Park and write: Wanderingscribe
I have just come across this story on the
BBC of a homeless women who
blogs about the experience of living in her car in London:
“It's a tale of our time - about being cut off from everything around you but still connected to people thousands of miles away.
A woman becomes homeless, so she gets into her car and drives. Except she has nowhere to go - so she stays in the car, with all her possessions heaped in the back, sleeping in the front seats, parking in secluded streets.
For eight months, no one notices her, because she makes sure she looks respectable, taking showers and even ironing her clothes in public places like hospitals. She has made herself invisible, out of touch from anyone she used to know - and keeping separate from other homeless people.
But this is the information age. And even though she doesn't speak to anyone, she can go into a library where she can access the internet and write an online journal - a homelessness blog - which she uses to describe all her unspoken experiences and feelings.”
An interesting and moving commentary on our times, how someone can be so isolated and yet so connected!
First Impressions – Harrogate International Centre – BSA Conference
Well I attended the
BSA conference this weekend at the Harrogate International Centre. I enjoyed the conference (more on my paper later), and Harrogate is still as beautiful as ever, but I’m not sure about the venue:
To me it seemed far too large for the number of people there, so it had an empty feel to it. The décor is super stainless steel and chrome with black glass walls around a curving central foyer that is probably 2-300 feet across. It felt a long way when I was trying to find the ladies! My problem here was the black glass walls – and my rapidly deteriorating eyesight. The signs were actually very small – and quite high up – when I finally found my way in I couldn’t find my way out again. Mind you all the staff I had dealings with were very helpful.
I particularly missed the opportunity to sit and have a proper lunch at proper tables – usually an excellent opportunity to eat, drink, renew old acquaintances and make new ones. BUT…all we had were bag meals and a few chairs and tables around the foyer and exhibition area. As a result people dispersed all over to find somewhere comfortable to sit and eat.
Because I went alone it was quite an isolating experience.
Conferences, Presenting Papers and Ideas
I chose not to attend the ASA conference at Keele this year – instead I am going to the BSA conference at Harrogate this weekend. In part this is because I felt the need to network among sociologists as well as anthropologists, see
John McCreery’s comments:"the paper is a unwelcome obligation in the way of the real business of meetings, which is networking and job-hunting"
So reading How To Present A Paper - or Can Anthropologists Talk? had me nodding along in agreement at the wishlist:
- Tell us your main points and findings before you start ("I will show that the Earth is flat" or so) and sum up your paper at the end.
- Tell us why we should listen to you. Yes, it's interesting that you have studied childhood in India. But why can your research be interesting or relevant for us who are not specialists in your field? What new insights does your paper give regarding general theories in anthropology and being a human?
- 20 minutes are 20 minutes. Stop talking when your time is over. Check the length of your presentation a few days before the conference, so that you avoid struggling with the introduction few minutes before your time is over.
- Don't read from your paper. Talk to and with your audience! By reading from your paper you show disrespect to your audience. This is the most important point and can't be stressed enough. Many speakers at conferences and seminars don't bother presenting their papers in a way that is understandable for us who came to listen.
I’ve had some experience of conference presentations in various parts of the world with poor presentations that had left me bored and fidgety. Hence I have already decided NOT to write a paper, but instead, to write a presentation around my topic ‘Order and Disorder in the Virtual City’. My intention is that a fruitful and enlightening dialogue will emerge that will clarify some of my ideas – resulting in a more rounded and polished paper that will address some important issues. (Well that’s the plan, but more on execution and outcome next week!).
Internet Nicknames – what’s in a name?
Using nicknames on the Internet is an interesting phenomenon that prompts all kinds of questions: who uses a nickname? Why is a particular nickname chosen? and how? Using a nickname often prompts others to suppose that the user wishes to be anonymous. According to Danet (1996) choosing an Internet nickname achieves two different goals:
- To hide the real identity
- To draw attention to the virtual identity
However, my own research suggests that Danet's explanation is no longer appropriate. Internet nicknames are highly personal and are often used all over the internet. Think about it: according to google 'Denise Carter' generates at least 4,860,000 hits (yes I am number one!). Yet my internet nickname 'dutypigeon' generates only 23 (and I am numbers 1-22!). by following these 'dutypigeon' links it is possible to identify me as Denise Carter. I am more traceable through my Internet nickname than through my formal given name.
Nicknames, being chosen rather than given by parents are often thought to reflect a person's identity better than the formal name. Yet, is this true of Internet nicknames? My own nickname, 'dutypigeon' was deliberately chosen to reflect neither age, sex, nor gender (this was a result of my early reading around the Internet and identity, particularly Turkle and Stone). It was also part of an old family joke in that when answering the telephone we would often say things like: 'Trafalgar Square, dutypigeon speaking', or, 'War department, do you want to fight?'.
Choosing an internet nickname is more serious a task than one might realise, and the names chosen tend to fall into various categories, fourteen of which were identified by Bechar-Israeli (1995). Asking other people why they chose their Internet nickname has revealed some strange reasons, especially when newbies are trying to logon to a new website and often have to think of a name really quickly (I know of one person who could only think of their dog's name!). the important thing to remember as a cyberethnographer is that anonymity does not mean an absence of identity, and so nicknames still need changing to protect my respndants. Indeed, trying to decide what to change weird and wonderful nicknames to, when writing up my research was a more difficult task than I had envisaged!
Meeting one of my virtual community members face-to-face caused much merriment among my family when I was addressed as dutypigeon. Thinking about it later, it was really no different from being called mum by my son or Denise by my beloved. After all - I inhabit many cages.
UPDATE 27/05/06
I have recently put a sitemeter on my blog and have been extremely interested to learn that this is the most popular comment - and is generally arrived at after using a search engine with the term 'Internet Nicknames'. I have often thought about writing a paper on Internet nicknames as I have a lot of data from my research, if anyone is interested and would love to discuss it please leave a comment.
Deep Thought – Is there life after a PhD?
Many of you will have been there… studying for your PhD in Anthropology, examining ‘other’ cultures and generally having deep and meaningful discussions about life, the universe and everything. Problematically the answer to what to do afterwards is not easy to find – although hopefully the problem can be solved in a shorter timespan than Deep Thought managed – here are some ‘Shallow Thoughts’ of what to do after your PhD in Anthropology:
1. Reaquaint yourself with your family, but be especially careful of partners/spouses/parents/friends/children who have aged five years since you last noticed them.
2. Get drunk (it doesn’t matter if you have a headache tomorrow)
3. Clean the fridge
4. Clean the house
5. Have sex (not necessarily in this order!)
6. Read something NOT published by Routledge, Sage, Berg, etc.
7. Change your email signature to include ‘Dr’
8. Switch the computer off before 5pm every day
9. Lie in every Sunday
10. Give birthday/christmas presents WITHOUT lecturing people about ‘gift exchange’
11. Move textbooks into spare bedroom
12. Accidentally leave your latest published article on the coffee table for when your mother-in-law visits
