University Scholar Proposal
We live in a digital era, yet as scholars we publish our work as printed text. However, from the tools we use for fieldwork to the journals and books we produce, our data and ideas are increasingly recorded, mediated, and distributed electronically. Why not then integrate the same multimedia information we cite in our lectures and presentations formally into a digital essay?
Epistemologically, ethnography is the means through which anthropologists convey their knowledge of others. At a time when scholarly authority has come under intense criticism—especially in regards to cultural representations (Said 1978, Clifford 1986, Haraway 1987)—the already tremendously difficult task of ethnography is still further complicated by its anachronistic limitation to printed text. Experimentation is the driving force behind for ethnographic progress (Marcus and Fischer 1986), and the field of visual anthropology already employs documentary film as its medium of choice in an attempt to transcend those problems inherent in practicing conventional ethnography. I hope to leap farther, utilizing digital publishing and communications technology to more effectively communicate my past, present, and future research on and knowledge of the global hip-hop diaspora in a six chapter book and hyper-ethnography, available in print or CD.
Simply put, a hyper-ethnography employs traditional ethnographic methods and enriches them with the inherent presentational advantage of publishing work in hyper-text markup language (html). For example, in digital works such as Microsoft’s Encarta, the visual and auditory data presented in multimedia works are secondary to the text they contribute to and highlight. Perhaps more than any other discipline in the human sciences, anthropology can benefit from digital communications technology. We can seamlessly include the same cultural data mined during fieldwork alongside the arguments being made in our interpretive narratives regarding these very artifacts. My University Scholar Project will illustrate this, showcasing a series of ethnographies/hyper-ethnographies of rap in Havana, Cuba, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, and the inner-cities and suburbs of the Northeast U.S.
The idea for my University Scholar Project began as I was preparing my presentation for the 2002 Frontiers in Undergraduate Research Forum, “Community, Subculture, and Cyberspace: The Displacement of Underground Hip-Hop.” My assignment was to dress up a large poster board in order to present my findings plainly so that passersby could quickly and easily understand the cultural, technological, social and spatial dynamics of liberal white intellectuals’ appropriation/gentrification of the underground hip-hop scene in the U.S. Considering that all rap sounds alike to most people, I had my work cut out for me. My solution was to chart a graph of artists’ discographic history through their respective demographic time and space to illustrate my thesis, as well as to bring some CDs, a stereo, and some posters along with me to drive my point home. The pictures I put up and the music I played were already digitized. Why not organize and present them with commonly available software tools already used for most web sites?
My University Scholar project will show, document, and explain the rise of hip-hop from its subcultural inception in the South Bronx in the late 1970s to its global presence today. If we understand culture as a living entity, or “ethnoscape” (Appadurai 1986), that grows and shrinks in participation through time and space, we can map its meaning as it is evidenced in cultural objects (Hebdidge 1979, Willis 1978) according to its reception, its particular flavor in its host population/s. And as scholars have already noted, hip-hop, while provincial, is popular the world over. Several years ago, rapper Chuck D of the politically charged rap group Public Enemy called rap “the CNN of Black America.” Really, contemporary hip-hop culture is even more fascinating—rap is more like the Associated Press of the ‘Black Atlantic’ (Gilroy 1993). Hip-hop culture is at once global and local, or ‘glocal,’ as scholars have termed it (Potter 1995, Bennett 2000) and enjoys its grand success largely because of this discursive versatility.
In studying and comparing local hip-hop within and across its geocultural context, I hope to flesh out the rationale underlying meaningful appropriations of symbols and culture. By what means, through what channels or populations did hip-hop travel to this location? How are hip-hop styles, forms, and meanings for particular locations similar to or different from hip-hop elsewhere? Why was hip-hop adopted in its host communities? What issues does hip-hop address in its host communities? What unites these varying rap scenes, from U.S. inner-cities to suburbs to the rest of the world, under a hip-hop label? More specifically, what is it about hip-hop’s brand of rebellion, its symbolism, its style—in all its global manifestations—that makes hip-hop the subcultural identity of choice for so many millions?
