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Research and the Search for Self

A recent article from the website, LiveScience, got me thinking about the challenge of researching issues related to diversity in academics. The title of the article is, “How Gay Uncles Pass Down Genes,” and while the subject of sexuality sounds like a typical article one would expect to see reviewed on a diversity blog, my interest is less on the topic of the article, but on the approach used by the researchers.

What I appreciate about the research reported in this article is that it is a truly multicultural and multidisciplinary work. Unlike most gender research we commonly see published, the social scientists mentioned in this article are not examining homosexuality in the US or other westernized societies; they are examining indigenous populations of Samoa. When I was studying anthropology, one of the most infuriating things about trying to have intellectual conversations with other grad students was the tendency of people studying other academic disciplines to extend research focused on aspects of American culture to the rest of the world. It became very obvious to me that the academic disciplines that tended to emphasize western cultural institutions generalized their research findings as “the way humans are” and “the way the world works.” When I would counter arguments with cultural examples from peoples in the South Pacific or Africa, I would be given the look that say, “who cares about those people.”

In relation to librarianship, when I help people with research, I have seen the same attitude. Students researching gender and sexuality don’t seem to be interested in the fa’afafine of Samoa or the hijra of India (let alone sexuality among other social animal). Most students researching witchcraft (always a popular topic) shun the great ethnographic information of witchcraft among the Azande or Yoruba. The patrons appear already to have formed their idea of what sexuality is or what witchcraft is and refuse material that is contrary to their mental ideal. It gets a bit frustrating trying to help someone with research when they have already arrived at the conclusion before they begin research.

I’ve thought about this a great deal, and I have formed two conclusions. One, in academia, even when we are researching subjects that seem directly related to diversity, we are still plagued with ethnocentrism. Spencer’s cultural evolutionary approach still permeates academia, and we are still waiting for the Other to “grow up” and be more like us. You may not see as many textbooks published with spectrums of cultural evolution based on skin color as you did in the 1800s and early 1900s, but there are other elements still present. It seems to be that biases associated with wealth, generation, and technology are most socially acceptable. I once heard a PoliSci grad student at the beginning of the Afghan conflict confidently argue that once the US introduced technology to the people, they would immediately give up in amazement and become more westernized. If he had spoken with a British accent and used the word "savage" a few times, I would had assumed I had travelled back in time.

The other conclusion is that many students as well as professional academics are concerned less with Humanity and more with Self. I once discussed the issue of low minority enrolment into social science programs with a multiracial friend of mine, and she felt that many minority students selected academic disciplines based on the search for their self and their heritage. Essentially, the perspective of heterosexual-male caucasionism is ingrained in us from our earliest school days, and college study really is our first opportunity to break free. The students and scholars tend to focus on those areas that appear to be directly related to some part of their identity. I can understand that and have lived it to some extent, but it still saddens me for the sake of others. When I research Other cultures and review the articles in serials that come through my office daily, I feel very fortunate that I am able to read about the Nuer and Yanomamo and learn from their cultures about my Self. I have always discovered more of my Self through the analysis of people that seem far different from me than I have reading about people who seem most apparently similar.

So, I have to admit that I tend to be slightly evangelical with the cross-cultural resources when assisting with research than the average patron probably wants me to be. If the patron simply is a detached researcher striving for objectivity, at least I am being thorough. If the patron is engaged in the search for Self, I am giving the opportunity to expand their understanding. I am gambling with the hope that the naivety and enthusiasm of youth will endure long enough to actually see a patron realize that the academic research of the Other is the same as the Self.

Logorrhea, Yet Failure to Communicate?

As I look at the campus newsletter, one part of my mind says, so what? No matter whether or not there are paper copies left in my mailbox, electronic copies left in my e-box, or someone is simply telling me in passing about events on campus, I’m usually a week late on the uptake. More and more of my life is subject to the “delete” button, and my “block mail from sender” list gets longer and longer, because I want my actual life—the activities, including work, I invest my mind in—to be meaningful. This becomes more imperative as I get older, and time gets shorter.
With regards to the word “diversity”, I remember giving a continuing education workshop on diversity for department alumni in 1989—around the time of Time magazine’s “Mosaic or Melting Pot?” cover, and before Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education (1991) heralded the right wing backlash against the gospel of what we then called “multicultural diversity.” A participant at the workshop was Jane Moore, one of our LIS program’s first African American graduates, then on the staff of the N. C. State Library. After I finished my admittedly gawky efforts at an introduction to the topic, Jane said, “You know, we’ve been hearing all this diversity stuff for years and years, and it’s more talk than anything. Why, what white people really want to know is how I use the hair products I use, and do I get sunburn? That's something we need to discuss person-to-person, not in a forum.” Jane and others of us of a certain age, especially those from the southern states where racial segregation was legalized, don’t really take diversity lightly, but we do want it to be more than a bureaucratic bookmark. The Presidency of Barak Obama is a watershed for many reasons, the most important of which is the fact that he was elected; likewise, the Greensboro Civil Rights Museum is much more than a Chamber of Commerce ploy.

Perhaps instead of So What? The title of this blog should be, So Why? Of course, we know why: open and civil communication is the only way to learn the point of view and experience The Other, whether that Other is differently pigmented, worships differently than I do, has different ideas than I do about what a spouse is, or identifies with a differently gendered body than the one they were born with. While the Library Diversity Committee overtly eschews politics as a raison d’être, it does so in order that politics and power, inevitably a part of any human discussion about almost anything, does not silence voices that ought to be heard. How can library employees, of which I am not really one, discuss ideas openly and not feel constrained by corporate culture? It grieves me to realize just how conservative we all are, or as someone mentioned yesterday, how passive aggressive. In the final analysis, whatever librarians say they believe, the reality of job security is close at hand. The question is, would that job security really be threatened if one disagreed with the majority, and said so--or if, for once, one did not adhere to a nineteenth century norm of "niceness?"

So many publications, the ones I delete and the ones I trash (electronic publication is still not ubiquitous on campus, even in 2010), contain what look like are reminders to faculty for their promotion and tenure files: there are their portraits from university publications, and there are necrotic paragraphs about their appointment to blah blah blah, or their grant award of sixty zillion dollars, as if they were a Ford dealership instead of teaching faculty. At times I feel I should leave campus in disgrace, for not keeping the pure faith in the credo that we do all that we do so that those who follow us will have to suffer at least as much as we did.

What I would hope that So What? could contribute is an ever expanding discussion of the many aspects of our lives that seem to alienate us from one another—technology is just one example—and what we can do to overcome those differences, as always with good faith, sincerity, and respect for one another’s feelings. I am recommending as supplemental reading in one of my classes Jarod Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (2010), an excerpt from which appeared in the current Harper's magazine. I just ordered a copy for the library. It offers refreshing reflections on "social networking" a la Web 2.0 that I wish everyone had time to read. Take a look at the Harper's excerpt, at the beginning of their "Readings" section, if you have time.