar. One example of the similarity between anthropology and cultural studies is in Rosaldo’s (1993) article, which states that with anthropology’s transformation from its classic form, the importance of understanding domination/resistance and emancipation came to the forefront. He also states that power, politics and the goal of creating change emerged with this transformation.
As to whether similar strategies for addressing objectivity exist amongst this week’s authors, I would say they do. Both Haraway (1988) and Rosaldo (1993) discuss the need go beyond reflexivity and to seek new points of view in order to gain greater knowledge. Haraway (1988) calls this “passionate detachment” and later refers to the importance of “subjugated standpoints” to obtain more accurate explanations of the world. Similarly, Rosaldo (1993) promotes conversations (as does Geertz, 1973) between the researcher and the subject in order for the researcher to gain greater insight and to learn from their subjects. In her aim to write against culture, Abu-Lughod (1991) specifically isolates ethnographies as responsible for “othering” their subjects, however, her goals are similar to those of Rosaldo (1993) and Haraway (1988). All three of the researchers aim to eliminate the divide between subject and researcher in order to diminish “othering” and the power it creates. Although Rosaldo (1993) and Haraway (1988) both address the importance of taking into account the “positioning” of the researcher, Haraway (1988) further develops the concept through her description of embodiment and the importance of understanding your subjects’ lives from the view of the body “versus the view from above, from nowhere” (589). A final similarity is between Rosaldo (1993) and Abu-Lughod (1991). Abu-Lughod (1991) criticizes the generalizations of ethnographies and pushes for more specific studies on individuals. Although Abu-Lughod (1991) specifically criticizes Rosaldo, in this week’s readings show otherwise when he states that ethnographies must study specific cases rather than aiming to make generalizations (1993).
I appreciate this week’s “tricks” for further honing my research skills and for providing ways to help uncover the “truth” or objectivity; however, I agree with Steph (and love the quote she uses from Ladson-Billings) that there is always going to be a degree of subjectivity to our research, and that subjectivity adds to the meaning. Ending with a bit of advice from Geertz (1973), this happens to be my mother’s ongoing advice: all you can do is your best under the circumstances. After all, we are not the only ones who bring subjectivity to our research. Going back to the cultural circuit (Johnson et al., 2006), and as alluded to in a few of our readings, the reader also brings their own context and interpretation to what we produce.
In answering Carolyn’s final question, first, I was intrigued by Abu-Lughod’s (1991) feminist-“halfie” stance, and also her notion of “writing against culture.” Because traditionally it has been the goal of “Anthropologists,” according to Abu-Lughod, “‘to make sense of differences’” (467), to develop “cultural wholes” (Rosaldo, 1993, 30) that have been not only normalizing but also totalizing, anthropological works have often been criticized and critiqued. As a research method/ology, then, anthropology has underwent some obvious transformations since the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteAn obvious theme in the readings, in past seminar discussions, and in a few of the blog comments (Carolyn, Jess, Robbie) is a concern over one’s positionality as a researcher. As important as I think it is to locate oneself and remain self-reflexive throughout one’s research, I do however also realize that some researchers should be required to do this more than others. Whereas I feel in my research it will be necessary to discuss my whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality, as examples, I would be interested in hearing or reading about the nature of others research and how and if they are finding it necessary to locate themselves and to what extent?
On the topic of self/other and researcher positionality, Haraway (1988) writes, “Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent ... Indeed, coming to terms with the agency of the “objects” studied is the only way to avoid gross error and false knowledge” (592). [This notion seems to parallel Howard Becker’s suggestion last week that we should ask “How?” rather than “Why?” social phenomena happen.] Is this a more embodied approach to research, though? Does that even make sense to anyone? I ask this question because I find myself wondering how others perceive the Cartesian dichotomy to play out in everyday life. (For reference, I also found Ladson-Billings’ “I think, therefore I am” and “Ubuntu” [I am because we are] comparison interesting.)
Finally, Rosaldo (1993), speaking on behalf of anthropologists, notes, “‘we haven’t discovered any laws of culture, but we do think there are class ethnographies, really telling descriptions of other cultures” (33). In other words, the era of and the search for the “grand [cultural] theory,” the grand narrative, appears to be over (Marcus & Fischer, 1986, 8). I therefore think that we cannot expect to have a “singular notion of culture in a postmodern era,” Carolyn, to answer one of your last questions, and perhaps this is also why I found the notion of writing against culture to be so interesting.
I just wanted to make a quick response to what Max brought up in the question of the "Cartesian Self." From a sociology background I always have these three things running around in my head: seeing the strange in the familiar, the general in the particular and locating the individual in their greater social context. I think that Ladson-Billings' comparison between the individualistic conception of 'self' (as articulated by Descartes) and the collective location of self, speaks to the necessity of locating ourselves (the researchers) in our greater social context.
ReplyDeleteThough these three sociological 'goals' focus on locating the individual, the post-modern approach does indeed recognize that the researcher themselves participates in greater 'society.'
