What're You Up To Wednesday? #30

What a week! It's been busy as hell, and I've still got so much work to do. Let's start with TIm and Liz's wedding. It went off perfectly. It was the most traditional wedding I've ever seen, though I haven't been to too many. Everyone looked great, the food was great, the reception was great, and we all had a great time. I don't know what else to say except that it was hectic and the whole weekend felt like a dream. Megan came up from Wichita, and we got to hang out together. Sadly, we didn't get to do too much on our own. But it was real nice seeing her, and I thought we had a good time together. Hopefully we'll see each other again real soon.
Here's a rough outline of the events: I got in to Tarrytown on Thursday around 5. I went to the hotel and saw Megan, but then had to rush out to the bachelor party with Sans, Tim's friend from junior high and Chris, Liz's brother. We went to X2O, where Tim's friend is the head chef, and had an amazing dinner. We then went to a couple of bars for drinks, and finally got home around 4am. I barely slept, and was a little sick the next day from all the food. Megan and I hung out for a while and then went to lunch in Tarrytown at a Greek place. After that we had to get ready and go to the rehearsal. Everyone was shuffled around and shown what we would be doing the next day and then we all went to the rehearsal dinner. There was a lot more good food and some drinks, there were a lot of family there including one of my Uncles and my Parents and my Aunt. The next morning I had to get up early, get on my tux and head over to Chris's house where he, Tim and I waited for the limo to take us to the Church. At the Church we waited around and were shuffled around some more until the wedding began. During the wedding I got to sit right on the altar in front of everyone. Many people said I looked bored up there - I really wasn't, but I think I have a bored looking face. What's more, it was a Catholic wedding, and I don't remember anything from my Catholic upbringing, so I had no idea what to do most of the time. Everything went perfectly with the wedding and then we were all shipped off to the reception. At the site the whole wedding party was moved around and posed for pictures - it was really crazy. Then we got to eat some food briefly before being taken upstairs for the actual reception. The wedding party was all brought into the room and announced football style to the waiting crowd. Then Liz's sister gave a speech, I gave a speech, and we all sat down to eat. There was much dancing, much eating, and much drinking. We were all very exhausted afterwards, and I was very happy to get out of my tux. We had a very slow relaxed meal that night and then went to sleep. The next day we all had to leave, but we had a brunch with everyone first. Megan got a ride to the airport from Liz's dad, and I took the train back to NYC to catch my train to Baltimore. And now we're back, we're all awake and the dream is over. Time to get down to work, and I have a ton of it backed up.
On another note, I finally got to go to the Bay yesterday. My advisor is doing some research out there on environmental justice and climate change, so he had a workshop in an African American church, and I got to go along and help out. It was a lot of fun, and the people were great. I hope I get to go again for the next workshops. I'll tell more about them another time; I'm tired, sick of typing and have tons of work I should be doing besides this. Anyway, I hope you all had a great time these past two weeks. Thank you for posting to last week's WRYUT?W - it's odd that I took a week off from it, but got the most comments I've had in a long time. I'll try to respond to those soon.
In the meantime, What're You Up To?

What're You Up To Wednesday? #29

WRYUT?W is on vacation this week. I'm busy getting ready for my brother's wedding, and trying to get some work done as well. I'll let you know how it went next week.

Thoughts on Power

1) Power subsumes and consumes; it tries to bring the Other into its Self (though it never fully succeeds). It is an inward pulling force.

2) Systems need inward pulling forces or else they melt into the aether. Systems also need multiplicity and difference or they become like icicles - fragile, cold and dead. (Laura Huxley says, don't try to make ice cubes out of a river)

3) Power must always be kept in check through intense competition or systemic limits. Competition between multiple powers makes it impossible for any one power to grow too large. Another strategy is counter-power, that is, when a particular power grows too large, there is an automatic, culturally embedded mechanism which acts to cut it down to size. If these limitations are not in play, then the system will become too homogeneous and fragile. (Imagine an ecosystem in which a single species consumes every other species - have we seen this before?)

