Studying me without my permission

Studying me without my permission

The square hole round peg of Anthropology

A look into the research process from an undergraduate perspective

The assignments:

The original assignment:

“Talk to 4 [four] friends (2 [two] of each gender) to generate 2 [two] lists of terms for penis - one from males and one from females.”-J. Cavanaugh

The assignment was simple enough - one would assume. The in-class assignment that was given by Professor Cavanaugh challenged us to take the “Naming of Parts: Gender, Culture and terms for the Penis among American College Students” (1995) by Deborah Cameron, one step further, naming the parts of females in addition to the male parts. This sounds like a normal assignment; however, at the time it was issued, I am not sure if Professor Cavanaugh knew if she wanted to use this for a bigger paper, that was to be produced by the independent studies course she was slated to teach the following semester. I think if that had we known the answer to this - at the time she issued the original assignment - the assignment instructions for the in-class assignment would have been delivered with more ramifications.

The original Cameron piece was strictly college students on an American campus. This was not the case for Brooklyn College; we have a diverse group of students in the class as well as on the campus and many of the student body are not American. Strict Americans they have a different approach to this topic. Our class was edgy however it was not strictly American.  

Socialization teaches that we are socialized from the moment we are born and our environments dictate where and how we learn I believe that is what happened with this assignment, there were too many loop holes there are too many uncontrollable variables. I think if the assignment was to talk to a specific group of friends of a particular racial group it would have been more controlled, I believe we would have gotten more American answers- meaning less of a diversified audience- verses the wide variety. We have with the turned in homework different instructions, those instructions were closer to the original assignment. 

The process:

Whenever you are handed an assignment or a task it is usually a daunting one considering I most of the time never know where to start. In the beginning because the information was vast the professor issued out this decree just start writing and I did that and I came up with this way of looking at the information. I would break it all down from the process; the dynamic and the reason for wanting to even try at a piece like this. I have to be honest and say I do not know much on the subject of think pieces, all I know is that I try at this thing called thinking at lot. I work hard and attempt at discovery. The process was simple, Professor Cavanaugh told the class about the impending independent studies class and asked them if their papers could be used for our assignment. Our assignment was to look at the names in the data and go from there. The original group came up with two master lists, which consisted of the data that was collected by each individual student. We created a system to read the repeat offenders as well as a key system to say what the marks indicated. I will in the following section discuss the group dynamic further, because it is important to understanding the process however it is a different process altogether and needs to be recognized, the process of producing a product has many twist and turns and those turns help you get to a different result and this result is usually the break of discovery that allows for more information to be processed and more responsibility to be placed in the hands of those that are looking to make a product.

The other part of the process that is important to realize is how you are thinking about a subject, how the subject is a part of your everyday life. During this process of coming to a thought I understood that I was being monitored by time as well as I was looking at the way we went about the information gathering, it was based on information from other people not information from my hands. One of the Internal Review Boards question was about how the information was gathered. This question helped me understand that our process had not considered the fact that maybe the information was falsified, or that maybe the information was not fully answered in the sense that an ethnographer would get detailed information and process in it in a way that all parties would gain something from it. I think having a process or some type of order is important to the flow of information. This order is what maintains, “show and prove” of academic writings versus public opinion or popular opinion. 

Group Dynamics:

This is always hard for me I do not tend to lean towards the group. I find it difficult to get close to people and see what their visions are in relations to my own so going into this group made me look at the dynamic. The group was made up of 5 women, of those women 3 where white, 2 are of European decent the other American (As far as I know). The other two women are both of African decent myself Puerto Rican the other African American. I however identify as African. This is important because my socialization is different than most. My internal and external ideologies are different and these differences are vast when attempting a project much like this one. I think this plays into the ways I look at the world. I find myself thinking with a very broad non-European mind, which allows for different ways of examining a situation than strictly western ideologies. In the beginning it did not sit well with me that we had not gone out and done the work ourselves, that we had not spoken to every participant and we could not for sure say that the whole group was held to the same ramifications and as a direct result I was forced to remove myself from the group but not the writing. I continued to write and think about this piece, theses words and ultimately my process.

