SKETCHING ETHNOGRAPHY
Questioning Ethnographic Texts
Janelle Levy, Fall 2018Department of Anthropology, University of California IrvineAnthro 215A / “Ethnographic Methods” / Professor Kim Fortun Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica By Deborah Thomas / Duke University Press, 2004What is the text “about” -- empirically and conceptually?What modes of inquiry were used to produce it?How is the text structured and performed?How can it circulate?What is the text about – empirically?What phenomenon is drawn out in the text? A social process; a cultural and political-economic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culture-technology-economics? Ethnographic study of cultural politics in Jamaica around competing and contradicting nationalist identities and ideologies. Diasporic discourses have a “tendency to privilege similarity, or unity, among African diasporic populations rather than difference, disunity, and asymmetry” (25). The main intervention is disrupting and frustrating assumptions of a monolithic blackness in the African diaspora. Where is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy? Post-colonial suburban Kingston, Jamaica What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount? Post-colonial; Post-Independence Jamaica as shaped by IMF and CIA interventions during the cold war, as well as emergent nation building ideologies and racial tensions, transitioning into subsequent globalizing forces and their cultural impacts. 1960s - present. What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale? Jamaican elites and institution ideologically putting emphasis on Eurocentric ideologies of respectability, progress, and nationalism as a means of creating a post-racial but still black nation, i.e. a creolized formation of Jamaicanness. However, Thomas complicates this by arguing for the recognition of subaltern subjectivities and identities created by globalization. identities.Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example? Creole, black, and non-black elites in relation to the black underclasses in determining how one and what is Jamaica. What is the temporal frame in which players play? In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?” In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization? Post-colonial/Post-Independence Jamaica being subsumed by global hegemonie during and post-cold war. What cultures and social structures are in play in the text? Blackness; creole indigeneity; nationalism; pan-africanism; “Jamaicanness” What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds? “Modern Blackness” is that friction between static post-colonial creole identity and more dynamic transnational.How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described? New global economic markets.What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text? Post-colonial; Post-Independence Jamaica as shaped by IMF and CIA interventions during the cold war, as well as emergent nation building ideologies and racial tensions, transitioning into subsequent globalizing forces and their cultural impacts.How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies, bureaucratic function, economics, etc? Power operates through respectability politics, language ideologies, racial hierarchies, and the disciplining of ‘blackness’. Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes? This is situated within a frictioned space between the impact of mestisaje ideology and african diasporic discourse. What is the text about – conceptually?Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims? Challenge existing notions of black homogeneity. What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both? Complicate taken-for-granted- discourse around the black experience and black nationhood. What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument? The disruption of national identity through globalization and the resistance of everyday practice and political economy How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument? Archives, conversations, and explorations of conflicting memory. How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged? It is challenged by American hegemonic control over racial discourse and notions of black symmetry and a desire for a unified black global politic. How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments other than those built in the text? Jamaicans’ lack of recognition of racism as a basis of structural and institutional inequality signifies a subaltern acceptance of certain aspects of creolization ideology. Modes of inquiry?What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text? The text resists both the white gaze in the expectations of what can be understood by those unfamiliar with black discourse, as well as the implicit pressures to conform with the particularly unique but powerful articulations of race familiar to the United States. What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability? Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant? Thomas assumes that the lived experiences of the subaltern will hold sway over established national ideology. What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained? Ethnographic interviews and archival research in Jamaica. If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews? Questions about how informants reconciled national ideas around progress, race, and resectability with actual economic conditions and opportunities. How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred? Juxtapositions of lived experience with memory and archive. How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories? Elite and state definitions of progress, the nation, and national identity alongside informant identity and perspectives. What additional data would strengthen the text? Visual/Images alongside the perspectives represented in text.Structure and performance?What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a research project? The introduction immediately complicates the assumptions of who has control over the national ideology and the idea of an asymmetrical ideology of blackness in a black nation. Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood? The theory is weaved throughout the anecdotes and historical background. What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided? Black nationalism versus the lived experience of blackness. The text frequently makes sharp distinctions between the two and frustrates the idea of innate congruity between them. How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development? The narrative is given linearly from the independence movement onwards, but shows the nonlinearity of how events inform each other...the past on the present; the present on the interpretation of the past. How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text? Though the information is given linearly the text fluctuates in tone from historical to conversational which is evocative of how history is interpreted within the text.How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text? Elite Jamaica and subaltern Jamaica; creole and black,How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated? They are the crux of the analysis and are layered throughout.How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described? The text is not specifically on science and technology, but draws on globalizing forces which are steered by science and technology to underscore how national identities become dynamic and malleable. How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers? The inclusion of informant memories, interpretations of historical events, and implementation or disengagement from national ideologies brings dimension, irony, and humor to the institutional information. What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument? It’s linearity gives a matter-of-fact feel to how the information is presented and lends to one favouring Thomas’ interpretation as the argument builds upon itself. What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect? None. It gives a type of authority and objectivity to interlocutor perspective that focuses the text and stops the reader from bringing in their own cultural biases into their interpretations of the information being given. What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes? Further and extensive historical context on Jamaican politics. How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”? It is a criticism of both creolization ideology and assumptions in Black academic thought. How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not? Thomas is not explicitly reflexive, but the tension between the archive of Jamaican identity and the subaltern expression of Jamaicanness gives insight into her own process of reconciliation. Circulation?Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences? It’s written for those interested in black consciousness or identity, particularly anyone interested in Jamaica or the Anglophone Caribbean. In this way, it is not an accessible read for the general public. However, the actual style of writing is quite straightforward and accessible, so it is not limited to academic audience. What all audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope? Bookish Caribbean people.What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is not obvious? Racial inequality and conflicting identities exist within the realm of blackness and black nationhood.How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research? There are many types of blackness and phenotypical whiteness does not have to be present for white supremacy to exist. This is a fascinating basis to revisit the subject of race in the post-colony as most post-colonial nations feature the oppressed ethnicity as the demographic majority, unlike the U.S.What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text? Reexamine, deconstruct, and illuminate the politics of the African diaspora.