FIELDWORK IN FOLKLORE

______________________________________

FIELDWORK PRACTICES / F523

(Prof  Pravina Shukla)

LECTURES

(Prof Henry Glassie) 

(Asafa Tafarra Dibaba, PhD Student) 

Spring 2012

Indiana University 

Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology
______________________________________

PROJECTS 

(Prof Pravina Shukla)

Observation Projects (I-III) 

           Reflections 

 Interview Projects (I-III 

          Reflections 

Documenting Creativity

        What Makes Creativity

        Knitting 

 Making Sound Project

LECTURES

(Prof Henry Glassie) 

Lecture 1. Doing Ethnography I

    Field Notes

    Sense of Place

    Making Photologue

Making Sound Project 

    Recording

    Indexing 

    Transcribing and Translating 

    Interpreting

  Lecture II. Doing Ethnography II

CONCLUSION

Post-fieldwork Reflections 

NOTE: Sample Ethnographic Work
The Stars of Ballemenon 
by Henry Glassie 


___________________________________

PROJECTS

1. OBSERVATION I

_______________________________

Studying Street-Corner Folks

_______________________________

Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington

I. Background:

In the tradition of urban ethnography, race and class-based social inequality are central themes. Hence this study, as a practice in fieldwork in folklore, will involve an exploration of how “street folks” as social “actors” react to the human fabric of sociopolitical, cultural and economic malfunctions around them and help create different dimensions of the urban experience.

As an example of urban ethnography, in 1943 a famous descriptive case study of street-corner inhabitants written by William Foote Whyte was published as Street Corner Society. By living for three and a half years, including 18 months with one family, in a slum district inhabited by first and second generation immigrants from Italy and writing his research Whyte became a pioneer in participant observation. The neighborhood Whyte called Cornerville—Boston North End— was known to be dangerous and crime was prevalent. Whyte describes in his study the politics and the relations of social structure among the various groups and communities within the district and categorizes the young generation as “corner boys” and “college boys;” the former limited themselves to particular street corners and shops while the latter were interested in education and personal / professional development.  Through this his account of the Italian Americans living in slum, Whyte maps the intricate social worlds of a street society, demonstrates that a poor community is socially not disorganized and sets in his research a standard for vivid portrayals of real people in real situations. Thus, participant observation as a methodology became an essential casebook in field research.

Methods

Methodologically, these preliminary activities lead onto data collection through narrative enquires and documentation of life experience of the street-corner folks. That is, a direct structured observation technique will be used, which eventually lead onto narrative inquiries as means of obtaining data through interview. The standpoint (positionality) to situate the voice of the researcher and the narrative voice of the persons in the research will be determined when the project will develop further into analysis and interpretation of the data following the documentation and report. However, the purpose of the study is to document the sequence of events in the fieldwork and to consolidate the data obtained and finally to report a written description of the fieldwork experience for discussion in class rather than data analysis.

Setting

Kirkwood Avenue is the street in Bloomington that runs from the Indiana University Sample Gates westward to Adams Street. The street was named after Daniel Kirkwood (1814-1895), an astronomer and a Professor of Mathematics at the IU. On Kirkwood, there are lots of bars, restaurants, apartments, park lots and peoples’ parks, library and businesses centers that serve IU students and the residents. Because of the concentration of bars, businesses and restaurants on this spot, it is common to see “street-corner folks” on Kirkwood spot. "Kirkwood" is considered by many as only between The Square and the IU campus; however, the street is officially named Kirkwood along all of its length westward with a small extension past Adams Street. Hence, the preliminary direct observation of the ethnographic incursion follows.

  

Observation I Contd. 

II. Preliminary Ethnography: Report

Through a series of three observations, three successive interviews will be conducted mainly focusing on narrative enquiries around personal life experience of the participants. The plan is, as a partial fulfillment of the course, Fieldwork in Folklore (F523), to practice fieldwork through planning and collecting the narrative accounts of the poor folks on Kirkwood Street and document to study the meanings they put into street life and around homelessness. 

Observation 1: Plan

As a direct observer, for the purpose of the study, I do not typically participate in the context but strive to become as obtrusive as I can by directly and closely investigating into that theoretically simple but intricate world of the street folks. Note-taking will be used to document the observation.

In this preliminary level of the fieldwork (urban ethnography), I use “street-corner folks” rather than “homeless people” because, first, I theorize that idle people (laid off and no job) could come on the street during the daytime for various reasons and they have ‘house’, if not ‘home’, to go to at night.  Second, there are folks who have no homes and presumably live at night on the streets, parks, in abandoned buildings, campgrounds and tunnels and few in plastic-made temporary shelters. Both groups, i.e., those with homes but no jobs and the homeless,  gather on some common spots during the day for purposes yet unknown but more likely to fend around for food provided by charitable organizations, cigarettes (and/or drugs) and games and usually with run-away dogs as their companion. However, the composition, pattern of behavior and mode of social relations of the folks is yet unknown before the preliminary observations and reports.

Observation 1: Report

In the report that follows the purpose is to create the scene of what I observed during my visit to the street-corner folks at the Trinity Episcopal Church, Kirkwood Avenue, on 22 January 2012 from 2pm-3pm. Hence, it is a description of the selected and revoked details of the event as I observed during the one hour and a half ethnographic visit. This scene will hopefully recreate the moment and represent perceptions and memories of the slice of life observed at the church and around during and before the lunch time by dividing into before and during the lunch service.

Before the Event

When I arrived at Kirkwood at around 11:30 a.m. the Peoples’ Park seemed raided. It was slippery and the brick-pavement was covered by snow. Only the graffiti on the tattered brick-wall made meaning in the dreary freezing weather and grave silence. I was dumbfounded to see no street-corner folk around who commonly gather at the Peoples’ Park for whatever reason. Kirkwood was quiet. Only humming and hurrying cars passed by troubled the silence. I had no idea where to talk to a group of street-corner folks but the Peoples’ Park. Now it is abandoned!

I looked around to see a young lady on the walkway dancing (as she said) or moving at least to keep herself warm. We both smiled and I apologetically greeted her for interrupting the dance and she answered in a very troubled and smattering voice. She was weak. I asked her where I could talk to “homeless” people. She pointed at herself and then to the church across Kirkwood Avenue. Now, I crossed and, literally, camped across the street and started casting my net. On the church walkway, I saw around fifteen people, men and women, difficult to tell if they were street-corner folks by their physical condition.

One young man came to me walking and swerving himself in a hip-hop manner and asked for a cigarette. I said no. He came back and invited me to a cigarette and said “What is your accent from, Bro?” to which I answered “Ethiopia”. “Oh, cool” he said, and added that his wife (the one I talked to) refused to buy him a cigarette, and that he forgot a packet at home.

I wanted to know, “Do you have a home?”

“Yes I do.” (Smiling and, now, giving a hip-hop).

‘Who pays the rent and how much?” I wanted to know.

“I pay. I ‘hassle.’ We get even more…,” he walked away dancing and scratching—“Mr. Hassle”.

“Mr. Hassle” was speaking to me but I was stunned by what I heard and contemplating “What is to ‘hassle’? Who is a ‘homeless’? Who are ‘street-corner folks’?

And the Church door was opened.

During the Lunch

The Church Hall was opened for delivering lunch at 1pm. The folks hurried in and seated in groups at dining tables and those interested took tea or coffee before lunch. It took some time before lunch was served and they waited with such a dignified patience chatting and drinking coffee or tea. Most of them were couples. Gradually the number of the folks increased. There were some men older than 60s and in a good condition and I could see no old women in the Hall. Generally there were more men than women street-corner folks in the Hall.

As lunch was served, some came out and lined up while some waited. They were very orderly in their general decorum and etiquettes and table manners. Members of the Church serving food wore an apron marked T.P.A.C. Compassion Ministries. The food delivered were ham, smashed potatoes, green beans, corn and fruit cocktails, bread and butter. Drinks were iced water, lemonade, coffee and tea.  Some folks added more food and after they ate to their fill they brought back the dishes for washers, dumped trashes and put chairs in order.

Generally, the situation of the folks is normal: no shame nor pride but a very friendly and family type of social mood in the hall though each and every folk showed some typical idiosyncrasies. Mr. Hassle, for instance, is seen more often scratching, loitering around singing or speaking by himself. There were only three handicapped men and one woman and all folks in the hall were physically apt. I saw very few African Americans (about five) of more than sixty or so street-corner folks. Most young folks had visible tattoos on their arm and neck and also lip and ear pierces. I had lunch seated in the corner and left the folks at 9:00 p.m. Some were smoking on the walkway outside while some were still chatting or eating inside at their dining table. Outside, it was still snowing!

_______________________________

OBSERVATION II (Week 8)

Observing Homeless People on Kirkwood and Trinity Church Episcopal

In this paper I present my second observation of the actual physical setting, i.e., Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, and the Trinity Episcopal Church (TEC), on the same street where homeless people frequent.  In Observation I, I discussed the broad range of the observable situation of the homeless both outside and inside the TEC, which was methodologically speaking broad for that project. Hence, in this second observation of 3 hours (on two days) I limit the project to closely following and documenting what I observed at the setting which includes the physical setting, the meetings between the homeless, and observations of events around.

Saturday morning around 9:30 a.m..

Snow was falling and nature was listening. Every day has its beauty, and the chilly windy morning snowstorm whips pedestrians and make feel walk, jog more vigorously.  The scenic beauty of the snowfall consisting of the roads filled with snow is nature's own paradise Saturday morning consisting of serene beauty all around.

From where I stood on the sidewalk, two neatly dressed adult men came to me from across the street and greeted formally. I answered, attentively but did not expect them homeless. One asked, "Sir, could you please spare 75 cents?" and not knowing what to say, I answered apologetically, “No, I don’t. I am sorry.”  I had no change as I don’t usually carry changes. To say I had no change to a homeless seemed irrelevant but only a working excuse! One said, “No problem, Sir.” Perhaps one would reply “Get a job!” even angrily to be interrupted texting or talking on iPhone, I though. Sometimes giving a small donation really helps someone more than we would ever know. The two men, on the outside, did not have any emotion that was visible, or did not show what they had inside. One could think for a fact that on the inside, they carried plenty of scars. The two men went to a woman who was just parking by the street side and trying struggling to come out or not to come out into that chilling snow. They asked the same thing (and the same amount?) I presumed. She gave a dollar note at which they smiled and bowed.

I stood there by myself and watched the two men asking few people walking up or down the street, that same question, "Sir, could you please spare a dollar?" The tree branches were loaded by snow and whiting and crisping like ice-cream. The roof tops of buildings, cars and my hat were irresistibly but less lightly laden by snow falling nonstop.  Now few people were seen walking except the two men, I and the snow cotton loitering but for different purposes.

Around 11:30 a.m. the sun faintly shined down upon the neatly spread snow. The smell of spring was in the air along with a variety of scents from stores opening their doors on Kirkwood. To my right were the two homeless people smoking and chatting. I assumed they were friends with an interlocking similarity, in close vicinity, and to them I probably seemed like a person reflecting solemnly in the falling snow on the beautiful Saturday morning. Quick walking businessmen and women were bustling to open their stores, restaurants, and bars. Privileged ones pulled up in brand new cars in the parking lot across the Kirkwood Avenue and some did the same by the street. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry or have a destination in which they were trying to navigate to. The homeless people, the snowfall, and the slightly flickering late morning sun were the only ones who seemed to be enjoying themselves on this beautiful day.

I saw a lady coming slowly on the side walk, walking and standing. Not too old to walk. Her hands were dirty and blotchy. Her nails chewed and there were few cuts on her arms. Her hair was bushy scattered aimlessly with a couple of gray strands while her face was covered in wrinkles. It became aware to me that the woman had obviously suffered through harsh moments in her life. I thought she would for some money but she did not. The roar of engines and tires hitting random depressions in the street made the atmosphere sound hosting a racetrack. Now it was nearly 11:15 a.m. I walked away, back to the IU campus, to Wells Library.

