Anthropological brownie points
Well, I hope I've now earned some brownie points in the bank of anthropological legitimacy. There is that thing in this discipline that the more you suffer for your data, the more valid they are. Of course I don't have nearly the balance in that account as some of my friends who are battling malaria, Maoist insurgents, crazy Quebecois-French school boards, etc. and I'm not sure I'll ever reach that level of scientific validity here, with my electricity and Thai cafe and running water.
But on Thursday, I made myself leave the comfort and light of my glorified caravan to take a trip on the bus to town in the evening in order to attend a community outreach gathering by representatives of the Scottish parliament. At the time, I thought that this meeting might reveal anthropological riches without which my dissertation would surely be inferior to the point of reverting into a freshman's Anthro 101 paper.
The weather was a atrocious, the way you'd imagine: stormy wind gusts blowing chunks of water through the air (not quite sure if they were rain or just the remnants of earlier rain whirled about by the wind), and I swear there was hail and snow earlier. Plus, it had been pitch-black since 4:30. Thankfully, my trusty waterproof rain coat (see below) fit over my down jacket, and I was wearing two pairs of socks. Of course, the bus was a little late, and then I still had to hike from the bus station to the council building at the edge of town.
The meeting was pleasant, and I probably understand the political process in the Scottish parliament a bit better now than I did before (when I didn't really understand it at all). There was the omnipresent tea and biscuits. The second part of the meeting was in Gaelic, discussing the proposed future of the Gaelic bill which would make Gaelic an official language of Scotland. I tried to listen to the Gaelic presentation and the simultaneous English translation on the headphones at the same time, to see if anything interesting would leap out (not sure what that would be, really), and then I left a bit early to catch the bus b/c I wasn't going to spring £10 for a cab home.
And that was it. I'm still not sure if it was worth it, although i'm starting to get the sense that this thing called fieldwork is mainly a series of mini-events that are almost non-events, punctuated a by a few moments of ethnographic brilliance and incisiveness. But hopefully I earned some anthropological brownie points nonetheless.
But on Thursday, I made myself leave the comfort and light of my glorified caravan to take a trip on the bus to town in the evening in order to attend a community outreach gathering by representatives of the Scottish parliament. At the time, I thought that this meeting might reveal anthropological riches without which my dissertation would surely be inferior to the point of reverting into a freshman's Anthro 101 paper.
The weather was a atrocious, the way you'd imagine: stormy wind gusts blowing chunks of water through the air (not quite sure if they were rain or just the remnants of earlier rain whirled about by the wind), and I swear there was hail and snow earlier. Plus, it had been pitch-black since 4:30. Thankfully, my trusty waterproof rain coat (see below) fit over my down jacket, and I was wearing two pairs of socks. Of course, the bus was a little late, and then I still had to hike from the bus station to the council building at the edge of town.
The meeting was pleasant, and I probably understand the political process in the Scottish parliament a bit better now than I did before (when I didn't really understand it at all). There was the omnipresent tea and biscuits. The second part of the meeting was in Gaelic, discussing the proposed future of the Gaelic bill which would make Gaelic an official language of Scotland. I tried to listen to the Gaelic presentation and the simultaneous English translation on the headphones at the same time, to see if anything interesting would leap out (not sure what that would be, really), and then I left a bit early to catch the bus b/c I wasn't going to spring £10 for a cab home.
And that was it. I'm still not sure if it was worth it, although i'm starting to get the sense that this thing called fieldwork is mainly a series of mini-events that are almost non-events, punctuated a by a few moments of ethnographic brilliance and incisiveness. But hopefully I earned some anthropological brownie points nonetheless.
posted by Ness @ 2:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home