Cultural Studies as a Methodology

Today, increasing number of people live in diaspora. As globalization has progressed with the advance of the technical means to extend communication and interaction over long distances, more and more  social, cultural and political practices and interaction, which once embedded in local or national contexts, have been moved toward new contexts institutionalized by mediated communication. Thus, the classical definition of diaspora, the reference to the conceptual homeland, has become more attenuated and has created new populations of diasporas. Considering that the diaspora experience that is constructed "by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity”  (Hall, 1990; p. 401-402), and identities constantly produce and reproduce themselves through "the continuous 'play' of history, culture and power” (Hall, 1990; p. 394), the current media landscape extends the dynamics of the process of diasporic identity construction. This brings questions about roots and social and historical boundaries: "what does it mean to be indigenous, and is indigeneity about place or space?” (Diaz & Kauanui, 2001; p. 332). “The endless desire to return to lost origins,” which lies at the heart of the diasporic experience, has been fulfilled by mediated narratives about “desire, memory, myth, search, discovery” (Hall, 1990; p. 402).

I think the concept of cultural identity and diaspora seem relevant to my research that examines the development of online community: how members of online community build a shared sense of community and how unique cultural practices, such as particular linguistic categories or inside jokes, create a sense of native authenticity.

Questions: How would you define the boundary between activism vs. research? Is it possible to engage in activism and still be considered doing scholarly work? 
How does cultural studies move beyond close readings and resist conclusions? 

Cultural Studies - Aditi

In the readings for this week, Hall and Abhu-Lughod offer ways of rethinking the practice of ethnography and writing about cultures. Abhu-Lughod offers three ways to engage with forms of writing about cultures that do not generalize the inferences drawn from studying cultures. Specifically, she argues that ethnography must focus on the particular, remove the distance between the researcher and the researched and be aware of the power in placing the researcher outside the subjects being researched (Abhu-Lughod 1991, 474). It also tends to erase all complexity and conflicts from accounts of a culture by producing it as a homogenous unit. As a counter she proposes "ethnographies of the particular" that look at the practices and social contours of a culture at a given time in a given place. 

Hall's notion of cultural identity as a suture, a positioning, and a process are useful to push Abhu-Lughod's work forward. Using the idea that identity is constantly a process of locating oneself in narratives of the past, and can never be a completed, essential definition of a particular individual or a culture, helps to think about how to produce an ethnography that is not homogenizing. I find this to be useful as a means to negotiate issues of power between the researcher and the researched. In discussions so far, we have struggled with understanding how a researcher might ever challenge the power structures of a Western frame of research methodology and epistemology. One way might be to use "identification" and studying the sutures created within it. To unravel the constantly shifting relationships between the researcher and their subject, as well as the continuous pulling away and putting back together of their identities in relation to each other and their wider society, can help to make the dynamics of power as well as agency more present in the work. 

I personally feel that in talking about women in precarious economies, that are in constant motion physically and virtually, it is useful to study identity not as a something static, or as a finished project but as a continuously unraveling and raveling set of relations. Writing this is a challenge but could be attempted through a mixture of fictional and academic forms as experimented in Visweswarans' work. Another possibility might be taking Clifford's tracing of the Kanak peoples constant migration and their ever changing sense of home and belonging. 

Question: 

1. Does Clifford's idea of "articulation" and "rooted cosmopolitans" offer useful ways to think about identity as always in the making and not a static or essential definition? 

2. How might an ethnography of the particular be at cross purposes with the idea of cultural identity as a process of creating an imagined coherence to reclaim stories from the past? 

Indigenous Articulations- Randi Provost

            

             In this week’s set of readings a common theme that I have been thinking quite a bit about is the contradictions that much of the research on cultural identity and cultural studies is built upon. This is salient in the Clifford article Indigenous Articulations. Particularly, in the way that he calls upon the perceived “ancestral “laws”, continuous traditions, spirituality and respect for Mother Earth , the like ” (472) while often the “pragmatic” (472), ideologies are not considered in the current cultural politics.

            This joins with his argument the complexities (or impossibility) of defining indigenous peoples through traditions or politic, rather he argues that the “commonality is historically contingent” (472). This includes the assimilations, colonial and imperialist powers that indigenous peoples contest. It is particularly interesting to think of these ideas both within the limitations of the theory of Articulations and research and how this looks “on the ground” especially in this moment.

            Articulation theory is most useful when thinking through the concept of authenticity, as mentioned before, and how it is defined by the communities that continue to re-configure themselves through diasporas and the piecing together of collective remembered past.

