Hidden

Here, I have encountered many house where they don't have any curtain and at nights you can see inside of the house!
It is amazing to me! and totally different from my nurturing up in a country where people cover all windows with heavy curtains... There were a lot to hide...

One Step Closer

I forgot to write here how much I appreciate the writing style of ethnographers and anthropologists. When I encounter this kind of writing, a flower of hope bloomed in my mind that the way of writting is not so long and unaccessible as I ever think.
This style is a wonderful option. It is academic style of writing as well as a literary. It is story but a real one. It is reality but writen in as a story, attractive, engaging and lovely...
Can I use this style of writing?
That small exercise in my Ethnography Methodology course showed me I am able to do.
I think it was the first time I felt I could put my reactions, emotions and experiences in a writing... I ever know that my writings are something mechanical and they are lack of any emotions... I mean that my writing has been "separated" from me... In this exercise, my writing was "me" and "I" wan my writing... What is the nature and sense of writing and the pleasure of writing, if it is not this?

Be Brave

What does it mean "to be brave in knowing"?
Being aware of the truth and of the reality of different issues is not a simple job.It is not easy to accept the truth which is different from what you have thought at that time. Sometimes, what is the truth is deconstructed whatever you have made for as an element of your identity. Is it easy to destroy everything to get the truth?
It is the way I am guessing now. I am not prod of it and I am disgusted about. But particularly in one recent year I feel I prefer not to know the "truth" of stuff. I am afraid of the truth. I am here to confess that I am afraid and it is not something I am proud of...
I think it is true about everybody. We see people who start to mocking, insulting, screaming and on and on when they encounter something different their ideas, their beliefs and their actions and practices... These refectory reactions is because of afraid... They do not want to encounter something maybe ruin their past actions, beliefs and behaviours. They are not brave enough to accept that they have done wrong and they should change their style.
Unfortunately, these reactions happen unconsciously and we just get frustrated or mournful or hatred when we see or hear something different from our thinking. When we start to insulting, mocking, frustrating, ridiculing and etc. it when we are getting that this new stuff seems better, more logical, more rational, more beneficial but we can not accept... This CONSCIOUSNESS'S and AWARENESS make us angry and we start shouting... we open our mouth and lock our mind...
*
I should confess that though I have always been skeptic about the accuracy of my beliefs and thoughts and challenged them all the time, I am not brave enough to hear something different from my structures. I don't open my mouth and shut my mind but I feel frighted extremely much... I am not powerful enough to challenge new truth... I feel so week to encounter something to destroy my system of present thoughts...
I am sad very much about this matter but my mind and my soul is weaker than to tolerate so much pressure on something which have constructed my identity; mu identity regardless of true elements or false elements...

Now, I perceive by all my mind cells that what is the exact meaning of "be brave in knowing".
And I am who have written for many times that "my greatest pleasure in the world is the pleasure of awareness and consciousness"

I am not proud of the status I stand now...

New Fields of Study

I don't know why I am interested in working on topics which have not researched so much! What I am reading about now is social capital, Internet, blogging and social network analysis. I hope that I will be able to present my PhD proposal in communication in this field but unfortunately, there are a few scholar works on social science particularly in the field of Internet. In fact, I did not find anything about social capital in the cyberspace with the focus on the blogging.
In addition, social network analysis as a methodology is not acceptable by all scholars in Social Science different branches and connecting among these new concepts are not easy to me.
I hope I will find something useful to base my research on it.

I sent an abstract for IAMCR international conference in Gender and Communication section. The head of the section wrote to me:


"I have received the abstract and we are now reviewing the materials. We should have final word in a month or so, but, given how well you did last year, and how interesting your topic was, I would anticipate at your proposal will be accepted.

No guarantees, of course (and I have to consult with the other organizers of our section), but that would be my early guess."

The previous year was the first time I participated in this conference. Actually, my paper seemed fascinating for audience!
Wow! Well done!

Researcher's body relationship to the fieldwork

I am reading “Paris chic, Tehran Thrill: aesthetic bodies, political objects” by Alexandru Balasescu for this week.

What I would like to investigate is that how anthropologists explain their own bodies’ reactions to different locations and circumstances in the fieldwork. I am also interested in examining how they illustrate and depict embodiment and especially female bodies in their anthropological reports.

This book is about fashion industry in Paris and Tehran and a sort of comparison of Paris, as a center of world’s fashion and Tehran, as a capital of a radical Islamic country. Obviously, in this book fashion and consequently body are the focus of anthropologist’s gaze. (p.1) so, discussion about female body is a key concept throughout the book.

Balasescu in the introduction of the book compares generally the status of body in Paris and Tehran. Since he has done urban fieldwork for his research, he pays especial attention to the location and space for body flexibility in the society. “In Paris, considering the density of population and scarcity of space, the body has to be more restrained; in the metro, one has to sit straight, often with legs crossed in order to leave more space for others.” (p. 14)

By exploring the body and embodiment as sites of knowledge and knowledge production, he engages cultural norms determining the relationship of bodies to specific sites, behaviors and destinies. In the following of the previous quotation, he adds: “People from Tehran have much more space at their disposition. However, gender distinction prescribes bodily postures in Iran: men do not have any social restrictions concerning their body postures, at least in public spaces. Thus, in Tehran, even if men and women share a small space, e.g. a common taxi, men tend to occupy the entire seat, and leave little space for their female seatmates.”

