The good news is I think I found another book that will be a much better choice for the book review. I'm very excited about that! I was thinking that reading books about Tonga, and especially reading books that are famous in Tonga, will not only give us a better understanding of the culture, but will also give us more to talk about with the natives. If we can go over there and say, "oh yeah, I read that book by that Tongan author!" it will show them that we are trying to learn more about their culture and immerse ourselves in their ways.
The bad news is, my ORCA Grant Application was denied, so I don't have that source of income I was hoping for. The other bad news is, because the grant was declined, the mentor I had been working with for the last few months is no longer going to work with me on the Field Study. So, I have to find a new mentor. This could also change my project proposal a little, as well. The reason that I had chosen to do the methods that I did was because my previous mentor had worked on a similar study and had hoped to get the at published, now my options are a little more free. Hopefully, some nice professor will decide to help me out with the Field Study!
Something that has been on my mind since I have been reading the articles about research and interviewing skills is how great this type of ethnographic research is. Most of the research that I read in my major and for my classes is experiments and studies that have been done to try and prove (or disprove) a specific hypothesis. With our Field Studies, so much of our research is interviewing and observing, that I think you really get the first hand experience of what the lives of the people are like. It seems to me like they aren't your research subjects, but rather they are people that you get to know and learn from (and about). The interviewing process is very important, but I think the most important thing in my mind (and probably something that will take real effort on my part) is that when you are interviewing other people, it's important to just listen, and let them talk. The more I think about Field Studies research, the more excited I get to go to Tonga. Going back all the way to the first article, it's not just about what you learn about yourself and the experience that you have while you are abroad, it's about what you learn from the people and their culture. I'm hoping my mind will be open and I will be able to learn a lot from "the Tongan way."
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ReplyDeleteI really liked what you said about ethnographic research. I tend to agree with this kind of thinking in regards to researching people. A lot of "scientific" ways of researching people just objectifies them. If we give a group of people in another culture a survey with multiple choice, we have no way on getting their reality because we only offer options that are relative to our culture and they could have insights that we could have never thought of before. And then, it also implies that the people you are studying are as they are, and don't have the ability to change or be different from that moment in which you studied them. Although survey research has its place in the sciences, when studying another culture it is vital to understand and get to know them as you mentioned.
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