4) Power is not the only inward pulling force; there is also identity, solidarity, cooperation. These inward pulling forces allow the Other to exist in its own right. By focusing on the relationships between within a heterogeneous network of entities, these forces promote justice and resilience.

What're You Up To Wednesday? #28

Ok, now I've got two weeks to post about. Let's see if I can remember all of the exciting things I've been doing.
A week ago Friday, I went to play in a kickball tournament with some other grad students from my department. We ended up being short some players so we merged with the Poli Sci students and kicked ass! Not really; we lost two games and won one. Both games we lost were against the same team too. But it was fun, and we didn't have to play against the really serious teams (Business school, apparently). After the game we went out with the Poli Sci people and had a fun time - I guess we've forged a relationship with them and are probably going to hang out in the future.
The next day I went to the 350 rally in DC. It started at Meridian Hill, where the drum circle is. There was some good music, probably 500-1000 people and lots of idealism. We then marched from Meridian Hill, down 16th street to the White House where we formed a circle - the 0 in 350. It was interesting to be a part of that, though I'm not sure how much it accomplished; it was also a nice walk. The only problem was that it was pouring rain the whole time. I was absolutely soaked by the time we got to the White House. I was supposed to go to a karaoke party with the department afterward, but I was so wet, cold and tired that I just went home, changed and had a nice relaxing evening watching TV.
The next day was more drum circle. I may get to go again this weekend, but I doubt there will be many times after that. I still haven't gone to the other circle, because I've been too busy with other things. I'll go this Friday, though.
Last Wednesday, my friend Brendan was in town. He was traveling north from Georgia to Connecticut for a film shoot with Patrick and then heading up to Vermont to stay for a while. It was good to see him, and I had a good time. I miss having good friends around that don't mind listening to my philosophical rants now and again.
Halloween was pretty lame. I didn't go anywhere or do anything. Everyone else was out, so I just watched some movies, read some and did some work. Oh well - they can't all be fun, right?
I've been having a moral/epistemological crisis lately; thus all of the posts on applied anthropology with more to come on Power and networks and things like that. I think I'm beginning to resolve it though, and I'm feeling a lot better than I did a few weeks ago.
I think that's it. I can't recall anything else, and I really should get to work. Hope you all are having a good time. What're YOU up to?

Thoughts on an Answer to the Previous Question

The previous question being "How can (Should?) anthropologists help the communities they work with?" More broadly, the question is, should we try to make the world a "better" place and how? The question is difficult to phrase without seeming idealistic, but I hope my meaning comes across.
I really appreciate the answers I received from Stacie and Josh (see comments on the previous post), and I'm still thinking about how to work those into my own conceptions. Here are some of my own thoughts:
1) I reject the premise that we can or should do nothing. Doing nothing is still doing something, that is, it's a political and moral choice that has consequences and repercussions. Even research for research's sake has consequences - we interact with a community, we write up our findings, we build a career based on our research, we talk to people about our research and all of these have not-insignificant consequences.
2) With that in mind, the only options are to a) intentionally reduce your impact as much as you can so as to limit the repercussions or b) attempt to direct your research toward some benefit.
3) If you choose option a), that's fine, but you still have to recognize the possibility that your research may have larger and unintended consequences. In which case, you'll have to take a more active role. If you choose b) then you have to recognize the possibility that your research may be used in ways that you don't approve and actively resist those uses.
4) If you choose option b) then you have to figure out a) What tools do you have? What are their potentials and their limitations? b) What is your ethical stance? and c) How effective is your research?
5) Anthropology has a set of tools including: a holistic perspective, a deep cultural knowledge about our communities, high resolution informations on large scale issues, the ability to compare cross-culturally, and the ability to translate cross-culturally (let me know if you can think of any more).
6) Ethically, you have to consider why you're conducting this research, where does the funding come from, who does it benefit and how. You also have to look at your own personal and professional history to see how it might interact with the community and the issues.
7) Much of the work of anthropologists is fairly ineffective, which, in some cases, may be a good thing. Most of the time research is simply published in an academic journal or book, recommendations are given and information is "disseminated" (a word I'm beginning to loathe). If you want your research to be effective, you're going to have to go beyond these activities - you'll have to advocate, reach out to the public, build networks, critique, etc. Sometimes you'll have to do one of these, sometimes you'll have to do several. I am convinced that any project that goes in with the idea of "doing X for this group" or of "helping this group do X" will fail. It will fail for two reasons, first, because it is always external. Even if X comes from community members it will still be only a partial representation of what the community wants or needs. Second, it is always teleological. Nobody can really predict how their research will turn out or the consequences of that research. Case study books in applied anthropology are full of these kinds of projects, and they tend to read like tragedies where nobody really gets anything from the project (except maybe lessons learned for the researcher).

