Paperback(New Edition)
-
SHIP THIS ITEMTemporarily Out of Stock Online
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611860290 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2012 |
| Series: | Latinos in the United States |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
NOSOTROS
A STUDY OF EVERYDAY MEANINGS IN HISPANO NEW MEXICOBy ALVIN O. KORTE
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2012 Alvin O. KorteAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61186-029-0
Chapter One
Phenomenology of Everyday Life: Fenomenología Cotidiana y los Hispanos
It is impossible to derive the basic logic of a science of persons from the logic of non-personal sciences. No branch of natural science requires us to make the particular type of inferences that are required in a science of persons. R. D. Laing, Self and Others
This book is a study of epistemology, which I define as what people know in their daily lives. Becker and Laing are used as starting points for a general depiction of Hispano thought, which includes the study of how language develops an understanding of the world of everyday life. Language usage is the vehicle for understanding how people name events, interactions, attitudes, and values. Understanding how words are used to construct the edifice of everyday life is best accomplished by using concepts from phenomenology.
Phenomenology allows one to study the elements of everyday life as phenomena. In order for us to make a reasoned inquiry about something (e.g., mortificación) as a lingual event, we must be willing to suspend whatever beliefs and preconceptions we have about this term in order to develop an understanding of it and what it signifies. We need to learn how this word is understood and used by people in everyday life. In this approach, I treat everyday life—that is, "lived experience"—as phenomena and not as part of that which is taken for granted. I need to become a stranger to this reality—and sometimes to my own reality—in order to reexperience it and be able to say something about its nature. The world of everyday life is structured in terms of words. Hispanos, like other people, have a vast array of words and concepts that they use in dealing with daily life.
In 1964, Ernest Becker called for a "quiet revolution" in psychiatry, in which an invasion of psychiatry by philosophy and the social sciences would change the reductionist medical view of human problems. Becker's work in part sets out to redefine and reexamine psychiatric symptoms and, in his words, "to merge [psychiatry] into a broad, human science so that the study of man in society, to which an enlightened social psychiatry will be a contributing discipline" (Becker 1964, 2). Philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and the other perspectives (e.g., existentialist thought) would enlarge the psychiatric view of man. This proposed revolution in psychiatry was prompted by two converging sources of dissatisfaction: the medical model as a perspective for the amelioration of human ills, and the physical science model for research on human problems. Part of the dissatisfaction with these concepts, argues R. D. Laing, is that the technical vocabulary used to describe psychiatric patients splits human beings into such dichotomies as inner and outer reality, mind and body, psych and soma, and physical and psychic reality. These terms serve to isolate humans from each other and from the world (Laing 1976, 24-26).
When parts of this chapter were written many years ago, my intent was to break loose from reductionist views of Hispanos as portrayed in the social sciences, and also from a "science" perspective that defines concepts in terms of how they are to be "operationalized" and measured. I once presented a paper on the Hispano view of vergüenza and was asked what steps were to be taken to develop it into a "shame" scale. Similar questions were asked of a paper on mortification. Why had a survey not been conducted to situate the concept? The mortificación paper, as it was judged, needed not only an operational definition of the concept showing how one was going to measure it, but also a survey and a statistical analysis to "prove" the existence of the concept. The paper was rejected for publication because it failed to meet "scientific exactitude." Another bone of contention stems from the predilection in mental health for defining a concept in terms of its remediation. A tendency exists among human services professionals to "medicalize" social problems and to define some issues in terms of their remediation. People suffer gravely from mortificación because it involves a social interaction in which one family member vexes another. I once received a telephone call from a state mental hospital employee saying that a recently admitted woman was suffering from mortificaciones (as the lady described her situation). Someone knew that I had written a paper on the topic, so I was asked, "What do you do about it?" But the vexer was obviously no longer vexing the mortified person, as she had been admitted to the mental hospital. The social worker could not see the interaction between the vexer and the vexed person as the source of the described mortifications. Thus, the social worker wanted to "treat" the individual at the mental hospital, away from the social interaction that had created the concern.
Social Science and the Phenomenological Method
Norman Denzin contrasts empirical social science based on the logical-positivist perspective and social science based on the phenomenological method:
The human experience does not present itself to the researcher in terms of variables, causal paths, tests of significance, or answers to fixed choice questionnaires. Rather that experience comes to the researcher in terms of lived experience, thickly embedded in the historical, interactional, temporal, emotional and relational worlds of everyday life. Accordingly our concerns should be with how to uncover and disclose meaning and meaningful experience, as that meaning is grounded in the lives of those we study. A preoccupation with the study of meaning, and not the study of the method, should occupy the attention of the human disciplines. (Denzin 1984a, 1)
He continues:
The structures of human experience are woven through a logic that is dialectical, not analytical, linear or causal. To impose analytical, linear, sequential logic on human experience is to violate the very structures of the conduct we wish to interpret and understand. Dialectical reason, as it is stitched into the fabrics of human group life, thus becomes the subject matter of phenomenological inquiry.
