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Home Migration and the City: New Narratives, New Methodologies – here I come!

Published on May 14, 2010 by cicilie Posted in Anthropological notes, Cicilie among the Parisians, Post-fieldwork

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I wasn’t selected for the quantitative methods workshop in Paris. Not so strange perhaps, since there is hardly any counting in my work… However, the competition was far fiercer for the other European Science Foundation happening I applied for, and there they wanted me (out of more than 260 abstracts :-) ) Paris is slightly more enticing that Linköping, that is so, and it would probably have been a very good learning experience one way or the other to hear more about how to study “discrimination” and particularly “integration” quantitatively (which is quite hard for us qualitatively focused people to see). And, not least, one of the organisers, Patrick Simon, has done a lot of work on Belleville. It would have been an excellent opportunity to network a little.

I’ve realised that networking, whether I like it or not – which happens to be the case – is an important part of this game. One comes nowhere without networks, a fact I learnt after I got a ridiculously meagre response to a workshop I tried to organise recently. And one day I’ll be finished at my old university, and that day is approaching faster than I like to think of. Home Migration and the City: New Narratives, New Methodologies in Linköping will also be an excellent place to start. From the program, I see that people come from all over the world, and it looks extremely interesting. I’m very much looking forward to going and I’ve already booked the trip. (It will be quite an adventurous journey it seems, as it’s almost as difficult to travel by train from Oslo to neighbouring capital Stockholm as it is between Thessalonica and Istanbul…).

The title of my paper is “Cosmopolitan space, place and notions of nation: Narratives of migration in Parisian performance poetry”, and I will look at how certain stories performed at the slam soirées play a key role in creating the cosmopolitan character of the sessions. Now, it’s just to get time to write it…

Qualitative and quantitative ways of seeing (social) integration

Published on May 3, 2010 by cicilie Posted in Anthropological notes, Cicilie among the Parisians, Philosophies of integration

Suddenly, at least to me, the ESF, European Science Foundation, pops up everywhere with interesting conferences and seminars. I’ve already applied for Home, Migration and the City: New Narratives, New Methodologies, a combination of themes which matches perfectly with my research. Now, I aim for an extremely interesting seminar in Paris, which appears equally made for my research perspective, but at the same time is very challenging. The perfect match is that they want to look at two differing approaches to incorporation of immigrants in Europe (one focused on social/cultural integration the other on (anti-)discrimination measures), a comparison which is very similar to my aim of comparing the two different philosophies of social integration in (“multicultural”) Britain and (republican) France. The challenge is that their research is quantitative! Quantitative methods in the Social Sciences: Immigration and Population dynamics: Measuring Integration and Discrimination. Do they want my qualitative approach? I doubt it, but I’m going to try anyway. Besides, the precision they demand from the use of concepts is a very gratifying challenge:
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It is certainly not the aim of this seminar to find a definition that satisfies many, but rather to start from the empirical end, and see how integration is being operationalised in research (ESF).

– Not so difficult. I have my three levels of analysis which, when I come to think of it, actually is an operationalisation of my conception of social integration:

1) A microstudy of the creation of an open, cosmopolitan and democratic space: the slam/performance poetry scene, where people of all ages and of very varied social and ethnic backgrounds come together and perform their own short texts. I attempt to analyse the sessions as a prism of French society, in many ways more true to the republican ideals than the republic itself.

2) An analysis of the process of inhabitation (Ingold 2000; 2007) – how people shape the environment they live in as well as being shaped by it – in Belleville, in Northeast Paris, the cradle of Parisian slam poetry.

3) An analysis of France as inherently postcolonial (i.e. shaped by her colonial past), seen form the perspective delineated by Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People without History (1982). (from my abstract)

The fundamental aim of the research is in fact to come a little closer to what social integration can mean in Europe today:

The overarching aim of the research project is to describe and make sense of the making of society – the social integration – in a former colonial metropolis, postcolonial Paris (and London). I understand the incorporation of newcomers – as well as of older residents – as a continuous process, where society – itself a process – is reproduced daily through everyday activities and encounters. Integration, understood as social cohesion or vivre ensemble, is thus a core concept in the project.(from my abstract)

What indicators are used and how are these believed to reflect integration as a process, but also as a state of affairs? (ESF).

