learning journal 18

This weekend I went to church at the Polynesian ward!  I only went to relief society, but it was so fun to get to talk to a couple of the Tongan people there!  I was actually paying attention to the lesson more than trying to do participant observations or taking note of their behaviors, but I did notice a few things that were really interesting.  The first thing was when I walked in, there were no gaps between where people were sitting.  In my relief society it's like everyone is grouped with their friends and there are a few seats between each little group.  I don't know if it was because they were all just friends, but it was like they just didn't mind sitting by whoever.  When I walked in, I was late and a girl on the edge of the row immediately moved her stuff and motioned for me to sit by her.  It was really nice.

Another thing I noticed was that they talked to each other from across the room.  For example, when one girl was sharing an experience another girl hollered something from literally the other side of the room and then a couple other comments were made.  I loved it!!  It was like a discussion and it was totally informal, but the message from the lesson was still getting across.  And so many of the girls were hillarious! I know it's just as stereotypical to say "Tongans are all funny" as it is to say "Tongans are all jerks" (this is just an example, not anything I have ever heard anyone say!), but a lot of the girls made me laugh so hard, which was really nice!  One of the girls invited me to come to FHE and to a Tongan class they have on wednesday nights, so that was exciting!  I plan on going back to meet more Tongan people and to get the experience of being around people that I don't know and putting myself out there.

On a different note, I really enjoyed the readings for today.  I thought the one about "eating Christmas dinner with the bushmen was really applicable."  It made me think about how important it is to not think that everything the people do or say to you is because you are white, or American, or an outsider.  The guy in the story felt like they were being mean to him or whatever because he was an outsider, but when he started asking around he found out they all treat each other like that and it wasn't just him.He actually should have felt happy they were treating him like one of them, or at least that's how I would feel.  I think my goal is to not be viewed the whole time I'm there as a BYU student, or an American, or a white girl, or anything else like that, but rather to be treated like one of them as much as possible.  I know that's a pretty heavy goal, but I think as you build relationships and get to know the people individually, they will start to think of me as more than just another student.  And the reading about helping, fixing, or serving made me realize how important it is to keep in mind that we are no better than the people that we will be in contact with in Tonga and that we should remember how they are serving us just as much as we will be serving them.

Learning Journal 17: The Ophellia Syndrome

The reading for today, "Curing the Ophellia Syndrome," had a lot of really good points.  One thing that I felt was very applicable to me was how it talked about not doing something just because that's what everyone around you does or believes.  One of my biggest complaints about BYU is how I feel like so much of personal agency is taken away.  This is not a bash on BYU, and I completely understand why the rules are the way they are so I don't need a lecture on that, but from an outside point of view, it really does seem like the rules/honor code/socially accepted norms really do take away a lot of choices for people.  It is crucial to remember that even if you are being told what to believe and how to live, you have to figure out what you actually want for yourself.   For me, I have to frequently remind myself that I'm allowed to have my own opinions about things, even if the culture around me doesn't agree on those opinions.  I think that's an important thing to remember in the Field, it's important to not just wait for someone to spoon feed us the information or tell us exactly what to do every day.  We have to be able to think for ourselves and use our brains to decide what we should be doing, how we should be using our time, and what is going to make our experience the best one for us.

Another great idea that came to me while reading this article was about the importance of journal keeping.  The author talked about how he wrote for five or ten minutes about his thoughts and feelings and things that were going on in his life, for himself.  Currently, I am the world's worst journal keeper.  But I think as I go out into the Field, it will be nice to spend a little time each day or week just writing about what I am feeling and thinking.  Obviously, we will be keeping lots of notes on our observations and projects, but just writing down your thoughts can really help you to be aware of yourself individually.

I also loved his suggestion to view everything from a different point of view.  I think that is one of the most important goals for me personally as I go to Tonga.  I don't want to view everything from my Amercian, egocentric, LDS point of view.  One of the most challenging things to do in my opinion is to step back and view the same situation from someone else's point of view.  This weekend, I watched a movie about this girl that was killing men.  Obviously, throughout the movie I was thinking of her as this bad person who was pretty much a heartless monster for killing so many young men.  So when I heard her story (about how she had been raped when she was in college and when she went to the police they wouldn't do anything because the young man who raped her was from a very socially elite family in their town) I tried to look at the situation from her point of view.  Instead of thinking of her as a monster, I actually felt a lot of sympathy and could understand how she came to be the way she did.  Anyways, the point is, I think it's important to view situations from the perspectives of other people.  Or as Atticus Finch said, "you never know somebody until you put on their shoes and walk around in them for a day." Hopefully, we will get to walk around in other people's shoes a lot in Tonga!

Learning Journal 16

The reading about finding a field cite were actually very interesting.  First of all, I realized that we are really lucky to have a contact already set up for us.  It's really nice to know that we are going to have somewhere to stay and have some contacts upon arrival.  I also think that the "field" that I will be doing my research in is one that will be very accessible since all I need is to have families and homes to be in.

