Speaking of Personal Space

Yahoo had an article today linked from The Daily Beast website on the after effects of the Haitian earthquake. The article, "Haiti's Rape Crisis," provides insight into how physical space can be a contributing factor in the rise of sexual violence in Haiti. With so many people out of their homes, jammed into makeshift camps, a loss of personal space and erasure of the barriers one home provides, is it a surprise that such a societal injustice is exacerbated? Especially when we consider Liesl Gerntholtz's point that "Violence against women was a problem in Haiti long before the earthquake, with rape only recognized as a crime in 2005. The earthquake has only increased the dangers for women and girls, though, and they will live with that increased risk for many months, if not years, to come." Gerntholtz's belief that the increased risk may stay for years only emphasizes how important a role physical space plays in a culture. The lack of housing and a poor economy are going to leave these women stuck in camps more vulnerable to what seems to be an epidemic within Haiti's social structure.

Bringing Secondary Source Knowledge to Field Work

As you begin your primary research, doing field work, you are essentially taking on the role of amateur cultural anthropologists. As we go through our field work, it is important to integrate an academic/discipline-specific vocabulary that can (and should) help a researcher look more fully at their subject-culture.

For instance, knowing the what "proxemics" is and how the word is applied to one's observation of their culture can deepen your inquiry into non-verbal communication tactics. Click this sentence to a link to "proxemics" and other cultural vocabulary terms.

Proxemics is a subset of "Paralanguage," which also includes "kinesics" (body language). These are three terms that you, when you find them relevant to your field work, can be used as part of your secondary source research Word Bank.

For instance, going to the Columbia College library's on-line database and searching "proxemics" leads to about 83 articles. Sifting through the list, one can find connections made between proxemics and texting; proxemics, gender and leadership; proxemics and gender; proxemics and architecture; even proxemics and HULA HOOPS!!!

aside: there are quite a few relevant articles to those in our course that I have found doing research practice for this course. I suggest typing in "codes", "culture" and "urban in the three fields in EBSCO on the library's on-line database.

Homework:

• First, e-mail me an article (that you found on your own and that was not given by teacher) that you are reading that deals with your own field work. It does not have to be on "proxemics" or non-verbal communication. But, I'd like to see an example of secondary sources you are using as a guide to your own critical thinking about your subject-culture.

• Read (29 pages): "Crip Walk, Villain Stroll, Pueblo Stroll: The Embodiment of Writing in African American Gang Dance," by Susan A. Phillips. Now, instead of "giving" you the handout, you are going to have to search for the article (put in title and/or author) on Columbia College Library on-line database! (Oasis will not let me upload the article, plus it gives you a chance to do source research.)

Ethics Affecting Field Work

Ethical Code Repeated (from the American Anthropological Association):

1. R-E-S-P-E-C-T at all times during of research, both in collecting data, and in writing.
2. Privacy, safety & dignity: allow informants and individuals to keep it!
3. Inform & Get Consent from "central players" you are going to for information. Clarify PRIOR to starting research whether people want to remain anonymous or not. Perhaps they can/want code names!
4. Plan to Share your research, what you wrote and how you viewed culture.

Conundrums & Quandaries of Field Work

• Boring Events: What you observe might not involve the most exciting, crazy, subversive behavior. This does not mean that you need to embellish in you writing what actually was said or happened. If the events themselves are dull, then focus on making your analysis of events interesting.

• Passing Judgment -- Good or Bad: Do you think, before even doing field work, that this might be an issue? Are you close to people, or part of the culture? Do you find the culture "weird" and that is why you want to explore it? Do find things wrong within the culture that you would like to "fix"? Do you feel people don't understand the culture and you want to show how awesome they really are? We all have these feelings! The goal, again, is to work with these feelings and not FOR them --> taking guidance from secondary source material for analytical points, again, can help you get beyond your natural inclination to become too subjective. Find a guiding principle from a professional that will allow you to look differently at your culture/subject.

• Shutting Down: Again, the most difficult thing to do during research is to maintain interest all the way through, at the same level. What are some possible reasons you have lost interest? Answer this question when you feel yourself stuck in "I don't care anymore mode." Better yet, answer this question prior to research: make some predictions about what could cause you to shut down your own interests... (As TC states, self-reflexivity is the best way out of shutting down.)

• Lack of Detail: Did you not write enough down? Did you not document your culture using a camera or video recorder? No tape recorder? Or, simply, did you not get the kind of material you thought you would get? As the examples in TC point out, the journey into the culture is just as important and invaluable to your final essay as is your actual participation. What do you have to do to enter the culture? Don't wait until you get permission or until you go to that concert. Take notes on your process. One can get invaluable material for analysis from the struggles of just getting "into" culture. Rites of passage, accessibility, outsiderness, etc.