Here the qualitative approach runs into serious trouble. Integration as a process, we’re good at of course, particularly since anthropology easily turns everything, including society itself into a an ongoing process. But indicators… Let’s try. What people say might be an indicator, no? I look at notions of belonging and perceptions of society among its members. I also look at who gets to voice their opinion and be heard. If, as my main hypothesis(!) says:

France is inherently postcolonial, i.e. fundamentally marked by her past and present global connection, but this fact has to a very limited degree been officially recognised. I claim that various forms of reappropriation – of space, time/history and notion of society – take place, on a conscious as well as unconscious level. Reappropriation becomes thus an important factor in postcolonial social integration.(from my abstract)

Why have these indicators been chosen, and to what extent do differences in theoretical viewpoints play a role in such choices? (ESF)

And, very good food for thought:

What are the major indicators of immigrant incorporation and how should these be operationalised in research that may be carried out at the interface of the two approaches [integration and (anti-) discrimination]? (ESF)

The last are not questions I could answer within the limit of 500 words, but definitely something to think about for my methodology chapter. The call for papers asked explicitly for main hypotheses, data, methodology and expected conclusions. Even though I love these kinds of puzzles where I have to match the answers to the questions perfectly, it’s not a way I as an anthropologist work very often. What exactly do I look for in the comparison between London and Paris?

In order to more clearly see the dynamic between the making of society and notions of belonging, I intend, in the final chapter of my PhD, to compare two different constructions of society with divergent categorisations of its inhabitants (e.g. hyphenated identity categories are common in the UK). Parallel postcolonial reappropriations take place in France and Britain, but since the two countries have distinctly different traditions of social philosophy accompanied by different histories as nation states, colonial powers and societies of immigration, the resulting perceptions of society and notions of belonging will be different. (from my abstract)

What questions do I want to answer when I look at this and that? Or, the other way around; what questions am I able to answer if my is gathered mainly through participant observation and informal conversations. In my opinion, there is no better way to investigate into the condition of society and its members that to actually look at what people do and listen to what they have to say about it. However, when I compare my approach to the specific language of quantitative approach can I understand why it’s more difficult to translate my own wordy descriptions into simple answers to direct questions… I’m not sure if this make sense yet, but it interests me and it seems relevant in order to investigate into the contributions of artful elements in anthropology that I’ve been writing about lately. And it will of course be relevant when I write my methods chapter in the autumn.

Suddenly, at least to me, the ESF, European Science Foundation, pops up everywhere with interesting conferences and seminars. I’ve already applied for Home, Migration and the City: New Narratives, New Methodologies, a combination of themes which matches perfectly with my…

What can people learn from your research?

Published on April 15, 2010 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Slam/Performance poetry, Writing

Yesterday, I had to answer the question: “What can people learn from your research?” Eh… Learn from what I do? So this job isn’t just a way of keeping another overqualified person out of unemployment statistics? Well, joke aside, …but I have to admit that such an upfront and naïve question up here in our ivory tower-existence made me realise that I think far too little about the very simple fact that people might learn something from what I do. Even if I often think that much in this world is outside of my jurisdiction and beyond repair, I hope I haven’t totally given up on the idea that what I do might be useful, – also above the personal pleasure of it and the societal benefit of not spending my days doing something that is harming the environment more. From now on, I’ll have in the back of my mind; what can the reader learn from what I write… or perhaps less didactic and patronising; which experiences do I want to convey? What do I want the reader to experience and retain from my text? Something like that…

And what did I answer to the question yesterday? First, I though eh… something about social classification blah blah…? That they are different in different societies…? That social cohesion and nationalism is different in different societies…? No, these things people say all the time. What I really want try to convey is perhaps the greatest thing about the Parisian slam poetry: How little it takes to create an inclusive environment where even a newbie like me can feel at home, and where one get to know others and get to express oneself. Can I write a manual to an open, cosmopolitan democracy in practice!?

Yesterday, I had to answer the question: “What can people learn from your research?” Eh… Learn from what I do? So this job isn’t just a way of keeping another overqualified person out of unemployment statistics? Well, joke aside, ...but…

10 days intervals for a peaceful but alert diary-keeper’s mind

Published on March 25, 2010 by cicilie Posted in Blogging, Cicilie among the Parisians, Music, literature, arts...

