Re: A Motive to Celebrate

I have found an article that has helped put the problems that I previously presented into perspective. “Tainted Space: Representations of Injection Drug Users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside” by Andrew Woolford (2001) has answered many concerns I had when writing my last article about different aspects of representation in the downtown eastside. According to Woolford, stigmatization of the downtown eastside has lead to segregation which in turn has lead to a lack of moral responsibility about the downtown eastside. Since this article reflects on media representations of the downtown eastside from 1997 to 1999, I have made a mental history of what has probably lead to the more recent representations of as a retort to what was being depicted previously.

Woolford noticed that the media had been representing the downtown eastside as the source of the HIV/AIDS problem in Vancouver with the potential to spread it’s terminal illness to everyone else. He shows how terms such as skid row and references to the downtown eastside being dirty, decaying, a blight on the beauty of Vancouver and a metaphorical war zone (all respective sections of the paper) have removed the community from the rest of society (mentally and physically) and placed them outside of the moral space of the city. Moral responsibility had been removed when regarding the area because the IDUs (injections drug users) were seen to have chosen their life path and were a burden on the tax payers.

In light of the negative representation from the media and the general public, I have begun to understand why there was a shift to a happier and more beautiful downtown eastside in literature and the arts. Though this is purely speculative, it now seems more obvious that the celebration of the downtown eastside’s culture is so strong (and sometimes maybe too strong) in response to the negative light shed on the area in the past. In a way it is like people are saying, “this place has a very engaging history and people here should not be viewed as being so indecent!” In trying to show the good side of the downtown eastside, many things have been left out and disregarded; just as things had been from 1997 to 1999.

In my original post I had jumped head first into the middle of a discussion that I did not know existed. After reading this article, I have gained a better perspective on how this discussion is effecting the representations of a specific group of people to the rest of society.

Cited:

Woolford, Andrew (2001) “Tainted Space: Representations of injection drug Users and HIV/AIDS in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside”, B.C. Studies Vol. 129, 27-50

A Motive to Celebrate

One of my classes this semester is at my school’s downtown campus. My class sometimes touches on performances done about the downtown eastside of Vancouver (which is an ethnographer magnet to say the least). We read literature and watch certain community plays about the homelessness and poverty in the area. When class ends I step outside onto the border between the downtown eastside and the business community. It is interesting to be immediately immersed into the very marginalized area that I have just been studying in a comfortable seat while drinking coffee. The experience of what I have just talked about in class is different than the one that I experience when I leave. What does this say for other more remote Ethnographies? What can what we have ‘brought back’ to our society really tell us about the people that were studied?

These questions became quite apparent to me as I was waiting for the bus one evening after class. My classmates and I had just watched a play (on DVD) that emphasized the strong and silent history of the downtown eastside. This play showed a number of different stories and attitudes about the street that I was standing on while waiting for the bus. I felt proud to live in such an interesting and exciting place and was excited to get on the bus and watch the various happenings of the 100 block of East Hastings (this block was of particular interest because it contains the most open display of downtown eastside culture).

The feelings that I had were soon extinguished as a homeless man came up to me and asked for change. I gave him the money I had in my pocket and after a “wow, thanks man… I got to get a place to stay tonight,” he was gone. A part of me wanted to talk to him. I wanted to yell, “Hey, I was just studying you guys in class! You seem very interesting. I’d like to talk to you!” but I couldn’t. That would have been really awkward. I in turn started to feel awkward and out of place. I felt bad for celebrating this area while I watched the man limp down the street towards the hotel area of Hastings. I thought about all the hardships and life threatening episodes this man must have had. Those three dollars were just going to be spent and nothing was going to improve.

Carnegie Center on the 100 block of the Downtown eastside.

I then remembered all of the things I have seen on this street at night; the overdosed people lying face down on the sidewalk (and sometimes literally in the gutter); the women screaming as loud as they could, running through the streets with their skeletal and bruised bodies thrashing around on the cement like fish; the crowded ally ways concealing people with their backs turned to the street while shooting up; the riot gates and vacant rotting buildings; the stilleto short skirts smiling at passing cars; skeletons with numbed expressions and paper bags. The only celebration was in the literature.

I had been deceived. This was not so much a place of rich history and culture as it was a place of indescribable complexity with far more sadness than happiness. In these streets, the only happiness that comes late at night while it’s raining and people huddle in door alcoves is through the crafty penmanship of someone who has never had to beg for change in order to sleep in a rat infested and moldy hotel.

What does this say about the ethnographic things that I have read? The only reason why I realized this flaw in ethnography was because I walked on the same street that I studied. The ethnographers that have studied the downtown eastside are not ignorant to these things. There is a choice made to celebrate things that one studies and this might me done unjustly. This experience has further alienated me from my studies in anthropology because it is becoming ever-more obvious that the objectives of research have personal goals laden within them.

Discussion:

In all fairness, however, it is impossible to be able to completely understand and even more impossible to transcribe the exact culture of a specific area; especially as an outsider. what I was trying to express was the difficulty I am having with the misrepresentations of certain descriptions of culture. I still think that there is a very interesting and unique culture in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, but sometimes the representations of such are misleading because certain areas are stressed too much. This causes other important descriptions needed to grasp a culture (at a very basic level) to be left out.

This raises another question which is not uncommon in anthropology: Who is the researcher representing? If the researcher is representing his/her personal goals, some problems arise. Things that are of little purpose to a culture may be over represented when the researcher makes evaluations. This will unavoidably lead to a different theoretical framework and a skewed overall tone of the finished product. This differs from concentrating on a function or process in itself within the framework of the culture because the researcher then has established boundaries in which to work while inevitably resorting to a general overview of the culture to explain what is going on.