The tangible part of the process I helped with the labeling of the parts as well as the IRB application for approval, which I find out, was denied, for some of the reasons I brought to the attention of Professor Haroon Kareem- on of my academic advisors.  I explained to him that I thought it was because I was African minded that these little steps did not sit well with me that we, the group had not done them and he explained to me that this has more to do with ethics than anything else, that when your personal morals and values come into play it is better to go with your gut, and sit back and watch. I did that and I began doing abstract research. I read for other classes with this class in mind. I started to compare what those ethnographers where doing in relation to what I was doing and the two did not match. In the back of my mind the question of why do we do this and why are these steps important and why is it in the hands of the researcher that we must be the ones that are thorough? I felt like my morals came to play because everything I had been taught from ethnographers and linguist alike that you follow your gut but you write it all down, you make a point to record all the history and the process but you can when you move forward protect the people whom you have interviewed and lived with much like Carol Stack in “All Our Kin” or that of Margret Mead in “Coming of Age in Samoa” and of course Lila Abu-Lughod “Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society”.

You have to know the land in which you are surveying and you should be able to tell the story and stay out of it. These examples are just examples of how to stay out of it, how to stick to the truth and how to let the data work for you. The group dynamic sometimes does not allow for all of the steps at times, it does not allow for all of the proper moments of patience. I think it was best that I took a step back because ultimately the IRB board professionals agreed with my gut feeling that something was incorrect. I have been told by some great researchers, listen to the research, follow your gut, pay attention to the disturbances you create and all will go well.

Understanding your information:

With this kind of piece you must look at the information around you and where it is coming from and how you are retaining this information. This is where all the reading you have done is important, it helps you form an idea about your subject matter. At this stage in my thinking this is where I understood why my professor have made me read so much over the past 5 years, why I was forced feed information and why being an undergraduate is a part of the academic pathology. All of this helps your mind recall information no matter how small it may seem to you it helps your mind recall information that could be important and relevant to the subject at hand. I know that I for one remember my textbooks as I am typing. I use a recall method. I know that my brain remembers the main idea and as I am typing I get the remainder of information I want to recall.

History is not just some old person’s idea of what happened when, history teaches us about our mistakes as well as our new endeavors, we teach from the history we share as well as the history we are creating. This is truly learning at its best. With this section I focused on Carol Stack and “All our kin”, because in the preface she asks the hard questions, how can I a white women study these African-American women? Is it possible to not have a set of predisposed biases and study these people who live in the flats? I think she did a wonderful job of presenting the information without the stigma of color associated with African-American people during the time of her studying. She made sure to give all sides to the story.

This is why history is important to know because Stack was able to remove the stereotype and let the facts allow you the reader to come up with your own conclusion and not the conclusion of society.  Stack did allow her data to speak for its self. From what I read stack did not fudge the data to fit into a mold that she had in mind, it was just the opposite she documented almost every event in the flats from marriage to death.  She even takes on the culture of poverty.

The Culture of poverty is a theory that was introduced by Oscar Lewis – an American anthropologist. He made the argument that those who are “poor” have a unique and very specialized value system and through that system they (the poor) continue to perpetuate that ideologies associated with poverty. Through adaptation those who are poor desire to stay poor as a direct result of their collective consciousness.  If this was the only truth that we had to look forward to, our lives would be very bleak and not worth living. 

