Tala AlRaheb
Wikan and Kleinman & Kleinman
Unni Wikan, in her book, Managing Turbulent Hearts: A Balinese Formula for Living, and Arthur and Joan Kleinman, in their article, “Suffering and its Professional Transformation: Toward an Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience”, argue for the reevaluation of the traditional anthropological model. They propose this reassessment in response to the work of anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz and others, who argue for a “view of culture as webs woven into a coherent structure.” (Wikan, 12) Instead, all three scholars call for the privileging of the complex experiences of individuals as they occur in certain contexts, i.e. an anthropology/ethnography of experience. In critiquing Geertz’s methodology, Wikan writes, “Perhaps a direct approach to the lived significance of other people’s concerns should be granted as much primacy as those other approaches.” (xxiv) Additionally, she states that the aim of the book is to “try and grasp how people actually experience their lives, lives lived according to Balinese ideas, concepts, and conventions. How can we best develop a degree of understanding, a resonance, for the events that happen in Balinese worlds, the meanings they have, and the experiences they induce?” (xxiv) Furthermore, in arguing for an ethnography of experience, Kleinman and Kleinman highlight a question often missed in traditional anthropological models, which is: What is at stake for the individuals we are studying? They write, “It is our opinion that a contextual focus on experience-near categories for ethnography should begin with the defining characteristic of overbearing practical relevance in the processes and forms of experience.” (277) Wikan incorporates this question in her study of the Balinese, as well. Failing to incorporate individual experiences in the study of anthropology/ethnography runs the risk of “delegitimating” as well as “dehumanizing” those individuals it seeks to study (Kleinman&Kleinman, 276). Or as Wikan writes in reference to Suriati, “we would come close to reducing her to an automaton: a mere embodiment of “her culture.” (Wikan, 13)
In order to exemplify her point, Wikan begins her book with Suriati’s narrative. Suriati, who is suffering due to her boyfriend’s death, cries herself to sleep at night. Yet, when she leaves the house, “she put[s] on that sparkling shine” and shows no signs of grief (9). What is at stake if Suriati shows signs of grief in public? Suriati fears black magic, and she is also concerned with “health, morality, and self-value.” (Wikan, 50) Wikan, furthermore, stresses that Suriati (and Balinese individuals in general), utilize a process of feeling-thoughts. She writes, “feeling-thoughts are regarded as precisely the choice and responsibility of the person and her closest kin. They are moral acts, truly the structures through which one lives in the world.” (139) Later she states, “A Balinese ethnotheory of feeling-thoughts is thus sustained by (super)natural sanctions. The microcosm of the self is linked with the macrocosm of society and the (super)natural world through a construction of individual emotional expression as a force to shape health or undermine it, make or break social relations…” (144) Thus, feeling-thoughts functions as a type of therapy that helps them cope with their suffering and offers them a way of living. If Wikan was content with the observation of Suriati’s public life and neglected to consider her private life and feeling-thoughts, she would have fallen into the shortcomings of traditional anthropological understandings of Balinese practices as “aesthetic at base.” (192) Wikan, however, did not stumble over these traditional pitfalls. Rather, by paying attention to Suriati’s private life, Wikan was able to refute the “anthropological generalization that the Balinese do not cry at death.” (10)
Similarly, in reporting their case study in China, Kleinman and Kleinman, oppose the conclusion which regards, “emotions in Chinese society as irrelevant to the legitimation of the social order.” (288) To combat this, they examine the “Third Century text, Renwu zhi” which argues that one must balance emotion in the face of suffering in order to remain in control (288). Through an analysis of the text, they delve deeper into personal experiences of suffering and arrive at the conclusion that, “uncontrolled emotional displays threaten one’s position in a world of power.” (288) As we can see here, the anthropology and ethnography of experience shatter false ideas regarding culture and un-otherize cultures by explaining the process by which individuals choose to display emotion. It makes the individuals being studied more relatable and more human. Reading this book made me realize that I too will be engaging an anthropology and ethnography of experience in studying Christian women in a patriarchal Palestinian society. Therefore, I cannot help but wonder, can the study of experience become too individualistic? Does such a methodology have its limitations?