            Overall, this reading has been useful for me to understand the evolutions of organizing, or organizations. For example, thinking through how this impacts what is most salient for a peoples at one point, and what needs to be addressed with a sense of urgency.

1)      In what ways can articulation theory be useful for thinking about this moment? Specifically thinking about the dichotomies that can be created out of articulations, how can we ensure that a “non-reductive” approach is being utilized? 

Abu-Lughod and Hall- Kim The

Questioning Culture

The readings Writing Against Culture and Cultural Identity and Diaspora challenge us to rethink and question our conceptualization of culture and cultural identity. Building off the concept of essentialism, these authors question how we conceptualize culture as stagnant, coherent, timeless, and meant for the Western gaze. Instead the authors of these readings argue that we perpetuate colonialist narratives when we do not highlight the multiplicity involved in cultural experiences as well as the imperfections, contradictions that are an inherent part of our work. We see these elements of challenging what culture means in works such as Fictions of Feminist Ethnography where Visweswaran shows the uncertainty in the research process in the way she writes and in describing her interactions and conversations. In Cultural Identity and Diaspora studies, we see a similar thread of thought when the author argues the importance of emphasizing difference and multiplicity. In addition, through his discussion on diaspora, Hall describes how identity is not fixed and emphasizes the importance of putting experiences in context and positioning them. Hall also discusses avoiding coherent and colonizing narratives such as the overused “returning to your home country to find yourself” narrative.

These lessons regarding culture can also be applied to disability. People with disabilities are often essentialized as objects of pity and as “a burden.” In the disability community, disability culture is promoted. However, in other spaces, such as medical spaces, disability is quickly boiled down to essentialized diagnoses. On the flip side, I have also seen the process of disability identity formation written and described in an essentialized way. I think the process of disability identity formation is often very uncertain, however, I see few academic works that describe disability identity formation written in this way. I tend to see this more in informal works where people with disabilities tell their stories. However, I think another problem that we run across is that we often value more coherent stories of identity and culture over imperfect and contradictory knowledge. It will be an ongoing challenge to highlight the multiplicity inherent in disability while at the same time retain the identity itself for organizing purposes and service needs.

In my own research, it will be important for me to find ways avoid essentializing disability. This means both from the standpoint of being too diagnosis-focused as well as from the other end of the spectrum as well. In disability studies, we are currently at a stage in the field where we are trying to blur the boundaries of disability and impairment and draw attention to experiences of impairment such as pain and how these can be addressed while still addressing social model concerns such as barriers that people with disabilities face. Avoiding essentializing disability culture is also something that I will need to be weary of. This can be done by highlighting the multiplicity of experiences that make up disability.

Discussion questions:

1.     Can concepts such as colonization and diaspora be applied to the disability experience with appropriation of terms? In what ways?

2.     How do we address concerns related to the essentialization of culture for fields such as the hard sciences and applied fields who may not have this theoretical background in ways that can be translated into practice?

Alison Kopit -- Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora"

Alison Kopit – Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”

In “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Cultural Studies scholar Stuart Hall writes about the production of identity, and the difference and dynamism laden in cultural identity in diasporic community, claiming, “The diaspora experience as I intend it here, is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity.” He continues to conceptualize the way that diaspora identities are in constant flux, writing, “Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (402). Although disability community is not grounded in place/ethnic background, as diasporic community is, in this post, I will take up the idea of cultural identity and consider the way that cultural identity functions within a Disability culture.

Disabled people often have to defend that a “culture” binding them together on the basis of identity even exists. The articulated concept (although not the phenomenon itself) is rather new and only dates back to the mid-1990s. When Carol Gill (1995) first started writing about a “Disability culture,” she was writing about core values and characteristics that she saw at work within the Disability community. Thus, she did not write the culture into existence; she articulated what was already vibrant and living. That said, disabled people are often defending the fact that they even have a culture. Culture is often bound up in pride, or positive identity. Because mainstream culture often doubts that Disability would be valuable to claim and/or to organize around, it can be difficult to conceptualize disability as being a characteristic around which to identify.

Hall identifies the characteristics of cultural identity within the diaspora as containing difference and hybridity at its core; it is necessarily heterogeneous and diverse. Identity is formed through boundaries of difference. Disability community is made up of people with diverse impairments and from diverse lived experiences, but common values—of accommodation, a commitment to “making it work,” shared humor, communication styles—are at work within the community. As in the diaspora experience, disabled people also often exist in liminal spaces: of passing, of privilege and/or oppression, and of inclusion. I have been a part of Disability community in various cities across the United States and in several different countries. In each place, there are certainly nuanced cultural differences, but there are also notable characteristics that are reproduced. Finding disabled people, especially disabled queer people, while traveling has been a way to find semblances of “home,” wherever I’ve been. As an art and culture organizer in the Disability community, I have seen the different ways that Disability Art functions in various Disability communities, and my master's thesis research articulates the characteristics of what I call a "Crip Aesthetic."