Conversely, if the people being studied are too able to shape the research, then other things are being left out. I think it was Phillip Bordeaux who said something like ‘That which comes without saying, goes without saying.’ That is to say, things that a group of people regard as obvious and unnecessary to discuss often don’t talk about them (yeah, it’s not that deep). Therefore, it is up to the researcher to find the values and connotations of such things. My experience may have something to do with this principle as well. The people being researched may be interprited any way the researcher chooses in the end.

I will be adding to this post as I research more about methods and representation.

The Process of Success

I had no idea that politics could be handled in such irresponsible way. I recently watched as 724 students out of around 750 raised their hands to impeach my university’s student president. He was accused of some sort of money scandal or another, along with a variety of other smaller complaints. I may sound like an ill-informed member of my student body when I speak of the reasons for impeachment and that is because I am.

The immediate “[removal] of the named individual from his or her position as a director,” (from an official pamphlet handout on the effects of the resolutions) was decided after a few months of slander (and rightfully named by the speaker who became humiliated when he mentioned this) in my school’s newspaper and speakers barging into classrooms to spit out their stories of why this person stole or how this person didn’t steal from the student society. I did not see one official document explaining what this person did, which is the reason I stood outside the voting area and watched as the vast majority launched their hands in the air at the first mention of “for impeachment!”

There were 8 abstaining, and I got the impression that there were many more silent abstainers in the crowed who voted yes in front of their peers. What kind of voting method is a hand raise anyways? My grandpa would tell me stories about how in communist Croatia there would be voting, but ‘there was always a guard looking over your shoulder to make sure you dropped your ballot in the Tito’s box.’ This is what this felt like; an overwhelming mass of outspoken and angry peers leading others to decide there and then whether or not they would be normal and with the majority.

The few people who had problems with the whole process were squelched and essentially brushed aside.

Now I’m confused. I guess I ought to be for wanting actual proof in a political situation.

So this is how politics operate!

An Introduction: My Social Disposition

As a general introduction to my self I will be concerned in matters of my social disposition in the interest of self reflexivity, which is of great importance to me. I will present my social position and a brief summary of how I got to where I am today. I feel that this is an important thing to write about as it affects my views on almost everything.

I am generally quite well off for a 20 year old student without a job. I have a good-sized apartment, a newer car and no student loans to worry about. I don’t have to worry about bills or money or anything of the like because it is all paid for by my mother and step-dad. When I write, I usually disregard this aspect of my life. I know I should not neglect the fact that I have relatively no worries in comparison to other people in my age group, but it is impossible to avoid as I have never had to experience ‘real life’ problems.

I was not always within what I would consider to be the lower upper class (higher than middle class to say the very least) of society. For the first eleven years of my life I lived in a suburb of Vancouver (North Delta) with my mom, who was unemployed, and my dad, who was (and still is) a real estate agent. At this time I had no concept of social position, so any term that I would attach to it would be purely in reflections sense. I had everything that I needed as a child; lots of Lego, books, and a computer. My parents divorced and almost a year later my mom became involved with a man who owned a Canada-wide wholesaling company, as well as a few restaurants in Maui. Meanwhile, I lived with my dad and grew up living in much comfort (except for the fact that he wouldn’t drive me anywhere so I had to walk over an hour every day to get to my elementary school). When I was fifteen we both moved in with my grandma in Vancouver after the untimely death of my grandfather. Two years after that we moved into a basement suit for rent.

I moved out of my dad’s house in the summer after graduating from high school, as I felt like I needed to be alone. I wanted to be my own man. Before this time I had not seen much financial support from my mother (who had married the man she started seeing a year after her divorce with my dad), except for an unworldly amount of Starbucks gift cards (I am very addicted to caffeine). Upon moving out I received the full benefits of having all of my expenses paid for as well as receiving spending money whenever I would ask for it. A year after I became ‘my own man,’ my mom bought me a car. I have recently moved to a bigger place that is closer to my school.

I am well off now. Indeed, I am sitting in the concert room at my step-dad’s house with a full-sized wood-finished grand piano sitting beside me while writing this blog. I have not had to struggle with the trials and tribulations of adult life as many of my friends have had to. I have had two jobs since moving out of my house. I had a great deal of fun at both of them, but went to work with the intentions of being able to leave at any time I wanted.

This puts me at a great disposition when writing about things. Sometimes I cannot fully understand, no matter how hard I try to fit things in my mind, why certain people do what they do. Things are easy for me; just ask for more money if I am hungry, if I want a new kettle, etc. Generally other people have to work for the luxuries of such things. This reflects on the actions which reflect on other actions which lead to different logic structures or something like that. The point I am trying to articulate here is, that because of my social position I may view trivial things as more than what they are, or things that are important as mundane and obviously a certain way.

Of course my life hasn’t been all roses as I have described here, and you will probably find this out upon reading more of my writing. I feel that mentioning my social disposition is important so that the reader can become more aware of why I think the way that I do. Understanding, after all, is an integral part of reading.

First Post

Hello,

I hope to make this blog into a place where I can write essays in reflection to my experiences. Much like my Previous blog, which I feel that I’ve grown out of, I want to give insight into thoughts on what I have done in order to make this an exciting party where millions of people come to learn musings of Sean. By millions I mean four, if I’m lucky. I hope this will be a good growing experience for me.

Thanks