Immigrants traversing the world around them through media consumption: an ethnographic vignette
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”- Socrates
During a 3-week journey through Colombia this summer, I began to truly grasp this argument in it’s entirety. I had never left the borders of the United States of America before. But, there I was 2,500 miles away from home with an imagined, extremely vague, concept of the country and people I would now interact with for the next few weeks.
To understand what I was seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and tasting I constantly had to inundate myself with media consumption of one kind or another. This was done to try to consistently grow in my knowledge of what I was experiencing, coupling past with present to become aware. Awareness is a very ambiguous term when it comes to broad elements like culture. That equivocal nature surrounding culture fits because of the true depth that culture represents in our lives. There is no beginning or end to culture, it is omni-present and can encompass basically anything.
On my journey, it occurred to me that what I was experiencing was a major component of life for many people that I interact with on a daily basis. Throughout life I have been around people who are immigrants from countries all over the world. When having conversations with them and understanding them as social beings I never thought about how they created their conceptualization of the U.S.
Developing my understanding these concepts, I will conduct ethnographic research with many of these people who I have come into contact with and try to gain insight as to how they developed their views. My base of research will be 5 individuals who all inhabit different spheres of life and originate from vastly different countries and cultures around the world.
Another basis of my research will be Dominic Boyer and his work described in the book The Life Informatic. Boyer describes the world of news making in modern society. His books coverage of news making in the modern technologically driven society gives a deep perspective of how people are interacting with their world, technologically and socially. These are two key components of interest in my ethnography. Boyer describes his approach as a, “ ‘multisited’ commentary with all the advantages and disadvantages multiple locatedness entails for establishing the kinds of intimate understanding upon which anthropological ethnography thrives.” (7) This exemplifies the depth which will be necessary for me to understand what I come across and to be able to give the most vivid depiction of my findings. Along with this, my research will focus heavily on first-hand interviews/ conversations with people to gain the most comprehensive overview of the issue on a personal level. In, The Life Informatic Boyer describes the importance of fieldwork, “anthropology justly prizes fieldwork as its core research practice.” (XV)
This work will give me insight into the imagined understanding that people that immigrate from outside of the United States have of our culture. It will help me understand what my imagined sense of American culture is as well, simultaneously. Is there a succinct understanding of culture, especially in America where we are such a melting pot of cultures and people?
I hope that this research can help me understand my experience better while also giving me a peak into the mind of those who must deal with this issue not just for 3 weeks at a time, but for a lifetime…
