07.29.09
Theorizing the Gaze, Part One
Occasionally (OK, more than occasionally), I like to think about Theory. Now, that definitely doesn’t make me unique among anthropologists. But the weird thing about anthropoloigsts is that most of their theories are useless or simply bad, despite the fact that so much of the work produced in our field is theoretical in nature. While I was talking to my sister on the phone the other day, she told me that she was expected to complete not one but two post-doctoral fellowships before she could even think about a career in astrophysics. We compared this to the situation in anthropology, where study beyond the doctoral level is rare. Astrophysicists feel an obligation to know intimately the work, both empirical and theoretical, in their field before they begin producing serious contributions. In anthropology, by contrast, there is no similar imperative to know the works of your forebears. Indeed, the emphasis is on killing your intellectual fathers as a way to prove yourself as an anthropologist. This makes anthropological theory go around in circles, more or less.
Furthermore, there is very little sense that anthropology is building toward more. Whereas astrophysicists see individual discoveries as contributions to a deeper understanding of the universe, I would argue that many anthropologists have lost sight of the fact that our findings are meant to further illuminate the vagaries of human behavior. Instead, new anthropological work tends to prioritize the accumulation of anecdotes or to use empirical data as a jumping-off point for the author’s pet theory.
These criticisms shouldn’t be taken to mean that I think we should stop theorizing or stop collecting information about the world. Rather, I think anthropologists should make a greater effort to contextualize their findings, both within a framework of theory and vis-a-vis the findings and theories of other anthropologists. We need to pay more attention to what’s going on in the world at large.
That said, I’m going to tentatively make a foray into Theory here. You’ll probably think my theory is bullshit, and I look forward to the criticisms and mockery.
It’s useful, I think, to view modern political movements as performances or acts of self-presentation as much as they are political acts. Benedict Anderson explains at length the ways in which modern revolutionary movements, conscious of their predecessors, emulate prior models of revolution and nationhood. In doing so, they create new nations simply by imagining them and forcing others to imagine them as well. So it seems fair to treat Mayan autonomy movements as a way to “perform” Maya autonomy and rights claims (I refrain from using the word ‘independence’ since these movements don’t seek independence from the state but rather a limited sphere of autonomy), in front of both indigenous and ladino audiences.
Now, people have theorized “the gaze” within the context of aesthetic representation many times. I think this is a useful framework to carry over to the political realm. Most members of national polities are savvy consumers of media, and it makes sense to think that the legitimacy that can be conferred on political movements by the “political gaze” adheres to the principles of the aesthetic gaze. To make things simple, let’s start with a thought experiment:
Think of a “normal” museum that displays cultural artifacts–something like the British Museum, for example, where pieces of archaeolgical interest from around the world are displayed, many acquired as a result of British empire-building. Such a museum, where artifacts that originated in one cultural milieu are appropriated and displayed in another, provides us with two levels at which the aesthetic gaze can dominate the work on display and its creators.
First, the curator of the exhibit imposes his own understanding of the cultural material on his audience and on the material itself. The curator selects certain works as “representative” of a certain time or place, and only the curator and a few highly trained experts can possibly know which works have been excluded from an exhibit. By exercising almost complete control over the artifacts of another cultural tradition, the curator emphasizes the marginality of that particular culture from corridors of power and its inability to assert iself through self-presentation or self-representation. By ordering and structuring the exhibit in certain ways, the curator imposes his own logic of understanding both on the culture in which the works originated and on visitors to the museum who walk through the exhibit. The curator is in a position of almost total dominance within a museum space.
However, his authority must be legitimated by visitors to the museum. If they explicitly reject his approach to or understanding of the works displayed in a museum, then the curator has failed in some sense. The viewer retains some independence within his own gaze, which he can in turn use to impose his own individual understanding on the works presented in an exhibit. However, becausein the “traditional” museum setting, both museum curators and visitors tend to share a privileged point of view and position of societal power that enables them to either work in or visit a museum, there tend to be few conflicts between the gaze of the visitor and the gaze of the curator.
The variation presented by a museum such as the National Museum of the American Indian, where exhibits are created through a collaborative process between museum staff and the native peoples who are meant to be represented by the exhibit, comes at least a small way toward lessening the problems by which the curator’s gaze dominates and marks the “otherness” and marginality of the culture on display. Obviously, “collaboration” does not amount to a full curatorial role. But if it did, this would still be problematic. If we still assume that the museum’s audience is primarily white (although we would hope that indigenous people have the means to visit and feel comfortable at NMAI, they still won’t make up a majority of visitors), it’s tempting to pat ourselves on the back and say that we’ve remedied the problem of the aesthetic gaze by using the power of the curator as a way to impose the indigenous gaze on a white audience. But this assumes that there is only one “indigenous” point of view and that by incorporating some indigenous voices into curatorial work, we somehow succeed in incorporating all indigenous communities in what is presumably an attempt to make amends for their subaltern status. This is a dangerous form of essentialism. Furthermore, the viewer’s gaze still retains some power independently of the curator, so we might expect the audience to more frequently reject an indigenous curator’s point of view than they would a white curator’s point of view. So we are left with the conclusion that even cultural exhibits curated by members of that culture fail to be fully representative, despite their claims to legitimacy via self-representation.
