When a woman who’d been rendered homeless–not by the hurricane or by the housing market, but by the levees breaking, urban planning, theft, and careless case management– asked the Houston Housing Authority what she should do as a disabled and elderly woman for a new place to live she was told to go to a shelter and when she asked where she could go during the day since shelters require folks to leave each morning she was told, “we have some beautiful parks.”

5. In contrast to social activism, in working to change government our doctorates are seldom helpful and often impediments. It’s more like the field of art in that if you earn your living doing the work, then you are a professional (I was a studio art undergrad, by the way). That means you have to compete for air space with anyone regardless of credentials.

6. Policy change has to be at the level of legislation, but also at that of funding, implementation, and enforcement or it’s nothing more than scratchy toilet paper; that means you’re addressing everyone with your message from senators to day care workers, from the president to police officers, and from cabinet appointees to members of chambers of commerce. In essence, you’re changing your larger community whether or not you identify with it that way.

That last one is what I think sometimes makes it hardest for anthropologists and others who see themselves (however dubiously) as one with the downtrodden, fighting the powers that be. We have to find compassion and empathy for a senator, or the Secretary of Defense.

I also think it’s the one that connects most to what anthropologist Janice Harper has said following her abusive treatment by those with whom she formerly worked at UT-Knoxville, that we’re part of the process in all of our activities including those that seem antithetical to activism and application: as colleagues, as co-workers, and as fellow citizens (of the planet). We have to see ourselves as feminists concerned with social justice even when we give reviews, grades, and staff meeting memos.

Whenever I have been fortunate enough to be able to hire field researchers for ethnographic observations and interviews, I have tried to recruit a variety of those with whom respondents might feel trust. In other words, I also try to do a little matching even knowing that 1) excellent work comes from great ethnographers even if they appear entirely distinct from or connection to those with whom they’re doing research; and 2) if “matching” were considered a requirement in anthropology then I would be unable to do much of the research I enjoy.

Fraud and fibbing fascinate me and they’ve come up often within my ethnographic observations and interviews in different parts of the world. Even yesterday, when I was called for jury duty (see 31 Aug post), I mused on the appropriateness of peer judgement about crime as I watched almost all of us waiting to serve break one rule or another (do not eat in this area, no cell phone use, etc.).

Anthropologist Gerald Mars has done extensive research specifically on fraud and corruption within organizations and at workplaces: http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/06/british-mps-public-fiddling

Note: one thing I’ve not yet learned to do is get photos to link with my posts. That gesture seems easier with facebook or perhaps I just don’t understand the wordpress system yet.

Was it the fact that I stated that yes, I have been robbed? I neglected to say on different continents, or describe the time I chased one guy through and around a labyrinthine and shadowy market and train station until he dropped my wallet, or the time I discovered that the pack I’d held to my chest in a crowd at a fair had been sliced open and my credit card and money taken but my photographs left behind, or…

And that, yes, I’d been home at the time? I neglected to add that that happened twice while I was a broke graduate student and the second time I chased that guy until he dropped my bag–as empty as it was when he’d taken it, containing my copy of Raymond Williams’ The Country and the City.

Or that I work for a thinktank, or that I study women and poverty? I thought that might make me more appealing, but you never know.

Or that while the lawyers were debating they looked us over (shopping, is what it seemed like, or maybe setting up for a team or against one: I did feel like the loser hit by a dodgeball when asked to step down) and I began reading the new edition of Lies My Teacher Told Me (I’d never read the first edition but found the book in the only bookstore I could get to during the lunch recess since I’d not brought enough to keep me occupied while waiting) and couldn’t stop my face from squirming at the appalling points James Loewen had to explain.

Regardless of the reason, I was rejected.

Although, I admit, that comment makes me feel so stupid–I should be proud to wear both labels like a girl scout with multiple sash badges or a lodge brother with several club ties and pins.

The physician Dr. Pou was active and continues to be. I find the results to be both horrific and unethical.

My own viewpoint, that I unfortunately sometimes fail to follow: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. I consider that that holds true with interventions and evaluations, and all sorts of other activities into which anthropologists and others push themselves. We’ve a lot to accomplish, but thinking first and maybe even doing nothing, can be good.

http://www.propublica.org/feature/the-deadly-choices-at-memorial-826

I know that scent and related to that, taste, are mnemonic triggers but wonder about other phenomena and their ability to stimulate memory–like the feeling of sopping wet or toasty dry air on your skin, clothes, and hair. Occasionally, I am provoked into memories of events or places other than where I am when I unexpectedly feel cooling dry breezes or heated moistened weather.

I know that anthropologists more intelligent than I have discussed field work and what should be transparent about it, particularly for those with whom we work, try to help, and try to teach regardless of the relationship among those categories or whether they are distinct. However, I often reflect that we as professional anthropologists seldom talk–or at least in a manner I find to be helpful–about how it is we are alike in contrast to others who research humans.

One of those similarities might be that we put our own bodies–and thus our later memories–in and out of contexts up the street or across the planet and are expected to both learn as we do and to communicate effectively and fully about what we learn. I do not think that this similarity, if it exists, is of the greatest importance or influence in our lives or work but nevertheless it is one that has affected me recently in this, the hurricane season of the US.

I know painfully well that among us we have very different bodies and different experiences, and what we bring to a site of observation and what goes on within it are also distinct for each anthropologist. The point is never to deny our differences, but to comment on how we might be alike.