Sunday, Feb 26, 2012, 12:00p.m to 2:45pm

One would love to wake up in a good mood on such a bright day Sunday, happy to be surrounded by family and feeling the love. Today Sunday, 12:00 p.m., I went out to the Kirkwood Avenue where I would observe the milieu, the habitats, and the people, with a special focus on the homeless.  The Kirkwood Avenue is busy as the sidewalks are by IU students, skaters, walkers, joggers, bickers and loiterers, some with pets (dogs) and some couples, basking in the sun on the sidewalks and in the Peoples’ Park.

The peoples’ Park is not crowded either. I saw few people seating by themselves and busy on their iPhone or iPod.  I came to see on one of the park tables some graffiti carefully written, not scribbled, by parker that reading:

-what happened to the 1^st Amendment? where did America go?

-it is still here under oppression.

-we are not free. We never have been under capitalism.

-shame on you Major Kruzan (I think it is to mean the city mayor?). 

-shame on all of us.

No one can tell who wrote these but from their content, that is, dissatisfaction and grievance about social inequality, homelessness, unemployment and other social ill-beings, one may presume who works on graffiti.  But there was another scene across the street that gave a clear picture of what the graffiti was about. I saw an old man with a fully grown and greyed large beard sitting by the sidewalk just opposite the Chacha store with a big black dog. He too had some writings but their contents were more spiritual and social (and economic). I gave him a dollar to which his face was lit with smile and he said, “This is the first dollar ever this morning. Bless you!” The dog wagged his tail and sniffed. I asked if I could take a picture to which both posed as a good luck would have it. The dog’s name is “Kiaayo” meaning, “Bear,” in the native tongue of the Black Foot, one of the Native Americans the old man said he belonged to. Some of his writings on used carton papers I took note of were: 

-Disabled. Need cash or little work. Bless you.

-Praying for kindness. Bless you.

-Disabled. Need $ or short job.

-Dog and I need your help. Bless you.

-Bless you! What can I do for you?

-Miss your dog puppy? Kisses, N’Loving for food or ca$h or petting. Bless you.  

At 2:00 p.m. I went to the Trinity Episcopal Church across the street where there were a group of homeless people chatting, smoking cigarette and loitering. I thought they were waiting for Lunch time to be served from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm.

A lot of the homeless people I observed were relatively young. Most of them, I thought, were runaways stopping in Bloomington a short while in their trek around the country. Maybe all they need was a little help to start their lives. Maybe the society needed homelessness to realize the personal blessings they are so fortunate to have. One can always change one’s identity. Who can tell who is who? I think it is significant to say that on my couple of days observing homelessness on the Kirkwood, one really cannot judge a people based on their appearance. Observing the social reality helped me more than I would ever know about other sub-cultures and how divided the world we live in is. One would not think of a concentration of wealth and poverty literally only a couple of feet away from each other. Most people caught in the depressing situation are not much different from the average citizen.

By my observation, homeless people could have problems related to alcoholism and drug which needs counseling. It is a social responsibility of every citizen to give a helping hand and direction to alleviate the social evil since the smallest help can have the biggest outcome. Homeless people are not necessarily muggers or criminals, though there can be some, but there are people who might have slightly fallen of the track at one point and could not make it back on the track. And there are some people in this world who need help like the homeless and there are also others who believe they can act, whatever it takes, to help out someone less fortunate.

_______________________________

Observation III  

(Week 14, April 9/2012)

Based on frequent visits and thorough observations to such a place as Kirkwood Avenue, one may come to a general hypothesis such as this: Kirkwood Avenue is a melting-pot of different cultures, peoples of all walks of life including street corner peoples, painters, scholars, shop dealers, bikers, skaters and motorists, and the Peoples’ Park is more for homeless people than for the general public.  

Today Saturday, April 7, I came to Kirkwood Avenue at 2:00pm to take one last chance to observe and walked around up to 5:15pm to see, sense, and identify how the place is different now in Spring, witness how people act and their behavior patterns, and watch the spatial and human conditions, interactions, socializations, behavior patterns of the people and spatial features of the place.   

The weather is moderate today but cold and windy in the morning. Though people wear lighter jackets for spring in the morning, it is common to see people carrying jackets around in the afternoon as it is warm. That is, there is a marked difference between morning and afternoon, especially for me, new to the college town. I hear that light clothes are typically appropriate here for March, April, October and November, that is, during Spring and Fall seasons, and lighter for the Summer.

Today by my observation at Kirkwood Avenue, I could see that now in Spring most men are in light t-shirts and shorts and some walk in open-toe sandal shoes. No heavy coats or jackets. A PhD student who has been here for four years told me that heavier coats may be needed in November-February, and perhaps into early March, and especially for the coldest time in January and during snowfall from late October into March.

I saw most women in skirts and shorts, some in clothes like jumpsuits, and some in tops and light pants or dress with belly buttons bare, and most in flat and light sandals (or slippers?).  Fitting their costumes into the season and the fashion, women and men do the walk and the talk on the sidewalks.

Motorists make Kirkwood more colorful. Some ride on the Honda Ruckus easy to park, fun, little knock-around scooter.  Some ‘gallop’ the Rebel model, ‘surf’ in the Spring light wind on a favorite stylish street-rider, bending to one side as if to show its enduring appeal and comfortable ride. Some cut across in a blink as if running errands around town or for emergency or heading out of town for a riding adventure.

I thought all the fuss about the tough Rebel or the little Ruckus scooter motors ride around as a great ride is fun in the warm Spring sun, sensing the sweet fragrance of flowers around, the crowded walkways, the people eating and drinking and chatting, all  having fun left and right, inside and out on Kirkwood. And I guessed that the buzzing loud sound of motors and noises made people sit close to each other to chat around tables on the porch.

In the People’s Park, I found more street-corner folks today than during my last two observations.  I saw “homeless” people were in every corner smoking and chatting in groups and some sitting by themselves and listening music. Located near Sample Gates at the corner of Dunn St. and Kirkwood Avenue, one “homeless” guy told me, the Park was open since 1976 for public recreation.

As native to Bloomington the guy said changes to lighting, sidewalks, additional trash receptacles and ash urns were made by the support of business owners, citizens, and park users in 1994 as a gathering place for recreation, socialization and as also they (the homeless) used it for their idling. Today I saw most of the park users were street-corner folks, and the guy I interviewed said that in Spring there are outdoor concerts and “homeless” people gather.  The park with benches, checker tables, murals or wall paintings and graffiti, mosaic tiles, concrete sculpture(s), and open tap water was overcrowded today than before. 

If my source is right there had been complaints from local businesses that recycling bins were sometimes used for “human waste.” However, I wouldn’t venture to claim that the People’s Park is down the drain to that level thought I could see it was crowded more today than ever and less cleaner. 

______________________

Observations I-III   Reflections

(Week 14, April 9/2012)

Observation of the physical and social settings is one part of ethnographic research since it has a direct bearing on why people behave the way they do and on their behavioral patterns. Sociocultural institutions, entertainment sites and shops, restaurants and bars and parks have some customers according to their cultural, religious and social orientations and economic backgrounds. Cross-cultural settings are also sources of attention as they bring closer distant cultures and tastes and to introduce new flavors and/or to make some cultural mélanges with the existing ones. At any rate, for a serious ethnographer, the natural environment and the surrounding flora and fauna therein are mute sources of information.

As I noted in my first Observation dated January 22, on the Kirkwood Avenue that run from the Indiana University Sample Gates westward to Adams Street there were lots of bars, restaurants, apartments, park lots and peoples’ parks, library and businesses centers that served IU students and the residents. Asian and Latino restaurants and bars are buzzing beehives, especially weekday evenings and weekends on the Kirkwood. The Trinity Episcopal Church, Public Library, People’s Park, and Parking Lots are among some public institutions drawing attention as centers of public services. These are among those foregrounded sites for casual observation, but still some activities and diversified social groups and behaviors make it a site unique for subsequent observations.

During my second three hour observation project on February 26 I limited the project to closely following and documenting what I observed at the setting which included the physical setting, the interactions between the homeless, and observations of events around. For the ethnographer, it is important that there are sites where some cultural (social) groups frequent more than others and therefore follow certain behavioral patterns.

Accordingly, in most cases, the People’s Park and the Trinity Church are places where the street-corner folks frequent especially on Sundays from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm for lunch service inside the church. Hence, between these specific times a large number of homeless people crowd the church compound, the sidewalks, and the People’s Park, particularly on Sunday afternoon. Identifying the nature of the people at one place and following their choices and behavior patterns helps the ethnographer to understand better the people s/he studies and interpret the meaning attached to human agencies.

Observation three is the last part of the three observations I made on Kirkwood Avenue, Sample Gates.  In my three hour observation project, I focused on describing the physical setting including events and people’s interactions and behavioral patterns. For my purpose, I employed note taking technique I used throughout the observations to record the information I obtained through observation and interview. At last I concluded my report by analyzing the nature of the problems I encountered during my fieldwork exercise on Kirkwood Avenue. 

Throughout the Observations I made, I could see that Kirkwood is a melting-pot of different cultures, peoples of different walks of life including street corner peoples, painters, scholars, shop dealers, bikers, skaters and motorists.  Because of the concentration of bars, businesses and restaurants on Kirkwood, it is common to see a number of “street-corner folks” on the street and in People’s Park. The concentration of people in the park and its neatness varies on seasonal bases.

Before I conclude my final direct observation and the preliminary exercises into ethnographic incursions, I say few words.  From this experience, I learnt that observation involves being on-site while some event is occurring. As a fieldworker, I took careful notes of what was happening and also talked to people about the place and patterns of behaviors during the interactions I observed.

Among other difficulties I encountered during this fieldwork exercises let me discuss the two major ones. First, the mixing up of description with interpretation. That is, for example, if I saw an old man publically intoxicated, rather than putting simply what I saw as “I saw an old man staggering  publically intoxicated,” I put it instead as,  “I saw an old man staggering  publically intoxicated, but he was wrong to drink too much and it is risky for him at this his age.”

Second, some technical problems were unanticipated. Sometimes I felt there were so much to write but I could not possibly get it all down, sometimes I felt like there was nothing new to see or nothing worth writing about, and sometimes it was really tough to keep my observations in a structured manner to write my report later, or though I could write but I felt like I missed important parts of the scene.

Though there is no one panacea to the above problems, I hope careful exercise and serious attention added to perseverance would be a right solution into a successful ethnographic venture.

 _______________________________

Documentation of Creativity Project

HAND-KNITTING SCARF

With creativity the issue of originality and novelty or newness is fundamental. For creativity to be original or new, the Halloween pumpkin decorating or Easter egg art or Christmas tree requires a rather sophisticated version of the already existing pumpkin or egg decorating or Christmas tree embellishment.  It is more than hitting a bit of soldering wire, a pair of needle nose pliers and a twist of the wrist into the delicate body of a Halloween pumpkin for the ritual.

For the objective evaluation of originality and novelty of the craft or art, usefulness or some practical validity may be more imperative for one culture while the process of the creativity is rather more valid as a self-fulfillment or a sign of internal growth or still a self-empowerment for another. Cultural subjectivity as part of the process of creativity is a more valid criterion in one culture than the pragmatic function or objectivity of the art or craft created. Hence, the process of creation in hand knitting (own) scarf will be described in this Documentation of Creativity Project.

Whenever the winter season approaches, one of the most fun and practical activities people, especially women, can engage in as a hobby is hand knitting own scarf, hat, gloves, and socks as both fun and practical, keeping warm during the winter months and saving money in the process. Like any other handcraft and creativity, the knitter says, hand knitting a scarf requires attention to detail; the process may not be as difficult as one might imagine though. What it takes is, in the knitter’s perspective, patience and following directions into the processes to effectively hand knit own warm scarves for winter.

