This weekend I went an ethnography conference with several other scholars and was very interested in the topics covered through out the talks. Throughout the day, it became apparently clear that I had and am becoming more and more entrenched in the driving ideologies of critical theory, with reference to the symbolic vs the material. To further explicate my frustrations with some of the presentations I encountered, I thought this blog could serve as a possible outlet. Besides, the over arching ideas that were propagated at many of the presentations reflect broader ideas discussed in this weeks reading.
For the sake of space (lol space), I will only provide one example that engendered major internal conflicts in me with reference to the material and the institutional control the shape the power structures in academia. So in the keynote address, there was a major professor from DePaul University who discussed alternative ethnographic methods that use radio diaries and sound recordings of neighborhoods as a way to access and give access to marginalized populations. The beginning of his presentation began light-heartedly as he reviewed one audio recording of a women walking through a city, providing a voice over of the actual spaces she was occupying in Paris. In these examples, he was simply explaining how audio could be used as a tool to mapping geographic areas rather than the often used visual map of streets and cities. His presentation soon began to slowly morph as it took up a specific subject position of power using means of production to represent the symbolic, which devoided the discussion of the material realities essential to his talk.
The most provocative radio diary he used to sensationalize his participants was one by two young African American boys living in underprivileged neighborhoods. The boys talked about their daily struggles and provided metaphoric examples of living in poverty that represented living through Vietnam. The most moving statement being similar to “Living here is like living in Vietnam. Most of the people who leave Vietnam end up crazy. Now how to do expect us (the two young African American boys) to be when we have to live here. Soldiers come home crazy after just visiting Vietnam and its our home. ” Though this summary can not do the quote justice to the realness brought out through the young boys words, it captures a glimpse of the radio diary provided to the academic audience at the ethnography conference. Many people were moved. I was too. However, I was not moved simply by the words of the child in the audio file, which the keynote speaker titled Ghetto 101 (I don’t even want to get into my problems with this title ).
My tensions and anger stemmed from my disgust of blatant exploitation of those young boys and their situation for the gains of this specific researcher. I could not help but think about Mill’s discussion of the power elite and the hierarchical placement of the middle-man in positions that leaves him/her struggling for “power” so much so that they are preoccupied with keeping power, prestige, and political standing. Going back to the example, my tensions and uncomfortableness seemed to emanate not from only this disgust, but more from my own hesitance to vocally voice my outrage. As I feverously sat writing my thoughts on the tiny 4x6 notepad that the conference had provided me, I felt almost relieved when another audience member asked “how can such radio diaries be used for social change and if the keynote speaker had ever used this method for such uses“. The keynote speaker strategically avoided answering this questioning a round-about way, explaining that the goal of his research is to give voice to these marginalized populations. All I heard was “I‘m not interested in taking risks or actually see material change for these people because it threatens my social standing and the little bit of power I hold within this position.”
So why this situation? How does this situation differ from the many situations we encounter as scholars? Well, of course it had specific relevance to me. While writing this, I’m feeling tension telling me don’t write this on the blog for many of reasons, one of which is that it can be used as possible incriminating evidence in the future. I was conflicted and uncomfortable with the ethnographic approach because the scholar had no intentions of seeing material change and wanted to “raise awareness.” Moreover, because I was aware that after graduating, I want to consider Depaul University for a place for professorship and because the keynote speaker was a professor of this very communication department, I unable to to muster the courage to response. I was playing the very same power and prestige game discussed through Mill’s Power Elite. Though parsed out here, these tensions flew through my head. Among others, I also felt dissonance to not offend my professor who was sitting directly next to me and who also admired the keynote speaker, as well as the rest of the academic scholars who sat in the room nodding their heads in acceptance or agreement with the speakers approaches and goals. So in the end, what did I do? I decided that I may have not been ready to openly and vocally disagree with the illustrations of oppressive practices preoccupied with keeping statuses of prestige allotted to them/us as academicians. However, I am ready to call attention to it on this blog, as it does in a much more microscopic way relate to the readings we reviewed thus far in the class. Contrary to Mill’s explanation of the masses under the power elite, I hope not to “slugglishly relax into uncomfortable mediocrity” (p. 14), even though I am fully aware that I did not have the balls to vocally point out the oppressive nature of the keynotes speakers work. I guess this is a start.
