Waterway: In this “Harbin Hot Springs' Actual/Virtual Ethnography,” a prime goal is to begin to understand people's freedoms in countercultural Harbin

Harbin ethnography:



... And I, as ethnographer, do a kind of duet with the writing of this book, also giving form to, and making Watsu music with the virtual, of virtual Harbin.

In this “Harbin Hot Springs' Actual/Virtual Ethnography,” a prime goal is to begin to understand people's freedoms in countercultural Harbin, and especially in the pool area, and explore, relatedly, how freedoms emerge in the Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs, as ethnographic field site, as a song of the virtual. By examining such Harbin freedoms, and also possible lack thereof, especially vis-a-vis the Harbin pool area, I posit the possibilities of such codes as having value for 'knowledge about' both the actual and the virtual, both actual and virtual Harbin, even though individuals and groups at Harbin may understand such freedoms in very different ways. Exploring these actual and virtual Harbin 'cultural codes,' grounded in ethnographic argument, and methodologies, doesn't lessen the significances of other Harbin subcultures, other arguments, other languages spoken (English, New Age, French or other) at actual or in virtual Harbin, Harbin informationalism emergences, or any related research questions. This book is making an argument for heteroglossic counterculture, and thus 'culture,' with its accordant challenges in the discipline of anthropology. With emergent virtual Harbin, and, for example, wiki technologies, multiple voices may and will emerge, with time, generating ongoing ethnographic conversations and understandings. Disagreements and differences about such will potentially be understood in relation to actual Harbin and its waters, as kinds of grounding assumptions (Boellstorff 2008:65) and especially as {counter}cultural codes.

The little things in the Harbin pools – both virtual and actual – fascinate me as an ethnographer, informing a kind of cultural code. ...












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/waterway-in-this-harbin-hot-springs.html - November 12, 2010)