Writing things down... what a concept

I found Keith Thomas' article this week super interesting. I'm completely unfamiliar with the concept of doing research on anything and everything that interests me and making a bank of information for when I do have a paper to write. If I were to commit to a life of academia past a masters I would probably try out his method. It strikes me as very traditional to write down excerpts, or I guess to manually write in general. These days it's so easy to search for the electronic version of texts and articles and to peruse them will our special pdf software or ipad apps. While Thomas' way may take longer, I think it is more detailed. With all his historical examples of the importance of physically writing something down to internalize it better I do believe it is a method worth preserving. Not long ago, I was still writing everything down. I'd attend undergraduate lectures with a pen and paper and sit in the first row, and this sounds crazy, but I was actually fully engaged. Our computer screens have pulled most of us away from this level of engagement, but they're fast and convenient and allow us to divide our attention in all sorts of directions. I appreciate that Thomas continues this seemingly traditional take on the literature review. As a historian, I think it's a good fit. However, as an information student technology beckons to us. Thomas, K. 2010. Diary: working methods. London Review of Books, 32(11), 36-7. [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary]

Structure vs. Risk-Taking in Creation

As I read Thomas' article "Diary", about his personal research process as a historian, it occurred to me how personal writers' process is. Probably more so for historians and less for scientific researchers. As Thomas says "But no two histories will be the same, whereas the essence of scientific experiments is that they can be endlessly replicated". Which is why as a social science researcher your methods must be systematic, well documented, defended, and you must be able to talk about and justify them. 
It has been a challenge for me and a completely new way of working, being part of this class and learning to write research proposals. Coming from an arts background (literature and theatre) I am used to improvising the process and coming up with something that works for me at any given time (which can differ from project to project) without needing to discuss it or break it down systematically or defend it. I have definitely gained more respect and insight into the work researchers put into their writing and the way of thinking and approach it requires. Luker's "Salsa Dancing Into The Social Sciences" is a call to mix and match approaches and methods and make it more unique to you and take risks with this systematic process. It is tricky to do that in academia because of the concern for following rules that get you a good grade. 
From my experience in theatre school at university, I learned that it is not easy to work creatively in academic institutions because of the result-oriented nature of academia (your performance is always evaluated and value is placed on that). Because you want to do well and 'get it right', there is fear around taking risks and trying new things and experimenting because at the end of the day you have to fit into the structure, and taking risks is not synonymous with fitting into the square box. 
So it is interesting, this duality of structure vs. risk-taking and creativity, which I found to be a theme in this course from the beginning. It is definitely useful to learn as much about how to work in each of these two ways, and at some point get comfortable enough with both (from practice) that you can blend them together in a way that works for you. 

Thomas, K. (2010). Diary: working methods. London Review of Books, 32(11), 36-7.

Late Thoughts on Ethnography

William Shaffir's essay "Doing Ethnography" got me thinking about the numerous times, in my time at the ischool, the term ethnography has come up in a variety of different courses. Most recently, we discussed it in Colin Furness' Information Architecture class as a means of studying users in order to fully understand their information needs when it came to making website schemas. We concluded that although ethnography is both as detailed and thorough as you can get, but it is too time consuming, and no company would invest in this sort of research. Shaffir ends his essay on a hopeful note saying that ethnography is becoming a tool in the professional setting, but I'd have to agree with my information arch. class about how tedious and inconvenient of a method it is for "the real world." Another thing Shaffir mentions is how much the experimenter can subconsciously affect his/her results even when embedded in the world of his/her research. This seems to be a concern that we keep coming across in different social science research methods, but how do we remedy this? For me, the results of ethnographic research can vary greatly depending solely on the experimenter and how he/she chooses to behave within the context of the practise being studied and this makes me uneasy about the method. I like the idea of ethnography but there may be too many factors going against it for me; factors that the experimenter may not even be aware of. Unlike Shaffir, I'm a lot less hopeful about the future of this method. 