Tomorrow, I’ll continue the thought experiment into the realm of political representation. But I think this is enough text for one day.
07.24.09
Learning K’iche’
As my lack of updates this week should make abundantly clear, Xela has kept me much busier than I had anticipated.
Unsurprisingly, five hours of one-on-one language instruction each day can be pretty draining. By the end of each day, my brain feels like putty. I am simultaneously exhausted and exhilirated, and always proud of and surprised at how much I manage to learn each day. Maybe this analogy springs to mind because I’ve been doing a lot of yoga in the last week, but a day of language instruction leaves your mind feeling the way your body feels after a good yoga class: even if you are tired to your very bones, you feel that the class created new spaces in your body and your mind and can’t wait to return the next day to explore them.
In this dialogue, Christine Kenneally explains that learning a new language rewires your brain. At the same time, distancing yourself from contexts in which your native language is spoken loosens your connections to your mother tongue. Since I’ve been in Guatemala, I’ve been experiencing the sense of instability and vertigo that comes every times that my ties to English weaken: in Buenos Aires, in Spain, in Mexico, and now, here. I have felt a similar “loosening” when visiting countries where Spanish was not the native language. But the pull of languages that were not my other mother tongue was not as strong, and so I did not feel as completely unmoored as I do when I travel to Spanish-speaking countries.
I am convinced that loosening my ties to English makes my brain more flexible and makes it easier for me to acquire new languages. Furthermore, in my host family’s house, we speak a veritable jumble of languages. My host mother speaks to me in a mix of K’iche’ and Spanish, and she speaks Spanish to the two other students from Celas Maya who are staying with her family. The other students are French Canadian, so they speak in English to me and French to each other. At any given meal, I am guaranteed to hear conversations in English, Spanish, French, and K’iche’, all of which I understand to some extent.
By learning K’iche’, I have been able to take advantage of this new flexibility in the language centers of my brain. I am very much conscious of the fact that each day that I study K’iche’, a “rewiring” process similar to the one Kenneally describes is occurring. I can practically feel the growth in neural connections at the end of each day. In four days of study, I have learned K’iche’ pronunciation, pluralization, possession, pronouns, and prepositions, as well as a few hundred nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. I can accurately take dictation from spoken K’iche’ and form full sentences in the past, present, and future using the few verbs I know. Our lesson plan for next week devotes a few days to verbs and their conjugation in different tenses, so I’m sure that my capacity to communicate in K’iche’ will grow immensely.
Celas Maya offers its students activities that, if you let them, can fill just about every moment that’s not dedicated to study. On Tuesday morning, I hiked to and climbed La Muela, a volcanic rock formation a few kilometers above Xela (I promise to post pictures very soon!). We arrived back in Xela at 12:30, which left just enough time for a quick shower and lunch before my K’iche’ classes begun at 2. I studied until 7, went back to my host family’s house for dinner, and then attend a film screening at Celas Maya at 8. By 11, I had collapsed into bed. On Wednesday morning, I took a cooking class where I learned to make jocom and to wrap tamales in corn leaves. After the cooking class, I bought some postcards and went to a cafe to finish my homework. Then I went to class, and after that to a bar with some other students from Celas Maya.
By Thursday, I was exhausted. I took a break from Celas Maya’s activities and devoted my new-found free time to serious study, catching up on field notes and e-mails, an early-morning yoga class, and, of course, updating my parents on my recent adventures. Now that I’ve learned how to manage my time here, juggling study, field work, work with radios comunitarias, tourism, and this blog should be easier.
07.18.09
A New Adventure
On Monday, I’m going to start learning K’iche.
Learning an indigenous language that’s spoken in Guatemala was always on my “to do” list, so when I realized that the volunteers at Radio Comunitaria Salcajá were too busy to learn from me during the week, I decided to move to Quetzaltenango and learn K’iche. I’ll still return to Salcajá on weekends, and because Quetzaltenango is a transportation hub and is fairly close to other radios comunitarias, I’ll be able to visit some of those during the week.
