question about collaborative research

Because the spaces we look at for our research topics vary greatly, do we have to come up with one coherent conclusion of our findings?

Data Collection Progress

Gay Pride Festival
Jul 31st--Attended Manoeuvre (Gay Pride Chorus), Lutherese Kerk; Photographed the performance.
Aug 2nd—Attended Gay Pride Parade; Photographed and videotaped the event.
Aug 3rd—Attended “Geloog, Hoop en Liefde” open-air church service; Photographed the event; Interviewed with the organizer from Evengelische Roze Vieringen (ERV) and the organizer from Gay Business Amsterdam.
Aug 6th—Visited Gewoon Anders! (Just Different!) at the Cobra Museum, photographed the exhibition.

Kwakow Festival
Aug 9th – Attended the festival from 3pm to 7pm; interviewed the information stand staff; interviewed with one NGO worker at the cultural shop; had casual talks with participants of the festival; tasted traditional Surinamese food; photographed various food stands, dances, singing, religious ceremony, soccer match, and etc.

De Parade
Aug 11th – Attend De Parade theater festival; photographed the setting in the park; recorded show schedule; photographed show ads and theater tents.

Reflection of Public Scholarship

“The teaching and research that occur in university settings matter tremendously, but these institutions are the educational equivalent of gated communities. Not all people can or want to gain entrance. I am now committed to working with people on both sides of the gates.”
--David Domke, “The Something We Can Do”
“Public scholarship provides a field for experiment, in which introspection and invention can be carried out sociably and publicly, yielding new relationships, new knowledge and tangible public goods.”
--Julie Ellison, “The Humanities and the Public Soul”

From Ellison and Domke’s articles, I learned that public Scholarship is the relationship built between the academic world and the public masses. As profound as the former sounds, the link to inform the latter is missing or weak. One used to say that going from easy or difficult is hard, yet going from difficult to easy is even harder, and this is exactly what a public scholar supposes to accomplish.
As a first year undergraduate student, I picture myself in between the prestigious academia and the general public. I’m an audience to my professors and a learner of professional knowledge, yet at the same time I generate my own critiques and skills based on what I am taught in class. In terms of informing the public in an affective way, I could convey the knowledge I have obtained in an academic setting to the public in a less intensive complicated way, because I had to once access and unpack it myself. This skill is critical to our research project in three stages: understand the academic complex; use it to research the public and the city; present it to the public in an accessible way. by feedback to the public, the purpose of our research is fulfilled in a greater sense, for the public is where the ideas lay and the actions taken.

Read Me

Third Person:
As plain and casual as I look today, I’m pretty sure I would not be checked out by another person so closely as this, but here is goes:
Hmmm…another Asian girl: skinny, black hair, with a classical roundish small Chinese face. She hurries across the Red Square, wearing a green stripy shirt with a bow design tightened up in front of her chest. She might have had it for a while, but it looks comfy, attaching to her body closely instead of shaping it with a tight squeeze. On top of the shirt she covers her shoulder with a tiny piece of white top. It ends right below her chest and two pieces of draperies join each other in a knot hanging down. The draperies swing freely as she walks, adding a sense of lightness to her steps.
Jeans and flip-flops—the most popular combo in the early summer, she is certainly well informed of the summery-ness that’s spreading across the campus. Maybe she decides to preserve her excitement of warm weather just a little bit and first observe what everybody is up wearing. Yet she is not afraid to state her anxiety for the real summer to arrive by carrying a bright multi-blue beach bag on her right shoulder.
She pulls less than half of her hair back loosely, two pairs of earrings dangling in the threads of hair: the flower ones on the top have five different colors, small but shining; the silver ones at the bottom matching with the white. Her whole outfit is understated by the first look, yet some tiny details elevate her sensitivity to the season with a sense of subtlety.