Research Method Induced Nostalgia

As I read the article ‘Diary’ by Keith Thomas I am flooded with fond memories of being an undergraduate history student. I remember back to my historical methodology course. I was taught the method of using index cards as medium for my notes and citations described by Thomas in his article. To be honest I have never utilized this method in the process of my research. I always took my notes down on continuous pages. I do identify with Thomas’ feelings of nostalgia. Thinking of these methods reminds me of my time as an undergraduate student. They remind me of the people I knew as well as the experiences I had there. Now as our research methods class comes to a close I think about the future. As time passes I think the ardour of proposal writing I perceive will diminish (or get worse only time will tell). I wonder however that on some later date will, the use of some research method bring me back to the first time I learned about it in our class.

Thank you everyone I have enjoyed my time in this class.

Featured

Thomas, K. 2010. Diary: working methods. London Review of Books, 32(11), 36-7. [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary]

A quick post about content analysis

I just realized that I missed doing a post on discourse analysis. This shall be remedied at once!

I found it strange that Thomas (1994) has to defend the practice of content analysis of artifacts. Maybe this is just the historian in me (my undergrad was in History), but it seems to me that studying what a culture leaves behind is very valuable. Thomas obviously agrees with me as well.

I also like the point that Thomas makes about the directness of various methods--questioning the claim that some methods offer a more direct and true window into the subjects under study. Of course nothing is direct! Even in something like an interview (which some might consider to be quite direct), Luker (2008) points out that what the subject says is just their version of events. It is up to the researcher to interpret from these statements.

Works Cited
Luker, K. Salsa dancing into the social sciences: Research in an age of info-glut. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Thomas, S. (1994). Artifactual study in the analysis of culture: A defense of content analysis in a postmodern age. Communication Research, 21, 683-697.

Last day of class!

Congratulations to everyone who feels good enough about their research proposals to come to class today... I wonder if anyone has ever done a study about who comes to class on the day that a big assignment is due?

Patrick Collinson "I had no method"

In the article titled Diary: working methods by Keith Thomas, the author notes in his opening statement that

"it never helps historians to say too much about their working methods. For just as the conjuror’s magic disappears if the audience knows how the trick is done, so the credibility of scholars can be sharply diminished if readers learn everything about how exactly their books came to be written."

As we continue reading we learn that in History of a History Man,  Patrick Collinson reveals that  when asked "what his research method [were], all he could say was that he tried to look at everything which was remotely relevant to his subject: ‘I had no 'method'." As the article continues we read about notes on scrap paper, cutting pages out, turning book page edges down, highlighting text, penciled in notes, and text being underlined.

This article reminded me of Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk Your elusive creative genius, particularly the part of the article that recalls Hobbes "always [carrying] a note book in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entred it into his book, or otherwise he might have lost it. He had drawn the designe of the book into chapters, etc., so he knew whereabout it would come in.’

In her TED Talk, Gilbert notes that at one point,

"people believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons". Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar. The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius."

As time passed we began to internalize the concept, referring to ourselves / the human being as the genius.

Where Hobbes's methods remind me of her talk is where she relates an encounter she had with the American poet Ruth Stone. Stone's account is related by Gilbert as follows:

"She told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, "run like hell." And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem,and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn't be fast enough, so she'd be running and running and running, and she wouldn't get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it "for another poet." And then there were these times --this is the piece I never forgot --she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she's running to the house and she's looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it's going through her,and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards, from the last word to the first."

Gilbert goes on the relate other stories of genius, but what stuck with me most about her talk on the writing process was this, that it's hard work. It reminded me of Luker's advice to break it down into 15 minute segments.  Either way, Gilbert says the when she's feeling dejected and uninspired, she calls on her genius, which she disembodied from her self.  She

"lifts her face up from the manuscript and directs her comments to an empty corner of the room, saying "Listen you, thing, you and I both know that if this book isn't brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see that I am putting everything I have into this, I don't have any more than this. So if you want it to be better, then you've got to show up and do your part of the deal.O.K. But if you don't do that, you know what, the hell with it. I'm going to keep writing anyway because that's my job. And I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up for my part of the job."

