![\"\"\/](\"http:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/img\/collie01.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nFrom an anthropological perspective, there’s always\nthe worry that I’m committing the ethical crime of appropriating someone else’s\nsubaltern culture. Racially I’m white, and I don’t want to even accidentally\nappear to act like I’m either stealing the words of, or attempting to speak for,\nany of the minority participants. Also, as I feel is only correct, CIIS\nstrongly suggests all participants be allowed to review what you’ve written\nabout them, so they know for sure that you’ve not either misquoted or\nmisrepresented them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All these concerns make me a little twitchy while writing! So initially I tried to craft each of the five families’ segments almost entirely of participant quotes. Unsurprisingly, this made for a Very Long Chapter! Fortunately my dissertation committee chair explained that statements of fact do not need to be quoted, e.g.: I can type ‘she has two sisters and seven brothers,’ rather than quoting the participant’s statement: “There were ten of us\u2026 I was the second of the three girls, and… our births were interspersed between those of our seven brothers.” Whew!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next thing I had to cope with was what I’ve\nheard writers refer to as “murdering your darlings.” In a nutshell,\nno matter how amazing or wonderful the quote, if it didn’t relate to the\nsubject at hand then it needed to be cut! That’s a painful process, since I\nreally wanted each family’s fascinating and cool information to remain. Oh the\nangst! J<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are the mechanical issues — as in, the entire\nchapter for the participant families should ideally only be about 60 pages\nlong. That averages out to about 12 pages per family. So I went back and\nchecked how many pages each family had devoted to them\u2026 and had to shudder! The\nshortest was 18 — and the longest was 29! OK, back to work\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this is my attempt at public self-accountability!\nI started with the largest family segment, at 29 pages, and got it down to 14\npages — I figured since I was interviewing three people all at once, the two\nextra pages weren’t too slipshod of me. The committee chair thinks I did great,\nand on to the next one! That family’s segment is 28 pages. While I’m still\nworking on it, it’s down to 18 now — yay, me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More — or rather, less pages, I hope — to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Writing up interviews is not easy! From an anthropological perspective, there’s always the worry that I’m committing the ethical crime of appropriating someone else’s subaltern…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":6209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,43,32,5,7,8,23,9,1,26,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","category-dissertation-blues","category-education","category-ethics-questions","category-family","category-feminism","category-ma-phd-programs","category-minorities","category-uncategorized","category-spirituality","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6210,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions\/6210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stormtiger.com\/collie\/bestiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}