Diana Eck: India: A Sacred Geography—Writing at the Intersection of Anthropology and Religion

Lotus; courtesy of Creative Commons

Recently shopping for some light reading for a short vacation, I came across Diana Eck’s India: A Sacred Geography on Amazon.  I was surprised to see Eck's name associated with a book on India, because my knowledge of her was related to work on diversity in the American religious scene.  In fact, at first I thought the odd last name was only a coincidence; but not so!!  Eck's decades long work with Indian religious issues is actually the catalyst for her current work with pluralism and American religious change. 

India: A Sacred Geography is a rich treat.  A book that has been gestating in its author for many, many years.  This long process of production started with her earliest work on Benaras (her dissertation I would presume), and includes many years of visiting India, going to numerous places of pilgrimage, and thinking about landscape, architecture, literature, language—how it all fits together. 

The underlying premise is that India was India long before the latest colonial invasions.  India created itself by foot and pilgrimage, endowing the landscape with a sense of meaning and story that is re-enacted again and again by the constant visiting that crosses various territories.  More powerful than any boundary drawn by British or other parties, India’s sense of consolidation is written on the landscape through the circulation of pilgrims. 

“Many Indian scholars have noted the significance of the network of pilgrimage places in constructing a sense of Indian “nationhood” not as a nation-state in the modern usage of the term, but as a shared, living landscape, with all this cultural and regional complexity,” says Eck (location 365) 

 A landscape that is created in this way is mythic, historical, and contemporary.  It is both natural and contrived.  Of the natural—rivers play a huge role, of which there are many, many crossing the geography of the country.   Of the contrived, temples, buildings, and cities are significant.  Tirthas, dhams, lingas—I began to lose count of the many kinds of constructions that could be linked to weave together this landscape. 

The anthropologic piece, for me, is the way Eck understands this landscape of vast proportions from a kind of participant-observation perspective.  She has walked the ways of the pilgrims…and yet she has also read and constructed a theoretical understanding of the ways goddess bodies are distributed across landscape, the way cities are connected through myth and pilgrimage, and the role that rivers play throughout it all. 

Studying the Indian sense of India as constructed through a religious landscape that has been evolving for centuries is a different kind of anthropologic feat than sitting in “x” village for a year and trying to figure out water rights (although there is nothing wrong with that).  And I am not at all sure that Eck would describe herself as an anthropologist.  But there is something here that is highly anthropologic and deserves to be thought about as a form of qualitative research.  As such it provides insights about how to study things that seem irregular, large, diffuse—not a village, school, or business department.  We need, I think, to make use of qualitative research tools to study the irregular as well as the regular and confined (made strange).  I would assume she has some items that count for traditional data, but I would also assume that much of her thinking is not data-driven in the traditional way we are using it right now—time bound and scientific—but incorporated in embodied memories of visits and time spent watching and thinking.  I think her method required lived experience, and, as she says, it was gestating for a long time. 

As I page through my digitally highlighted notes of the book it’s hard to know what to stop and share—there is so much that I felt was significant.  It is definitely a good read for a qualitative researcher in search of new models. 

 Diana Eck.  2012.  India: A Sacred Geography.  Published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House.  New York. 

Making Sense of Obrist and Ways of Curating

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s book, Ways of Curating, is a marvel for many reasons.  He is so widely read and so deeply intertwined with artists and curators through his decades long interviewing activities that he is able to make amazing connections between the history of curation and the current trends.  There are many lessons and overlap with qualitative research. 

Below is a curated collection of quotations drawn from my highlights in the Obrist text.  Taken from various parts of the text, they began to form a new narrative about the bringing together of the arts and science, which was one, but certainly not the whole of Obrist’s discussions. 

As he has done in many sphere’s, Obrist suggests ways of creating connections, making sparks fly through juxtapositions, miming, and reorganization.  My question to the world of qualitative research is:  How might we change the way we bring things together—people, ideas, conferences—to “allow different elements to touch”?  What would happen if we did? 

