in the space of a canteloupe

By AUTUMN on March 20, 2008 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In research we are expected to observe and collect data from the real world, summarize, analyze, and churn it out to compact some aspect of reality into a portion that can fit inside the mind of a reader.

If the written word displaces the setting from the reader, how much more will summarized data deviate from that reality we are trying to explain? In the hard sciences, we try to work around this issue by creating an ideal, or artificial, environment to carry out experiments, and project those results into the real world, hoping that they will still apply. In anthropology we have to accept from the start that our lab setting is not ideal (which might be why we are drawn to it to begin with). However, because an investigation in any field must have some specific object, the data must be decontextualized to an extent. There can be many deviations from this objective and overlaps of categorization (will read Clifford Geertz for more on this). Their filtration quickly becomes subjective, and a matter of practicality if you actually want to produce a piece of written work. But these are all still part of reality, and I am sure that a million studies could not replace the real experience of a place and people.

Research does force you to look closer at something that you otherwise might not have, so in this way it can enhance this experience. It certainly enhanced mine. I don't know if I would have appreciated those exchanges that I saw in the Berber souq, which superficially looked less involved than the ones I saw in other markets, if I was not made to think about why they operated as they did. On top of immersing you in another culture, research also provokes you to think about why things are as they are in your own. Why is it, and do they really have to be that way?

Usually we talk about culture shock in reference to that alienation you feel when you are dropped in the middle of a country other than your own. Another form is the reverse, which you feel when returning home from a radically different place, that transition of reprogramming all the new behaviors you have learned. These experiences are more than can fit inside the space of a canteloupe, even too big for me to absorb as they are happening, but I am more than eager to share them.