#jennykch

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

There is certainly a change in my body and my overall thoughts when I enter the library. Those transformations and thoughts also change somewhat depending on which part of the library I’m in. The lower the level, surprisingly, relaxes my body as I allow myself to mold into the library chairs. The lower levels are hidden underground and without the availability of windows, its easier to ignore the passing of time and the thought of wasting a whole day away in front of one laptop in one position. In the lower levels, I become more sprawled out and tune into myself more. Without the presence of constant human movement and chatter, there’s a greater sense of being connected with just yourself and your work. On the other hand, when entering the atrium, my sight is constantly filled with friends, acquaintances, and strangers talking and studying. My body and mind are more aware of the social aspect of the library and more vigilant to comparison. Who’s studying what? Has he been here for as long as me? I wonder what they are working on. In the lower levels, whether its separated by the physical walls of the cubed-desks or just by the general silence of the air, my body and mind both understand that everyone is focused individually, staring ahead at their laptops without the disruption of others.

In order to resolve a writing block or ease the difficulties in writing, there are many pre-writing steps that must be take and ensured. Writing requires a real table for me, I can’t be sitting on a comfy chair and write something seriously. Similarly, just as Narayan states, the workspace must be cleared of any residual papers or work from other subjects. The only sources that should be laid out or in sight are the ones that relate to the writing piece itself. One of the big things to help push the writing process forwards it the set up of a detailed, but not overwhelming outline. Throughout writing long papers, it’s often easy to loose track of what the real point is or of what information is actually important to include. The outline helps centralize details and focus the purpose of the paper. There isn’t a certain atmosphere that must be present for writing a successful paper, but I can’t be surrounded by friends that divert my attention from writing. A coffee shop or Brody atrium are personally the best atmospheres to write because there is constant movement and things to look at when your brain needs a break from the writing itself. The constant, slight buzz of a coffee shop or Brody atrium is what stimulates and renews my brain to keep on writing.

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

11/15

De Leon uses the term a “socio-technical system” to portray the dynamic and interrelated relationship between objects and the human body. Those trying to cross the border have developed deeply held ideologies to rely on certain items to assuage the pain of crossing the dessert, even though those certain items may have the exact opposite effect. For migrants, their ‘logic’ to rely on certain goods shapes their behavior and “produces and projects social distinctions”. The use of certain objects is logical in the fact that items are chosen based on the amount of knowledge given to them to undertake something that is highly difficult and clandestine. The complex and dynamic relationship between the objects chosen to keep these people alive are influenced by many logical factors, including economic constraints, folk logic, vendor/past advice, guides, and misconceptions of Border Control. A socio-technical system structures and explains the "relatively uniform collection of material culture” that often ends up harming the migrants than fulfilling the expected job of the object itself. People make conscious decisions to purchase and use certain goods based on the small amount of knowledge they have collected through a variety of different people, even though these techniques create a cyclical system of harm. For example, the perception of blacked out water bottles and dark clothing provide camouflage, but also raise water and body temperature to an unbearable degree. Though all of the decisions made are logical, the duality that exists between objects and peoplecreates an interdependency that often ends up betraying the people themselves.

The two different atmospheres of studying in the library, public, group discussion versus individual, private study, can be divided into gendered spaces. The chairs in the atrium naturally arrange themselves into a cyclical, group-oriented shape, which can be seen as a more female-oriented shape. The chairs in the atrium are very public and push students to discuss their opinions on subjects and work together. From the essay, the cyclical nature of the chairs indicates a more female-sphered space in comparison to the more individual and closed off study cubes in the lower levels of the library. The cubes themselves form a 'walled-up' and separate space that each student ‘dominates’ and takes over for themselves to focus privately. These cut off spaces that each student ‘conquers’ can be seen as a more male gendered space.  Each student demarcates an end and a start in the space that it allows. The study cubes do not allow for more than one person to occupy the space. This distinction between gendered space is an underlying effect of my project to uncover the distinctions in bodily positions that are indicative of specific study spaces. The different power and gender dynamics can be seen as a possible characteristic to take into account when observing body positions.