Nonetheless, through the study of experience, Wikan is able to go beyond the reach of the study of individuals within public spaces. In doing so, she is able to see into their private lives and spaces. Wikan, argues that there is a connection between the public and private spheres within Balinese culture that governs their behavior and makes them choose to “make [their] face look bright and clear.” (51) Without the anthropology of experience, one, like Geertz, would apply Western understanding of the public and private to Balinese culture. Therefore, she argues, “for the abandonment of the public/private dichotomy in the study of Bali and for a general restraint in using the pair as an analytical tool in any cross-cultural study.” (62) Wikan, thus, stresses the need to disregard the Western notion of public/private in order to understand people’s concerns and actions in a certain context and what is at stake for them. Furthermore, in studying both the public and private life, one arrives at the same conclusion that both Wikan and Kleinman come to, which is intersubjectivity. This means that while each experience is unique, it shares certain aspects with regard to feelings and concerns that make them generalizable to others. Wikan writes, “ The complex world of individual concerns, feelings, passions, and fears of Balinese, though private in the sense of being shielded from the scrutiny of strangers, is also essentially shared and intersubjective, hence cultural” (116) Kleinman and Kleinman take the idea of intersubjectivity a bit farther than Wikan and claim that “the intersubjective experience of suffering… is itself a defining characteristic of human conditions in all societies.” (280) Thus, while the anthropology/ ethnography of experience begins with the individuals, it also points to shared cultural and universal experiences.
Thus, the starting point for the scholars is experience. Wikan writes, “I argue, that we should start, methodologically, with people’s compelling concerns as they are evinced through their everyday life experiences.” (Wikan, 47) This necessitates a certain engagement with individuals within a culture that goes beyond participant observation. Wikan, instead, engages in interpersonal interactions and interviews in order to understand the various experiences of her subjects. She writes, “I tried as much as possible to be a friend and sympathetic listener to people. I never used a tape recorder and rarely took notes on the spot. Thus most of the conversations and observations I relate are rendered from memory.” (xxv) Reading this statement elicited several questions for me. What are the possible implications of becoming friends with those we are studying? Do we lose a certain objectivity when the lines between researcher and subject are blurred? Or do we gain more insight into the lives of the individuals we are studying when we take the researcher goggles off, and instead become a part of their daily lives? The second claim in Wikan’s statement was problematic for me. If these interviews were mostly “rendered from memory,” can we truly rely on her analysis of these conversations? Could she have forgotten or misremembered some of the conversations thus leading her to a different conclusion regarding Balinese society? Or did the fact that she was not using a tape recorder, generate a more natural flow of situations, since people did not feel watched by her?
With these questions being raised, however, the method of Wikan clearly achieves her aim of understanding how Balinese live their lives and what is at stake for them when they make their faces bright and clear. She un-others the Balinese to the Western audience and helps us connect with them in order to achieve her final aim which is resonance. She writes, “Resonance thus demands something of both author and reader: a joint effort at feeling-thought; a willingness on the part of both to engage with another world, life, or idea: to use one’s own life experience… to try to grasp the meanings…evoked in the meeting of an experiencing subject with the text; in the next instance, then, to share such understandings with others.” (269) Wikan prompts us to engage with the narratives in the book and understand why a project that begins with experience is essential. How did you interact with the stories and the text? Did you resonate?
** NOTE** Please feel free to also engage any other parts of the book or article you found intriguing in your comments. (Black magic, feeling-thoughts, the contributions of Wikan and Kleinman to medicine and Psychology)
Hi Tala, thank you for your precis and for highlighting the key methodological and analytical issues raised by our readings this week. I was also struck by Wikan’s emphasis on friendship, which we have talked about to some degree in class as well. What she really highlighted for me, though, was how unpredictable this aspect of her research seemed to be. Wikan was helpfully self-reflective about how deeply both her relationship with Suriati and the presence of her son, Kim, impacted her ability to engage with and learn about Balinese culture through direct engagement with the interpersonal experiences of the local people. She also highlighted how it was, in some ways, coincidental that she met and became close with Suriati at such a significant moment in the young woman’s life and how difficult the research was when Kim was not with her. What I noticed was how deeply the particularities of the researcher’s experience impact the data collected and the conclusions reached. Some of this appears to be within the researcher’s control, but much does not appear possible to pre-plan or coordinate. As someone who has done much of my research in the library or in scheduled interview sessions, I’m curious how an ethnographer might manage the uncontrollable aspects of their research and to what extent limitations or roadblocks to building relationship can be prevented from dramatically compromising their research.
