None of the above that Terkel does is tantamount to telling people you are one thing when in reality you are another.
> there are different reasons for doing participant-observation as opposed to
> doing interviews -- different because you get different kinds of
> experience, information, etc. when i studied downsized professionals who'd
> been out of work for 9 months or more, sometimes two years, what i learned
> from them through interviews was often very different than what i observed
> when i sat with them at the transition agency where they met with other
> unemployed folks, psyching themselves up for another week of degradation, etc.
>
So if I want to interview disabled people and I put myself in a wheelchair and make up some bogus story about how I became disabled so others with disabilities would open up to me this is cool in everyones opinion, right? Assuming I am writing a book about how unfair society is to the disabled, the nature of the obstacles the disabled face and finish with comments about how inadequate our disability legislation is and how much I've learned about the true nature of disabilities of course. If it's not cool then someone please tell my how this is different than what EB did. If it is cool does it matter that it probably won't be looked upon kindly by those who actually have disabilities?
> as for the rest, i read her very differently than you -- which happens. i
> saw her wrestle with the morality of what she was doing, often beating
> herself up (i thought needlessly) for not really being poor.
>
It isn't that I didn't see all these things, I did. If I only saw negatives I would not be ambivalent about her.
> cards on the table: i have nothing but contempt for people who think that
> having been poor (or whatever) gives them some sort of identity license for
> being outraged when someone else dares speak to "their", viewed as some
> sort of impostor or some shit. i understand the impulse, but i rilly rilly
> RILLy don't think that playing "I'm more authentic than you" gets us
> anywhere. it's, as Doug might put it, regressive and "deeply silly" because
> it makes a fetish out of pain and plays right into the victimization
> narratives so loved by the identity politics movement in its worst forms.
> here i'm taking my cue from Wendy Brown's work on "wounded identities" --
> so getting the bright idea that i'm opposed to id politics wouldn't be
> especially bright.
>
> so basically, were i ehrenreich in the face of these accusations, I'd just
> say, "Yeah. Isn't it nice." (maybe that's a longer way of saying,
> "whatever"? heh.)
>
I'm not claiming any of the above and I haven't said I understand people who feel this way. I agree with you but that makes me no more comfortable about her dishonesty.
John Thornton