January 31

After our discussion last Wednesday about how we view other cultures as "weird" compared to our own, I couldn't help but think of all the times I judged the Tongan culture and thought that things were strange or dumb. I remember back in our culture class, we were learning about the fahu and we discussed how the fahu can take presents from a celebration even if they were supposed to go to the wedding couple or graduating student. We were all completely blown away and I'm pretty sure I said that it was so weird! I couldn't even grasp the idea that at a celebration for someone, where people bring them gifts, a person could come and take all those gifts no questions asked. For the Tongan culture, it's normal and people don't even think twice about it. Why would they get gifts in the first place if they knew the fahu was going to come and take them and there's a chance that the person the gift was intended for wouldn't even receive it?
But, when you've grown up in a culture, things that you do aren't strange because you're used it! I'm sure if someone who's never been to church before, and sat with a bunch of people who then proceeded to sing songs about God it would be super strange for them. And then the fact that we separate men and women into Elders Quorum and Relief society or young men and women would probably be strange and people might not like it because it's like segregation!
Anyway, it's important to watch our behavior and the words we say around or about other cultures because we all see the world differently through our culture and lifestyles.

January 26

Fields and sites help us to frame our research in order to make a good proposal and research topic. I think I'm finally sticking to a subject and I want to put it all together so that I can work on my proposal this weekend.
The field is the study of gender, my topic is going to be the women specifically in Tonga. This amounts for an interesting research topic due to the family structure in Tonga. The father's oldest sister, called the "Fahu" is THE BOSS of the family. She gets whatever she wants and has the final say on everything. This is unique to their culture and it is something that many women in other countries do not enjoy. So, researching this topic in Tonga as it relates to feminism and "power" would be really interesting to look at, and then use it as a critique of how we see feminism in the US in terms of what power is. For example, in the US the biggest critique of feminism would be that feminist desire what men hold has power and what they consider to be power. I really want to argue against that, because regardless of whether men and women are socialized to be different or whether there are natural laws in place governing characteristics of males and females, you can't ignore the fact that there are differences. I guess the ontology behind that is that we have to work on the reality that we live in, not the one that exists in some other entity. Regardless of whether some other reality actually exists, doesn't change the fact that we live in one that may or may not be different.
Back to feminism, I have no problems with women getting equal pay for equal work, and I have no problems with women voting and all that other good stuff. However, I do have a problem with women trying to elevate their status HIGHER than men to make up for "lost time." Differences between men are more stratified than the differences between men and women. Regardless, there are characteristics that are different that each gender hold, and feminists look at it as a bad thing, in that they want the powers and characteristics that men enjoy.
Perhaps a better way of looking at gender relations is that each gender as its own sphere of "power" and influence and that doesn't necessarily equate to "inequality." In other words, it's not a bad thing that women and men are different. In fact, I love it!
So, women in Tonga probably have a really unique perspective on gender relations that I would like to look at. The women, especially the Fahu, hold a lot of power in the family, and I wonder if they would prefer the power that men usually hold, or if they are satisfied with their lives the way it is. I think it's largely a US ideal that's branded into our minds, that everyone is EQUAL. But, this leads us to the misunderstanding that everyone should be THE SAME, which is not only completely different but impossible to say the least.

So, given that, I'm going to lay down my question for now.
Given the higher elevated status of women in the family, especially for the Fahu in Tonga, what are the perspectives of what is considered "power" for women versus the power that men hold, and do these powers satisfy their needs to control their reality or do they feel that they are dominated by men?

January 24

I think I've finally chosen my topic and I really want to look at the women in Tonga. Specifically, through cultural social interactions during weaving and tapa cloth making groups. The type of study I want to do is an ethnographic/anthropological type research. I choose this because when studying culture and people, it shouldn't be a scientific approach like you would go about to study a plant or a microorganism. Doing such research only adds knowledge to the field as a paradigm*, and when I say paradigm in this context I mean that science is only a theory upon theory until an "end" of true pure knowledge is reached. An end that I would argue not only doesn't exist (how would we even know WHEN we reached it if we did?), but is unreachable when studying people. People are not objects and have the capacity to change don't exist as one entity that "are" but rather they are "being." The advantages to an anthropological study is this is that I will be able to interact with the group and the culture in order to understand them better. I really want to be able to get to know the culture and understand their way of thinking, as it is completely different then mine from values, in terms of how the they think and how they feel about their social surroundings. Also, I will be able to have more access to the people's knowledge and feelings through getting to know them, rather than just watching them or giving them a survey. I feel like this is really the best way to understand their culture.
As I am doing research, there is not a whole lot of socio-research concerning interactions between women. This is a bad thing for my literature review but a good thing for my project because I will be able to research something that hasn't really been looked at before. Some questions I have concerning my topic are as follows:
How do the women view themselves in terms of others?
Are Tongan people mostly individual or collective people?
Do women value their relationship with other women like them?
Do they ostracize women that are "different"?
How do they maintain relationships with other people or women outside of their weaving groups?


