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[Last modified: November, 30 2024 12:57 PM]

Ethical Guidance for Case Study 5

Although the student’s desired study is interesting, and has merit, there are several factors which must be addressed. For now, it is firmly in the Medium/High risk section for ethical clearance.

The first major red flag is the section of study pertaining to undertaking research with 16-19 year olds in two London schools. Although 16-19 year olds (for the purposes of ethical clearance) are not classified as children, it may not be appropriate to ask questions about a sensitive subject such as body image. In order to pursue this potentially sensitive topic, the student must make their proposed interview outline explicit and specific, in order to be approved both by the Ethics Committee and the staff and teachers from the respective schools. Participants must be made aware that they can leave the group discussions at any point for any reason, and that it is not necessary to answer questions that provoke discomfort. They should be able to provide fully informed consent in order to participate in the research.

The researcher must also be aware that it could be very difficult to gain access to schools, as many are understandably wary about researchers interacting with their students. Therefore the researcher must start contacting schools early on, and be prepared for rejection in most cases. Ultimately, it is worth considering why the researcher needs to undertake research with young female students. As the proposed research topic (public breastfeeding) has an arguably minimal correlation with these subjects, perhaps the drawbacks outweigh the benefits of this research?

Furthermore, the student researcher must pay close attention to their own positionality when undertaking this research, as this can greatly influence the power dynamics at play.  If the researcher is male, extra consideration is needed to ensure women interviewed feel comfortable answering potentially sensitive questions. If research with school-age women is to go ahead, it would be necessary to have a supervisor in the room while interviews are being conducted (no matter the positionality of the researcher).

Finally, the researcher should ensure that all data is protected, and at minimum psydonymized. The researcher must collect written consent (ideally) from interviewees and explicit permission from schools to conduct research. If conversations turn to the subject’s mental health, the researcher should guide the conversation away from the topic, or, if concerned about the individual’s well-being, stop the interview altogether. It is worth stressing that research must do no harm, and therefore the researcher should consider carefully what benefits this project may bring to the individuals, and if they are worth the risk entailed.

[Last modified: November, 26 2024 02:08 PM]

How might an anthropology of the body (particularly within the cinematic context of the communal viewing of ‘body horror’ films) be enriched by a productive and collaborative framework such as one hypothesised by multimodal anthropology? I believe it could be a generative approach, as my research ultimately focuses on affective sensory feelings that occur beyond the realm of verbal discourse.

Perhaps research can be directed by allowing participants to modulate the environments in which these movies are viewed. How does the cinematic experience differ when the lights are on? When the sound is lowered? When bodies aren’t separated through the confines of a seat, when they touch? When cinema seats are set up in a semi-circle for the purpose of movie-viewing, rather than in a straight line, directing our eyes away from one another? A focus on encouraging active choice in the construction of the movie-going environment may illuminate certain factors which are otherwise obscured when people are forced to assimilate to a conventional ‘cinema’ space.

To study the sensorial aspects of film-viewing, it could also be an interesting approach to encourage participants to literally inscribe on their bodies what was felt, and where. Providing artistic materials like paints and inks in all colours before the film, and encouraging people to use them on their bodies to capture the ephemeral sensations provoked by the movie, could be a means of co-producing a visual representation of non-discursive experiences.

Beyond the primary, immediate experience of viewing, how does the consumption of body horror movies generate productive ideas of possibility, in terms of creation and invention? If viewers were encouraged to make or conceive of a short film about ‘body horror’ – what would they highlight? What emerges as a site of unease for them, how was this inspired by the original film, or by their everyday lives? How does it feel to (fictionally) inflict or withstand violence, how are understandings of the body and self affected when one is covered in (fake) blood? How is an active approach to the horror of the body felt?

All of these approaches could be starting points for the co-production of knowledge, and for the representation of knowledge and practise that is outside the realm of traditional anthropology. Whilst conducting the research, it would be important to ‘go with the flow’ – to not become stuck within what I want to achieve but also to allow participants to direct the flow of research. What I have instead tried to do is generate affective questions, that can be answered in a multitude of ways, (ideally) provoking more questions.