The knitting creativity I am documenting in this project is, as I said, a homemade, hand knitting scarf.  Unlike knitters this knitter seems to have no endless patience to knitting and to give a bit of finishing to what she started and say, hurrah, it’s all over! She knits gloves and caps and socks and scarves for winter on her free time which she said she learnt it in school but knits only as a hobby. She said that people assume knitters must be extremely patient but that may not be the case and that she would love to knit but lacked the patience. She added that she also lacked the patience to sit with nothing to do in many of life’s waiting moments and knitting few things filled a void in time for her and gave her an outlet for physical and mental energy as an unemployed young mother.

Though she knows the full process of knitting that ‘professional’ knitters go through and the skill leading through those processes of yardage calculations, ribbon or matching thread colors, reading the pattern, ironing the pattern paper, cutting the pattern out, ironing the fabric, clearing the kitchen table so to have enough room to work, laying out the pattern, pinning the pattern to the fabric, cutting the fabric, more pinning, winding the bobbin or spindle, ironing the seams, sewing the seams flat, trimming seams, fitting, hemming and button sewing she did not go into the business. As a mother of two children and unemployed, she hand knits little homemade stuff as a hobby.

It was really difficult for me to understand the processes, for example, what yardage calculation is all about. But she explained it as determining the amount of yarn one needs for a given knitting project that one must measure gauge swatch and know the needle size and get an estimate of the required amount of yarn.

As she talked she was just starting knitting a four-row pattern scarf of a horizontal drop stitch or sea foam pattern and, as she said, more for neck-warmer than for decoration but it was really more than a neck-warmer.

She began a new hand knitting scarf to show me by making a slip knot and casting on the required number of stitches for the scarf as part of the basic hand knitting techniques which takes one through multiple processes of slip knot or slip loop to begin the hand knitting.

For hand knitting scarf, one should collect all necessary materials including knitting needles, scissors, and different types of yarn. The most popular type of yarn used for winter scarves are the thick varieties, I was told, such as ladder yarn. Still, a scarf that uses multiple yarn types rather than a single yarn, is usually warmest and looks the best, so that is the type of hand knitted scarf I will describe in this creativity documentation.

The process begins by finding and buying the correct yarn and color, and drafting the pattern and starting with making the slip knot for the required number of stiches. The first step to make the slip knot or loop is to start with the yarn end in the left hand and the yarn laying over in the right hand, pinching it with thumb at the point that was measured off. With right hand holding the yarn attached to the yarn ball, the yarn is made on top of left hand and back down behind the left hand until it gives a full circle and by pulling the two yarn ends and tightening by the knitting needle and that gives the loop or the knot. What follows the knot is casting on and counting on the needle the required number of stiches for the scarf which makes its girth.  Using a garter stitch and cast on around 15 to 20 stitches will do unless one wants a really wide scarf, which is often an option for winter.  

The knitting goes on by bringing hands close together and inserting the right hand knitting needle into the front of the first stitch on the left knitting needle from the left side and steadying it up by keeping the bundle yarn to the back of hand. Drawing the yarn on the right hand needle through the stitch on the left hand knitting needle, the stitch grows to its full knitting.

Knitting the stich is also a matter of attention and practice. It starts with holding the needle with the stitches just cast on with the left hand and holding the first stitch by the index finger near the tip of the needle to control the stitches.  Holding the knitting needle in the right hand with the thumb and index finger, like holding a pencil, then the yarn is woven over the right hand index finger to make another stich on the stitching needle in the left hand and the knitting stretches to the intended length of the scarf bit by bit.

As the knitting is in progress there are loose ends of yarn that should be carefully hidden within the knitting so that it is as invisible as possible and does not go loose and cause the knitting to come apart. To avoid loose yarn ends to be visible a secure method of weaving is to follow the formation of the knit stitch, the square knot that will not allow the yarn to slip out of the yarn, which is particularly useful with a slippery yarn. To tie the ends together one can take the left end behind the right end yarn and tuck the left end yarn through the circle bringing it to the front. Pinching the top of the two yarn ends to hold them in the position that creates a circle can keep the knit not to go apart and also remain invisible. Since wool yarns are not slippery, it may not need bulge of a yarn knot on the edge of the scarf.

Finally, now as the hand knit scarf is coming to a finishing, following the line of the knit stitch, the knitter pulls the yarn through gently hand pressing to keep the hidden yarn the same size as the actual knit stitch and weaves the yarn ends to secure its end and trim the yarn end close to the knitting as tassels are woven at the end of the scarf.  

Making tassels brings to a closure the end of the scarf with as many tassels as one wants on each side. One can cut the strands for each tassel at up to ten inches and attach the yarn as a tassel to the scarf ends using a crochet hook and poke the tool through the scarf edge where one wishes to place the tassel.

To make a pattern of scarf with different color yarns one can tie as many pieces of yarn leaving another when finished with the subsequent stitches and tying on another type of yarn. The knitting goes on across the stitches one already created making sure it is so as tightly as possible, the tighter and warmer one can make a scarf. Stiches may go apart unless one makes it sure to tie the yarn around twice at each stitch to ensure it remains intact.

Thus, people hand knit different things for different seasons, but when the coldest days of winter sets in, one wants a scarf knitting pattern that makes a nice, warm scarf. There are such best homemade warmest scarves that keep cozy no matter what the weather throws at us.

Each such craft has its own genealogy like its creator!

 ________________________

II. INTERVIEW PRACTICES

Interview Projects I

In his The Tape-recorded  Interview (1995), Edward D Eves’ “Some things can be done as well as others” (quoting Sam Patch) is really encouraging. His book is also a special guide to field-working in folklore and oral history, interviewing venture in particular. How to find the interviewee(s) and build trust and a good relationship is daunting at the beginning as the beginning of everything is. The problem of finding an interviewee is mainly because of lack of clear idea what it is we want to find out. That is, once our research questions are clearly designed in line with the research goal, it will be less problematic to spot who to interview.

For my purpose, the major aim of the interview being to exercise the act of interviewing in fieldwork and field-note taking techniques, and to describe the whole range of the interview process, I interviewed this ‘single’ young mother of two who singlehandedly mange her home and take care for her children in the absence of her husband. I have known this family since I came to Bloomington but I never cared about knowing their life history or personal stories. And now the time has come and I asked this young mother to tell me her personal story.

The Beginning

As I called her a day before and set time to see her at her home and I went, on January 28 for the one hour interview which took more than two hours, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The two kids like hugging and playing rolling on the floor as they used to with their father. Now that they saw me, they wanted me to give them some ticklish, tricky games and make them laugh. I did.  Their mother was making us coffee and something to eat.

Now we sat and the children are still coming and going and they need attention. I began by asking her how her husband is doing in Afghanistan, just by way of breaking the ice, and she talked a little bit about him and that the children miss him so much. Next, I told her the purpose of the interview and asked her to tell me about herself. As she said she was happy to do so and continued telling her personal story.

She was from Uganda and the middle-born in a large family living in Kampala, where life was difficult as this was the case to most families in Africa. She got chance to go to Germany at some point and where she met her soon-to-be-husband, who was then in the US army in Germany, and now in Afghanistan. They got married and came to the US where they got children and bought the present house and lived happily until her husband left for Afghanistan. There were many incidents that occurred to her before and after he left home. Few weeks before he left she got a surgery and the complications of it and medications led to a miscarriage of twins after he left, which is very depressing and saddening for both and especially for her as an inexperienced young woman by herself. Few weeks before he left, her five year old daughter fell and two of her front teeth were broken and removed. This happened to be punctuated by the sad news of the death of her maternal grandmother whom she loved much as she was taken care by as young.

I asked about her family background in Uganda to which she answered she grew up in such an extended family. And they struggled to make the ends meet and in many cases that never happened. She brought her aunt and her young brother to the US and now the aunt is a medical student and her brother studies engineering.

She is such a very strong young lady, so energetic, loving and caring and also strongly believing in herself and her family’s progress. She said that would go to school and study law after her husband came home.

Reflection(s)

There are cultural presuppositions about staying at a woman’s home when the husband is not at home. I found that this is not typically African perspective but still with a lesser self-assertiveness universal in human society. Someone called as the interview was on progress and I was talking to the kids. At the point I spoke loudly, the speaker on the other end picked up my voice and asked my interviewee how come she kept a guy at home when her husband was not present. I heard my interviewee saying I was their family, a close relative. After the telephone conversation ended she laughed and said that her friend was friend was a good guard.

Another issue was that, if I tape-recorded the interview, it was absolutely impossible with children at home. Field-note taking was also difficult and I had to rely on throwing the information into my memory pool to retrieve it later and write it down. Finally, unless the research topic necessities, it would be advisable not to talk to an interviewee at the time s/he is overburdened by personal and family or any other similar inconveniences. At last, the kids led me out to the gate as they loved it always to hang out and I bid goodnight telling them it was late.  

________________________

INTERVIEW PROJECT II

My Interview Project I was conducted with a single mother of two who singlehandedly raises two kids. Her husband is a US Army abroad and she is not happy at all about being all alone and raising two kids. She is so bright, intelligent and thinks seriously about going back to school when her husband comes home. In the first interview, my informant told me her life experience in Africa and now in exile, her experience as a single mother, her sad life experiences and also mixed up with success stories. From that interview, I could infer that life is not easy for mothers and they sacrifice a lot for their home, children and siblings or family than they care much about bringing their own personal dreams come true.

I had to look for another informant for the remaining interview projects since my previous informant is not accessible and has no time for me because of kids. I was worried whom to interview to get a touching personal story and I really wanted to interview a homeless person so I could know their life story. This time, my informant is a homeless. I needed to be able to give the person a good reason why I was asking "nosey questions" and I had to think if I had the skill to be empathizing and be able to read body language (facial expressions and other paralinguistic features), when needed, to interpret the difference between spoken and unspoken communication during the interview. 

To interview a homeless, I thought lack of experience about homelessness was also another limitation and I was afraid things would go awkward but I had to go ahead and learn from the encounter.  Another important issue that worried me was what some interview questions I was to ask. Then I had to take note of the questions and needed the interview to be like telling a story rather than choppy unrelated and uneven questions and answers. I decided on some themes like age, family, daily routine, origin, and occupation before they moved here, how they ended up here. I hoped that those questions should bring out the homeless person’s stories in a coherent manner by keeping prodding gently as the story unfolds and keeps going.  Other issues I thought relevant were some of the things they've seen/observed in the city, what skill or technique used to make a living and to get money, health issues, where they live and with whom, friends or family, life in homelessness, things they plan to change their life permanently. Then after, I put those themes into general categories of background (personal and family information if at ease), personal story of homelessness, experiences as a homeless women, current situation, future life plan (hopes and fears). I double-checked that those are questions that wouldn't inflict any judgment and conflict or resistance.

I thought the old man with his black dog whom I met last time on Kirkwood Avenue, during my Observation Project II, with his black dog Kiaayo (Bear, in the Black Foot, Native Indians’ language, and he is part of) was not there today March 4. I turned around and waited and got this informant, 56, whom I interviewed and it turned out well for me at last. Hers is an incredible story. Her name is Beverly, MA in Public Administration, and a homeless. Her daughter is also an MA graduate form IPU with a BA in Anthropology from the IU, and married with a kid and enjoying a happy family life.

I met my informant and just walked up to them (they were two) and said, "Hi” and “My name is…..”  I introduced myself respectfully and asked, “Would you mind if I ask you a few questions about yourself?" And this lady showed interest. They were two and both were smoking tobacco and waiting the Monroe Public Library opening at 1p.m., Sunday. We talked and I gave her some background on the project I was conducting and we sat in the library, a free space downstairs.

I indicated below just as “I” to mean “I” the interviewer and then the Interviewee, her initial, as “B”.  I transcribed her story as she narrated it herself. The ‘dots’ are where words were unclear.

