cultural anthropology 102

project ethnography synopsis

mary eng

LACC

for Professor Brian Bartelt

research question: what are perceptions of veiled women in Islam in my neighborhood of Los

Angeles?

objective: understand modern perceptions of islam. uncover the geographic variations, the

nomenclature, international representations in international media and law of women with islamic

veiling in dress. Find ways to cherish human rights, and shed light on misguided obliteration of

culture, uncovering motivations and contradictions therein. Reconfigure islamaphobia as racism

reified by alleged misogyny, and expose the crumbling foundation of western moral standing in

regards to civil rights. Look at how the war culture and the peace culture perpetuate the

stigmatization of the veil, and perpetuate objectification of women as physical entities subject to

control, in public media and war humiliation spectacles euphemised as attempted liberation.

Uncover oppressions in the culture of the accusing parties. Negotiate the process of accusation

(or the usefulness of its propagandizability) as a child-like stage preceding self-awareness and

rectification of human rights failings.

field locations: LACC campus, Islamic Center, Hollywood. Little Ethiopia, Islamic community on

3rd street between Normandie and Vermont.

method:

--visit mosque, Islamic Center, neighborhoods to asses the demographic distribution.

--read international press

--graph geographic variation

--study law, sacred texts

--compile chronological notes both in hand written notes and in blog format with bookmarked

links to resources

--interview---audio record or videoblog willing participants

--assess the internet's impact on mobilizing a culture of disclosure for women behind the veil, and

other means of uniting, mobilizing, and self-defining expressively

--telephone calls and emails to coordinate conversations and interviews

skype international friends

--keep the conversation international, looking at the political implications of stereotype.

--so far, free-formed polemical and philosophical journalings are allowing me to free my mind

from my opinions, so i can interview people in a neutral way.

--consider cultural parallels outside of Islam relevancy in other art, clothing, theater, fashion. also

consider topic as analogy or metaphor.

my thesis at the moment:

the prevailing conceit

alleging islam=misogyny with visible-sign=veil, becomes pretense/propaganda for the USA foreign

policy, and becomes appropriated even by well-meaning human rights campaigners, i a way that

crassly bulldozes the possibility of a subjective spirtual experience. a failure to look deeper into

american expressions of sexism, underlie this artificial postulate of the we/they.

by accessing and reveling the narcotizing power of accusation in this paradigm, here and in

europe, we become blind to our own human rights failings. this lends to a different kind of

exploitation. if the veil were an enslavement, the utilization of it by western ideologues to

propagandize war, and enforce systems of exclusion, further hurts the alleged victims.

a more sensitive approach to human rights, which does not jump to conclusions based on

culturally subjective inferences, will aid in total human liberation. the culture of blame, and value
judgement, fails us. the mobilization of this symbology has transcended even into discourse

which one would hope might be immune. i fear that the forced liberation of women from the veil,

becomes more legislation of female flesh, undermining self-authorship. as we force feed hunger

strikers in guantanamo, with no anesthesia, similarly, this cultural gavage mutilates that which it

seeks to liberate.

issues:

original idea has already morphed in accord with the practical realities. my hope is to speak to

women and gain their trust to explain to me their lives and dress. so far, i have been in contact

with men at the islamic center, men from cairo, moroccan parisians, adel from IC, and beginning

to discuss this with friends. i have remembered conversations that have stunned me, and plan to

ask my swedish friend about his experience. movies and images jump into my mind, and i

wonder of the paths of distortion and tangent i might find, how i can reference Bader-Meinhoff's

training escapade, and postulate farcical human liberation made possible only through contact

with a misunderstood culture's reckoning with technos outpacing westernization. A lot of

literature i am reminded of pertains to my ability to even indulge in language, and so the question

arises how to use it or filtrate it out. i imagine i will have many drafts, and then filtrate out the

most condensed, coherent topical material, and hopefully leave my philosophies, and musings at

minimum. perhaps, a long and short version, as my notebooking/blogging/scribd.com document

are filling themselves up with thoughts daily.

i realize so far i have many potential sources/interviewees with vast familiarity personally

through world travel and experience. They are all men, either from countries with prevalent

Islamic practices. But what bothers me so far, is that i have not yet found women to speak to. So

far, on the street, in the marketplace, at school, i am overcome by awe and shyness, and realize

the effect the veil has on me as a participant in the project. i feel intimidated. As though the veil

adds a further impediment. is it more difficult to listen to women because we are not used to their

voices, their opinions, or authority, and they are not used to speaking? and then to add a veil, and

a linguistical element. to explore the human longing for a face, the face and whole range of facial

expression muffled and in hiding. exiled.

as much as i want to distance myself from the presumptive world views, i fear they cast a pall.

i do not want to offend. i feel that women speak in silent ways, and i fear for lack of adequate

language skills. i do not want to be mistaken, in motive. and humanly, i feel that los angeles

culture, with its diversity, still holds many skepticisms. what am i trying to sell, who exploit, what

agenda or stereotype reinvigorate??? trying to find ways to be neutral, and gather information,

and realize too that it will be inseparable with a religious language that gives me discomfort.

the repetitive nature of the story . . . conversion attempts may be numerous, re: Allah's

command's to evangelize.

My resolution to the problem, other than time and patience, is to gather information on the web

and begin conversations with anyone who will have them. And as i seek out my most immediate

contacts and new friends, from Israel, Egypt, France, Morrocco, Indonesia, Turkey, and Tunisia, i

might gain a better understanding of Los Angelenos living here secularly or as Islamic, but with

significant exposure and world travel/immigration. With the men i have spoken with so far, a few

ask to keep anonymity and are averse to recordings, either for immigration reasons or retaliation

fears.

This too is significant.

Hopefully i will speak with women and have found many amazing blogs, and ideas, law, literature,

scripture, and press, as well as more academic research on the web. But to hone the project in to

something very local, i think perceptions of Islam amongst people coming from countries with

significant Islamic representation will be sufficient. If i can hone it down further, to women's

voices, i will. And at that point, my self-conscious writings and records and conversations which

began sunday 3-7-10 will be preliminary.

And if i am unable to summon the resourcefulness to find women, or enough women, they will

remain hidden, or further obscured.

And then this will be more about women through the eyes of men, brothers, sons, beloveds.

While the fire of this topic heated and cooled to suit propagandistic furors here, it still rages in

France where Sarkozy, so recently has made proclamations re:the veil "you are not welcome

here." the continued relevancy i see is the way islamophobia (as projected sexism) has
normatized its way into our dominant culture (even within the progressive), whereas a parallel

and cogent political self-critique, has not. And sadly, human lives are at stake. Even the

assumption that the war reification attained (through the veil=misogyny construct) is actual---

must be thrown out. Primitive power games, conversationally, and in the abstraction of our

preserved minds, deplete themselves with faulty reasoning. Whose sexism? Whose racism?

Whose murder?

And who does not feel veiled, silenced, muffled, strangled, suffocated, indoctrinated?

By shaking off the taint of propaganda culture, might we begin to feel human, and feel human

things again, about other humans, towards peace ubuntu.