I also think Mel has brought up a good point, though Haraway has been lauded as being a post-modern scholar the anthropological pieces are quite dated, and this needs to be recognized. Then again, we never seem to be able to leave Marx and his Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1884. Though it is problematic to dictate that these pieces are 'current' they clearly articulate long standing tensions between the researcher and the 'subject' being researched.
Sorry for the late post, but epistemology is such a fascinating topic, isn’t it? I’ve been reading your posts with great interest, and there are a few things that emerge from the blog that I am definitely going to think about further.
ReplyDeleteThe importance of context and paradox.
Mel and Stephanie ask us to consider what of these readings remains relevant to our research practices today. As Geertz notes, a very useful idea that was totalizing in one temporal context may have “reached the point where it obscures a good deal more than it reveals” (p. 4). His diction is important: at one point (in time), this idea elucidates; at another, it obscures; both of these seemingly contradictory observations are true. Because context matters, elucidation and obfuscation are not mutually exclusive. How/can we resolve this paradox? Do we want to? What can we gain in exploring the boundaries of usefulness in theories and ideas? I’m thinking here of Haraway and the quotation that Robbie mentions about using modern critical theory not to deny bodies, but build meaningful ones.
The divide between researcher and object/subject.
How does the question of permeable boundaries between research and object mesh with the notion that difference is a precondition of dialogue?
I think we can usefully think about challenging the concept of culture and its differentiating effect in terms of these deconstructions: thinking back to our discussions about the academy and the public, I wonder how we can draw on Abu-Loghod’s suggestions (and the others’) in a discussion about academic culture.
The question of the reader.
If authority does not rest with the author, then again knowledge as process is an important concept to consider. No text is final and complete, which is what critics of formalism have argued for years. Should we think about how writing has a life of its own, and can we attribute agency to those textual objects?
Thick description and empathy.
With personal experience playing such a powerful role in the subjective researcher’s interpretive ability, affect and empathy step to the fore. Is empathy, however, a limited tool? What is the role of the thick description of one’s self in trying to reach the kinds of epiphany that Rosaldo describes? And this goes back to the reader and questions of reader-response: is examining affect in the self-as-reader a way to better understand connections?
Objectivity and generalization/generalizability.
If the era of the grand narrative is over, and yet the notion is mobilized still in all kinds of disciplines (i.e., epidemiology, which is better understood as disease narratives), what kinds of arguments could we make to convince all researchers of the highly contingent nature of their research? I’d like to talk more about Max’s comment regarding some researchers needing to position themselves more than others.
How could we change the popular understanding of “objectivity” from a definition of emotionless distance to a (more neutral???) notion of the relationship between agents and objects, in which both agents are recognized as objects, and objects as agents?
Oh, the things we grapple with! I have to post this, since it’s almost eleven, but I’m really looking forward to class today!
Hey, sorry about the late post. Had some problems with my internet last night. See you soon!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading about culture and difference in Abu-Lughod’s article, I found myself struggling with the definition of culture and how it pertains to my thesis. Abu-Lughod tells us that culture involves a wide range of characteristics like “behaviors, customs, traditions, rules, plans, recipes...” She almost makes it seem like the term culture is exclusive to anthropological study by using examples like race to explain it. If “culture is the essential tool for making other,” then shouldn’t we all be using culture to separate ourselves from the subjects we plan on studying? And, if that is the case, wouldn’t the term culture take on a wider meaning?
Take for example the comparison between mine and Max’s research subjects. In his response, he showed us some attributes which distinguish himself from the other he plans on researching by relying on the traditional characteristics used to define culture. What if we widened those characteristics? For my thesis, I will be studying male adolescents who blog about their experiences being overweight online. I don’t know yet how I differ from my subjects in terms of age, race, ethnicity and socio-economic background; however, I know for certainty I am different from them in that they share the experience of struggling with weight issues and voicing their experiences to the public via the web, and I don’t. These two characteristics that they have in common, in my opinion, separate me from them. Additionally, I think that these characteristics combined can be used to classify these individuals as belonging to a culture of their own. Anyone who doesn’t share those characteristics, and who isn’t a male, or an adolescent, cannot belong to the culture, and therefore are classified as the “other.”
That being the case, I feel that as an outsider, not belonging to the culture I am studying, that I must be objective to a certain extent. I could not personally understand their specific experiences but rather I can only rely on experiences of my own that I find similar. Harraway tells us that to be objective, does not necessarily mean that we must dis-engage ourselves from the group we are studying. While Max has a list of characteristics to distinguish himself from the group he will be studying, I don’t. Prior to choosing my research topic, I didn’t notice an abundance of characteristics that separated me from the “other” I plan on studying, but rather I felt a connection between myself and the group purely based on interest and a strong desire to learn more about their experiences.
Now I find myself questioning whether or not I will be objective. From having a strong interest in the research topic, I have already formed some type of opinion on the group and therefore I sometimes find myself already judging them and theorizing without having studied them yet. On the other hand, I am the “other.” I am different from them and therefore could not truly understand their experiences. So where do I stand as a researcher?