It's an absolutely wonderful talk for anyone who hasn't internalized the concept of genius, but may need to call on one from time to time.  Particularly those of us who will be expected to come up with graduate (genius) level prose in the not too distant future. 

References
Gilbert, E. (2009, February). Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Luker, K. (2010). Salsa dancing into the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Thomas, K. (2010). Diary: working methods. London Review of Books, 32(11), 36-7.

Subjectivity

 

Reading Knight's chapter “Sensemaking,” although some of the statistics-related discussion is beyond me, reinforced to me just how subjective research is, whether it's qualitative or quantitative. At the same time, I've also been working through the methodology of my final proposal, and doing that is also reminding me that although data may be objective, the research conclusions that come from it certainly aren't. In my case even the number of relevant texts, and therefore the actual data, is subjective: do I include all texts that explicitly mention my topic (a nineteenth-century gentlemen's club) in any context, even one unrelated to my interest? Do I include texts on similar topics (like other clubs) or not? What if there are texts in obscure locations that I never find and that therefore don't make it in to my research? All of these decisions will affect the outcome of the research project. In a sense, this realization is freeing – I need to make decisions one way or another, and these decisions will affect the research no matter what I choose. For projects that don't draw on textual analysis, similar questions come up when, to use examples from Knight, the researcher must decide at what level of depth to analyze or how to code themes from interviews.

One of the biggest conclusions I draw from all this is just how important it is to be clear about your methodology and decisions in your final article/product. If the people reading your research doesn't know what decisions you made and why you made them, they can't judge for themselves whether they feel the research is conducted well, whether certain things should also be analyzed in different ways, and whether the conclusions might have turned out differently. 

Knight, P.T. (2002). Small-scale research: Pragmatic inquiry in social science and the caring professions. London: SAGE.

Ongoing processes

I always thought of research methods as a series of stages or steps. And while this is true to a large extent, both Luker (2008) and Knight (2002) remind us that there is work that is ongoing during the entire research process.

In Luker's salsa dancing approach, where "you don't really know what [the research] is about until the very end" (p. 130), you have to constantly be asking yourself questions. What is this a case of? What category or categories does your case address? If not, then you will find yourself in a version of what she calls the Damnation of the Ten Thousand Index Cards. Luker really stresses the multiple practices that need to be ongoing to do the kind of research that she advocates. And the repetition of those practices. Luker's process is almost like a circle, as you keep doubling back to go over things again.

For Knight, there are also processes that occur continually. Data analysis begins when you are beginning to think about your research. It doesn't end until you are finished with the whole project. As Erlandson states, quoted in Knight: "The analysis of the data gathered in a naturalistic inquiry begins the first day the researcher arrives at the setting. The collection and analysis of the data obtained go hand-in-hand as theories and themes emerge during the study" (p. 182).

It is evident that there is a constant process of appraisal. Much as Luker's approach where you don't know what you're really looking at until the end, Knight points out that inquiries often change shape when you're in the middle of them. You thought the data would lead a certain way, but it does something else entirely. A major lesson learned from this entire course is that you can't put your research on autopilot at any point. Research is a very active process, even when there doesn't look like much action is taking place (i.e. you're thinking about things).

Works Cited
Knight, P.T. (2002). Small-scale research: Pragmatic inquiry in social science and the caring professions. London: SAGE Publictions.

