Positioning is very important in writing an ethnography because the writer must understand how their subjective features are affecting the population being observed as well as the way in which the researcher observes the data. Understanding ones position also allows the researcher to "check in" on oneself in order to deduce how it is influencing the writing. In other words, in order for the researcher to write an effective ethnography, they must be self-conscious or aware of all the subjective cues that shape their arguments and their voice.
In Angels Town, it is hard to tell what the authors fixed position is (except that he is a male) while writing this piece since we are not given any information at the beginning regarding his race, age, class, etc... However, I feel like his subjective positioning is influenced extremely by his childhood experiences with schooling. For example on pg 101 he talks about how schooling has historically trained students with a fill-in-the-blank concept of reading but then complains when students full absorb that style. Perhaps this is a reflection of how he was treated as a young student. Furthermore, I think the author does a good job of recognizing that the time he is spending with Valerio's family is causing his "feelings to becomes shaped by theirs, curved like the curved doggedness of their stocky bodies". Here he is recognizing that the subjective experiences from his interactions with the family are influencing the way he interprets his data and writes his argument.
My question for the class is this: Do you guys think that the time Ralph spent with the Valerio family has caused him to empathize more with Valerio and his circumstances, as opposed to if he would have taken a complete outsiders perspective? What other aspects do you think have been influenced by Ralph's intimate contact with the Martinez family?
Yes I think the time he spent with the family helped him understand their background and empathize with Valerio’s circumstances. Another aspect that was influenced by his contact with the Martinez family is that he developed a new interpretation of scores on LD tests. If he had not been in close contact with the family, he would not have thought much of the children being in LD classes and whether or not the scores were “accurate.” His close proximity to their family helped him realize what they thought of being in LD classes, and that they might be in there because of their socioeconomic conditions and language barriers, instead of having an “actual” learning disability.
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