Embodied ethnography. Doing culture

Transcription

1 AARON TURNER Embodied ethnography. Doing culture Over recent years there has been serious research and debate within the social sciences focused on the constitution of knowledge in various settings and contexts. This work has raised issues that seem to have become central to discussions about anthropological research and writing. In this paper I will be arguing that although anthropology has engaged with these issues it has not applied the insights of recent theory to this process. In addition, where these theoretical developments have been applied to anthropological investigation there has been no recognition of the issues raised by critical examinations of the research process. I will go on to argue that applying recent theoretical perspectives of our examination of the research process as well as to analysis of the results will create further potential for research, analysis and theory. Critical examinations of research, epistemology and the constitution of knowledge have highlighted that facts, and knowledge about them, are actively constituted rather than being pre-existing and discovered (for example, see Haraway 1991a). The analysis of facts as constructed in turn problematises the idea of the objective detached observer recording pre-existing facts. It has also been suggested that far from being value-free and disinterested, objectivity itself is not only a value-laden cultural artefact but also a political artefact built on, and upholding, certain relations of power. Not only has the unquestioned legitimacy and authority of positivism been brought into question but it has also been pointed out that all people observers and participants occupy inherently subjective and limited positionings. Consequently, it is claimed that all positionings and perspectives are inherently partial and that claims to objectivity are merely a means to privilege and extend the authority and status of certain positioned and partial perspectives. These points significantly question any person s ability to gain objective knowledge as all knowledge is inherently subjective and partial (Haraway 1991b). Implicit in this point is a critique of the privilege of objectivity and scientific professionalism and the suggestion that all perspectives, while unique, cannot be seen to be inherently inferior or superior. All of these points have raised serious issues for the process and possibilities of anthropological research. In relation to ethnographic fieldwork, it is now widely accepted that the anthropologist can no longer be seen as an observer recording social facts and processes but must be seen as an active, situated, participant in the construction of accounts and representations. It has been suggested that these accounts be acknowledged as partial fictions because they have been actively constructed through the use of techniques that include omissions and rhetoric. Even the best ethnographic texts serious, true fictions are systems, or economies, of truth (Clifford and Marcus 1986: 7). There has also been a concern with the anthropologist s ability to Social Anthropology (2000), 8, 1, European Association of Social Anthropologists 51

2 privilege their own knowledge and perspectives above those of the people they have worked with. Because of these issues, it is argued that the anthropologist has to be visibly reinserted into the research and the representations that come from it. To do this, it is proposed that the anthropologist must reflexively interrogate the processes by which they themselves contributed to the construction of the information and representations constructed through the research. For the most part, this seems to be seen as an issue of presenting the research process and the influences on it as clearly as possible. Consequently, these concerns have led to a heightened critical focus on the process of constructing representations in text (Clifford and Marcus 1986). As well as a critical examination of writing as the part the anthropologist plays in the construction of representations, there have been attempts to turn the research gaze on to anthropologists themselves (for example, for the proposition that autobiography be used as a tool, see Okely and Callaway 1992). While I agree that the anthropologist is an integral and influential part of the research process and the representations produced as part of it, I will argue that the ways that people have attempted to engage with these points seem to be to restricted and limited, relying on some of the key distinctions that they intended to overcome, like the observer and the observed, the intellectual work of thinking and writing (of anthropologists) and the work of daily life (of the subjects in the field). Much examination of anthropologists themselves, and indeed critical reflection on anthropologists writing, focuses on anthropologists separated from the field of research, either after they have left it and are writing up or as individuals with internal cultural values of their own. This pattern in the engagement with reflexivity has two important points for the argument of this paper. Firstly, the focus on analysis, writing and the anthropologist s history and values maintains a distinction between the anthropologist and the context of fieldwork leaving the anthropologist s participation in the field unconsidered. Secondly, the main analysed and considered attributes and activities of the anthropologist are intellectual in terms of thinking, writing or cultural values. So while I agree that the logic of the argument for greater reflexivity is sound in theory and intention, the practice of reflexivity has often done little to reinsert the anthropologist in representations of the field and the construction of knowledge about it. In some cases attempts at reflexivity have kept consideration of anthropologists and their activities separate from discussions of the process operating in the field of their research. I will argue that one of the reasons for this is that the reflexive anthropologist has all too often been constructed as a sentient consciousness reflecting on fieldwork without any consideration of the implications of his or her physical presence in the field. (For an account in which the presence of the anthropologist is taken as an essential starting point, see Pool 1994; however, Pool uses a concept of dialogue that implies the priority of verbal communication rather than embodiment implying the intersubjective significance of mutual physical presence.) The significance of the actual physical presence, disposition, and practices of people in the field has been highlighted by much recent anthropology particularly medical anthropology on embodiment (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987; Csordas 1990). Csordas (1990: 5) has suggested the value of seeing embodiment as the existential ground of culture through which realities, relationships and social order are constituted for people in the processes of ongoing social interaction. This perspective on what we see in the field has been used to shift the anthropologist s attention away from the study of an enduring society or culture in itself to the ways culture is lived, and in 52 AARON TURNER

