Robots in the field

Hey so I was a bit late on reading this.. sorry! A...

2009-06-04T12:31:56.196+09:00

Hey so I was a bit late on reading this.. sorry!
Anyways, I agree with what Sitna said about the empathy thing. That is what they taught me at West Corp anyways haha, and you hear a lot of idiotic crap in customer service (a person duct taping their cell phone to a pig anyone?).

As for the flu itself. I met someone at work, who has since become my friend, who had just got back from Mexico and she was wearing a mask at work to prevent possible spreading. She said that she was 100% sure she didn't have it, but there is an 8 day incubation period so it really was just a precaution and she was doing it to put everyone else at ease. Anyways the point is that the masks are here too, just not to the same extent ;). You look cool in your mask anyways man - I dig the facebook pic.

Really insightful comments. I can see what you mea...

2009-05-19T09:53:00.000+09:00

Really insightful comments. I can see what you mean.

Though, I do think I, like me personally, tend to get people annoyed (all people, not just when doing ethnography) because I sometimes come across as patronizing and/or overly disagreeable...

I was also really surprised to hear today that 150+ have been infected in Japan (or Osaka area? not sure which). That's just from 3 days. One thought is that all that prevention must not be very effective :P The other, less snarky, thought was that maybe because Japan is so densely packed, contagions like flu spread more quickly. Probably doesn't help, either, that, in Japan, people are expected to go to work when they have a fever and can barely stand up...

I think you shouldn't feel guilty for thinking tha...

2009-05-18T18:02:00.000+09:00

I think you shouldn't feel guilty for thinking that they are paranoid. Having your own very personal view of things and even judging is unavoidable when perceiving cultural differences. What is important is to be aware of your own views, prejudices and so on, in order to be open and trying understand what the other is telling you or doing.
I completely disagree with this "ethnographer mask" I think one needs more than a mere facial expression to be a good ethnographer and get people tell you things. I have always thought that it is a question of emphathy. People confide you things when they feel comfortable with you and trust you. Being an ethnographer is more than a mere theatrical pretension of being understanding. I think that philosopher/ethnographer is not really being aware of his own prejudices and is not being able to drop them so he can try to understand his interlocutors.

Yeah guess I am really canadian then :P But reflex...

2009-05-08T17:02:00.000+09:00

Yeah guess I am really canadian then :P But reflexively, its hard to really say why face masks seem paranoid and condoms seem just good sense, for example...

Interesting that you bring up face-masks/swine flu...

2009-05-07T11:12:00.000+09:00

Interesting that you bring up face-masks/swine flu because there is a lot of panic surrounding the flu here too but the face mask response is quite different. for example, people i know that have been traveling recently mention people that WERE wearing masks in the airports as sort of a novelty and really strange. like "there are some really paranoid ppl out there! get this! i saw one guy that was wearing a surgical mask in the victoria airport. can you believe that??". and then everyone listening to the story debated about how the swine flu is getting out of proportion (like SARS) and how some people get waaay too paranoid about these things (as evidenced by wearing said masks). so there you have it. discussions going on in canada on the same disease and the same practice but from very different perspectives!

You have no new posts :(

2009-05-01T05:37:00.000+09:00

You have no new posts :(

As a side note, I only know who Noam Chomsky is ou...

2009-04-07T05:25:00.000+09:00

As a side note, I only know who Noam Chomsky is out of that list as well...

Haha, yes, as for the last part...a couple times I...

2009-04-06T10:13:00.000+09:00

Haha, yes, as for the last part...a couple times I've been asked (by hard-core computers and sciences types) how all these things I write into my notebook can actually add up to any kind of findings in general. So I went off on an example about the use of face masks* in Japan compared to their non-use in Canada/US/UK/Europe and how this can be used to think about relativised rationalities and the link between science (especially ideas about medicine and the body) and culture.

I got the strangest looks... not sure whether it was disbelief or incomprehension. Probably both.