*paradigm- The word has come to refer very often now to a thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind."[5] -Wikipedia
I provide this definition since the definition we have been using in class is something very different than how it is used in sociology.

January 21

Last class we had an activity where we ranked individuals based on a story. This was an interesting analogy to research in which I would like to discuss. This relates to us because everybody had a different view on which people in the story appealed to them more. Not only that, we had to judge these people based on only a small story. While in Tonga, we're only getting a small 3 month story and we can only make assumptions on the people there based on that chapter of Tonga.
Additionally, every team had their own biases when looking at the story, and individuals in each group had their own biases as well. These include, religion, values, ethics, culture, gender, age, experience, etc. This relates to our study in Tonga, because we will all go in with our own biases.
Dallin asked me if it's possible even for a little bit, to study a culture without your own biases and how the best way to do that is. My opinion is that the reflexive approach to studying people is probably the best way to study people, yet not exactly because it eliminates biases. By that I mean, the study of people knowing that the study not only reflects these people but also reflects who is studying it. It all depends on your audience from this sort of reflexive approach. For example, if my audience are Tongan people I would have to study them in relation to how they would study themselves through their way of thinking. I probably would not be a good candidate for something like that since I am not a native Tongan and the way I think, and the way I see the world is not the same as theirs. However, because I am writing to an audience similar to myself, it gives validation to my biases in that I want my audience will probably have those some understandings of society, through which we use to understand another.
A critique of this type of study would be that we can never know what is truth, because we can't know what affects our own ontological and cultural assumptions and then how it in-turn affects how we see other people and therefore cannot separate our biases from skewing the "truth" or "reality." To that I would say that as long as we acknowledge our biases and that they have probably altered what "reality" is to the people you're studying, then your research is still valid. This is because the way I understand a people (to an audience who thinks similar to myself) would be similar. Additionally, "truth" or "reality" is entirely subjective, and I would argue that there is no scientific way to define a truth that is universal to all beliefs and people, nor does anybody have a method to do so . For example, a way that science uses to discover truth is through the "scientific method." But, you cannot use the scientific method to prove the scientific method is the best way to find truth. This is not to say that all research is ambiguous and contains no truth. But, when we acknowledge where we are coming from in our study, how we look at things, and look at people subjectively rather than objectively, then we can really look at people as they are in relation to us. And that's really as far as we can go and as close as we can get to the truth.

Ideas for next time: Advantages of anthropological approaches to studying people.

