First, let me start off by telling you a little more about myself. I am an 18 year old white girl with brunette hair and hazel eyes. I've lived in Attleboro, Massachusetts for my entire life with my parents and siblings. I have three other siblings, 2 brothers and a sister, and have always done everything as a family. My parents have been happily married for 22 years. My dad owns his own business and money has never been a problem for my family; you can say we are middle-class. I still live at home and commute to Rhode Island College which is about a 25 minute drive.
I chose to study the subculture of farmers and people who visit farms because it is part of my family tradition to go apple picking every year during the fall. Will who I am affect how I perceive this subculture?
I don't think that any of my fixed positions will affect what I see at my field site. I know many of my friends and people my age going apple picking with theirs friends on a nice weekend afternoon. Many families also go apple picking together which won't be unusual for me because I too went apple picking as a kid with my family. One thing that may affect how I see this subculture is the make up of the families. My parents are still happily married, but this doesn't mean that everyone's family is. Some families that I observe might only have one parent. I also have multiple siblings. Other families could only have 1 or 2 children. This can affect my study because those types of families might interact differently than mine.
When asking others about what they think this subculture is like many of the responses were "healthy" and "hipster". I am in not way either healthy or hipster. This is ironic because one of the main reasons my family would go apple picking was to collect the sweetest apples to bake apple pie with. This turns a healthy fruit snack into a fatty sugary dessert. I'm not going to lie, I'm not exactly sure what people mean when they say hipster. So if I can't even really describe what "hipster" is in the context of apple picking I feel like I wouldn't be one. "Hipster" just makes me think of dorky glasses and skinny jeans and edgy taste in music. I guess I am just way too mainstream to even know what hipster is.
Sam: It's okay that you're "mainstream," but what is "mainstream?" It's okay that you're "middle class," but what's "middle class?" Remember when I introduced you to "social constructs" in class on Thursday" Well, middle class is a made-up thing used to dictate how we structure society (social construct). So, what does it mean, exactly, precisely, in the mind of an intellectually curious writer like you?
ReplyDeleteI want you to be careful with words, with terms, with the language you use to describe yourself and others.
A quick story: I used to teach high school in Springfield, Massachusetts, at a school called the High School of Commerce, the "worst" school in the city at the time, a place with metal detectors but armed cops in the hallway, a place where we had to be bussed to another school to use their green grass for soccer practice, a place where I drove kids home after dark, against the rules of the school, because I was scared to send them on their way down the sidewalk because no one was coming to pick them up. So, when I think about the kids I taught at Commerce, and I think about apple picking at an apple orchard, I have tons of questions, questions like:
Who goes apple picking? Why do people go apple picking? Can you go apple picking if you don't own a car? How much does it cost to pick apples versus buying them in a "tote" at Stop & Shop? What does apple picking give you that buying apples in a store cannot give you? Are there apple orchards in Rhode Island run by people of color? Women?
My questions are meant to get you thinking about how your socioeconomic status in life and how your ethnicity and skin color DO impact your perspective. Apple picking requires desire, time, money, transportation, and energy. In order to go apple picking, you need to have all these things at your disposal. Does everyone have these things at their disposal? Please spend a little time this week--and a little space here on your blog, which you can add to/write on whenever the spirit moves you--thinking about how your status (white, middle class) might affect the way you view apple picking, apple pickers, and an apple orchard. It is a familiar place to you, not an exotic one. That's significant! It's a tradition in your family, not a anomaly. That's significant! And so on. And so forth. Thank you, Sam!