interviews

So I've completed my first interview and started to transcribe it. One thing I'd say is that I for sure underestimated the transcription procedure. Thus far it's taken me around an hour of transciption for ten to fifteen minutes of interview. I't fun though to go back and listen to what people say. I wasn't aware how much people contradict themselves until I went back and got a chance to look at it. Themese kinda pop out at you and the entire process is like a huge review. Although tedious, I think it's helpful. It does suck to hear myself on tape though. I wasn't aware of how horriblu inarticulate I was. I guess I can work on that. Although the first interview was rough, I'm confident that my second one will be a lot better. I'm going to shoot for longer more detailed answers on behalf of my interviewee.

basketball game summary

Upon walking into the stadium and seeing the crowd and the teams, I realized that athletics are one of the rare places at Southwestern that you’ll find diversity. I was struck by the percentage of African American non student fans there were compared to the number of African American players on the team. As the game started, an interesting series of events started to unfold. Although I can’t speak for the entire crowd, I was able to hear my friends and two parties, one of which was primarily comprised of African Americans and one of which was about half African American, behind me. The first thing I noticed was that although everyone was cheering pretty hard for the team as a whole, the people around me would erupt when the starting African American point guard was given the ball. The African American kids behind me knew his name, only his name, and insisted that he shoot the ball every time he got it. The adults seemed disappointed every time he passed it away, voicing their sentiments for him publicly. This may, in part, be because the point guard is very short, a senior, or a variety of other reasons but as I looked around I saw the same response from most of the African American players in the crowd. His parents or at least I assume they were his parents, were surrounded by African Americans who seemed to live and die every time he touched the ball. Although I was very aware of it, I don’t think it was something that was noticeable to the untrained eye. Halftime brought more entertainment. The athletes of the year were announced, the African American point guard and a white female golfer, and they came to the center of the court to get their trophies. After posing for pictures with their family, they exchanged what may have been the most awkward hug I’ve ever witnessed. This could be because the girl was dressed up and our point guard was sweaty and shorter than her, but the crowd seemed to think it was for other reasons. A man behind me said something along the lines of, “oh man did you see how scared that boy was to hug that girl. Haha. Man black guys just need to learn to squeeze white girls.” Although it was funny for all members of the crowd, it seemed a bit odd for two reasons. First of all why would hugging each other be something that the two athletes decided to do if they weren’t comfortable with it? My guess is that they felt pressure from the crowd to create a picture perfect moment of that it was something that they were told to do. Secondly, was the crowd’s response legitimate and why did only the African Americans react to it? Was the point guard scared to hug the white girl in front of a crowd? It seemed as though most of the white members didn’t see anything unnatural about it but it elicited quite a response out of the African American crowd.

Last Week

Last week I attended the Salon @ Wildfire which had to do with homelessness in Georgetown. The speaker was Gene Davenport, one of the directors of The Georgetown Project. It was a really interesting talk because I was able to see the community's response to the issue. I took many notes and I got a chance to talk to him afterwards. He seemed willing to participate in interviews so I just need to schedule an interview now. I might be getting somewhere finally! :)

technical difficulties

well, my recent clash with technology has reached an all-time high. looking back through the posts, i just realized that my last three posts have not been posted, nor can i find any record of having written them on my computer or my blog-homepage-thing. great.

but anyways, things have been going fairly well with my project. i've been attending the two churches on alternating sundays that i'm going to do my participant observations at, and began jotting down notes. i've found that i can do this fairly unobtrusively if i try to make it look like i'm taking notes of the sermons, such as only writing anything when a new point is displayed on the powerpoint. i've also been in contact with my two interviewees, and am in the process of deciding a time for the interviews that will work for them. that's about it, i might have my first interview later this week, and i'll update y'all on how that goes. :)

Interview problem

I have just made contact with one of my interviewees. He said he would be happy to do an interview with me, but he is very busy and asked to have two, shorter, separate interviews, rather than one long one. Have any of your interviewees requested this? I feel that it could very easily go better, because I would have more time to formulate my second line of questions, that respond to the answers, but I worry about losing track and the second interview being a repeat of the first. What do you think?

