Sierra river & illumination: What can ethnography tell us about actual and virtual Harbin in the present vis-a-vis method?

Harbin ethnography:

... To engage Harbin on its own terms, the ethnographic methods I develop here involve reading Ishvara's first impressions in historical record, as actual place and emerging milieu.

What can ethnography tell us about actual and virtual Harbin in the present vis-a-vis method? While understanding some of Ishvara's low-key influence at Harbin over the years opens many possibilities for exploring the remarkable fabric of Harbin life vis-a-vis its emergence from the 1960s, the community, and ways of life, which have emerged at Harbin, since 1972, are especially significant in fathoming Harbin's unique fabric of life and its vision. In addition to one far-reaching interview with Ishvara in 2008 (MacLeod 2008), as well as interviews with a number of long term residents, the significance, in particular, of the Harbin pool area, and especially of the pools themselves, is central to the understanding on-the-ground Harbin. And pool work, emerging out of the practices of ethnographic field work, is a new, anthropological method emerging here, finding form in fluidity and release in an warm aqueous environment, vis-a-vis participant observation. In the context of Harbin as Heart Consciousness Church, interpreting both 1960s language, as well, as New Age processes significantly given form by hippies, in some ways may involve developing relatively unexplored, anthropological connectednesses – in the pools.

To study a virtual Harbin, or virtual Harbins, in relation to an ethnographic interpretation of actual Harbin vis-a-vis its pools, as well as its emergence from the 1960s, involves relatively new approaches to ethnography vis-a-vis cyberspace, and comparison. ...












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/sierra-river-illumination-what-can.html - October 25, 2010)