confidentiality

Hey guys I just wanted to remind everyone that what we discuss in class needs to stay in class. While conducting an interview my interviewee told me that he had heard that his information had been talked about in class and that he had been called racist. Although I don't think anyone called him racist, its clear that my interviews had been talked about outside of class. This really isn't cool. He was hesitant to answer certain questions during the interview and rightfully so. I know who is responsible for this breech in trust but instead of singling anyone out I'd just like to use this opprotunity to remind everyone, and myself, how important the matter of trust is in this entire process. Among all of us and between interviewee and interviewer. What we discuss in the class room needs to stay in the classroom. Thanks

LATE POST

It has been too long since I have posted.

So I really enjoyed the speaker in class. His insight into his struggles and successes with his project was really helpful. I also thought his topic was really interesting and I would like to read his finished product.

After a good amount of time, I finally have contacts for my last interviews and am now waiting to hear back to set up times for the interviews. Also, I didn’t think I would have a chance to do some participant observation/take field notes but I was invited to attend The Georgetown Project board meeting this Wednesday.

Slowly but surely things are coming together. Although, I feel a little stressed since the paper is due at the end of this month. Is anyone else feeling as stressed as I am?

The Secret? "Each actual entity is a locus for the universe"

I thought the article was exceedingly interesting (probably for ethnocentric, Western-cultural-indoctrination reasons). But I have a lot of questions!

The greater notion of “reflexivity” that imbued the article was challenging. How do we go about “mak[ing] a problem out of what was once unproblematic” without winding up our own personal life into a psychological tangle? Can we make reflexivity simply an academic mindset? Do we want to? When adding the self into this already troubling equation, how can we be sure to think appropriately and not wind up reflecting ourselves through others? As young people with developing brains and personas, are we more apt to produce ego-centric or otherwise problematic ethnographic works?

Other than sex, what other “social construct[s] with a past” invade our thinking and skew our abilities as an anthropologist? How much of this is motivated by what is considered “fetchingly risqué” at the time?

Hmm....

Paper Progress

I have been thinking about my paper much more than I have been writing.

Being out of town multiple the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to try to absorb what my paper will be about. Attending a conference full of activists also helped place some of my observations in perspective. I did not quite recognize the uniqueness of the seemingly banal setting of the clinic. It really is a product of a capitalistic process occurring in suburban Texas linking all the way back to Washington, DC via bureaucracy and federal dollars.

The substance of my interviews are much more relevant to current events that I realized. For example, my interview with a doctor commented on a number of aspects of medicine that need addressing but seem to go unrecognized by medical policy makers. The new healthcare bill though extraordinary in its dynamism will not impact medicine as much as we might like and will not likely impact this health clinic much. Patients will still be suffering from chronic illness due to lifestyle, health employees will continue to abuse their own health, and health clinics will continue to try to find ways to make money (even if they are non-profits).

Perhaps that was a bit too stream of consciousness, but that is what is going into my head. I do not think it would be appropriate in my developing paper which will be much less connected to the big picture, I think.

In any case, this project has really helped me begin on a very long journey to understand the healthcare system and the people that work it. I feel very fortunate for the questions this project has led me to ask- but now I need to start compiling and understanding the answers I have been given!

Update #1

I completely spaced and forgot to post entries for last week, I will make up for those this time!

Entry 1 of 4:
I really enjoyed the guest speaker that we had on Monday - he was really informative and great at answering questions. It was neat to learn more about his personal ethnographic experiences and what he learned from his successes and setbacks.
As for my ethnography, I'm still working on field-notes and participant observation. I've also been re-reading my notes and culling the ethnographic field-note book again as I start to work on writing the actual paper. I'm also finishing up transcribing my second interview - express scribe is a godsend. It's pretty hilarious to listen to the tape slowed down about 50% - I sound ridiculous and all of my funny intonational habits are magnified. But I highly recommend it if you all haven't tried it - it makes transcribing much easier and this is amazing typing practice!

We're having our last bout of the season coming up here soon - we're reviving the original team rivalry - Homewrecker Hussies vs. Domestic Divas. These are rather tongue-in-cheek team names - it'll be interesting to see what kind of uniforms are out on the track...Since it's the last game of the spring season, we should have a big soiree afterwards to celebrate - I'm getting some responses from on online survey I sent out and I'm hoping to get some more group feedback from that party.

Fieldnotes, Interviews

This past Saturday I woke up early to make an awesome trip to Mary Hardin Baylor just north of here in Belton, TX. I was going along with the group I'm researching and found some good times to have informal interviews or just small conversations. I didn't go into my formal interview questions becasue I really wanted to wait for a formal inteview to ask them, but from what we did talk about I got some good notes on how they like the program. I'm at the point of possibley interviewing this Wednesday or Thursday, depending when the students are free. But as of this weekend I feel that I'm making some slow progress.

Oh Anthro, why must you be so.....undefined and boundless??

I'm in the process of typing out my field notes, it's interesting to re-read them and begin to find patterns. Also, I haven't been able to interview a Spanish professor as of yet due to time constraints, but hopefully I'll be able to this week. I have no other updates at this moment.

Anyways, I'm pretty excited about our speaker tomorrow...or rather later on today. I'm interested in the findings of his research and wonder his philosophy is on anthropology, especially since we established that Anthropology is an undefined, boundless type of subject. We'll see.