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Good morning, for once...
So it seems like, despite my intentions and my greater flexibility of time lately, I haven't been able to get myself organized to post regularly during the week. This is a shame, as I have been thinking about a lot of things lately!
First off, some preliminaries - I got my colour copy of my dissertation today, and it looks great! So I can order a few more copies to fulfill my obligations on that front, and send them off. I do need to collect some other things to go with them, like putting together DVD versions, or possibly some flash drives (since the photos are a good 7 gigs on their own) with all the stuff that goes with. Although I'm pretty sure I already gave the AMMC a flash drive with all the photos >.> I'd like to be as complete as possible. I also need to double check what all I owe them - I think I need two copies for the national archives, for instance. And then I need to decide if I should send them all at once. Probably yes. I also want to get a copy for the Harbour Island library, but I may wait on that, and these are not cheap :p maybe I will get a colour copy for myself someday as well :p Maybe :p I can leave the book on bookpatch for however long, at least. I considered putting it up for sale, but I don't have all the copyrights I'd need for that (mostly for maps), and i don't think it is really worth it. Especially when you can download it in pdf form for free! Which is to say if anyone wants a copy, it is available...well crap, it *should be* available through the URL link on this page but that doesn't seem to be working correctly, and since if I click the contact form it tries to open Outlook (and fuck outlook, I'm at home), I can't even report the problem. I think the problem is on A&M's side though, as I can't get to any of their dissertations at the moment :p
I also picked up Fan Culture: Theory/Practice by Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, which is an edited volume of fan studies. The editors have also recently released Fangasm:Supernatural Fangirls which is more about their personal experiences in fandom. We have been considering looking (sections of?) at one or both books for the next Ficthropology episode we record (we still have one in process). Some of the skimming we have done has made me consider that we really haven't seen an *anthropological* approach to fandom in any of this material - academic work seems to mostly be more of a media studies approach. The closes we've had would be Janice Radway's Reading the Romance, which is actually the one that isn't out yet! But my point is that I'm not sure where to find material looking at fandom from that approach, and I wish it was out there. One of the things that Larsen and Zubernis say in the introduction to Fangasm is that they don't feel like the analysis of fandom and fanworks that *is* being done is not really capturing their experiences of fandom, and that's why they wanted to write the second book. I may be biased, but I feel like an anthropological approach is probably a better way to tackle how fans do what they do and why from a more emic perspective. Also, as a side note - Theory/Practice? Oh yes, I'd ship that ^-^ I'm positive that the title is no accident in that regard!
Finally the other big thing on my mind lately has been various thoughts about the construction of gender, which is something I think about anyway, being someone who is fascinated by concepts of identity, but the talk I went to on Wednesday by Shane Whalley has really stirred it all up but good. The talk was entitled "No Thank You, I Don't Need Your Gender Rulebook, I Brought My Own." It was mostly about zir own life and the context in which ze understood zirself and how that changed over time. Ze gave a little bit of history - or at least ze referenced it without talking about it in too great detail, but just to give a sense of the times in which ze was living. Ze also talked about zir family, and about being a Christian Scientist. Ze didn't make direct comments on a lot of this, I think because ze never thought of it that way explicitly at the time. Ze talked about how we give kids when they are both a set of rules for how to be a girl and how to be a boy, and how these never fit for zir, and so ze instead took what ze wanted from the books and wrote zir own.
So, I believe that gender is constructed anyway. It's external social pressures mediated by personal experience. It's malleable, both on a personal and a cultural level, and those progressions aren't - possibly can't be? - in synch. But society is made of of individuals making personal decisions - contextualising their experiences - and their decisions in turn provide more context for other people, and so it goes. That's my layman's Bourdieu for what society is. So what about gender in all of this? Do we need it? Is it a helpful construct, despite all of its problems? I sort of see two projects in the (Western? Euro/American? What is even really a good term here?) world with a goal of creating a more equal context, i.e. society, for people in general. One accepts that we have these different labels, but the rules that go between them are flexible. Boys can wear skirts and play with ponies and be nurses. Girls can be engineers and play with lego and wear pantsuits, etc. The other says that someone who mixes and matches like that can be a whole other thing, that we don't need to to settle into a binary at all, or even along a single line, and that many people don't, and let's create categories and language that are more fluid. And that's just the *behaviour* aspect, not even accounting for bodies. Humans have all kinds of issues with their bodies, and they are personal, but they also have context. If you are given a rulebook, to use the analogy from Shane's talk, that doesn't fit with what you want to do, that girls wear dresses and boys wear pants - if that's what the rules say, and your desires mesh more with the other book, does it follow that there must be something wrong with your body? Because girls have a specific (culturally defined/constructed) body as well as specific (culturally defined/constructed) rules? If the rules were less restrictive, the categories more inclusive, what then?
