Autoethnographic Blog-Journal

Based on a reading of:
Carolyn Ellis, The Autoethnographic I (Oxford: AltaMira, 2004, p.212-214)

Sour Times -Riz MC

3DF: Methodology Simplified/Revised

3DF: Muxlim Pal

Just paid a visit to Muxlim Pal, a trial version of the first virtual world aimed at the Muslim community “based loosely on other virtual worlds” such as Second Life. The current trial version is extremely simplistic, but then so was SL in its earliest versions. Having enjoyed the wonders of Second Life for several years, now – on and off — I’m finding it difficult to be enthusiastic about Muxlim Pal, for all its good intentions.

To be frank, it’s more like a poor man’s version of The Sims, and there rests the better comparison. It also has to be said that, at this very moment, 43,240 avatars are strutting their stuff on Second Life, and well over a million have logged in during the past month alone. By contrast, the current number of visitors to Muxlim Pal is precisely zero – there are more people using Muxlim’s run-of–the-mill chatroom.

Nevertheless, I wish Mohamed El-Fatatry, founder of Muxlim Pal and Muxlim.com, every success in his work, insha Allah.

3DF: Quest Narrative

I’m currently taking notes from Carolyn Ellis’ guide to autoethnography. I’ve read it a few times before. I have never sought a neutral reading, since I don’t believe such a thing is possible, nor do I believe such a reading is in keeping with the spirit of autoethnography. However, my previous readings have been less partial, and personal more steeped in self-deception. I read from it what I wanted, rather than reading it for a purpose — the former being an approach the involves very little in the way of genuine learning.

Ellis asserts a narrative form that is typical of the traditional novel (exposition, development, climax, resolution). I never planned to write according to this form. When I started with the Tasneem Project Scrapbook (3DF’s previous incarnation), it seemed to make more sense to adopt a narrative style that was closer to ‘quest’, although quests may include traditional mini-stories of the form outlined above. The idea of quest somehow felt important, but for some reason, there was one question I never posed in respect of the use of this narrative form — a quest for what?

In an attempt to answer this question, I want to take some examples of quest narratives, and consider where they end up:

 Briefly, these narratives centre around the e.g. following end-points

• Muhammad – to deliver the Qur’an and manifest the (re)birth of Islam
• Neverending Story – individuation
• Gawain – to keep his promise to the Green Knight
• Star Trek Voyager & Wizard of Oz - to get home
• Jane Eyre – to discover a life of personal fulfillment

And 3DF? My destination is little more pedestrian, but includes a personal element, too. My quest aims to investigate what Muslims mean when they use terms such as ”religion” and “spiritual” in 3-D virtual realities. The autoethnographic angle is that, in making sense of what other Muslims mean by these terms, I will have to decide what they mean to me, and assuming that I don’t know, develop a more coherent understanding of them.

3DF: Dropping back into SL

I visited Second Life this morning and found myself showing a Brazilian educator around the Peace Park, a religious resource designed by US librarians. My Brazilian acquaintance, now an SL friend, was a newbie. I regret, when it comes to ‘basics’, I’m fine with Islam (and perhaps Christianity), but I stumble with respect to other religions. Yet if I am going to write about religion and religions in Second Life, I need to brush up on the fundamentals – e.g. what would you find inside a real-life synagogue? Note to self — need book on religious buildings, perhaps one aimed at children.

My sustained period of isolation has left me socially anxious, even on SL.

My Brazilian friend asked a revealing question about the nature  of Second Life relationships, responding to a comment I made about an old SL friend:

[2:28] Drown Pharaoh: This card over here has links to different places in SL
[2:28] Drown Pharaoh: This Jewish temple was not here last time I came
[2:29] Drown Pharaoh: BO is the most famous Jewish person on SL
[2:29] Drown Pharaoh: she is an artist and a lovely person
[2:29] TB: ok
[2:29] Drown Pharaoh: she built the first synagogue, or shul on SL
[2:29] TB: that is great
[2:29] TB: do you know her in the first life [my emphasis]
[2:29] Drown Pharaoh: on her sim, there is a giant teapot you can sit inside to drink tea
[2:30] Drown Pharaoh: no, she lives in the States
[2:30] Turrioni Buccaneer: ok

Even after so long, I feel a strong emotional attachment to avatars/people I befriended on SL, and I talk about them as if I knew them personally – which to some extent, I do. Or do I? Perhaps I need to go back to Tom Boellstorff’s book on Second Life before I re-engage more fully with Second Life. There is still so much about my past experiences of SL that I don’t really understand.

