Savage Minds -- as usual, more eloquent than I

Savage Minds, a great Anthro blog, addresses the experience of anthropology as "personal transformation". The comments also capture the tension within anthropology to resist the dangers that some blame on the "reflexive turn" of the 80s. One commenter said he had been thinking of writing a piece called, "I am A Tool" -- which is exactly how I try to explain to others the experience of fieldwork and research.

It is comforting, in some ways, to hear the experience shared over and over again. It is disheartening that it is an experience that seems to be kept under-wraps for the most part, while one is being trained in school. There is definitely a fear in being too emotional or too personal in academic writing. At the same time, without the acknowledgment of the personal, writing becomes alienating and alienated, and the idea that one's work (especially when it involves fieldwork, whether sociological or anthropological) doesn't affect you as an individual seems absurd. Though in another post on the topic, one commenter wisely points out the danger of the sloppy "I am my own fieldnote" ethnography -- which is what I feel happens here on the blog. Hopefully what happens on my blog will not happen in my academic work. (And in many ways, this blog is an outlet for this meandering self-reflection, to keep it from becoming the form of my academic work...they are separate. I know that.)

And maybe, if this debate were more public and explicit, each student wouldn't have to tread the boring path (because I recognize that there is something tiresome about my concerns, even as I experience them nonetheless) of grappling for how to articulate the experience. Of course, just as our parents may find our youthful stresses and problems predictable (having already gone through the trials and tribulations of life), I suppose one has to "go through" the fieldwork growing pains in order to come out at the other side as a better and more reflective researcher.

Pharma creates new syndromes, or how we are all pathological

There have been a number of interesting articles about the ways in which pharmaceutical companies market problems to us. Meika Loe has a good short article in Contexts about the new generation of kids raised on pharma. (This is only the abstract, alas, as I don't know how to upload pdfs onto blogger. Will work on that.)

Alternet has one about Pfizer funding more studies on whether Viagara works for women. With a study sample size of 98. I love that...when anthropologists conduct research with only 25-30 people, we're denigrated for our lack of scientific reroducibility (that may have some truth, if that were all we looked at, but few anthropologists make claims with research conducted only through a few interviews), but when big Pharma conducts studies with fewer than a hundred, they still manage to be picked up by major news outlets. One of the observations the article makes is that the patent on Viagara is set to expire in a few years. I spent a summer interning at an advertising company that created ads for pharma. We worked on a new "extended release" antibiotic that touted itself as a solution to the heightened resistant strains of bacteria. Ironically, it seemd to me, much of that antibiotic resistance came from the over-prescription of the company's own antibiotic. In addition, their patent was about to expire, so it must have seemed a perfect time to launch a new and improved version of their formerly rockstar drug.

I know much of what I'm saying isn't terribly shocking to most who are paying attention to these things, but at the same time, finding multiple examples in which pharma creates demand is important, to confirm what I see happening with the vaccine I work on. In junior high school, my father started working on medical education, and that included direct marketing to physicians. I used to ask him how or why he could justify his work, and he would argue that medicine is not cut-and-dry a bad thing. Perhaps, at 14 or 15, I presented my argument too simplistically. It's not that I want to suggest medications are "bad". But I do think we need to be careful to note how we're implicated in the marketing of pathologies. As I get older and find my body more fallible, it's hard to resist the magic pills (whatever those might be) to cure or solve my discomforts. I can't help but wonder about those who are less medically-savvy or less aware of these nuances, and wonder about how they're affected by the commodification of health and the market of pathology.

Fieldwork bleeds into my spam folder

The most intense interview I conducted has resurfaced. It's strange because I have been thinking about her a lot lately. I looked at my spam folder, and she's added me as a contact through "reunion.com". I didn't even realize I'd joined this site...probably many years ago, when we were all very naive about joining various internet groups, I signed up when someone I knew added me. Possibly, in fact, certainly, pre-Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. It just feels incredibly weird to have her a) think of me (though the reflexive nature of voyeurism seems to be extremely relevant right now in my life -- watching people, watch me, watch them...etc...so Alice in Wonderlandesque) and b) to have her actively type my name into some search engine and pull me out.

