Grad student life in Michigan -- the highs, the lows.

There's a new yoga studio in the area. I was excited to see that, because up until then the only one I knew of around Livingston County was Yoga Center for Healthy Living in Brighton, which is a bit on the pricey side. Unfortunately, this new one in Pinckney doesn't offer that many classes, and no morning yoga. Boo.

Why isn't there full cooperation from the rest of the world for my dream life of weekend days of sun, yoga class and farmer's market in the morning followed by a smoothie and coffee while catching up on the news, whole grain baking and organic gardening, a little reading and writing, a little country bike ride, and a swim at sunset?

I did pretty well in realizing my vision today, though -- I biked in the snippet of sun after our downpour this morning, came home and made a blueberry/strawberry/nonfat milk/Vanilla protein smoothie and some coffee & milk, took care of a little personal business, and made another new version of quick rye bread, this time including buckwheat and quinoa flour, sesame and sunflower seeds, to complement the rye & molasses. I'll let you know how it turns out . . . it sure smells good in the oven, though. :)

The mosquitoes are really bumming me out -- I'd like to go back to the garden and do some more work, and I think I'll brave them anyway. But even covered from head to toe and hovering close to two citronella candles, I get divebombed without a mosquito net covering my face. And I don't have a mosquito net, unfortunately. I'm resisting DEET products, though I did order some Avon Skin-so-soft bug spray to see if that does the trick. Gwen's suggestion of vanilla was clever, but it didn't work for me, nor did citronella essential oil. I've been so itchy the past few days, I can hardly fathom exposing myself to more bites right now. . . never mind the diseases they can carry . . .

I'm thinking now about the rest of my day. Some house cleaning, I think, a closet reorganization operation, a bit of gardening, some work on an archaeology paper, and maybe a house party and some visiting with friends this evening. That is, if I get paid on Monday. I need to drive to Detroit first thing in the morning for a job interview, and my gas tank is (as usual, lately) running low, along with my bank account. If I can't buy gas on Monday morning, I actually can't afford to go anywhere at all between now and then. Oh, if only I could afford to buy a more fuel-efficient car. If only housing were more affordable in Ann Arbor. If only gas prices weren't so damned high.

I have several jobs potentially in the works, a few hours here, a few hours there. Three tutoring gigs, a research assistantship, and a research analyst position. (I've applied for others, but some didn't come through, and I gave up on the baking job when I heard that fifteen people had interviewed for that one full-time minimum wage position starting work at 5 am.) It's so confusing I've created a spreadsheet to keep track of it all. But if I get one or both of the ones I'm really hoping for, I'll be doing fine for the rest of the summer. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to turn to prostitution to fill in the gaps between tutoring gigs so I can make rent for August and September, until I start my next GSI position at U of M, and get my first paycheck at the very end of September. Just kidding. Mostly.

Oh! My bread is ready, and I'm already devouring it with ripe avocado. MMMMMmmmm.

Baking details HERE in the Kitchen Empress.

Herr, lehre doch mich

I think I've finally figured out the correct metaphor for how I've been feeling.

It's as if there is an elephant sitting on top of my soul.

And though I'd benefit from talk therapy, physical therapy, massage therapy, grief counseling, and many other varieties of therapy, what I could probably most use is a shamanic healer.

Is this just another bump in the road in grad school? Is existential crisis part of the routine?

There are books staring at me from across the room. Can I open them? What am I so afraid of?

Parenthood, Childhood, and the State -- starting the first draft.

Well, I've written the beginning of a draft of my paper for Parenthood, Childhood, and the State.
It's funny, I sometimes get really passionate when I write papers for social work.

Want to see what I've got so far? If it's boring to you, by all means, you can skip it. :)

Just one other thing. I got a personal thank-you note in email tonight from one of my students. Aww, I feel all warm and fuzzy now.


