"Doing" Cultural Anthropology

Here I sit, "doing" anthropology in my plush-ish Lima living room. My roommate is watching blaringly loud cable television.

So Margaret Mead would have a cow if she knew the methodological fates of her beloved research. Now, we email contacts to make new contacts, and to check back with previous interviewees. Even the "lower middle-class" families I've interviewed have, and check, email. Participant observation with middle-class folks involves "hanging out" at grocery stores, churches, and riding in taxis.

This is obviously not to say that traditional cultural anthropology has died out. My peers still conduct research and glean comparable ethnographic perspectives by spending time in hard-to-get-to villages, all around the world. They speak languages we didn't know existed. They eat foreign foods and nod their heads and write stuff down and try not to offend. They do this in the name of broadening human perspectives, documenting diverse lifeways, and creating new paths toward communicating and respecting the seemingly infinite ways of being human.

But urban anthropology is gaining ground as a valid field of inquiry. As increasing numbers of people move from rural areas to urban areas in order to find jobs, anthropologists and other types of social researchers find themselves intrigued by the varied ways in which people adapt to and perceive new stimuli, new rules, forging or forsaking connections with old ways, in their new city homes.

Did I mention that Lima is loud? Disconcerting? Hellish? Heavenly, too? It's a veritable cacophony, not just of sights, but of smells and SOUNDS, stimulation. Will you EVER SHUT UP, Lima? Please? Five in the morning is a damned sacred time. It's quieter then. I'm not agoraphobic, but I'm assuredly not in a position to oversimplify Limeños' lived experiences. I cannot PROCESS these sounds yet.

The last time I lived in Lima, my apartment was situated on a quieter street.

Again my question here is a methodological one. Am I still "doing anthropology" from this chair? How about from this blog? With my bottled water, my land line, my shitty shitty cellphone? With this technology, I could mathematically quantify networks; I could (and do) observe and document gestures and gendered communication (I don't); I could Skype with highland medicinemen about the fate of Lima (hmm. Not for me). I could be harsh toward myself for the piecemeal nature of my work: three months here, three months there, when I can afford it, rather than leaving L.A. altogether for a year like "real" anthropologists do. The problem with coming and going is the delay in readjusting. Auditory culture shock, man. I tell you what.

As it stands, I'm making appointments with people who work in high-rise buildings, who work nine- to ten-hour days (without being paid for overtime, they frequently note), and who have kids to raise. They're busy, so sometimes I meet them for lunch so we can knock out the demographic survey aspect of my study so that when we actually meet in their homes, we can reduce the amount of time they need to take to do the filming and the open-ended interviews.

I wanted to conclude this entry with something powerfully cohesive. As of now, it's a rambling self-attempt to render my doctoral stab at research valid ... gulp.

Anthropologists are an insecure bunch. It's not that we're insecure in ourselves, per se, but that we're insecure in our discipline. It's hard to pronounce, it's hard to define, it's hard to DO. We're awesome at winging stuff. We're people people, yo.