*Can't remember if I've written about that on this blog, but basically a lot of people in Japan use face masks when they are sick, when they don't want to get sick from other people, when they have allergies, etc, and so it looks like there are either a lot of surgeons (or perhaps ninjas) walking the streets.

I just wanted you to know that now i am just that ...

2009-04-06T01:40:00.000+09:00

I just wanted you to know that now i am just that much more terrified of my fieldwork for my MA...these are the kind of questions i wonder about. i think, doing research among teenager mothers...they are probably going to be like "hahaha why are you asking me these weird questions... ooooookaaaaaaay" or "what's it to ya?". but i think that the little anecdotes you are writing about would be good in an enthnography! even the ones when people ask you about your hypotheses...that could totally be incorporated into an article about science vs. humanities! remember, half of what we do is to take mundane anecdotes and theorize social theory on them :P (and to non-anthropologists, that was a joke...)

I am for more journalistic style in anthropologica...

2009-03-15T06:19:00.000+09:00

I am for more journalistic style in anthropological writing and more anthropological thinking in Journalism.

Mike... To understand what I mean by reification o...

2009-01-22T23:43:00.000+09:00

Mike... To understand what I mean by reification of places as a problem, see Bachelard: "The Poetics of Space", or Foucault: "Of other Spaces" and to some extent Gupta and Ferguson "Culture, Power, Place". As for what I meant by effect in the second point, see Barthes on "L’effet de réel". And last, whatever people make of fieldwork, I just think it would be wise not to leave the conditions of possibility of their own knowledge unexamined. That is it but I better shut up now! :-)

Heh, yes well the lesson is perhaps anthropologist...

2009-01-22T14:04:00.000+09:00

Heh, yes well the lesson is perhaps anthropologists are different. And also that they are supposed to be acquainted with various weird things (like French philosophy written by people who are half-insane!) ;) I'm afraid that I don't have the inclination to unravel this all for an impatient and pragmatic crowd of engineers... :)

So my quick responses:

Places cannot be reified. They are arguably nominalizations. This point can be used usefully when researching border areas, trafficking of objects/people, and that kind of thing. But I don't see the relevance in this instance (not too hard to go to your closest University, and look up Department of Anthropology on the conveniently colour-coded map).

The second point. I'm unclear at the intention of this point because it could be many radically different things depending on what is meant by effect (ie. a consequence or an illusion, an impression or a force). And I'd like to know what these mysterious "questions" are specifically.

The third point. In my view, fieldwork is not a state of being (in some place), nor is it a "disposition". Rather, I think it is best described as an activity.

A sub-point, on mind meta-reflexivity and philosophical assumptions. Anthropologists are interested in assumptions of people, as are certain kinds of philosophers, so there is a certain slippage and pull, especially when an anthropologist thinks about their own assumptions. But I think its telling this becomes meta-reflexivity of the mind, implying dualism. Fieldwork is different in that it is in a sense non/anti Cartesian.

Ok, Mike. I kind of see your point! I don't think ...

2009-01-22T13:31:00.000+09:00

Ok, Mike. I kind of see your point! I don't think I agree with you, though. To mention just one thing, I think the idea that you are presenting of "fieldwork" is kind of problematic in many ways. For example, that "fieldwork" is about going "to some place where X is" brings questions about reification of places; that the "been there" is what makes anthropology different just brings questions about how anthropologists use certain narratives to produce "an effect of reality"; you also don't mention that "fieldwork" is a disposition towards things rather than being somewhere, etc... But then we know we have our different philosophical assumptions! As I see it, your position is loaded with implicit philosophical assumptions! Even when you argue against philosophy... Mind meta-reflexivity. So, I guess the message for the non-experts is really that there are different anthropologies, and anthropologists. :-)

2009-01-22T13:26:00.000+09:00

This comment has been removed by the author.

Okay, Moises is making an interesting point that I...