I. Let me start with your background and your name.

B. My name is …. Beverly. Am from Indiana, 30 miles south here……My mother was from Kentucky. She passed away just last year on January 31^st. She was 89. And my father died six years ago. He was from Oklahoma. He had a fourth grade education. My mother had eighth grade education. I was the first after two sisters were born older than I.

I was the first one to graduate from college. I got the bachelors of Urban Affairs. And then I got my Masters in Public Administration all from IU Public and Environmental Affairs. That was in 1987.

I went to work in Florida….as a Budget Management Analyst. It was a very good job and I really enjoyed it. I had my daughter by then. She was six in first grade. We lived near the ocean. I stayed there almost eight years. Hurricane came there. I didn’t like that. And my daughter went to middle school, the first grade the first day, I didn’t like that. So I decided to come back here. And my job in Florida, and I decided to come here…to operate the Homeless Shelter here. So that was the time when I was first acquainted with homeless folks. That was a good experience. I stayed there for almost a year. And then I served on a Board of Directors. And in reaction I operated in Self-sufficiency Program and Welfare to Work….New laws …passed that only allowed mothers two years to receive assistance before they had to get a job. So our job was to help them get ready to work. I was promoted from that to Head Start Director …after …five years and I loved to move to Illinois to Community Action Executive Director…I took a course Certified Community Action Professional. It is a national program. Took about a year and half …to be certified. Moved to Columbus, Ohio, to operate a huge homeless shelter…about 5, 000 people a night. I didn’t like the way the Board of Directors spent the money. And I went back to Head Start, in …Ohio and stayed there until 2002. And came back home to my parents and when I was on disability Epithermal and …chronic Bronchitis, COPD, also Diabetes.

So I had my parents and I …enjoyed…I knew a lot of people in local government…I eventually took on a position part-time worked at my home to help change a Literacy Program teach adult …volunteer program…And I did that and reported that to my …independent Disability Company. And they took me up as disability because they said I keep working part-time. And I needed to apply for social security which I did (still have that). Got laid off. Drew unemployment for a year and half. And then when that run out I was downhill. I had no money for rent.   I drew in the houses of my true sisters. It was my parents’ home. It was on a market now. It was in Bedford. I guess that was downhill. My animals and…went to Indianapolis…to…army shelters ….and they moved me a place called Queen Peace …And I didn’t like …it rains by nine and I had to be out at eight in the morning till 3:30. Came back and we had to do logger by hand hang on the line and we get meal at night and we did get breakfast…and lunch …and so I loved there. I came back to Bedford. I was arrested for trespassing my own property because my sister and I did not get along….. I got   no big deal I just got bail out …so I spent ten weeks in jail. And then I came up here…. which I didn’t know one …came up here November fourth. Moved into Marl’s House, Homeless shelter, for men and women

I.  November 4?

B. November 4, last year…..

*          *          *

Reelections

I felt happy to get someone knowledgeable like my informant, so positive and considerate. However, I felt sad for the Homeless people because are such resourceful people with a tremendous potential who are wasting without a due attention, but only feeding them and sheltering and clothing them, yet it is more than that to be human. And for women, like Beverly, it is different to be less human in the so-called Great Nation like America.

Reports have that the nation’s homeless population decreased 1 percent, or by about 7,000 people. That is, according to the report, it went from 643,067 in 2009 to 636,017 in 2011. The number of people experiencing homelessness is decreased in most of the subpopulations examined in the report: families, individuals in families, and individuals. The only increase was among those unsheltered.*

It is said that homelessness is basically caused by economic crisis that affected people to pay for housing. Thus, it is impacted by both income and the affordability of available housing.  Another factor is the demographic shift: that is, as homelessness affects people of all ages, races, ethnicities and geographies, there are groups of people at increased risk: people living in “doubled up” situations (with relatives, friends, or nonrelatives), people discharged from prison, young adults leaving foster care, and people without health insurance. 

I left Monroe County Library heavyhearted struck by my homeless informant’s story. I didn't offer her money by way of reciprocity. But she was ready for lunch to be served at the Trinity Episcopal Church, Kirkwood. In Africa, where a BA graduate can make a Minister (as far as a political loyalty to the ruling party is there), the homeless is mostly the uneducated, the poor, the disabled and/or the runaway. Here in the US, the storied and the storyteller are different—an MA holder can make a good Homeless Storyteller. Here and there the storyline take different route! Here and there the Characters are Homeless; Spectators are at Home and already not at Home!  Here in America, one can be spiritual but not religious, one can have a House but Homeless!

_______________________

*National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The State of Homelessness in America 2012

http://www.endhomelessness.org/content/article/detail/4361

March 4, 2012. Monroe County Public Library.

 ____________________________________

 INTERVIEW PROJECT III

April 21, 2012

Hypothesis:

A successful ethnographic interview is one that is directed as a speech event, one that shares many features with the friendly conversation rather than a strict question and answer format. One can gather data through a participant observation and many casual and friendly conversations by introducing a few ethnographic purpose, explanations, and questions.

During my ethnographic interview projects with my first and second informants we had more friendly conversations into which I slowly introduced new elements to assist my informants to respond than pose fixed interview questions in such a question-and-answer format. However, my first interview session sounded much more like a formal interrogation than friendly conversations. Now I think that was why my first informant was much more into her kids than paid attention to my interview. Throughout the interview projects I came to understand that a few minutes of easygoing talks at the start and interposed here and there throughout the interview session builds trust as it directs the interview to a more conversational yet purposeful talk than very formal interrogation.  

In this interview project continued from the March 4 Interview Project II with the same informant, after some easy talks, I triggered a question to my informant about what contributed into homelessness. In the transcription next, “I”, represents Me, and “B”, my Informant:

I. What is the common factor that contributed into the homelessness as you talk with people? because you are educated …and do you think there are other educated people like you …

B. I know there are a lot of them…I have been with a lot of them…a couple of them we lived with as a catholic worker…both have bachelor degree

I. they are homeless

B. Yea. And now they operate that house as catholic worker. But they don’t know none…they get to live there…that they have no problem where to stay…we can stay here. But after they have two children. They are beautiful family. Very into the church. And trained as one of the church’s servant ….Ah…ammm..and the church is down here and the library…Ah…he really feel like all these people [the public] come together and help the homeless. They never looked down on you. They never make you feel like…you’re a homeless. When you go in, they are very kind, ah, …an’ giving, and they make sure that you have everything in it, ask you before you leave if you need anything. Lots of times we live there…they give you tooth brush and toothpaste, bar of soap, things that…things that you need, of course we can shower…we ‘re at house. A lot of these people shower and do their laundry at the Shalom Center. Amm…there is like twenty cats at Shalom if you are not feeling well you can go upstairs and lay down during the day. Ah…if worse we can ask we can stay in…Ah…but everybody is just really kind… they just treat you...they don’t just look down their nose look down nose…they just so do that…

I. That is great to hear that really. But let me ask you. What contributes into being homelessness as you observed, as you talked with people? is it economic, is it social problem? Is it personal?

B. I think the biggest thing…is employment. People lose their jobs. Second biggest thing may be right after that is the court system. A lot of these people,… are in the court system…in the court system for various reasons…child support…ah, lots of non-violent crimes, such as stealing. Because they steal food, they steal alcohol, an’ they steal cigarette …so they live….

I. these are the stuff they steal if they do at all…(I interrupted)

B. Right….And, so they live under the court system…and then…back in again…they got some probation….they got some violent crimes and end up in prison 

In this interview, one can understand that the informant realized the talking is supposed to go somewhere. As I made it clear to my informant the purpose of the interview, she has no hazy idea what it is all about that she talks. She is organized and resourceful about homelessness. By her analysis the care and support humanitarian organizations, the Shalom Center in particular, offer the homeless people might have contributed into developing the dependency syndrome to the people.

The other reason being unemployment, but court system is also a serious cause that feeds into homelessness. According to my informant’s thoughtful analysis, it is a vicious circle that the poor commit some non-violent crimes such as stealing cigarette, alcohol, food and they are put in jail, get probation come into the society, unemployed, commit the same crime or may be more violent and get back into prison. Child support is anther court case my informant mentions as a serious problem about homelessness. As we talked during our informal chat in between the interview, my informant told me that homeless women need children to get child support from the government. And the father is responsible also to feed the child and the family but has no job to do so. Hence he is put into court system that he finally ends up in jail for he is unable to pay child support.

As my informant had enough information about homelessness and was also well organized, each time we finished one issue or (sub)topic, it was not very necessary to remind her where the interview was to go. She knew that ethnographic interviews involved purpose and direction, so she put herself in the conversation in a way that was well directed, but not aimlessly surfing across the wider expanse of her life experience as a homeless herself and educated. My role was not only posing questions for the conversation but, without being too formal and rigid, I gradually took more control of the talking, directing it in those channels that led to discovering the knowledge of the informant about what contributed into homelessness as she observed it herself.

It was such an abundant experience I got through ethnographic conversation, rather than question and answer, I had with my informant about the nature of homelessness, causes, patterns of homeless people’s behavior, and the vicious circle of unemployment, crimes and the court system unsuccessfully controlling rather than disciplining the homeless and homelessness. 

__________________________________

INTERVIEW PROJECTS I-III     (Reflections)

My first Interview Project was conducted with a single mother of two who was singlehandedly raising two kids since her husband was abroad as a US army officer. She was not happy at all when I interviewed her because of the burden she was shouldering by herself. That had a strong impact on the interview and the information sought. That is, when the informant is not motivated into telling personal stories or not feeling well organized to give adequate data, that is not the time for serious matters but just to talk, to chitchat IF there is time and world or mood as it goes. 

My informant lacked readiness though she showed some willingness busy with kids. Raising kids by herself she also had health issues: a minor surgery and medications led to a miscarriage of twins a week after her husband left home. However, she somehow told me about her life in Africa as a young girl and now in exile, and her experience as a single mother, her sad life experience mixed with few success stories: married with two children, planning to go to school. I could infer from the interview that life is not easy for mothers also in the western world, especially for single mothers who dedicate their life to their home, children and family than have chances for their own and see personal dreams come true.

As I had to look for another informant for the remaining interview projects, since my previous informant had personal problems, I wanted to interview a homeless person to know a little bit about homelessness in the US. There exist some problems too. The first problem is the misconceptions we have about street-corner folks that they could be misbehaving in some way, drug, alcoholism, and other idiosyncrasies and mannerisms that do not fit into the mainstream conventions—preventing drug and public alcoholism, for example. That is true but the problem can make also a case for the interview project.

Another problem equally important to contemplate is that homeless persons are not situated in one place and time in most cases. Such a problem can disrupt the schedule for the interview project. It can be health problem or lack of transportation, or trust, which can be tackled through time and frequent meetings.  I believe it is better to be risk taker for the good than be averter—I decided!

On March 4, 2012 after some hesitations and failed attempts, I came to talk to one homeless woman for the remaining interview projects. She showed interest and we continued but still with more reservations on her side. Since it was not easy to rely on appointment, I decided to take time to talk, discuss, interview her on some accounts of her personal life and what she was willing to talk about and tape-record. I used the time to its fullest since I was not sure I could see her again, and true, I couldn’t!  That the ethnographer should not put off time is another tip into the matter.

Before the interviews, I felt it imperative to think what to ask and what not since some questions could be sensitive and could hurt a homeless unintentionally. To avoid inconveniences, I had to also take note of questions I thought pertinent to ask related to themes of age, family background, daily routine, origin, and occupation before the homeless moved to Bloomington. Other issues included food, shelter, friends or family, life as a homeless and future plan, hopes and fears as a homeless. That is, I thought it sensible to preplan the interview and to put them into categories for convenience and to avoid posing questions haphazardly. However, practically, the open-ended questions turn into much more conversations than in a question-and-answer format so that through discussions more detailed information could unfold, and that they may not otherwise.

