Author: MAYS

by Jyoti Gupta
Department of Sociology
University of Delhi, India 

In the present time, no matter where and by which means you travel the world, advertisements are a common sight. From big hoardings to wall paintings, cosmetics to agricultural products and photographs to line drawings, advertisements are widespread across genres, product categories and styles. Some are made for promotional purposes while some aim to inform people on the evils in society or are made to create a ‘social good’. It is the latter that I delve into for my research project, in order to find answers to the following two questions- first, why and how a particular category of advertisements acquires the prefix ‘social’? Second, does the production process of these advertisements contribute to the making of this category? Following the work of Bruno Latour, I wish to explore the making of this ‘social’ category.

The government of India launches many public service campaigns but I specifically focus on the health sector for many reasons. First of all, the majority of public service campaigns belong to this sector, so it provides me with many options. Secondly, the idea of social advertisement was first introduced in the health sector. Thirdly, my own work experience in the rural health sector was thought to be helpful in understanding the conceptualization and making of the advertisements. I have followed two government run national programmes where one offers a great range of advertisements across media and other persuades audience via emotional engagements by referring to culture and relationships. Certainly a lot depends on the issue/subject regarding which change is to be promoted. Approach for a malaria and HIV campaign would differ.

The reason behind focusing on rural India is that the most of these programmes are primarily made for the rural illiterate or semi-literate population. Consequently, visuals become the primary object of the study. However, it is not the final visual advertisement that I am looking at, but the processes of making these visuals under selected health programmes. For example one of the visuals on how malaria spreads via mosquito bite, there was no other way for the creators but to show mosquito bite, the entering of parasite and its interaction with the blood cells and so on. The visuals on the interaction were however made very simplistically but still not very easy to decipher for the targeted population. Certain suggestions were taken during the pre-test but the visuals remain moreover the same. This presented me with one of the most challenging aspect in visual communication that is the distinct nature of ‘visual literacy’. All of us are exposed to a particular gamut of visuals signs and representations. Creators who are mostly aware of universal systems of education and have read science text books drew it accordingly but in all possible simplistic way. However, the population that have not completed secondary education or have not ever gone to school perhaps would draw the same very differently. Nevertheless one cannot go with the local version of representation realizing that there were still be differences across populations. This leaves us with a question: there can be a universal system of representation for scientific or technical information even for the illiterate population?

Earlier researches in the discipline of sociology and anthropology have studied commercial advertisements but none have researched the ‘process of making’. For example, William Mazzarella’s research at LINTAS, one of the leading advertisement agencies, mainly dealt with the global and political issues that guided the making of profit oriented product advertisements. My research argues that it is different to study something as a process, given the uncertainty of the upcoming steps to be followed. Even when plans are made in advance, those are never executed completely. Some decisions are made on the spot, some delayed and bring something totally unexpected into the picture; and some issues are left undecided. The study of a finished product in some way provides a well formed and guided narrative to be read and talked about. It omits or at least reduces the other possible stories. For a sociologist, studying a process is like unfolding a story that provides a rich understanding of where individual, organizational, political and global interests provide support or interfere. Studying an ongoing process provides me with the opportunity to understand the production process in detail while observing both micro and macro level ideologies existing from the perspective of the practitioners working in this sector. This study argues that any decision that is taken or any gap that exists between planning and execution in the making of an advertisement does not necessarily follow a pattern. Many factors contribute to this process such as timeline, hierarchy, goodwill, future plans and availability of resources, to name a few. While my focus was to observe the work process, I figured out that the concept of creativity is considerably an issue for discussion. As an example, I was asked in one of the field sites if I was creative. I did not know what to say in answer and another employee said yes she makes very good paintings and cards. Creative here was seen in relation to having an eye for aesthetics and art skills, however my respondents saw it differently e.g. an advertising professional explained creativity as thinking out of the box while still maintaining simplicity, for an art designer it was knowing one’s medium well enough to mould it accordingly, and for a creative head working for social development creativity had to do with reaching the target audience straight and simple. The understanding of creativity amongst the creators of social ads was a mixture of how it was seen by the advertisement and the art world.