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Discussion 11/8

Structural violence draws attention and emphasizes on the root causes of indirect violence that is inflicted on people, specifically the social, political, and economic structures that harm bodies unnecessarily. Structural violence is not focused on maintaining one ‘bad guy’ and the victim but the context and ways in which the violence comes about. Stone criticizes the use of “suffering bodies” because those images focus entirely on the poverty and emaciated nature of the victims, and does not give view on the perpetrators/root causes of the suffering bodies. Secondly, those specific images continue and reproduce the previously held conceptions of suffering bodies. They do not ‘disrupt’ or challenge the power dynamics that already exist and basically continue to confirm what the audience wants to see. Lastly, the most powerful images of suffering bodies emphasizes the idea of helplessness and destitution beyond help. Stone states the images “close off pathways toward resolution”. Stone writes that alternatives to showing victimization would be showing ‘scenes of confrontation’ which displays victims of violence as 'capable adversaries’ and includes the perpetrators within the shot. These scenes show structural violence more clearly by defining the needs and solutions to certain violences and do not show the victims as helpless.

Photos can be viewed as gifts if they withhold a certain past, sentimental value within them that can be bestowed to ongoing generations. The authors challenge this idea by stating that these images evoke a passage of time that depict “a past that has gone” and a loss to a past way of life. At times these photos can be a bad reminder of the past and of the dead. The process of looking at collections of photos can be seen as an immediate connection to the Ladakhi lives but also ‘simultaneously constitut[ing] a historical record’. The representations of the images will change as they age and as the memories that they hold are viewed in different ways as the times change. The authors pose the questions that dictate what counts as a memory and what counts as historical knowledge and how they two interrelate to each other.

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Built Environment Discussion

Karen Dohm focuses on the different architecture of houses, storage of certain items and ability to convert surveillance as techniques to analyze the difference of public versus private space in Pueblo Housing. She also writes on the types of activities performed in private verus public spaces, the lack of entry ways and windows to offer a sense of protect ability and the idea of higher value and lower value items distinguishing more private and well cared for areas. Dohm does mention areas that are less easily definable as private or public, such as pathways and rooftops. She explains this complexity by stating how the elevation to view a space, the amount of vents and walls in an area, and the amount of time spent in an area can morph the dynamic of private to public space in these areas/circumstances.

Margaret Dorsey and Miguel Diaz-Barriga critique visual representations of the US-Mexico Border Wall by claiming that major new magazines tend to “fetishize” the wall as uninviting and illegal. Visual representations limit the border wall community to ideas surrounding surveillance, desert, rust, unnatural, undocumented migrants, and rarely display the culture, refuges, wildlife and people that actually make up these areas. The authors move beyond popular assumptions of the border wall by capturing different festivals that occur, people with their families smiling and people generally living and enjoying their community. The last image, in particular, shows how the wall has cut into the everyday lives of the people living there, taking away their natural space and property they once owned.

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

The first photo is taken of a lamp in front of a window, with the contrast and exposure heightened to bring out the framing the diagonal blinds create and the weird shape of the lamp to create a simplistic yet eerie photo. The use of silhouette and centering create a more abstract photo. 

The second photo, similar to the first, utilizes the window light to create some shading on the mirror and the bottles. The mirror and the bottles create a form of symmetry and balance, though they aren’t completely the same objects or placed on one side of another. The photo is framed by the rectangular window crop and and there are also vertical lines that shape the image. The exposure and contrast are also increased in this to bring out the shapes that the objects create. 

The third photo utilizes contrast and a form of rectangular balance to frame the photo and bring out the 2D nature of the picture frames. The light shone upon the frames also creates a shadow that helps structure the image.

The last image was taken in a busy road in China over the summer, and it utilizes the use of leading lines and symmetry to create an aesthetically pleasing image that allows the eye to follow the two roads and the balance of the cars on each road.