Luker, K. (2008). Salsa dancing into the social sciences: Research in an age of info-glut. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

"Open-Hearted" Lit Reviews

In chapter 7 of Salsa Dancing Into the Social Sciences, Luker (2008) states that we should read literature surrounding our research interest in an"open-hearted way" (p. 133).  This got me thinking about my own reading patterns while investigating a certain area of research.  Typically, when I'm looking into a subject, I have a preconceived stance on what I am reading.  I read looking for what I want to argue, while either disregarding what is irrelevant or noting it so that I can argue against it in a paper.  However, in light of what Luker said in chapter 7, I now think this is the wrong way to approach literature.  If I am set in my thinking on a topic, in a way, I am not allowing my brain to work at its full capacity.  I am not allowing different ideas to mold, shape, and change what I think.  This is a natural evolutionary process of thinking that is healthy and, as I see now, vital in research.  In my prior way of reading, I was allowing room for ignorance and lazy thinking.  I want to apply this, firstly, to my research proposal.  As I'm working on it and finishing up my lit review, I want to make sure that I'm addressing all sides, thinking through all perspectives, and being as well informed on the topic as possible, rather than being selective in the information I talk about for convenience sake.

Big Data and Privacy

In this past Wednesday's class, we discussed the implications of revealing the identities of online trolls. The conversation reminded me of the some of material concerning the hopes and fears surrounding the Big Data phenomena. Many of those concerns center on the public's right to privacy.  A recent New York Time's article addressed this issue:

"In the 1960s, mainframe computers posed a significant technological challenge to common notions of privacy. That’s when the federal government started putting tax returns into those giant machines, and consumer credit bureaus began building databases containing the personal financial information of millions of Americans. Many people feared that the new computerized databanks would be put in the service of an intrusive corporate or government Big Brother. "It really freaked people out,” says Daniel J. Weitzner, a former senior Internet policy official in the Obama administration. “The people who cared about privacy were every bit as worried as we are now" (Lohr, 2013).


Sound familiar? I find it comforting that humanity has been through a similar change before, without the dire consequences predicted at the time having come to pass.

For anyone interested in the size of Big Data, see this infographic: http://visual.ly/how-big-big-data

References

Lohr, S. Big data is opening new doors, but maybe too many. (2013, March 24). New York Times, p. BU3. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/technology/big-data-and-a-renewed-debate-over-privacy.html?smid=pl-share.

How big is big data: http://visual.ly/how-big-big-data

Generalizability Question Answered

In my post from February 26, I discussed the implications of the inclusion of the word "generalizable" in research legislation or guidelines (see: "Research Ethics and Generalizability"-http://researchmethodstotheextreme.blogspot.ca/2013/02/research-ethics-and-generalizability.html). In Wednesday's workshop on research ethics, I asked Dr. Dean Sharpe to clarify what the implications for the inclusion of this word in U.S. research ethics legislation has for research in the United States. Dr. Sharpe said that the research ethics reviews boards (known as "institutional review boards" (IRBs) in the U.S.) spend valuable time debating whether a particular proposal's research is generalizable, at the expense of discussing the ethical issues in the same proposal. I did further research on the topic, and discovered this article-"Institutional Review Board mission creep: the common rule, social science, and the nanny state" by Ronald F. White. The following passage illustrates the problem:

"In the narrow sense, the term generalizable might be interpreted reasonably as synonymous with quantifiable. This category would seemingly include any research that employs statistical analysis of collected data. It would certainly include all surveys, questionnaires, and so forth. It would seemingly exclude all journalistic or historical research that involves interviewing a single person. However, if researchers interview two persons and compare their answers, are they not, in a sense, generalizing? So, if we construe generalizable in the broadest sense, any research that makes generalizations apparently falls into this category. Consequently, the malleability of the concept "generalizable" has made it difficult to decide whether all, some, or none of the research in journalism, communication, ethnology, and history come under the jurisdiction of the Common Rule." (White, 2007, p. 552).

Does anyone have any further thoughts on this matter?

Reference
White, R.F. (2007). Institutional review board mission creep: The common rule, social science, and the nanny state. The Independent Review, 11(4), 547-564.

