ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF POSITIONING AND SUBJECTIVITY

Ethnographic Studies of Positioning and Subjectivity:

Narcotraffickers, Taiwanese Brides, Angry Loggers, School Troublemakers

Ethos volume 32, number 2, June 2004

Edited by Dorothy Holland and Kevin Leander

This issue presents rich ethnographic and historical accounts of social positioning and its consequences for senses of self.  The articles trace the social positioning of persons and groups through a range of cultural media, including everyday talk, narratives, songs, and spatial arrangements, and consider how these media become integral to subjectivity. The studies address a means by which power relations shape a person’s self (or a group’s identity) through acts that distinguish and treat the person as gendered, raced, classed or other sorts of subjects.  The issue also shows how specific regimes of power/knowledge create such social categories as the “genius”, “troubled youth,” or “attractive women” within fields of practice that shape the sense of self of those to whom they are applied.   The particular case studies range from the cultural personae of the narcotrafficker admired by youth along the U.S-Mexico border, the labeling of students in public school classrooms in the United States, the cultivation of wedding poses in Taiwanese bridal salons, the emotional insults of environmental conflicts, to the effects of "genius" as a social category.  Along with the introductory overview, the cases extend the theoretical understanding of these self-forming processes by attending to historical specificity, which locates and relativizes positioning to particular times and places.  The issue encourages awareness of these myriad points and timescales of positioning and thus diversifies our apprehension of self-fashioning.  It is a welcome collection for graduate level classes that treat theoretical developments in the study of subjectivity and social life, and for undergraduate and graduate classes that would benefit from engaging case studies of collective self-fashioning. 

What are the hybrid social/psychological entities created by episodes of positioning? How might we describe these entities in the course of practice?  In the introduction, Holland and Leander use the metaphor of “lamination” to describe these hybrids, which acquire their strength through layering (as with cymbals). They consider how episodes of positioning consist of layers, including traces in the minds and bodies of participants, surviving artifacts (photographs, feelings), and social resources and categories of identity. Studies in the collection investigate how a person, event, category and artifact can “thicken” over time, including, for instance, how a girl becomes identified as a “troublemaker” in school in the case of Stanton Wortham’s article, or how the category “genius” becomes historically produced in piece by Ray McDermott.

The unique particulars of these studies, as well as their collective impact, arguing for a hybrid social/psychological approach to identity and positioning, make this collection especially unique and timely as an educational resource. For undergraduates taking courses in psychology, anthropology, sociology, or cultural studies, the volume provides an accessible collection of high interest cases. For example, Bonnie Adrian, in her article, offers an in-depth ethnographic account of bridal photography in Taiwan, allowing us to see the painstaking physical and emotional work of coaxing a glowing bride and an adoring groom from the photographic subjects. Through Adrian's analyses we understand the many “diffuse positionings” that bring brides and grooms to the salon and their various stances toward the experience. In addition to the detailed analysis of the cases, which permit undergraduates to visualize and understand social/psychological dynamics at work, reading across the collection as a set would enable advanced undergraduates to consider how scholars from different traditions (e.g., cultural studies, history, anthropology) might create conceptual and theoretical strands among their research endeavors. This quality of the volume would certainly apply to graduate courses as well.  Each of these chapters, accessible yet engaging complex situations, functions as an invitation for students to explore the dialogue of social/psychological life.