These aren't answerable questions, not on an individual level. Generally speaking, it's not okay to quiz individuals on how they have internalized these context, how it has made them who they are, or how (if!) they have come to terms with the conflicts between personal experience and external social pressures. It's rude, at the very least. But at the same time it does appear to me as though there is a conflict between these two projects, despite the fact that they are working towards a similar goal, and that conflict is in the contexts that both ultimately create. In one, when a new person is born, we're still giving them a rulebook, or at least some broad guidelines. "You appear to fit our construction of the male or female sex, here is what those bodies mean, here are your pronouns, do what you want with them." In the other.... I'm not sure. "You appear to have a body. We're going to give you some neutral pronouns, maybe later you can pick something you like better, but we're not going to tell you what your body means - that's up to you to decide." If I can be forgiven for being a little "Think of the children /o\" - both of those approaches have problems (though the latter is certainly friendlier to people who don't fit the *sexual* binary), and that's assuming that society as a whole (all the lols) could ever stick to one or the other. Maybe the problem is that I really can't conceive of a genderless society - let's be fair, if such a thing is possible, its a looong looong looong ways off. Maybe I should just worry about myself, hmm? Because I don't know how to reconcile these projects, despite feeling that they are both important in different ways.
First off, some preliminaries - I got my colour copy of my dissertation today, and it looks great! So I can order a few more copies to fulfill my obligations on that front, and send them off. I do need to collect some other things to go with them, like putting together DVD versions, or possibly some flash drives (since the photos are a good 7 gigs on their own) with all the stuff that goes with. Although I'm pretty sure I already gave the AMMC a flash drive with all the photos >.> I'd like to be as complete as possible. I also need to double check what all I owe them - I think I need two copies for the national archives, for instance. And then I need to decide if I should send them all at once. Probably yes. I also want to get a copy for the Harbour Island library, but I may wait on that, and these are not cheap :p maybe I will get a colour copy for myself someday as well :p Maybe :p I can leave the book on bookpatch for however long, at least. I considered putting it up for sale, but I don't have all the copyrights I'd need for that (mostly for maps), and i don't think it is really worth it. Especially when you can download it in pdf form for free! Which is to say if anyone wants a copy, it is available...well crap, it *should be* available through the URL link on this page but that doesn't seem to be working correctly, and since if I click the contact form it tries to open Outlook (and fuck outlook, I'm at home), I can't even report the problem. I think the problem is on A&M's side though, as I can't get to any of their dissertations at the moment :p
I also picked up Fan Culture: Theory/Practice by Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, which is an edited volume of fan studies. The editors have also recently released Fangasm:Supernatural Fangirls which is more about their personal experiences in fandom. We have been considering looking (sections of?) at one or both books for the next Ficthropology episode we record (we still have one in process). Some of the skimming we have done has made me consider that we really haven't seen an *anthropological* approach to fandom in any of this material - academic work seems to mostly be more of a media studies approach. The closes we've had would be Janice Radway's Reading the Romance, which is actually the one that isn't out yet! But my point is that I'm not sure where to find material looking at fandom from that approach, and I wish it was out there. One of the things that Larsen and Zubernis say in the introduction to Fangasm is that they don't feel like the analysis of fandom and fanworks that *is* being done is not really capturing their experiences of fandom, and that's why they wanted to write the second book. I may be biased, but I feel like an anthropological approach is probably a better way to tackle how fans do what they do and why from a more emic perspective. Also, as a side note - Theory/Practice? Oh yes, I'd ship that ^-^ I'm positive that the title is no accident in that regard!
Finally the other big thing on my mind lately has been various thoughts about the construction of gender, which is something I think about anyway, being someone who is fascinated by concepts of identity, but the talk I went to on Wednesday by Shane Whalley has really stirred it all up but good. The talk was entitled "No Thank You, I Don't Need Your Gender Rulebook, I Brought My Own." It was mostly about zir own life and the context in which ze understood zirself and how that changed over time. Ze gave a little bit of history - or at least ze referenced it without talking about it in too great detail, but just to give a sense of the times in which ze was living. Ze also talked about zir family, and about being a Christian Scientist. Ze didn't make direct comments on a lot of this, I think because ze never thought of it that way explicitly at the time. Ze talked about how we give kids when they are both a set of rules for how to be a girl and how to be a boy, and how these never fit for zir, and so ze instead took what ze wanted from the books and wrote zir own.
