I must admit, when I first heard about the ethnography presentations, I was more than skeptical. I was unconvinced that the assignment would be anything more than pretending to see things in places where there was nothing to see and assigning abstract terms that we barely understood to describe these things. I was quite wrong. In ALL four of the other presentations, I came away entirely convinced that a tangible culture existed in each instance. While they may not have always been easy to see by any stretch, they are clearly there. Likewise, I am entirely convinced that in my particular group's topic (The Dav), a culture certainly existed and I can only hope that we conveyed it effectively.
Something interesting kept coming out of these presentations, though. It seems that, oftentimes, people are unaware or desensitized to the cultures that they belong to. Based on the reactions exhibited by the students at Howard or those who work as PSAs here at AU, it seems that they were almost humored by the concept of a cultural examination of their particular group and has perhaps never considered the possibility of a culture that they comprised. Maybe, though, this is what constitutes a true culture; if what a group of people shares is legitimate, perhaps so is an implied understanding.
Also, as I acknowledged in a number of my recent comments, I think that people need to be more open-minded when listening to others explaining their preconceived stereotypes or misconceptions.
-Dylan Parker
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I also was unconvinced that the ethnographies would have any value when I first heard the assignment and, like you, was pleasantly surprised to find that I was absolutely wrong.
ReplyDeleteI disagree however, when it comes to your idea that "what constitutes a true culture" is that the group's members "never considered the possibility of a culture that they compromised". In my opinion, what makes a true culture is that group members define themselves based on that culture.
For instance, if someone asked me to describe myself and my identity, I would say that I am a Minnesotan, I go to American, I am a girl, etc. All of these constitute cultures precisely because they make up a part of my identity. At least in my eyes, when something is a culture, it is a group that the members can see and recognize.
I too was not convinced that we would have proper cultures to discuss. I think a lot of us did. But all the ethnographies did have reasonable arguments that their subject was in fact a culture. I think it also comes down to how you define a culture. If different people have different ideas of what makes up a culture than it would have been harder to make a good argument that it is one.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you Dylan that people need to be more open-minded about the preconceived notions and stereotypes of others. I think a lot of arguments came up during the presentations about whether some stereotypes were fair. For example, the Howard group said they thought Howard students would be lazy, and there were a lot of disagreements about that. I think whether we like it or not, or whether we can control it or not, a lot of us do stereotype and I believe that’s probably because we simply don’t know anything about that culture group.
I think youre right Maryam. It was hard to actually see any defined cultures in any of the ethnography we did, especially ours in trying to form tourists as one. However i think it was definitely helpful to try to define them as such because it definitely gave us an idea on how hard it is to define culture as it is not a static or stagnant "thing." That is why today there is still so much contention between various theorists, anthropologists, sociologists etc. as to what culture is exactly.
ReplyDeleteLaying stereotypes bare and acknowledging them is the first step to understanding ones cultural bias. However everyone cultures is so ingrained in us that even the way we talk about stereotypes or simply describe a scene in front of us will be rife with these cultural biases. Stereotyping is only the outermost layer of our cultural bias while there exists much more in not only the way we frame things, but the way we think and express ourselves from word choice or use of colloquialisms.
I think while it was difficult to truly define any culture, it was important for us to grasp just how difficult this subject is to study.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how hard we tried to distance ourselves from our observations, our stereotypes, biases, and preconcieved notions don't just disappear. I think that it's hard to completely disregard your personal experiences, and while that may not give way to a completely unbiased presentation, it does make the presentations and observations much more interesting.
I'm glad we did this ethnography assignment because it really got us thinking about what exactly a culture is. I think looking at our stereotypes and our perceptions helped out with helping us realize how complex a culture really is. We can't just simplify a culture to a few simple observations we can make of them.
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