According to the FieldWorking Self Excerpt, positioning is the act of including subjective responses of fieldwork experiences within one’s ethnographic writing. The researcher can take on three different types of positions: fixed, subjective and textual. Fixed positions are unchanged factors - such as age, class, gender, nationality and race - that affect how a fieldworker perceives his or her research. Subjective positions similarly have the ability to affect one’s research, but rather than being based on fixed factors are based on factors such as life history and personal experiences. Fixed and subjective positions often affect textual positions, which are the language choices used to represent what the researcher observes in his/her fieldwork. Positioning is important within ethnographic writing because it “admits the researcher’s presence as she goes about her fieldwork” (pg. 131).
Each of these positions can be observed in Ralph Cintron’s ethnography “A Boy and His Wall”. Cintron’s “fixed position” as an American Male can be displayed early in his ethnography through the following statement, “When I was with Valerio or members of his family, my feelings became shaped by theirs, curved like the curved doggedness of their stocky bodies” (99). Cintron, being non-Latino, views Latinos as individuals who tend to be built short and thick. Not only can Cintron’s fixed position be observed throughout his writings, but his subjective position is also frequently evident. For example, when discussing why Valerio hates the word chero Cintron says, “Valerio hated the word, and his animosity suggested, to me at least, personal encounters that had stung him” (pg. 100). Through this statement Cintron assumes that animosity stems from personal negative experiences, which insinuates that Cintron’s own negative life occurrences have generally led to feelings of aversion. Both Cintron’s fixed and subjective positions alter the language he chooses to use when describing the Latino culture, focusing on Velario. In my opinion, Cintron’s language – affected by his middle-to-upper class status and his personal experiences of lower class – makes his language somewhat condescending and stereotypical.
Question: While reading Cintron's article, did anyone else sense undertones of condescension? If so, do you believe it is possible to write about another culture without any ethnocentrism? What efforts can we make to avoid our own ethnocentricity from becoming apparent in our writing?
I agree with your views on Cintron and the way he characterizes the community he is writing about. The terminology he uses seems very bookish and therefore derogatory when he puts their colloquial words in quotations. Also, although the speech therapist explains that there are things that Valerio does not understand, I found that Cintron took his analysis too far, by further characterizing other parts of Valerio's life as things he did not quite grasp. I felt this went past analysis and was more in the territory of judgement.
ReplyDeleteYeah, when I was reading the article, I definitely thought there was condescending undertones within Cintron's writing. His textual positioning and the word choices he choses to use make the article seem like Cintron is judging. He kinda makes everything about Valerio sound like there's nothing going for him by talking about his life and all his learning problems. Because of this, I thought the article had a very sad and depressing tone to it.
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