A Different Mode of Knowing for a Nuanced Digital Anthropology in Vietnam - Catching the World through Individual Empowerment (2)

But as individuals who experience first hand the phenomenon social scientists study, ordinary people offer something experientially, in its raw form and in a large and messy quantity tha

A Different Mode of Knowing for a Nuanced Digital Anthropology in Vietnam - Catching the World through Individual Empowerment

Stan BH Tan-Tangbau, School of Communication & Design

RMIT University Vietnam (Hanoi Campus)

Email: stanbhtan@me.com

Abstract:

Vietnamese Anthropology is dominated by a particular mode of knowing akin to an

experimentum model of acquiring knowledge, where the privileged expert acquires

knowledge through a highly sophisticated and exclusive scientific process However, there is also another means in which knowledge could be produced and acquired

Experientia is an alternative model where laypersons could acquire knowledge

through experiential learning in the lived everyday and accumulation from the

common experience shared by all We have arrived at a new historical juncture in the globalizing digital present where ordinary individuals could play (and are already playing) an active role in the complex process of acquiring knowledge of the social They could be “produsers” in the digitally connected globalizing present rather than either simply “producers” or “consumers.” In other words, digital empowerment of the

individual could help us better capture the world sans pervasive ethnographic

authorship of the anthropologist Several pertinent questions arise from this

consideration Are ordinary individuals who take on the roles of produsers

considered scientific players? What is the academic or scientific “deliverable”? How

do we learn? Is this mode of knowing mediated by the social and the affective

senses thus rendering it effectively multiple, relational and ephemeral?

Anthropology in Vietnam and Digital Change

Two trends underscore the context of anthropology in Vietnam The first trend tells of convergence across the globalizing social sciences among academics and researchers across different intellectual traditions in different countries and continents in the pursuit of global universities ranking As a major requirement enabling academics to contribute to this game of insitutional ranking, academics look to publish research essays in “globally reputable”

scientific journals often dominated by the English language medium and driven by dominant undercurrents of academic or paradigmatic concerns of elite groups of scholars in respective fields This in turn drives the convergence of concepts, theories and topics across the diverse world The academic’s participation in this ranking competition is in turn also beneficial to his/her own career, earning accolades such as an “internationally recognized expert who has published in high impact international scientific journals” in his/her profile description along the way, not to mention tenure and promotion The scientific contribution of the social

science academic is thus measured (as if it should ever be measured!) by number of authored publications (preferably single author) in “reputable international, peer-reviewed scientific journals.” Two things we can take away from this trend First, the social science academic has now an elevated scientific status to speak on behalf of the subject matter of which he/she is

an expert Second, creation of scientific knowledge is fundamentally measured in terms of the number of international publications (read “English”) in endorsed channels (read commercial academic “publishers”) Globalizing social sciences, it seems, have very little to do with the very the people these publications talk about It belongs squarely in the realm of the experts

A second trend is one that engulfs us all, social scientists (we are ordinary people, too!) and ordinary individuals (that social scientists re-categorize with specific sets of criteria into research subjects) This is the ongoing digital revolution that permeates our lives as ordinary people From this very iPad with which I am typing this manuscript that saves my document in the cloud to the intelligent and internet-linked refrigerator that tells me beer supply is running low, we could always be connected digitally And we are no longer

surprised, such as in a hypothetical scenario that I am very sure has played out for many anthropologists in the field, when in the remote mountainous periodic market, our local ethnic minority field collaborator whips out an Oppo to maybe call a motorbike over to take

us to the next periodic market As we finish a conversation with the local peddler, our local field collaborator takes a welfie of everyone, uploads to a Wechat Moment with a short caption to tell of our encounter and the peddler’s day, and immediately tags the local peddler whom she befriends in person and on Wechat It is probably not too long before the peddler comments with a “hello” and “come visit me” with her own Wechat account and a friend waiting at the other periodic market leaves a comment with her own picture of a stall selling similar things in that market Every ordinary person who could be connected to the internet could create content to share and could respond to shared content It might not be too

exaggerated to state that anthropological agency has been returned to the individual, no longer solely in the hands of the anthropologist (or any social scientist) per se (Tan-Tangbau, 2016-2017) In this sense, my understanding of digital change partly agrees with Ruppert, Law and Savage (2013: 29) when they suggest “it is the ‘liveliness of data’ and the making of transformational agents” that require our attention in how social science methods might change to better understand lives as a result of the pervasiveness of the mobile digital device