So, here's the beginning of the draft. No title as of yet, and don't even really like the subtitles. It still needs work, editing, and a lot more thinking. But if you do read it and you have a comment, I'd love to hear it, especially if it might help with the conceptualization of what I'm trying to bring together. It's still not clear yet from what I've written so far, I'm afraid. I've got a veritable tower of books here I'm still sorting through and trying to think about, and realistically, this is probably going to feed directly into my preliminary exams, since I know I'm not going to get the mastery of the material that I want to in the next ten days. But, still to come is: Meredith Small, Margaret Mead (somewhere I need to work in those wacky videos!), Foucault, Ann Stoler, more history and law, some historical sociology on Hungarian social welfare (Lynne Haney), some stuff on the control of reproduction, and some interdisciplinary stuff on child welfare, child abuse and neglect, the framing of child development in social work, and some more policy stuff. In other words, it's a right mess and I really need to figure out how to pull it all together.

My Point of Entry for this Inquiry

My interest in drawing together a rather disparate body of literature on parenthood, childhood, and the state, in this course, originated out of a nagging sense that policymakers and social workers ought to pay more attention to anthropology and history. Social work courses at the master's level often take as a given social constructions that we consider an object of inquiry at the doctoral level, and the treatment of childhood and the relationship between the state and the child in particular were two areas that had troubled me in my MSW courses. "What are the goals of childhood?" asked one instructor at the beginning of a course on Child and Infant development, yielding a series of student responses such as "learning language", "learning to walk," "play," "going to school," "learning to read and write," "learning math," and so on. The implication that this was a scientific question being presented to the class, one that could be answered in a way that could apply to all settings, concerned me deeply. The very framing of childhood as a context where goals ought to be made, striven toward, and accomplished seemed odd to me. With regular social contact with communicative adults, every child without specific limitations comes to be able to communicate through language and walk without assistance. The concept that these processes require specific parental (or social work) intervention is one that is patently untrue, and one that promotes an ethnocentric view of families where childhood is not a "project" to succeed or fail in and of cultures where work, rather than play, is the emphasis for children.

After all, setting aside our own enculturation as Americans and emotional cues to the contrary, there is nothing that makes our categorization of a menstruating twelve-year-old female as a child any more appropriate or natural than that of another culture that may view her as ready for marriage. Such arguments, when they arise in international media, frequently yield cries from international experts who cite apparently harmful physiological effects of early child birth, economic and social effects of curtailing her enrollment in formal public education, and human rights established and agreed upon in some international forum. I do not mean to dispute any such claims in this instance, but merely to point out the remarkable variation that has existed across time and space in (1) what we consider a child, (2) what roles we consider appropriate and inappropriate for someone in that category, (3) what modes of interaction we consider appropriate between parents or other caregivers and children, and (4) how and when we believe we ought to intervene in these interactions as a public (whether as a state representing the people, or as other authority figures or neighbors in a shared community).

There is no doubt that there are trends and even universals in human development across the life course, and I don't contest that these features are important for future social work practitioners to learn. But it is my contention that the ahistoricism and ethnocentrism that plague many practice-oriented social work courses do a profound disservice to both practitioner and client in the long term. Why? Because it robs the social worker of an education in critical theory that could aid her or him in contextualizing — and challenging — the normative, and ultimately could shape a profoundly more radical version of social work than currently appears to be inculcated in schools of social work.

In order for real social change to occur, a systematic and thorough understanding of the current situation is necessary, and such an understanding is impossible without knowledge of what has preceded. In the words of Robert van Krieken, a "lack of historical understanding" . . .

encourages the tendency to see promising novelty where there is often recycling of old ideas and old recipes, and disables us from perceiving long-term trends. As David Thompson puts it, to neglect history "means that we often fail to appreciate that the options facing us now are very familiar to those considered, tried and discarded by previous generations which also had to decide how to care for the lonely elderly, the husbandless mother, the parentless child or the unemployed family man (Thompson 1986:357)" (van Krieken 1991:2).

