>On Thu, November 15, 2007 7:22 pm, John Thornton wrote:
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>>I also dislike deliberately deceiving
>>people. She presented herself to her co-workers as something she was not
>>and she did so for personal gain.
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>Oh, going undercover isn't lying. Lots of employers don't hire skilled,
>educated workers -- too much trouble -- and lots of people wouldn't talk
>to you, or would give you a heavily censored version of the truth, if they
>knew you were a journalist/ethnographer/anthropologist/intellectual.
>
I'm reading "People of the Abyss" by Jack London -- to keep my daughter
company; she's got to read it for school, and then there's also Orwell's
"Down and Out in Paris and London" -- both of these are classics in the
genre of writers going down a few rungs to uncover worlds that are made
invisible in many different ways.
There are things you find out by working these kinds of jobs that no sociology book can ever really convey. I worked as security guard -- guarding the Bank of America world trade center, and I also worked in a slaughterhouse for a while. It is extremely enlightening to have your assumptions knocked out right from under you. For example, I used to think I was an innately interesting person. Then I put on a security guard uniform and found out I was completely invisible. That was an eye opener. I have actually learned more from working these kinds of jobs than from working professional jobs. At any rate, the experiences I had there stick in my mind with a kind of crystalline clarity that my other jobs don't. So, why not write about them?
The general public assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that people working minimum wage type jobs are losers. So, when an intellectual/journalist/ethnographer does it and reports back on the conditions from a human point of view, it has an impact. And if an intellectual/writer does not give a voice to the voiceless, who will?
I do agree with John about the dishonesty about taking the bus.
Joanna