3 the living of it, constituted. Embodiment seems to shift the study of society and culture to an examination of processes at work in everyday experience and interaction. A central point for this paper arising from this perspective is the shift from seeing culture as principally located in people s minds in concepts and values to a perspective on culture as the embodied and enacted result of continually coming to terms with the world in which one lives. Consequently, culture can be understood to be embodied and sustained and developed in practice, interaction and disposition. This perspective links with ideas of bodily practice as mindful (Scheper Hughes and Lock 1987), culturally informed (Bourdieu 1977) and as a mnemonic of tradition (Connerton 1989). Arising from these perspectives is the idea that culture only exists and persists in the form in which it is lived and that this form is itself constituted in ongoing intersubjective interaction. The aim of this paper is to highlight the opportunity that embodiment presents both to our examination of the part we play in our own research and to the object of that research more generally. If we intend to include a consideration of the part we have played in the research process and the representations constructed from it, it would seem that we should include as an embodied subject the whole anthropologist in the form in which he or she was present in the research process. However, the reflexive anthropologist has remained present as an analytical consciousness but not as an embodied, sensing, acting, socially situated participant. A focus on embodiment within anthropology has generally involved a focus on the embodied experience and practice of others, while the anthropologist is once again distanced from the account. My aim in this paper is to highlight some of the implications of the absence of the embodied reflexive anthropologist and to suggest some of the possibilities that arise from placing them at the centre of analysis. The anthropologist in the research process In this section I aim to examine the implications of applying the theoretical insights of work on embodiment to the anthropologist s role in the research process. To do this, I will draw on my field work amongst younger people in an area of West London. Participant observation involves, at least to some extent, the anthropologist s presence, activity and interaction in a social field; this in turn involves developing relationships. It is interesting to note in view of my present argument how these relationships are often not described as shifting social relationships that have constantly to be negotiated, but are covered by the blanket-term informants, implying a fixed role and fixed relationship that seems to appear from nowhere. It is also interesting to note that informants are often seen to belong to the anthropologist my informants and not the social context in question. The distinction often made between anthropologists and the social field in which they are researching is an important issue that I will question later in the paper. My main point at this stage is that the anthropologist cannot be present in a social field without participating and becoming a significant author of events, practices and political configurations, thereby effecting what happens and the significance it has for the constructions that emerge for participants. I would like to illustrate this by reference in my own research. The bulk of my fieldwork until now has consisted of becoming involved in the daily lives of young white guys in Southall and nearby areas of west London. My involvement has been very active and has consisted of a lot more participation than EMBODIED ETHNOGRAPHY 53

