Before the process of research even begins, it's important for me to do a bit of self reflection in order to recognize the lenses through which I'll be seeing this new world. I'll be breaking this down into three categories, the first being general facts about me, the second being the life experiences and background which aided my formation, and the third being the type of language I use.
I'm Cameron Evans, a 19 year old man born in the early days of October, the 5th to be exact.Ethnically I'm descended completely from Europeans, mostly English and German, I identify as white but it doesn't mean much to me past the fact that family history lies in America and Europe. I was born in the Newton/Wellesley Hospital, within the same 20 mile radius as my father's side as family has been born dating back over 16 generations. For the first few years of my life I lived in Ashland, Massachusetts before moving to Barrington, Rhode Island with my mother where I've lived for most of my life.
My life experiences have been a bit out of the ordinary from many around me, which has left me as a bit of an outsider to my own culture. Contrary to many other Americans, and Rhode Islanders especially, I was never a part of any sort of faith or religion. It wasn't a matter of my parents being religious and me taking a backseat to it all, I was purposefully kept from being initiated into any sort of faith at a young age. My parents never married making me an illegitimate child of sorts. Living with my mother and aunt alone and having to travel back and forth between my father's house and her own taught me responsibility at an early age. With no other siblings and my mother very busy with work I mainly raised myself and learned how to take care of myself without anyone looking over my shoulder for the most part. By age 13 I was on my own even in buying and making my own food, though I was provided money. With no religious guidelines and no strict moral system set out by my parents, I was in a unique position to develop ideas completely my own. These ideas were usually not considered by many of my peers for being too "crazy" or not taking the social contract of authority into account, but they always seemed to work out in the end for me because of my persistence. While I'm a part of American Culture, I'm a bit of an outsider to it, I don't watch television or know anything about sports or the popular culture of the day. I spend more time watching things in the Japanese language than I do my own. I can recognize a lot of what subjectivities I hold due to this background. Due to my upbringing all of my role models had been fictional characters who were written to be nearly flawless, this gave me an idealistic lens of the world where I don't compromise on the things that I want, suffice to say it made me a very stubborn person. Yet at the same time the lack of an ingrained belief system from when I was young allowed all of my beliefs to be gained through my own personal whims rather than passed down from others, which makes me receptive to new ideas while being stubborn at the same time, an almost contradiction of sorts. Due to my separation from American mainstream culture I have never identified with any groups that I didn't myself start, and this has left me extremely individualistic, self-aware, and conscious of my own place in the universe. So in summation my subjectivites are a position of individualism in every aspect of my being. While writing this analysis of myself I recognized one new thing: I have a great interest in cultures and people that are pushed to the wayside by what the majority is doing, and I almost wonder if in that lies a primal desire to find those like myself. As much as I love being independent, I wonder if I'm looking for a place where I won't be an outcast for once. While Islam and I might not have much in common and likely won't satisfy this, what it's believers and I do share is a view of the world not accepted by the mainstream American culture.
The third and final position relates to the language I use when speaking and typing. Despite growing up in the northeastern United States, I slang most of my words. I regularly will intermix large and complicated words with "gonna" "woulda" "coulda" and "shoulda". I mainly talk and write in the first person and don't have any qualms about asking difficult questions or speaking to figures of perceived authority. As a child I used to be considered brazen and a troublemaker for correcting teachers and speaking to them as if they were on an equal level as me, as I always believed they were. My language in my fieldworking will definitely reflect this. It's likely that readers will notice that I'm not at all afraid to share my feelings, and will likely gain the same sort of depth in return. Another thing readers will notice is that I hate grouping. When someone speaks about "Muslims" the first thing I think of is "Individuals who share the trait of practicing Islam" rather than Islam as their collective defining feature. Due to this my writing will contain lot of different viewpoints and Islam will be analyzed through each person separately rather than combined rhetoric.
Cam! This is a fantastic examination of your positions and subjectivities, and I've learned so much about you as an author/writer just by reading this honest and vulnerable (thanks for trusting us!) post. Things that struck me:
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you may have spent more time with women than men in your young life.
"By age 13 I was on my own even in buying and making my own food"
Independence. A self-made man.
Acceptance: you must have recognized from an early age that life was not a bed of roses. It sounds like you came in contact with some harsh realities at a young age and were able to fold them into your worldview.
Response to authority. Your stories about being "difficult" to teachers demonstrated what may have been your want/need to be an independent learner, guided by your own desires and not the directions or whims of others. In other words, you are a natural born fieldworker, Cam! :)
"I hate grouping." While I appreciate your adherence to an individualistic perspective, I wish you didn't, well, HATE groupings, for they can be useful to us when we are trying to understand behavior, patterns, themes, and society. You shouldn't study an ant farm if all you're open to seeing is the freethinking ant! We find comfort in groups, camraderie in groups, and many people find identity in a group where they couldn't find one on their own. This may seem bizarre to you, but I suppose if it does, that's a subjectivity!
Thanks, Cam, for being so thoughtful. There are still other avenues to explore where subjectivities and your fieldsite/subculture are concerned! You spent a lot of your growing up years being raised by women. And, now you are studying members of an organized religion, some of whom voluntarily subscribe to a tenet that says that women are subordinate to men (Catholics subscribe to the same belief! A male god, male domination of religions laws, male domination of religious positions/seats, etc). Where are your subjectivities relative to this?
I guess hate was a bit of a strong word! A better way for me to describe it, coincidentally enough, would be much like the "Humans of New York" project that you had showed to us today. I much prefer the individual stories and lives of each person than giving them a collective identity. I consider it taking every person is unique to the utmost degree. This is a big subjectivity of mine but I can see some value in grouping, I would just ideally prefer never to have to make rules or judgments based off of it, but that's something that's just untenable in the world. A good example would be that while I would prefer age to not be a factor in the ability to drive or drink, it would be nearly impossible to test each and every person for competency. I can honestly say while typing my subjectivities I completely forgot about the matter of religious segregation. It didn't hit me until I saw first hand inside the mosque that there were separate areas of prayer. As you pointed out, I was in fact raised mostly by women, regardless of how much I did raising myself. Due to this I'm much more used to an open environment with women and don't harbor any sort of fears or uncomfortable situations when talking or hanging out with them. With a religious system such as Islam though, where segregation and even oppression are very real, it will be an interesting scenario. I have a few opinions and beliefs before delving into this new world. On one hand due to this community being in the United States, the women of the mosque will have the same rights as the men if it came down to legality. In this way no one is actively being oppressed by an Islam-based legal system, and if women aren't being allowed to do things, it's either by their own self-regulation or coercion from others. While I am always a stalwart defender of the right to self-determination, I'm also not one to go out and bend the world towards my will. I only seek for the ability to choose to be available. What is chosen doesn't concern me in the slightest. In this way I won't be bothered by the segregated prayer areas or even the prospect of Sharia law as long as it's a willing association on the part of all involved. I definitely will not be skirting around those questions though, now that I know there is a separation of prayer, I'm even more interested in learning about it. In summation, on the matter of subjugation of women, despite my rearing by only women, I won't be flying into any sort of righteous disgust over the fact that this system holds women to be subordinate to men, as while it is something I disagree with fundamentally, it's also something I recognize the women of this mosque are likely following of their own free-will. Also as an expanded explanation of my small gripe over groups; it's definitely something I don't feel, the need to seek out a group for identification that is, at least consciously. I can understand why others would do it though.
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