First person:
After less than five hours of sleep, it’s Monday morning again. I rubbed my eyes as I climbed down my top bunk bed, peeking out the window. No sunshine today? That crosses off the option of dress or skirt. Better just save for later of the week when I’m thoroughly depressed by all the work piled up as the end of the quarter approaches. But it is summer indeed, maybe a nice shirt with jeans will do? I digged out one of my majorly-worn shirt from last year. It’s been lying in my closet for an entire year as a perfect reminder of some good times from last summer. The design is simple but cute: while and green strips with a bow tight in the front. Then I put on my jeans and a pair of flip-flops, usual and casual.
However, I overestimated the warm weather and was attacked by a breeze of chills right when I walked out of the dorm. After the first class, I went back to my room and put a piece of tiny sweater over the top and tights it ends into a knot. I like the way it flares out my body and tights it all together right below my chest. While the top totally covers up my summery-ness, my multi-blue colored beach bag fits me right into the sunshine. The out-spoken blues balance out my slightly faded green shirt, just like my flowery earrings add colors to the white top. Same as most Mondays, I dress up for no one else but myself, and casual and subtle is always the way to go!

Conceptual Framework

Since Flannery is not any more in the group, I had to narrow down the topic to how tourists interact with Amsterdam and the natives. To make the research question more approachable, I tried to break it down into more specific questions and filled with details. Here are the questions I have come up with so far:
l Where do the tourists go? What do they tend to do there (taking pictures, walking around, buying stuff?)
l What is their clothing like? How is it different from the natives and among themselves?
l What are their impressions of the city? What do they enjoy doing there and what are some dislikes?
l What might one group of tourists differ from another? (You can always tell Americans apart from other tourists. If that’s the case?)
Several conceptual frameworks can serve as the guide of conducting the research. One of them comes from Bal’s writing on “tradition and culture.” Tourists coming from all regions and countries experience “culture shock” as well as “culture clash” with Amsterdam and its people. Sometimes, tourists might find their values contradicting with the ones held in Amsterdam. For example, how would a Muslim woman perceive the prostitutes in the Red Light District? The clashes between what Amsterdam has to offer and what the tourists are willing to get out from it might not always be as correlative as they hope to be.
By employing Bal’s theatrical analysis on “tradition” and “culture”, I hope to gain a better understanding in terms of how people’s perception might be influenced by their cultural background and their values might be altered by the new cultural environment.

?Questions for Mieke Bal?

“Tradition” – Bal
1. Is tradition changed by people as much as people follow it? Take the example of the Dutch Zwarte Piet, do we choose to follow it or change it? How to follow or change it? For what purpose do we need to do so?

As I read through the article, I wonder why a tradition passed down for holiday ceremony is attacked by the same reason that it was inspired of. Does that necessarily mean out society has became more moralistic or just “politically correct” without explicitly calling white good and black evil. If we had to diminish such tradition, are we really destroying our cultural value or are we reforming it into a more modernized context?

Telling, Showing, Showing Off
2. Compare to the real world out there, Museum is a less natural setting in terms of its organization and purpose. What is some unavoidable unnaturalness about museums and how do they hinder/help to exhibit the nature of human society?

Bal talks about how nature is manifested with the space organizations and exhibition patterns in the museums. It helps me to see the connection between space and culture, but I wonder as unnatural as its purpose of showing it all at one place intends to be, how is a museum setting able to integrate past and present, human and animals, Asia and Europe all together with a flow of naturalness.

Forms of Mediums

In our research project, both visual and literate forms of medium will be used to present facts and ideas of our topic. In terms of producing images of the people and events, we could use camera and video taper to obtain a vivid visualization of our researching subjects. The drawback of merely using such recording method alone is an image often cannot tell the full story and its logic behind it. It is limited in one fragment moment of time, which might prevent us from viewing the entire picture of the event. Although videotape contains more fluidity in time than pictures, it also lacks explanation of why and how the events happen this way instead of in another.
Literate form of medium is definitely a good way to communicate ideas and discuss opinions. It is more subjective compare to visual presentation. We as researchers can interpret our observations and convert them into insights of our own. However, the downside of such device also lies under its subjectivity. The facts about the events and people might be distorted by the researchers’ own perspectives and therefore cause bias. Simply recording what happened and what they see without preference is psychological impossible; therefore, Literate form of medium might not be as accurate in presenting facts as visual images.
It is hard to classify what exactly type of audiences the research will be aiming towards, because there might be multiple groups of people who share the same interest in the research topic. Yet as far as research goes, its intended audience would be academic scholars who review the project in an intellectual context where the ideas and opinions are valued based on the facts and evidences you present. Therefore, both forms of mediums are great devices in communicating with the audience.

