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The Question Meme Returns
Jan. 29th, 2004 10:01 amThese are from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anarqueso.
1. I don't know much about anthropology. Tell me about your focus.
Umm. I do sociocultural anthropology with a theoretical focus on symbolic/psychological anthropology and a geographical focus on Ecuadorian lowalnds. My dissertation is going to be about the role of ecotourism and cultural tourism in contemporary Quichua culture. I am interested in how the Quichua are a diasporic indigenous peoples, some of whom live in the Amazon basin around the Napo river, where I will be doing fieldwork.) their cultural identity constructed in the context of the ecotourism industry that has burgeoned in the last decade, that essentially packages and markets indigenous culture, transforming it from a traditional, historically sustained system of meaningful practices into a commodity the access to which is determined by economic privilege, rather than cultural belonding. Traditional knowledge and practices are exported into a context where they can be marketed, and as becomes reified as “authentically native” the very Quichua identity (a society characterized by small-scale settlements, self-sustinance through hunting and gathering and localized agriculture, and a rich, complex) becomes a commodity that can be traded on in the capitalist discourse shaped. I want to get at what it means for the Quichua, who have participated in the discourse of modernization ever since the first advent of the missionaries in the 1950s that their most “marketable” traits are the ones metonymic with "radical cultural alterity."
2. What kind of a Jew are you? (This is my pet question today.)
I am a half-Jew. In Orthodox terms, I am kind of a nobody, because on my mother's side of things (Tartar), paternity determines ethnic selfhood; on my dad's side (Jewish), obviously it's the other way around. Ethnically, I am 50/50, but I was raised Jewish and I am not extensively familiar with my Tartar roots. Part of it probably had to do with the fact that my Jewish side of the family was very intellectual; my grand-grandfather was a rabbi, various people in my family debated and wrote about theological scriptures, and there was just a lot more writing and transmitting culture going on. My mother's side of the family were, until my grandparents' generation, pretty much illiterate peasants from little villages in Central Asia. My mother, who had a passion for learning/intelligencia definitely reified that aspect of my father's family, and was really fascinated with the Jewish culture. Both Tartars and Jews were equally marginalized in Russia, so it wasn't some "exoticizing the minority" maneuver, she just really liked the culture, and so both of my parents, while not religious, raised me culturally Jewish.
3. What's your best tool for dealing with your slumlord?
I don't really have one. This month we are withholding rent until he fixes something he was supposed to fix in October, that he claims would take him no more than 2 hours to do. It's the 29th today, and it's not fixed, and we have not paid rent. Actually, I think my best tool for dealing with him is my roommate (notconstintinaJ.Mu), who is the slumlord's favorite.
4. What's the funniest thing you can think of right now?
Um. Well, I doubt it will be funny to you or anyone else. But I was talking to my dad yesterday, and I mentioned that it was my best friend's birthday, and he asked how old he turned, and I said 26, and he said "oh, like the 26 executed insurrectionists" (referring to some political SNAFU in Soviet History of the Building Communism variety") and I said, "yes, and in two years he will be 28, like the 28 soldiers that died defending Moscow but stopped the Nazi tanks from getting to the capital." I thought the whole exchange was really funny.
5. Do you have a phobia?
Yes. In descending order: I have a phobia of flying, and I have a selective phobia of darkness (darkness on the street, or night in and of itself does not scare me, but I can't sleep alone without a light on, and I can't be alone in a dark apartment without turning lights on in most of the rooms). I also have a phobia of pigeons.
If you want to be interviewed by me, leave me a comment, I will respond with your five questions, the answers to which you will post on your own livejournal.
anarqueso.1. I don't know much about anthropology. Tell me about your focus.
Umm. I do sociocultural anthropology with a theoretical focus on symbolic/psychological anthropology and a geographical focus on Ecuadorian lowalnds. My dissertation is going to be about the role of ecotourism and cultural tourism in contemporary Quichua culture. I am interested in how the Quichua are a diasporic indigenous peoples, some of whom live in the Amazon basin around the Napo river, where I will be doing fieldwork.) their cultural identity constructed in the context of the ecotourism industry that has burgeoned in the last decade, that essentially packages and markets indigenous culture, transforming it from a traditional, historically sustained system of meaningful practices into a commodity the access to which is determined by economic privilege, rather than cultural belonding. Traditional knowledge and practices are exported into a context where they can be marketed, and as becomes reified as “authentically native” the very Quichua identity (a society characterized by small-scale settlements, self-sustinance through hunting and gathering and localized agriculture, and a rich, complex) becomes a commodity that can be traded on in the capitalist discourse shaped. I want to get at what it means for the Quichua, who have participated in the discourse of modernization ever since the first advent of the missionaries in the 1950s that their most “marketable” traits are the ones metonymic with "radical cultural alterity."
2. What kind of a Jew are you? (This is my pet question today.)
I am a half-Jew. In Orthodox terms, I am kind of a nobody, because on my mother's side of things (Tartar), paternity determines ethnic selfhood; on my dad's side (Jewish), obviously it's the other way around. Ethnically, I am 50/50, but I was raised Jewish and I am not extensively familiar with my Tartar roots. Part of it probably had to do with the fact that my Jewish side of the family was very intellectual; my grand-grandfather was a rabbi, various people in my family debated and wrote about theological scriptures, and there was just a lot more writing and transmitting culture going on. My mother's side of the family were, until my grandparents' generation, pretty much illiterate peasants from little villages in Central Asia. My mother, who had a passion for learning/intelligencia definitely reified that aspect of my father's family, and was really fascinated with the Jewish culture. Both Tartars and Jews were equally marginalized in Russia, so it wasn't some "exoticizing the minority" maneuver, she just really liked the culture, and so both of my parents, while not religious, raised me culturally Jewish.
3. What's your best tool for dealing with your slumlord?
I don't really have one. This month we are withholding rent until he fixes something he was supposed to fix in October, that he claims would take him no more than 2 hours to do. It's the 29th today, and it's not fixed, and we have not paid rent. Actually, I think my best tool for dealing with him is my roommate (not
constintinaJ.Mu), who is the slumlord's favorite.4. What's the funniest thing you can think of right now?
Um. Well, I doubt it will be funny to you or anyone else. But I was talking to my dad yesterday, and I mentioned that it was my best friend's birthday, and he asked how old he turned, and I said 26, and he said "oh, like the 26 executed insurrectionists" (referring to some political SNAFU in Soviet History of the Building Communism variety") and I said, "yes, and in two years he will be 28, like the 28 soldiers that died defending Moscow but stopped the Nazi tanks from getting to the capital." I thought the whole exchange was really funny.
5. Do you have a phobia?
Yes. In descending order: I have a phobia of flying, and I have a selective phobia of darkness (darkness on the street, or night in and of itself does not scare me, but I can't sleep alone without a light on, and I can't be alone in a dark apartment without turning lights on in most of the rooms). I also have a phobia of pigeons.
If you want to be interviewed by me, leave me a comment, I will respond with your five questions, the answers to which you will post on your own livejournal.
