By Mercedes McGuire (Jan. 11, 2013).

It is hard to believe that next week we will be entering the second week of classes- already!  Time has gone by quickly, lectures, readings, and discussions melting together under one umbrella- education. I have been a student for some time now, and yet find that I am continually learning.  One thing which catalyzed this learning process, and encouraged me to embrace its true meaning, was a comment made my Professor Menzies on the process of critiquing- questioning the way in which the work of someone who has committed themselves to becoming experts in a particular field can so easily be torn apart by people who haven’t attained to the same rigor of understanding.  This resonated with me, both reminding me to listen before I interrupt the flow of words from another, and actually hear what the other person is trying to communicate.  This is an invaluable skill to develop in all areas of life, but is particularly interesting in the context of academia, where the exchange and development of ideas creates knowledge which shapes our society.  I realized that there is a pull, however, as students to profess that we know something.  To perform confidently on exams, papers, publications, with answers to questions.  There seems to be a strange and paradoxical dichotomy between continually learning and knowing.

Ways of knowing, depths of understanding, and methods used to interpret the world around us all play a role in informing that knowledge.  I was reminded of the complexity of communication during an activity the first day wherein we hid from ourselves the identity of a particular object and tried to describe it to a partner simply based on what we felt with our less dominant hand.  I was holding a pinecone in my left hand, and while I could identify it as such for myself, the reaction of the person to whom I was describing it was very telling; she was curious about this strange object, this mysterious artifact.  Despite the common relationship we each have to a pinecone, without experiencing it for herself, she was left to imagine what this strange, spiky, cone shaped creature with a somewhat organic feel could possibly be.

How much more is my own understanding of the world and the inner workings of its dominant systems interpreted according to my own imagination due to lack of tangible experience, and depth of knowledge and understanding of it?  Capitalism, for example, and the experiences of people living and labouring within this system. I remember taking an introductory microeconomics class and arguing with what I was learning because I disagreed with the ethics of such a system, but I think I failed to actually understand it before I critiqued it, making my arguments void of power due to lack of knowledge.  The subject of this course is the anthropology of rural people in a global economy, and we have begun with the works of Eric Wolf and Anthony Brewer, as well as a film directed by Lorraine Gray in which the timeless tensions of labour, society, capital, and justice have been explored. There are so many facets from which to engage with these concepts, in terms of society, economy, environment, politics… And while they describe a unique facet, there is a deep interconnection which persists in threading together these different ways of knowing which have been fragmented into ‘disciplines’.  As I engage with this material in the context of my education as a whole, I can only understand society and culture(s) as elements within expansive and complex ecosystems, continually embedded within multiple other ecosystems.    Ecosystems are complex, they are dynamic, they are ever changing, and they are alive. So, how do I, on those grounds, begin to know about them; to engage in understanding and gaining knowledge about such awe-inspiring organisms?

Readings:

Wolf, Eric (1982). Europe and the People Without History.“Introduction,” 1-23; and “Chapter 3 –Modes of Production,” 72-100.

Anthony Brewer (1980). Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey. “Introduction,” 1-24.

The global assembly line (Lorraine Gray). 58 mins