Actually

What do you guys think about doing an ethnography project looking at how "Mouthwestern" works? Sort of a comparison to how the game Telephone worked when we were little? I'm not really sure how I'd do participant observation on that, but it could be interesting? And I know that a lot of people have a lot to say about it because we've all been affected by it at some point. The only problem I foresee with doing a project on "Mouthwestern" is that the outcome I feel would be really obvious since we all know what it is and basically what it does. Would it be too lame to chose something like that? I'm thinking that maybe I could listen to conversations in the cafeteria to see what people are talking about and if it's about other students (which would be evidence of the "Mouthwestern" subculture?), or would that not be okay because I'm supposed to inform the people that I'm studying about what I'm doing. I know we talked about how people fall back into old habits fast, but if I chose to study a group of friends since I feel like they'd be more likely to let me eaves drop on them, do I have to explicitly tell them that I'm trying to see if they are gossiping or not?

Crisis!

So apparently none of my emails to our prof have gotten through and my email for my IRB form didn't go thru because they aren't in my outbox and I haven't gotten a reply from anyone, so now I'm on a quest to find a new topic that I can do on campus that doesn't require an IRB form. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm more or less hitting panic mode since I'd set everything up for my other one and my email is just not functioning... Thanks!

Interviews

I have been working on finding the people I can interview so that I can begin my first interview this week and so far I have three people, each has given me a little background information that helped me select them. One lives in Juarez but works in El Paso, and has actually began staying with a friend in El Paso during the week to avoid going home because the violence makes her nervous. The second moved to El Paso last year when the violence began peaking, and they admitted that they did move because of the violence, and had the violence been less they would have stayed in Juarez. The third person comes from a prominent family in Juarez. she was actually kidnapped and held for ransom for several weeks. The interesting thing was that these people were randomly selected, yet each has had a personal experience with the violence in Juarez. My first interview will be with the third person I described and should be some time this week. It will have to be a telephone interview because she resides in Juarez and I can't go down there to interview at this point in time.

The Readings...

It may be drawing close to the eleventh hour (quite literally), but I am going to go ahead and comment on some of the readings after I have had some time to synthesize my reading.

In "Discourse-Centered Methods", I found several ideas quite striking. While the theory about cultur and self construction through speech and "signifying acts" seemed really intriguing, I could not see how to apply such thought to my research. The examples where discourse centered methods were used seemed to occur in more traditional anthropological research sites: distant lands populated by people quite foreign to the researchers. While I would like to look at how accent and code shifting may be important in "interactive performance of identity".

I cannot say that I fully understand the following excerpt:

"When...persons are viewed instead as causally empowered embodied agents with unique powers and capacities for making meaning, discursive practices emerge as the means by which social action, cultural knowledge, and social institutions are achieved and enacted."

From the "Structured Interviewing and Questionnaire Construction" reading, I hope to apply a few pointers. The question format seems most prescient (e.g. combining open-ended and rating questions, choosing words exactly, making comparisons between certain groups to elicit more detailed responses). I do not think that I will have much time to do an extensive "general information" questioning session. Might I be able to apply this structure to individuals, though? Through the course of the interview, I intend to move from broad to more exact questions, adapting questions as I go along according to what I hear and see. Based on the first reading, it seems a good idea to note body language while informants respond to questions.

Most applicable to my intended method of questioning, the "Person-Centered Interviewing and Observation" article had some good pointers and contextual notes. Its recognition of the need to be ready to move away from the "mechanical" or "cookbook" instructions was also comforting. I have taken special note of the need to treat the interviewee as both "informant" and "respondent".

On the whole, the articles were a bit dry but still intriguing because their topics were relatively foreign to me.

Chugging along....

Though I have done some research into the literature, I have already commented on it and I will rather choose to comment on my field experience from last week.

I have encountered some problem with field notes. It seems whenever I return with a notebook of jotted notes from volunteering, I am immediately inundated by distractions (e.g. the need for food) that lead me to put off my full field notes. I fear the loss of important details and data. So, this week, I strive to be better about this! I plan to volunteer again either Wednesday or Friday afternoon and I will be sure to block off at least an hour after I return for uninterrupted field note writing.