So, I believe that gender is constructed anyway. It's external social pressures mediated by personal experience. It's malleable, both on a personal and a cultural level, and those progressions aren't - possibly can't be? - in synch. But society is made of of individuals making personal decisions - contextualising their experiences - and their decisions in turn provide more context for other people, and so it goes. That's my layman's Bourdieu for what society is. So what about gender in all of this? Do we need it? Is it a helpful construct, despite all of its problems? I sort of see two projects in the (Western? Euro/American? What is even really a good term here?) world with a goal of creating a more equal context, i.e. society, for people in general. One accepts that we have these different labels, but the rules that go between them are flexible. Boys can wear skirts and play with ponies and be nurses. Girls can be engineers and play with lego and wear pantsuits, etc. The other says that someone who mixes and matches like that can be a whole other thing, that we don't need to to settle into a binary at all, or even along a single line, and that many people don't, and let's create categories and language that are more fluid. And that's just the *behaviour* aspect, not even accounting for bodies. Humans have all kinds of issues with their bodies, and they are personal, but they also have context. If you are given a rulebook, to use the analogy from Shane's talk, that doesn't fit with what you want to do, that girls wear dresses and boys wear pants - if that's what the rules say, and your desires mesh more with the other book, does it follow that there must be something wrong with your body? Because girls have a specific (culturally defined/constructed) body as well as specific (culturally defined/constructed) rules? If the rules were less restrictive, the categories more inclusive, what then?
These aren't answerable questions, not on an individual level. Generally speaking, it's not okay to quiz individuals on how they have internalized these context, how it has made them who they are, or how (if!) they have come to terms with the conflicts between personal experience and external social pressures. It's rude, at the very least. But at the same time it does appear to me as though there is a conflict between these two projects, despite the fact that they are working towards a similar goal, and that conflict is in the contexts that both ultimately create. In one, when a new person is born, we're still giving them a rulebook, or at least some broad guidelines. "You appear to fit our construction of the male or female sex, here is what those bodies mean, here are your pronouns, do what you want with them." In the other.... I'm not sure. "You appear to have a body. We're going to give you some neutral pronouns, maybe later you can pick something you like better, but we're not going to tell you what your body means - that's up to you to decide." If I can be forgiven for being a little "Think of the children /o\" - both of those approaches have problems (though the latter is certainly friendlier to people who don't fit the *sexual* binary), and that's assuming that society as a whole (all the lols) could ever stick to one or the other. Maybe the problem is that I really can't conceive of a genderless society - let's be fair, if such a thing is possible, its a looong looong looong ways off. Maybe I should just worry about myself, hmm? Because I don't know how to reconcile these projects, despite feeling that they are both important in different ways.
no subject
I suspect that anthropology would have some similar method issues with fandom as I did when interviewing tattooists, but not a few of those were needing more theory.
I think if the gender scripts accepted more overlapping of fields, outliers wouldn't be such 'you don't fit' and more 'oh, wow, that's interesting.' Given the cultures that came up with different answers than one to one assortment gender-biosex... And there are some that are much more concerned with relative age than gender.
no subject
Anthropologists have allll kinds of problems wherever they go trying to figure out how to ask questions in order to get usable answer - even figuring out who to ask and what the right questions are, or even what they should be asking *about* can be tricky. There is a balance to be struck by giving people a chance to talk about themselves and also watching to see what they are doping from the outside that is fascinating. That said, most of *my* training to date is dealing with people who are already dead >.> I'd need to do more research, and thinking, myself to try and figure out the best way to approach fandom.
As for gender, I suspect that you are right, but of course there is an infinite variety of ways that groups of people of any scale can organize themselves, as nice as it would be, I have a hard time seeing how we will get there.
no subject
I expect that's overstating the case.
My (B.A.) anthro program focused on ethnographic interviewing and forming taxonomies. Tattooists, while of course having norms, have an attitude of going their own way, rebelling etc. Might need to approach it more like banana-leaf wealth or the Kula ring.
In a lot of my posts there's no discussion at all, so any contrib would be 100% improvement.
no subject