Dialectical reason is historical, conflictual, pragmatic, emotional, and temporal. That is, it is embedded in the historical structures that confront the human as she interacts with her fellow humans through the legal, linguistic, kinship, economical, political, cultural and ideological categories given by her society. A conflict of negation, affirmation, thesis and antithesis, and synthesis is grounded in the pragmatic, practical structure of action she undertakes on a daily basis. (Denzin 1984a, 1)
People create meanings—or, according to Alfred Schutz, typifications—about the lived experience. These meanings are the social stock of knowledge that is passed from one generation to another through families, groups, or cultures. We learn names for events, situations, attitudes, things, and people (consociates, as Schutz refers to fellow human beings) (Schutz 1971). The goal of this book is to consider these typifications and define them in emotional, historical, dialectical, and social-interactional terms. Phenomenology is an attempt to bracket what we think we know about an experience; more important, it is a "study of the structures that govern the instances of particular manifestations of the essence of those phenomena. In other words, phenomenology is the systematic attempt to uncover and describe the structures, the internal meanings structures of lived experience" (van Manen 1990, 10). An example of a lived experience comes from the term mancornadora, which will be examined in chapter 5. The term is heard in many Mexican songs, most of them about the killing of women. Does this mean that Hispanos and Mexicans are violent? What is the original social-interactional meaning of this typified term? What is the essence of it root meaning? What do the roots mano and cuerno ("hand" and "horn") imply in the word? How is it indicative of types (typal categories) of social interactions? What is the experience of being a mancornado(a) like? What are the cultural-historical roots of these interactions? The dictionary can give us a concise definition, but it does not take us far enough into the social world to understand the historical, dialectical, temporal, and interactional nuances of the term. Van Manen opines that phenomenological analysis is
the study of lived or existential meanings; it attempts to describe and interpret these meanings to a certain degree of depth and richness. In this focus upon meaning, phenomenology differs from some other social or human sciences which may focus not on meanings but on statistical relationships among variables, on the predominance of social opinions, or on the occurrence or frequency of certain behaviors, etc. (van Manen 1990, 11)
Typifying Experience
We can use the theory of typifications from the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz to describe the consciousness of feelings, emotions, attitudes, values, and social relations of Hispanos. To begin, it is necessary to describe the term Hispano/a. I use the term Hispanos to refer to both genders (except as noted with an a or an o, as in Hispana/o). Spanish-speaking persons in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado use Hispanos to refer to themselves. It is not meant to disparage any other Spanish-speaking peoples in the country, but rather is a self-referencing term with a long historical usage. Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, as well as the United States, influence the everyday life of New Mexico's Hispanos. For example, the chapter on despedidas underscores the great influence of the Mexican corrido and its Spanish precursor, the romance, in the writing of local recuerdos (remembrances) in the newspapers of northern New Mexico. There is no pure culture because Hispanos, like other peoples in this country, migrate from one language identity to another.
In this book, I attempt to answer such questions as these: What is the experience of misery in mortificación or in desmadre like? What are the rules in carría games? What are the assumptions of life behind bars in a southwestern prison? What views do Hispanos have of life and death, and how do they demonstrate these views? In grappling with these and other questions, I will attempt to peel back the layers of the reality of everyday life to expose core ideas. The whole of social reality obviously cannot be tackled, but I offer a methodology that could be extended to study other aspects of social life. I offer a sampling of some typifications found in social life. By typifications, I mean the ability to abstract and name various aspects of social reality. Indeed, "to typify is to abstract" (Natanson 1974, 69). It is the naming of social events, social situations, persons, and types of interactions. Mitote (gossip) is one such typification. Some kinds of verbal experiences are of the genre mitote, others are not. What qualifies as mitote? Where does the word come from? Under what conditions does mitote flourish? The topics in this book have been selected largely by what has struck me as important over the years.
Although other tantalizingly interesting areas are part of everyday life in New Mexico, I do not tackle them in this book. For example, how do Hispanos as individuals or families develop spiritual devotions? How (or why) do some Hispanos latch on to particular saints? One person told me that when her nephew was in the Vietnam War, she would pray diligently to San Martín (1579–1639), a ubiquitous saint in New Mexico homes and churches. For example, he is depicted on the main wall of the Villanueva, New Mexico, village church. He was the mulatto son of an African woman and a white man and suffered much discrimination from his fellow Dominican friars in seventeenth-century Peru. Es el santo de la escoba (San Martín is usually shown with a broom as he feeds his little animals). When this woman's nephew returned from the war, he showed slides of Vietnam to his aunt. The soldier testified that he had a particular guardian, a fellow soldier who had saved his life on a number of occasions. When shown the picture of this war buddy and guardian, she knew that her prayers to San Martín had been answered. The guardian proved to be an African American soldier.