Tala, thank you for your precis. I was wondering which method you found to be more useful, Geertz or Wikan? As Chelsea notes, I think there were some difficult challenges to overcome for Wikan that may have hindered her data collection, whereas Geertz seems to be more distant reducing the issues that Wikan had. I wonder what a mixed approach between the two would look like, and if it would do a better or worse job?
Tala, thank you for a very detailed analysis in your précis. As one who has never taken a anthropological or ethnography course until this one, please describe the general difference of approaches as you understand it. As I read your comments, you raise the question, “can the study of experience become too individualistic? Does such a methodology have its limitations? I wondered that too as I read the book. I almost got the feeling that Suriati was the case subject and the core questions of the entire book evolved around her are: can she show signs of grief in public, and what are the cultural and relationship consequences if she does. Does such a methodology have its limitations? The reader will decide.
Having read the rest of your précis, I believe you captured the dilemma for Wikan when you raised the following questions: What are the possible implications of becoming friends with those we are studying? Do we lose certain objectivity when the lines between researcher and subject are blurred? Or do we gain more insight into the lives of the individuals we are studying when we take the researcher goggles off, and instead become a part of their daily lives? Whatever the answer might be for your questions, the tension between the two questions produces a closer and clearer picture of the Christian women you will be studying in a patriarchal Palestinian Society.
Tala,
I thought this was a fantastic synthesis of the authors, and raised several questions that I think are equally important and exciting! I wanted to spend my response addressing a few of those questions as I understand them, and hopefully that can help kickstart (at least for me) some of the conversation for tomorrow!
1. “What are the possible implications of becoming friends with those we are studying? Do we lose a certain objectivity when the lines between researcher and subject are blurred? Or do we gain more insight into the lives of the individuals we are studying when we take the researcher goggles off, and instead become a part of their daily lives?”
I think this set of questions can be answered with both a weak formulation and a strong formulation.
The weak formulation of the response (although still somewhat strong for many who think of ethnography as a “social science” and not one of the humanities) is that objectivity is not the aim of ethnography. Objectivity is often in service of oppressive hierarchies who paint their perspectives with the patina of a faux objectivity (Lila Abu-Lughod, building off of Catharine MacKinnon, addresses this issue within the realm of feminist work and ethnography. If you haven’t read Lila Abu-Lughod, or the edited volume “Women Writing Culture,” it may be of interest to you for your research!). Instead, ethnography produces a kind of subjective knowledge born from relationships and the kinds of humanistic understanding that is transmitted from interpersonal interaction.
The strong formulation (and it’s quite strong) would be to suggest that actually all knowledge that has ever been had has only been encountered through being a part of daily life. There is no escaping what the Kleinmans consistently call the “flow” of life or experience–“We live in the flow of daily experience: we are intersubjective forms of memory and action” (293). Interpersonal relationship and the immersion into daily life, in this stronger understanding, is not an impediment to knowledge. It is actually the only way in which we can ever be or know at all.
Which raises the question–how then is “being ethnographically” any different than “being scientifically,” if each is immersed in the flow of experience? Unni Wikan’s account of the Balinese is tremendously different than Geertz’s in its orientation. Wikan orients herself toward the interior worlds that attend particular experiences, and the affective conditions underneath those experiences. Geertz interprets those experiences superficially and then assembles the superficial units into systems of meaning-making. But if everything is immersed in the flow of being, why should one orientation be preferred over another?
I think the answer is there in the Kleinmans’ initial account of the problem they’re trying to fix. Certain moments, “human conditions,” act as points of resistance in the flow of experience, and these points of resistance are valid subjects of ethnography (294). But I think that ethnography itself acts, in some ways, as a constant point of resistance and confrontation with the flow of experience. In the encounter with the other the flow of experience meets a pushback with the possibility of both difference and similarity.
An orientation such as Geertz’s would seem to miss this encounter, because it fails to actually engage with different experience. It encounters superficial units of human behavior that it explains as part of a model that is immensely familiar to its creator, failing to engage with the complex world navigated in the experience of Balinese people.
And so ethnography in Wikan and the Kleinman’s vision accomplishes something that Geertz’s vision can’t–not just living among the flow of experience, but, by means of encounter, enlarging our vision of the human condition within that flow.
