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- Convenors:
-
Gunilla Bjerén
(Stockholm University)
Aud Talle (University of Oslo)
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- Discussant:
-
Signe Howell
(University of Oslo)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 5
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
We invite researchers who are engaged in, or preparing, re-studies to present the experiences and the dilemmas in studying change when the researchers her/himself, the theoretical stance of the discipline, and the methods we use have changed as much as the objects of study.
Long Abstract:
The large anthropologist cohorts born in the 1940'ies are now reaching a time in life when returning to previously studied fields and topics might be attractive. We once made the heavy investment in learning languages and immersing ourselves in what was then strange contexts, often under considerable personal hardship. Some of us have lived with this experience as a living memory, almost as vivid today as at the time when events took place, others have kept in touch and returned for brief visits from time to time. Given the opportunity, the temptation to return to the field years or decades later is difficult to resist. What happens when we do? In the words of Clifford Geertz: "When everything changes, from the small and immediate to the vast and abstract - the object of study, the world immediately around him (sic!), and the wider world around them both - there seems to be no place to stand so as to locate just what has altered and how." (After the fact, Harvard UP, 1995, p.2).
To this workshop we invite researchers who are engaged in re-studies of different kinds. Feel welcome to present results, methodological and theoretical issues and practical and personal experiences of any kind relevant to the study of change in the social and cultural world where we find our fields, and ourselves.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
Since ethnography is an intersubjective entreprise, each revisitation of “the field” brings forward the issue of the double nature of ethnography’s historicity: both in relation to the ethnographer and the ethnographed. But does the contingent character of the ethnographic encounter prevents ethnography altogether from making sense of change through re-studies?
Paper long abstract:
Since ethnography is an intersubjective entreprise, each revisitation of "the field" brings necessarily forward the issue of the double nature of ethnography's historicity: historicity in relation to the ethnographer, historicity in relation to the ethnographed. Both ethnographer and ethnographed are enmeshed in time and evolve as it progresses. Each ethnographic inquiry is thus inevitably contingent not only to a set of circumstances but also to a unique intersubjective encounter. But does this contingency render futile any attempt to make sense of change by adding up successive visits to "the field"? Can ethnography translate into a "longitudinal study", in the manner of the ones produced in other social sciences? Does the nature of ethnography's situatedness condemn each ethnographic inquiry to merely punctuate a moment of a historical process and to dissolve itself in the duration?
The discussion of these issues will be grounded on data derived from what started as a "re-study" in a Portuguese women's prison. It will be argued that the processes affecting ethnographer and ethnographed can be taken into account as parameters for more accurately articulating the past and the present in order to make sense of change.
Paper short abstract:
This paper compares preference data focused on masks collected in 1979 (400 interviews) and 2003 (130 interviews), in Okpella, (Edo State, Nigeria), and addresses questions of how well formed and resilient the local aesthetic has proven to be in the face of dramatic social change.
Paper long abstract:
Survey research proved an effective tool for tapping into reservoirs of local perception in Okpella, a place and a people, located north of Benin City in southern Nigeria, when informal consideration of images failed to prompt discussion of aesthetic criteria. In 1979, five years after a social and historical study of Okpella's ancestral masquerades was made, a major survey on aesthetic preference was undertaken. 400 individuals of different ages and genders were interviewed. In 2003, a panel study took place. 100 of the original sample were re-interviewed along with additional young people. The survey's centerpiece was a set of 'mask' images categorized as 'beautiful' (osomhotse) or 'grotesque' (ulishi). Respondents saw these in paired sequences, making what is called a 'forced choice' between two images. Rankings were then constructed using statistical procedures. Formal art historical analysis of the ranked images and acquired cultural knowledge provided the basis for constructing a theory, or at least an hypothesis, of what made an image 'beautiful' or 'grotesque,' and where people focused when they make such assessments. The proposed paper looks at the questions asked in the original study (e.g., Is there an aesthetic when people choose not to voice criticism?), their relevance for today, and the independent value of the responses compared over this time period to provide valuable insight into how well formed and resilient the Okpella aesthetic has proven itself to be in the face of dramatic social change.
Paper short abstract:
In 1973 I studied urban migration in a town in southern Ethiopia. In this paper I will report on the reactions of the new elite of the town when finally reading a book that was until now only hearsay and the local expectations of the findings to be of the new study.
Paper long abstract:
Since 1974 Ethiopia has undergone overwhelming historical events. As a consequence, the town which I studied in 1973 today has a totally new elite with no, or shallow, roots in the place. All archives from previous regimes are gone. My humble dissertation, that was only known by hearsay when I returned in January 2008, was hoped to supply the new townspeople with a sense of their past and to provide material for tourist exhibitions and other things. In this paper, I will outline the response that I met when bringing this hope to an end while at the same time trying to fend off extravagant expectations of what the re-study would yield in terms of measurable success of "development" and increased welfare.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is a continuation of fieldwork I did among the pastoral Maasai of Kenya in the 1980’s. The title of the paper suggests a longitudinal methodological approach, of which family biographies and individual life careers constitute a major part. I use this long-term engagement with the field to debate both social change as well as continuity in the context of a minority population.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is a continuation of fieldwork I did among the pastoral Maasai of Kenya in the 1980’s. The title of the paper suggests a longitudinal methodological approach, of which family biographies and individual life careers constitute a major part. I use this long-term engagement with the field to debate both social change as well as continuity in the context of a minority population. The paper focuses particularly female identity making and women’s management of household and family resources. Considerable changes in life circumstances have taken place in the study sites over this quarter of a century. Two factors in particular are interesting for the discussion in this paper: 1) increased sales of both male and female labour, and 2) widespread evangelisation, not least among the women. The paper especially aspires to discuss how men and women in shifting contexts of pastoral production negotiate spaces of autonomy and power. Earlier findings of female marginalisation and loss of influence within the pastoral sector will be set against recent observations.
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at a fieldtrip the length of California testing the Arthur Murray dance studios and their free dance introduction lessons. This dance lesson exercise highlights some of the difficulties faced by anthropologists making return studies where skills, personalities and even presentation are subject to change, thus calling into question the nature of ethnographic comparison itself.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at a fieldtrip the length of California testing the Arthur Murray dance studios and their free dance introduction lessons. Each dance studio is part of a franchise offering similar services, but the teachers and locations vary. So too does the dancer: in this case, the anthropologist visited 9 different studios and assumed the identity of a different type of dancer with different abilities and motives to examine the interactions on the dance floor and in the dance package hard sell. The experience revealed a student-teacher interaction based upon dominance and sexuality, knowledge and coercion, but also one dependent upon the presumed personality of the anthropologist. This dance lesson exercise highlights some of the difficulties faced by anthropologists making return studies where skills, personalities and even presentation are subject to change, thus calling into question the nature of ethnographic comparison itself.