When personal trouble started for her, one woman usually said, "Es tiempo de rezarle al santo" (It's time to pray to the saint). San Antonio has a particular import to Hispanos because they believe he finds lost objects when one makes an ardent appeal. Taking the Santo Niño away from him is particularly motivating to this santo (saint) because he wants his "charge" returned to him: hence the santo's motivation to recover lost objects. A prayer to San Antonio might present other needs: "San Antonio bendito, tres cosas te pido, salud, dinero y un buen marido" (Blessed Saint Anthony, three things I ask of thee, health, money, and a good husband). Another prayer says, "Tony, Tony, something has been lost." Once we turn our attention to these aspects of daily life, we begin the process of wondering about these beliefs and behaviors. These observations become the grist for phenomenological analysis. To begin in wonder is the first step in any phenomenological inquiry, as Natanson (1974) said, in order to unearth the richness of everyday life.
Commonsense Reasoning
Kenneth Leiter's A Primer on Ethnomethodology, based on Alfred Schutz's theory of phenomenology, lists three major themes of the phenomenology of everyday life: (1) the social stock of knowledge at hand, (2) the natural attitude, and (3) commonsense reasoning (Leiter 1980). Schutz refers to the social stock of knowledge at hand as recipes, general ways of doing things, such as the presentation of self to others, rules of thumb, social types, maxims, and definitions (1971, 8). The social stock of knowledge is handed down via family teachings, formal schooling, religious instruction, and other types of instruction. Only a small portion of the social stock of knowledge comes out of one's personal experience (Schutz 1971, 13). This knowledge is expressed in terms of everyday terminology. "The vernacular of everyday life is primarily a language of named things and events, and any name includes a typification and generalization referring to the relevant system prevailing in the linguistic in-group which found the named thing significant enough to provide a separate term for it" (Schutz, quoted in Leiter 1980, 6). For example, the prison stock of knowledge covered in chapters 6 and 7 is the naming of various kinds of convicts by Hispano men in a southwestern prison. Named social types found in barrios, work environments, universities, and prisons all participate in their own social stock of knowledge.
The natural attitude forms another basis for phenomenology. The natural attitude is an intersubjective world defined through the stock of knowledge and is taken for granted—until something disrupts the social understanding of this knowledge. In fact, the world is taken for granted until unanticipated events cause us to question our social stock of knowledge and our understanding of social reality. The natural attitude is a depiction of the structure of the social world as it is encountered and experienced by members of our social grouping. In order to study many of the concepts presented in this book, I had to suspend my prior understanding of the reality they denote for the reality to become manifest to me. For example, the idea of the chapter on mortificación came from a student's (an older Anglo man) question in one of my classes. He asked me if what I was talking about was an example of mortificación. He was married to a Mexican woman who probably complained of the mortifications she was experiencing in living with him. She used a typification from her social stock of knowledge to describe what she was experiencing. This question caused me to suspend my own ideas about mortificación, a term I had often heard at home concerning the doings of a mentally ill sister. I began to "bracket" what I knew about the term until I could begin a reasoned inquiry into the term. The student had laid bare for me the idea of mortification. It seemed even stranger coming as it did from an older Anglo student. Natanson talks about rendering reality "strange," or entering into a
radical stance, a remarkable way of looking at things. That experience cannot be taken straightforwardly, that it is to-be-understood, introduces a mode of reversal into ordinary and unreflective acceptance of the mundane course of affairs: a philosophical turn of mind signifies a shifting perspective from simple placement in the world to wonder aslant about it. Philosophy begins with the critique of mundanity. The narrow sense of transformation of familiarity into strangeness involves the phenomenological attitude. (Natanson 1974, 8)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from NOSOTROS by ALVIN O. KORTE Copyright © 2012 by Alvin O. Korte. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
foreword Rubén O. Martinez vii
Preface xv
ACknoeledgments xxiii
chapter 1 Phenomenology of Everyday Life: Fenomenologia Cotidiana y los Hispanos 1
chapter 2 The Oral Tradition: El Saber Popular 27
chapter 3 Mortification, an Interactional Perspective: La Mortificatión 57
chapter 4 Shame, Respect, and Joking Exchanges: Verguenza, Respeto, y la Carria 73
chapter 5 Violence in Mexican Music: Mancornando 91
chapter 6 Being in Prison: En la Pinta 123
chapter 7 Multiple Realities: Multiples Realidades 141
chapter 8 Curse and Disorder: El Desmadre 171
chapter 9 Leave Taking: Despedidas 191
chapter 10 From Tombstones to Star Trek: Qué poco soy! No soy más? 215
chapter 11 Seeking Light after the Great Night: Tinieblas 245
chapter 12 Giving Thanks: Dando Gracias 267
chapter 13 Final Thoughts: Pensamientos Últimos 295
Glossary 323
References333
Index 351