4 observation. Most of the time spent together has involved doing things. On meeting or arranging to meet most talk is asking what guys feel like doing or what we could do. This discussion is pursued until something is decided on. Even if the conversation topic is changed I will occasionally be asked: So, what do you want to do?. I have been wary of this process because I want to do what they want to do, so I do not want to make the decisions and try to express enthusiasm for doing something while insisting that I do not mind what. I have no idea what happens when I am absent or even if the issue of what to do arises in the same way or is dealt with in the same way when I am not there. They try ideas out on me and then decide on something that I agree on. Despite my attempts to let natural cultural processes take their course it is evident that I am actively participating in deciding what we will do. Firstly, during some periods I have had a car and am willing to contribute to the cost of activities (as a participant). Secondly, as I have suggested, I am present. When I am absent, I suspect that the process and dynamic of the way choices are made is different in some way. For example, I have sometimes noticed the hesitancy of others to express an opinion. This may be because I was reluctant to state a preference or it may be because they are unsure of expressing themselves openly when I am there. I have also noticed that the young man who I have been closest to and who brought me into the collective has at times used me to create a decision that has gone unchallenged by others. Whether this young man often makes the decisions in the group or not, it is clear that I am affecting the dynamics of the process and the resources and balance of power by which these processes are engaged in. Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, I can not help but be actively involved in the decision-making process. By trying not to affect the process I endorse choices as they are run by me and in the end endorse the final choice. They are watching the way I act to see my preference and I am doing the same, so our demeanour and actions are affecting the process and understandings of it. It seems clear to me that I am a significant participant in affecting the practices we engage in and how we come to do them. I am also a significant participant in affecting the way practices are engaged in and carried out as well as the meanings that are constituted from them. Most of the things we decide to do are leisure activities and many of these are games that are usually, if not always, structured around competition. I also participate in these. At first I was struck by an awareness of the significance of the appearance of competence and the ability to compete effectively; even old ice cream sticks are turned into something to do and a means to compete. If I tried to just emulate what others were doing and go along with things I would be endorsing and promoting a certain way of doing things. I have never refused to compete in a game and this may have contributed to competition being the main form of play when we are together. Further, I noticed the importance of winning when I played one young man at pool and won. Each time I noticed him become more intent and less relaxed, quickly racking up the balls for a chance to win again. I thought I should throw a game to help the research but when it came to the shot I did not. In fact, when this young man improved at pool my playing intensified. So I did more than just go along with competition, to my own surprise I actively engaged in it. In my effort to participate I attempt to play football competently and not exceed my competence, but not show it to be as limited as it seems compared to their competence. At the same time I endorsed and furthered the competition and confirmed the importance and natural taken-for-grantedness of competence at football (I will come to my negation of that later). Even in speech, quite naturally saying 54 AARON TURNER

5 unlucky after a missed pool shot or missed goal, or giving a smile or laugh after a slip or outrageous miss of the ball actively confirm and claim the importance of competence, competition and success. In view of my participation in these processes it would be a violent misrepresentation to state or even construct a representation along the lines of young white males often play football, and much of their interaction is around competition. This representation, although parallelling many anthropological representations of cultures, misses an essential fact through which these activities were pursued. I was an active participant in the processes whereby these practices were engaged in and in the processes in which their significance was found. Consequently, this is not a representation that can be attributed to their culture or to things they do. We have learned nothing of them. What I have learned about is we as a negotiating social configuration. To extract the anthropologist as separate from the cultural subjects involved would be to misrepresent the social configuration in which the practices and meanings that emerged was negotiated. Consequently, the anthropologist must be seen as an inside participant in the negotiation of culture, and this negotiation then becomes an important focus of the analysis of embodied interaction from a position of involvement and experience. The point I am trying to make does not in any way relate to debates about the ability of anthropologists to become cultural insiders. I am not suggesting that the anthropologist is gaining the knowledge and understanding to become an insider in an existing culture in which they were previously an outsider. I am putting aside the consideration of insider and outsidership, and the boundary and continuity it implies, in order to consider from a different perspective the anthropologist s position in a social context. Debates about anthropologists as insiders or outsiders depend on the idea of a culture existing before the anthropologist arrives, and persisting during and after their stay, to which the anthropologist may or may not be able to gain insidership. The anthropologist is a significant participant, an insider to the social processes by which practices are developed and gain meaning. The part that the anthropologist can play in these negotiations, and on what terms, is an important consideration for observation and analysis. But to extract the anthropologist as a participant in this process would be to present a unfounded fiction. This raises issues about concepts of social and cultural identity in relation to both the concept of insiderness and other concepts of identity that rely on reference to us them distinctions. I will come back to these issues later. The focus on processes that the anthropologist is directly involved in also allows her/him to interrogate processes from the position of experience of embodied negotiation in which reality and social order are discovered and constituted. Consequently, the anthropologist s participation becomes the object of study rather than a variable to be controlled for through analytic reflexivity. Traditionally, the examination of embodied interaction as a constitutive process seems to rely heavily on interpretation of uses of other bodies and of the significance and outcomes of interactions. As implied here, there is a distance between the observed actions of embodied subjects and the representations of these. Accepting involvement as the basis of interpretation adds to the possibilities of analysing these processes. Considering the anthropologist as an embodied participant also allows the problematisation of the anthropologist s own experience as a serious object of analysis. I will give a few examples from my own research. During fieldwork I have con- EMBODIED ETHNOGRAPHY 55