2009-01-22T10:25:00.000+09:00

Okay, Moises is making an interesting point that I want to respond to. But I am concerned that it would quickly be lost on the non-expert when it could usefully address and contextualize some of the questions from my supervisor or from Steph. For those familiar with these things, feel free to skim until the end :) For others, I'll try to use a few analogies from other disciplines to make it clear, though they are only roughly equivalent.

My supervisor's, Sitna's, and my understanding of "an anthropologist studying other anthropologists" rests on a particular, commonsense understanding of what an anthropologist does. In particular, we are essentially equating anthropology with fieldwork. That is "an anthropologist studying X" is an anthropologist who goes to some place where X is, hangs out, listens around, writes it down, and tries to learn the minutiae of everyday life. The point of such an exercise is to learn about the social process of everyday life, in a way like how a linguist studies language (my made-up analogy). While people "know" their language subconsciously, a linguist focuses on it in order to make it an explicit description that is open to analysis. Likewise, the anthropologist.

But this understanding of anthropology is not necessarily what you see when you read the "great" thinkers spell out what the discipline is all about. Such explanations can be wide-ranging. It could be vague: Anthropology is a way of being in the world. It could be humanistic: Anthropology is about learning about others in order to better understand ourselves. It could be scientific: Anthropology is about tracing the causal relationships within social life in order to develop generalizable explanationatory models. Lots of other possibilities could and have been proclaimed.

This separation is, perhaps, something like in Computer Science. Computer science is "about" programming in roughly the way that anthropology is "about" fieldwork. In practice, everyone does it and so it is fundamental. But it could be argued that it is not the main core, instead it is the mechanistic implementation of some higher intellectual goal. A quick side note: they are also similar in that they both have a certain romantic attachment to their respective methods, this idea of the lone eccentric, mocked by "mainstream" society, but obsessed with details, who eventually creates an amazing text (programs are texts, afterall!).

So I think Moises is thinking more in this second way. In particular, he is thinking about anthropology as a kind of philosophical enterprise. When he says "meta-reflexive" I am not sure how well this will be understood, but it basically means being reflexive about our own reflexivity. This is recursive enough that it confuses me even trying to explain the difference between being reflexive and being meta-reflexive. Perhaps Moises can take a stab, if he likes ;) But the point, anyway, is that Moises is saying that anthropologists have debated and thought about how they write texts, how they appear in the text, why do we do things a certain way, what historical and social bias are built into the discipline, basically asking the questions Steph asked. This, he is saying, is a kind of anthro of anthros.

So my response is I don't think this is really doing an anthro of anthros, except in a weak roundabout way. And definitely not in the way that the question was intended. In particular, to me it takes the form of what is pejoratively referred to as "armchair anthropology", that is anthropology without its "been there" empirical basis. Which, is to me, just philosophy. In fact, it is a kind of philosophy of anthropology as a kind of philosophy of science. The anthropology of science and technology that I mentioned before basically challenged philosophy of science as having an idealized version of science, shown through ethnographies of actual practice. You could say the same about philosophy of anthropology. Which is what I think Sitna, my supervisor, and I were talking about. So, heed! bring on the anthropology of anthropology and destroy the philosopher (as) king! ;)

Wouldn't it be the case that we kind of do that on...

2009-01-22T02:51:00.000+09:00

Wouldn't it be the case that we kind of do that on a meta-reflexive basis? I mean, to the extent that we have to be in dialogue with anthro literature and other anthropologists we observe and participate in what other anthropologists are doing? More explicitly, all the debates about what is anthropology, ethnography, culture, etc... could be said to be the result of anthro of anthro, no?

2009-01-22T02:47:00.000+09:00

This comment has been removed by the author.

2009-01-22T02:45:00.000+09:00

This comment has been removed by the author.

Hey, I remembered that when I was in uni studying ...