Page 1 · Location 33

There is a fundamental similarity to the act of curating, which at its most basic is simply about connecting cultures, bringing their elements into proximity with each other –the task of curating is to make junctions, to allow different elements to touch. You might describe it as the attempted pollination of culture, or a form of map-making that opens new routes through a city, a people or a world.

Page 20 · Location 264

Zones of contact was my working phrase for what Boltanski, Lavier and I were trying to create. I took it from the anthropologist James Clifford, who had written about a new model for ethnographic museums, in which the peoples whose culture was being ‘represented’ by the museum proposed their own alternate forms of exhibiting and collecting. They were taking it upon themselves to recollect their own story and create their history from the inside. This changed the whole historical narrative of the ethnographic museum, which has mostly been a place for one culture to tell the story of another.

 

Page 23 · Location 305

The current vogue for the idea of curating stems from a feature of modern life that is impossible to ignore: the proliferation and reproduction of ideas, raw data, processed information, images, disciplinary knowledge and material products that we are witnessing today.

Collecting Knowledge

Highlight(orange) - Page 39 · Location 526

Though the aim of amassing evidence may sound like a rather scientific way to think about collecting, it is necessary to remember that the hard distinction between science and art which marks more recent centuries was not evident as late as the sixteenth century. The separation of art and the humanities on the one hand, and science on the other, is a fundamental feature of modern life, but it also constitutes a loss.

Highlight(orange) - Page 40 · Location 534

To study the Renaissance is to gain a model for reconnecting art and science, sundered by history.

 

Curating (Non-)Conferences

Highlight(yellow) - Page 152 · Location 1921

Having suddenly been introduced to such an interdisciplinary mixture of people was like a revelation to me. So I thought more about how to connect the arts and the sciences within my own curatorial work.

Highlight(yellow) - Page 153 · Location 1932

So I thought it would be interesting to apply the idea of changing the rules of the game for a discursive event like a conference, similar to what I had done in exhibitions. A mischievous idea occurred to me. What if one had all the accoutrements of a conference: the schedule, hotel accommodation, participants with their badges, but dispensed with the ‘official’ elements of panels,

Highlight(yellow) - Page 153 · Location 1937

The idea was to create a contact zone where something could happen but nothing had to happen. And so the ‘conference’ we organized at the research centre, ‘Art and Brain’, had all the constituents of a colloquium except the colloquium. There were coffee breaks, a bus trip, meals, tours of the facilities, but no colloquium.

Highlight(yellow) - Page 154 · Location 1943

the role of the curator is to create free space, not occupy existing space. In my practice, the curator has to bridge gaps and build bridges between artists, the public, institutions and other types of communities. The crux of this work is to build temporary communities, by connecting different people and practices, and creating the conditions for triggering sparks between them.

 

 

Sharlene Hesse-Biber Does It Again! The Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research

I consider Sharlene Hesse-Biber to be the absolute queen of handbooks about qualitative research (and related subjects).  When some people get to the "handbook stage" of their career, the reading gets dull.  But this is not the case with Dr. Hesse-Biber.  Recently I found myself sitting at a desk with multiple handbooks assembled by Hesse-Biber...and they were all good and worthwhile!  Her latest volume is not a disappointment. 

I selected a couple of articles from it for my "Advanced Topics in Qualitative Research" course for this fall.  I wanted to provide students with cutting edge topics in qualitative research, and mixed methods definitely counts as one of those.  The two we reviewed were:


"Introduction: Navigating a Turbulent Research Landscape: Working the Boundaries, Tensions, Diversity, and Contradictions of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Inquiry" by Sharlene Hesse-Biber


and


"A Qualitatively Driven Approach to Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research" by Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Deborah Rodriguez, and Nollaig Frost. 