A fellow grad student ended up changing her cell phone number when a woman in Baltimore would call her regularly to ask for financial support. This motivated me to get a second phone for research purposes, so none of my research participants have my main cell phone. It's a problematic way to distance myself from participants, but it also is a way to maintain control. I'm less good at the full-immersion aspects of anthro, as I'm wary even in the "real world" of my own life about keeping people in very distinct circles and trying to create limited access (though that rarely works).

I'm going to continue to pretend that I never saw the email, but I suspect she may call or email at some point. And in theory, I should go back to the mother's group, next time I'm in LA (which may coincide with the monthly meetings). I may see her again, but her attachment to me makes me uneasy. It sounds like vanity to call it attachment, but that's what it was. And I find it painful, too, to feel so hyper-aware of her yearning.

Flea Market Spectators

I love these two photos... I feel like it captures something very American about the social disengagement.


This was at the kettle corn stand, which included a spectator/eating station. With vintage chairs, of course.

more bad cell phone shots. But I'm trying to be a bit more fieldworky in my every day life. Even when it takes me to bars and flea markets. I'm an Americanist, so I can totally justify such indulgences. No?

"Me, you, and everyone we know"

I steal from Miranda July, whom I love sometimes and who drives me up the wall other times. Though, I suppose that's true of almost everything and everybody, so at the very least, I want to give her credit for a perfect summation of life these days.

I was writing to someone about what I miss about the neighborhood where I grew up, and I said,

I'm pretty heartbroken over how much the city has changed, and I miss the neighborhood I grew up in -- which was a pretty rough, but very community-centric place. I learned a lot by being raised there, and it makes me sad that the things that made it distinct are quickly being erased.

I feel like I keep coming back to the problem of individuality and what a supreme fallacy this is. America seems very obsessed with originality and proving one's uniqueness, especially in a city like San Francisco. It's kind of exhausting. And I'm not sure what the anxiety over proving one's inimitability is about. I suffer from it -- feeling that I need to be different in my own way. I guess that's why I quote myself (the arrogance), to point out the romanticization of my unique upbringing. It was unique, and it was irreplaceable, but I'm not sure why that matters in the scheme of things.

A friend recently told me that after spending a number of days with me at a wedding that he hadn't realized anthropology was an actual "skill" (his words, not mine). So maybe my main point is that specificity of experiences may in fact have a value -- that it allows you to perceive the world in certain ways. But then...I'm not entirely sure why or how that matters. So what? Another friend has noted that I'm an expert at discarding my emotions and moving forward, always asking, "what's the point" of dwelling on inconvenient feelings or past disappointments. So I guess I integrate this willingness to find no meaning in anything (nihilist!) into my larger research conundrums right now. But then, I get these weird moments of pollyanna-ism, and I'm much more positive (though not a positivist). Perhaps others out there in my mini-audience will weigh in (you are not adequately participating in my expectation of public discourse...) as to whether one can find a point to all this uber-self-reflection.

Solicited

I got asked back to teach an "intersession" class I taught last winter. It's kind of awesome to a) be asked to teach; b) be paid to teach; and c) be paid to fly back east to teach. I really enjoyed teaching that class last year, and I'm looking forward to refining it and thinking about it more critically. Plus, it's Baltimore-centric, and I have a major soft-spot for that city. I like the ability to influence the freshmen's perspective on the city (as it's a freshman-only class). Makes me feel like occasionally, what I do is respected...by someone...somewhere. As I'm about to re-embark on grant-writing (endless chore of academia that I really hate with a passion), it's these sorts of affirmations that make such a difference. Unfortunately, they're too few and far between and they require so much work (usually) to come together. Hence the delight in being solicited and not having to throw myself shamelessly at the deciders. Sometimes, it's nice to make a quick buck.

Fieldwork @ the bar

I wish I had my proper camera with me, as my cell phone camera doesn't do it justice. I had been telling my bar companion about my work (a fellow academic who may have been indulging me or may have been genuinely interested in my rambling, time will tell, I suppose), had to pee, went to the bathroom and discovered this...


yeah...I don't think it's legible. I'll have to go back and bring a camera with flash. (bad anthropologist, not ready to whip out her research tools even when out on a social call.) I'm not sure it's actually all that interesting, but it was weird timing. And who decided "pabst smear" was a good idea?

I...just...can't...resist...the...fucking...analysis....

