oleander

i see you're still alive, my hardy little blog.


here we are of late... a hiking trip. lots to see and do. the trail ran along war eagle creek so we saw several water birds of different kinds.
















know anything about autoethnography?

"an ethnographic description written by a member of the culture." oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth370/gloss.html
what a great definition.

we had to write one recently in my field methods class (all about how to actually *do* sociology). we got it back today and i thought i'd share. apparently time is going to be so limited in grad school that i can only cross post stuff i wrote for school now. :roll eyes:

Where I’m Coming From: A Radical Autoethnography

The study of subcultures, countercultures and deviance fascinate me. After all, the human animal, like our primate cousins, seems biologically predestined to seek and enjoy membership in the broader community. This biological blueprint is legitimized, codified, and reified through cultural experiences that seek to bring individuals “into the fold”—from pre-school to church to clubs, to sororities and festivals and baseball games, the social sphere is a powerful magnet, pulling us into belonging. Yet for many, the benefits, though myriad, of belonging, are somehow not sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary.) Or, put another way, the disadvantages of membership in a group may outweigh the difficulties inherent in being an outsider. It is this push/pull experience that I can’t stop thinking about. Particularly since, with each day that passes, I find myself more alienated from the culture I was born into, nurtured on, and raised to join.

It’s true that I have problems with authority. I left my less than ideal family and its explosive scenes at 15, and I was kicked out of two high schools in the next eighteen months, getting a full scholarship to college based on my GED scores. The last time I was kicked out, it was because I refused to stop advocating vociferously for the rights of an unjustly accused and punished girl who just happened to be my only real enemy. It has always been the case that conforming for the sake of conforming is anathema to me. But these experiences were the nascent stirrings of something in my general paradigm that would mature, over time, from mere youthful rebellion against the powers that be, to a radical rejection of mainstream American behaviors, values, attitudes, and beliefs. The ambivalence this standpoint creates in me is something I struggle with every day. Whoever said, “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention” had more than a great idea for a bumper sticker. That well-turned phrase articulates one of the themes my heart has inexorably turned toward over the last fifteen years. But not the only one. The sweetness of this world speaks to me too, and the sorrow that is its dark twin. And a voice I can’t silence--and more and more, don’t want to silence--tells me the world doesn’t have to be this way.

It’s modernity I have issues with. And I know what an easy statement that is to rebut, what a straw man it may seem I’ve propped up before you. I’ve heard the eye-rolling arguments. You don’t like electricity? Clean water? Mattresses? An abundance and variety of foods to choose from? Germ theory? Antibiotics? An average life expectancy of 75 years? And what can I say? I’d be a hypocrite to say these things aren’t good, at least in their proper place, so I’m supposed to just sit down and shut up. But it isn’t that easy. It isn’t that easy to dismiss my feeling, no, my surety, my absolute certainty, that modernity, despite its ease and its efficiency and all the trappings that make life so much softer than our human ancestors could have dreamed of, is a monster. Anthony Giddens called it a juggernaut—the moving machine we built but can’t get off of, hurtling out of our control, changing the world, and us, whether we like it or not.

I’m probably not being clear. If you aren’t in the place I am--and I’ve learned not to expect that anyone is--I haven’t said anything sensible yet. What’s wrong with me anyway? I don’t think a laundry list of what I can’t accept about modern mainstream reality will really bear witness in an eloquent or effective way. Of course I don’t like strip malls…who does? And I haven’t had a television with channels and programming since my oldest child was born. What’s more, I believe that in a world where consumption has become a compulsory national pastime, practicing a gratitude-based perspective like simple abundance and learning to become a producer of one’s own food, clothing, and entertainment is as important as learning math and science. Does that really tell you the uneasy, fractured place I find myself? But these snapshots only refer to the trappings of the age, and my dis-ease, in truth, is rooted in something more integral, more inherent about the state of modern human civilization.

Let me put a finer point on this discussion. I am a radical. I embraced that term only after I learned that “radical” comes from the Latin radicalis "of or having roots," from L. radix, or "root." It wasn’t until after 1800 that the term began to connote reform, and even later, about 1920, that it began to mean “unconventional.”1 My most deeply held beliefs and values are an outgrowth not of a desire to differ, but rather of my having metaphorical, philosophical roots. I believe that human groups hit the apex of evolution about 50,000 years ago, and that it’s been a slow but sure decline into the nadir ever since.

I believe Jared Diamond when he says that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history, judging by declines in life expectancy, child mortality, height, bone density, and general well-being.2 And I was astounded to learn that the number of hours of work per day needed to provide the calories necessary for life are lowest among hunter-gatherer groups.3 But how could such a remote abstraction—that humans lived better long ago—possibly have an effect on my personal perspective of the world? After all, I am a well-educated woman in the most modern culture in the modern age. What existential angst could possibly trickle down through a million years to have a real impact on me today? Herein lies my ambivalence and my uneasy occupation of the space, the age, and the way in which I live.

I don’t valorize the “noble savage”. Please don’t misunderstand me. And I don’t have plans to outfit myself with stone-age hand tools, put my child on my back, and trek into the bush to eke out an anachronistic existence. But I do choose to take many, many lessons from our Pleistocene roots, and where those decisions intersect with the average mainstream American is the difficult terrain that forms the terra firma of this autoethnography.