At Celas Maya, I’ll receive 25 hours of one-on-one instruction each week. I am living with a multi-generational K’iche family here in Quetzaltenango. They live in a beautiful courtyard compound that is also home to a rooster, two kittens, and a dog. Flowers hang from the courtyard roofs and flower pots dot the tiled floors. The family’s experiences with language are a microcosm of the experiences of many indigenous Guatemalans who live in urban areas. The older members of the family grew up speaking only K’iche, but the youngest generation grew up speaking primarily Spanish. Although they learned K’iche in their home, they explicitly think of K’iche as a “learned” language rather than a mother tongue. Claudia, who is 16, assured me that if she was able to learn K’iche, then I would be able to as well.
One benefit of being in Quetzaltenango is that it enables me to “zoom out” and gain a more panoramic view of the role that radios comunitarias play in Guatemalan political life. In Sumpango and Patzun, I was able to observe the central role that radios comunitarias play in the lives of people living in isolated, primarily-indigenous areas. But I am interested in the radio comunitaria movement both because of the opportunities for local indigenous autonomy that it provides and because it provides a way for indigenous Guatemalans to make their voices heard on a national level. Up until now, I’ve heard stories about this second function, but neither I nor many of the volunteers I have met have been able to experience the ability to influence nation-wide policy first-hand. In Quetzaltenango, I’ll be able to observe instances of cooperation between the radios comunitarias and NGOs and between the radios comunitarias and departamento-wide government. I’ll also have the opportunity to explore NGOs’ and government offices’ perceptions of the radios comunitarias‘ effectiveness and legitimacy as voices for indigenous communities.
Somewhat selfishly, the other nice thing about being in Quetzaltenango is that the lifestyle is much closer to what I’m accustomed to and comfortable with. Quetzaltenango is the second-largest city in Guatemala, which means that it has about 125,000 permanent residents and a “floating” population of 30,000. This may not be very large by American standards, but by Guatemalan standards, it’s huge. Quetzaltenango is large enough to support a yoga studio (which, of course, I made a point of visiting on my first day here), a museum, a teatro municipal, an Alliance Française, several cultural centers, innumerable restaurants and bars, and a live music scene. Most importantly, for someone whose first and formative experiences with field work consisted of taking field notes in the cafés of Buenos Aires, there are about a million cafés here. In the rest of Guatemala, people only drink instant coffee, so this is a nice change!
07.17.09
Typically Chaotic
On Wednesday, after a panicky few hours on the phone with my bank, I left Patzun for Salcajá, a town 7 kilometers outside of Quetzaltenango, in the Western Highlands. This entailed a 3 1/2-hour ride on a chicken bus, winding our way through mountain ranges and past roadside crosses that mark the scenes of previous bus accidents. I won’t lie to you, dear readers: I gripped the seat-back in front of me with white-knuckled intensity. But the views were some of the most breath-taking I have ever seen. Mountainsides had been razored away to make room for the road. When I looked out the windows of the bus, I could see the tiered cliff face on one side of me. On the other, well-tended and orderly fields formed a grid in both the valleys below and the mountains opposite us.
When I arrived in Salcajá (by which time I was faintly green), I gave Carlos, the director of Radio Comunitaria Salcajá, a call. He came to get me in his pickup truck and we drove directly to the radio station. There, we were immediately thrown into a whirlwind of activity. Marta, a staffer for an NGO called Health Unlimited, was at the station to put on a weekly news program for children. The program was to start in four minutes, and neither Marta nor her 7-year-old co-DJ, Nicolas, had been given microphones yet. But everyone took the time to greet me with hugs and handshakes, and then we all resumed screwing microphones into mic stands and stapling together script pages. The program began a bit late, at maybe 4:05 rather than 4, but other than that, it went off without a hitch.
Between live segments, Marta played interviews with child workers and recordings of children reciting laws that govern children’s rights. Marta, who DJed for a radio comunitaria before she began working for Health Unlimited, took that time to talk to me a little bit about the importance of radios comunitarias to Health Unlimited. She explained that participation in media is a way to validate the opinions of under-represented groups and encourage them to continue to speak out. Health Unlimited focuses much of its work on women and young people, and radio comunitaria provides a rare platform for their voices within indigenous communities. Marta likes to think of radio comunitaria as a training ground from which young people can move on to influence their communities in other ways.
When the program finished, Carlos suggested that we go across town to his office, where we could discuss our plans for the next two weeks in a quieter environment. “Let’s take the motorcycle,” he said, “it’ll be faster than the car.”
Now, I’ve never been on a motorcycle before, and those of you who know me know that I’m not a particularly adventurous person. So I was a little bit apprehensive, especially after Carlos suited up with a helmet and leather jacket and then simply told me to hop on behind him. But there’s a first time for everything, I guess.
I loved it. I’m not sure how much I would love it at 60 m.p.h., but at 30 m.p.h. on cobblestoned streets, a motorcycle is the perfect means of transportation. As we rode, I fantasized about living in Barcelona and riding a cute candy-colored motorcycle to work every day, like so many be-suited commuters I had seen when I visited there last year.