Almost all big advertisement agencies now have a separate wing for making this specialized set of advertisements aiming at a ‘social good’. These are called social advertisements because of their focus on welfare subjects and persuasion to bring change into their target audiences’ habits and choices. However, the government and non-governmental organizations prefer to put these media under the categories of social messaging, social communication, IEC (Information, Education and Communication) and BCC (Behaviour Change Communication) material; advertisements for them is just one section of a whole range of communication media. For most of the public service campaigns or programmes, each of these organizations contributes in some way or the other. Therefore, all of them became informants in my research. I also found that there is not one clear definition of social advertisement that is agreed upon by all actors working in the sector. They all follow different ideologies and concepts but a common thread that connects them all is the idea of doing ‘wellbeing’ for the society; disseminating ideas (and services) for a ‘social good’ and ‘not for profit’. Nevertheless, one can always ask where a soap advertisement would fall; it is to earn profit from selling of soap while the product will also promote hygiene. Hence, I too end with not having a clear cut differentiation of the two. Perhaps it is equal to defining morality.

by Tanja Ahlin
Doctoral candidate at UvA & ITM
University of Barcelona 

Several months ago I attended a lecture given by a respected senior anthropologist, who was lecturing a class of Master students on the (non)ethical practices in anthropological research. Among his many thought-provoking stories from the field, one particularly resonated with me. The lecturer told of a time when he was trying to find a way to interview a person who had been difficult to reach. After several failed attempts, our lecturer – then a young fieldworker – heard that his potential informant was coming into town in order to attend a funeral of a beloved family member. Upon his arrival, the lecturer approached the grieving man and asked for a meeting. The man refused repeatedly, but our lecturer was persistent. He realized that the time was perhaps not the most appropriate, but he felt strongly that this particular man would provide a valuable piece of information to the mosaic of his ethnographic story. “I was lucky,” concluded our lecturer proudly, “the man was kind to me and he finally consented.”

As an ethnographer, what would you do in such a situation?

I know what I did. During my second fieldwork period in India in 2015, I found myself in a similar circumstance. An informant of mine had just travelled for about twenty-four hours from her home in USA to visit her parents in India. Previously I had only spoken to her on the phone, but I had met and interviewed her parents in person. She came to India because her father was burdened with a serious health condition and I knew the times were rough for the family. At the same time, this lady was one of my most interesting informants and it would be highly valuable for me to see her. So when I learnt of her arrival, I called her and asked for a meeting, but also let her know that the final decision was hers. A few days later I called her again to ask how she had decided. She did not pick up at my first try and I decided to let it go.

Should I regret not having been more persistent? I don’t think so, but I can only answer this with confidence having learnt from previous experiences. This was not the first time I was confronted with a situation like this. Earlier in my fieldwork, I had fallen into the trap of anxiety and on more than one occasion I caught myself thinking ‘What if I am missing out on something? Am I giving up too quickly? Should I ask for more than that?’ So it happened that I called my informants one too many times, sat on their sofa for a bit too long, asked too impatiently and too many questions. As Bianca Brijnath writes in her reflection of her field methods, “In what I did (or did not do), I was not always who I like to think I am” (Brijnath 2015: 32).

However, with time I realized the importance of being kind – not only towards my informants, but also towards myself. I learnt not to pressure myself and the people I was working with, as that only resulted in subsequent feelings of uneasiness, I guess for us all. I came to understand that no information gathered in this way is more valuable than treating everyone involved with respect to their time, needs and, most significantly, their feelings.

How did I get things done then? How did I make sure all the pieces of information would come together? Indeed by being persistent, but in quite a different way than our lecturer from the beginning of this post, or me during my early research experiences. With time in the field I realized that it is the most important, and the most challenging, to persist in being kind to yourself and to the people around you when you seem to have hit a dead-end with your research, or when you feel you are running out of time. The most valuable discoveries I made were not attained by being pushy, but by immediately attending to serendipities – those precious moments of falling into the rabbit hole when you least expect it. Finally, I realized that the story I was after unfolded in all its depth not through force, but through patience, and it was worth the wait.