• Oversimplifying Culture: This partially relates to the fifth and first dilemmas in TC, but mostly from years of experience. Does the culture seem to doing nothing "new"? Are they fulfilling stereotypes? Or, are they completely "different" from what you expected and what was assumed? ... Either way, this proves nothing as far as any logically-driven professional is concerned. Don't resort to sound-bite rhetoric, and watch out for this in your writing and thinking.

Critical Writing & Thinking

Consider the five conundrums above. Considering the projects and sites chosen among the students in your class, begin to discern which sites might possibly lend themselves to the complications noted above. Are there things you might do or think about in order to avoid the stated pitfalls?

Homework:

• What are your goals for first "official visit" into your culture? (Some of you may have already started field work, unofficially.)
• Who are some informants that you plan to include in your research? How do you know them, and how will you (or did you) get their permission? Why these informants?
• From a secondary source text, what is one guiding principle you plan on applying to your primary research -- at least your first official "field work" visits?

Earth to Student, This is Earth...

The "conclusion" of a Research Proposal is very important. In the professional world, it is your last chance to try to get money/permission to do the research. The conclusion is the section in which, after providing all of what you want to do, your goal is to convince your audience why they should care, and why the project is relevant to your own learning/professional development.

Two generic ideas you should make specifically clear in your RPs:

1. local implications: how are your own scholarly goals benefitted from doing the project. What will this project help you learn?
2. global implications: what will your research ADD to the larger academic world? Also, outside of academia why would a general audience be interested in you writing on your subject?

WHY :: Significance

With both implications on your mind, how does one accomplish clarifying beyond the obvious?Below are some critical thinking/talking points which should inspire you to provide detailed explanation of why you believe people will be interested in reading that final paper that will be a result of your research.

First, you need to understand (if you don't) that you are, in some way, defending why I should let you write on your subject-culture. Look at me as your Publisher, Boss, or Chair of the Board. Look at the final paper as something that you want published, a personal goal you are trying to fulfill.

Now, the reasons your project might be relevant are numerous, and varied. Each of you should and will have different reasons for seeing the validity in doing your project. Here are a couple of categories in which your own vision can be articulated. These are just a few categories, or general topics, that you could center your "significance argument" around.

• Stereotypes // Assumptions -- the most generic and easiest to "see," because part of human nature is to stereotype the world to make life easy to comprehend. However, what about stereotypes are you exploring? Which ones, what might people learn? WARNING: trying to prove the validity or invalidness of a stereotype, whether it is a good one or a bad one, is not what our projects are about. You are not writing well-informed Op-ed pieces; you are investigating the beliefs and roots of what makes up the culture. Remember that! So, what do you hope an audience can learn from your researching stereotypes? Where do the stereotypes come from? What will we gain from knowing the roots? How do those roots relate to other disciplines? Other cultures? Do you

• Cultural Trend -- you may have identified in your proposal a behavior or belief you find to be "trendy." So what? What questions do you have? Do you have assumptions for where the trend came from, other trends it is similar to, assumptions for how the trend represents its culture? Will you explore how trends spread in your culture, and how is that relevant?

• Cultural Phenomenon -- trends and phenomena are siblings (or at least cousins). Do you see the behavior or belief you are exploring as a possible isolated or spotty one? But, if the behavior is so out of the ordinary, what makes it so "fascinating" to study?

• Culture Evolution -- are you exploring ways that your culture has transformed, for example, its language; its food sources; its religion? Again, what can be learned by identifying and exploring the transformation?

• Old Subject, New Outlook -- many subjects have been written about a thousand times over. Many of those subjects, though, are looked at using the same lens -- the same theories within the discipline -- over and over. For instance, many academics and journalists have written (and still do) about the failure of communism and Russia being a result of corruption within the military/govt. ranks (bureaucracy). It is a warranted cliche, but still a cliche, to discuss the bureaucracy. Why not look at other areas for the failure and fall of the USSR? Taking this example to our own projects: do you think your project takes a fresh outlook on a commonly explored culture? How is your approach fresh, and how are you looking differently at the culture?

• Cross-Disciplinary Theory Application -- perhaps you find relevance in the science geeks dream: taking a well-known, respected and practiced theory from one discipline and analyzing you subject under the principles of that theory. For instance, analyzing Isaac Newton's Laws of Gravity as they apply to cartoons! Or, more relevant to Cultural Inquiry: using sociologist Max Weber's theories of music and its impact on and by society and applying them to your own culture. In fact, what Weber did was to develop sociological theories by looking at the discipline that is "Music." He strove to make connections between a society and its music.