Before the interview, I gave her good reason why I was asking her personal life stories and in doing so, to build trust. During the interviews, it was easier to carry it on like a conversation rather than a question and answer format. Through the conversations, I learnt lots about different aspects of homelessness especially for women. Homeless women are exposed to an unwanted pregnancy and raising the child alone where in most cases men move quickly or put in jail for inability to support the child. Paradoxically, homeless women choose to get pregnant to get child support and additional care for themselves from the government and after birth the father is put in jail for failure to support his (?) child.

As she was telling her personal stories I was very stunned to hear what she had to say about those situations, general and personal experiences as a homeless and before. I was glad to hear it from the horse’s mouth through interview and conversations than I would have heard it through other avenues such as lecture or “casual talks”.

Was it one lucky accident? The old man with his black dog, Kiaayo (Bear, in the Black Foot, Native Indians’ language, he said he was part of), and whom I once met during my Observation II Project on Kirkwood was not there today. I thought him for my Interview Projects. As he was not there today on March 4, I met my homeless informant, 56, and took around three hours outside and inside the ground floor of the Monroe County Library, Sunday. She was an MA in Public Administration from the IU, and now a homeless. Her daughter is also a graduate with an MA and married.

While working on my Interview Projects I felt happy to get someone knowledgeable like my informant, though it was sad to see her in that situation as a homeless in the so-called Great Nation like America. However, my informant was so positive and considerate and thoughtful. It is sad that such resourceful people with a tremendous potential are left idle and waste without due attention, but only with but with minor basic needs yet it is more than that to be human.

I felt the interviews were an invaluable experience indeed. I learnt about homelessness as a different aspect of life. If the opportunity arose again, I would definitely take it up and work on Street-Corner Folks’ Lore in Bloomington, which would give invaluable information into the lives of homeless people so that they can be better understood and helped.  Or else, it is all out and about!

So I rethought ethnographic venture is not about risk-taking or risk-averting per se as it is about to follow one’s inner flow, learning to listen to one’s lyrical synchronicity. It is a “little gift” to do more things when occurrences are in line, when events are in place and time and then obstacles melt away.  Hence, one among many ethnographic lucky accidents!

_______________________

Sense of Place: 

(Observing Physical Setting)

Visiting the Amish World, Lancaster: Penn. (March 10-18, With Loya's Family)

Note: Loya Haftamu Marga, my brother-in-law's daughter, was 2 weeks old on my visit. My deepest gratitude to her parents. They sponsored my visit to Lancaster and I enjoyed my Spring Break staying with this loving and caring family in 10 years.! I wish Loya (I named her Loya upon her Dad's request before she was born, meaning, in Oromo, 'abundant herd of cattle'), I wish her to grow and prosper and to see a bright future. And to her parents, respect, love and all that is best, but what for Yomi (2), Loya's brother, and Amarti (5), her sister? They said my name "Ashafa," wetting it with innocence, drenching it with love, and carrying me in  their tiny heart and my name between their milk teeth, they giggled, "Ashafa," budding and creeping upstairs, Yomi and Amarti, every new morning for 10 days. They woke me up to play with them in their Toy House, next to my room upstairs. We plaid indeed, though I was not good at "seek and hide". They asked me when they would play with my two sons, Ebba (5and half) and Doti (2 and half). How big is this love, oh God? I would say to Loya, Yomi, and Amarti, I love you all.

________________________

This project called Sense of Place aims to promote meaningful field experiences with the environment through using alternative methods based on qualitative information, i.e., interviewing and observation. This is a more holistic approach that embraces some aspects of the environment which provides understanding and a greater awareness of places, often through engaging in sensory fieldwork. The knowledge of place is also gained constantly through reflections on both personal and environmental experiences through time and becomes a living textbook of understanding for the ethnographer to recall. Hence, place as a way of seeing, knowing and understanding the world is the attachments and connections between people and the social / physical world.

Lancaster County, with 946 square miles in size, is a home to the oldest Amish community in Southeast Pennsylvania State. The County has many distinct characteristics that give it a sense of place and a character with an estimated population of 519,445. By the 2010 census results, Lancaster City’s population was approximately 59,322 people, including a continuous movement of people into and out of the area. People flow into Lancaster to seek a better economic standing. The peak tourism months to Lancaster are August and October.

The place names of original Lancaster County townships reflect the diverse groups of settlers in the county. Two of the townships had Welsh names (Caernarvon and Lampeter), three had Native American names (Cocalico, Conestoga, and Peshtank or Paxton), six were English (Warwick, Lancaster, Martic, Sadsbury, Salisbury, and Hempfield), and four were Irish (Donegal, Drumore, Derry, and Leacock). Manheim was German, Lebanon came from the Bible, and Earl the anglicization of the German surname of Graf. Native tribes in the area include(d) the Shawnee, Susquehannock, Gawanese, Lenape (or Delaware), and Nanticoke peoples. Wheatland, or the James Buchanan House was formerly owned by James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States in 1856. It is located outside of Lancaster in, Lancaster Township, and now serves as a museum. Buchanan was Lancaster’s native son elected the only Pennsylvanian to hold the presidency.

The best non-irrigated farmland in the world brought the Amish here to settle.  By 2011, Lancaster County's Amish population was 30,000. Most Amish are trilingual, speaking English, Pennsylvania Dutch (a dialect of German), and High German. Amish children attend schools until the eighth grade. School system is generally held in one-room schoolhouses of 10 to 15 students. The Amish are named after Jacob Amman, their religious leader who broke away in 1693 from a group called Mennonites led by a young Catholic priest from Holland named Menno Simon. The Old Order Amish people are also called the "Plain People," after their simple plain clothing style.  Despite all the changes that happened to societies, but they chose to live and work as their forefathers hundreds of years back. The more traditional groups called “old order” do not permit electricity, automobiles or telephones in their homes and no television, or radio to keep the modern world from intruding into their home life.

Around the Lancaster City and on the suburbs it is common to see big Amish farms. One can feel stepping back in time to enjoy a slower, more peaceful pace among the Amish where the horse and buggy (pushchair) remains a primary form of transportation. The landscape is dotted by windmills, for homemade energy, providing power harnessed from nature, and large farms. A vital part of Lancaster County culture is that the Amish are involved in agriculture as well as an array of businesses and cottage industries. Because of their large farms, trees are rare to see around in the County. For Amish lifestyle, their families can best be maintained in a rural environment than in town. While they do not permit the use of tractors in their fields, old order Amish groups are seen using modern farm equipment pulled by teams of horses. They ride horses and buggies on local roads. In Roots Market on the suburb area, one can shop a true sense of the County's agricultural bounty in an open air on Tuesdays. The local produces include garden fresh fruits, root plants, vegetables, and cereals.

In Spring in Lancaster County, the temperatures range from the '50's to '70's in March through mid-June. Spring festivals, craft demonstrations and art shows are popular. Several Amish farms and showcase traditional spring farming practices are open to the public. Its farmlands are occasionally covered by snow in mid-December through February. Winter is said heavy and requires more layers, heavier wools and appropriate footwear. The climate is said warm during summer with 70's and very cold during winter with 30's. The warmest month of the year is July with an average maximum temperature of 84.70 ‘F while the coldest month of the year is January 20.70 ‘F. Rainfall is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. The wettest month of the year, I was told, is September with an average rainfall of 4.45’.  In Spring the Pennsylvania Dutch Country finds the rebirth of greenery in the countryside with Amish tilling and planting their fields with horse teams.

The countryside is spotted by Amish schoolhouses, buggies, barns, farms, historic homes and beautiful farmland vistas. One may even drive through one of the historic covered bridges that dot the countryside in an open-air horse cart and stopping at a quaint Amish roadside stand for an added experience of unique local flavor. The stops in the countryside include farms, roadside stands, crafts, quilt shops, and bakeries. It is common to see covered bridges in Lancaster County. In the Pennsylvania Dutch Country of Lancaster there are 28 covered bridges.  It is said that Pennsylvania is recognized for its about 1500 covered bridges built between 1820s to 1900. Out of the 219 covered bridges in the nation, Lancaster County has more than any other county in Penn. Covered bridges, also called kissing bridges, are used to  protect bridges from bad weather.

The Amish culture can be well described by the grace and forgiveness they showed the world following the tragic Amish school shooting of 10 young schoolgirls in a One-room Amish School in October 2006.  Charles Roberts, a milk truck driver, lost a baby girl nine years earlier who died in 20 minutes soon after she was born, and he never forgave God for her death and eventually planned to get revenge. Tormented for nine years, on October 2, 2006 when he cold-bloodedly shot 10 innocent Amish school girls and committed suicide, the Amish almost immediately forgave him and showed compassion toward his family. Amish mourners outnumbered the non-Amish at Charles Roberts' funeral. He never forgave God for the death of his baby girl. In a world at war and in a society that often points fingers and blames others, this reaction was unheard of.  

To sum up, the notion of sense of place is relevant to understand how people interact with their environment and consider how the interaction may become more sustainable. Considering how a sense of place develops includes paying attention to the importance of comparisons between places and people through observation, talking to people, especially elders who know historical sites as I did for my purpose, i.e. making sense of place in Lancaster. In making sense of place, childhood experience is vital. Links between exposure to natural environments in childhood and environmental preferences later in life have close relationship, as a result of direct experience of playing, the role of family, culture, and community creating what is called the “primal landscape,” which develops between children and their childhood environments. It serves as a baseline to constitute a key point of comparison between subsequent places later in life and the childhood landscapes. The sense of new places as a folklorist/ethnographer later in life is made in relation to the earlier baseline, the primal landscape. In this regard, as an outsider to make sense of place through the prism of the primal landscape, observation and interview, one can make sense of three unique immediate social contexts among the Amish in Lancaster. These include the farm/milking time, a home/cottage “industry,” and the family. By visiting their cottage industry, one hears about and observes a unique handcraft, by visiting Amish family, one can have an informal chat right in their home, and makes sense of home, and by visiting at their milking time on observes how Amish milk cows and make cool milk without electricity.

 

 ________________________

Focusing on Sound Project

(Week 13, March 26/April 2)

In the focusing on sound project, an attempt is made to record music inside my apartment residence at Bradford Place to determine where actual sound events begin or end (segmenting), figuring out and storing information about each sound event to distinguish it from other preceding or following sound events (indexing), and, in so doing, to obtain all events of a given sound event.

The recording took place at my residence where there were indoor and outdoor natural and environmental sounds. Outside. It was raining this morning, Sunday, April 1. Chilly. Birds sing solo and pay homage to the spring rain generously drenching nature as if it rained for good. Wind whistled and wafted nonstop. Inside. My tape understood the recording and the sounds came and went indoor and outdoor one after another. Discontinuous music sounds accompanied by things fall or other non-tunable sounds.  

One can segment the sound event into clusters. By segmenting simply I mean identifying individual sound events along their onset and end times. Sound event shows the sound emanating from a single physical source. It can be one bird’s song after another from outside or a wind blow or the rain fall. Indoor, it can be things fall, or music sound all at the same time or door opens but they can be segmented into clusters of sound events if carefully tuned. The same way as we understand a “speech event” to be a continuous speech between pauses and/or transitions where the speaker changes phonemes, words, or sentences, so is a “sound event” and has clusters of individual sounds segmented and identified as an “event”.

Sound Segments: The recorded data include the following sound events as happened: music, rain, wind, birds sing at a time ‘in chorus or solo,’ things fall inside, one bird sings, music, two birds sing, one music ends another begins, birds sing louder, door bangs by wind.  Each event happened at a time and that one can hear only the paramount sound cluster which we could not hear if it were not for its dominance in spite of other sound events non-tunable. Generally there were three indoor sound events and two outdoor sound events, and two indoor and outdoor sound events overlapping. The total of seven clearly identified sound events were recorded indoor and outdoor approximately within eleven minutes during the windy and rainy day of Sunday morning at my Bradford Place Apt on April 1.

The sound events included some over-lapping and some non-overlapping sound events. For example, the two birds’ singing at the same time, music and things fall inside, and music and the banging of door which show alternate and same spread of the sound events in space and time.