2009-01-21T04:22:00.000+09:00

Hey, I remembered that when I was in uni studying anthro in Mexico, many people suggested carrying out an study of anthropologists themselves as the National school of Anthropology is such a world of its kind! I believe some even attempted to carry out such thing but as far as i know it never happened. AS you say, there is a power issue within academia that would definitely reject it, more so if you are just a PhD student. It is true that a study like that would be very interesting as anthropologists them/ourselves are quite a social phenomenon!

Hey Steph. Those questions deserve in depth respon...

2009-01-20T23:38:00.000+09:00

Hey Steph. Those questions deserve in depth responses, and some don't really have good answers. But, just a quick reply...

First, well, before starting fieldwork, the aim in our proposal was to be specific about the actions/interactions we planned to look at. But then, conversely, at the early stage, the goal (or, perhaps, what I should say is what we are encouraged to do by our supervisors, or at least what mine have encouraged me to do) is to observe as much as possible (and record it in detailed descriptions). This is then supposed to narrow over time, as certain themes crystallize.

Life experiences shape your observations and therefore this biases your viewpoint. How this is handled within anthropology is usually first through reflexivity as a general principle (one which cannot eliminate bias but I guess "guard" against it or at least make it apparent by addressing it explicitly in your work) and second is the general critique of the concept of an "unbiased manner." It depends on the person though, some anthropologists might use methods such as surveys, or even experiments.

The effect of the observer on the observed, if you like, is also an issue within anthropology that is handled in a couple of different ways. One is theoretically, which would be questioning the prospect of an impartial or "god's viewpoint" as either a possibility or even something that exists. That is proponents of this position argue that previous ethnography, which pretended to such claims as unbiased objectivity and wrote themselves out of their accounts, are misleading. This is I guess what you would call the post-modern position. The other, more pragmatic, answer is that over time people just get used to having you around. After you've been hanging around, even living with people, for a year, it is a bit hard to "fake it" I suppose. You still have an effect on their actions I suppose, but really any kind of research on actual living people (at least any ethical research) has some effect on them.

But your questions are good, and these are not satisfactory answers, more indicative answers, because those points are all contested and debated!

hmm not knowing much about anthropology myself, I'...

2009-01-20T17:16:00.000+09:00

hmm not knowing much about anthropology myself, I'd have the same questions as your supervisor. It wasn't clear to me that you would be observing the roboticists in the lab until this post. Now i'm really curious! So, here come the flood of questions...

what do you try to observe?
Are you looking for specific actions/interactions, or is the goal to observe as much as possible?
And given that life experiences can shape your observations, how would you accomplish this in an unbiased manner?
And... I assume the people you're observing know they're being observed. If so, knowing they're being watched would have some effect on their actions and consequently on what you observe. (recall Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?) how do you account for that as an anthropologist, or does it matter?

Oh, interesting. Actually I kind of remember you t...

2008-12-27T17:35:00.000+09:00

Oh, interesting. Actually I kind of remember you telling me something about Jung before, now that you mention it. How's Benin? Are you in the city for now?

hey, got internet connection! it is quite slow but...

2008-12-27T05:42:00.000+09:00

hey, got internet connection! it is quite slow but does the job and it is a prepayed thing hahah, funny right? everything is alright here, a bit hectic. Tony left today :(

But anyway, guess what? in relation to your blog post, I am reading Jung's autobiography right now! it is called "Jung. Memories, dreams and reflections" it is fascinating, I like this guy! Anyways, good luck with recording dreams, it just takes practice to remember them.

"Our cohort's favourite" (?!) Well I am also part ...

2008-12-01T01:11:00.000+09:00

"Our cohort's favourite" (?!) Well I am also part of that cohort and as much as I respect Graeber's work, he is not my favourite anthropologist. I don't even know if I have such thing as "favourite anthropologist", but I like anthropology though.

Thanks for all the comments!

2008-11-29T11:59:00.000+09:00

Thanks for all the comments!