>Convolute<

In Walter Benjamin’s writing of idleness, he contradicts the leisure obtained by it with labor that is done by lower-class people. In this sense, Benjamin would extend his definition of idleness to travelling, and the people who can afford leisure and wandering are classified as travelers.
Another connection worth making is the “planning” and “adventure” involved in idling. Same as touring in a city, the continuous experience is built on a large scale by “multiple tradition”; whereas the “immediate experience” comes from an impulse of action. It is the predictableness and unexpectedness make idling a unique way of exploring the city. These is no absolute division between such two actions: “In this way there comes into play the peculiar configuration by dint of which long experience appears translated into the language of immediate experience.” This sounds like a natural yet intrinsic process. As an observer of tourists, it is crucial to understand how they are able to translate what they encounter into their own experience based on the knowledge or tradition of their own.
Last but not least, Benjamin talks the emotion impact on travelers. Solitude is one of the important aspects of idleness, for it allow individual to be embraced in empathy. It is the one last thing left when the tourist or traveler finishes its journey and all the excitements brought by “immediate experience” have now become part of the continuous experience and submerge into the past. Such emotion can sometimes be best reflected through travelling journals, in which one can obtain the fullest impression of the tourists, who were once privileged to idle among the city.

My Convolute--- Tourism
1. “The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.”
Work cited:
Goodman, Paul. "Proverbia-Tourism". Vicent Jordà. 2001-2008
.

2. Tourists who come from different cultural background might have different percepectives about Amsterdam, and its impacts on the tourists might vary as well. By observing their interactions with the city and its people, one can obtain various flavors for each and every aspect of experiences there.

3. “For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very center of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.”
Baudelaire, Charles. "Baudelaire, Charles quote". QuatationsBook. .

Relfections for preliminary research purposals

All three group presented on Monday did a very good job demonstrating their preliminary research topics and the methods they chose to conduct their research. There are many stimulating points that I share great interest in, but there are also some concerns that caught my attention in terms of how the research will be carried out in a practical way.

Squatting Group:
Interesting points—
l Definition: occupying an abandoned space with a bed, a table, and a chair
l Legibility: It is legal in Netherlands but barely anywhere else in the world.
l Population make-up: not necessarily homeless people. There are plenty of young people up for such experience.
Concerns:
Squatting activities are taken in a fairly private space and people who squat might not want to be targeted. Besides it’s hard not to take a private approach without a sense of invasion. I suggest the group to obtain some kind of consent before doing any observation or interview.

Religion/Community Group
Interesting points—
l getting information from brochures/pamphlets
l Interview church leaders
l Attending church services

Concerns:
The impression I get from this topic is broad. The group did a good job with the researching methods and so, yet there seems to be a lot to be covered under such a broad topic. Also, religious is intensely associated with multiculturalism and tolerance, which have caused many conflicts within Dutch society. Therefore, the group might want to extra careful when carrying out their researching methods, such as interviewing church leaders.

Health Group:
Interesting points
l Diverging interest: Different from the other two groups’ topics, which majorly focus on arts and culture, this group diverge their interests with a blend of science.
l Relating healthcare to women issue and Muslim culture
Concerns:
Healthcare practice is a professional field that involves much bureaucracy and knowledge of health science. It is even more challenging to investigate within another cultural contest, since many of the resources can only be obtained in Dutch. One way to overcome such anticipated problem might be looking up for the resources as much as possible and contacting local agency for assistance and access.

More on Research Layout~

During our last class, Flannery and I took some time to shape our research interests into greater details. As divergent as our interests appeared in the beginning, we actually managed to find many common grounds for our research, such as the places we shall take our observations, the people who would like to interview, or the hypothesis we anticipate in every aspect of our research.
Now, let’s get down to the specific questions we need to address in this blog post:

Research Question:
How the tourists and the natives differ within the tourism industry and how would the natives differ among themselves and how would the tourists differ among themselves?

