Rediscovering place: experiences of a quadriplegic anthropologist
| Autor: | Gerald L. Gold |
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| Rok vydání: | 2003 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | The Canadian Geographer/Le G?ographe canadien. 47:467-479 |
| ISSN: | 1541-0064 0008-3658 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/j.0008-3658.2003.00036.x |
| Popis: | ********** Field research by anthropologists, geographers and sociologists, is both a methodology and a craft, and the boundary between art and science is not always finely drawn. This article deals with this ambiguity by focusing on fieldwork in virtual places in cyberspace. From a personal perspective, this focus is a major change in methodology, initially from a joint anthropological and geographic study of Cajun French-speaking communities in Louisiana (Louder and Wardell 1992) to sociological and anthropological research with Israeli immigrants in Toronto (Cohen and Gold 1997) and then to research with virtual support communities in cyberspace. A starting point is my doctoral fieldwork at the University of Minnesota, which incorporates a multi-focal notion of place using anthropology, social geography and sociology (Gold 1975, 1985). However, my identification of a French Canada (Gold and Tremblay 1973) later became controversial among Quebec scholars who began to reconsider the idea of a place called French Canada which, after the 1970s, they referred to as French Quebec or Quebec francais. As I gravitated towards the study of virtual communities, it became clear to me that the notion of place is often a conceptual and cultural idea. Fieldwork Using a Social Model of Disability: How Finding Archetypical Places in Cyberspace Became a Paradigm Shift In the present context, to which I will return, my field research demonstrates how the definition of place is culturally and politically influenced. However, my understanding of place changed dramatically after my encounter with disability, in 1988, which began to limit my physical ability to do fieldwork. Moreover, disability motivated me to become a political advocate within anthropology and I became interested in the creation of 'archetypical environments' for anthropologists. This led me to consider what factors in the research environment enhance fieldwork. Are these contingent on the physical wellness of the researcher, gender or age? These factors can influence conditions for undertaking fieldwork. Using a masculine metaphor, fieldwork often depends on the move to undermine the Herculean abilities of researchers to overcome physical or sensual barriers. This article discusses one alternative to these barriers by focusing on fieldwork in cyberspace as an alternative to conventional fieldwork. To do so, I draw on my own experiences as a fieldworker facing increasing disability. Reflecting on these experiences leads me to look for continuities with previous fieldwork and its influence on my interpretation of the virtual communities of the disabled. The focus on cyberspace was a paradigm shift which emphasises research in computer mediated environments as one way to study the spatial relationships in the barrier free environment of cyberspace. A growing number of studies focus on communities in cyberspace as places with 'fuzzy boundaries', that are based on text and metaphor and which use new conceptual approaches and methodologies in the study of place in cyberspace (Freidman 1998, Smith and Kollack 1999). Virtual Support Groups and Virtual Disability In the most recent phase of this research, I focus on the study of virtual support communities for arthritis, Crohn's-colitis, fibromyalgia, lupus and multiple sclerosis (Gold in press). In this fieldwork with disabled persons and their caregivers, a context that I refer to as 'virtual disability', I refer to virtual communities as communities with distinctive identities and participants who often refer to themselves as 'members'. These members have extensive 'weak' ties with a geographically dispersed community or weak network (Wellman and Gulia 1999) which contrasts with the 'strong' ties which are found more in face-to-face relationships. Cyberspace communities, most of which do not focus on disability, are characterised by an absence of social or physical barriers. … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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