For the sake of space (lol space), I will only provide one example that engendered major internal conflicts in me with reference to the material and the institutional control the shape the power structures in academia. So in the keynote address, there was a major professor from DePaul University who discussed alternative ethnographic methods that use radio diaries and sound recordings of neighborhoods as a way to access and give access to marginalized populations. The beginning of his presentation began light-heartedly as he reviewed one audio recording of a women walking through a city, providing a voice over of the actual spaces she was occupying in Paris. In these examples, he was simply explaining how audio could be used as a tool to mapping geographic areas rather than the often used visual map of streets and cities. His presentation soon began to slowly morph as it took up a specific subject position of power using means of production to represent the symbolic, which devoided the discussion of the material realities essential to his talk.
The most provocative radio diary he used to sensationalize his participants was one by two young African American boys living in underprivileged neighborhoods. The boys talked about their daily struggles and provided metaphoric examples of living in poverty that represented living through Vietnam. The most moving statement being similar to “Living here is like living in Vietnam. Most of the people who leave Vietnam end up crazy. Now how to do expect us (the two young African American boys) to be when we have to live here. Soldiers come home crazy after just visiting Vietnam and its our home. ” Though this summary can not do the quote justice to the realness brought out through the young boys words, it captures a glimpse of the radio diary provided to the academic audience at the ethnography conference. Many people were moved. I was too. However, I was not moved simply by the words of the child in the audio file, which the keynote speaker titled Ghetto 101 (I don’t even want to get into my problems with this title ).
My tensions and anger stemmed from my disgust of blatant exploitation of those young boys and their situation for the gains of this specific researcher. I could not help but think about Mill’s discussion of the power elite and the hierarchical placement of the middle-man in positions that leaves him/her struggling for “power” so much so that they are preoccupied with keeping power, prestige, and political standing. Going back to the example, my tensions and uncomfortableness seemed to emanate not from only this disgust, but more from my own hesitance to vocally voice my outrage. As I feverously sat writing my thoughts on the tiny 4x6 notepad that the conference had provided me, I felt almost relieved when another audience member asked “how can such radio diaries be used for social change and if the keynote speaker had ever used this method for such uses“. The keynote speaker strategically avoided answering this questioning a round-about way, explaining that the goal of his research is to give voice to these marginalized populations. All I heard was “I‘m not interested in taking risks or actually see material change for these people because it threatens my social standing and the little bit of power I hold within this position.”
So why this situation? How does this situation differ from the many situations we encounter as scholars? Well, of course it had specific relevance to me. While writing this, I’m feeling tension telling me don’t write this on the blog for many of reasons, one of which is that it can be used as possible incriminating evidence in the future. I was conflicted and uncomfortable with the ethnographic approach because the scholar had no intentions of seeing material change and wanted to “raise awareness.” Moreover, because I was aware that after graduating, I want to consider Depaul University for a place for professorship and because the keynote speaker was a professor of this very communication department, I unable to to muster the courage to response. I was playing the very same power and prestige game discussed through Mill’s Power Elite. Though parsed out here, these tensions flew through my head. Among others, I also felt dissonance to not offend my professor who was sitting directly next to me and who also admired the keynote speaker, as well as the rest of the academic scholars who sat in the room nodding their heads in acceptance or agreement with the speakers approaches and goals. So in the end, what did I do? I decided that I may have not been ready to openly and vocally disagree with the illustrations of oppressive practices preoccupied with keeping statuses of prestige allotted to them/us as academicians. However, I am ready to call attention to it on this blog, as it does in a much more microscopic way relate to the readings we reviewed thus far in the class. Contrary to Mill’s explanation of the masses under the power elite, I hope not to “slugglishly relax into uncomfortable mediocrity” (p. 14), even though I am fully aware that I did not have the balls to vocally point out the oppressive nature of the keynotes speakers work. I guess this is a start.
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