These two trends set up an almost oppositional tension in the context of change facing anthropology in Vietnam On the one hand, the positionality of academics as experts has never been placed on such an elevated pedestal than before On the other hand, digital change has radically restructured the knowledge architecture that fundamentally changed what possible roles ordinary individuals could play in the production, dissemination and

consumption of knowledge As individuals, ordinary people might not challenge the expert knowledge of experts But as individuals who experience first hand the phenomenon social scientists study, ordinary people offer something experientially, in its raw form and in a large and messy quantity that experts try to redact into a seamless and logical argument, theorize into an abstract concept and finally reify into an optic to see the world (Law, 2004) As a crowd, ordinary people offer the possibility of massive and inclusive participation in the production, dissemination and consumption of knowledge that social scientists could only fantasize in the pre-digital era Social scientists being experts, this possibility of massive inclusivity is quite often seen as enhancing existing scientific paradigms with a promise of greater reliability by means of having a much larger data sample size than before, or even studying the entire population! Hence, the dominance of data sciences, big data and data mining in current perceived understanding of social phenomena (Lohmeier, 2014) Despite the fact that anthropological agency has been reverted to ordinary individuals, globalizing social sciences is fundamentally still driven by a specific mode of knowing that has changed very little And anthropology in Vietnam is fundamentally dominated by this particular mode

of knowing, too

The Asymmetry Between Researcher and Subjects

Our current globalizing social sciences is dominated by a particular mode of knowing

in which the Researcher (Expert) and the “Researched” (Subjects) are set in asymmetrical roles By mode of knowing, I am following Law (2016) when he poses the question “how should we know the world?” (18) and acknowledges that in the globalizing social sciences,

“knowing is embedded in practices” (19-21) and regimented by institutional continuities that

“has little space for unruly passions, messy materials and bodies, excesses, the idea that knowing might be situated, the possibility of formlessness, or performativity” (22)

The Researcher is a highly trained professional who has to play the game of the academic guild, is rigorously trained and whose work is subjected to scientific peer review by

fellow experts The Researcher is well read and logical in the use and creation of conceptual underpinnings, systematically trained in the art of research design to craft an inquiry and capable of both using and innovating sophisticated methodologies to extract data from the messy world out there The Researcher is highly perceptive, scientific, systematic and

specialized, and thus placed in a privileged position of authority entrusted to tell us how best

to understand social phenomena I am quite sure, in the course of our fieldwork, we have encountered instances when very well read or informed “research subjects” made reference

or even defer to books written by Researchers when asked about their history and how they live their lives! Research Subjects are “things” (both human and non-human actors) to be studied by the Researcher In the research process, Research Subjects merely exist to be studied But your qualification as a Research Subject is to be determined by the Researcher; only when the checks in an expertly designed rubric are sufficiently accumulated then could

an actor (human or non-human) be included in the research process So for example, the Researcher determines if X is Kachin or not, based on conceptual underpinnings developed to define “ethnicity,” and therefore to be included as a Research Subject or not according to the research design In this sense, the Research Subject, placed on the subjectification end of this asymmetry, is a product of “Othering” that John Law (2004: 85) speaks of that “bracket, conceal and forget” in order to funnel and filter a messy world into one that is “specific, determinate and identifiable.”

Thus, according to Law (2004), our prevailing social science methods are underlined

by a process of “Othering” that arranges the discordant world into a pattern that we could make sense of and could explain His point is simple, it is still a messy world out there

although our methods make it orderly and readable Law (2004: 2) provocatively suggests,

“[p]arts of the world are caught in our ethnographies, our histories and our statistics But other parts are not, or if they are then this is because they have been distorted into clarity .”