Case studies and storytelling

Our readings for week 11 really helped focus case studies for me. Yin (1981) does a great job by explicitly distinguishing between evidence type, data collection method, and research strategy (case studies are a research strategy, by the way). Yin also helpfully points out when case studies make a good research strategy (when the phenomena and the context being studied are intertwined). Beaulieu, Scharnhorst and Wouters (2007) say that case studies are good for deconstructing the scientific method and the claims of universality that are produced as a result. This is backed up by Knight (2002), who says that they can powerfully counteract over-generalization.

 What really struck me, though, was the quote of Miles, in Yin (1981), that asserted that the qualitative research done in his area of study (organizations) "cannot be expected to transcend story-telling" (p. 58). I thought to myself, what's wrong with storytelling? Stories are powerful tools for conveying information, helping the reader become engaged with the material like nothing else. Just because a narrative is being told does not mean that it is the result of shoddy research or lazy scholarship.

Works Cited

Beaulieu, A., Scharnhorst, A., & Wouters, P. (2007). Not another case study: A middle-range interrogation of ethnographic case studies in the exploration of e-science. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 32(6), 672-692.

Knight, P.T. (2002). Small-scale research: Pragmatic inquiry in social science and the caring professions. London: SAGE Publications.

Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65.

Hubris, academic research, and ethics

I was in continuous disbelief as I read Zimmer's (2010) painstakingly precise smackdown of the "Taste, Ties, and Times" (T3) project's approach to research ethics. Wow. I just couldn't believe the hubris of the researchers. A point that really stuck out to me, was how the T3 researchers trumpeted how they got permission from the school and Facebook to access the data. Um, gee, don't worry about the actual students whose personal data you're snooping on. My god! I suppose when people are reduced to numbers, or thought of as simply data, then there is a greater likelihood that their concerns will not be considered.

I think the T3 case underscores how important it is to have outside perspectives check out your research. One of the researchers is quoted in Zimmer (2010) saying "we're sociologists, not technologists, so a lot of this is new to us" (p. 316). That realization should have instigated an attempt to get expert opinions on whether their privacy safeguards were sufficient. Instead, it is revealed that they did not consult any experts in privacy. Again--wow.

A lot of lessons to be learned from this. The T3 researchers would have been better off trying to learn from their mistakes, as opposed to arrogantly firing back at critics, saying that they did enough.

Works Cited
Zimmer, M. (2010). "But the data is already public": On the ethics of research in Facebook. In Ethics and Information Technology, 12, 313-325.

Research Ethics and Contributions to Knowledge

Last week, I completed the TCPS 2: CORE ethics tutorial for another class: http://tcps2core.ca/  It tied in very well with the readings for this week – the tutorial is comprised of eight modules that discuss various aspects of research ethics, with a quiz at the end of each, so in a way it was like another reading for this class. Many of the same issues were covered in the ethics tutorial as in our readings and in class today, but I especially appreciated how this tutorial clearly broke down the main components of research ethics: risks and benefits, consent, privacy and confidentiality, fairness and equity, and avoiding conflict of interest.

I've never really had to prepare for an ethics review, but as we write our proposals and read about ethics this week, I've been thinking that being forced to spell out the ethical implications of your research in each of these areas is not only important from a moral standpoint but also helpful for thinking through the research itself. It especially forces you to really consider the contribution to knowledge of your research. As I'm writing the contribution to knowledge section of my proposal, I'm thinking about exactly what the risks and benefits are, and having a bit more background knowledge about research ethics is helping me articulate them more clearly.

Looking Back at Luker and the "Hook"

In chapter 8 of Salsa Dancing Into the Social Sciences, Luker discusses interviewing as a form of research.  As I first thought, interviews may seem straight forward and a simple question and answer process, however, the author shows otherwise.  Specifically, Luker's address of "hooks" in interviews show complexity of interviews and the need for researchers to approach interviews in a methodical and strategic way.

In our day and age, time is money. People are very selective in how they spend their time and what they participate in.  It seems that every other receipt, email, or website attempts to engage people in some sort of survey or participation in research, whether business, law, or academic.  Because there is such a overload of research participation requests, researchers must be smart about the way they pitch the requests to the public.