In my academic work as well as in my teaching, I approach Disability community as a culture. I teach my undergrad students about Disability culture, through starting with the social model (limiting though the social model can sometimes be). I teach that the social model is empowering to disabled people because it allows us to claim Disability and build coalition with other disabled people on the basis of a shared experience of oppression. I teach them that the social model matters because forming community means that people can unite to effect social change. Is there value in relating Disability identity to Stuart Hall’s concept of diasporic cultural identities? Disabled people are dispersed throughout the world, but because we do not have an actual place of origin, is it a useful comparison? Is it appropriative (or completely off the mark)? What are the differences in dispersed community that has never been grounded in place (such as in queer or Disability community), versus those that have?

Works Cited

Gill, Carol. “A Psychological View of Disability Culture.” Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 1995): 1–4. Web.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Columbia University Press, 1994, 392-403.

Of Mimicry and Man (Hashim Ali)

Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity is a quintessential tool for “radical analytical intervention.” According to this concept, it would be a mimetic effect of the Eurasian subject, rather than his racialized identity, that signals a possibility for postcolonial intervention: a moment that Bhabha calls hybridity. In Bhabha’s view, the mimic man was split between his desire to be white and the irreconcilable difference and thus “he circulated without being seen." Bhabha is fixated with the “unrepresentability” of the mimic men as the colonial situation entailed training the contradictory, hybrid figures to “respect” the colonial whites that can be contrasted with Fanon’s intervention: “the black man stops being an actional person for only the white man can represent his self-esteem” (Bhabha, 155). Perhaps, one can conceptualize these colonial situations as discursive sites of imperial scandal and crisis of empire: a scandal that disrupts and relativizes the totalizing and omnipresent “authority” of the “white” colonizer. As Bhabha points out: “Mimicry does not merely destroy narcissistic authority through the repetitious slippage of difference and desire. It is the process of the fixation of the colonial as a form of cross-classificatory, discriminatory knowledge in the defiles of an interdictory discourse, and necessarily raises the question of the authorization of colonial representations” (Bhabha, 157). Bhabha’s emphasis on “authorization” is fundamental to his critique of historical discipline as employing teleological, linear time and its complicity in the colonial project that mimicry subverts.

Questions:

1. In the post-colonial situations such as nation-state building, how does one reconcile the “unspeakability” of subaltern subjects with the very “loud” historically contingent social and national formations? How does one de-essentialize Bhabha’s “a priori blocs” of hybrid identities in the context of national, social narratives?

Cultural Studies - Ezra

Stuart Hall approaches the notion of ‘cultural identity’ as a historically contingent production shaped through a dialogue between similarity and difference. He contrasts this to a perspective of fixed or transcendental essences. Furthermore, he describes how black Caribbean cinemas creatively re-engage with the discontinuities of the past to construct new diasporic identities. When addressing the persistent impulse of reconstructing a unitary subject, he references the idea of an  “imaginary plenitude”, prior to the violence and fragmentation of slavery (394, 402). Nonetheless, he emphasizes a relationship of play toward this temporality, affirming the possibility for multiple, non-national formations to emerge.

This dynamic seems relevant to my own research which traces the utopian doctrine of ‘free love’ in early 20th century southern cone literature. 'Free love' was a set of radical proposals that interrogated practices of marriage, rejected the role of the state as a mediator of social bonds and contested normative gender roles, thus producing grounds of legitimacy for erotic same-sex relationships. Many anarchist immigrants and exiles even joined ‘free love’ communes in attempts to undo prevailing ideas of morality and public health. My question then is how can diasporic subjects like these be said to engage in the construction of imagined geographies? What other scales for the apprehension of community are at play beyond the bridging of a prior plenitude? Is there also a sense in which futurity  becomes a vector for identity even for otherwise disconnected subjects of different national or geographic provenance?

Shifting gears a bit, my final question relates to Lila Abu Lughod’s arguments in Writing Against Culture. Abu-Lughod challanges and tries to find alternatives to the use of 'culture' on the grounds that it is “the essential tool for making the other” (143). However, she paradoxically defends the use of the concept of 'humanity', admitting its complicity with similar mutilations, because, “humanism continues to be, in the West, the language of human equality with the most moral force”. How can a method which tactically/cynically embraces the language of humanism actually overcome its anthropocentric and western connotations rather than reaffirm its signifying power?