Indexing in this sound project is about the time-based frequency, length, and speed of each sound event one after another. How the features change on the boundaries of each event (loud, low, medium), how fast, and how frequent is what indexing is all about, at least in the context of the present project. The sounds were distributed through space and time as they were continuously recorded. The indexing method inferred onsets and end times of the each prominent sound event in the space and time as the tape-recorder captured the sounds corresponding to each event. Through indexing one can have a rough idea of where a certain sound event can start and where the other follows in the recording.

In what follows, the outdoor and indoor sound events are indexed for further understanding and appreciation of the sound events.

The Recording took place at 8:25 am to 8:36am approximately for 11 minutes.

Sound event                 Duration           In/outdoor  Distribution in

                                                            s. event      space & time__

                                                                                            

1. A bird sings/           

    rain/wind                  25:23’’-00:23’’      outdoor s.e.    overlap

2. Music                         26:33’’-01:10’’      indoor  s.e.     non-overlap

3. A bird sings /rain       26:58’’-00:25’’      outdoor s.e.    overlap

4. Things fall/Music       27:13’’-00:15’’      indoor s.e.      overlap

5. Music/things

    fall /door opens        31:46’’ -04:31’      indoor s. e.     overlap

6. Music/Birds sing       34:31’’-03:14’’       out/indoor s.e. overlap                      

7. Music/Birds sing/

    wind                        35:31”-01:00’’       out/indoor s.e. overlap 

                                                         

In indexing, one may think of how the sound features varied, how fast and how frequent the sounds occurred. The outdoor sound events were performed to a varied extent and not on constant trends.  The number of the sounds also varied to a larger extent based on the indoor and outdoor nature and environment recording conditions. In the outdoor environment, factors such as wind, rain, and other noises led to low recording conditions and there were also longer non-tunable sound events. The non-relevant sounds in the background or overlapping the sound event(s) also made it difficult to decide when one sound event “turned off” and another “turned on”.

The longer sound events were the indoor sound events (#5) indexed as 04:31 which likely exhibited constant feature trends, as they might be the combination of several events. The least and (abrupt) sound event overlapping with music was the falling of a thing (#4) as the music sound event was going on. It took only 15’’, onset and end.

In sum, the frequency of the sound events, that is, how often (frequent), the sound event occurred needs equal attention. Of the sound events occurred approximately in 11 minutes, “music” as a primary sound event occurred 5 times and “birds sing” occurred four times. This shows that the frequency of the outdoor events was hampered by the natural and environmental noises than the indoor sound events. In the latter case, things falling and the door opening were the two one-time sound events less frequent to hamper the indoor record activity.

TOWARDS ETHNOGRAPHY OF RESISTANCE POETICS: METHODS

Critical Readings into 

Franz Boas

Marcel Mauss

and

Malinowski's 

Ethnographic Search

(and two other readings)

Asafa Tafarra Dibaba

Indiana University

Spring / May 2012 

I. Background  

The aim of the present paper is to examine the nature, goal, and method of Ethnography in three readings of early Ethnographic and Ethnological works for the course Readings in Ethnographies (F525): Boas’ Tsimshain Mythology, Mauss’ The Gift, and Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific. In addition, I read two other most recent Ethnographic works which focus on Resistance Research: Lesly Brown and Susan Strega (2005), and Ted Chamberlin’s If this is Your Land, Where are your Stories (2003), with the aim of practicing Ethnography of Resistance Poetics in Folkoristics and in my PhD research. The Gift, as Evans Pritchard rightly observes, is the junction between Mauss’ social and scientific preoccupations and Ethnology and politics (a1966:vii), and I paid a special attention to it.

Poetics is the making of meanings through language, through songs, stories, and myth as if the world is made of stories and not of atoms. The Salale Oromo in Ethiopia historicize into their collective life experience the social injustice and historical resistance, root it deeply in their local history, sustain it through singing and telling and handing it over to the succeeding generation to contemplate. The Oromo in Ethiopia like the oppressed people elsewhere join in social movements and raise their voices demanding justice, land, democracy, and freedom as part of the arrested decolonization process, the reality generally ignored in postcolonial discourses. The “post” is not per se a “post” independence, “post” colonial reality for most world nations still kept in bondage.  There were/are “things” taken by force, and not reciprocated nor returned and that the oppressed demand “now” and that ethnography of resistance poetics explores. That is what my PhD project does among the Salale Oromo in Ethiopia. Hence, in this paper, first I examine the course readings one after another and proceed to analyzing those works on resistance poetics vis-à-vis the course readings and then discuss the ethnography of my PhD research project.

II. Franz Boas' Distance "Ethnography": Tsimshian Mythology (1916)

Boas’ Tsimshian Mythology (1916) is a typical example of a practical limitation of doing ethnography at a distance.  That is, doing data collection through someone, though the collector knows the culture and the language, there could be still some holes and shortcomings that the ethnographer could have filled in the field.  Lack of documenting the data in the native language to be transformed (translated) later is a major deficiency to an ethnographic research and doing it over through another informant cannot help it to resuscitate as nothing can be like the original. In spite of the limitations, however, Franz Boas’ Tsimshian Mythology is considered as a single most influential piece of American Indian folklore scholarship, in which Boas presents a corpus of Tsimshian myths and tales collected by a Tsimshian, Mr Henry Tate from 1903 to 1914.

For the volume of Tsimshian Mythology (1916) Boas worked on Henry Tate’s English version, while still making some changes. For example, in story 6, “The Deluge,” the word “Eyes” is used instead of “Ice” as it is commonsensical to see the word to follow, “hail” (“At last the Living Eyes came in. It was the hail” (TM, p347). In the section entitled “Description of the Tsimshian, based on their mythology” (pp. 393-477) Boas gives “a description of the mode of life, customs, and ideas of the Tsimshian” (p393) which are expressed in the myths contained in the first part of the work, and, as he claims, “in the Nass River tales collected by me (Boas 7)”, to mean that the present work is not collected by him. Rumors are that Boas was said to have spent a total of 33.5 months during the thirteen field trips he made, not including his trip to Baffinland, 1883, he undertook primarily as a geographer. Thus, methodologically survey approach was a significant feature of his fieldwork as he travelled from location to location only for a brief visit, which can have a direct impact on the authenticity of the data.

The collection, recording and publishing of oral data is believed to demand certain responsibility from the collector. Methodologically speaking, Boas’ Tsimshian Mythology, in this regard, seems inadequate. That is, the documentation of more than two thousand pages by a single informant, and editing and changing of words adds to the unreliability of the data and would violate the principles of ethnography and folklore collection, namely, “being there”.  Not “being there” and doing ethnographic fieldwork among the community where data come from can cause such irreparable shortcomings.

In his voluminous TM collection Boas did not grasp some of the elementary aspects of the tribal social organization, a project later taken up by his PhD student, Viola Garfield, published as Tsimshian Clan and Society, 1939, though an ethnographer cannot cover every aspect of a society. With such abundant data indirectly collected, it would be difficult also to demonstrate historical dynamics. If changes are to be inferred from indirect evidence, it is even more difficult to make significant reconstructions, and TM is the case in point. When the collection was made, Boas was working as an honorary philologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology (p17).

The first part of the TM comprises myths (and tales) without the original texts because it was impossible, as Boas notes, to revise phonetics and grammar of the texts as there was also no immediate prospect of carrying through the revision (p32). The stories include myths and tales. In the myths animals appear as actors in the form of human beings, whereas, the tales are historical in character but also have elements of the supernatural. The Raven myths and the Transformer myth being the most important ones in the collection, the Raven myths comprise origin tales, Raven’s voraciousness, and his amorous and other adventures. The descriptions of social organization of the people and their religious ideas and practices based on their mythology, ethical concepts (p443) and disseminations of the myths are presented in the second part. The comparative study of the Tsimshian myths with other native Indians’ myths also comprises the collection which begins by origin stories and concludes by war tales. In the stories, patience, perseverance, and abstemious behaviors are thought rewarding, particularly eating little and speaking little are qualities of decorum, while children are given what they ask for and restraint is seldom demanded of them (p444). Hunter’s taboos, seasons taboos among others, and sacrifices offered because they are “supposed to go to the home of the supernatural beings” (p451) make the religious beliefs and practices of the Tsimshian community.

This is the world where, mythically speaking, human eyes, snakes, or frogs are the regular food for the in habitants and visitors are offered the same; it is the world where the idea of “vagina dentata” most worries the young man (p809). When all these happened, i.e. stories told, rituals performed, magic conjured, sacrifices offered, decorum and ethics practiced in a world “supported by a man named Am’ala” (p453), I am not of the view that Boas was not there in the world of American Indians but particularly not to this world of the Tsimshian myths. In his prefatory notes Boas makes it clear that the collection was recorded by Henry Tate, in Tsimshian, his native language during the last twelve years, and the translation of the tales was made by Boas based on free interlinear renderings given by Henry Tate (p31), though it is said that the recording was first made in English. I would say that to develop relationships with the people, learn from them and conduct a systematic study of their culture, “being there” is an indispensable ethnographic principle as practiced mostly by Brownislaw Malinowski among the Trobriand natives. At the heart of traditional performances including magic among the Tsimshian or the Trobriand Islanders or the Melanesians, the idea of “the gift” is an overarching principle as sit is in rituals where the victim is a scapegoat and intermediary between the profane and the sacred. 

III. Malinowski's Ethnographic Credo: The Argonauts (1922) 

 Of the interdisciplinary nature of ethnographic research processes, Malinowski believes that an act has no meaning unless the ethnographer knows and infers the thoughts and emotions of the informant about it. That is, describing a series of acts would not answer the purpose of ethnography without any reference to the state of mind of the agent. Malinowski knew well that the aim of ethnographer is not merely to collect and analyze data, which is the case with Boas’ Tsimshian Mythology, but by “being there” to experience and understand human actions in society. Unless the ethnographer lives, according to Malinowski, as the natives do, no ethnography can be successful and no pure sociology can fulfill its task without calling in at every turn the aid of other fields, for example, psychology (p. ix). This practice of science at the start consisted in collecting concrete data of evidence and drawing general conclusion which seemed obvious on the surface but was not of some practical effect in ethnography until fieldwork was taken up. From his field experience, Malinowski tells us that it was necessary to devise concrete applications of ethnographic method to carry out social research “systematically and consistently” and in so doing to appeal also to the feelings and emotions of the human agent (1922:12).

A belief in magic is, for example, one of the main psychological forces which allow for organization and systematization of economic effort among the Trobrianders, one case of the complexity of human nature untenable by a single research method or model. Magic, for example, is a human attempt to govern the forces of nature through a special lore and is “all-pervading” among the Trobrianders in the many industrial and communal activities. All the data disclose the extreme importance of magic in the Kula.

Hence, speaking of his methods, Malinowski states, “each phenomenon ought to be studied through the broadest range possible of its concrete manifestations” by an exhaustive survey of detailed examples, and of the research product, he comments, “if possible, the results ought to be embodied into some sort of synoptic chart” (1922:17). The result thus organized and carefully documented is to be used as an instrument of study and presented as an ethnological document, which facilitates the study of actualities and clear outline of the natives' culture, the constitution of the society as concrete evidence. The importance of observation to supplement objective documents is paramount. It is observation of the manner in which a given custom is carried out, observation of the behavior of the natives in obeying the rules as formulated by the ethnographer. As to the actual method of observing and recording in fieldwork, the imponderabilia of actual life represent facts difficult to document, such as the agent’s routine daily life, and to capture as a typical behavior in the collection of crystalized and ethnographic data (p18). 