January 19

This morning I got the opportunity to talk to one of my professors about my research project and it got me thinking about a lot of ideas that I had for my research. I wanted to focus my study on marriage and family specifically toward women, and he gave me an interesting topic. He talked about how I can study motherhood and then compare it to the western/modern ideas of parenting here in the US.
Coming onto this project as a sociologist wanting to do an ethnographic study, it was hard for me to justify my research into something that would be not only meaningful but interesting for people to read. If I do a study of the Tongan lifestyle, a society we would not consider especially "modern" and then use that as a commentary on our society in the US as modernists, then I could make interesting statements on society and lifestyle.
So, more about the topic, we talked about how women in the US have a very privatized style of parenting. This is where each mother is responsible for her children and no one else's, and does not necessarily want other people "raising" her children since she wants to do it her "right" way. Dallin discussed how in Tonga children are raised communally and parents take care of, shelter and even feed other people's children. I read an article about how Tongans consider themselves weaved together just the cloth they weave. Not only to people aroung them in the community but to their ancestory as well. Maybe the people in Tonga don't necessarily act as rational, individualistic beings. Maybe they look at themselves in relation to others, whether this be their parents, grandparents, or simply the people around them with whom they associate with. In the United States the modernists are primarily rational individualistic where people pursue the means to a desired end and act according to their desires.
This way of looking yourselves affects the way you look at parenting. this is interesting because in the US only biological (or adoptive) parents are allowed to teach their children, discipline them and instill values and religious beliefs on them. This goes along with the individualistic rational approach to life, and your children are simply your means to a certain end, whether to bring another person in the world just like you, or simply to fufill societal duties and expectations of raising a family.
Comparing our society to a society like Tonga might be problematic since Tonga is much more homogeneous than the United States where backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs are extremely varied. Not only that, the culture of US being over sensitive over their beliefs is part of the reason why parents are so privatized over their child rearing. It could also be why teachers and schools of the public sort cannot, in any way, discuss religion or moral beliefs for fear of "offending" a parent who wishes to instill different values in their child.
Perhaps the best way of looking at this is questioning our ideals of parenting. Perhaps the worst way of raising a child is to drill one set of beliefs and not allow them to explore other options. Such a close-minded way of raising a child probably results in closed-minded people who believe there is only one right way of doing things. It will be interesting to see what kinds of effects the Tongan lifestyle of parenting has on children.
Another interesting topic we discussed was the modernists perception of time. Dallin spoke to me about how Tongan’s have a different perception of time. Sometimes the people just didn’t follow through on appointments etc. In the US our society is so glued to our watches and have a strict schedule that follows time by the very second. This is a way of organizing life in a way that we can “maximize” our potential and get the most done. The modernist would argue that this is the best way to order society however looking at another perception of time might argue against such enslavement to a unit of measurement.
From a religious perspective, time is something man-made. In order to organize days and in an effort to control the sun rising and setting, people have a set clock and even daylight savings time in order to maximize on sunlight etc. This is interesting because God has no time. He is yesterday, today and forever. Maybe the best kind of lifestyle isn’t necessarily one that is strict on clocks and time.
Anyway, these were just some interesting topics that go along on the path which I wanted to study. Studying tonga isn’t necessarily looking at a primitive society and seeing how they are going to evolve into what we consider “modernism.” In fact, I would argue against that. Tonga has its own modernity in and of itself. So rather than looking at Tonga as a “time machine” and criticize modernism, I want to look at is as sort of an alternative modernism. Because the way that we are right now isn’t the way we have to be. We can't study people as objects that are contained in and of themselves. People are changing, and studies of them have to reflect changes and the idea of "becoming" rather than people as they "are."

January 14

Last night I got the opportunity to interview someone who had lived in Tonga for 2 years for his LDS mission. I asked him about the lifestyle there, and about family lives. He said a lot of women spend their time taking care of the homes and then make tapa cloth and weave, which they usually sell for a profit. Then the men work out in "the bush." I told him that I am extremely interested in learning more about the social aspects of weaving that the women participate in. While weaving, the women talk about family life, stories, and even gossip. I'm looking into spending more time on researching this specific topic. I would love to do my research as an ethnography, and just write about what its like in Tonga to be in a group of women weaving all day together.
For my research, I'm definitely leaning toward a qualitative research study, but I have to give it some sort of validity. I'm not one to say that positivism and the scientific method gives us real "truth" or that there is one perfect way to give us unadulterated truth. My experiences in Tonga won't be the same as everyone else's, and it most certainly won't be the same as my friend who served his mission there. What gives validity to my research, then, is the argument against this "perfect way" of studying a people to find truth. Anyone who studies a people or culture will have their biases. As much as they try to avoid that, any person studying another culture only sees it through their perspective of "culture". There is no real way to eliminate our own perspective on our research. Therefore, as a qualitative study, my experiences aren't necessarily a scientific claim on what life is like there in Tonga or what "reality" is for the people in Tonga. I can't possibly know that, since I am not a native born Tongan. My claim is only to share what I discovered while there, in my involvement with the people and through my experiences as an outsider looking in through my empirical knowledge. I am in no way saying that my research will reflect the same research that has been done in Tonga or will be repeatable as a scientific experiment in the future. Those are just some thoughts I had on where I'm coming from in my research.

January 12

Today in our class discussion, we talked about how to make a good research proposal. It pressured me to get on narrowing my research project so that I can start preparing for my proposal. As a general idea, I want to study families and their interactions. I want to come into the field study as what I would call a "socioethnopoligist," where I combine sociological ontological assumptions when approaching my research, and study as an anthropoligist in that I will participate in life in order to experience it and understand it more, and then to write up my research as more of an ethnography of family life in Tonga. Specifically, I'm very interested in women in society, and how their roles affect family life. In class my group discussed how I can narrow my topic by looking at one aspect of the women's life, such as tapa weaving, and then see how it affects family life or perceptions on what family is and how its structured. I'm very excited to do more research in order to really dig deep into what I want to study.