This is where Carol Stack another American Anthropologist comes into play. By doing the simple act of removing names and locations she automatically disproves Oscar Lewis.  She removes all of the names, locations and any identifying markers from her association with those in the Flats. Not approving of this tactic in the beginning because we are taught that you need “proof” of all you do, it was hard to associate the reason for removing the ‘necessary information’ or so I thought.  This removal is what allowed my mind in this piece to realize the importance of what she has done. She removed the possibility of stereotype. I want to note that the families that are taking through tragic day-today operations are much like you and me, the only difference is they are “disadvantaged”.  Stack does a few other important things she makes you think, about your decisions and she makes you think about what you think you know when it comes to ethic and values, and where those values are placed. I thought I knew everything there was to know about being a person of color because I am of color but I do not because I have not been faced with the same list of problems as those who live in the flats. She got me to thinking this is what I appreciate.

Then stepping out on your own:

The hardest potion of this project was writing to Professor Cavanaugh and telling her I had to remove myself. I then felt lost as to what I was supposed to do next; I did not know how to proceed. I knew that I needed to start some where, and let me tell you I started to write this piece several times and I did not get anywhere I only got as far as my own self would let me get to. Then I would delete it, I even was almost done and I deleted the paper. Stepping out on my own I had to challenge myself, doing this paper this way I made myself feel more comfortable with the challenge of having a point to include about what we were doing. In Ordered Universe a book that is primarily about religion and religious behavior he states that everything has an order or a system that it works with and moves in. And that these systems are in place for a myriad of reasons some of those reasons are to explain, interpret, predict and control a particular outcome. I feel like this is the way it was supposed to happen. I needed to be able have the room to say I do not feel comfortable with going forward. The ethical question I asked myself was “is the work that is being put fourth the work that will carry you through to making the data have a reasonable outcome or are you forcing the square peg round whole?  Do we need to have a clear line of information or is the information sufficient that students obtained it? Why are we placing them into list? Will the list assist in some form or will the list force us to look at the data closer? Can we move forward with the information the way we have it now? These are all reasonable request when you start to thinking about it, knowing all of these things helps the individual thinking clearly and clearly is what we were looking for when I stepped out on my own to examine the process of data collection. The words may not be enough however the idea that you are actually applying what you learned to a situation that shows by virtue of the academic method “show and prove”, that you are ready to at least try to stand on your own two feet.

            Conclusion:

Conclusions are almost as important as the opening statement. And in the case of this think piece about the ethics that surround that project I was attempting to work on and the way the piece it self has been shaping I think and believe that I will be able to say all I need to say in the conclusion. We at times in our lives are presented with information and what we do with that information is solely up to the way we have processed the information. I mean by this that not only is what being said in the above pages important but also how you go about gathering information as well. This was one of the harder pieces I was challenged with because my vocabulary is not the extensive and my way of thinking in a round circle versus a long lines do not agree with the majority of thinkers out there. I also believe that research is based on your passion, and enthusiasm about a particular topic. My passion was in explaining that this topic needed to be expanded upon. My enthusiasm is in attempting to try. My final statement is follow your gut and make sure you are okay with the people who you are in a group with and work with the information as it is present. Do not try to put a square peg into a round hole.

Bibliography:

1.     Durkheim, Emile 1888 “Rules for Explanation of Social Facts” (Class Readings)

2.     Harris, Marvin 1866 “The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle Current Anthropology

3.     Levi-Strauss, Claude 1863 “Inquisitive Anthropology” Structural Anthropology (Class Readings)

4.     Spencer, Herbert 1888 “The Evolution of Society” (Class Readings)

5.     Boas, Franz 1896 “The limitations of the comparative Method of Anthropology”

6.     Morton Klass “Ordered Universe” 1995 West view press

7.     Carol Stack “All Our Kin” 1974 Basic Book

8.     Ky-Mani Marley “Dear Dad, Where is the family in our family today?”

9.     Tobe Correal “Finding the Soul on the path to Orisha”

10. Lila Abu-Lughod 2000 “Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society”

11. J Cavanaugh group notes and class discussions

12.  Exodus Williams field notes from Fall 2010-Spring 2010 Brooklyn College