• Cross-Cultural Parallel -- do you think there might be a connection between two seemingly distinct cultures? How so? I find such work, even if not your focus, will be inevitable to your learning and understanding of...LIFE!

SO?!?

From the above topics, which do you find most fits why you want to do your project and why you think your project will yield worthwhile material? Have confidence in this proposal, and work to convince us to be interested.

Writing Prompt: in the next 20 minutes, defend your project! Develop some rationale from two places: 1. The above categories, and 2. By reflecting on your introduction* and what you have told us about your culture in it.

*This is one way that you can help build a theme throughout your proposal. You should have a theme in the proposal, and the conclusion should further ideas provided at outset of the Proposal.

Homework:

• Reminder: Research Proposal is due Wednesday!

• Read Translating Culture: Chapter 4 (framing ethical research)

Eradicating the Boring

Quality writing draws a reader in to the images and ideas presented, creates a unique world for the reader to live in, and has what Ernest Hemingway calls "vigorous language."

This week, and from our observations over this past week, we are to practice upping our language by focusing on the descriptive value of prose. The audience will most likely lose attention IF a writer is not willing to provide accurate detail, the right word choice, and expand on the ideas they themselves present in their writing.

As the semester chugs on, there is much we must consider in representing our cultures through our language. We must pay attention to the finer details, so that when we come to the page our vision of the culture is most accurately portrayed.

Writing Sins

Judgmental Words: you do want to provide your audience with what you think, but don't tell them how to feel about a subject. Have confidence that your audience will see the "bad" in a person who, for instance, thinks it is funny to go around kicking random people in the back of the knee!

• Example Bad words: bad, good, great, amazing, rude, mean, dumb, super, wonderful, sloppy, intimidating, cool...

• Exceptions: of course, writing would be hard if we weren't allowed to use these words at all, but the goal is to rely more on the describing the people and places that give you the feeling.

• To Combat: Yes, a graveyard may be spooky, but if "spooky" was all you had in your description of the graveyard, well, that's pretty low in value. What makes the graveyard spooky? Is there a rusted iron gate, falling off its hinges, are there ravens cawing on gravestones? Are graves packed closely together; grave markers ten feet tall, blocking out life beyond the cemetery? What I mean: focus on the surroundings, the details that provide you the feeling. Go in depth as to what gave you the feeling you have labelled on your subject.

General Store Language: an over-reliance on abstract adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs that have innumerable meaning. There is nothing more boring than reading an essay that is filled with flat, voiceless, faceless characters and unknown, under-painted landscapes. There is nothing more frustrating than when an author replies on the common associations and assumptions that go with a concept like "freedom" or "love," and won't provide their own subject-cultures definitions of these concepts. (As Foreigner sings, "I want to know what love is, I want you to show me.")

• Example Abstractions: love, freedom (!), happy, people, animals, thing, everything, everyone, no one, nothing ...

• Exceptions: Of course, you will have some of these words used, but again you want to make sure that you don't casually use these terms. If, for example, you are studying a culture like a Protest Group, and "freedom" is one of the things they are protesting for, you would have to use the word. However, their idea of freedom might not be my idea of freedom, or your idea of freedom. Instead of relying on the catchphrase, your job as the writer would be to meditate on what that word means to your subject-culture.

• To Combat: As I said, defining generic terms is one thing. Another combat move would be to, in the revision process, seek out weaker phrases from sentence to sentence. When you see yourself using all-inclusive language like "everyone, no one, everything, people, etc." you need to stop and rewrite that phrase to the specific person or to be less all-inclusive. (I know you don't really mean "They love everyone" so why would you use this weak phrase?)

Pronoun High: we, us, they, them, he, she, it, this, that. Uggggggggggggh. Really? From the first two sins, the reasons these words are worth avoiding should be obvious. The constant use of pronouns to replace the noun is easy to do for any writer, but easy does not mean that using pronouns makes for the best writing.

Using pronouns can cause you to miss opportunities in your writing to re-define/develop your subject-culture more thoroughly. Yes, constantly referring to your subject as "The Outsider Graffiti Gang" might get tedious, or tiresome. However, instead of using a generic pronoun like "They," use a noun-phrase that helps build their character. For instance, you might replace "The Outsider Graffiti Gang" with "The lawbreakers..." or "The subversive artists...."

It, this, that are three words used at the beginning of sentences that are highly frustrating. Avoid these words if you can! You can build sentence-to-sentence coherence by using the specific reference instead of the vague pronoun. You can.

Writing Activity

• With all of these ideas fresh in your brain, we are going to write drafts of your Research Proposal introductions...