Ethnographic documentation? Art? Anyway: It’s spring! Let not the expulsions blossom – Resist!
When I started blogging again, I gave myself a 10-days interval between blog posts. The interval should be long enough to be realistic and feel comfortable, but not so long that I lose sight of the trains of thought I keep on track here. To blog regularly, sharpens the attention (as I said a long time ago here) to the little tidbits that pop up in the mind which somehow connect to the research process, without being speaking directly to what I’m working on.

There are a couple of blog posts at various stages along the production line, but as I discovered today that I’m three days late for my self-imposed 10 days deadline, I’ll skip the mindfulness and instead just quickly sum up one thing I’ve been working on lately.

At the same time as I read Knausgård and pondered upon anthropological elements in novels, Aleksandra Bartoszko interviewed me (in Norwegian) about some photos I’d taken during my fieldwork in Paris. Inspired by an art exhibition (see the interviews with the artists Lange and Heier), she made a series of interviews on ethnography and art and asked me about how I saw the differences between the two. I’d never thought of my photos neither as ethnography nor as art, and she made me think about the criteria I – until then, unconsciously – confer on the one and the other. The co-occurrence of the interview and my plunge into fiction inspired me to initiate a workshop on Representations of social life (Norw.) at the Norwegian Anthropological Association’s annual meeting, which Aleksandra and I will co-chair.

Ethnographic documentation? Art? Anyway: It's spring! Let not the expulsions blossom - Resist!
When I started blogging again, I gave myself a 10-days interval between blog posts. The interval should be long enough to be realistic and feel comfortable, but not…

Writing and performance

Published on March 12, 2010 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Music, literature, arts..., Writing

It was hard picking a photo for this post. So many of my photos evoke memories from my many slam nights in Paris, but how to find a photo that can convey some of theses feelings to the readers of this blog… With this one, I hope to put across the mundaneness of French slam (the greengrocer’s Sharazade in the background), as well as some of it’s diversity of participants.

My thesis takes shape from the margins, and slowly, slowly am I circling in the core chapters. I don’t think this is a particularly good way of composing the general argument of the work, but I have a fairly good idea of why the core content just keep slipping away from me. The final part of this core, the chapter where I give an in depth analysis of the slam sessions, is finally now on its way. Thus on a deeper level, it feels like I’ve always had an idea of what goes on. But to actually describe what happens, is far harder. The first part of what I call the core, is thus just very hard to get a grip on.
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I’ve recently taken up again an excellent book on performance, Utopia in Performance, by Jill Dolan (she even has a blog!). In the introduction, I found a description of exactly what I’ve been struggling with:

How do we write about our own spectatorship in nuanced ways that capture the complicated emotions that the best theater experiences solicit? How do we place our own corporeal bodies in the service of those ineffable moments of insight, understanding, and love that utopian performatives usher into our hearts and minds? How do we theorize such moments, subjecting them to the rigor of our sharpest analysis while preserving the pleasure, the affective gifts that these moments share? (Dolan 2005: 8-9)

I could have quotes several passages on this subject from Dolan’s book. The way she writes about theatre and performance, fits as hand in glove with how I perceived the slam sessions. In some ways, it fits even better for the particular performance French slam poetry constitutes, as the boundary between spectators and performers is by definition blurred (to a far larger extent than in for instance US slam poetry). I’m itching to get deeper into this, but for now I’ll just give the word once more to professor Dolan:

How can we capture, in our discourse, not just the outlines of a performance’s structure and form, its content and the contours of its narrative, but the ineffable emotion it provokes in its moment of presence? How can we evoke, in writing, how its presence grounds us in a present, a moment of life at the theatre, that seems somehow imbued with our past and our future, at once? How can I summon for you here my own experience of the simultaneity of time that infuses my argument, and that I feel during my richest, most memorable visits to the theater… (Dolan 2005: 9).

And finally, as a motto for my further writing in the thesis, particularly since I will claim that French slam poetry upholds an ideal of society as genuinely cosmopolitan and democratic (that is Utopia in performance…):

But part of the challenge of writing about performance as a public practice, one that circulates extensively and has some social impact, is to make it live well beyond itself, to hold it visually in memory, to evoke it with words, and to share it widely, so that its effects and potential might be known (Dolan 2005: 9).

It was hard picking a photo for this post. So many of my photos evoke memories from my many slam nights in Paris, but how to find a photo that can convey some of theses feelings to the readers of…