Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Distance, Spatiality, and Disciplinarity
So I'm reading here in James Clifford's book Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century about a slow dissolution of the borders between, on one hand, "real" "academic" ethnography, that is, field-work professionals collecting stories that are outside the researcher's purview (and comfort zone) and presenting/processing them for use by others - and engaging informants/interviewees in familiar places - "communities one wants not to leave" (84). The idea of distance - physical, economy, emotion, ethnicity, ethnic, age - is an intriguing one; do we need distance in order to be effective fieldworkers (why is it called, after all, fieldwork? We leave the comforts of home and go "out" into the "field" and bring something "back"?)? In traditional academic discourse, the home-based researcher - the local historian, the informant - is often marginalized and separated from the discipline that s/he is really central to. Why is it, then, that local informants become "subjects" for observation rather than bona fide experts in their own right? Kamela Visweswaran makes an interesting argument for calling "fieldwork" "homework" for this particular reason - specifically with respect to emphases on women's domesticity. How can we engage these issues of center/margin, home/field, and informant/interviewer in a meaningful way?
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3 comments:
"Field work", consists of in some ways leaving your home/school, and getting your hands dirty. It doesn't have to always fit that mold. Many people tend to learn best when outside of their "comfort zone". This can be speaking up as a shy person, using technology as someone unfamiliar with it/uncomfortable using it, or talking to a stranger as an inward person. All of these scenarios can still take place within the home or school setting. Stepping outside of that comfort zone is in itself "distance".
Field work is when you go out into the "field" wether this field be an actual field or your neighbors house. it is when you explore alternatives methods of study then what you are used to. our informants become subnjects rather than experts becasue they may not be experts they could just be a local "joe schome" what thinks that what he is saying is correct when really it is personal opinion not fact.
Fieldwork is going out into the field. You are leaving your sense of home or work, the place where you feel comfortable, and you are going into the unknown.
Local informants becoming "subjects", seems a little harsh. I feel as if you call someone even an informant then you are calling them, a spy, fbi, something that is degrading. Although its useful information from them, I wouldn't call them either informants or subjects. Subject as in a test subject, subject in a result. I don't think they are experts, because they are only telling there portion. They could be an expert liar and make up the stories there telling. Who really knows?
Meaningful? Not sure really how meaningful it can be with using the word subject and informant, but present the questions in a "could you tell me about..." rather than, "why did you do this?. Just act relaxed and comfortable.. but then that goes back to going out of your comfort zone...
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