#ethonography

[protoslacker]

In finished anthropological writings, including those collected here, this fact-that what we call our data are really our own constructions of other people's constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to-is obscured because most of what we need to comprehend a particular event, ritual, custom, idea, or whatever is insinuated as background information before the thing itself is directly examined.

Clifford Geertz in Preface (PDF). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays

The Interpretation of Cultures

[kormorana]

[hemonrro-blog]

Learning binary codes, to program the robots.

[cupidford]

A lot of people have been bringing up how fandom ‘used to be’ or mentioning the craziness of just-post-S3 or S2 hiatus etc etc etc. As a Tumblr toddler I’d be really interested in a timeline synopsis of fandom dynamics over the last 5 years. An ethnography of sorts I suppose.

I mean, I know a lot about the timeline of TJLC thinking but I’m talking more broadly. Does something like this exist? I mean no narrative will be unbiased, but I’d be super interested! Just in changes of thinking, points of tension over the years, etc....

[thetranslationstaysthesame-blog]

Blog entry 01

"What does the notion of culture mean to you?"

"Is there a place you'd like to go to conduct ethonography? Where? Why?"

To me the idea of culture is the way people live their lives in relation to a group.  In my mind culture is not something that an individual can simple create for him or herself, it's something that comes from a larger group that effects the individual.  However the culture also could not exist without all of the individuals who contribute to it.  So in a sense culture is both a cause and an effect, and as such cannot remain stagnant. I also feel that just because two cultures are different does not mean that one is wrong, or primitive.  Both cultures will be suited to the people living in them and the people living in them will be contributing to the culture as a whole.  No one person can decide what is absolutely right for another and neither can a culture.

If I could conduce [an?] ethonography anywhere in the world I think I would go to England.  I would go there because we tend to assume that because the language is the same the culture is the same as well.  We assume that because we can understand a verbal exchange we can also understand the culture behind it, and I feel that this is a false assumption.  I think that the notion that Americans are descendents of people from England adds to this false assumption that the cultures are the same.  Of course in reality this assumption it itself is false, as a people we aren't just descended from the English, and even those of us who are have been brought up to adopt the culture that is uniquely American.  I would especially like to look into the instances in which American English and British English differ. I think it would be interesting to trace the origins of their words (especially words for things that developed some time after the colonization of America).  For example I would make a point to look into why they call it "the tube" and we call it "the subway".  Since this is something that would appear in both cultures long after the divide of American and English culture I think it would be interesting to look into how cultural differences led to the naming of a singular thing in two different ways by two different cultures.