“the medicine is worse than the disease”
week 10: degree (cushman and monberg)
good article.
i agree with the authors and their take on the value of responsible socially reflexive research. within academe, social reflexivity is especially important because it, ” [..] can inform and facilitate the dialogue and negotiations that take place in this intersection of competing perspectives,” (166). basically, including a perspective from the “other” point of view adds dimensions to scholarship that a solipsistic perspective on culture will exclude during research. “social reflexivity demands that the researcher and participants openly negotiate their interdependent relationships using dialogic interaction,” (172). in other words, a socially reflexive approach to research validates the experiences of groups on the periphery of academe while simultaneously highlighting the connectivity between that group and the group at the center of academic studies (i.e. whitey).
however, even the open-minded approach that social reflexivity offers can be taken to a detrimental degree when cultural informants are exoticzed. the example that cushman and monberg present on page 169 supports this idea. their discussion centers on denny taylor’s polyvocal ethnographies, which showcases cultural informants in museum-like exhibits that bring them out of their comfort zones and into the academic contact zone, which is a comfort zone for scholars. why is this problematic? well, when this happens, the “performed ethnographies” (169), become just that — performances rather than legitimate studies where academics gain the authority to inform on, or with, a cultural group via interconnected interaction with the cultural informants within their contact zones.
on going research conducted this way will probably lead to the misrepresentation of various cultures as the dominant group (i.e. whitey) interprets what they observe through uninformed lenses.
