Stephen Michael Lyon, UKC
Written in Bhalot, Punjab, Pakistan, February 1999.
I began at the University of Kent in the combined Master's program of Computing and
Social Anthropology, so when I applied and was accepted as an MPhil candidate and
later upgraded to a PhD candidate I had every intention of continuing this combination.
I am fortunate enough to have some good equipment and good support both in the UK
and in Pakistan. I was careful in selecting a field site to be sure that I would
have regular access to both electricty and a telephone line. These are things that
many anthropologists do not have in the field. As computer technology advances that
becomes less of a problem (even today it is not so much a technical problem as a
financial one), however this report is written in the context of one who has been
very lucky to have these possibilities. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that
Pakistan has a very solid infrastrusture for IT-- albeit mostly restricted to PC
machines. There are numerous ISP's available in all the major cities and now even
in secondary cities like Taxila. I will not discuss the details of setting up the
service or setting up the website as that seems to me the least intersting aspect
of using electronic media in the field (though admittedly important ones). I will
cover three topics: electronically documenting fieldnotes, using the internet in
the field, using audio/video equipment in the field. I do intend this to be anything
more than a record of what I have done so far. No doubt, like with most other aspects
of social science, everyone does things his or her own way. This is a brief summary
of my way of using these things in the field and a brief explanation of why I have
chosen to use them.
Electronic documentation
Electronic documentation was major part of my project from the outset. I worked
on Professor Paul Stirling's Turkish Village Archives and the APFT website prior
to becoming a doctoral student and was terribly impressed at the quantity of data
that could potentially be made accessible. The nice thing about books is they are
self contained and so searching through them for particular bits of information may
be tedious but it is feasible. With Stirling's Turkish Village and APFT it became
necessary to devise some other method for accessing all the data. I worked on both
of those projects off and on for over a year and still cannot claim to have seen
every bit of either of them. With electronic storage facilities it becomes increasingly
difficult to see everything so it is not so much a question of browsing through everything
as being more focused in getting exactly what you want. The first step in both of
those projects was keyword searching. Anyone who has gone through the electronic
version of Paul Stirling's book, A Turkish Village, can tell you that the keyword
searches work but leave something to be desired. The computer is not a clever thing.
It looks for specific words but it cannot find those passages that are relevant
but do not contain any of the keywords. The APFT Content Coding System is a next
step in the pursuit of making data accessible. With this system fieldnotes are supposed
to be coded (though I never actually saw any that came in with codes) so that a search
engine can search through the notes for content rather than keyword. For example
I am very interested in hierarchy and status in the village I work in however I rarely
use either of those words in my notes. I could simply add the keywords and that
would solve some of my problems-- but there are times when I may be interested in
particular aspects of status-- like those times when I witness or hear about inversions
of predictable status markers or behaviour. One could simply continue to add to
the list of keywords to cover all contingencies but then the fieldnotes are really
only accessible to the keyword list writer. If I myself am unwilling to learn a
new keyword list for every new anthropologist's fieldnotes then I can hardly expect
anyone else to do so.
Fortunately for me I came along a little after the truly initial experimental days
of electronic documentation. Dr. Michael Fischer and Dr. David Zeitlyn at UKC have
been working on getting vast quantities of data on the web and accessible for some
time now. Michael Fischer began working on an SGML parser for field notes in October/November
of 1998 (perhaps earlier but I became aware of it then). This parser facilitates
content codes as well as security tags. This allows me to write my notes more or
less uninhibited by worries about confidentiality since all notes are default coded
to level 1 (which means only I can see them. I then upgrade the security level depending
on the nature of the entry. I have been working with him since then to make the
sgml note entry easier to use and more adapted to my specific needs (without making
them so specific for my needs as to render them inefficient for others). I do not
know what other anthropologists do with their notes or how they take them but since
I arrived in December I have amassed almost three hundred pages of notes just in
my sgml files. I realize now that a parser to help me make sense of those notes
when I go back to England will be of enormous interest to me personally-- regardless
of whether anyone else ever decides to use them. If I continue to take notes at
a similar pace then I will end up with somewhere between 1200 and 2000 pages of notes
on a wide range of topics. Although I am a fast reader and I enjoy reading, I do
not relish the thought of pouring through 2000 pages of notes to look for all instances
of a particular topic.
I estimate that I spend between 30 minutes and 2 hours writing my notes every day.