Perhaps the best way to really get at the kinds of choices I am referring to is through a “rich description” of them. One domain in my own life that has been strongly influenced by my appreciation of our species-specific roots is the way in which I parent. When I share that I had my last child at home, unassisted, without a doctor or midwife present, I can see the shock this causes—despite the fact that this is how women bore babies for millions of years. When I nurse my three year old after she falls and needs comforting at the park, I see responses ranging from discomfort, to defensiveness, to outright disgust, though anthropologists say that based on a number of life history factors, a normal weaning age for hominids is somewhere between 2.5 at the earliest and 7 years, at the latest.4 I have received so many negative remarks while carrying my babies and toddlers in a sling as I go about my daily activities—no one seems to realize that the practice of infant-carrying is not only what our human brains have evolved to expect in infancy, but was the common experience of 99.9% of human babies, until very recently. When I eschew cribs, strollers, playpen, walkers, and a million other gadgets and gear meant to distance my young children from my body, I feel, despite my certainty that I know what is best for my children, the negative perceptions of those around me, who think I am either judging them for doing differently, or unhealthily attached to my children, or both. Co-sleeping with my young children never failed to get staggeringly negative responses, despite the fact the cross-cultural research indicates that even today, a majority of the world’s cultures see shared sleep as normal—and it is certain that all human groups shared sleep with their children in our recent and ancient past. When I leave the “child’s physician” line blank on my daughter’s preschool forms, I steel myself for the questions that are laced with concern, puzzlement, and judgment. We don’t use allopathic care or physicians as a matter of course, I say, explaining that I consult an herbalist friend, or my own books and knowledge, when my children need support for their already good health, and that they are rarely sick since we don’t use antibiotics and breastfeed long enough to fully facilitate the development of a normal strong immune system. Until I worked diligently with state representatives to create a philosophical exemption to the Arkansas law that requires vaccinations mandated by the state, I had a choice of keeping my unvaccinated children out of pre- and public school, or filling out forms fraudulently, claiming that I was compliant with a law I deeply disagree with. When I need to let someone know that my children don’t regularly eat wheat or dairy because, based on the research I have become familiar with, both are highly allergenic and likely to cause systemic, chronic problems, I don’t even get as far as explaining that both foods have only been part of the human diet for a few thousand years, and therefore we didn’t evolve or adapt to expect to ingest them. I usually stop well before then because I see the completely flabbergasted, uncomprehending stares. One that you may currently find on your own face as you read. And these are just a representative sample of the parenting decisions I make as a reflection of my understanding and agreement with ancient human practices.

When others learn that I hold similarly radical views about other facets of my life—regarding work, politics, consumption, the family, the community-- it doesn’t make things any easier. No one, except a handful of mothers I know in real life, and a more sizeable group of mothers I know only know via online interaction, “gets me”. Worse, many who are more conventional write me off as a freak, or convince themselves that I must be judging them and their own choices, and proceed to reciprocate. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make friends with people when your children don’t play with the same types of toys they do, when you have absolutely no knowledge of a mainstream pop culture that others constantly refer to, and even your diet is radically different from theirs? One is forced to either express no preferences whatsoever, thus failing to maintain consistency in one’s own and one’s children’s lives—or to haltingly, falteringly, attempt to explain a life so far down the road less taken that it can’t even be perceived, or seems to be a veritable fist in the ear of the listener. There is often no common ground to be found—and where values and norms diverge wildly, community doesn’t exist.


My desire to understand this place I find myself in has led me to a certain kind of research. I don’t kid myself—I know that, in part, my work with Attachment Parenting (AP) mothers is an effort to create theoretical buttresses that support my own precarious sense of identity. Like me, they are American, generally middle-class, well-educated women who mother in ways so strikingly different from the mainstream that they appear to have more in common with hunter-gatherer mothers than with their own sisters and neighbors. Understanding how they manage the internal ambivalence and external stressors (like disapproval and sanctions from those around them), and what compels them to choose to do so rather than simply acquiesce to cultural norms and values is not only important to the fields of feminism, deviance, and parenting. It’s also very important to me, for very personal reasons. Perhaps this is the case with all researchers who choose to analyze a group or behavior that they themselves are a part of or practice. I’d like to know what causes me to think and act the way I do, despite the difficulty it causes me. I’d like to know if the shared meanings among AP mothers constitute a kind of countercultural or sub-cultural disaffiliation with mainstream ideology, like I experience. What’s more, and perhaps most important of all—and I see now what I most need to divulge in this essay--moving through this world like an ash-smeared, wild-eyed ascetic out of the wilderness has a certain appeal, but it is community that calls us home. That said, community, in a modern world that has so much to disagree with, may have less to do with geographical and spatial and kinship ties and more to do with shared norms, values, and mores, . My research reassures me that no matter how alienated I feel from the world around me, I know that “out there”—spread out over the 50 states in America—there are at least 1500 women who understand. Despite my sense of utter separation from the world, I know there are those who know where I am coming from, and what I’m getting at.

1 Online Etymology Dictionary (2006). Search for word “radical.” Retrieved 10 September, 2006.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=radical
2 Diamond, J. (1987) "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race". Discover, May: 64-66. Retrieved 10 September, 2006.
http://anthropology.lbcc.edu/handoutsdocs/mistake.pdf#search=%22jared%20diamond%20the%20worst%20mistake%22
3 Sahlins, M. The Original Affluent Society. Retrieved 10 September, 2006. http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
4 Dettwyler, K. (1995). A Natural Age of Weaning. Retrieved July 20, 2006.
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html