Carlos and I discussed the projects we would work on together in the next few weeks, then he gave me a tour of Salcajá, on motorcycle and on foot. We looped back around to the radio station, where Carlos needed to fill in for a DJ who was running late. We waited for him in the studio for about 45 minutes and did a quick round of introductions when he arrived. Then I excused myself to call my parents.
“Where have you been?” My mother asked. “We called you a few times and you didn’t pick up.”
“Just getting settled. I haven’t really had a free moment since I arrived.”
Editor’s note: I’m sorry for the long gap between posts. This is what happens when your anthropologist first get sick, then runs out of money for internet cafés, and finally, spends a few days without a definite home. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.
07.13.09
Control By Consensus
On Saturday, Francisco and I walked in Patzun and its surrounding areas for a few hours. We traversed the main square, whose park and original church had to be renovated following the devastation of the 1976 earthquake. They have only been made fully operational in the last three years. We then made our way to the northern part of the city, stopping to admire a 450-year-old cypress tree, the only one left standing when Spanish colonists razed a cypress grove to the ground in order to build the city of Patzun.
Patzun's cypress tree.
As you can see, it dominates the village pretty handily.
As we continued our upward climb, the path changed from cobblestone to dirt. Patzun’s cobblestone roads are another recent improvement. The roads were all paved in the last ten years, funded partly by the mayor’s office and partly by neighbors’ contributions of labor, materials, and money. Each resident of Patzun was responsible for the construction of the cobblestone path directly in front of his house. But when the road snakes upward toward the milpas, the cobblestones are replaced by mud, dirt, and grass. There are fewer houses among the milpas. These houses are made of adobe or dried corn stalks and thatch rather than of the expensive but earthquake-proof tin and concrete with which Patzun’s wealthier residents, who live closer to the city center, rebuilt their homes following the 1976 earthquake.
Aerial view of Patzun.
We walked through fields of corn, beans growing in the shade of each corn plant and providing it with nitrogen. These are the staples of the indigenous Guatemalan diet, so virtually every family in Patzun grows these crops for subsistence. Most families also cultivate either broccoli or peas, cash crops that they can sell to large agro-export corporations. The milpas are slowly being replaced by houses, as families who have run out of space in their homes at the center of Patzun seek to expand outward by purchasing more distant plots of land.
A recently-planted milpa.
“But how will people grow enough food for their families if they sell their land?” Francisco tells me he doesn’t know.
We make our way back toward the village proper, talking about the differences between the United States and Guatemala as we go. I explain to Francisco that communities in the U.S. tend to be much more fragmented than their Guatemalan counterparts because of a strong individualistic ethos and high labor mobility.
“We don’t have that problem here,” Francisco says proudly. “Just about everyone has been here for generations, and when you know someone’s parents, you can trust them. It is true that the younger generation is a little bit wild. But the community does a pretty good job of putting down anti-social behavior.”
How does Patzun “put down” anti-social behavior? At first glance, it gives the impression of being a community-dominated effort. Each cuadro of the city, and each manzana (square) within each cuadro, has an alcalde auxiliar (auxiliary mayor). The alcalde auxiliar’s job is to represent the interests of his particular geographic area to the mayor and other government representatives and agencies located in Patzun. In order to control “anti-social behavior,” the alcaldes auxiliares meet with Patzun’s police. They tell the police which areas are trouble spots and where gang members tend to congregate, and the police force responds by patrolling those areas more frequently. This works fairly well because it’s easier for residents of a particular area to acquire accurate information about gang behavior patterns than it is for police to do so.
Patzun’s method of dealing with neighborhood crime mirrors the efforts of neighborhood watch or community policing projects in the United States, with the difference that Patzun’s efforts seem to be more successful.
The alcaldes auxiliares are not elected, as I had originally thought. Instead, they are people of “honorable character” who are asked to serve one-year terms by the outgoing alcaldes auxiliares of their particular area. There is no formal mechanism to keep a bad alcalde auxiliar in check; if he is doing a poor job, people who live in his area simply ignore his decisions and suggestions. This strikes me as a perfect example of control by consensus: local rule is carried out not by bureaucrats or by formal governance structures, but rather through tradition-bound systems that rely for their efficacy on the tacit consent of the people they are meant to govern.
I used to consider myself a pretty enthusiastic cheerleader for control by consensus. I saw it as a way that traditional communities had for centuries incorporated democratic principals and addressed dissent without dissolving local structures of authority. But Patzun’s system of rule by alcaldes auxiliares in everyday matters doesn’t even begin to approximate participatory democracy.