I do not always code the notes the same day that I write them but I have found certain
advantages in waiting a day or two before writing the abstracts and filling in the
codes. January, for example, was a very busy month and I had trouble finding the
time to write notes and code them and write abstracts. I ended up doing a few long
sessions of abstract writing and coding near the end of the month. I then became
aware of how much I had forgotten in such a short time. As soon as I saw the note
it all came back to me but there is so much happening that my poor little brain cannot
keep it all on my current 'Hot Topics' list. Going through the notes again in some
detail reminded me of events that I wanted to follow up on and questions I wanted
to ask again to get some clarification. Taking notes is time consuming but useful
in the process of my fieldwork. Prior to coming to Pakistan this time I had several
seminars with Dr. Bill Watson where we discussed taking notes in the field. The
problem of taking notes in front of people came up and I was adamant that anthropologists
should take notes openly in front of informants. I cannot say I always do this--
I must, unfortunately, admit that Bill Watson had a point that there are occasions
when the act of taking notes puts people off. I found the act of taking notes with
a hand held computer to be highly distracting for my informants so did not bother
to bring one this trip (also a bit distracting for me). Now I carry three or four
blank sheets of A4 paper and 2 pens (when I take out my pen someone invariably wants
to borrow it and then I am stuck without ability to take any notes). these scratch
notes tend to take the form of keywords. If I write these keywords up within a day
then I find my memory is very rich. If I wait a few days then the difference is
drastic. I regularly resolve not to let these scratch notes go unwritten up but
I must admit, to my shame, that I still let them sit in my pocket for a few days
from time to time.
Using the internet in the field.
Notes on internet use in the field
December
n:7, n:8, n:11, n:14, n:15, n:18, n:27, n:28, n:29, n:36, n:62, n:63, n:41, n:43,
n:62
January
n:4
February
n:30, n:45
The most frequent internet activity in the field is without a doubt email. I had
a short flurry of enormous interest in the World Wide Web in December and early January
but for various reasons that has dropped off and I have let it drop. I have found
that most major difficulties in working on the CSAC server are surmountable though
it remains a less than ideal working situation.
Post in Bhalot is reasonably secure but there can be enormous delays. One example
that illustrates the problem occurred last month with a zamindar's phone bill. I
was in the tea shop when the shopkeeper handed the bill to another zamindar (the
post is delivered to the tea shop where people can pick it up). This zamindar took
the phone bill to his dhéra where he opened it and we all had a look at who
the other zamindar had called. The bill was then given to a man who is related to
a servant of the zamindar. I forgot about this bill until a few weeks later I heard
the two zamindars arguing about where the bill had gone. The original zamindar (the
real recipient of the bill) had somehow never received his phone bill but only heard
rumours that it was somewhere in the village. Personal mail is treated with more
respect but all the same the problem remains that post involves some risk. Email
has therefore been a great comfort to me. I receive around 15-20 messages in a week.
When the US and the UK started bombing Iraq in December I received a large number
of emails from friends and family who were worried. Thanks to email I was able to
inexpensively let them all know I was fine. I have also found email to be quite
useful within Pakistan. I still have trouble with Urdu and especially on the phone
so when I call Islamabad and the person I want is not available I find it difficult
to leave exactly the message I want. Many of the people I contact outside the village
now have email so it is simple and efficient to email them if I don't get them on
the telephone.
In the first month that I was in the village I used the www with several people.
We browsed the web for anything they wanted to know about. The initial requests
were usually for something illicit (alcohol, women, guns) or some luxury (cars, perfume).
After people got tired of that they started asking for useful information about
tractors and crops. What we discovered rather quickly is that the www is very much
targeted at the west. The tractors we were able to find photographs of were all
the latest models. These tractors are ten times more powerful than the tractors
in use in the village (and far out of the price range of most Pakistani farmers).
Our browsing for crops was also dissatisfying. We found lots of information but
the seeds and varieties were all placed in a western context so none of us were sure
how they would do in Pakistan. Our emails for more details went unanswered. Exporting
to Pakistan can be a tricky thing so I do not blame those people for not wanting
to deal with a request from Pakistan but I was disappointed all the same. The one
common thing I found with everyone I used the www with is that they would not touch
the computer themselves and they were absolutely not interested in looking at news
websites. The newspapers they read here are all local Urdu language newspapers and
they are unavailable in the village. The little international news they receive
in these local papers and on the nightly television broadcast seems to be as much
international news as they really want.