In answering these questions, I expect to illustrate how regional issues of racial and economic oppression are addressed in a common culture of resistance and style of defiance based on the symbolic power of black underclass protest in late capitalist society. Since slavery, African-American society has sought and fought to recover its humanity in the face of racial and economic oppression, as historically reflected in African-American blues music. As the blues evolve in relation to white appropriation in the U.S. (Baraka 1963), its most recent (postmodern?) incarnation—hip-hop—emerged at a time when America is the world’s dominant political and cultural power. In her eminent work on hip-hop, scholar Tricia Rose notes that “rap’s discursive territory engages in symbolic and ideological warfare with institutions and groups that symbolically, ideologically, and materially oppress African-Americans” (Rose 1994, 100). Because the figureheads of capitalist domination are so distinctly uncool to the world’s subaltern population, the image of inner-city black youth in America and their rebellious style—whether as basketball players (Jelly-Schapiro 2002) or rappers (Gay 2001)—has symbolically become distinctly cool on MTV and, by extension, the world over.
African-American protest has already accomplished a lot in terms of human rights through the last three decades. Symbolically, in its tirade against racial and economic tyranny, black youth cultural subversion actualizes its aura of ‘black power’ in U.S. media and by extension global discourse. Just think of how charged and restricted the use of the word “nigga” is in our society. Only blacks and increasingly Latinos in the U.S. can say “nigga” publicly, others cannot get away with it. While some argue this inversion is in reality ignorant and unprogressive—some of the same complaints once leveled against rap—one must realize that neutering this derogatory moniker by turning it into one of inclusion and even fraternity, thereby forbidding its hegemonic use, is a powerful feat for the subaltern. In studying and understanding the hip-hop diaspora I hope to reveal the symbolic power of black culture at work advancing human rights agendas globally.
Brazil and Cuba possess unique qualities that influence the flavor of hip-hop there, and comparing each other should show reveal how the [ideological and economic] circumstances of production effect the character of hip-hop in those societies. Brazil is an industrializing country rich with culture and contradiction. Its wealth is shared by relatively few, its glimmering metropolises are flanked by favelas (slums), and it preaches racial harmony yet practices racial hierarchy. As the capital of Afro-Brazilian culture, the city of Salvador de Bahia is one ideal site in which to study hip-hop diaspora. Lying at the opposite end of the spectrum is socialist post-Revolutionary Cuba, overly educated and underdeveloped, whose governing ideological aims are to erase racial and economic difference from Cuban society. Its hypocrisies, successes and failures make it another ideal case study.
My University Scholar project has already begun in earnest. After two summers of grant-supported research, my work on hip-hop in cyberspace and in the suburbs and inner-cities Northeast U.S. has established the beginnings of a framework to compare meanings of rap for those populations that influence and define notions of hip-hop the world over. With my savings and an equipment travel grant from the Humanities Institute, I will spend this fall in Havana, Cuba, researching my Latin American Studies honors thesis. Pending a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, I will study abroad in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, through the Council on International Education and Exchange, where I will study Brazilian hip-hop. For my remaining two semesters, I will assemble my project’s components (printed ethnographic fieldwork + theoretical legwork + critical essay > informational art-work), meanwhile continuing my interdisciplinary studies of cultural theory. I hope to continue winning research grants to further expand the scope of my work.
Admission to the University Scholar Program will allow me the academic freedom to continue working closely with my instructors and to take courses in schools outside the Arts and Sciences. Communication Design courses and development laboratories available in the School of Fine Arts as well as a marketing theory course offered through the School of Business will contribute vitally to my scholarly research, publishing, and overall education. The design course will provide access to digital publishing laboratories and instruct me on theories of information structure, design and implementation. Additionally, the marketing course will provide an interdisciplinary, supply-side approach to understanding consumer behavior, drawing on cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and economics to understand the psychosocial functions of market forces—information helpful for interpreting cultural demographics, style, and ideology. The rest of the courses outlined in my University Scholar Plan of Study all advance my knowledge of culture/s and human behavior along with my ability to report it. My work as a University Scholar over the next two years tackles key subjects of epistemological enquiry and under-explored methods of presentation that are of keen interest to scholars of cultural anthropology—and of special interest to this one in particular.