 

Reference

Brijnath, B. (2014). Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India (Vol. 2). Berghahn Books.

by Dominik Arkuszewski
Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology Institute,
Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland)

As Thomas Csordas proposed, the body can be seen as the existential ground of culture (1997). This postulate can have a revolutionary impact on social sciences. Why? The answer lies somewhere between the lived body, embodiment paradigm and senses, particularly the senses of touch (Paterson 2007). As Andrew Strathern claimed turning embodiment in the direction of the senses can lead to the revitalization of ethnography itself (1996: 200). David Howes coined the term “sensual revolution” to elaborate a ” ideological move that has turned the tables and recovered a full-bodied understanding of culture and experience” (Pink 2009: 21) Sarah Pink puts her two pennyworth in saying that “it is generally agreed that it is time to attend to the senses” (Pink 2009: 19).

We, as anthropologists, can theorize the body in terms of having/being dialectic or switch to focus on what bodies can do and become. Phenomenologists’ notion of a lived body reveals it as alive, dynamic field of sensations, not just a flesh object deferred to brains’ control. The ambiguity of human experience, where we mutually are and possess the body still remains in the spotlight. The notion of practices, which enable and coordinate the doing, can add a transformative factor to the above. This transformation can be put into healing terms and affect all the body’s dispositions.

The following text describes a research related to my MA thesis. I had spent nearly three years with the taijiquan/qigong group in Poznan, Poland. Firstly as a participant and later as a researcher. The formal orientation of the group is rather vague. In other words, many different approaches (spiritual, martial, psychological or therapeutical) can be distinguished in the course of subsequent meetings. The group was created five years ago by one man and includes 8 to 16 people depending on the season. During the classes taijiquan is presented in a fairly classical way while qigong exercises are taught using more unconventional methods, as I will elaborate below.

The word “qigong” has two elements. Qi stands for life energy, which pervades both, the human body and the world. Gong means to perfectly master something, which usually takes a long period of time and arduous work. There are many sets of qigong exercises but their application is more important. In a nutshell, qigong is addressed to daily life, but “from the inside”. What does it mean? It is all about reflexivity.

One can be reflexive towards one’s thoughts and different inner phenomena: emotions, affects, drives and perceptions, all reflected in one’s body in a variety of sensations. The ability to perceive our own thoughts and sensations as internal phenomena belies the division between subject and object. What is perceived by who after all? If we look deeper, the answer turns out to be problematic. Nevertheless, every person will have a personal answer. People can adapt available propositions or create their own ones. It usually occurs automatically through socialization. It seems to be necessary to everyday functioning, including relating to emotions and other sensations, organizing thoughts (assigned or rejected from the self) and much more.

What does this have to do with qigong? In my research I found that the answer lies in the body and embodiment. Touch can provide a different kind(s) of knowledge, which are relevant in relation to self and others. When it comes to touch multiple senses can be distinguished, such as external touch but also proprioception, kinesthesia or vestibular sense. These senses are turned inward and play a crucial role in qigong practice and experience. They are responsible for the orientation in space, relating to other bodies and objects, keeping balance while being still and in-move and feeling the body from the inside. And this feature deserves special attention. As Elisabeth Hsu claimed, the peculiarity of a touch and the tactile (both inner and outer) experience is based on a dialectical relationality; “whatever you touch, touches you too” (Hsu 2000:252). Does it include relationship with ourselves too? And what does it have in common with reflexivity?

