[Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)

[Jonathan Marshall]

Rhiannon Bury <welshwitch75 at rogers.com>

> As Deborah Britzman say, ethnographic accounts are 
> "overinvested in second hand memories." 

seriously, what isn't?

One thing I found about doing internet ethnography, was
that i didn't have to rely solely on my memories 
or other people's memories and retellings.  

I could go to the archives and re-read.  It was often interesting
to observe how my memories of what happened often did
not match the re-reading. And it became at least partially
possible to start to see how memories, or narratives of things,
were constructed.

Not surprisingly, these narratives of group events had a lot to do 
with the narratives common offline.  

Political narratives seemed particularly important, in making sense 
of others and events. Which suggests that politics is where 'myth' 
resides in the contemporary world.

> As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I use 
> Foucault's conceptualization of the heterotopia.  It was my data 
> that 
> led to me to work with this notion, not the other way around. Yet, 
> the 
> participants would not necessarily describe their "spaces" as 
> heterotopic and might think it's just a bunch of academic whooey 
> for all I know (but just be too polite to say so.)

I agree (for what that's worth :), we can't always expect people to 
use the same terms as analysts do.  Indeed analysis should *add* 
something.  

The problem, I guess, is that if it doesn't seem relevant 
(because of the terms employed) then the ethnography can seem 
exploitative, and if it does seem relevant it may do nothing 
more than summarise local common sense - or even worse
lead to attempts to exert power over (as opposed to with) others.

jon



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