So, it's all well and good to point you to interesting scientific analyses of human phenomena. Because, yes, attempts to "legitimate" human phenomena are interesting as cultural productions in and of themselves -- but that's also what I find so irresistable. The idea that we should just take scientific knowledge, nod our heads, and accept its self-evidentness. A year ago, I forwarded to some friends the Guttmacher Institute's article on the fact that most people in the U.S. have engaged in (or are engaging in) premarital sex. Its very obviousness was fascinating to me -- what I find compelling about these sorts of studies is how information needs to be disseminated and how there's an anxiety about not having hard cold data to defend any sort of position or attempt at re-imagining our current intervention methods. The article I linked to below is sort of in the same camp as the "most people have had pre-marital sex" (I mean, you wonder about all those people who never marry or those for whom legal marriage was never an option to begin with, in most states). Quantifying everyday human behaviors somehow makes it all seem more substantive and worthy. My investment in qualitative research methods comes partially from the desire to allow the messiness of human behavior to bleed into research. Surveys get you only so far. And hearing how people think and talk about behavior seems important to me....

I'm not sure why I wanted to defend this position (and perhaps this is totally redundant as I've said things along these lines many times before). Still, I think it's important to clarify and re-clarify why I find certain kinds of science interesting and useful.

A link -- and not so much damn navel-gazing

From HL. All hail camera phones.

I've been a slacker on the linkages...
Today, I keep the meta and the analysis a bit tamped down and offer this fun link/site/information about hyperventilation, sex-noises, and sex. It's all scientific, and shit. Because I believe in being as erudite and research-y as possible even when (and maybe especially when?) talking about sex.

Wheeee....

Plus the blog has the great name of Neurotic Physiology with the sub-heading of "are you sci-curious" -- and that's pretty awesome in and of itself!

The personal on the blog

Is it too meta to try to figure out how personal I ought to be on this -- or more meta to try to share my figuring it out in the process? This has always been my resistance to blogging more generally (I once even titled an unfinished project "solipsistic, navel-gazing, and self-reflection" in an attempt to remind myself how absurd the whole process was). But here, in particular, I've worked to keep up a modicum of anonymity. Most who read this are people who know me, and therefore, I do censor myself somewhat. Though the truth is, most who read this, who also know me, are people with whom I'm close and to whom I would say all this and more.

But...occasionally, I share the site with someone who may indirectly be mentioned or criticized, and then I freak out about how my (solipsistic and navel-gazing) comments will be interpreted. (I try only to write nice things, and genuine things, for that matter, about people directly, thinly veiled with acronyms and nicknames.) And lately, because I'm a lazy-ass researcher, I've not been writing about my work directly at all (that is because I have not been working in the fieldworky sense of the word).

So, there has been a fair amount of "personal" stuff on here, even though sometimes it's a bit cryptic, it's not that hard to decipher. I realized I'm a bit relieved that my father never bothers to read this, though I'm sure he would not be terribly disturbed to read about his daughter's "abstinence and diaphragm" contradictions, it still feels a bit unsettling to publicly proclaim this purported birth control method. (Do note the "purported" -- since I've obviously been committed to medical flouting.) It's also weird to announce such things in a public forum. Part of the advice of the writing intensive summer institute I just finished was to put yourself back into the work. It's true that much academic writing is dry and distant. I'm grateful that anthropology allows for the personal, but it's also such a fine line between the personal and oversharing. And fieldwork is not about "you" -- though it's hard sometimes to figure out where "you -- the researcher" and "you -- the human being" begin and end.

I guess this is part of why the blog format appeals to me. It allows me to play a little more with the boundaries, so that there can be "me the human being" a bit more in my work. My work is personal...I think no matter what I do, I will always want to be doing something that has significance to me. I don't really understand the friends and acquaintances whose jobs are just time-fillers. I do understand the allure of good money (sigh), but I know of a number of people who sound like they're just keeping on keeping on. They complain about being boring and they let their jobs get them in terrible moods. I suppose I ought to be more sympathetic.

Still, I'm not sure about what it is I'm trying to accomplish here. I think the August goal will be to document a bit more the process as I careen into the remaining quarter of fieldwork, as it's something I need to do in the non-virtual world, as well. Or maybe I'll just start logging my progress of being allowed to run again. Or my bike itineraries. Or something equally dull -- thereby losing my mini-readership. Perhaps I ought to start a poll -- what should misanthrope hate next?! Maybe I'm not actualizing the populist potential of blogging sufficiently.