In a world where powerful forces (capitalism, imperialism, ethnocentrism, etc.) are driving unprecedented cultural (and biological) homogenization, it seems to me that one of the most politically positive acts one can do is to propagate and promote Difference. This implies a 2 pronged strategy, advocacy for marginal groups and critique (or resistance to) dominant groups. That's where I stand now, and for this I am inspired by Bateson, Deleuze and Guattari, Escobar, Connolly, and DeLanda among many others I can't think of right now.

How can (Should?) Anthropologists Try to Help the People We Work With?

This is the question that I struggle with perennially, and I'm confident that I'll never find a satisfactory answer. I think it's important to try, but I'm afraid I'll have to live with some degree of ethical ambiguity.
Here I am hoping to collect some different answers to the question in order to better understand how Anthropologists view themselves and perhaps find some ideas that resonate with my own. Please contribute whatever thoughts you might have - even if you're not an anthropologist (the question actually applies more broadly to all types of activism/advocacy).
Thanks in advance!

What're You Up To? Wednesday #27

Hey my faithful blog readers! Welcome to the 27th edition of WRYUT?W! I hope you are all enthralled by my amazing adventures and tales of daring doo. So what's on the plate for this week, then? On Friday I made a trip into DC to do some clothes shopping. I'm continually amazed by the city. I go there and see these amazing buildings, see all of these interesting people, and all of these things that I hear about on the news but think of as far off and abstract. That day I walked by the Heritage Foundation. It's a conservative "think tank" that's been behind a lot of the conservative revival of the last few decades, and also the conservative infiltration and critique of academia. In any case, it's on the news a lot, but it's always been just this vague conception to me. Now I've seen it. I even saw people walking out of the building, and wondered how conservative they are. It was fun.
On Saturday I went "tailgating" with some friends before and during the homecoming football game. I'm not much of a football fan, so I was just going to get out of the house and have fun. Nobody else ended up going to the game either, though, because it was all rainy and cold. Afterward we all went to one of the other student's house, and hung out for a while. It was nice to spend some time with people in the department and get to know them better.
Sunday was a lot of boring work and then a trip to the drum circle which was cancelled due to cold. The rest of the week has been pretty standard with work and school.
This weekend should be interesting though. For one, I've decided to expand my ethnography project to include an indoor drum circle in Silver Spring. Mainly this is to avoid missing out on future events due to bad weather (which has happened twice with the Malcolm X circle). But I think it will also add another dimension to my project. This new circle is more oriented toward the therapeutic/spiritual side, so it'll be interesting to compare and contrast the two. I think it'll also be easier to get one-on-one interviews there. So I'm going to that Friday night. Saturday is a national climate change awareness day (for the 350.org movement). There's going to be a big march from Meridian Hill (aka Malcolm X Park) to the White House, and I'm planning on going. It's going to rain, though, so hopefully it'll still be on. After that I'm supposed to go to a Karaoke party for the department at my advisor's house. That should be interesting, but I really don't want to do any singing!
That's all for now. What're YOU up to?