Writing Against Culture - Shannon M

The image I kept getting while reading through these articles on experience, representation and diaspora was one of the Hoberman Expanding Sphere.  I generally work better with images.  In this sphere, everything is connected and bends, expands and contracts, can be closer to another section sometimes and far from it with an adjustment of the way it is managed.  With the speed at which globalization continues to take hold and move people and manipulate systems and social structures, I also feel like the diaspora and experience of ruptures discussed in these articles become increasingly intricate.  There are more opportunities for rupture - in physical as well as digital space.  The commodification of people, gender, education, labor etc etc through digital economies is just as strong in some places now as historic mass movements of people for these same topics.  I feel like the linearity of life in not simply ruptured by numerous offshoots of “other” but exploded like a supernova.

Of course through systems of power people, people utilize whichever section of their identity allows them the best posturing in that moment, even in research.  I think Abu-lughod makes an interesting statement about power in mentioning how unnecessary the distance between researcher and subject might be.  When researchers define themselves as outsiders of those they study, is it truly an act of humility or is it a positioning of power.  Those of us in the American academy assume one of the most powerful positions, meaning that our disclosures, considerations, and ethics around our research subjects become compulsory.  It made me wonder, though, when people from academies in “developing nations” come to study American subjects, do they do as much expository work on themselves or is even this a habit only of people with power (Diaz & Kauanui, pp 324).  Should we instead be trying to find our similarities?  Should we redirect our writing into a different kind of neutral?

What struck me most about Abu-Lughod’s piece is it’s commentary on the posturing of power when approaching research.  I was particularly struck by her statement on page 147 that “Practice is associated, in anthropology, with Bourdieu whose theoretical approach is built around problems of contradictions, misunderstanding, and misrecognition, and favors strategies, interests, and improvisations over the more static and homogenizing cultural tropes of rules, models, and texts.”  I think this statement points toward an anthropological practice of pure observation of artifacts and practices of individuals but warns that the researcher will always fail in interpreting the private motivation of individuals.  Even within collectivist cultures, we do not function like the Borg and should not pretend or assume to know each others’ minds.  We all have differences and to claim that a group of one hundred is like one thing promptly insults the other ninety-nine members of the group.  So if we approach anthropology as such, we might begin to avoid sweeping generalization and misinformed proclamations about the habits of “the others.”

I found Diaz and Kauanui and Clifford interesting in that they discuss the idea that no one who is living on island nations or territories can truly claim an origin story with ownership to the island.  (Isn’t in the same for continental land as well?)  Everyone now is a product of i/emmigration.  Does this statement give power to or take it away from those in the diaspora?  Diaz & Kauanui and Hall both mention ideas of triangulation of cultural practices - that one’s identity in the diaspora is developed between cultural heritage passed generationally, the place they began, the place they now reside in and the newly adapted cultural practices.  Is it ever possible to say anymore that any cultural practice or identity is “pure?”  Does the idea of purity assume essentialism from the outset?  Does this give or take away legitimacy of cultural studies?  

So to move away from imperialism and colonialism (if this was truly our aim) implies that research might stop, that folks from the academy would stop trying to interpret who and what people are based on observations that cannot properly box up a ruptured life experience. Of course, research will not stop, so how do we instead, lessen the inherent oppression of creating a "subject" out of someone or a group?

Cultural Studies as Methodology

Abu-Lughod argues that “’culture operates in anthropological discourse to enforce separations that inevitably carry a sense of hierarchy” (137-38). I’m most curious about her assertion that anthropologists retain their identities by making the “communities they study seem other” (139). I’m wondering if time itself “others” historical subjects. Readings so far offer methodologies to overcome disciplinary practices that reinforce/perpetuate “othering,” but what about time itself? Isn’t past/present just another form of hierarchy? Abu-Lughod also points to “objections to the work of feminist or native or semi-native anthropologists” that “betray the persistence of ideals of objectivity” (141). As a historian, I do not believe in objectivity. All historical analysis/interpretation is subjective. We seek out problems to explain, generally situated within a conflict we already characterize in terms of right and wrong. However, considering time as a power I may potentially wield over my subjects, particularly the social workers/VISTA volunteers, and my desire to advocate for the “potentially delinquent” girls, does my subjectivity become more problematic?