This system, although it has deep roots in Patzun, was first implemented by mayoral appointees of the Spanish crown as a way to control a possibly rebellious local population. Knowing this history, it is impossible to believe that, at least at the beginning of the alcalde auxiliar system, people of “honorable character” were in any way independent from colonial structures. There is no way of knowing to what extent modern citizens’ conceptions of “honorable character” have been influenced by a colonial system that rewarded people whose attitudes tended toward loyalty and submission.
Furthermore, because there is obviously no codified standard for an “honorable character” and no one can interfere with the outgoing alcalde auxilar’s right to choose his successor, the selection process for alcaldes auxiliares is almost completely opaque. There are very few chances for aspiring alcaldes auxiliares to make their intentions known, and it’s very unlikely that any sort of “reform candidate” would be able to break into the authority structure, as sometimes happens in democratic elections.
Of course, control by consensus guarantees that the government moves in lock-step with the wishes of society at large, guaranteeing stability. But consensus, in this particular case, functions as a way to silence dissent rather than as a way to incorporate it as democratic discourse.
07.12.09
A “Guardian Angel”?
On Thursday, after I finished a workshop on writing radio scripts with the volunteers at Radio Renacer, Rosa took me aside.
“I need to ask you something,” she said. ”The community health center in Patzun has an Italian woman that helps them to raise money. She visits a few times a year to make sure that everything is in order at the health center. She’s like a guardian angel to them…without her help, the health center wouldn’t be able to offer us even half the services it does. I was thinking that…that you could be Radio Renacer’s guardian angel.”
My hesitation was obvious. ”I don’t have the money to give Radio Renacer that kind of help.”
“Oh, but I’m not suggesting you give us your own money! You could be like a godmother to us. That’s what the Italian woman I was telling you about does, really. She helps the health center get funding from NGOs that work in that area, and she acts as the link between the health center and the NGOs.”
At those words, my panic left me and was replaced by excitement. Here was a project that could provide tangible, possibly world-changing aid to a radio comunitaria. And it was a project I knew I was capable of seeing through. ”I can absolutely help you. I don’t yet know which particular NGOs would be interested in funding a radio comunitaria, but I’m sure they’re out there. Let me do some research and get back to you.”
The atmosphere in the room became jubilant. Rosa, Francisco and I talked about the logistics of the work we would have to do and planned our steps for the next month. Rosa beamed at me. ”I knew on the first day that you walked in here that you would be our guardian angel.”
I’m obviously not very comfortable with the term “guardian angel,” nor with the term “godmother.” Besides the religious connotations, both terms reek of colonialism. I don’t like the idea of playing the part of a foreign, white “guardian angel” sent to rescue a radio station. In rural Guatemala, godparentage is a patronage relation, and the landowners in a given area tend to be godparents to their workers’ children.
I worried that by using these words, Rosa was trying to tap into a discourse of domination in order to stir in me a sense of obligation, or worse, that she was using these terms unquestioningly. At the same time, because indigenous Guatemalans have been reduced to incredibly marginal roles in the worlds of politics and economics, religion, which provides more opportunities for local control and interpretation, has become the primary idiom for any dialogue. Matters that would normally be addressed using the terminology of politics or economics are “translated” into religious phraseology so that indigenous people can more closely shape the meaning of their interactions. At a Catholic radio comunitaria, this was especially so.
I cautiously tried to erode the idea of my playing the role of “savior” for Radio Renacer without disdaining what had probably been meant as complimentary religious rhetoric. ”I don’t know how much funding we’ll be able to get, or how much that funding will help Radio Renacer in the long run. In the end it will be up to the NGOs and fate. But I’ll do everything I can to help.”
And I will, of course. Radio Renacer has ambitious plans to eventually turn its radio enterprise into a community center, but they can’t do it without funding. It’s almost impossible for the volunteers to access funds on their own. They don’t speak fluent Spanish, operate at an incredible remove from even the NGOs that operate in departmental capitals like Chimaltenango, and and do not feel comfortable completing grant applications. The volunteers at Radio Renacer know exactly what they want; they just need an intermediary to help them get it.
My excitement at the prospect of working on this funding project with the volunteers at Radio Renacer shows that sub-consciously, I probably always wanted to be able to provide the radios comunitarias with help in the long term. Providing training for a few months and then leaving without any definite promise to return struck me as a bit mercenary. In a way, I think I am hoping that my attempts to link Radio Renacer to NGO funding will provide a more permanent link between me and Guatemala. If our attempts to secure international funding work out, I’ll have to come back to visit Radio Renacer. Even if I can’t be here physically, I’ll need to be in fairly regular communication with the volunteers. It seems like this project would create a link between me and Radio Renacer that is firmer and more tangible than that between an academic anthropologist and her subjects. Of course, more complicated ties between people bring to the surface ever more complicated problems. But I think those complications are healthy and represent an improvement over the distanciation by abstraction that is their alternative.