Malinowski’s the economic man is more than one who always cares about where his material interests lie. That is the materialistic conception of history that everything man devises and pursues is all about “material advantage of a purely utilitarian type at heart” (p516), and hence, the economic man. Beyond the ethnological presumptions whatsoever, by the general science of culture (?ethnography/anthropology), now the meaning of the Kula “will consist in being instrumental to dispel such crude, rationalistic conceptions of primitive mankind… and to deepen the analysis of economic facts” (p516). With these findings about the Kula, gift exchange, (gift economy), which is more all-pervasive than the commodity economy, the erroneous conceptions about primitive values and the whole objects of value as “money” or “currency” need to be revised. In this regard, Malinowski’s notion (exact use) of the terms “ethnology,” the “general science of culture,” and “ethnography” is blurred.

Ethnology or Ethnography?

Malinowski’s use of the term Ethnology related to Ethnography is less explicit also in his conclusive remark. Acknowledging Sir James Frazer for the Preface Frazer wrote, Malinowski declares that it is not only honor and advantage for him but also a special pleasure sine Malinowski’s first love for Ethnology was inspired by the reading of the Frazer’s Golden Bough.  He states that Ethnology is often mistaken for “an idle hunting after curios for a ramble among the savage and fantastic shapes of ‘barbarous customs and crude superstitions’” (p518). Hence as he took it beyond what was traditionally viewed as unsystematic search for ‘barbarous customs’ but, as he says, “the time is short for Ethnology” before the truth of its “real meaning and importance” is realized (ibid). Why is the time short for Ethnology? Towards the end, we are told once again that the custom, beliefs and practices of the Kula and mythological assumptions spun around it have been examined and as something not met before in ethnological studies (p509), and ethnology, and not ethnography, seems to be the trademark of the day.

To Malinowski, “Kula seems to be…a novel type of ethnological fact” (p510), its novelty being in its “surpassing size and complexity” and the sociological and geographical extent it covers.  Ethnologically, the Kula valuables can be classed among the “ceremonial objects of wealth” which includes carved and decorated weapons, stone implements, articles of domestic and industrial nature, and the “word seems to cover a great number of meanings and much that has no meaning at all” (p89). Hence, “ethnology” covers a wider range of Malinowski’s methodological creed than “ethnography” if that can mean a difference of both model and method. To the school of comparative cultural history, certain phenomena might have immigrated to where they are today and there is also the possibility that a cultural element might have originated just where it is now, since no culture is void of ‘civilization’! Mauss’ idea of “the gift” best illustrates this latter fact next. 

IV. Marcel Mauss and His Ethnology (1923; 1966)

Mauss’ The Gift appeared a year after Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, which made Mauss’ work timely in relation to Malinowski’s. However, The Gift is said rather a wider contribution to the study of economic behavior based on archival studies of ethnographies tracing the pattern over a much wider area than Malinowski’s single Trobriand case. Needless to say, since both had distinct research goals, they employed different research methods. Mauss’ writings were not the products of ethnographic fieldwork, however. The economic exchange among those societies Mauss discusses is governed largely by values other than utility, and particularly connected to religion. It is important to note that to Mauss intangibles such as politeness, dances, songs and stories, feasts and services were exchanged so much as material goods, which did not take place just between individuals but between families, and/or clans as he called it total prestation or total social fact imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honor of both giver and receiver into social reciprocity.

Mauss’ notion of “totality” is the Durkheimian creed that social phenomena should be seen in their totality. As Mauss also presents in his work a new view of Durkheim's theory of social cohesion, The Gift is the junction between Mauss’ social and scientific preoccupations and Ethnology and politics, as one can presumably tell in the title l’ethnologie et la politique: le don (Ethnology and Politics: The Gift). In the introductory note, Evans-Pritchard presents Mauss to have the background of analytic tradition of concepts than of facts which are reached at by deductive formulations (1966:vii).

The “gift exchange” in archaic societies that Mauss examined are “total social movements or activities” and at the same time, economic, juridical, moral, aesthetic, religious, mythological and socio-morphological phenomena (ibid.) which operate within the web of the existing social structure. The ethnographer’s purpose is to understand those social facts from both outside and inside as an anthropologist (from outside/etic) and also as an insider/emic by living with and like the members of the society he is studying as Malinowski did, a matching ethnological mission that Mauss accomplished based on archival research into ethnographic and linguistic materials without leaving Paris. An anthropologist can “observe” and “experience” a social phenomenon and thus he is one of those social anthropologists in the field doing “long distance ethnography” through archival research. While connecting the two methods of both archival and filed research, it is of a great intrinsic value that a detailed archival research such as Mauss’ makes the work of understanding “social phenomena” more detailed and the analysis of it comprehensive when archival and ethnographic enquiries merge. The combination between the two also helps to fully grasp the nature and the significance or function of the custom in relation to the social order we study.

The opening statement of Mauss' lecture dated 1902 was that “there are no uncivilized peoples, only peoples with different civilizations” (p4), which can be referred to as the underlying basic idea of his philosophy rooted within an evolutionary framework. Mauss is said to have never used the word “primitive” in his works outside of quotation marks. He believed that there are more simple societies than others and still at an earliest stage of development than those more complex ones. To Mauss, and other Durkheim's students of the time, the study of one specific society would make it possible to explain more complex societies. However, the degree of variation between simpler societies was not well understood (or overlooked) by Mauss and his colleagues. In this regard, the study by Durkheimian French sociologists in “primitive” societies was considered as an ethnological theory by American Boasian anthropologists, and not as ethnography.  But Mauss’ critique is loud. At one point he comments in The Gift that “The Tsimshian Myth. (cf. pp154, 192) is incomplete…Although Boas did not notice the identity it is clear. The Tsimshain goddess wears a ‘garment of wealth’” (1966:110, en.184), which is an evidence for Mauss’ detailed archival research and systematic ethnological method.

The Gift is an example of Mauss’ ethnological theory, which was the basic tenet in the early days of Durkheimian sociology.  Durkheim’s students’, including Mauss, are said to have added nothing but applied their Master’s ideas to social problems, i.e. finding a universal social law.  An example of the search for a universal law such as in The Gift is a power that causes the recipient to pay it back, which was/is an attempt at the search for a universal social law. However, the irony behind the search is that, Marcel Mauss never engaged himself in fieldwork of any kind though his The Gift focused on gift exchange among archaic societies much like Malinowski did among the Trobriand before him. Speaking of the Melanesians, “In this economy,” Mauss asserts, much like a filed-worker (an ethnographer) would, “and …in these societies groups cannot analyze themselves or their actions…however comprehending they may be, do not realize that they have to oppose each other …and individuals feel themselves to act only in one way” (p30), although their economic activities cross geographical and linguistic borders wider than the Polynesians. With regard to using ethnographic report and explaining facts extracted from those reports, Mauss suggested, for example, explaining religious phenomena in terms of the social phenomena as opposed to E.B. Tylor's view of general psychological phenomena to do the same. Mauss' suggestion was also an example of Durkheim's influence pertaining to ethnography of religious forms among simpler societies.

The Malinowskian concept of “gift exchange” came about during the WWI, when the shades of the war of aggression were hovering around. Hence, Mauss’ purpose was initially to establish grounds for the reparation, now the gift, French government claimed from the Germans after the war. Where there is no reciprocity, the war can be war of arms or war of words but war is war as long as it is no peace!

  

As in Maori the gift is the toonga one receives, and the hau of the toonga one also receives and is obliged to return or one chooses to die, for such is a hau of personal property, the hau of the forest  that kills (p9)! In such a case, the gift is inalienably connected to the giver beyond the limit of time and place, while the accompanying behavior is a formal pretense and social deception of the receiver. What is more, the transaction is based on self-interest on the side of the receiver and survival for the giver and, therefore, transcends the division between the spiritual and the material in a way that is, also according to Mauss, a “magical” contract as in Maori.

By the totemic language, the devotee is bound to the deity through totem, ritual and praises but in exchange if, for some reason, the intended goal (child, health, abundance, generally, prestige, power, success) is not reciprocated, the devotee cuts the relationship and turns to another god (or goddess). In this case the service (sacrifice) is not intended to divinity but to reciprocity, which fails its goal of divine warship. Pertaining to gifts to god(s), Mauss states that “sacrificial destruction implies giving something that is to be repaid” (p14). Systematically citing Malinowski about Trobriand’s sacrifice to gods in exchange for wealth Mauss adds that “the ‘owner’ can ‘buy’ from the spirits the right to do certain things with his or rather ‘their’ property. Before he cuts his wood or digs his garden or stakes out his house “he must make a payment to the gods….away to the country of the dead; there the spirits rival each other in wealth as men do in return from a solemn kula” (p14).

In gift exchange, and in its ancient form of total prestation, based on Malinowski’s experience among the Polynesians and Melanesians, Mauss’ argues, “the principles of rivalry and antagonism are basic” and rank of every kind are determined by the war of property, by armed hostilities, by chance, inheritance or marriage but “everything is conceived as if it were a war of wealth” (Mauss, p35). This argument may be on an antithesis position to what we have previously read Mauss as saying “these societies groups… do not realize that they have to oppose each other …and individuals feel themselves to act only in one way” (p30), as if social cohesion is achieved through the gift exchange as an absolute means of homogenization. Of the Polynesian mana, honor/prestige, for example, Mauss sounds like one who gives an eye-witness account as if skipped unsaid by Malinowski that mana symbolizes the man’s honor and his magical power and he also adds the translations of the word (mana) as “authority” and “wealth,” citing a certain Tregar (en. 128, Ch. II, Mauss, p36).

Speaking of the Tsimshian and the Kwakiutl of British Colombia and the Tlingit and the Haida of Alaska, Mauss acknowledges them to have a high standard of material culture: pipes, clubs and sticks which are “the pride of our ethnological collections” (p32). In Mauss’ perspective the system of gift exchange, however, unlike the western perspective, is not primarily material or economic transaction, but moral. It is a system of “total service” such as the “Kwakiutl spirit song” (from winter ceremony shamanism) ‘You send us all things from the other world, O spirits / You heard that we were hungry / We shall receive many things from you’ (Mauss, p90) where each gift is part of a system of reciprocity, a debt to be split among the tribe payable through sacrifices. It is even more than what Mauss refers to as “potlatch,” the word derives from the Tsinuk, meaning “feed,” “consume,” the system of gift which involves the principle of rivalry and disputes as among the Argonauts, or resistance against giving their land as among Ted Chamberlin’s  Gitksan  community of the British Colombia (pls. see next, #V).

“The Gift” as a Principle of Resistance

Social reciprocity or lack of it can affect relationship. When we see through the prism of heuristic principle of reciprocity politicians giving speeches and kissing babies and winning (receiving) votes, we can understand how social reciprocity can be used as a social influence strategy in a more complex way than we could ever imagine, and the ad campaigns that overwhelmingly turn us into a tame animal for consumerism, i.e., McDonaldization of society. Hence, I would take up Mauss’ notion of The Gift earnestly. I strongly believe that the gift is not always generously given, but taken when the giver has it but as one last resort to survive by giving, and when in no way a social reciprocity is expected under an unequal power relation. “Inalienability” of “the gift” is a characteristic feature of such a “social contract” between the powerful and the powerless that suspends “ownership” only temporarily until the table turns and the power relationship strikes the balance or in favor of once the powerless.

The gift can be one’s right, one’s pride/prestige/mana, one’s property, one’s land, one’s child, one’s wife, one’s language, one’s culture, one’s identity, one’s country in exchange for ‘new’ religion, ‘new’ language, ‘new’ way of life and thought principles called “modernity”/“civilization” as a driving force toward a “nation building” tenet.  But when the time came, better later than never, of necessity there should be some binding rules that govern the giver and the receiver, in which case, social reciprocity was the fundamental binding principle governed by the nature of social history, theoretical sociology, moral and political economy and the old problems which constantly turn up under new guises.