Research methods:
* Observation of the space and people

The aspects of tourists/natives we are interested in observing:
Appearances
Behaviors
Interaction with space and people
Interaction with each other/ counterparts

* Interview
The way that we approach the interviews shall be through casual conversations, because this way people are more comfortable in expressing their thoughts and experiences. There are primarily two aspects we take interests in --- the accents and misconceptions about Amsterdam.
Accents can tell a great deal about what background does the person identifies with. Not only the tourists have foreign accents when they speak Dutch or English, the Dutch might have distinct accents among themselves depending on which part of Netherlands they live in. Therefore, distinguishing the accents among people will allow us to have a clear grasp of the tourists and native’s backgrounds and later we can focus on how their backgrounds affect their experiences in A’dam.
Another interesting fact is misconceptions. By asking what the tourists or the native think about Amsterdam, we could acquire a variety of opinions on a specific subject. For example, what does the Red Light District mean to you? By receiving different or even contradictory responses, we can go on to analyze how those misconceptions are formed and whether they should be eliminated.

*Participation
Participation in the tourists and the natives’ activities might be another intimated way to connect with their experiences. For example, we are planning to take a boat cruise and try to view the surrounding from tourists’ perspectives. We could also engage in the natives’ work within the tourism industry and try to a better understanding of how the tourism business in Amsterdam is run.
Hotspots we might set out feet on J:
Canals
Red district
Museums
Art museum
Boat tours
Coffee shops
Transportation
Restaurants
Souvenir stores

feet feet feet

After talked to my partner Flannery, we decided that feet of the tourists and natives would a proper synecdoche for the people that we will be observing in Amsterdam. It would be interesting to look from the angle of one’ feet: What kind of shoes is he wearing? What kind of socks is he wearing? How does he walk? When and where does he stop? Then we can infer from these questions about whether they are natives or tourists, how familiar they are to the places. We could also question about their feet-y behaviors: what is the pace they walk at? Are they in a hurry or at leisure? Where do they usually stop at?
Feet are something that is often being neglected when it comes to study of people. Yet I take interest in them because they tell about people’s purpose of travelling as well as the destination and pace of their travelling. People on-the-go are the ones who bring vibrancy and liveliness to the city of Amsterdam.

Tourism v. Localism

Some online manifestations of topics on “tourism v. localism”
I started off by just googling the word “Amsterdam”, and a list of websites contain tourist information appeared on the top of the search page. Just to get a sense of how prevalent tourism is in Amsterdam as to other places, I then googled “Washington” and the official state government page showed on the top of the page rather than anything else. Here are some websites that contains tremendous amount of traveling necessities for tourists in Amsterdam:
http://www.iamsterdam.com/
This is the City of Amsterdam official English portal for Amsterdam’s international visitor. The website covers from architecture to people, economy to night life, outlining a fairly comprehensive guide for probably first-time visitors to Amsterdam.
One thing that draws my attention to this website is its claim of “I amsterdam”. It sends out a welcoming gesture to tourists from all over the world as an embodiment of its provocative multiculturalism. It stands on a middle ground between tourists and the locals by not taking much of the perspectives of either side. Instead, it serves as an informative tool that tells the tourists what Amsterdam has to offer and what not to miss, so they can later go on to find out on their own.
The next term I tried googling was “Amsterdam travel jounal/blog”. My incentive was to get more personal on each individual traveler’s experience in Amsterdam, because different people might get so many dissimilar flavors out of one city, which I think is the very charm of Amsterdam. The results turned out in abundance. Such as:
http://www.igougo.com/travelcontent/JournalDestination.aspx?LocationID=502&Mode=0
http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Netherlands/North-Holland/Amsterdam/
They are people who just went to Amsterdam or are still there with various cultural and national backgrounds. Regardless they have something in common-they are all tourists. Their blogs/journals are flooded with photos, videos, and detailed descriptions of places in Amsterdam, yet adding their own experiences and perspectives, none of the entries are the even remotely the same.
In term of the research, I definitely think that reading those blog entries is a preview of what Amsterdam is like in tourists’ eyes. This would give me some directions and expectations when I have a chance to interview or take observations in Amsterdam.
The last piece of information I needs was local’s views on Amsterdam as well as their perception of the tourists. However, it was not easy-accessed as I have imagined. I tried different approaches such as “local’s views of Amsterdam”, “live in Amsterdam”, “Dutch in Amsterdam”, “Amsterdamer”, and etc. Most of them do not reveal much of the local lifestyle and happenings but rather are the ad-hocs for traveling suggestions.
I tried to search for “misconceptions about Amsterdam”. Although there were not a whole lot of articles focusing on such topic specifically, there are fragments of facts and opinions addressing the misconceptions about the city. Most of them seem to be very interesting by comparing and contrasting what is assumed and what is really going on. One example of the websites would be:
http://www.amsterdamhotelstours.com/
Finally, I attempted “life in Amsterdam”, from where I found some interesting stories of the new comers adjusting to the city while they explore the locals’ ways to settle down instead of just come and go. It takes more than just a map and a bike to get to know the city on the surface. What those people are going through is to make themselves as a part of Amsterdam.
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/kantors_abroad/amsterdam/1050357600/tpod.html
This blog entry is written by someone who is trying to adjust life in Amsterdam for the first couple weeks. While he seems to be caught up with a ton of tasks he is supposed to accomplish for settling down, he draws out some miscellaneous distinction of how the Dutch act locally in some occasions. His writings send out a clue to me about what’s the mainstream Amsterdam culture could be like and maybe how easy or hard it is to fit in the Dutch society.