I was particularly pleased to see interdisciplinary and team research issues discussed at length in Hesse-Biber's introduction.  This emphasis is contrary to what one sees in the majority of textbooks on qualitative research up to now, which describe research methodology as primarily an act performed by individuals.   The inclusion of these issues here illustrates the way Hesse-Biber stays current with developments in research. 


She does not shy away from the difficulties present in trying to mix methodological approaches. 

Important in fostering a robust mixed methods analytical and interpretative process as well is the development of a profound appreciation for the potential contributions a given methodological perspective can bring to a mixed methods project. (xli)

Border tensions thread throughout the Introduction from the qual/quant divide to disciplinary differences to the colonial divide of the global North and South, to technology divides.  Not surprisingly Hesse-Biber is also the editor of the excellent "Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research."  She speaks with authority when she says:

The MMMR community is witnessing a shift from a 'one data set' study structure toward multiple data sets aggregated from a range of structure levels (micro/meso/macro/emanating from a variety of sources (online/offline/mobile/hybrid). (xliv)

 The notion of multiple data sets and structure levels was part of the class conversation about the second article as we considered the different models the authors offered of qualitative driven research that was also mixed method and/or multi-level.  My students grappled with the idea of a qualitative research study with multiple levels of qualitative research data--what that might look like, why you might do it, what the pitfalls could be, and how you would manage it. 


In thinking about these issues, the case studies included were invaluable.  There are three.  The first about rape culture.  The second about enhancing the validity of clinical trials with Asian-American patients.  The third case study took up gender inequality in the workplace. 


Throughout the chapter, the authors used simple visuals (squares inside of or relationship to other squares)--so simple, but very effective. 


I appreciated the caveats or cautions the authors offered.  Here is one that stood out:

In addition, pursuing a qualitatively driven MMMR design also requires new research skills and resources, and here it behooves researchers to being to question the extent to which they may need to retool their research skills or approach their project with a team of differently skilled researchers (18) [the emphasis is the authors]

 I can't wait to see how the concerns we encountered in the discussion of these articles translate into the future dissertations that will come out of this group. 


The full reference is:


Hesse-Biber, S. & Burke Johnson, R. (Eds.) (2015).  The Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry.  Oxford University Press. 

Reading Deeply: Kindle, Obrist, and Ways of Curating

I have been experimenting, slowly over many months, with the notes function of Kindle.  I wasn’t quite sure how it would work for me to read full books digitally, to highlight as my form of taking notes, and to import into other forms.  It was all fuzzy for me.  I tried out different aspects, moving carefully, and, interestingly, without reverting to “Google It!” to solve the problem or give me an overview. 

Reading digitally in the kindle is important to me because the time is already upon us when there may not be a paper form.  I was also concerned about the 10% limit on highlighted sections for export rule.  Would I capture enough for my purposes?  A third concern was, how was I going to keep a sense of the whole, the chapter structure in which the quotes were embedded? 

Obrist’s Ways of Curating was the first text where I really went to town with the highlighter and have now imported the notes.  Here are some things I learned.

1.       Go ahead and save in the html format, because there is an option for editing in Word 2016.  It works.

2.      The highlights will be in embedded in the chapter format—the chapter headings will be there.

3.      You can also highlight the table of contents and it will save at the beginning (but in a long line of text like a single sentence). 

4.      In the digital version you can see the top places others have highlighted—I, therefore, didn’t highlight there, but if it is something you want, go ahead and do it also so you can bring it into your notes. 

5.      Reading the captured highlights is similar and different to reading the larger text.  It’s like an out-of-body experience.  Reminds me of how people quote/place quotes everywhere today.  We are “quote crazy”. 

My next possibilities for using this text was to import to NVivo if I were going to use it in a particular study…and eventually export to Endnote with the reference.  This is overkill until I have a specific use for it.   

In my next blog post I will share selected quotes from the Obrist reading to give you a sense of what all the quoteness feels like. 

