My Ethnography & The Direction of My Writing

My Ethnography

Ramon and I briefly talked about yesterdays writing, and he focused again on the idea of auto-ethnography. He recommended I watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3EJfPN9sIg&t=231s. I haven't done much but skim about 5 minutes of it, yet, so he suggested two primary (and correlated) take-away's from that keynote.
- Auto-ethnography builds empathy
- Auto-ethnography satisfies a current need in the sciences

I have only had roughly-hypothetical interactions with auto-ethnography. I haven't read a full study, though I have been to a seminar on one that is in the process of being written. I've been in brainstorming session for another graduate student writing one. I read a very powerful "ethnography of one" by Foor et al. that I guess I conflated with auto-ethnography until Ramon and I started talking about writing one in earnest. While I am still fairly sure that I won't be writing one yet, it is an interesting question of what I would write about if I did write one.

I would write about my college experience. As an engineer and as a scientist, the macro-ethics of my work and the humanitarian impact of our discipline was constantly on my mind, but was eclipsed, suppressed by many mechanisms that form the norms of engineering. The "many" is a key word. It was the crushing work load, and the narrow band of acceptable social interaction. The treatment of complex topics in the classroom, and the general lack of acknowledgement of our human sides. What was engineering? And if it was a mechanistic productivity, why was it so well-oiled? When the gears were people, and when the product was so precise but blind to justice or the lack thereof.

I have done a little of this writing before. A piece of writing that inspires and resonates with me very much in this regard is the poem "I am Your Whistleblower" (previously called "I am Your Spy") by Mordechai Vanunu (http://www.vanunu.com/poems/mvpoemspy.html). That poem rests on top of all of the engineering studies literature that I have sought out to answer the question of the well-oiled engineering machine.

The Direction of My Writing

On a related note of what is and isn't the direction of my writing: talking with my advisor, she recommends seeking a deliberate overlap between my writing, my goals, and my research. Taking that advice to heart, I will be spending my writing time related to the main research project I am working on, but in an attempt to cultivate deep interest related to identity and social justice. I have the resources of data and research partners (not to mention funding), and I have the goal of challenging engineering assumptions and figuring out this machine. The direct connection is not there in my mind yet, but that overlap is also yet unexplored, so I will explore it. To that end, I have just purchased Wenger's "Communities of Practice" and will be reading it to write on it.

The other topics, like for instance, yesterday's bipartisanship, go to a place that my advisor and I think of as a "later file" or "later notebook". There is so much I would like to write and do, and not all of it makes sense to immediately focus on. That said, there will still be some of that writing, to keep up my morale, to keep my eyes wide and curious, but it will not be my focus.

Regardless of my focus, I feel that if I can keep up this reading and writing, I will be settling into a long lost intellectual groove. A creative space that is navigated with passion and impact and discovery. And I hope that this space can intersect with my longer charted groove, which I navigate by work ethic, by convenience, by stability.