Dear Mike and everybody-
I think that the notion of "appropriateness" is a reifying notion. It
tacitly replaces the issues of social relations and especially power for an
object of behavior. Let me give an example.
A few weeks ago, when I was at the Latin American Community Center (LACC)
and work with kids (mainly preadolescent boys of Puerto-Rican and Mexican
decent) on movie making an incident took place. An LACC officer yelled and
chased a boy (let's call him Felipe) was running directly to me with a video
camera. When Felipe reached me he pushed the video camera into my hands. The
LACC officer demanded the videotape being destroyed because as she claimed
Felipe videotaped local drug dealers outside of LACC which was obviously
very dangerous activity. She wanted the tape to be destroyed because the
drug dealers might come for it. She yelled at Felipe how INAPPROPRIATE his
videotape was. She did not give any opportunity for Felipe to talk so he
burst in tears and left the computer room. The site coordinator joined us
and agreed to take responsibility for destroying the tape. The LACC officer
told me how goofy, immature, and irresponsible Felipe is. I have heard this
about Felipe from many LACC officers and from LACC kids but in my multi-year
experience with Felipe I have a different view of him. I saw him as very
helpful, respectful, affectionate, funny (with sense of humor), and caring
person who when pushed could strike back.
In a few days the videotape reemerged because the site coordinator forgot to
erase it. Several kids and I watched videos together that the kids produced
when we saw Felipe's video footage. Felipe did not videotape drug dealers
instead he was playfully teasing older boys from LACC (I knew them well)
calling them crackheads as if they dealing drugs outside the LACC porch.
Then the tape suddenly was interrupted by yelling and chase. It was clear
that Felipe was trying to do a provocative but rather safe video. I found
Felipe and invited to edit the video. Now it is the most popular video at
LACC (you can watch it and provide your comments at
http://www.web-ed.udel.edu/m-club/oscar, the video is called "Fake
crackheades")
"Appropriateness" focuses on person's acts (and guilt) while actually it is
about disruption of social relations. It makes relations invisible and thus
uncritical. It makes participants focus on Felipe's act and on his guilt
rather than of a fact that fear of violence rips the community apart (which
his video in part is about).
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 12:48 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: enculturation, ethnemes, pedagogy, research
>
> Eugene-- I would relate appropriation to the concepts of passing and
> management in Goffman. That is, one learns to behave in a manner that
> is appropriate to the group/idioculture one is participating in. A wide
> range of behaviors can be so considered and it is clearly an ongoing,
> negotiated, interactional process. Not a fixed state. Since no two
> members of any group share 100% of its cultural resources, how could
> it be a static state, in principle?
> mike
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