The following quote from the reading is one of my most favorite that I read from all the readings so far: "The researcher does not participate in the lives of subjects in order to observe them, but rather observes while participating fully in their lives.. . through living with the people being studied."  Ashley sort of talked about this last week when she was saying how important it is for us to remember that the people we will be are interacting with, and researching in a sense, are people, and not just subjects there for us to ask questions. I have stated this before, and alluded to it several of my learning journals, but it just keeps hitting me over and over again that it's so important that we keep in mind that these are people who are being kind enough to let us in their homes and in their communities and they aren't just subjects for us to use to do research on.  They are people who have lives of their own. We talked last week in class about how much they will probably want to do for us, as far as taking care of all of the housework and cooking and stuff like that. I think it's very important that I make sure to do all I can to try and help and not take advantage of their kindness.

As much as I hope to be immersed in the culture, I think realistically my kind of experience will be "participant as observer."  They will know that we are there to observe, but hopefully for the most part my research will be observe and I will be able to build real, intimate relationships with some of the families and community members.  Obviously, to others I will fill the role of "observer as participant" since I won't have close contact with them and to some I will probably just seem like another student there for school or whatever.  But with a little luck, and cultural sensitivity, I will be able to build actual relationships with the Tongan people that I meet.

Learning Journal 14

I have been thinking about my project proposal a lot this week (which is probably because it's due Friday!) and am feeling pretty good about my topic but very vague about my methods.  I know that I want to get a general understanding of Tongan families, and not just about one aspect.  My goal is to understand multiple aspects about the Tongan family so that I can get a general understanding of what it's like on a whole.  I completely understand the point of making sure you narrow your topic to a specific enough question that you can get results, however.  This is where my predicament comes in my methods area.  I want to ask questions about multiple topics of family:  marriage, pregnancy, child discipline, gender roles and how children are viewed.  These aspects clearly narrow the general question of "what is the Tongan Family like" down to specific aspects of the family, but there are still multiple aspects to each domain listed.  So I'm trying to figure out if I will be able to ask questions about each of these domains and be specific enough to get good research, and not have to spend five hours with each person I interview. . . it's a tricky situation.

On a completely different note, I was thinking about how families in Utah are VERY different from families in my community in Kentucky.  It made me wonder how different families in Va'Vau are from other areas in Tonga.  I was thinking if I only interview families in Va'Vau and not families in other areas or islands in Tonga, it might not be a good representation of the "TONGAN FAMILY." I don't know if it would even be possible, or feasible, for me to be able to go other places to interview, but even if it's not, I'm becoming more aware of the importance of not generalizing results.  Instead of saying this is what families in Tonga are like, I'll probably want to say something more along the lines of "this is what my research showed about families in Va'vau."

Learning Journal 13

In my method's practice 2 I wrote about our experience that we had visiting the Tongan Ward.  I really loved going there and getting to spend time with the people.  It made me even more excited to go to Tonga.  It's been really stressful trying to figure out everything as far as money goes and classes, but visiting the ward reminded me why I am really going to Tonga.  It's about the people.  The other stuff is just logistics and details, but the point is the cultural experience that I'll have with the Tongan people.  I know that the research and educational aspects are very important to the Field Study experience, but I think the most important thing to me is the culture immersion.  Spending time with the Tongan people and eating their food and hearing about their lives, made me excited to gain a real experience in the actual culture.

As I continue to research about Tonga and the family, I have been thinking very hard about how I want to go about asking the questions I want to ask.  As I have read about research methods and after the methods workshop today, I am pretty sure I want to ask questions in a semi-structured interviewed setting. I am going to ask a series of very basic questions about family relationships.  I have a couple of books that are giving me some good guidelines for the types of subjects that I want to look in to and the types of questions I'd like to ask.  I think the most important thing I am trying to keep in mind right now is to make my questions narrow enough to get good, specific answers, but broad enough to gain a good assessment of the general Tongan family.  It's a hard balance, but I think it's very doable, so that gives me a lot of hope!

Learning Journal 12

One of the most frustrating parts of doing research about Tonga is how quickly things are changing over there.  From what I have heard, it seems like the Tongan culture prides themselves on their traditional ways and on their being one of the only monarchies not to be taken over by another nation.  Even though a lot of things they do are still very traditional and have resisted westernization, they are rapidly changing some of their ways.  For example, we talked in our section about how they are moving towards democratic elections.  Anyways, the reason this is so frustrating is because even a research article that is only ten years old can be very outdated. For this reason, it's hard to know what you can trust from the article and what no longer applies to how things really are.

I read an article about Class systems in Tonga.  The article was kind of difficult to read, and used pretty technical language, but it basically said that their is not really a class system in Tonga, or atleast their is no middle class.  The author said that because of the monarchy, there is a noble class, but then everyone who isn't in that class is pretty much the same.  If this is true, and if this is how it is today, I think that's pretty great.  I think it would be a nice change from American culture to have everyone be in one class, but unfortunately in Tonga, I think that class would be a pretty impoverished class.  I'm excited to go see for my self if this is still how it is today.