3DF: Keeping a journal – and one possible research theme

At this juncture, I have some idea of what autoethnography and 3-D virtual religion entail. My initial reading is to some extent re-reading: Ellis’ “Ethnographic I” and a collection of essays edited by Dawson and Cowan, entitled “Religion Online”. I also know what is likely to constitute “research issues”, and it is in the nature of autoethnography that some are not what you’d describe as traditionally academic issues.

Such as emotions. Ellis describes the autoethnographic analysis of personal feelings as an intense, even “emotionally painful” experience. However, being the parent and primary carer of a child with autism requires I stay on an even keel, emotionally speaking — both for my son’s benefit and my own. The Shaykh (his online nickname) struggles to cope with people who are emotionally inconsistent (and I’m a terrible actor) — that is in the nature of his autistic condition. Moreover, the long-term impact of being his carer has left me traumatized and emotionally vulnerable. The quest to maintain a state of affective quietude is essential for psychological survival, for myself and my son. The kind of emotional honesty Ellis envisages is simply not possible.

Having said that, psychological and emotional survival is a plausible and relevant theme. After all, not long after I discovered the joys of 3-D virtual reality, the minute my son started to turn over his bedroom – a behaviour I could do nothing to stop, and which often required 4 hours to tidy — I headed straight for Second Life (often stopping by the medicine cupboard to down a few codeine pills just for good measure).

3DF: First Journal Entry

A couple of years ago, I applied to research a PhD in 3-D cyber-Islamic environments, using a methodological approach known as autoethnography. Sadly, it never got past the application stage. I was chronically ill, there were political issues (my principle supervisor was the object of secret service surveillance), the University I applied to didn’t award it’s own PhDs (the awarding university didn’t even have a religious studies department), and there was the further problem that my first degree is a 2:2.

The University I applied to is very small and the application thus proceeded at a snail’s pace. During the many months of waiting, I began to have second and third thoughts. My supervisor, despite being a talented ethnographer who has written some excellent academic papers in his field, turned out to be more of an academic careerist than I realised. He readily endorsed a culture of mindless hoop jumping and one of his books is so mediocre, it would be hard to believe it was written for any other reason than to pad out his CV. I began to wonder what a PhD had to offer that I couldn’t gain independently of professional academia. In the end, I just said forget it.

Rather than focus on a single research topic, I decided to go on an intellectual and spiritual adventure. I took in a wide spectrum of social theory, began to explore the roots of my own Islamic faith, and investigated my political outlook. My website leapfrogged over itself in a bid to keep up with my changing interests and views. Finally, having orbited the planet several times and considered the form of the continents and oceans from a perusing distance, a desire to land and investigate just a small piece of the world began to emerge, a place of study and reflection I could make my own.

Specialisation seems a more useful way to go on. Ethically speaking, I am a believer in cultural evolution. We must live as if we mean to make the world a better place than we found it, even if much of it is still a hell whole, whether it be through our character or our professional achievements.

I have to confess, when it comes to specialisation and close study, I find the boundaries of academia supportive and disciplining of my efforts. I’m due to start a modular research-based part-time MA in September, on Religion and Education in Contemporary Society. I therefore need to focus my reading and interests so that I can establish a base of expertise to work from in the future, perhaps teaching either in Further or Higher Education.

I remain interested in 3-D cyber-religious environments, and I continue to be interested in autoethnography as a methodology. But I also enjoy aspects of discourse analysis, particularly the debates surrounding the meaning and use of the concept ‘religion’, as well as more pedestrian topics, such as sex education, which is something of a hot topic in Britain at the moment, if you’ll excuse the pun. The trouble is, with so many fascinating interests facing me, I am having trouble picking just one.

In the end, considering all the roads open to me, I am hopping with 3-D cyber-religious environments. There is plenty of room for discourse analysis, autoethnography and education here (3-D CREs are a potentially fabulous educational resource). It’’s a research topic that necessitates both fieldwork and text-based research. And, in my opinion, it’s the future.

Armed Forces Day mocks our military

Symon Hill guardian.co.uk
Saturday 27 June 2009

Whatever animosity Gordon Brown and Tony Blair may feel towards each other, one characteristic they share is an unswerving ability to underestimate the intelligence of the British public. Six years after the weapons of mass destruction were discovered to exist only in Blair’s imagination, Brown apparently thought he could get away with a secret inquiry into the Iraq war. Today he wants the public to join in with another thinly veiled attempt at dodging the issue, as the government celebrates the UK’s first Armed Forces Day.

With breathtaking hypocrisy, ministers are promoting “respect” for the people whose lives they risked in a futile war based on deceit. Like most attempts by politicians to patronise the public, Armed Forces Day looks likely to backfire.

source