My "partial truths"

Part I: Ethnography

I became interested in ethnographic theory and methods in the late 1990s when I was a new Ph.D. student in the Literature Program at Wayne State University. As a part of the graduation requirement, we were to take two graduate level courses in an ancillary field, one that would presumably assist us in coming to a greater understanding of the literature we were to read and write about. Probably because I considered myself a student of American/Cultural Studies, rather than straight literature, I chose to take my outside courses in anthropology; it seemed to be the place to learn about how to study and write about culture.

It was in a graduate course on anthropological theory that I was formally introduced to ethnography as a research methodology. However, rather than reading, or even writing, ethnographies, we engaged in the then current discussion regarding the "crisis" in anthropology, one noted (or instigated as some anthropologist believe) by James Clifford and George Marcus's now famous work Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Simply stated, the crisis is this: How can anthropology (cultural anthropology more specifically) consider itself a science when its mode of knowledge making is the monograph, a literary text that presents reality as perceived by one person?

From what I could tell, it wasn't the accusation of producing literary-like text that had these folks half-torqued. The professor and other budding anthropologists seemed flattered to be considered "real writers," as those who could engage a reader. However, there was also the sense that having been lumped in with those in English and Cultural Studies (armchair anthropologists) was somehow degrading.

"We may write well, but we are also adding to a body of knowledge."

"These observations are accurate."

"All this postmodern stuff is just 'goosing at butterflies'."

The problem was that even as the professor argued for some sort of scientific truth in anthropology, the format of the class seemed to open a space for the students to experience the crisis on an even more personal level. Each week we were to write short essays responding to the readings. These essays were then read aloud, one at a time. The first two weeks were deathly boring; 14 book reports of varying depth.

Then, something shifted. There was another graduate student from the English department in our class. His second paper was, for the most part, personal narrative. I can recall very little of the content, but the basic idea was his using a personal story as a way of thinking through the text at hand. All of the other students--myself included--actually found ourselves listening to what he had to say. The next week the entire tone of the class shifted. Tales of Santa Claus, Walt Disney, walking dogs, and eating ice cream began to frame discussions of cultural relativity. That is, the personal narratives made clear that truth is personal, even as the stories themselves allowed the authors to consider the idea of relativity in a political sense. The class, as a whole, seemed to be making clear Clifford and Marcus's point that how we write our essays, how we frame our understanding of what happened, actually creates the culture in which we exist.

So, I left that class with a realization--with a better understanding of my own truth regarding academia. It is the act of writing, the construction of the reality, the retelling of the stories, the representation of "partial truths" that I enjoy. Sure, I liked to "read" culture, but I was, and still am, even more interested in what it means to "write" culture. And ethnography--as a writing of culture, as writing culture--became the lens through which I began to see goals and objectives in the composition classroom.

Part II: Technology

I have to get a job.

Computers are everywhere.

Multi-sited realities exist in technology.

Ethnography hungers for polyvocality.

Webtext allows for dimensional, dialogical discovery.

Humans connect through the web.

Academia discovers the Other through ethnography.

The web is an Other.

We can all be an Other on the web.

We create culture through technology.

Technology writes culture.

Culture writes technology.

Jobs become careers.

In our field * When ethnography and technology meet*

My "partial truths"* Multi-sited insights * Works Cited * Home