Kids on the Playground

Field side setting: Playground, Greenlake Park
There are various playing facilities, such as swings, slides, sand, climbers, playhouses, and etc. all the facilities are in fairly close distance to each other in one open area. The ground is paved with beach sand to prevent the kids from hurting themselves when falling or tripping.
Around the playground, there are all kinds of trees forming shades on the edge of the playing area. People who might be the kids’ parents are barbecuing under the shades near the picnic tables. Some young couples are resting on the grass hills under the sun. They are farther away from the playground.
The weather is warm with slight morning breeze. The Cherry trees around the playground are in full blossom. Overall, the playground appears to be a little overcrowded yet not overwhelming, conveying a sense of liveliness in the spring.

Research question:
What gender roles do young children portray in appearance/social action?

Researching method:
By employing Zelisal’s physical traces and environmental behavior, we sat on the bench near the playground and took observations of Merry-go-around, swings, and other playing facilities. We watched the kids play and their interaction with the people around them for approximately for about half hour and had discovered several appearance traces as well as social traces that would help us how gender role apply in such setting.

The results of analysis
One of the first things came to my eyes was that the boys, especially the older ones, tend to push the merry-go-around way more that the girls so. Although most time the job is still done by the adults dutifully, the boys try to push around just for fun. They also enjoy themselves by pushing while standing on the edge and the merry-go-around, seeming to challenge themselves with such tasks and fewer girls are seen attempting doing.
Another thing we observed was the clothing. I noticed that, despite all types of clothes the children wore at the playground, the typical color trend for boys and girls still prevail. For boys, almost all of them wore blue and something resembling that; whereas girls were dressed up with more and brighter colors with pink or red as the base color. Such phenomenon led us to believe that the gender roles are portrayed by children in many ways and certainly in the way of dressing. Dressing in two major different colors according their genders is definitely an important factor that builds up their self-image in later future, their gender roles are therefore constructed and confirmed at such an early stage.
Yet children themselves are less realization in such distinction in their gender roles than their parents are. One of major influences on roles of genders comes from the parents. At the playground, we observed that fathers outnumbered mothers greatly when pushing the swings for their kids. Also, father or male adults tend to push the merry-go-around, whereas the mothers or females adults stand by and watch the kids. This distribution of duties at the playground reflects the gender roles in adult society. Growing up with their parents’ gender role and learning from their behaviors, the young children will be aware of their gender roles and learn to fulfill them according the society’s needs and perceptions.
In conclusion, through our observations of the kids and their parents at the playground, I feel it is justify saying that the gender roles play a significant part in everyday life of young children, and they learn to portray the roles from the influences of both social and appearance actions.

Amsterdam research interests/preliminary questions:
For now, as vibrant and liberal as the city appears to be, I am leaning towards finding more about how the city functions with so many different perspectives and how are the people able to tolerate (more like enjoy though) the dissimilarities in every corner of the city. Who benefits from such liberalism and who suffers from it? What needs to be changed or kept to maintain the city in a harmonic tone if not the same?