2.6 The Cultural Scene
Research about the Counterculture
Before beginning this weeks’ post, thank you for your interest in this research project. Today’s post concludes the second of seven chapters. Here’s a look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed:
Chapter 1 was about the Counterculture movement. This is my secondary research— reading what’s already published.
Chapter 2 was the “About” section of this study: my research question, what ethnography is, and how I did my research.
Chapter 3, up next, is the study itself, my primary research—new findings. The cultural scene of Comptche in the 70s can be understood through what people know, what they do, and what tools they use. Regional history looks at who lives in Mendocino county—from indigenous people, settlers, and back-to-the-landers. There are stories told by local voices. There are stories told by redwood giants.
Today’s post:
2.6 The Cultural Scene
Cultural scene refers to the overall culture an ethnographer will explore. For this study, Comptche in the 1970s is the cultural scene.
I started exploring the cultural scene through on-site Participant Observation as a method, and the questionnaire as a tool.
The data I gathered began to reveal patterns. Patterns can be organized into areas of likeness called cultural domains. The cultural domains are revealed by looking at patterns in the data I collected.
The cultural domains I found:
Reasons to Live in Comptche
Sources of Livelihood
Differences in the Other
Learning Country Living Skills
Volunteering
Issues in Conflict
Issues in Common
Places to Gather
Events
Traditions
Common Ground
These are the cultural patterns that people used to organize life in 1970s Comptche.
Organizing findings into cultural domains establishes a viewpoint of the culture that provides meaning and understanding. Arranging and sorting data this way helps move understanding from the general into the particular.
“In anthropology, as in all social sciences, the concern with the particular is incidental to an understanding of the general.” James Spradley
Next I mapped out these data details to analyze and understand what I was finding. These details are aspects of culture that make a group unique. The domains organize the meanings of the cultural scene.
These unique cultural details are organized into the topics and stories in the next chapters of this research project, Collective Effervescence. Voices of participants enter the scene, talking about people and place, Comptche in the Seventies, events, and common ground.
Once the above-mentioned cultural domains became apparent, what I looked for next were organizing cultural domains, which self-separate like cream floating to the top of fresh milk. These can be seen by looking closely at patterns of likeness. I found three organizing domains:
Events
Traditions
Common Ground
Each one of the eleven cultural domains noted above fit into one of these three organizing domains.
Events
In Comptche, there is a tradition among residents to maintain the social structure of the remote rural community. Knowingly or not, they create events for this purpose. An unintended outcome of regularly-occurring community events is regularly occurring communitas.
Communitas is an essential function in a healthy society. These are social gatherings intended to be joyful: parties, events, celebrations, concerts, parades… Anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner observed this universally in human culture and explain it through Communitas Theory. This theory identifies the feeling of cohesion and oneness we experience, calling it collective effervescence.
Communitas affords us a departure from daily life, integrating us in a shared space where together we experience something in a state of equality and unity. There is a shared purpose, even pure joy. In the year of my fieldwork in Comptche, I lost count of the times I enjoyed communitas and the peak experience of collective effervescence.
Resources for post:
Durkheim, Emile, 1912
Spradley, James, 1980
Turner, Victor, 1969
Up Next Chapter 3: Historical Cycles of People and Place