[Last modified: November, 19 2024 02:34 PM]

The Anthropology of Illness? Or: The Illness of an Anthropologist?

The moment I wake up I immediately sense a tickle in the back of my throat. Before I register much else in my hazy state, I’m alert to this feeling, to the potential doom it portends.

It’s interesting that we call this feeling a tickle, or an itch. Implicit in these words is the presence of an Other, some intentionality behind an action that causes this sensation. It does feel other than me, not a reaction of my body but evidence of a lodger, an unwelcome guest, a square of notepaper folded and slotted into my throat, that if I could pull it out would say two simple words – you’re next.

Realising that you’re coming down with an illness is fundamentally disorientating. As I scan a Required Reading for the coming week I notice myself re-reading the same sentences again, again, again. There’s a cloud in my head, a film layered over my eyes that obfuscates words on a page, turns my mother tongue into a riddle. Is this my potential illness? I wonder. Or is this article just poorly written? My body seems to radiate heat, yet my hand can’t seem to register any empirical difference when it seeks out my forehead. Am I feverish? And if so, why does my hand betray me? Why does my body register different truths?

Suddenly, all immediate experience becomes a site of contention, a negotiation of what wellness and illness really feels like to me. I direct question after question at my body: Does my back usually hurt this much? How many sneezes is too many? Perhaps it’s not normal to feel this tired? I don’t stretch, I often suffer with allergies, I went to sleep rather late. All reasonable answers to my probing questions, and yet. Something doesn’t feel right.

My body starts to feel heavier, simple actions seem to cost me more. Energy, that which I usually take for granted, is now a mode of currency – if I finish this article then I cannot cook myself dinner, and vice versa. Negotiations move on from the immediacy of the body to the futurity of the body’s capabilities. It’s as if by interrogating my illness that I have made it so; I’ve legitimated that barely perceptible Other coursing through my system. My body seems powerless in the face of the power of suggestion. I am ill.

[Last modified: November, 4 2024 10:57 AM]

In terms of my project design, I necessarily have a politically oriented embodiment that shapes my watching of horror movies, one which I must be careful to not universalise throughout my research. It is clear that my positionality as the target demographic of these films – white, young, British – affects my thought processes towards and enjoyment of these films, which may not be shared by different categories of people. My methods throughout the research process should be carefully designed as to account for the myriad of ways in which people’s viewing experiences are shaped by the political dimensions of their everyday lives, in ways that might be triggering or upsetting.

Even the designation of who gets to watch what movies is shaped by long histories imbued with politically oriented understandings of morality. Who decides age ratings for movies? Who decides what movies are too ‘extreme’ to be screened in public places? Many of the most famous and respected movies of the genre – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Exorcist (1973), The Evil Dead (1981) – were banned in multiple countries following their release. More recently, The Human Centipede 2 (2011) was banned in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and the Philippines. The politics of censorship is a continuing practise that shapes the making, editing and distribution of horror movies, which cannot be disentangled from the viewing experience.

It’s also worth mentioning the inherent political nature of horror movies themselves, which often make explicit the political dimensions of everyday life and uncover normative societal understandings. Who is the Other in these movies, who are the victims, what do they fear? These are all politically motivated representations that, although sometimes subversive, speak to the ways in which contemporary cultural understandings of fear are moulded by societal dynamics of ‘Othering’. The call for more ‘representation’ in media is also problematized through the genre – do we want more onscreen victims to have marginalised backgrounds? Or is it desirable to have underrepresented communities acting as (fictional) perpetrators of violence? These are simplistic questions, but they illustrate the political complexities of the genre.

 

References:

Creepy Bonfire. 2024. ‘15 Banned Horror Films That Shocked the World’. Link: https://creepybonfire.com/horrortainment/tv-and-films/15-banned-horror-films-that-shocked-the-world/ [Accessed 03/11/2024]

[Last modified: October, 28 2024 12:04 PM]

In a café sits a customer who has not moved in the last two weeks. This loyal patron haunts the doorway, perched at the table nearest to the entrance, visible to all who walk by.

