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

[Slater,D]

That's a problem to get our teeth into. My own feeling is that we've got
false alternatives here: it's not a matter of either imposing northern
theory on 'them' or else taking their accounts as 'truth'. I tend to
think of ethnography as dialogic (or even dialectical) - as in Gadamer's
'fusion of horizons'. I've never been able to articulate it very well,
but as Rhiannon says, we as researchers are always part of the frame,
trying to understand the people we are talking with, and hoping to make
that understanding mnore and more sensitive and complete, but we never
escape ourselves, nor should we. At best, the ethnographic encounter -
like any really intense conversation - shakes us up and changes us (and
in some cases, 'them' too). You *respond* to experiences, you don't
accept them at face value. (though I'll confess that I've often found my
biggest problem is indeed getting overenthusiastic about the people I
study)

I'm not sure whether or not I would call myself a poststructuralist.
What I do know is that I have lived and developed my ideas during the
era of poststructuralist thought and in dialogue with it. You could
simply say I've learned from it, in the sense that you develop your
ideas in a context, in discussions. Same goes for my conversations in
Ghanaian households or chatrooms or whatever.

I'm also quite comfortable to disagree with the people I research, or
think they are wrong, or that they are doing something other than what
they think they are doing. After all ethnography is not interviews. It
cannot be ethnography until what people say and what they do, and the
tensions between the two, are brought within the same frame (not to
prove them liars or deluded, but to flesh out *practice* in toto).
Moreover, I've always felt it was a mark of deeper respect for people to
believe that everyone is intelligent and autonomous enough to be argued
with, and to believe that they can be wrong! I hope they treat me that
way too. 

Just one other thought along these lines - my last few projects have all
involved working with local researchers. Their job is very difficult as
they are both part of the 'community' and at the same distanced (often
by class and education, but mainly by the stance required by the
research). Ethnographyt is definitely a dialectic of closeness and
distance, and while I am worried by my distance, they are actually
plagued by their closeness. I've come out of this feeling that there is
a lot to be said about the older anthropology of strangers coming to
learn a culture (given plenty of safeguards around issues of power,
etc). 


Anyway, I'm mainly trying to say that I agree with Rhiannon, except in
seeing all this in terms of alternatives rather than a rather unstable
dialogue.


Don
_______________________________________________

Don Slater
Reader in Sociology, London School of Economics

Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE
Tel: +44 (020) 7849 4653
Fax: +44 (020) 7955 7405

 http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/slater

______________________________________________



-----Original Message-----
From: Rhiannon Bury [mailto:welshwitch75 at rogers.com] 
Sent: 12 February 2004 15:11
To: air-l at aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Without Space)


I too enjoyed Don's thought-provoking post and wholeheartedly agree with

the main point that we can't just come up with theories about 
"cyberspace" with no context of use (1990s "cyberbabble", heheh, I've 
have to remember that one).

That said, I'm uncomfortable what seems to be the resurrection of the 
old theory/practice binary. Like Lori and Radhika, I do ethnographic 
work, but I'm also a  poststructuralist.  I certainly understand Don's 
concerns about imposing "northern strands" (I think those were his 
words) of theories in non-western contexts. But, what is the 
alternative? Taking participants'  experiences and accounts as 
unadulterated "truth" that we have "discovered" through our research? 
Our own stories and that includes our theories, are always part of the 
frame. As Deborah Britzman say, ethnographic accounts are "overinvested 
in second hand memories." 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.)


Rhiannon

radhika_gajjala wrote:

> ditto.
>
> (I may even take this rant to my research methods class;-))
>
> r
>
> At 2:44 PM -0500 2/11/04, Kendall, Lori wrote:
>
>> Woo! I greatly enjoyed Don Slater's post on this issue and
>> particularly the
>> rant about ethnography.  (No big surprise to anyone who knows me, I'm

>> sure!)
>>
>> Lori
>> ________________________________________
>> Lori Kendall
>> Assistant Professor of Sociology
>> Purchase College-SUNY
>> lori.kendall at purchase.edu
>>
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