6 stantly been surprised at the things my body does quite naturally that I never would have expected. In terms of competition when playing pool or running, although I agreed with myself that it was a good idea not to play to win, I still did so. This led me to observe my approach to playing pool in other contexts. Although I thought I played for fun, I only did this when I was sure I could win if I wanted to; on other occasion I played to win and the winning was the enjoyment. So embodied experience in the field can also inform us about our own embodiment and what we take for granted and do without reflection. This seems to offer further possibilities for employing anthropology as cultural critique by making the familiar strange (Marcus and Fischer 1986). When it came to football, when we went out to play the other young men I was with immediately displayed all their flash footwork and ball-handling skills. At first, I played casually, missing the ball a couple of times and smiling at my mistake. One of the guys muttered something to another. I caught the end of the reply that followed the short laugh: He is a bit odd but you ll get used to him. The comment implied a link between performance on the pitch and the kind of consideration I would be given as a person generally. This led me to be more serious about the way I played while trying not to look as if this was the case; I began watching myself trying to look competent but not show the limits of my competence. This incident shows more than me learning their value of competence; it shows me embodying it, legitimating and promoting it in a bid to develop my ability to persevere in the field. Playing with other players who were not so good and also noticing the way small boys kicked the ball back to us I noticed how carefully boys seemed to be about kicking a ball right when trying to kick it back. Even smaller boys who would kick the ball back into play if it went too far seemed both to relish the chance of kicking the ball, and kicking it carefully as if aware of a degree of attention and scrutiny. Football began to seem as much about appearance and showing oneself playing as it was about the actual game itself. This observation, which started with my own experience, has opened up avenues for the analysis of the kick around for experience, social positioning and personhood. Interrogation of the anthropologists experience may also allow for the development of understanding of the relationship between experience and social practices and processes. Playing football or tenpin bowling, I was struck by the intense feeling when all ten pins went down or when the ball hit the post or was saved. These experiences suggest that the feat of achieving a set of prescribed outcomes through manipulation of bodily practice is more than just a meaning-making process or a means of establishing social position. It shows a strong relation to sensory experience. The anthropologist s experience provides some basis, although not a necessarily comparable one, for analysis of these relationships. The socially constituting configuration So far I have suggested the importance of recognising the anthropologist as a participant in social processes and grounding research and analysis at this point; to build on this idea I will be using the concept of the socially constituting configuration. What this term refers to is the configuration of subjects who are present, and are therefore actively involved in negotiating cultural practices and the meanings drawn from them. Since the anthropologist will generally be examining processes among configurations 56 AARON TURNER