A woman pushes a pram past a flock of pigeons, scrapping for food on the ground. Her gaze lingers on this static client – a life-size plastic skeleton clad in a scrappy black wig and a lei of autumnal leaves. His hand is raised, mouth agape in silent greeting. A pumpkin rests on the table in front of him, beside a coffee cup. The woman walks on.

I don’t know what I expect to see from those who walk past the skeleton. I think I hope for gasps, laughs and wry smiles, a break from the monotony of hurried city life. What I get are split glances, lingering looks, a bare bones acknowledgement forgotten by the next step.

Often a drifting eye finds me, staring, nursing an Americano at a nearby table. My eyes dart away quickly, hurriedly stopping to scribble in my notebook, with an unsettling feeling that it was I, not the skeleton, that was the spooky presence for this pedestrian.

A family wander past, the father’s eyes snagging on the patron for only a second. Caught, however, is their young boy, stood in the doorway, using a stick to rhythmically tap his own foot. As the family moves onwards, the child stands still, peering curiously at the assemblage of plastic bones before him. After a couple of moments the father returns, unceremoniously guiding the child onwards, away from the haunting.

Yet again, passer-by gazes move smoothly from the skeleton to me. I seem to be connected to this decoration now, our (un)inviting co-presence made conspicuous by my wide eyes, bright blue notebook, alertness. Too late, I look away, wondering how to look and yet not look, how to allow life to continue around me unobserved but noted. A woman holding a pumpkin walks past, a small smile appearing as she takes in the sight of another pumpkin, accompanied by the skeletal customer.

Rain starts to fall, forcing heads down, gazes averted to hurrying feet, spook-free pavement. With no more eyes to catch, I turn to my drawing, waving arm half unfinished, quotidian horror forever preserved in my shaky pen, my determination to see.

[Last modified: October, 20 2024 12:27 PM]

My research topic centres around the phenomenological experience of watching ‘body horror’ movies, particularly focused on the cinema as a site of communal experience. Body horror, or biological horror, is a subgenre of horror that pinpoints the body itself as a site of horror – often involving mutations, mutilations or otherwise visceral modulations of the body.

As a horror lover myself, I would be remiss if I said I didn’t have any bias towards the genre. For me, horror sparks joy, in all of its creepy, sticky, spine-tingly gloriousness. I’m well aware though that this opinion is not universal, nor is it even of the majority. There are plenty of factors within my position that endear me towards the genre, which must be recognised throughout the course of my research.

For starters, I am a white, British woman in my mid-twenties – one of the major demographic categories these films are made for and marketed towards. I am not religious, an important factor given the religious undertones (and criticisms) encompassed by many horror movies. I have been watching horror movies from a young age, and therefore may be more desensitised to theatrical acts of violence than someone who started watching them later in life. Throughout my life I have been able to watch a wide variety of movies due to access to subscriptions, technology, free time and proximity to cinemas. Thus, despite my lack of formal film studies training, I embody a certain privilege and therefore may have a different approach to movies than that of some of my interlocutors.

It is also important for me to note that horror movies often display psychologically traumatising situations, and extreme acts of violence. I have had no personal experience of these events, nor do I have an atypical relationship with my body. In this way, horror can be triggering in different ways to different people – a fact that must be explored in my ethics process and recognition of which should be deeply embedded during my research.

All of these factors alert me to the fact that I must be sensitive throughout the research process to my levels of enthusiasm regarding the genre, allowing my interlocutors to guide the affective discussions of the medium according to their level of comfort. Fundamentally I need to keep in mind that, although we may have watched the same movie, our experiences of it can be extremely different, modulated by a variety of social, cultural and biosocial factors – an idea that forms the crux of my intended research.

[Last modified: October, 14 2024 11:41 AM]

Forty five minutes to plan, find and conduct meaningful participant observation. Words that should terrify any anthropologist to their core. Thankfully, I’m no stranger to horror, having spent the previous evening watching the highly rated gore-fest The Substance in a packed cinema in Camden. Waiting in the line for a coffee at the George Farha (caffeine being the utmost academic resource), I start to scroll through Letterboxd, a social media platform with a user base of amateur film fanatics dedicated to sharing their movie-related thoughts, feelings and critiques. It’s an oddly beautiful niche of the internet – achieving a level of fame on this app is largely unheard of, and arguably undesirable. Most users simply add unwatched movies to their ‘Watchlist’, or log the films they have seen, sometimes giving them a rating out of five and a small review. Reviews are then published on the page of the movie in question, allowing other users to read, like, and comment on your thoughts.