Along this line of thought, to know the world is to make sense of it, to understand it, so that

we can manipulate, change, correct and improve So that decisions can be made Some things

we need to know Some things are not so pertinent in addressing our queries Some things are relevant to help us identify patterns, to see the causal relations Some things are irrelevant, obscuring our crisp understanding of how things actually are beneath the layer of messiness

Treating the world as a laboratory, the Researcher, trained in his/her respective

disciplinary theories and methodologies, systematically extract information about the

Research Subject A typical explanation of this process could read like,

“I identify village X as an exemplary sample field site because it is inhabited by a majority X percentage of Kachin who have been living there for at least three

generations I identify Kachin as people who fulfill the specific criteria I discuss in detail in Chapter 2 Only a small X percentage could be identified as belonging to other ethnicities who lived there as slaves and spouses Using a combination of participant-observation and focus-group interviews, I developed a pilot survey

instrument to guide a more in-depth ethnographic study I carried out this survey among subjects selected from across a range of age groups, gender, occupation and presumed social status With this, I established a set of key concerns relating to pertinent events and questions crucial to the Kachin people specific to this locality and in general across the region At the same time, I participated in the everyday lives

of the villagers un-invasively using participant-observation to develop a grounded and rich understanding of the Kachin in village X I lived with the subjects for X amount of time and was accepted as a member of their community I carried out in-depth ethnographic interviews with XXX number of subjects over a period two years and accumulated XXXX pages of field diary and XXXXX hours of interview

recordings I analysed my field data using XXXX method and XXXX software ” With this, the Researcher establishes both scientific and social authority to speak on behalf of the Research Subject Through fieldwork, the Researcher successfully generates data and using the analytical framework prescribed in the research design develops enlightened

understandings of the Research Subject

This asymmetry between Researcher and Research Subject is perhaps most clearly

highlighted in Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (2012), an indignant and

powerful treatise on how Research as we know it is essentially a most insidious tool of

colonialism that continues to shape our understanding of the once colonized world and its

people Smith (2012: 1032), however, does not advocate a rejection of Research as we know

it, but implores indigenous academics to reinvent Research as a way to place front and center the concerns and priorities of the researched and developing theory and understanding from the indigenous perspectives and for indigenous purposes She introduces Kaupapa Maori Research as a form indigenous methodology that seeks to understand Maori’s form of

knowledge in their own terms and their “living in the world” (Smith 2012: loc 3816) Smith (2012) outlines three key characteristics of Kaupapa Maori Research, namely “involving Maori people as individuals and communities” (loc 3885); seriously addressing “cultural ground rules of respect, of working with communities, of sharing processes and

knowledge” (loc 3891); and incorporating “processes such as networking, community

consultations and whanau research groups groups, which assist in bringing into focus the

research problems that are significant for Maori” (loc 3891) She concludes that when the asymmetry between the Researcher and the Research Subject is removed or alleviated,

research as an activity will be fundamentally different and as a result, “[q]uestions are framed

differently, priorities are ranked differently, problems are defined differently, and people participate on different terms” (Smith 2012: loc 3937)

Experimentum vs Experientia

To remove the asymmetry between Researcher and the Research Subject is to

recognize that there is science beyond academia In their extended essay on Technical

Democracy, Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009) shows how rapid development and

adoption of scientific knowledge, without fully considering its social and ecological

consequences for the very people who have to live with their world thus understood, in the way that has been happening in the world for a long time, is underlined by an outmoded distinction of scientific experts (our Researcher) and laypeople (our Research Subject) The ability to act, in order to overcome a problem with a technical solution, in such a scheme of things is marked by a “clear cut” decision model where the expert professional is legitimately privileged with the authority to decide what the world is and how the world should be

without including laypeople stakeholders (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe, 2009: 222)

“Specific, determinate and identifiable” answers could be extracted when our presumed understanding of the world is made certain through expert knowledge

As a result, walk among the crowds in the city we live in, immerse ourselves in the nostalgic countryside or traverse the two ends of the spectrum in our performance of

ethnographic fieldwork, invariably academics (not all!) ask if is there a masterfully written ethnography or well-researched sociological text that could educate us about this society or the group of people we are interested in? And professionally we believe we could produce one such study That mess of a mass of revving and honking motor vehicles on the streets of any developing Southeast Asian city, or hidden amidst a rolling terrain in the uplands and boundless ricefields in the plains are made readable, compelling and definitive in an

ethnographic text Indeed, Clifford (1986: 98) reminds us that ethnography is marked by a pervasive authorship and expert emplotment weaving messy data into a coherent narrative, a