07.10.09
Taking Stock
Today marks the halfway point of my time in Guatemala. This dividing line is as arbitrary as any other, but I thought it presented a good opportunity to take stock of what I have learned so far, both about myself and about my subjects.
So far, I’ve been surprised by the pride in indigenous identity that people here routinely display. Knowing the abuses that have been heaped on indigenous Guatemalans by the army, government, teachers, and religious leaders, I expected people to be more reluctant to claim the label “indigenous.” Although I get the feeling that ladinos still cannot see indigenous people except through a veil of stereotypes and negative assumptions, indigenous people are doing intensive work to reclaim the label “indigenous” as a positive term that conjures images of tradition, family, community, and self-reliance. From what I’ve read of Guatemala during the Civil War and before the pan-indigenous movement gained power, there has been a real change here over the past 20 years.
Still, the marginal role played by indigenous communities in the Guatemalan state is evident in the gap between state and local knowledge of radios comunitarias. In villages, radios comunitarias play a pivotal role. They report local news, provide a forum in which political parties can speak to community members, function as a gathering spot for social events, and act as a conduit for both educational material from NGOs and information from government agencies. In all the cities I have been to, community members were aware of the names and political and religious affiliations of all of the radios comunitarias in the area. Furthermore, most people that I approached on the street could accurately tell me where each radio station was located.
By contrast, the radios comunitarias barely make a dent nationally. Most legislators and policymakers are unaware that they exist. If they have heard the term radios comunitarias, they associate it with evangelical or religious radio stations rather than with public interest stations. Policymakers, who live and work at a remove from village life, cannot conceive of the importance of radios comunitarias at the local level.
In terms of what I have learned about myself in the past 33 days, the biggest surprise has been the ease with which I’ve adapted to the life of an anthropologist in the field. Before coming to Guatemala, I thought of myself as an aspiring anthropologist. I knew that I wanted to do field work, but I wasn’t completely sure what “field work” entailed or confident of my ability to understand an issue by living in close proximity to it. Although I did some field work in Buenos Aires a year ago, that experience was much easier because I was doing an internship at the same time, was (obviously) already familiar with the culture, and had the support of family and friends who were in the area.
Now, I think of myself as a working anthropologist. Yes, I was caught off guard by the leisurely pace of life here, a shortage of intellectual companions, and having to create a structure for myself. But as soon as I got to Guatemala, I began to take copious field notes as if I had been doing it all my life. I carry my notebooks with me everywhere. So far, I have been able to tackle even the most complex of the issues that I had proposed to examine with what one might immodestly call analytical brilliance. Luckily, it turns out that the anthropological model of living with people in order to understand them and their experiences actually works pretty well.
Finally, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed writing this blog and the ease with which I’ve been able to do so. With the exception of two newspaper columns I wrote at the beginning of my freshman year, I’ve written nothing but academic work since starting at Brandeis. That’s 3 years’ worth of atrophy to the writerly part of my brain. It’s been a pleasure to begin to re-learn how to write narratives, and I think I’m getting better at it. Thanks to everyone who has been reading along!
07.09.09
Confidence and Conscientization
Today, Francisco and I talked about disequilibrium. When it comes to human and political rights in Guatemala, there are two types: the disequilibrium between the rights that indigenous people possess in theory and those that they are able to exercise in practice; and the disequilibrium between the rights available to indigenous people and ladinos. When a volunteer at Radio Renacer was imprisoned for operating a “pirated” radio frequency, he had to post bail of $30,000 quetzales. When Alfonso Portillo, a former President of Guatemala who fled the country after being charged with corruption, had to post bail, the cost was $10,000 quetzales. While indigneous people have trouble exercising even their basic constitutional rights, ladinos regularly claim rights far beyond anything mentioned in the Constitution.
Indigenous Guatemalans are often unaware of even their most basic rights. Every radio comunitaria that I have visited runs spots or more elaborate programs to inform listeners that they are entitled to treatment that equals that of ladinos in public places, that their children can wear indigenous dress to school if they want, and that they can vote in elections. It is incredibly easy for ladinos to violate the rights of indigenous people because many of them do not know what counts as a rights violation. When you have grown up in a state of constant deprivation of your rights, coming to terms with the fact that this deprivation is in fact a crime rather than the natural state of the world is difficult.
Eliminating the disequilibrium between the de jure and de facto rights of indigenous people is a many-parted process. First, consciousness-raising is needed to inform people of their basic rights. Then, indigenous people must learn that rights violations can be challenged and stopped. Finally, they must gain the confidence and self-assurance necessary to fight discrimination. This new self-confidence needs to be able to counter-act years of taught inferiority. These steps alone obviously do not get us to a place of post-racial harmony. They only enable the praxis of an initial state of resistance that might someday, if we’re lucky, guarantee indigenous people rights equal to those ladinos currently enjoy.