7 in which they themselves are present, this socially constituting configuration should be seen as a socially constituting we or us rather than socially constituting them. At any one time and place this collective constitutes the embodied subjects doing culture. I am using the term to examine the use of focusing on configurations of people actually present in social interactions, but it can be widened out to include the influence of people not present and in view of network theory objects. It seems to me, however, that in doing so the ways that these other influences are brought to bear on negotiations must be examined rather than assumed. For example, when I was using it, my car became a significant actor, influencing the practices that we engaged in. However, in analysing the significance of the car as a participant I would suggest that we examine how its significance was constituted by the participants present. When I had the car it was usually suggested that we go and do things that had to be driven to. It is important to note that I participated in this process by trying to go along with what the other wanted to do and being eager to contribute in some way. It is also important to note that other factors and people were brought to bear in the making of these decisions. Often it was said that there was nothing to do in the area and this was often linked to the kinds of people around the area. In these cases both the nature of the area and its facilities, together with other absent residents, were constituted as significant participants influencing what we did and where we did it. The concept of the socially constituting configuration is useful as it does not necessitate the assumption of the boundaries and extension of culture or community. The concept also has the benefit of not assuming membership; it is completely dependent on who is present or brought to significance by the people present. Examining the processes within a socially constituting configuration that is constantly in flux and changing in constitution disallows the assumption of community as a necessarily significant unit of social constitution. Culture as embodied practice, disposition and interaction is constituted in the intersubjective interaction of socially constituting configurations, as are the nature, significance and terms of social relationships and social networks. If we see the socially constituting configuration as the context of the constitution of culture and social relationships, the idea and concept of community becomes problematic. How is it possible for people to assume community or society? In other words, how is it possible for people to assume that the basis for social life is shared and can be left unsaid? This is especially the case where there is an anthropologist present who does not belong to what may be an assumed community, and demonstrates this fact. In my case I am not within the age range of people that these young people normally hang out with; this raises the question of how inclusion is constituted. To examine the occasions on which it becomes impossible to assume community and a sharing of some common reality is extremely important for understanding how notions of us, and community and society remain important constructs in the face of constant assault. I have become increasingly attentive to the occasions on which I am kept within the range of acceptable by my age being overlooked, by being seen as a little odd but something you will get used to when my incompetence at football causes observers to laugh. On one occasion a man who was watching me play darts with the same incompetence as the young women I was playing with, gave me a wink and muttered You got to give them a chance. I decided to let him know that I really could not play darts and was doing my best. Halfway through telling him, his expression changed; he looked distinctly uncomfortable and I also felt uncomfortable, as if some breach had EMBODIED ETHNOGRAPHY 57

8 occurred between us. His expression changed again, and he shrugged: Never mind, it s just a game. To me, these signal the moments at which society becomes possible to resume and the principles by which it is seen to operate come to be reinstated by slights of definition. I interpreted this occasion as an instance in which the assumption of male superiority in competence in certain activities that allows them to patronise women was displaced, as was the ability of us as two males to collude in this fiction. His reaction was to redefine darts, not as a site for the establishment of social position and assumptions about its basis, but as just a game of fun. In my research it has become clear that certain communities are implicitly or explicitly constituted and brought to bear in certain instances but are absent or denied in others within the interactions of a socially constituting configuration. I have spent a lot of time among a group of mates. They see themselves as mates and have often described themselves as us lot and talked about possibilities for action that constitute them as some kind of group or community. For example, in discussions about people or events at the pub at which the are regulars, they will say: You know what we should do? We should all.... In these suggestions it seems clear who is being talked about. It also seems to be assumed that it can be taken for granted that everyone will act together. It is also assumed that they will stand up for each other s interests and fight on each other s behalf. It is relevant to note here that they seem to agree that they all have different ethnicities. Don is agreed to be black; Tom is seen to be English with gypsy blood; Tim is seen to be Australian (despite a cockney accent and an English upbringing in London); and Rich is understood to be Indian. Al is seen to be of Irish background, but has a cockney accent, as do Tom and Don. When I have been there I have been understood to be Jewish. Most of the time I have been with these mates they have been together. They see their community as the centre of their life in the area. As Al said when we were all in his living room, This is it. You are in the centre of Southall. They all laughed and agreed. However, they also have networks that extent to other mates. These networks are often cut (Strathern 1996) as these other friendships are not always extended to all the mates, and if they are, they are not always accepted. It was Al who invited me to spend time with him and his mates in the pub, at their houses and going out to other people s house and blues parties. Al also has other friends that the others know, but with whom he often goes out with separately. Don and Tom and the others seem clear that when Al is invited out by his other mates, they are not necessarily invited. However, Al invited me out with his mate, Joe, to go to a party in another area of London. Gesturing with his head towards a passing Asian-looking young man, Joe remarked on his presence in the pub, using the term nig nog. Joe smiled, wondering at what he was doing, saying that he was the only blacky there; he joked that he must be lost. His comments implied that the young man had no reason to be in the pub because of his skin colour, implying that the white people in the pub were welcome and in some way belonged. His comments implied ideas about insiderness, outsiderness and community, on this night in the area we were in. This way of talking, while providing a basis for the three of us to be together that extended to a wider community of whites, also discredited the community of mates that Al and I spent time with at other times. Later that evening another guy was supposed to turn up. Al was not keen to met him because he was an idiot. Al expressed an unwillingness to accept community with this guy who used to be a friend, while Joe tried to convince Al that Jake was all right and a good bloke. Here again the terms 58 AARON TURNER