The problems I have encountered with internet are not terribly important. There
is occasionally static or noise on the phone lines so a clean data transfer becomes
more problematic. Downloading large files through a browser can be a problem. I
must be sure to have else something going on (which unfortunately occupies the phone
line even more). It may be superstitious but I find if I simply leave my computer
to transfer a large file and do nothing else then I get disconnected. I do not know
whether it is at the server side or something specific to my computer but it seems
to decide after a few minutes of only downloading that I do not need the connection
anymore. For the most part I avoid downloading large files from the web. The longest
file I got was a huge super fast tractor video 2 or 3 minutes long. Everyone was
thoroughly impressed with both the video and the tractor but in the end it was completely
inappropriate for this area and so this rather large file got dumped.
Other problems include one temporary crash of the server which lasted one weekend.
This is not unique to Pakistan of course-- this happens at UKC from time to time
and is just a fact of life for the moment. Requests from young men for pornography
has been a very minor problem. My own reputation in the village is not set in stone.
I think I am reasonably well respected now but I know that if I become known as
a pornography supplier then I will rapidly lose the respect I have. Secrets, I have
decided, are virtually impossible for me in this village. While other people certainly
have their little secrets that they are able to keep I am not in a position to be
able to keep much from anyone. My room has become an open guest area where people
wander in and out to chat most times of the day. This serves my purposes since it
means I get a steady supply of informants with minimal effort on my part, but it
also means that they all see what I do and they tell others. A good example of that
is when I arrive in the evenings for my late night chats with my host he usually
knows where I have been and who I have spoken to throughout the day. Even when I
go to Rawalpindi he often has a notion of what I have been up to because somewhere
there I encountered someone who knows him and calls him up chat about this 'gora'
who lives in a Punjabi village. So my web browsing activities have declined rapidly
in recent weeks. I still get an occasional request for specific information (airline
schedules, phone numbers in the US, email addresses) but mostly people seem to have
lost interest and I do not push it.
Using audio/video equipment in the field.
I have a video camera and a still camera which I use fairly often. The still camera
has proven a big hit with everyone because it takes good photos and I am reasonably
generous with my copies. I had three prints of every negative made and keep one
complete set for myself and the other two I either give to someone in the village
or send back to Europe to friends and family. Most of the photos get given out in
the village. My last batch of photos was 8 rolls of film (about 250 photos). Although
people have seen these photos dozens of times they never fail to go through them
in detail every time they get a chance. The video camera was more popular at first
until people discovered that I could not give them stills off of the video camera
that were of the same quality as my SLR camera. Since very few people own VCR's
or even televisions, the thrill of having a videotape of one's family quickly fades.
I have tried to videotape techniques people use for farming. I show these back to
people and ask them to tell me what is happening. I have two problems with this
technique. 1) If I show these films in a group setting there is usually a Malik
present and he will tell the others to shut up when they start to answer my questions.
2) It seems to take an inordinately long time for people to get over the excitement
of seeing themselves or their friends on video (on 'television')-- hence they are
not very interested in giving more detail than I already have. Where I find this
extremely useful is in identifying people. Some video footage that I took with Dr.
Lukas Werth at an 'urs' at Kalyam Sharif proved very productive. There was so much
happening at the time that I really was unable to get straight who everyone was.
Had I not had the video this would simply have faded into the background until I
got back to Kalyam Sharif. With the video I was able to get positive identities
of many of the people at the 'urs' and more importantly, get a measure of just how
important saints are to villagers. The fact that they knew so much about the kin
relations and castes of various participants in the ritual proves to me that these
things matter to my temporary neighbours. Like Evans-Pritchard says in his Azande
book regarding his interest in witchcraft, I wasn't interested in saints or pirs
before coming to Pakistan but I have become interested because they are interested.
I have not become so interested as to shift my thesis topic but then I do not think
that their interest is that great as to merit a thesis on what they think of saints
(or is that simply my own lack of interest in religion impacting on what they tell
me?).
I am using the video camera to pull of audio recordings until my minidiskman gets
repaired. This works reasonably well. The only problem is that it is a big bulky
thing and if I want a discrete little hand held recorder to put on a table in front
of singer or during a conversation this camera is not the answer. I have copied
two speeches from the k'huli kacherri onto the computer and some folk songs. I am
painstakingly trying to transcribe the folk songs. They are not so difficult to
transcribe as tedious. That is perhaps my biggest complaint about using audio recordings--
they are fun to have and useful to play back, but if one wants a text version they
are no fun at all. It is however extremely good for my Punjabi and Urdu lessons.
So far I have been pleased with every aspect of electronic media in the field. It
may have added some time to my field note entries, but it has made up for that in
the reliability and security those notes have. In addition I am confident that it
will save me time in the writing up process (and hopefully improve the writing up
process). I have had no serious problems and those few technical problems I have
had I have managed to overcome reasonably quickly (though it did not feel quick at
the time).
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