ask me anything

Is it possible to be objective when you are trying to tell someone else’s story? Can you even do such a thing? When you begin to relate someone else’s perspective through a narrative developed by yourself, is it not subjected to the distortions that are a result of your internalizing what you observe and understand as being true? And if it isn’t possible, then what is research really for? Is it an exercise in simply getting your perspective validated by an academy and for them alone?

I face these questions on a regular basis, echoing through my mind like some clarion call, arguably also referred to as a reality check. While this may simply be a state of nature when you are trying to relate what you’ve seen to someone else, I’m doing it now as a member of the academy. The academy. The academy presents guidelines, and a methodology to do research. It is rooted in principles; principles of how to interact with people, of ethics, of constructs rooted in classical treatises of how someone who is not part of a community is to interact with that community. It is well documented. And I am certainly not the first to wonder what my role in such an exercise is. But the problem I face now is acute, because it is my life. It is how I am spending my waking hours. I spend my time in a village. I am trying to document their perceptions to an outside audience. I don’t even know who the audience is. They’re out there somewhere. I meet them sometimes. Sometimes I like them. Other times I wish I could just run away. Sometimes I am the audience. I’m an attentive audience when I want to be. If I can interact without feeling the intruder in any case.

I am not sure where these lines are drawn. I am not sure when and where one can state that my role is delineated as such. But I feel as though the academy has drawn these lines for me. And I know that I had little to do with that exercise. So I don’t really feel bound to it. If anything, I want to redefine these lines. I don’t think that they apply in reality. I don’t think that they actually mean anything to anyone in the syntax utilized because it’s often impenetrable. Perhaps that is the construct, and perhaps it is strategic. If you can’t understand what I am saying, then you can’t engage with me, because you don’t speak the language or appreciate the terms of reference. Or perhaps that is more a function of my being trained as an economist and my colleagues appearing to take pleasure in being incomprehensible. Econometrica is good bathroom reading.

I wonder what would happen if someone outside the academy started to ask the questions that would form the basis of a research objective. I wonder what would happen if the academy suddenly became irrelevant, much as record labels and becoming irrelevant, or publishing houses…if you can’t centralize processes, then you can’t award the exercise of validation to a select few. And if you can’t limit that process to a select few, then the rules that determine what is and is not acceptable no longer apply. And then, it appears, most anything can get out there and appreciated by anyone. Or so it seems in any case.

I don’t want to ask the questions. I don’t want to have to decide who should read this stuff. I don’t want to have to isolate my approach of how I go about understanding a series of events according to a predetermined methodology based on someone elses experiences.

I want to be able to approach situations based on what those I am interacting with perceive. I want to be able to facilitate a process rather than direct it. I don’t really want to have to tell anyone what to do, or how to do it, or how to say it, or where to say it. I just don’t. I’m not comfortable in that role. I’m not comfortable in telling others how to approach the unknown. I want to be able to allow others the opportunity to do so according to their own terms.

But perhaps I am deluded. Perhaps I am too caught up in ideologues myself. Perhaps I am indeed part of the academy that I am trying to address disparagingly. Perhaps.

Anything worth having in life is not going to come easy. When you are trying to do things that may go in directions that you simply cannot imagine, it’s a problem. Or at least it can be at times.

Maybe I’m just not comfortable in this position.

The problem is this:

I am not comfortable asking people questions about things they know better than I do. I am especially not comfortable asking these questions when I can’t even speak their language. And so I try to remedy this by getting them to ask the questions for me. But they are probably only asking the questions that they think I want to hear being asked.