The influences of such transactions in gift exchange, and the discussion of it are usually taken for granted as a gift generously offered. To the contrary, when the giver has no choice but to give unwillingly and survive willingly, the gift turns itself into a poison if not returned or reciprocated. That is to mean, either the giver puts a spell on the gift, motivated by an unequal power relationship and never revokes it for generations, and/or brews another war ritual to take back by war what was grudgingly given/taken by war in the past!  In this case, for the giver, time never is; time was!  For the receiver, past is too fast driven by guilt! And for both the future is a forward movement into the past until the ‘paradise lost’ turns into ‘paradise regained’!  

There are such unpaid social debts long overdue that imbue grudges and instill resistance among nations today. The oppressed tell/urge the oppressor (the receiver) to return “the gift,” the ancestral gift taken by force. They tell through stories, songs, and every possible nonviolent or violent means until their voices are silenced.  Thus, the spiritual implications of disregarding reciprocity are worse. It can mean to lose honor (mana) and status or even freedom. Based on the reciprocal gift exchange under normal circumstances, according to Mauss, there are three obligations: giving, the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of social relationships; receiving, to refuse to receive is to reject the social bond; and reciprocating, which is, to Mauss, to demonstrate one’s own liberality, honor and wealth. However, in the latter form of obligation, i.e. reciprocity, unlike Mauss’ precept, where there is no ‘free exchange’ (of power) due to unequal relationship, the obligation is, I posit, not of liberality or permissiveness but of morality and duty. The notion of “inalienability” is important in Mauss’ conceptualization of gift exchange. In “gift economy,” as in Mauss’ ‘archaic’ societies, the gift is ‘inalienated’ from the giver(s) — it is “loaned rather than sold and ceded” as the case in commodity economy. In “gift economy” the identity of the giver is invariably bound up with the gift and compels social/moral reciprocity which creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid.

From my vantage point, given the premise that gift can be material or non-material, the notion of the gift-debt, long overdue as social debt, creates relationship overtime (unjust or just historical relationship) between the two sides. According to Mauss, solidarity is achieved through the social bonds created by reciprocated gift exchange, which is a Durkheimian notion of understanding social cohesion through the concept of solidarity. However, what is missing in Mauss’ argument is that where social cohesion and solidarity are disrupted by unequal power relations, gift presides only over “exchange” for the giver in order to survive, and self-interest of the receiver superimposes mutual interdependence between the giver and the receiver. Such are “social debts” long overdue that many generations are born to contemplate, to repay or to be paid.

Resistance is obvious when the gift (donation/charity/aid—some argue donation is not a gift) is a tool used by the giver (influence agent) as a request made to the receiver (influence target/the oppressed) to comply to the political or economic unequal relations that gradually unfolds as suppressive/exploitative.  Resistance against such social influence strategies through gift is often hampered by divisions, by the divide and rule policy of the influence agent, among the influence targets. It is a disintegration that the oppressed suffer but resist through subversive expressive culture. Doing ethnography may involve “locating” the ethnographic self in that contesting terrain, “giving” oneself, in relationship to land, language, and spiritual, cosmological, political, economic, environmental, and social elements in one’s life. One can see how the spatial location of houses, rivers, towns, prairies, tributaries and confluences are important in Boas’ stories to describe the people by the myths and stories they make (Boas 1916: 394-395). The politics of location between researchers and the communities they wish to study, and how the context of history, colonization, research, and academic institutions shape those relationships is the concern of critical ethnography and anti-oppressive/resistance research as is my PhD research project.

V. Conclusion: Toward Ethnography of Resistance Poetics

Is resistance research possible in Folkloristics?  I theorize it as possible but can be difficult. It is difficult because it is a struggle against hegemony, against domination deep-rooted thorough time. The oppressed have ways of "world-making" and also making history, however. One such way of coping with oppressive state structure and challenging hegemony is through creative resistance. Through songs and stories, the oppressed extend the sociocultural consequence of resistance acts both spatially and temporally into their own social reality and the resistance acts/words eventually become part of the local historical experience, part of a stream of sociocultural knowledge. When culture is transformed into emancipatory acts, I argue, creative resistance becomes emancipatory because it is not a response to one incident of temporal oppression but resistance grounded in a belief in fundamental human freedom. This interdisciplinary nature of folklore and resistance culture makes my PhD Project involve folkloric, anthropological, and historical inquiries focusing on the Salale Oromo, Oromia/Ethiopia.

Thus, when the Native Indian elder challenged the Canadian government officials who were among the First Nations to evict them from their land in the early 2000s, the community elder confronted them by giving a story (may be a hospitality second to nothing among the oppressed) in Gitksan language about the land and their connectedness to their land, and then, in English, he demanded, If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? This came to be the title of the book by Edward Chamberlin (2003).  What did the storyteller demand if not reciprocity (“gift exchange”) through justification, authenticity, and justice referring to tradition? Chamberlin says, “We tell stories about evolution…, we sing songs about justice and freedom or chaos and order. And we make up new stories and songs. We call the old ones teaching and the new ones research” (234).  Hence, resistance research can be difficult, but possible. 

Anti-oppressive research or research as resistance also has become one form of engaged ethnography as a critical examination of ontological and epistemological basis of social sciences (Brown and Strega 2005; Chamberlin 2003) and of folkloristics. The objective of resistance research is offering accessible description and explanation of its potential as an emancipatory research methodology. Storytelling is one such example for resistance research methodology used to subvert historical and contemporary oppressive system, as a Native Indian ethnographer, Qwul’sih’ yah’maht (Robina Ann Thomas) demonstrated it (Brown and Strega 2005:15, 237). Authority demands complete obedience (a giving away of one’s power) and people resist against it in any possible way and against coercion, which stands against the egalitarian order of persuasion. Both to the people and to the ethnographer, this social fact is of historical importance to reboot the faulty reciprocity by every possible means. That combatant ethnographic context invites resistance research(er) or what can be called Research Activism. Ethnography, as an activist researcher re-examines the continuing polarization of theory and practice, is an expression of unequal power relations in the modern world (Brown and Strega 2005).

Hence, in folklore research, Hence, in folklore research, operationalizing the “community” we study is imperative. That is, in approaching folklore as “artistic communication,” the “folk/group,” “tradition,” and “common factor” are significant, and that “significance” is what the society value most at a given time in history. It could be a concept of nationalism and nation-building, an “ideal type” to which people conform. And verbal art is the sum total of creation of a whole community overtime, each genre of which has some unique didactic function at some point in time. As our general concept of genre tends to overemphasize certain qualities of it and omit others, and one genre valued over another, we may resort to select generic ideal type as a reflection of reality but not a mirror image of it, rather a “reflexivity”/(refraction) of reality.

To study the nationalist root of folkloristics in a given society, we may need to construct an ideal type of resistance poetics based on the facts of unjust historical (power) relationships. This “social invisibility” of the “oppressed” is part of “the disenchantment of the world” as “modernity” overhauled “tradition” and humanity.  This historical root of resistance against injustice and nationalism in the genealogy of folkloristics, I posit, necessitates a theoretical model capable of responding to socio-political changes in the society and the academy in a form of ethnography of resistance poetics against the general apolitical disciplinary project.

Ethnography of resistance poetics attempts to offer the analysis of the neocolonial imagination of Euro-American empires tended to tame locality (provincialism) through such rhetorical and narrative strategies as surveillance, aestheticization, classification, debasement, negation, and idealization focused on nation-states used as allies. Third world nations are classified, analyzed, judged and admonished in negative patterns like “endemic poverty,” and the “persons” are excluded and rather debased as individual savage troubled by dishonesty, suspicion, superstition, lack of self-discipline in the society also characterized by corruption, xenophobia, tribalism, and the inability to govern itself. This is another predicament of “modernity,” I believe, engaging “nationalism” in its every multifaceted form of resistances at the grassroots level, one among which is the role of folklore used as a “creative resistance,” not simply resistance to change but a “critical” one, an “emancipatory resistance” which prompts change from “below.”

The “oppressed,” such as the Salale Oromo in Ethiopia deconstruct such hegemonic oppressive state ideology through counter-texts and performance forms such as laments, work songs, anecdotes, praise and historical songs of bandits/banditry. Here also in Salale, “folk” and “folklore” develop in parallel to “primitive” and “anthropology,” thus, “forms of culture” are connected with “kinds of people”. What the Patum does in Berga (Catalan) Nationalism, so the Irreecha does in Oromo. The recent “Songs of Millennium” by Salale Oromo Women is another case in point for ethnography of resistance poetics suitable for a scholarly appreciation and folkloristic research into the resistance culture of the people often undervalued by successive Ethiopian ruling class as mere social banditry.  

My PhD research focuses on this concept of “creative resistance” articulated through protest songs and narratives. It is about the legitimacy of non-violent tenets (and actions) enacted through waadaa (covenant) and held to reverse socio-political and economic domination, and in effect, challenge violations of human rights. It draws on (un)institutionalized acts and opinions articulated through narratives and songs that spring from a deeply felt denial of legitimacy of the dominating power and mainstream culture. The purpose of the study is to explore the role of Salale Oromo (protest) songs and narratives in line with the pan-Oromo resistance culture as a non-violent means of reversing unlawful practices and rules that violate human rights and menace natural environment.  Central to the study is theorizing contemporary Oromo narratives as resistance poetics focusing on the Salale Oromo and enquiring into what narratives do in the society and how they relate to and engage with the social base in which they develop.  Hence, using ethnographic method(s) of folkloric, anthropological, and historical enquiries in my PhD research, I collected my data in Salale from September 2009 to July 2010 centring on the following themes and topics:

1) the social basis and political scope of the Salale Oromo protest narratives and resistance culture are to be pinpointed as thoughts and verbal expressions and as modes of communication where the technology of literacy, especially writing and print, are unfamiliar to most of the population. 

2) how folk narratives are closely allied to resistance culture, i.e. to banditry in the area and to the principle of waadaa/covenant as a binding force against internal disintegration will be closely examined. The two aspects of resistance culture have broader implications, implicitly touching every aspect of human conditions. 

3) the moral components of narratives of rebellion i.e., if “emancipatory resistance” or simply resistance to change, is investigated vis-à-vis the ethical waadaa/covenant principle. It is to critically scrutinize what resistance (sub-)cultures impede or enhance development and help to maintain common good, peace, human rights, equity, social justice and democratic trends 

4) in Salale local history,  the nature of indigenous forces used to shape social changes from below and enhance transformations, promote those values and boost their political, social, and economic well-being in line with the pan-Oromo reality under the successive regimes in Ethiopia will be explored. 

On the whole, the aim is to critically study the Salale Oromo folk narratives used to valorize both social/political banditry and the waadaa/covenant as the two binding principles used in Salale resistance culture to fight against domination and maintain social cohesion, respectively. Using ethnographic methods (interviews, discussions and observations), the aim is also to outline the responses, attitudes and views of the people about justice, legitimacy, and human agency, and explore what meanings they make and why about unequal power relations and discontents in their immediate milieu in particular and the pan-Oromo reality in general.

The Salale Oromo sing songs of war and peace, tell tales of bandits and pundits, of heroes and heretics, of spirits and deities to appease secure peace and ensure genuine human freedom. Digging into the poetics of Salale folklore and resistance culture is, I believe, a valid and valuable ethnographic undertaking.

Works Cited: 
Boas, Franz. (1916). Tsimshian Mythology. 31st Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington: Government Printing Office. 
http://ia700306.us.archive.org/21/items/tsimshianmytholo00boas/tsimshianmytholo00boas.pdf 

Brown, Lesly and Strega, Susan. (2005).  Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Canadian Scholars Press. 

Chamberlain, Edward (Ted). (2003). If this is your Land, where are your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Knopf Canada. 

Malinowski, Branislaw (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge and Kegan.
http://ia700300.us.archive.org/19/items/argonautsofweste00mali/argonautsofweste00mali.pdf

 
Mauss, Marcel. (1923, 2000). The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies.  France University Press.

http://ia600300.us.archive.org/21/items/giftformsfunctio00maus/giftformsfunctio00maus.pdf 

 Spurr, David. (1993). The Rhetoric of Empire. Duke University Press.