That’s who we are
Carl, Susan, Natasha, Kevin, Elaina, Krista, David, Susanna, Peter, Christina, Kate, Tish, Marcy
Trudy, Indira, Bea, Yaari, Nancy, Jocelyne, Sandra and Larry (missing)
Celebration!
Go, Carl, go!
Truth about self
Randall, W. L. (1995). The stories we are: An essay on self-creation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Randall theorizes about “self” and the combination of self: self-creation, self-interpretation, self-fabrication… He distinguishes four levels of storytelling: the inner/inside (experience), outer/outside story (existence), from inside out (expression) and from outside in (impression). He investigates where do stories come from and how subjective self-representation is. I wonder whether the outside stories, or “from outside in” are less subjective. There is no objectivity because every story is someone else’s subjective view.
I like his point about storytelling as a sense of power. An even or experience does change its character when it is turned into a narrative; it get the power to shape, influence, change mood…
“What we read teaches us how we are supposed to write”
Ellis and Bochner talk about D. Rose’s observation about writing. That is what they taught me when I was a kid: “Read and your writing will improve”. It is so true, but do we always necessarily want to write as we read? Ellis and Bochner are proposing something different, new “alternative forms” for writing ethnography. Carolyn Ellis says that she wants to be a storyteller, so that the readers can “feel as well as think”. Their introduction to Composing ethnography, a collection of articles about ethnographic research is like a manifesto of an ethnographic researcher. “Ethnography is what ethnographers do”, they say.
They introduce their contributors by talking about how the authors approached the issues of ethnography. When analyzing Aliza Kolker’s paper, Ellis and Bochner say how her story is a good reminder of our attempt to make sense of our lives through a narrative, to make sense of our experiences. This has been said for so many times, but it always seems new and so true to me. Sometimes, I am bothered and upset about a particular situation, a person, a relationship, but unless I start putting it on paper (or screen), and turning it into a narrative, I can’t make sense of it. Through explaining it, or describing it, we come to terms with ourselves and see, not always, our flows and misconceptions. Narrative has a power to clarify, maybe because in our mind, regardless whether we write it for someone or not, there is always a reader whom we are trying to reach.
Thinking globally, if possible
On teaching and “cultures in transition”
“We could accordingly view the teacher [...] as situated within and in relationship to institutional fields of regional and national governance, and the capital production of goods and texts, but also in relation to the emergence of larger transnational economies, and their affiliated cultures and identities.” (Luke, 2004)
In his article “Teaching After the Market: From Commodity to Cosmopolitan”, Luke takes a critical look at teachers, their role and position in U.S., Australia and U.K. in the context of current policy orientations, expectations and standardization of education. He points to the paradox between standardized tests (based on specific political, cultural and economic values) as valid proof of knowledge acquisition of diverse population in these locations, and demand for teachers to develop culturally responsive practice and embrace globalization. What does “globalization” mean in everyday classroom situation? Luke talks about “cultures in transition” created as a consequence of increased mobility, physical or virtual, and the mixture of languages, ideologies, religions, accepted values and behavours. A huge burden of responding to this conundrum put on teachers’ shoulders, is not something that will go away easily.
On one hand, it seems that different parts of the world have been drawn together closer than ever before, where, because of this beehive of individuals, there is no space for “grand narratives” (Lyotard, 1984); on the other the students are still pushed into the same mould, with the expectation of standardized set of skills, highly valued and profitable locally. Luke wonders how this product of the education system fits into the new work order of the new economy as described by Gee, Hull and Lankshear (1998). He calls for creating teachers with “critical capacities for dealing with the transnational and the global”, and not teacher-consumers. How is this possible when, as he says, “teaching is intrinsically and intimately institutional in character”? He continues explaining that “whatever scaffolding and pedagogical orchestration of intersubjective ralations we undertake (via direct instruction, authentic pedagogies, or whatever) in the classroom sit within a political economy, a division of pedagogic/discourse labor, and within larger material relations between spatially located and discursively positioned classes of human subjects.”
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