I also need to take this into consideration in the research I am proposing for this course.  I need to think about what methodology is best suited to the research I am conducting.  As the semester progresses, I am seeing more and more how much thought and strategy is required in conducting research.

Accurate Data Collection

The topic of cross-case study analysis, discussed in the article, "The Case Study Crisis: Some Answers," is one that, I feel, deserves some attention and consideration.  Collecting and analyzing data has proved to be a complex and multilayered component of research through the readings of this course.  We have learned about quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research and each of their advantages and disadvantages, we discussed methodology and the importance of being informed in the particular area of research you are pursuing, and so on.  Among everything that we have learned thus far, I think that how you choose to use the data that you have collected is one of the most important.  In our own research, it is important to analyze whether the data sets we collect (1) can be related to each other (2) can be generalized for a larger population, and (3) is accurate and truthful.  Researchers who are highly invested in their work may be tempted to alter or manipulate data in order to come up with the conclusions they desire.  However, we, as researchers, must hold ourselves up to the highest standard in order to truthfully present information with as little bias as possible.   In order to do this, it is evident that citation and providing evidence is of utmost importance.  Yin notes that, "the case study researcher must preserve a chain of evidence as each analytic step is conducted" (p. 63).  This has challenged me to be careful about the citations and references I use in my research proposal and in future research endeavors.  In creating my final research proposal, I will be paying close attention to how I set up my research in how many subjects I propose to collect data from.  Yin's article demonstrates how important it is to construct and execute solid research.

References

Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65. 

Cookbooks

I just got a new cookbook that I’m really excited about, and as I was browsing through it I realized that our research proposals are not that different from a recipe.  For those of you who like to cook, you know that when you are experimenting with a new dish, you will probably get it wrong the first time, or even the first couple of times.  Our research proposals are the same; we keep tweaking and revising our original idea until we (hopefully) have an outline for a study that can be done consistently, and hopefully achieve the desired results.  However, like a recipe, there is always a chance that our research design does not go as planned.  For example, you could realize halfway through that the questions you sent out in your questionnaires are all wrong.  Hopefully, we can create a proposal that is like a good recipe, and produces good results!

Assignment 4 and Thoughts About 'Doing It"

Reading Chapt. 7 of Knight "Doing It" regarding the practical implications of acting out your research design and its various stages in the real world was almost reassuring in its claim that problems and issues will definitely come up. Throughout this course I have struggled with understanding various concepts and translating what we have been learning into assignments and making it make sense for me. In my experience part of completing any project involves problem solving, and it was an important reminder to anticipate issues and have back-up plans in place so when you are in the field you are not disabled by issues that come up.
The last section "Disclosure and Harm" (p.169-172) brought up the issue of dealing with strong emotional reactions from participants, being emotionally impacted as the researcher, and how to handle these consequences during the process (p.171-172). This made me think of an anticipated problem I for see in terms of writing Assignment 4 due to my close emotional involvement with my field of research. I am emotionally invested in the issue and this social problem because of the impact it is having on the life of someone I love. I understand that this may create biases I may project on to the research if it is carried out. As I was writing Assignment 3 I became aware of the potential problem this could cause and I had to remind myself to not take sides or push for a certain outcome based on my experiences, but be open to unexpected results and be mindful of including every possibility so as not to narrow the point of view and not miss/ignore/exclude important information I may find surprising.
Initially I thought due to my personal connection it will be easier for me to invest in this assignment. But the more I am learning about the role of the researcher and the importance of being aware of your personal biases and how they may affect your work, I am learning that it could make my job as a researcher more difficult and may act as a burden. Perhaps I should have chosen something I was not as invested in emotionally (note to self for next time).
What I realized from Chapt. 7 is the importance of separating myself and my personal connection to my research question from my role as researcher while working on this assignment so as to not undermine the quality and inclusiveness of my approach and the potential data analysis and conclusions.