Works Cited:
Appadurai,
Arjun.
1984 Ethnoscapes.
in Recapturing Anthropology : Working In the Present.
Richard G. Fox, ed. Santa
Fe, N.M. : School
of American Research Press : Distributed by the University of Washington Press
Bennett,
Andy
2000 Popular Music and
Youth Culture: Music, Identity and
Place. London : Macmillan Press
Baraka, Imamu Amiri
1963 Blues People; Negro Music in White America. New York : W. Morrow
Clifford,
James
1986
The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature,
and Art.
Cambridge :
Harvard University Press
Debray, Régis
2000
Transmitting Culture. New York : Columbia University Press.
Gay,
Brandon.
2001
Wiggers.
New Haven Ct : Yale Univeristy
Gilroy, Paul.
1993 The
Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness.
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press,
Haraway,
Donna
1987 Primate Visions.
New York : Routledge
Hebdige, Dick.
1979
Subculture, The Meaning of Style. London
: Methuen, 1979.
Jelly-Schapiro,
Joshua.
2000 Tattoos,
Basketball, and Late Capitalism. Continua. New Haven, CT : Yale
University
Marcus,
George E. and Fischer M.J.
1988 Anthropology
as Cultural Critique; An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences.
Chicago :
University of Chicago Press.
Potter, Russell A.
1995
Spectacular Vernaculars : Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism.
Albany : State University of New York Press
Rose, Tricia.
1994
Black Noize : Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.
Hanover, NH : University Press of New England, c1994.
Said, Edward W.
1978 Orientalism.
New York : Pantheon Books
Willis, Paul E.
1978
Profane Culture. London ; Boston : Routledge & K. Paul, 1978.
Academic
History and Plan of Study
(All
Courses Listed Below Are 3 Credits)
Preparatory Courses of Note:
Latin American Popular Culture Spring 2000 LAMS 275H
Hip-Hop, Politics, and Youth Culture Spring 2000 HIST 276
Latin American Cinema and Society Spring 2001 LAMS 270H
Caribbean Cultures Fall 2002 ANTH 229H
Contemporary Anthropological Theory Spring 2002 ANTH 305
Critical Theory Spring 2002 CLCS 302
Fall 2002, Havana, Cuba: (Havana, Cuba)
Ethnographic Field Studies ANTH 299
History of African American Protest HIST 299H
Latin American Research Seminar LAMS 290H
History of Afro-Cuban Music and Society LAMS 299
LAMS Honors Thesis LAMS 299H
Theoretical Issues in Cultural Studies SPAN 320
Spring 2003: (Salvador de Bahia, Brazil)
Intensive Portuguese Language Culture (6 credits) CRLP 101
Semester Portuguese Language PORT 221
Contemporary Brazil LAMS 293H
Communication and Community COMS 293
Economic Anthropology ANTH 235H
Theory of Knowledge PHIL 293
History of Contemporary Philosophy PHIL 210
Fall 2003:
Theory of Mass Communications COMS 309
Consumer and Market Behavior MKTG 360
Communication Design ARTS 236H*
Honors Thesis Research INTD 299H
Math for Business and Economics MATH 106Q
Intensive Elementary French I
FREN 172
Spring 2004:
Philosophy of Social Science PHIL 316
Political Theory POLS 301
History of Economic Thought ECON 420
Cultural Theory Honors Thesis INTD 299H
Introduction to Physics PHYS 101Q
Intensive Intermediate French II FREN 173
*Due to budget constraints, Communication Design courses are only open to students in the School of Fine Arts. However, after discussing my project and experience in the arts and communication design with Edvin Yegir, one of the course’s instructors, pending my admission the University Scholar Program it will be possible to arrange an independent study focusing on topics necessary to my project.