In his first sojourn in Tehran, he tries to order a suit of clothes. The result turns out to be a large dress, floating around his body “in the normal way”. Interestingly, the anthropologist reacts to the situation: “I felt that my body had lost its shape!” He mentions this event as a “first hand experience” and adds: “it made me think about the architecture and the environment. Contours and shapes create our field of visibility, and obviously I experienced a major change between Paris and Tehran.

I Am Happy

I am happy I am here in Canada.
I am happy I am able to read everyday.
I am happy my closed mind is opening...
I am happy I got a wonderful scholarship that make us to afford living costs...
I am happy I am overwhelmed by new ideas and plans everyday...
I am happy I reach the fertile soil...
I am happy I am blossoming...



P.S. I should learn to make films! Documentary films... I should concentrate on this channel of knowledge circulation! Why all the academics products should be a paper or a book?! Films are more effective, influential and actually impressive which a broader range of audience... I should learn to be a filmmaker...

Women Autobiographies

I am preparing an abstract for this IAMCR's international conference. I would like to work on the content of women's blog, especially journal blogs which are about everyday life and ordinary events. I am sure that we should register these posts because nowhere we are able to find this tremendous amount of content of everyday life, ordinary events from ordinary people! They are the best content for social researches.
I will mostly focus on the texts and survey them from the literary perspective particularly concentrate on them as life narratives and autobiographies.
I found a fascinating book (Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives) which made me delighted. It is a practical guidebook with clear ategorized conceptialization in this regard even for unfamiliar reader.

My main concern, as always, remains! I don't know what I should do about the methodology and sampling of weblogs for this kind of research. I should consult to one of my professors.

Outliers

I finished "Outliers: the story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell today.
It was the first English book I read in two days completely! It reminded me the teenager's addition to reading books without any stop! I was book worm actually!

This book was thought-provoking and insightful. I really enjoyed of the multidimensional approach of Gladwell to the notion of success.
I mean that his approach to the success was not unilateral, overlooking various several impressive factors. It was also a very good sample in English writing for me, as a recent reader in English language. Especially, the beginning of the book was astonishing. The style of writing was engrossing and engaging.

I mostly liked the discussion about putting 10000 hours on "anything" and be global master in it. In addition, the engaging argument about the language and culture differences in in airoplanes' crushes was so intriguing for me.
I will undoubtedly start reading his other books soon.

Social Network

Since I have been interested in Social Networks, I have decided to read more about it.
"Social networks and the study of relations: networks as method, metaphor and form" by Hannah Knox, Mike Savage and Penny Harvey which was published in Economy and Society,Vol. 35 No. 1 Feb. 2006, 113-140.
It was interesting cause I don't know much about this issue, this paper had summarized key studies in two fields of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Social Anthropology with this approach.
When I was reading I felt that the "field" of social network in my mind has many thousand off lamps which by reading this paper those lamps are turned on one by one. although they became sporadically without any special relations, I know the more I read about the topic, the lamps will be on. It is in this way always when I encounter to the new field of study.


I read another paper about two weeks ago which I liked. "The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging": On Language, and Power in Persian Weblogestan" by Alireza Doostdar in American Anthropologist, Vol. 106, Issue 4, pp. 651-662.
The most fascinating point about this paper was its methodology. Participatory observation is the first and most acceptable method in Anthropology. He had used this method for researching on blogs! He created his own blog and reading all blog and write about them, commenting n others' posts and link them interestingly claims that used participatory observation!
I love anthropologists who have done in a wide various range of research topics.

Ethnographic Methodology

I finished my first assignment for Ethnographic Methodology. I like it so much!
I wrote in the last paragraphs:

During last week I have thought about how I should organize my report on this exercise. Now, I see that it is 3501 words and much more than necessary. Why I am writing these seemingly useless words?! Because during this exercise I have found out how much the researcher, her background, her emotions, her knowledge, and her experiences can shape the nature of the research in participatory observation. I feel guilty a little bit because I think I have not observed my sites very well and seemed I have observed myself, as a researcher, rather than my sites! And I have collected data about myself rather than the observed. This exercise is really helping me to discover myself rather than “others”. Maybe I have done wrong in the process of doing exercise. But I have never known that to be dominant on the new place is so much important to me!

In other hand, there are some unanswered questions in my mind. Is knowledge production in Ethnography, especially in this method, dependent on the researcher’s life, emotion, knowledge, experience, etc. so much? The process of the research has been wonderful for me, as a researcher. I actually feel that I have done something inner and valuable for my exercise and I have learned many new points during this practical work. I will follow this method for my future real researches undoubtedly. But am I eligible to be in the center of the research? Can I say it was my first experience and I was excited more than usual in using a new method? Can I imagine that passing time and dominating to mechanisms of this method will help me in the future?

I finish this report which this concern; Maybe I have not applied the true principles of participatory observation methodologically but I cannot deny my great pleasure in experiencing a qualitative method which “respect and value” me as a researcher personally…