Another thing that I thought about while I was reading this article was how different observational research is from experimental.  Doing observational research is wonderful and can let you see a lot more than experimental research in many cases because you aren't limiting yourself to one survey or just a few specific questions, you can see the people and the way they live and see how that would influence their answers.  But, I think one thing to take into consideration about doing research in another culture is to not apply your findings to everyone in the population.  It's important to note that the research you collected may not apply to every single person or family in the whole culture. 

Article about Class in Tonga

James, Kerry. 1943. Is there a Tongan middle class? Hierarchy and protest in contemporary Tonga. The Contemporary Pacific, 15 (2),  309-336.


This article concludes that there is no coherent, durable middle class in Tonga capable of the effective class action he claimed for it. Instead, the social struggles of recent decades, typically led by members of commoner educated elites, may be seen as protests against the traditional patriarchal hierarchy and especially what they perceive to be the actions of an arrogant, paternalistic government. Rather than issues theoretically associated with class, the struggles have involved commoners' claims to respect from socially superior leaders and recognition of the covenant-like relationship that ideally should exist between them within the body politic. 

Learning Journal 11

This past week has brought on several new discoveries for me! First, I decided on a book that I want to read for my Book Review, called "Becoming Tongan."  It's all about the Tongan family and I feel like it will be very beneficial in my research on the family.  I think this is a great opportunity to help me gain a little bit of insight, and if nothing else, have some conversation starters for my encounters/interviews with the Tongan people.

Another thing that I learned this week was the importance of preparing good questions before going into an interview and learning how to be a good interviewer.  Obviously, I haven't mastered the skill by reading a couple of articles and practicing a couple of interviews, but I think it's very beneficial to gain an idea of what you can do to make your experience better.  I'm very excited for the opportunity I will have to sit down with the Tongan people and ask them questions about their families and their views on things.  I think one of the most important things I learned about that though, is the importance of guiding the interview and keeping it some what structured while still tailoring it for the situation at hand. I think I learned that it's actually ok to change your questions around a little based on the answers that the interviewee gives and that you don't have to stick to strict number or order of questions, etc.  I think that keeping this in mind can really help you to have more successful interviews and help the person you are talking to want to open up more.

Lastly, I changed the topic that I will be studying around and am taking a different angle on studying the family.  Instead of studying aggression, I am going to ask the Tongan people multiple different questions about family life in Tonga and get a general consensus of what the family norms are like.  I am hoping to gain insights into the norms of Tongan courtship,marriage, pregnancy, child discipline, gender roles, along with a few other things.  I think that this project will allow me much more flexibility and will help me to gain a broader understanding of several aspects of the family rather than one specific thing.  I'm really excited about this topic and think it will make a successful project in Tonga!

Learning Journal 10: Marriage

First, I should tell you that while I was reading the article that I found about marriage in Tonga, I was able to practice keeping an open mind about their culture and not using my frame of reference to describe it.  For example,  in Tonga, it's not uncommon for a father to be supportive of young men making sexual innuendos or talking about her in a sexual way in front of the father.  He actually supports it and is proud that his daughther is desirable. I had never really heard anything like that before, and it really made me think about how different that culture is compared to what I know.  But that doesn't make it wrong, just because it's not what I do or what I would encourage (or allow!) my husband to do.  There were many examples like that in the article I read about marriage. 
I was really interested to find out how many people elope instead of having ceremonial weddings first.

Rafa Rafa-Extra credit journal

I really enjoyed the rafa, rafa activity.  Basically there were two different "cultures" and you learned one of the cultures and the reasoning for why you did everything that you did. Then, after you had played the game of your culture for a while, you went and observed the other culture.  It looked really strange from an outsiders view.  Then, the group that went and observed the other culture reported back to your culture what they saw.  After that, two more groups went and got to participate in the culture.  It was really confusing and I couldn't understand why they were doing what they were doing or how to play their game with them.

Basically, the point of the activity was to open your eyes to how it is to go to another culture.  You don't really understand everything that's going on or what you are supposed to be doing.  It's kind of hard to understand why people are doing what they are doing just by observing.  It made me think about how important it is in my Field Study to make sure that I don't go into another culture and think it's weird just because I don't understand it.  It's also important not to try to define their culture only using things you know.  I feel like sometimes it's easy to try and explain other people using things you know, or the values of your culture.  But it's important that I don't do that when I travel to Tonga.  I can see myself thinking that it's weird that they share everything because in my culture it's important to have your own things and be independent.  But, when you step back and look at it, independence may not be important to their culture at all.  That's just one little example, but something that I can see happening.  Overall, I think it just goes back to the general idea that we need to be aware of our ethnocentrism, and make sure that we are trying to view other cultures with open eyes.