The very first review I see for The Substance states that ‘watching the last 30 minutes of this movie with a packed audience is truly one of life’s greatest pleasures’. I like it. So do 17,822 other people; it’s the most popular review for this film on the site. Scrolling down a little further, I spot reviews that describe how ‘seeing this in a packed screening added so much to the overwhelming experience’ and that it was ‘the cinema going experience of a lifetime’. One person even adds ‘i feel trauma bonded with everyone in that cinema today’ (which has been liked over five thousand times).

Sipping my coffee, looking out the window, I’m prompted by these musings to conduct a sort of retrospective participant observation on myself, nestled amongst a sea of strangers, gazing at a screen filled with blood and goo and pain. Gasping in tandem with shadowed faces, watching the white of my neighbours’ hand grip their fingers whilst fingernails are torn off onscreen. Paying witness to the moment of shocked silence that exploded in the cinema as the end credits began to roll, before we turned to one another, eyes wide, and grinned.

What I had experienced last night was something visceral, embodied unease intermingling with (and prompting) joy, heightened unquestionably by the other bodies around me. I can’t speak for the other people in the cinema, if they communed as I did, but I feel certain that at least one of them liked, or would have liked, that top review on Letterboxd.

References:

• • Rev of The Substance, by davidehrlich. 2024. Letterboxd.
  • Rev of The Substance, by Sethsreviews. 2024. Letterboxd.
  • Rev of The Substance, by aaron. 2024. Letterboxd.
  • Rev of The Substance, by suspirliam. 2024. Letterboxd.

[Last modified: October, 6 2024 05:32 PM]

The following research proposal is a rough draft of my current research interests, as such it will (and I hope that it does) change over the course of my first term at UCL, as I deepen my knowledge of Medical Anthropology and allow myself to be inspired by different theoretical approaches and frames of understanding.

With that being said, these are some research questions that currently stimulate my intellectual curiosity:

• • What might the investigation into spaces of aid (sometimes referred to as ‘Aidland’) reveal about the interplay between various refugee-focused medical aid and volunteer humanitarian organisations in border zones?
  • As such, how might different organisational approaches to medical/psychological humanitarian aid affect the nature of (health)care provision?
  • In what ways are these situations of ’emergency’ healthcare provision shaped by gender and age dynamics, and how might these differ by organisation?
  • Of additional interest, and also potentially illuminating may be the consideration of how mental states such as boredom and joy (and associated responses such as socialising or self-care) affect one’s lived experience of precarious socio-political contexts?

Such considerations are anthropologically relevant as they explore humanitarian lived experience outside of the largely researched conception of aid as a response to ‘disasters’, instead considering spaces of state-sanctioned (and perpetuated) ill health along transitory pathways.

Methods best-suited to explore these questions would involve participant observation and interviews, with a focus on areas in which several different organisations operate simultaneously, which can help to level out some of the contextual differences that could potentially muddle a comparative approach. Thus, the field site would likely be in one of the European border zones, such as Greek Islands (Samos, Chios, Lesvos) or Calais, France, with the potential inclusion of lesser known Balkans locations such as those in Serbia, Bosnia or Bulgaria. Interlocutors could involve medical professionals, non-medical staff in medical organisations, volunteers and coordinators of non-medical organisations, and refugees who have accessed aid in several of the organisations. Ethical issues could arise from interviewing such vulnerable populations. Also, since the organisational spaces of my research questions are so varied, it may be complicated to be granted access to all of the respective places.

These research questions could potentially expose how different perceptual approaches to humanitarian aid (as politically neutral, as anti-state, as solidarity), not only express themselves through the active nature of work, but also in non-work, or social, situations. The intimacy  and gendered dynamics of particular moments of care (whether intra-organisationally or between aid ‘givers’ and ‘recievers’) may also vary by organisation.

[Last modified: October, 1 2024 05:16 PM]

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