I will examine these questions by examples taken from the meetings of the group. However, the elementary theoretical elaboration seems to be necessary before. Nowadays we see a spread of manifold psychophysical techniques taken from, mostly, Eastern religions or designed by psychologists, coaches, gurus and other specialists. Robert Sharf’s term “spiritual technologies” can be partly useful in this context. Spiritual technologies are “intended to induce a transformative experience of the absolute in the mind of the practitioner.” (1998: 271). Obviously, modern techniques are not only devoted to religious sphere, but also to control stress, enhance productivity, improve male-female relationships, be more mindful or focused and many more. Thus, therapeutic culture offers a customer various techniques like visualisation, imagination, body scan, numerous meditation practices, conscious breathing and so on. For example, Olivia F. Cabane, coach famous for working with chief executives proposes not just books on charisma, but also workbooks including exercises and practices. The common factor underlying all above is a discovery of possibility to manipulate mental and somatic dispositions by given methods to be practised on one’s own. Thanks to reflexivity one can now confront one’s dispositions and affect them. Mind or habitus appears to be plastic.

Cohen (1985), drawing from Lienhardt (1961) work titled “Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka” gives an interesting example of this kind of activity taken from tribal environment. The “thuic” practice described in the chapter “Control of Experience” involves a “knotting a tuft of grass to indicate that the one who makes the knot hopes and intends to contrive some kind of constriction or delay” (1961: 282). As Lienhardt puts it, “the man who ties such a knot has made an external, physical representation of a well-formed mental intention” (1961: 283). In other words, the purpose of this practice is to manipulate mental intentions by parts of the physical world in “purely technical” (282) way.

Below I would like to give a few examples of such techniques trained in my group. Many of them are based on everyday actions, but taken “from the inside” as I put it above. Every exercise illustrates many dispositions engaged into the task, which need to be trained simultaneously. For example, participants train the ability to release from their hand being gripped by their wrist while staying aware of the surrounding sensory stimuli. The attempt to release oneself needs to be effortless, relaxed and thoughtless. Instead of grappling with exercise’s partner one needs to divert attention away from the hand and distract it on the perceptual environment. In order to emphasize the felt difference between focus and distraction one shifts from one to another repetitively. When the attention gets attached to the hand (which makes slipping out impossible), one can focus on some detail in environment or think about something neutral. All these tricks are used to gain control over focus in order to get detached from the conflictious sense of situation. Getting attached to somebody or something is crucial here and many exercises are directed to break the attachment.

Another exercise involves two people staring at each other in silence. The “active” partner is trying to generate acceptance towards the “passive” one just by looking. Afterwards the acceptation changes to aversion. Is it possible to feel this shift without any facial signs? This exercise has another variation, which is approaching someone and handshaking (with negative or positive attitude alternately). One needs to stay conscious to both the other person’s signals and one’s own personal bodily sensations at the same time. This exercise creates sort of testing environment where particular reactions can be vividly experienced. The somatic aspect of previously described exercises cannot be underestimated. The ability to “train” certain dispositions becomes possible thanks to being embodied in the sense of generating feeling straight “from” the body.

Following exercises explore the body-in-move and a very important factor namely subject-object dialectic. One of them includes being directed by other person in means of automatic following the sensed stimuli. Both partners in exercise feel level of sensitivity; an active partner is feeling the receptivity of a passive one who is searching for the deepest possible surrender. In order to feel the difference a passive partner is withstanding an active one from time to time. Hence both partners can feel the alternation of flow, resistance and everything in-between. There are also manifold exercises consisting of taijiquan techniques, like tui shou, cloud hands and complex classical forms where participant can feel rich sensations accompanying mere moving. During in-depth interviews participants were describing the above in a creative and diversified way. They were reporting the sense of electricity or density in/of the air, tingling, rubbing or flowing. All of these sensations are experienceable thanks to the very subtle cognitive switch where body is perceived passively, like “something else than me”. This way of experiencing is revealing both inner and outer sensations occurring on skin, inside of the body, between the hands and concomitant with interhuman interactions. For instance, moving the hand close to other’s body and holding it just above it (without touching) or waving a hand intuitively around one’s body generates a variety of subtle sensations which are integral part of relation itself. Anyone interested in further investigations on this topic should get familiar with Csordas’ notion of “somatic modes of attention”. One of the exercises practiced regularly on the meetings involves asking for guidance, searching for the sense of being led and doing everything in accordance of this feeling. The state concerned shares many similarities with possession, participants are trying to find a feeling that their body conducts rather than obeys to their will. I suppose that most of these exercises are founded on the subject-object or active-passive alternation occurring within the experience. Training of switching between these two may give a flexibility resulting in a deeper feeling of body at ease, release of tensions and sense of relaxation lasting for a few days. Thanks to the embodiment daily usage of the body feels pleasant and smooth, while mere moves appear to be interesting. What is more, body is felt like empty inside and suffused with energy wandering through. The tensions appear to be crucial; their intensity determines the depth of embodiment. As I personally noticed, the experience of being at ease with one’s body is much more vivid than even the strongest tensions. One can live highly charged with tensions and not feel it till the moment of a strong release. In other words, tensions are “slipping into” the body, which results in disembodiment. According to other participants, tensions are returning in the period of two-four days, armouring the body with tensions. When I am asking for the reason they return, the participants say: it’s lack of acceptance and attachment.

