Fieldnotes From History (8)—First Attempts at Reflexivity

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] Circuitous RF

Part of an occasional Round and Square series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987—some nicely-stated and some embarrassing. Although the series began with my assumption that the entries can stand alone, I have found that separate comments and notes might help readers understand a world that is now, well, history. These are always separate from the original fieldnote.

Comment

[b] "True" PD

This note and the next (#9) represent my first conscious attempt to apply the methods of my teacher, Paul Riesman, to my own work. In a nutshell (and I will have more to write about the matter in a new "topic" on the blog soon), Riesman and others in the 1960s and 1970s developed an approach to fieldwork that not only acknowledged the role of the fieldworker in the ethnographic process, but sought to channel it toward better understanding than the camera lens-like "objectivity" of earlier work. I was still skeptical at the time, and these early attempts at bringing my perspective into the mix are failures, in my opinion. They are not really "reflexive" at all (I didn't "get" what Riesman was teaching yet). Still, I remember them as a key moment in my own work, when I forever left behind the idea that I could "show" a "culture" without being part of the analysis myself. 

My little "opinion" at the end, let me reiterate, is not good "reflexive" analysis. It is just opinion. It had the strange effect, however, of making me see in new ways the Republic of China's deep-rooted insecurities of which I write in the notes below. I should also add that my reference to "true-believers" is not just a phrase I chose at the time. I was referring to Eric Hoffer's still-fascinating work The True Believer (1951). My father had recommended it to me several years before, and it has influenced a great deal of my thinking (academic and political) ever since.

Note
I am not comfortable with adding links to items readers may want to check in the old fieldnotes themselves. To state the obvious, Internet linkages weren't possible in 1985, so the Pentagon Papers, William Buckley, Hu Na, or even Fox Butterfield could not just be clicked on or typed into a search engine. These lines are not the fieldnotes, so the links are included if you want to click on them.

16 May 1985

Taipei

Fox Butterfield's book has gotten him into a hornet's nest of ideological conflicts.  As one of the key journalists behind the publication of the Pentagon Papers, he certainly understands these matters, and probably better than most others do. For example, in a recent travel article on China for the New York Times Magazine, William Buckley wrote that we need not visit China for ourselves anymore; everything we need to know is in Butterfield's book.  I should have been wary of a Buckleyesque: Don't experience; just believe what I believe."  The aristocrats will think for the masses. 

[A former classmate I met here],[1] however, launched into a bitter attack on Butterfield as soon as I mentioned his name the other day. He said that Butterfield was a hack who couldn't even get his Ph.D. Neither could [the classmate], and he doesn't even write for the Times. He said Butterfield perceived that the climate in the United States was right (literally), and attacked mainland China to get a bestseller. The R.O.C. government has wined and dined him (also the mainland defector, Hu Na, who knows nothing but tennis) like he is a head of state. Taiwan apparently thinks that China's problems are testimony, in reverse, to its own government and economic system.  What it reveals, instead, is a deep-rooted insecurity. The true-believers, right and left, have strong opinions on Butterfield and his book.  They both make me sick, and I am as tired of liberals who don’t think as conservatives. 

[1] The only changes made in these notes occur in the form above. I have given the context for names of acquaintances, friends, and "informants," but left out their actual names.

[c] Followers RF