9 of community have changed, only admitting people that one liked or knew were alright. It could even be argued that no specific community was brought to bear in this instance; relations bore no reference to any community and were wholly based on personal feelings and choice without relation to a wider population. At the party Jake, who was white, turned up with three mates of his own to whom we were introduced. We all smiled and laughed and sat on the two couches in the party. We talked and interacted as a group. Drinks were passed round and shared. This was a community: your friends are my friends. Interestingly enough, one of Jake s friends was Asian-looking but this was not commented on at the time or after. As we made our way back to Southall, Al declared: Jake s mates were all right, and Joe agreed. This example shows how different communities are constituted and denied, extending to different people and populations on varying terms and at different times. In relation to these kind of social processes it does not make sense to consider people as part of any community or group. It makes more sense to ask how it is that groups and communities are constituted as significant at different times and what the significance and participation of different people and practices in these processes implies. This focus on social constituting configurations shifts our examination from local contexts and people as examples that can allow us to understand wider cultures or communities to an examination of the ways in which culture and social relationships are constituted. Considering the anthropologist as a participant forces us to reconstruct the terms on which we view other participants. We have to move from seeing participants as unproblematic members of a society or culture to examining the methods by which society is constantly remade as a possibility against its own inconsistencies. As I have argued, the mood of reflexivity within anthropology has been engaged with mainly as intellectual subjects. By not situating research and analysis in the embodied participating anthropologist many opportunities for theory and analysis are being missed. These opportunities are based on accepting the anthropologist as a participant in various and varying constituting configurations. The problematisations this perspective raises about society, culture and identity are central for a more processual and critically informed theorisation of social processes. I have also argued that perspectives on embodiment suggest that by being present in the field the anthropologist becomes a significant participant in the intersubjective constitution of culture. Consequently, to ignore the participation of the anthropologist in the processes of the development of cultural practice among varying socially constituting configurations seems to miss the opportunity of developing a comprehensive analysis of these processes. Aaron Turner Centre for the Study of Health Sickness and Disablement Department of Human Sciences Brunel University Uxbridge UD8 3PH United Kingdom Aaron.Turner@brunel.ac.uk References Bourdieu, P Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clifford, J Introduction. Partial truths, in (eds.) J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus, Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press. EMBODIED ETHNOGRAPHY 59

10 Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (eds.) Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connerton, P How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Csordas, T. J Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology, Ethnos 18: Haraway, D. J. 1991a. Simians, cyborgs and women. the reinvention of nature. London: Free Association Books. 1991b. Situated knowledges. The science question in feminism and the privilege of the partial perspective, in Simians, cyborgs and women. The reinvention of nature, London: Free Association Books. Marcus, G. E. and Fischer M. M. J Anthropology as cultural critique. An experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Okely, J., and Callaway, H. (eds.) Anthropology and autobiography. London: Routledge. Pool, R Dialogue and the interpretation of illness. Conversations in a Cameroon village. Oxford: Berg. Scheper-Hughes, N. and Lock, M The mindful body. A prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1: Strathern, M Cutting the network, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2: AARON TURNER