Week 9 - Learning Cultural Models

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WEEK 9 - LEARNING CULTURAL MODELS

At this point in the term, you'll be wanting to try to refine your understanding of the things that people have been telling you. One thing to do, of course, is to continue to gather information so that you can correct the misimpressions that others may have given you before. But equally important is your effort to get a more detailed and refined sense of the issues that people have presented you with in general. One useful way to think about these things is in term of CULTURAL MODELS. These are detailed scenarios people have in thinking about the important aspects of their lives. They are generally shared by people of the same society, but of course individual views can vary. Your task is to try to build as strong a sense as you can for the cultural model. There are several ways you can go about this:

First, try to identify TOPICS that are of interest to your informants (and yourself). These topics can be such things as "romance," "attractiveness," "a good marriage," "Fijian character"–basically they are the general topics of significance in people's lives.

Pay attention to the CENTRAL THEMES or METAPHORS people use in talking about the topic. So, for example, a central theme in dealing with the topic of "yaqona" is "being addicted" to it or "lusting after" it. In other words, when people talk about yaqona, it is not long before they start talking about how such-and-such a person is addicted to it. Another them is "powerful effect compared to alcohol"–this one is particularly interesting because it seems to us so obviously incorrect. But several times we have had people tell us something like, "It may seem mild, but in the end its effect is stronger than alcohol's."

Related to this are CENTRAL NARRATIVES associated with the topic. Here we are thinking of stories people tend to tell about the topic. Collect as many of these stories as you can (or extract them from interview material) and think about WHAT POINT the person is making in telling the story. Usually, the point of the story will give you some good clues as to how the person wants to think about the topic.

There are various tools for extracting more complete information about these topics which you can try out. One is to COLLECT TERMS associated with a topic, such as slang terms, so, for example, you can ask someone to think of all the terms people use to refer to yaqona, terms such as "grog" and there may be others. Or there may be terms to describe the effects of yaqona, with colorful metaphors. This kind of information may be hard to collect, as your informants will keep thinking this is a test. But is still worth a try. Some topics work better than others. We had some good success in PNG with eliciting insults in the local language. It ended up being quite valuable for finding out about how people thought of the body.

Another tool is to offer OPEN-ENDED NARRATIVES about the topic, of your design, asking the informant to finish the story or to elaborate on the story. These can be difficult to make up, but it may well be worth a try. If you want to design some of these related to topics of interest to you, you might try them out among yourselves to see what your colleagues think, or you might try them out on a Fijian friend to see how they work. In this way you can refine them before you actually do your little study with them.

We are not going to require that you do any of these, but we do think it's a good idea to try to think in terms of getting a stronger sense of people's cultural models. This will also give you good things to say in your introductory paragraphs to different sections of your individual project, as these themes tend to emerge as central ones to discuss.

ASSIGNMENTS FORE WEEK 9:

Reading:

Review the second half of Body, Self, and Society

Becoming Tongan, selections to be announced in class

Writing:

turn in your revision of the economics chapter

turn in a detailed outline for what you envision will be in your independent project paper. This should include chapter-by-chapter descriptions of topics, with at least one paragraph for each chapter outlining the kinds of points and/or data you're planning to include in that chapter.

turn in chapters that you are behind on, depending on the student. For example, the revision of the social structure chapter, life cycle chapter, etc. We need to get everyone caught up on the ethnography so that you can focus squarely on your independent project on the home stretch.

turn in notes as usual, featuring more data on religion

Our next class meeting will be on Wednesday, November 3

Also, we want to announce that Naivuvuni is planning a lovo dinner for us on Friday, November 6. We're hoping that most of you will be able to come, for Megan, and on behalf of all of us. If you have a pressing event in the village to attend instead, that's fine. Otherwise, we'll be going around to pick you all up and then will bring you home after dinner.

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