Label and Shame: Donald Trump Illustrates a Common American Trait

[This was an op-ed piece that was not accepted, which I wrote during the Presidential Primaries shortly after Donald Trump and Megyn Kelly of Fox News had a well-publicized encounter during a primary debate.  I was connecting the dots between the research I had done that appeared in Sexting:  Gender and Teens (Sense Publications 2016) and the Donald Trump’s behavior towards women.  My thanks to June Lemon of the Center for Women and Work at UMass Lowell for her editing and suggestions.]

At the first Republican debate, news reporter Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump about the names he had called women in the past, including “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”  His response to Kelly’s question about negative labels was to  shoot back hard at her, claiming the questions were inappropriate, blaming political correctness, and later referring to the blood coming out of her eyes and her wherever.” 

I was not surprised by “the Donald’s” use of what I would term the “label and shame technique” for controlling women.   In a recent study on teen sexting in which I took part, I discovered that “label and shame” is alive and well across the United States.   If anything, when Donald Trump labels women with negative and hurtful names and then tries to shame them into the behavior he wants from them, he is behaving more, rather than less, like most Americans.   

In Sexting: Gender and Teens (2014), I describe both how fear of negative labels and shaming are integral to the way girls navigate friends and intimates during high school and how other people  — boys and adults — use these techniques to manipulate them. 

In hundreds of pages of transcribed interviews with teens, caregivers, and educators and others who work with teens in three different regions of the United States, we found broad evidence of the application of  negative and demeaning terms like whore, slut, easy, tramp, bus, and flip to describe a girl who would engage in sexting: the digital exchange of textual or visual material with sexual content. 

On the other hand, there are no negative terms applied to boys who engage in sexting.  Instead boys were considered hapless or victims of circumstance, perhaps even gaining stature and bragging rights through involvement in sexting.  As Abraham, a young man, pointed out:  “It’s like a competition with guys.” 

Bethany, a high school age teen in Ohio explained the difference in this way:  “I feel …it’s another one of those things where it’s a …double standard, like if girls have sex with a bunch of dudes, they’re a ho [whore], but if guys have sex with a bunch of girls, like oh, I got it in with this girl…then you’re cool, like oh, man, you’re a pimp.” 

The shaming of a girl, according to youth,  is done not only by those closest to her (parental anger and peer rejection and humiliation), but will also be perpetrated by adults, such as teachers at her school or the parents of friends who will look down on her and no longer allow her to continue friendship with their child.  Carolyn (another teenager quoted in the study) stated, “They’re going to have like a reputation from all the adults that they’re not going to want their kids hanging out around them because of it.”

Youth attitudes about gender and sexting are contextualized by adult attitudes.  Adults in our study, whether consciously or unconsciously, consistently pointed to or blamed girls for sexual changes in our society.  Often the rush to blame girls for social changes are attached to a nostalgic notion of a golden age when girls knew how to behave.  This quote from a parent sums it up:

It used to be that the boys were kind of potty mouths, and the girls always needed to appear prim and proper.  Now, what I’ve seen on Facebook, the girls could make some of those guys blush.

It is galling to think that despite the many political, legal, and economic changes that have taken place in regard to women’s rights, women continue to be constrained by the shaping practices of labelling and shaming.  These negative discourses apply labels such as whore, slut, dog, or fat pig to women who misbehave.  These negative discourses surround young people with talk about the way girls or women bear considerable responsibility for the negative changes that have led toward a more sexual and less moral society. 

So as troublesome as some may find “the Donald’s” label and shame tactics, we may need to look more closely at our own behavior and at the ways we discuss and discipline boys and girls in regard to gendered differences.  We also need to show that labelling and shaming has consequences: the disinvitation of Mr. Trump from a conservative activist conference was a step in the right direction.

For more information on the book: 

http://tinyurl.com/mrphst6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adding Qualitative Research to the Classic Research Design Course

This week I had so much fun at my institution, UMass Lowell!  I got to teach the qualitative research component of our classic research design course in the Graduate School of education.  I had 10 so-called research newbies in front of me, and it was my job to give them their first real taste of my passion--qualitative research. 