Furthermore, I would add, as globalization continues to reshape our social world in quite profound ways, and social workers are more and more likely to come into contact with clients socialized in environments dramatically different from those they grew up in themselves, the lessons of anthropology become increasingly important to integrate into the training of social work practitioners. The application of a tried-and-true method in a culturally inappropriate setting is arguably no less foolhardy than the application of a method that was "tried and discarded by previous generations". However, without placing a greater value on the contributions of both anthropology and history to the education of those conceptualizing interventions, these are both inevitably mistakes they will make.

* * *

Weapons of the Powerful

Debates for or against a particular change in policy often draw on the public's emotions by rhetorically establishing a frame of normalcy, then placing a certain belief or practice outside that frame by invoking what is natural or what is universal. These constructs, however, almost never are used with the basis of scientific evidence that informs of what was practiced by our ancestors, or how practices vary across human populations. In the area of the family, this type of rhetoric is particularly popular for attempts to discredit such far-ranging practices as polygamy, homosexuality, various approaches to parenting, and the list goes on.

In just one of the more recent of such debates, calling for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, President Bush made the following statement:

The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoring, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.

Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.

Within two days, the American Anthropological Association stepped forward to dispute the claim President Bush had made, stating that:

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

Anthropology and history provide powerful tools for challenging commonsense understandings of the natural by countering assumptions about what is universal with empirical evidence of how human social structures have varied over time and space.

Works Cited

AAA statement on Marriage and the Family, issued February 26, 2004, available at: http://www.aaanet.org/press/ma_stmt_marriage.htm

Bush, President George W., Statement of February 24, 2004, "President Calls for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage," available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040224-2.html

Van Krieken, Robert (1991). Children and the State: Social Control and the formation of Australian Child Welfare. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Top Ten Strategies for Tricking Myself into Continuing to Work When I Want to Play or Sleep

1. System of rewards. If you just get out of bed to work now, and get something started, you can take a nap this afternoon.

2. Brief vigorous exercise. Dancing crazy, jumping jacks, going for a 5-minute jog outside.

3. Snacking. Walk to kitchen, stretch legs and neck, grab snack foods, return, write a paragraph, repeat if necessary. In my opinion, the best kinds to have on hand are: Tons of fruit (bananas, apples, tangerines, oranges), natural popcorn in the bag (white cheddar or plain varieties), raw carrots, pre-cooked veggies that work as finger foods like steamed broccolini or roasted asparagus, whole grain crackers, hummous for when you're feeling dippy, and nuts -- especially raw almonds and cashews, and occasionally dry roasted peanuts. For hungrier times, Morningstar Farms buffalo wings dipped in blue cheese dressing are a real favorite. But I actually eat those for dinner more often than I'd like to admit. Steamed quinoa brown rice is another winner, with a little tamari sauce and butter.

4. Being in my Pajamas. It helps, somehow, because it feels inherently indulgent.

5. Showering. A good break that can stimulate the circulation and also makes for good thinking time if you do it at exactly the right moment. You've been writing, writing, writing, and then you're printing and need a break before you sit down to read a draft, and you shower while the printer's going and think about what else you need to add to your argument. Brilliant. My best ideas seem to come while almost-sleeping or while under a stream of warm water.

6. Making lists. (Hmmm. notice anything here. . .?) It's a good way to release the things you need to do, the other interests you have that you're not allowing yourself to think about for the time being, or whatever.

7. Switching between scholarly tasks. Going from one paper to another when you're stuck, or moving from reading and note-taking to outlining or writing drafts to researching and ordering library books can help keep you productive even when you're feeling antsy. I try to avoid email when I'm doing something that requires more concentrated and longer-term thinking, but there are always emails to professors or colleagues that need writing, too, and especially if they're related to what I'm doing they can sometimes help.

8. Taking a quick break to do something more mundane that needs to get done. This can be a time-suck if you're not careful, because it's rare that I don't urgently need to dust, vacuum, clean my bathroom, clean my kitchen, do the laundry, sort mail, file papers, print journal articles, grade undergraduate papers, shovel the porch, salt the driveway, do my physical therapy stretches, apply more cream to my eczema, give myself a facial mask, add air to my tires, schedule a car maintenance and a dental hygiene appointment, make phone calls about health referrals, and . . . well, you know how it is. Graduate school. Anyway, though, doing one of these silly things that needs doing can offer a sense of accomplishment when you're feeling less than powerful with the rather abstract theoretical or empirical thing you're trying to think through, and can make it easier to go back to.