This problem of access to basic rights is replicated in the double discrimination faced by indigenous women, the subject of my conversation with Rosa. Indigenous women, as second-class citizens even within indigenous communities, have less access to education and are more often told that they lack intelligence and abilities. Consequently, the processes of conscientization and confidence-building are both more challenging and more important to an ultimate defense of indigenous women’s basic human and political rights on a national stage.
But even when indigenous women are able to claim rights from their nation, they have trouble claiming rights within their own communities. Many indigenous women are still prohibited from working outside the home. Indigenous women drop out of school at younger ages than men do, and in isolated areas, they are often told that they cannot vote. Even within the ranks of volunteers at radios comunitarias, who are more progressive and conscious of the problems of rights and equality than are most Guatemalans, women are marginalized and discounted.
Rosa, the only female DJ at Radio Renacer, confessed that she is discriminated against by her male co-workers “most of the time.” Her co-workers expect her to keep the station clean and serve them food. When she asks to conduct interviews or broadcast from the field, they tell her that she’s better off staying in the studio so that she doesn’t tire. Rosa’s opinion is routinely ignored in discussions at the radio station until repeated by a male colleague (much like the opinions of a certain female justice on the Supreme Court). Rosa’s husband is supportive of her work at the radio station, but most men would not be. They use the demands of the second shift and the low pay of radio work to argue that their wives should stay home.
When I expressed my frustration with this state of affairs, Rosa told me that it is in women’s natures to be discriminated against. I asked her how we can make this discrimination go away, or at least neutralize it long enough for women to enter the world of radios comunitarias. Would a radio station run exclusively by women be at all successful?
“The problem is that we don’t have confidence in our own abilities and we’re still very timid. I think it could work, but you’d first need to make the women go through a process of conscientization. You need to teach them to believe in themselves. Otherwise, they’ll quit as soon as their husbands tell them they can’t do it.”
07.08.09
Exoticism and Control
Yesterday, I gave the second in a series of five workshops to radio comunitaria volunteers here in Patzun. While I was waiting for the volunteers to arrive, I took the opportunity to draft the beginnings of a blog post. Here’s what I wrote:
Right now, I’m sitting at a desk in Radio Renacer’s office, waiting to start a workshop on interview techniques. On one side of me, there’s a computer. On the other side, there’s a glass case filled with Christian rock cassettes and books on religious instruction for children. Next to the case, five colored plastic lawn chairs are arranged in anticipation of the workshop. Between my desk and the row of chairs, a turkey alternately pecks t the tiled floor and arches its neck menacingly–
At which point the turkey flew onto my desk. As I flailed around, trying to shoo it away but reluctant to actually scare it, the turkey very calmly shat on the papers I had arranged on the desk. After embarrassing myself by ineffectively shrieking at the turkey, I asked one of the volunteers to come into the room to scare it off. So much for the glamorous image of the anthropologist in the bush!
The narrative of the anthropologist as adventurer loses its luster the moment that the anthropologist loses control of the situation. As long as the anthropologist acts like Indiana Jones, all is right with the world, but no one really wants to see an anthropologist passively reacting to either turkey invasions or indigenous assertions of autonomy. It’s fine for me and the turkey to face off as long as I can assert control by framing the story of our encounter as one in which I enjoy the fundamental strangeness of field work and am able to exoticize lived experience for my readers. But as soon as my narrative control disappears–as soon as the “other” literally craps all over my field notes–and I am forced to react without framing the story of my reactions, my tale becomes less attractive to my readers and harder for me to tell.
I’ve been thinking about the question of control in relation to so-called “activist” anthropology. The idea that undergirds activist anthropology is that anthropologists are essentially parasites that take from their host communities without giving anything back. To counteract this lop-sided relationship, anthropologists should “give back” by working for improvements in these communities, following community leaders’ own efforts rather than striking out in another direction. Activist anthropologists tend to be academic anthropologists who become engaged in political activism alongside the community they study, whereas applied anthropologists tend to be non-academics working for governments or NGOs in a given community.
Of course, “giving back” is neither an uncomplicated nor an unselfish process. After all, there are myriad ways that activist anthropologists could “give back” that do not require political activism. Some activist anthropologists claim that they choose to “give back” as activists because this is the sphere in which they can be most effective, but I would venture that many choose to “give back” in this particular way because it’s the most fun for them. It’s not exactly a secret that anthropologists tend to be leftist and politically active. If there is some sort of “comparative advantage” for anthropologists who “give back” as activists, I would venture that it comes about through the anthropologists’ prior political activism rather than through any innate skill in that area.