Why is this such a big deal, you ask?  Well, let me explain.  At my institution and at many others around the world, there is an introduction to research course that anchors all the other social science research training, which is supposed to give students a taste of all the possible flavors of research coming up in their doctoral program.  Most of these classes, however, are taught by people with deep roots in positivist perspectives, using textbooks that emphasize positive perspectives.  I am sorry if this sounds like over simplification to some, but that's what my experience has been.  Their interaction with qualitative research has been limited--and they tend to see it as affirming or instrumental, but not as a creative component in and of it own right, nor do they usually have a very complex view of the paradigmatic issues that burden methodological approaches. 


However, having launched the Research Methods and Program Evaluation in Education Ph.D. program, our little faculty has been meeting and discussing these issues with real openness...and the result was that my colleague who teaches our Introductory Research Course invited me in to teach the two weeks devoted specifically to qualitative research.  Last week was the first week of the two-week experiment.  


Selfishly I used it to introduce materials I am developing about the historical beginnings of qualitative research, the chronologies we use to describe its beginnings, and the plethora of research kinds that we now face about a century and a half since those first anthropologists and sociologists were beginning to take lay out the foundations of the field.  An interesting exercise I shared was this table of kinds of research taken from the indexes of four qualitative research textbooks on my shelf. 

Research Kinds In Qualitative Research:  J. Davidson    Derived from the Indexes of these texts. 

Patton, M. (2015).  Qualitative research and evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.).  Sage Publications.	Savin-Baden, M. & Major, C. (2013).  Qualitative research: The essential guide to theory and practice.  Routledge:  New York.	Hays, D. & Singh, A. (2012).  Qualitative inquiry in clinical and educational settings.  The Guildford Press:  New York.	Punch, K. & Oancea, A. (2014) Introduction to Research methods in Education.  (2nd ed.) Sage Publications.
Action Research Anthropology Autoethnography Embodied Ethnography Case Studies Collaborative/Participatory Research Ethnography Education action research Empowerment Evaluation Ethnographic futures research Applied Ethnography (anthropology) Narrative Ethnography Organizational Ethnography Public Ethnography Virtual Ethnography Ethnomethodology Grounded Theory Hermeneutics Indigeneous Research Interactive Inquiry Mixed Methods Narrative Inquiry Phenomenology Pragmatic qualitative inquiry Qualitative inquiry Symbolic Interactionism	Action research Critical/emancipatory action research Pragmatic action research Participatory action research Anthropology Arts-based case studies Arts-informed inquiry Autoethnography Case study Discourse analysis Feminist theory Democratic evaluation Duoethnography Ethnodrama Ethnography Autoethnography Grounded theory Hermeneutics Interpretivism Life course research Narrative research Naturalistic inquiry Participatory Action Research Phenomenology Pragmatic qualitative research Symbolic interactionism	Action Research Participatory Action Research Anthropology Applied Research Autobiographical case study Autoethnography Biographical case study Case study                        Life Histories Collective case study Critical theory Ethnomethodology Dialectical hermeneutics Discourse analysis Ethnography Femininst research Grounded theory Hermeneutics Mixed methods Narrative analysis Narratology Symbolic Interaction	Action research Critical action research Participatory action research Anthropology Case studies Critical discourse analysis Discourse analysis Ethnography Grounded theory Constructivist grounded theory Mixed methids research Narrative analysis Naturalistic research Phenomenological Analysis Qualitative research Symbolic interactionism

Looks pretty daunting, right?  And this is not the sum total of kinds of research one could list--there are many more out there. 


My cry to the field is--isn't it about time that we started talking about the principles of qualitative research and started looking at these kinds of research as talking points in an ongoing conversation about those principles? 


Onward and upward--I can't wait for next week's class:  data collection and analysis and QDAS!