9. Meditating. A few minutes of silent deep breathing always helps to focus the mind and cut through the mental garbage.

10. Gilmore Girls. When all else fails, a break of a few minutes to watch silly television with quick witty banter can help a lot. Especially if I've been doing good, concentrated writing, it can be a really good break to zone out and rest the mind that way.

11. Oh, I know, I said there'd be 10. But how could I forget: Caffeinated beverage. Coffee and tea, what would I do without you? Cafe con leche, coffee with cream, Earl Grey with lemon and honey, green tea, black tea with milk. . . The varieties are endless. The effect so dependable.

12. Power nap. Sometimes you actually need a few minutes of real sleep to get going again. I always find that when I'm writing, my ideas flow so much better, my thinking is so much sharper, just after I've woken up.

13. Turning on or off the music. I used to be all about pure silence for writing. But the past few days, I've realized that certain types of writing, or certain parts of the process, are actually good for me with music. Especially when it's late at night and all I want to do is cover myself up with blankies and close my eyes. Mixing it up with silence and sound can keep my thoughts moving when I don't want to be.

So, grad school buddies, what are your tricks?

Oh, God. . .

can't sleep can't sleep can't sleep. ugh. got an important meeting in the morning . . . need to prepare for it . . . but wanted to sleep first . . . can't sleep can't sleep can't sleep

. . .


Might as well look at my tarot reading from the other day. I discovered an online spot where you can get free readings on the Rider-Waite deck. This is a Celtic Cross spread. Typically, you enter the practice of a reading with a question in mind. In case you think I'm some crazy California hippie girl all of a sudden, since I'm talking about tarot, I should probably explain that I don't take tarot to be a source of literal psychic reading of the future, but rather a beneficial analytic tool for thinking metaphorically about one's life and journey in a broader sense. That said, though, I don't dismiss its mysticism entirely. I have to say, this reading resonated in quite compelling ways with what I was wondering about.

The Significator The Significator represents you and your current state of being.
	The King of Wands Passionate, a spry body and mind, honesty and friendliness.
The Crossing Card The Crossing Card denotes that which opposes or influences you.
	Seven of Cups Deception, an overactive imagination, and the illusion of success. Strengths are not consolidated to work as one.
The Foundation card The Foundation card addresses the origin of your question.
	Five of Pentacles Poverty and unemployment are possible. Possessions may be lost. A troubled soul is likely.
The Recent Past The Recent Past represents past events and concerns.
	The Hanged Man Reversed The card of false prophecy and time wasted. The reversed Hanged Man represents a preoccupation with the worldly and wasted energy.
The Crown The Crown addresses issues that are significant in the present or may come to pass in the future. This card foretells future events which you may or may not occur, depending upon how you respond to the present situation.
	The Six of Wands Reversed Success may be delayed. Be wary of accomplished enemies.
The Future The Future depicts that which lies ahead.
	Knight of Cups Reversed Scrutinize all ventures and deals carefully. Lies, laziness and underhandedness are possible.
Emotions Emotions card signifies the current state of your emotional self.
	Nine of Cups Reversed Unfulfilled wishes, bad health and deprivation are possible.
External Forces represents the influence of others in your life as well as trends in your relationships with others.
	Eight of Pentacles Reversed Possible failure. Vanity and underhandedness must be watched for. Skills may be misused.
Hopes and Desires Hopes and Desires stands for the hopes and desires you have for the outcome of your question.
	Seven of Swords Plans may fail. Distrust and dishonesty are possible. Success will not be complete.
The Outcome The Outcome the ultimate outcome your question. Remember the future is not predetermined. Interpret this card in the context of the entire reading and as an indicator of the path you are currently on, but not bound to. reading.
	The Lovers The drawing of two forces together, choices, temptations. The fight between the sacred and the secular. Accord of the inner and worldly self.