I continue to struggle with conceptualizing the role culture will play in my project, but Hall offers some ideas for further thought (especially important because I will be comparing different migrant groups in specific neighborhoods, and also hope to include transnational or comparative component looking at Jamaican girls at London’s Toynbee Hall). If identity is a production which is never complete, what are the implications of presenting a snap-shot of that productive process? Identity is self-construction, but when does it embrace and perpetuate otherness? Do girls and young women labeled potentially delinquent have a distinct sub-culture? (Even in addition to membership in another sub-culture, i.e. zoots, punks, rockers, which are widely identified as oppositional.) 

According to Bhabha, mimicry is colonized subjects adopting the culture of the colonizer, which is highly problematic because it confuses boundaries necessary for domination. I’m wondering if the limitations on my girls in terms of opportunities (charm school instead of social work projects) could be read as an effort to maintain the cultural boundary between them as working-class migrants, and the middle- and upper-class social workers and VISTA volunteers. Othered for their perceived potential delinquency, is full rehabilitation somehow equally threatening?

Clifford was a nice wrap-up for my thoughts. My first question of Abu-Lughod was what is the impact of location on identity? I really like his concept of “indigenous commuting.” Migration Studies and some transnational histories explore similar themes, including cultural networks that result in two way exchanges with social and political impacts in both locations. Regarding articulation, is the behavior of “potentially delinquent” girls cultural? Not as sub-culture, as mentioned above, but culture originating from their point of origin that becomes problematic once it migrates. This is especially interesting if this is a clash between different American cultures. For example, rural children spend a lot of time outside. When this persists in urban space, does that alone signify potentially delinquent? Might there be other examples of this? Are these cultural practices the ways potentially delinquent girls became visible to social workers?

Megan Collier- Writing Against Culture

            Abu-Lughod’s “Writing Against Culture” examines the notion of the self and other in anthropological research.  She uses the figures of the feminist and “halfie” researcher to address problematic distinctions between insider/outsider and the power dynamics that can be obscured in social scientific knowledge.  These critiques connect to Visweswaran and Tuhiwai Smith’s interventions as they relate to questions of betrayal, relations of domination, and imperialism that structures Western knowledge.  The feminist and halfie help to reveal complications inherent in research: positionality as researchers are never “outside” of power in relation to communities of study, writing to multiple audiences, and power distinctions even among seemingly “native” researchers. She highlights these power dynamics to illustrate how the concept of “culture” is reified in research, and that it acts as a “dividing practice”(143) that naturalizes difference and produces the Other.  Abu-Lughod reveals how culture, typically used to argue against difference emerging from nature and biology, can in fact take on an essentialist form.   The usage of “culture” is steeped in power relations: “shadowed by coherence, timelessness, and discreteness, [culture] is the prime anthropological tool for making ‘other,’ and difference”(147).   She argues for the need to write against culture and describes ethnographies of the particular as one tool that can challenge the reification of cultural categories and difference. 

             I appreciate Abu-Lughod’s critique of generalizability and overemphasizing cultural coherence in research.  She describes how cultural theories tend to overemphasize coherence of the social group, leading to the notion that a community is bounded and discrete (146).  Her approach to “culture” and its relation to difference and other-ness are particularly important for destabilizing taken for granted categories in our own research.   Both of these aspects of research are often taken as starting points in the academy, built into the processes like the IRB where you have to clearly define your sample.  The first step in studying a social group is to coherently identify the group and its bounds.  Even within this simple act, as a researcher you are imposing boundaries upon a group.  Conducting my interview study, I struggled thinking about the boundaries of queer and trans communities, how this intersects with categories, and attempted not impose my own boundaries of who fit the research protocol.   I struggled with how to encompass folks who might identify as gender variant but might not easily relate to the umbrella of trans- genderqueer folks, butch women, assigned female at birth femme women, etc.  And in the process of writing about a really gender diverse group, I struggled with my desire to be coherent in categorizing the participants but also wanting to embrace the particulars of their experiences.  As I think about future research, I still struggle with messy questions about representation and the practical application of this.  What would it look like to focus on the particulars and differences of my research participants, and not have to talk about the generalizable patterns?

Question:

Abu-Lughod describes the professional risks of alternative research strategies and how they are not often seen as legitimate.  As a grad student, I’m told to have a big enough sample size and argue for how research on subordinated groups is generalizable to broader social issues.  How can we promote and conduct “ethnographies of the particular” within the constraints of the academy?  And can we use alternative methods in ways that are not just marginalized in the academy, actively engaging and challenging more hegemonic forms of knowledge in the discipline?