Many medical anthropologists already pointed out the troublesomeness of Cartesian dualism. The split between the body and the mind is deeply grounded in social theory, but can we say the same about its “social applicability”? In other words, how the body-mind dualism affects relations to self, others and the environment? T. Csordas elaborated the term “embodiment” as a theoretical paradigm. In my research it can also be understood as a healing process of restoring the relation with one’s body. By classical anthropological methodology (participant observation, in-depth interview) and unconventional tool excerpted from the sensory anthropology (sensory enhancement training),I investigate the process of embodiment and ask about its possible benefits and transformations which eventually could refer to the whole society.

References

Csordas Th.[ed.] 1997 Embodiment and Experience. The Existential Ground of Culture and Self Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Csordas Th., 1993, Somatic modes of attention. Cultural Anthropology 8:2.

Cohen A.P. 1985, Wspólnoty znaczeń, w: M. Kempny, E. Nowicka (ed.), Badanie kultury. Elementy teorii antropologicznej.

Hsu E., 2000, Towards a science of touch, part I: Chinese pulse diagnostics in early modern Europe in Anthropology & Medicine, 7:2

Lienhardt G. 1961 Divinity and experience: The religion of the Dinka, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Paterson M. 2007 The senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies, Oxford and New York: Berg Press.

Pink S. 2009, Doing Sensory Ethnography, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Singapore: Sage Publications.

Sharf R., 1998, Rhetoric of experience and study on religion. Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 7 11/12.

Strathern J.A., 1996, Body Thoughts, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

The program of the 6th annual MAYS conference is now online. You can access it HERE !

The conference will have the same peer-review structure like the 2014 MAYS conference in Berlin. Infos on workshops and a keynote lecture will follow. 

For more information please download the full Call for Papers HERE .

We cordially invite you to send your abstract (max 300 words) to mays.easa@gmail.com by February 1st 2015

We’re looking forward to getting to know your work and meeting you in Amsterdam!

Your MAYS-coordinators

Natashe Lemos Dekker (Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research)
and Judith Schühle (Freie Universität Berlin) 

A report of the 5th MAYS conference which took place in Berlin between 4-5th July 2014 is now available online at Medicine Anthropology Theory. You can access the report HERE.

Please download the final program HERE.

We are happy to announce that the 5th Annual MAYS Meeting will take place on July 4-5 at the Freie Universität Berlin.

The meeting will be smaller than the previous MAYS events in order to foster an even more productive exchance of thoughts among the participants in the familiar enjoyable MAYS atmosphere.

Apart from paper presentations in two parallel working groups with plenty of room for discussion, there will be two expert-led, practice-oriented workshops of interest to junior scholars in Medical Anthropology.

For more information please download the full Call for Papers HERE.

We cordially invite you to send your abstract to mays.easa@gmail.com by February 23rd.

We’re looking forward to getting to know your work and meeting you in Berlin!

Dominik Mattes (MAYS Coordinator) and the organizing team at FU:

Mustafa Abdalla, Anika König, Caroline Meier zu Biesen, Ursula Probst, Britta Rutert, Miriam Weihe

The final program and abstract list for our meeting in Tarragona are now downloadable here.