Himalayan Muntjac Deer: Ethnography as experiment, Harbin's unique pool area, Representations and Harbin

Harbin ethnography:


The ethnography of my actual and virtual field sites of Harbin Hot Springs is itself a methodological experiment, due to Harbin's unique pool area, and its emergence from the Human Potential Movement, the Holistic, Natural Movement, and Universal Spirituality, and the 1960s, and what has taken shape on-the-ground over nearly 40 years. Building on a century of ethnographic fieldwork, and a large body of research about the 'virtual,' I suggest that ethnography as method reveals much about counterculture at Harbin, actually and virtually. I trace a trajectory of the 'virtual' from within the practice of ethnography itself, where Malinowski's “Imagine yourself...” in a new place, such as the Trobriand Islands, and, Geertz's emphasis on understanding the “native's point of view,” both of which suggest similar kinds of virtuality (Boellstorff 2007:6) to the idea of a virtual world 'avatar.' And while, not in the scope of my actual/virtual Harbin ethnography, I take this a step further to suggest that this is part of symbolizing which we human primates engage in, as well as in, for example, the understanding of ideas that Plato proposed, and of “saying something about something,” to quote Aristotle. Representing both actual and virtual Harbins, ethnographically, is to explicitly examine the 'virtual,' anthropologically, and is the methodological experiment I engage in.














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/himalayan-muntjac-deer-ethnography-as.html - Feburary 23, 2010)