My last observation session occurred on a Friday this week. I had a chance to notice the more personalized possessions of the employees as they were leaving (e.g. purses, coats, even Valentine goody bags). I heard them talk about weekend and Valentine's Day plans, which definitely added dimension to some of the characters I have already become aware of. So far I do not have much analytical insights other than the fact that junk food is accepted in the clinical midst and that casual Friday is mainly observed by the positions on the lower rungs of the secretarial hierarchy. I am beginning to wonder if my background will blind me to unique aspects of work in the clinical setting. I practically grew up in a health clinic, so the rhythm and the long hours even after the door shuts are not too strange to me. I am banking that my lack of familiarity with this clinic will make me hypersensitive to what might be interesting observations. Perhaps most productively, I spoke with the clinic manager some more. I was able to start to ask her questions about changes that were occurring in the clinic (e.g. the redistribution of doctors to other clinics in the same network). In her explanation, she revealed a bit more about her own philosophy about healthcare. We have also started talking about setting up an interview date.

On top of late field note writing, I have another admission: I have not made it clear to everyone at the clinic what I am studying. Because I work rather individually and because I do not sense the "warm and fuzzies" from some of them (especially the front desk manager), I have been hesitant to approach them. Further complicating the matter, the 5 people I work most closely with never stop- they are always running around working. I really do not want to get in the way of their jobs. Also, they are not always all there. While I would prefer talking to everyone in a big group, I think I might write a general letter or email which the clinic manager could send out. I will email the clinic manager for her thoughts while scheduling our interview.

My goals for this week are to break into the clinical side of the office and to spend some more time there this Friday (preferably until they kick me out). Even if it means just setting an appointment for an interview with a nurse or doctor, I would be happy.

Documentary notes

Here are some of my notes from my viewing of Hell on Wheels:

The original name of the roller derby company - it started out as a for-profit - was "Bad Girl, Good Woman" - I thought that was a neat name

Roller derby is Austin definitely started out much more campy and raunchy - fights were encouraged and there were a few choreographed hits. Elbowing, pulling, pushing, shoving, etc. were all included. Some of the founders talked about how, in the beginning, marketing and profits were really important. Sex sold for roller derby and girls "behaving badly" definitely drew in a crowd. However, many of the skaters voiced concerns or addendums to that statement- saying that they also wanted it to be about the skating and the superior athleticism. "We want them to say 'damn they skate good, not just damn, they look good'" - paraphrase

They talked about the fine line between sexy and slutty - another skater also talked about the problematic dichotomy that is often made between expressing sexuality/sex appeal and being a feminist.

Texas rollergirls have come a long way since their inception - the rules are now WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association) sanctioned and fights are a thing of the past. Usually. They don't have the "penalty wheel" anymore - This foul system was a fun idea but it had some interesting options such as:

"Sold to the highest bidder" - the skater has to go on a date with whatever audience member bids the highest
"Spank alley" - she bends over and skates past the audience while they spank her - sometimes that got reversed however, and the skater got to spank the audience...
"Jackass" - this one was neat - the skater had to wear a set of donkey ears over her helmet for the next jam

Bibliography sample

Hey everybody - here's the rough draft of my bibliography that I've come up with - these are just a few of the sources so far:

Hell on Wheels. Dir. Bob Ray. IndiePix, 2009. DVD.
This is a pretty great documentary by an Austin filmmaker - I think it's a really good introduction to how women's roller derby was revitalized and reinvented in Austin. It was only released last year but the filming took place over about five years. I skate with/am trained by several of the women interviewed in this documentary - I'm really hoping to get to record some of their current thoughts and opinions.

Rollergirls - The Complete Season One. Dir. Dan Brown. Sunset Home Visual Entertainment (SHE) / A&E Home Video, 2006. DVD.
The series focuses on players from the Texas-based TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls - I haven't seen this yet but I'm interested to see how roller derby is presented in this series. I'm expecting it to be useful to compare and contrast the two Austin roller derby leagues where I can. They play a pretty different game than we do however - bank track derby is intense..

Coppage, Keith. Roller Derby to RollerJam: The Authorized Story of an Unauthorized Sport. Square, 1999. Print.
I found this book at the library - it looks like it might have some good history, visuals, and personal accounts in it.

Joulwan, Melissa. Rollergirl Totally True Tales from the Track. New York: Touchstone, 2007. Print.
This is a book written by Melicious - a retired Texas rollergirl. She was one of the founding members of the new league and it looks like it could have some useful information in it - "complete with photos and suggestions on how to develop a Rollergirl name and persona, this unprecedented tell-all comes from the woman who's watched the sport evolve from an underground Friday-night event to a bona fide national phenomenon."

I'm also looking into articles on feminist theory - I have some suggestions and leads that I'm still going through as of now. Hope you're all doing well!