2. “I cannot help but wonder, can the study of experience become too individualistic? Does such a methodology have its limitations?”
To cite the same line again that I cited above, “We live in the flow of daily experience: we are intersubjective forms of memory and action” (Kleinmans 293). I think what is particularly important here is their emphasis on the inersubjective element of existence. The ethnographic engagement with experience certainly can be individualistic. I’d argue that when a lot of ethnography fails, it fails because of an instrumentalization of the other by the ethnographer, an instrumentalization that results because the ethnographer fails to truly encounter the other and is more interested in some overarching narrative toward which the other can be used. In instrumentalizing the other, the other is also both objectified, and thus particularized. And this fundamentally creates a problem of individualism.
But it is not individualistic because it attends to experience. Experience, as understood here, is always something that exists at the intersection of the person, community, and world. Experience is an “intersubjective” phenomena. We live in complex worlds of different understanding, “ethnopsychological categories” being one way the Kleinmans use to characterize them. It is impossible to produce those worlds entirely individualistically, and so experience constitutes as much a navigation of a pre-existing reality as it does the creative play with meaning that Geertz envisions. That navigational element is always intersubjective, because we are never the sole author.
So, encountering a person’s experience is never just encountering a particular individual, but encountering an individual placed in community.
Thank you for your precis and emphasizing the arguments that Wikan and Kleinman made. I just want to point out two things. First, is it wise not to record or use tape record for this kind of ethnographical research? As you have motioned, I am also concerned about not getting all the information that has been provided by interviewee for ethnographic research. At the same time, I doubt that the researchers, especially if they are from totally different background, would grasp and understand Balinese’s lives in a way that Balinese would interpret. As researchers would analyze from non-Balinese perspective, in order to grasp their life and thoughts, it needs careful analysis. Does not having tape record make a huge difference / progress in analyzing interviewee’s story?
Second, your question, “Can the study of experience become too individualistic? Does such methodology have its limitations?” made me to go back to Wikan and have a close look on her claims again. However, to me, Wikan is emphasizing individuals’ experience and emotion not simply to shed light on individuals but to extend and highlight that the formation of culture of communities is affected and formed by individuals’ life, experience, and emotion. Her focus on individual experience is to void the generalization of culture.
Tala, thank you for your precis. It is interesting that both works in some sense seek to right a misunderstanding they perceive in the dominant or traditional analysis of the culture in the place they are researching. The Kleinman’s saw a different understanding of emotion in Chinese culture than scholars who dismissed personal emotional lives and in some sense the same issue was at place with Wikan in Bali. Although from our modern perspective to say anyone does not see themselves as in individual, but rather an empty player in a cultural drama- which Geertz asserts about the Balinese- seems improbable and almost like science fiction. I think it speaks to the cultural other-ing at play in some scholarship that an anthropology of experience seeks to undermine and re-cast. For example, you mentioned that Wikan challenges us to disregard our Western notions of the public/private dichotomy in order to better understand what is at stake for the Balinese. I would argue that she allows us to maintain that dichotomy while complicating how it is manifest. The sitting room is a space that can become public or private depending on who is present. I can easily relate to that concept. My living room is usually a private space but if my husband has friends over who I don’t know then a place where I usually an relaxed becomes a “public” space. Part of what I think underlies Wikan’s project is to make the context of the Balinese worldview comprehendible to an audience unfamiliar with it and in doing so allow for the actions of the Balinese, which previously were so othered by Geertz, to become understandable. I found the whole concept of black magic, and its seemingly ubiquitous role in Balinese culture, to be difficult to relate to. Yet I felt the whole time that by bringing concrete examples, like the teacher who was deemed mad after bringing his student to a graveyard at night (where they ALL saw the evil force), made me see how it is very real to the Balinese.
Your questions about the potential limiting nature of an ethnography of experience and Wikan’s lack of recorded interviews I think are both answered by the way in which she appears to have done her fieldwork. She completely immersed herself in the worldview of the Balinese. She addresses the limitation of having one primary interlocutor in the first chapter. She explains that she came to understand Sariati in relation to the many other people in her life. This way her research was both focused on one persons experience and yet situated in the larger environment in which she lives. When I did ethnographic research in college, I taped all my interviews. On the back side it was so much more work transcribing them that if I had just been alert for key points and perhaps jotted down afterward some salient points. The practical side of the methodology is also something to consider.