Knight, P.T. (2002). Small-Scale Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Tomatoes as technologies

In class last week the professor asked us to think about the technologies presented in the film, Isle of Flowers. I could not help but think that everything depicted in the film, by nature of their positioning, reflected an end product that has been molded by technology, down to the woman buying tomatoes and selling perfumes, to the film's protagonist, the tomato.  Would it be fair to call the tomato a technology?  I don't know, but it remains true, that if left solely to nature, the tomato would not have been produced on that farm, to be to be harvested and sold in the supermarket to the woman, who eventually tossed it out, where it was picked up by the garbage truck, sent to a landfill, found unsuitable for pigs, and eventually left for children in groups of ten to find. Each 'cog' in that technological infrastructure has to do its piece for the system to remain viable, and so perhaps an argument that what's driving the process isn't the so much the humans with the highly developed brains and opposable thumbs, but the technological ecosystem itself. 

In my thinking of "tomatoes as technologies", I googled the term and came up with the following:

"In the Ilocos Region, tomato is one of the major cash crops normally cultivated by farmers during the dry season after rice is harvested. Planting season is from November to December and the bulk of the produce is harvested in February and March. Thus, the local market during this period is generally flooded with locally produced fresh market tomato. Naturally, the price becomes very low, averaging less than P 5 kg (2001). Worse, the supply is much higher than the demand for the product, resulting in a host of marketing problems.” (http://www.mixph.com/2010/06/the-technology-of-growing-tomato-during-off-season.html) The article continues on to address this issue, and in relation to the film, perhaps also shed some insights on why in that particular technologically and economically driven food chain, pigs come before children.

The Zimbabwe Bush Pump

This article talks about the Zimbabwe Bush Pump.  However, the pump is not discussed as merely an object, but as an entire concept which serves many purposes; providing affordable clean water which prevents disease, building communities by providing a community project, and empowering poor communities to be in charge of their own water supply.  The authors do not talk about the bush pump as a thing.  In fact, they state at the beginning of the article that they “…love the Zimbabwe Bush Pump.”

Much like the short film we watched in class today, this article gets us thinking about the deeper meaning of things.  The Zimbabwe bush pump is not just a water pump, just as the results of our research will not be comprised of one simple interpretation.  Likewise, when we are writing our research proposals, it is important to consider all of the implications of our research.  A reviewer who is not familiar with the subject may not be aware of how the outcome will contribute to research.  We might not even be aware of all of the implications of our research at first.  Perhaps if we try looking at our projects through a few different lenses we will be surprised at what we find.

De Laet, M., and Mol, A. (2000). The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology. Social Studies of Science, 30(2), 225-263. [http://go.utlib.ca/cat/7755570]

"The Social Life of Tomatoes"

The short film we watched in class, “The Social Life of Tomatoes”,  uses the journey of one tomato to identify the similarities and differences between human beings and some of our social constructions, as well as to place major class divisions into context.  The film follows one tomato from a field, where it is tended by the Japanese man, Mr. Suzuki, to a supermarket, where it is purchased by a woman who throws it in the garbage.  It is then taken to a trash heap on the Island of Flowers, where it is meant to be fed to pigs.  The pig’s owner decides that it is unfit for pigs, and it is then thrown in a pile where poor women and children are free to scavenge it to eat themselves.

The beginning of the film has a light tone, and finds connections between such topics as opposable thumbs, whales, and money.  There is also a stress on religion, identifying Jews and Roman Catholics.  However, by the end, it is obvious that this film has a more serious message.  It uses satire to stress the major class divisions, such as the woman who sells perfume to buy food from the supermarket for her family, and the woman and children who line up to gather food which was rejected as pig food.  The film also uses serious images, such as footage from concentration camps.

“The Social Life ofTomatoes” shows how an everyday item or concept can be connected to countless other items and concepts.  This can be used as an exercise to open our eyes when considering our research projects.  Sometimes, important connections can be made where we least expect them.