It's so silly! I absolutely LOVE to write! So why does it take me such an amazingly bloody fucking long time to get down to the business of actually doing it?

It was absolute torture getting started on my first Qualitative Methods paper. Absolute torture!! I was hiding under the desk, getting ready to scream, going around the house dusting while calling all my friends. But then, finally, finally, I picked up Ben Highmore's Everyday Life and Cultural Theory, a book I've had sitting on my shelf for-fucking-ever, and I read a bit, and it started the rusty wheels of thought. There was an interesting confluence in Highmore's using Sherlock Holmes as an example, since I'd just heard the editor of the recently published volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's correspondence talking on Diane Rehm a few days ago. And then Highmore led me to Weber, with some interesting thoughts about Marx and Kafka along the way, and Weber got me all excited about the stahlhartes Gehäuse and the subtleties of the new translation. And then she's off!

(from my Qual Methods paper)

In a particularly famous moment of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber asserts that capitalism has fundamentally transformed the nature and degree of human autonomy. Eschewing previous translations referring to our 'iron cages', Peter Baehr and Gordon Wells render his words thus:

Today's capitalist economic order is a monstrous cosmos, into which the individual is born and which in practice is for him, at least as an individual, simply a given, an immutable shell, in which he is obliged to live. It forces on the individual, to the extent that he is caught up in the relationships of the 'market,' the norms of its economic activity. The manufacturer who consistently defies these norms will just as surely be forced out of business as the worker who cannot or will not conform will be thrown out of work" (Weber 2002 [1905]: 13).

Weber continues, . . .

"Puritans wanted to be men of the calling—we, on the other hand, must be. For when asceticism moved out of the monastic cells into working life, and began to dominate innerworldly morality, it helped to build that mighty cosmos of the modern economic order (which is bound to the technical and economic conditions of mechanical and machine production). Today this mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed.

"In Baxter's view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly on the shoulders of his saints 'like a thin cloak which can be thrown off at any time' [312]. But fate decreed that the cloak should become a shell as hard as steel [stahlhartes Gehäuse]. As asceticism began to change the world and endeavored to exercise its influence over it, the outward goods of this world gained increasing and finally inescapable power over men, as never before in history. Today its spirit has fled from this shell—whether for all time, who knows?" (Weber 2002 [1905]:120-121) In a dystopic vision of a possible future, Weber suggests that, in the absence of "new prophets" or "powerful old ideas and ideals. . . reborn at the end of this monstrous development," we might become "specialists without spirit, hedonists without heart, . . . nonentities [who] imagine they have attained a stage of humankind [Menschentum] never before reached" (121).

I lapse into this lengthy quotation from the new translation of Weber because I find his metaphor to be highly relevant and useful for understanding many of the issues Ms. Grad Student Colleague raises about her experience as a graduate student being socialized into one or more professions. Weber suggests that the social structure of capitalism has created the expectation that we must embody our calling to the extent that it transforms our way of being. As the translators note on the change in language in this edition, "a shell has an organic quality and symbolizes something that has not just been externally imposed but that has become integral to human existence. Whereas a cage confines human agents but leaves their powers otherwise intact, a shell suggests that modern capitalism has created a new kind of being" (lxxi).

. . . And then, on to Crotty, and Giordano & Boscoboinik (who not only edited a volume on anthropological understandings of risk, but also coauthored a paper on Romani identity in Bulgaria, weirdly and coincidentally enough), and from there to Tom Wengraf to talk about BNIM. A few more linkages, a conclusion, and the integration of the material I have that I want to use from my interview and my colleagues' written memos, and maybe a word or two about Nagarjuna, and I'll be done. From start to finish is so easy. It's just getting to the starting line that could possibly kill me . . . .

Well, anyway, for now it's time for a bath and bed. What'll it be tonight, hmm? Lavender and orange again? Maybe some chamomile? Oh, I love aromatherapy. Liles, I can never thank you enough for introducing me to the practice.