• What are the 2-3 most "defining" characteristics of your culture? Choose 1 of the 5 general prompts, and write a draft of your RP intro:

1. Is physical appearance hugely important to our understanding? If so, perhaps you might introduce your subject-culture by giving the "typical" physical description of someone in the culture. Be playful, be accurate, don't settle on just adjectives.
2. Is the subject-culture's ideology (religious, gender, political, ethnic, food, etc.) most important to their identity? If so, an effective way to introduce your culture to your audience might be to give a brief list of the culture's key beliefs -- like Martin Luther when he introduced Protestantism with his list of 95 grievances against the Catholic church, circa 1517!.
3. Dialogue. Providing a couple of key phrases used by participants in your culture, and then clarify the relevance of those phrases. What is so interesting in what the culture is saying? (Do the words signify empowerment; are they filled with patriarchal privilege; are they influenced, and stealing, from popular culture figures?)
4. A major behavior. Describe the behavior. Who is involved? Pose questions to what you find fascinating about culture.
5. LANDSCAPE. Where does your culture live? Give a physical description of the place in which your culture spends a majority of its time.

Now, these are just starter prompts that give us some room to focus on certain areas to focus our description of culture. Your own introductions will be revised and more fully developed.

Homework:

• Bring back the writing activity, as we continue talking about writing Research Proposals.
• Read Lygia Navarro's "Tropical Depression from the Winter 2009 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. This is a very long reading! That said, focus on the beginning and how Navarro describes Cuba. What are some of her arresting images that help you understand what it is like to live in Cuba, and in what ways does her focus on the landscape affect our tonal understanding of Cuba?

Want to Study Abroad?

The following announcement was e-mailed to me this morning. I think, since we are practicing research by exploring cultures, that studying abroad is a fantastic supplement to anyone's education -- during school or after! You learn as much about yourself and your own culture as you do about the cultures you get to experience firsthand...

The office of International Programs will be hosting a Study Abroad Fair on Tuesday, March 9 from 11am-3pm. This is an opportunity for students to meet with independent program providers, Columbia program representatives and other international organizations to learn about the various options around the world that are available to them.

WHEN: Tuesday, March 9th, 11am-3pm

WHERE: Conaway Center, 1104 S Wabash, First floor

Study abroad is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students to travel, learn and live in a foreign country. They can earn college credit and use their Title IV (FAFSA) awards to help pay for approved study abroad programs. Encourage your students to go and learn more about their options!

For more information, please contact:

International Programs

600 S Michigan, 1311

aiipoffice@colum.edu

312.369.7726

No Class Meeting on 2/19: Out of Class Assignment

Today’s assignment (2/19), which gets you out of the classroom and into field work, is to work on a couple of very important aspects of quality writing so that you will be able to make quality analysis:

1) Focus on smaller details of an object (people, in our case) that are often overlooked

2) Attempting to provide an image*(or images) to your audience rather than simply telling your audience how to feel by using bias language.

* As writers, we are after trying to recreate what we saw as if we are the cameras recording a scene. We want to capture the color, the language, and even the way a character might shrug their shoulder when asked a question, or turn their head and roll their eyes when one of the group members mentions being tired.

More specifically, your assignment for class participation today is to attend a large tourist spot – Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute, etc. – where you can see a large amount of people interacting with each other and within small groups. The Shedd is free today, Friday (2/19), and the Art Institute is free all February. There are other places, too, as we discussed in class, that you may go!

Normally, I tell you not to be a voyeur, but today is different. In order to sharpen your descriptive language abilities, you have to be able to stare people down…without being awkward or threatening, of course.

Specific Assignment at Your Site:

Descriptive value in writing relies much more on providing the specific details of people rather than relying solely on judgmental, summary phrases, often through OVERUSE of adjectives and adverbs (funny, angrily, great, huge). The key is to spend more time on our descriptions; pay attention to the small details that make up our judgments. Descriptive value allows your reader to see more of what you see – as if you are the camera. So, going to a larger tourist spot, you are to practice this kind of writing by doing the following:

- Pick at least one person, or a small group of people, and start noting down as much as you can about physical appearance of those observed – clothing to height to hair color to jewelry to describing their body language and where they are sitting, and how they are sitting. Also, describe their body movement and facial expressions – all those parts of their action that we interpret as their behavior!

- Can you, in words, provide for your audience the kind of description that will allow us to see what you saw, as if we were looking at a photo when we read your prose?

Descriptive value in writing is often overlooked, so this assignment is highly necessary to field work for your projects. Analysis becomes much clearer and easier when you pay the closest attention to your subject. The more you can show your audience what your subject looks like, the more likely they will understand your ideas.

Due for Wednesday, 2/24: Bring in your best observation of a person or small group, so that we may discuss “the next step,” which is to use the observation to start making analysis. This may be written out, and not typed.