At least in my own case, I admit that my decision to practice activist anthropology in Guatemala was not motivated by pure altruism. I’ve been a supporter of indigenous rights movements for far longer than I’ve known about the hardships that Guatemala’s indigenous population faces. I searched for a field experience that would allow me to engage in political activism rather than adjusting my activism to suit the needs of my field work. My political work with the radios comunitarias is probably more important to my personal fulfillment or enjoyment than it is to the radios comunitarias themselves.
While the technical assistance that I’ve been able to give radios comunitarias is less ideologically fraught because it is apolitical and addresses an obvious need for more technical training, it is not without its problems. My training sessions for radio comunitaria volunteers takes the form of workshops where I ask people to listen to what I have to say about radio production. Even in adapting my “giving back” to the needs of the community with which I’m working, I’ve managed to retain authority and control over the situation.
Now, maybe that’s inevitable because the knowledge imbalance is precisely what makes me useful to radios comunitarias here. But it also seems that the control that these knowledge imbalances guarantee is fundamental both to the process of telling the anthropological tale and to the anthropologist’s psychological stability as an “owner” of knowledge and of her own destiny. Still, there must be a way to further democratize my field relationships. In doing so, however, would the exotic shift from thrilling to threatening?
07.06.09
Takers and Leavers
Today I’ve been thinking about, and trying to explain my obsession with, movements for subnational autonomy. I know what you’re thinking: the very phrase sounds so esoteric and academic that I couldn’t possibly spend my time thinking about it. But even though the phrase is clunky, the concept is powerful and will probably help define democracy in the 21st century.
So what is a “movement for subnational autonomy”?
In a word, movements for subnational autonomy are those that seek, rather than out-and-out independence (an increasingly unpopular proposition in the international arena post-Balkans), to establish a sphere of limited autonomy for themselves. This can be done through military might, as in the case of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, or through political activism and negotiation, as was the case for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. Generally, movements for subnational autonomy seek some combination of political, economic, and cultural self-rule. In case you were wondering, most indigenous rights movements in Latin America focus on cultural autonomy. Later this week, I’ll try to explain why.
I’ll admit that the following interpretation of these movements is heavily informed by Marx’s theory of social change, but it’s also borne out by empirical evidence. Historically, movements that focus on cultural autonomy have been the most successful, those that focus on economic autonomy have been least successful, and those that focus on political autonomy have fallen somewhere in the middle.
This may be in part because the depth of change required for each type of autonomy differs. Of our three categories, culture is the most flexible. Cultural change is not codified and can be affected from the grassroots as well as from the top down; we expect that cultures will evolve over time. Furthermore, guaranteeing cultural autonomy to another group does not require a change in the state’s dominant culture (barring a change from an ideology of absolute domination of minority groups).
Demands for political autonomy, on the other hand, must be met by institutional change in a country’s electoral system and constitution or other governing documents. Granting a subnational group increased political autonomy implies changes to daily life not only for that group, but also for all other grous that comprise the nation. Concessions made for political autonomy are not only of the “live and let live” variety; they can also include changes in proportional representation formula or tax structures that other groups perceive as harms to their on well-being.
Economic systems are the most resistant to change. Unlike cultural and political systems, they do not possess built-in mechanisms to accomodate demands for structural change. Indeed, their successful functioning is contingent on uniform understandings of the economic system’s tools and goals. Attempts to achieve economic autonomy by, for example, instituting communal land ownership or cooperatives, are met with resistance because they threaten to undermine the logic of private ownership and ever-increasing production. They are perceived as a danger to economic systems of areas far outside the autonomous economic zone.
There is another way to think of bids for economic political, and cultural autonomy: as “taker” and “leaver” revolutions. For those of you who haven’t read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael (which I can’t recommend enough), “takers” is Quinn’s term for expansionist cultures whose worldview requires that all other groups adopt its own culture. For Quinn, totalitarian agriculture as practiced everywhere that has been affected by the Green Revolution is “taker” culture par excellence. “Leaver” cultures, on the other hand, do not demand any adjustment in the way of life of outside groups to themselves be successful. You might think, for example, of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists co-existing peacefully in Namibia (until the “taker” colonization of Namibia by the Germans, British, and Dutch).
Quinn summarizes the “taker” world view as: We know the right way to live, and everyone else should follow our lead. The “taker” world view states that man ought to have complete control over his environment and his fate. Consequently, “takers” must dominate not only the earth, but also all other human cultures. The “leaver” world view, by contrast is: There is no one right way to live.
We can think of political and economic revolutions as “taker” because by forcing other groups to go along with their proposed changes, they implicitly state that there is only one right way to live. Movements for cultural autonomy, on the other hand, intentionally limit themselves to their own cultural group. Their “live and let live” mentality is “leaver” in its essence. In Ishmael, Quinn notes that most remaining “leaver” societies are indigenous peoples who comprise a “fourth world” of minority groups living within “taker” states. How fitting that their demands for autonomy should also be manifestly “leaver” in nature.