“performance emplotted by powerful stories.” John Law turns such a predominating mode of knowing on its head by suggesting that it is precisely this set of “methods, rules and

practices” running the “fact-producing industry” that in fact produces the “reality” we

presumed (Law 2004: 5)

In ethnography, we could hardly deny that in the first place, we simply do not get to observe everything in the field; we do not put everything we observe in our field diaries; not everything in the field diary is put into writing; and not every writing is published There are methods in translating the messy world out there, from the things being observed and asked,

to what is being put in writing (or images/moving images for visual ethnography), after clearing the hoops of institutional practices To make sense of this complex world, according

to Law (2016: 19), this dominant mode of knowing “bracket, forget, and conceal much.” And

I might add, by way of an asymmetry privileging the “expert” researcher over the research subject; a most emaciating treatment of the people/things being “researched.”

I find the discussion by Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 37-70) about how expert knowledge is fundamentally a kind of “secluded research” useful in further illustrating this asymmetrical relationship between the Researcher and the Research Subject This

knowledge is constructed on the basis of a separation between laypersons and scientists (or experts, elites and the specialists, etc.), creating such a chasmic difference that it is almost impossible for laypersons to call into question the findings of the scientist According to Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 43-44), a crucial element here is the distinction

between two positions concerning the acquiring of knowledge On one end is experientia, one

in which laypersons could acquire knowledge through experiential learning in the lived everyday and accumulation from the common experience shared by all On the other end is

experimentum, one in which only the privileged, in terms of status, training, resources and

time, i.e., the scientists, could produce knowledge through the “singular, original experiment, accessible only to the small number of this who have been invited to witness its

organization.” Through a triple process of translation, scientists acquire experimentum

knowledge that could not be disputed by laypersons First, an identified phenomenon is transferred from the real world (field site) into the laboratory (office and lecture hall), making

a clear “break between experientia and experimentum” in what they call a translation from

“the macrocosm to the microcosm” (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe, 2009: 48) This is a process in which the complexity of the world out there is reconstructed into an orderly

complex This reconstructed microcosm is then pulled apart, tested and manipulated to study what it is, how it works, and why it happens Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 51-59)

call this a second translation process, one that requires the assemblage of human and

non-human actors to mimic the world in the laboratory Conclusion of the tests in this second translation process is then verified by exporting it for corroboration, reproduction and clinical

trials in the real world outside the laboratory, the third translation process This third phase of

the process, according to the authors, is often supported by what Latour (1988) calls a

“laboratorization” of the world, the modification of the real world by manipulating

components of the world to facilitate an assemblage of the conditions of the laboratory and reinterpreting the real world phenomenon according to the ecology fabricated in the

laboratory

But Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 70) are critical of this undemocratic

process, branding it,

“ a machine for changing the life of laypersons, but without really involving them

in the conception and implementation of this change Is this exclusion, which is no

doubt one of the reasons for the proliferation of socio-technical controversies,

inevitable?”

The Researcher translates clinical analyses into neatly packaged research publications

governed by practices of the academic guild, peer reviews by fellow expert researchers, use

of diligent citation practices and a formal, objective and scientific style of academic writing Written in the language of the research or academic circle in which the researcher is active, these deliverables are treated as illuminated knowledge and these inscriptions are

disseminated on an elevated pedestal – peer reviewed scientific reports/papers/books – to the

“public,” often at “reasonably” exorbitant prices and limited access It does not quite matter that the Research Subjects might not be able to read in that language, or could not fathom the dense style of writing that is the hallmark of academia It is after all, not hagiography Not everyone has the capacity to carry out a research project, not every researcher could produce

a good scientific paper or monograph, and definitely not anyone could have the ability to read

a scientific tome Indeed, as Van de Port (2016: 168) remarks, the emotions and sensibilities

of the stakeholders and the world we encounter in the field are rather unsatisfactorily

translated into a logical, orderly and analytical text, but there is no other way that is

institutionally acceptable; it is “utterly unbending.”

