Acanalonia conica: At Harbin, 'groups,' workshops, in the pool area, in the Harbin office, in the Residents' Center, at the Temple

Harbin ethnography:


... In so doing, I articulate a kind of comparative, pragmatic ethics of actual and virtual Harbin field work.

At Harbin, I didn't identify with any of 'groups,' or even workshops, in general. In the pool area, in the Harbin office, in the Residents' Center, which was new in 2005, along with the also-new-then Temple, I didn't identify with a specific groups, such as the managing directors, puddles of friends in the warm pool, human awareness institute workshops, or Paul Lowe group workshops. In general, I took what I would call a fairly independent direction, which, while making friends, didn't lead me to identify with any identifies, cliques, workshops, or groups. Recalling the opening paragraphs of this book, what I might call the ethics of play at Harbin Hot Springs, of hippie play, for many of the people who visit or are residents - but not for me as a resident or an anthropologist - involves 'engaging' at Harbin, sometimes with intimacy, in the pools for example, and sometimes in quirky ways. My independence partly involved a reflexive sense of my personal, developing ethics in relation to Harbin, and I also had, concurrently, writing this actual / virtual Harbin ethnography in mind, which made me a little careful about how I engaged people. Harbin's openness, its milieu emerging from the 60s, the possibilities for intimacy, and its clothing-optionalness can attract some pretty wild people, in my experience, so part of my ethics, personally and anthropologically, involved more observation than participation, to explicitly engage a key methodology in ethnography. The ethics of pool play (a development on anthropological field work) at Harbin Hot Springs, anthropologically, might welcome more engagement, yet I've held back some. Ethically and ethnographically, I may engage more such opportunities in order to learn about Harbin's ethics.

With virtual Harbin, I've ...











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/01/acanalonia-conica-at-harbin-groups-or.html - January 12, 2011)