Furthermore, the dominant mode of knowing in the social sciences is embedded in institutional practices, academic deliverables of papers, reports, dissertations and monographs that define the university, and failure to play the game could, to borrow Law’s words (2016: 21), lead to “silence or expulsion.” Marcus (1986: 265) himself notes a limitation to the

extend that academia could actually take up the challenges raised in Writing Culture when he

admits the anthropological dissertation has tended to be “a conservative exercise” because it

determines the acceptance, or not, of joining the professional circle of being an

anthropologist But he also reminds us that critical endeavors do happen, but only after promotion and tenure Play the game well enough and you could do anything Nevertheless,

we seldom escape the prescribed deliverables of this dominant mode of knowing Van de Port (2016: 168) is spot on when he hints at the “utterly unbending” formats of academic

deliverables in claiming to represent the world But professional researchers have limited or

no alternatives Academic ways of knowing are basically, still, underscored by a rigid and limited way of telling about the world we experienced as social scientists Van de Port (2016: 168) points out,

“[a] much discussed – but unfortunately much less practiced – ‘literary turn’ sought

to face the inadequacies of academic modes of representation, and opened up a space for the fuzziness, ambiguity, and indeterminacy that pervades life-as-it-is-lived [t]he critical reflections that were put forward in these debates have been reduced to

an option (‘ah, I see, you are into “Writing Culture”! How interesting!’), rather than

an epistemological turning point.”

In Figure 1, I visualize this dominant mode of knowing in the schema of a funneling mode of knowing Treating the world as a laboratory, the Researcher, trained in his/her respective disciplinary theories and methodologies, funnels enlightened observations about the Research Subjects through a set of exclusive analytical framework The Researcher then funnels

clinical analyses into neatly packaged research publications governed by practices of the academic guild Treated as illuminated knowledge, these inscriptions are disseminated on an elevated pedestal – scientific reports/books – to the public for a uni-directional consumption through this exclusive line of academic institutions

Figure 1 Funneling Mode of Knowing

Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 99) sees knowledge created through experientia

by laypersons as knowledge developed through “research in the wild,” rather than just “lay knowledge.” For them, it is crucial to restore “a symmetry that is denied by the usual

distinctions between learned and common knowledge ” They list three important

considerations why it is crucial to respect knowledge created by “research in the

wild” (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe, 2009: 98) First, experts might not always formulate inquiries in a most relevant way for the stakeholders or the concerns of “concerned groups” are simply not the concerns of the experts’ scientific pursuits Second, the enclosed and exclusive nature of scientific inquiries (applies to social science and humanities as well) limit engagement beyond circle of experts the “objects and methods of research.” Third, expert production of knowledge per se might not always be capable of capturing the “richness and complexity” of the real world As such, Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 17-36) also speaks of a more democratic mode of knowing that is a hybrid of experimentum and

experientia knowledge building where experts and laypersons come together to exchange what they know, what they experienced and most importantly, get involved The authors call this a “hybrid forum,” not just because experts and laypersons are involved, but also “because the questions and problems taken up are addressed at different levels in a variety domains,” making it inclusive, multidirectional and collaborative (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe, 2009: 17) This hybrid mode of knowing, according to Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009:

134-136), engenders a dialogic democracy opening up new spaces for inclusion and

participation by members of society As the laypersons in Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 36) declare,

“We do not accept the monopoly of experts! We want to be directly involved in the political debate on questions that our representatives either ignore or deal with

without speaking with us!”

The outcome is a mode of decision making guided by precaution built on a “series of

rendezvous” among different stakeholders, experts and laypersons, resulting in small steps,

“measured action” that are “reversible, open to new information or to new formulations of what is at stake” Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe (2009: 222-223) We are less certain of what

we know about our world, but it might not be a bad thing Knowing our world is not the divine privilege of experts per se

#kachinlifestories: From Subjects to Individuals

Accepting lay knowledge into the fold of the social sciences is to allow ordinary individuals to play the roles they could rather than subject them to roles for what the expert think they should be Ordinary individuals might not have gone through the specialized training, indoctrination and peer review controlled environment as the expert But what they

bring to the table are experientially accumulated understanding and/or sensitivities, real-time and/or grounded status updates, and unbridled passion for the subject matter that often

eludes the professional framework of the expert More importantly, ordinary individuals could contribute through the uncollective of the crowd in terms of massive numbers that could not be shepherded in a singular direction just because a theoretical paradigm dictates so