Marija Knudson
Seeing the world with new eyes: How the sociology/anthropology major transformed my compassion into action
During my senior year of high school we were required to complete a personal portfolio for English class, complete with 20 different chapters about our life up until that point. The pages of my portfolio detailed my aspirations of becoming a camp counselor, my dreams of traveling the world, my commitment to volunteering, my relationships with friends and family, and my desire to pursue a service-oriented career. This project served as a valuable benchmark because it clearly articulated my passions and dreams as an 18-year-old on the edge of attending college. I see this distinction paper functioning in a similar way, freeze-framing my interests and hopes as a 21-year-old on the brink of entering the world after college. These two projects serve as bookends on my college experience, begging the question: how did these four years at St. Olaf influence my development and sense of identity as a student, a friend, a citizen? As I look back at that personal portfolio while synthesizing my college experience, I notice a common thread of compassion coupled with a strong organized mind that seeks to serve. These two strengths have matured and developed through the systematic study found within my sociology/anthropology major. I have different eyes now, informed by all the reading and writing that I have done, but the eyes are still connected to a heart for others. In this paper, I will show how my approach to education, the Global Semester, and service have been influenced by my discovery of the sociology/anthropology major.
Approach to Education
I was born to be a sociology and anthropology major; I just didn’t know it right away. My initial understanding of what it meant to choose a major held a very rational bent. While I have always been passionate about helping others, I approached my classes and choice of major as separate from that. I compartmentalized my life in such a way that lessons learned in the classroom did not necessarily relate to my life outside. I was interested in math and science because there were concrete answers and a “right” way to do them. I was a strong student in the subjects and hardly had to spend much time or thought on them. I thought these disciplines were appealing because the technical and practical skills that I would gain would serve me well in my search for post-college employment. In retrospect, I think that these classes have the tendency to breed an attitude of just getting the answers without taking the time to really think about the questions behind them. In sum, I wasn’t learning anything of value or substance that pertained to my life outside the classroom.
My exposure to the sociology/anthropology major opened my eyes to what this education could be like. I believe that the role of higher education is to produce mindful and thoughtful individuals with a heart for people and issues. A sociological/anthropological approach to education emphasizes an interactive learning process which challenges students intellectually and emotionally. My decision to switch tracks was rooted in my desire to think for myself, explore issues that I care about, and synthesize the material in a way that holds meaning for my life. It was perfectly acceptable, if not encouraged, to love my classes, the accompanying reading, and the papers that integrate the two. My sociology/anthropology courses have consumed me, accommodating my wide-ranging curiosity and funneling it into a legitimate academic pursuit. According to Jeffrey Nealon, theory is “useful for asking reflexive questions about how things works and how they might work differently… as well as providing angles of intervention that you wouldn’t otherwise have” (Nealon 2003:4,6). I have a voracious appetite for understanding the complexity of social interaction.
The learning doesn’t stop when I leave Holland Hall after 55 minutes of class; rather I am eager to share what I have learned with others and draw connections with classes in other disciplines. Without fail, each semester I have had multiple classes that overlap in content, presenting valuable perspectives that benefit the level of discourse. Sociology and anthropology naturally lend themselves to interdisciplinary social science work because the integration of political, economic and social dimensions creates a more holistic understanding of the society and culture at hand. My coursework in sociology and anthropology has revitalized education for me on campus. As I departed on the Global Semester this past fall, I was eager to see what it would do for me when I left the Hill.
Approach to the Global Semester
My experience on Global utilized two major themes in anthropological theory, paying attention and viewing the world with a questioning eye. Coupled with my compassion for others, these perspectives enabled me to recognize injustices and the importance of human dignity. In her essay Seeing, Annie Dillard says “I see what I expect… unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it” (2001). The following anecdote from my journal serves as an example of what I saw when I slowed down and paid attention in South India.
Stepping gingerly out of the coach bus into the throngs of people filling the streets even as the monsoon rains poured around us, I made my way to the Tiruvannamalai temple. I was stopped about 100 meters away from the entrance and instructed to take off my shoes in order to pay respects to the sanctity of the space we were about to enter. My first thought was that I did not want to get my feet wet from the streams of water through the streets and second of all, I did not want to step in the stagnant puddles of human feces that littered the ground. As I anxiously removed my shoes, I glanced downward, fixing my eyes on a girl walking beside me on the street, highlighting the beautiful brown callused feet that had never known shoes. Then I looked at the woman selling flowers next door – yet another set of bare feet. This pattern continued as my eyes scanned the ground, thwarted in my attempt to find a single pair of shoes. In that moment, I was bombarded by the injustice and irony of it all in the apparent contradiction; that I had the privilege and luxury to be worried about getting my feet dirty whereas a shoeless foot was just a reality of daily life in India. I had spent three weeks in India at this point but this was the first time that my eyes had been opened to this phenomenon. Greatly humbled by this awakening, I was careful to use this experience as impetus for slowing down and “seeing” the world differently, especially the things in life that seem to be so ordinary and taken for granted.
While I had definitely studied about the importance of ‘seeing for the first time’ in my sociology/anthropology classes, being on the Global Semester gave me the perspective of actually putting that into action. In travel, I am perceptive of everything around me because each clue that I can uncover brings me one step closer to understanding the nuances of a place. The process of disorientation that comes with the advent of a new place and surroundings leads to re-orientation, reawakening a sense of what exists around me. Common, ordinary events became novel again. I reclaimed a sense of awe and wonderment of things I saw, whether they were substantially great like the Taj Mahal or seemingly small like a woman selling fruit on the street corner.
Studying abroad also helped me understand the kind of critical thinking that I do that is different from people in other disciplines as a result of being a sociology/anthropology major. When I found out that the field-supervised class was focused on the interplay between traditional culture and the forces of globalization, I could not contain my excitement. It seemed like a perfect capstone to my major because I would be able to utilize the abstract theories and methods that I had developed in the classroom and transplant them into action. Our task was to create an academic scrapbook for Egypt, India, Hong Kong, and South Korea analyzing the role of this interplay in each country. We were encouraged to gather evidence through classes, field trips, and daily life and assemble a thesis supported by personal anecdotes, academic text, and print media. As a tactile learner who benefits the most when examining an issue through multiple lenses, I was looking forward to exploring each country with this multi-faceted approach.
Throughout the course of the class, I became disillusioned with the task. Even with eight sociology/anthropology classes under my belt, I was not equipped to answer the given question, especially not in one month. I hardly felt comfortable making cultural claims about the city that I spent time in, let alone an entire country. I was wary of making generalizations about how the interplay between traditional culture and the forces of globalization affected the lives of millions of people that I had never met. The last thing I wanted to do was reduce these enigmatic, complex countries into five topics of my choosing, especially since I knew full well that there were many important aspects of life that I would not understand as a Western outsider. I was willing to articulate my thoughts only with a caveat emphasizing the wide-ranging diversity of human experience.
From the beginning, traditional culture as a concept was not operationalized, leaving me with many more questions than I had answers. Where does traditional culture begin and end? How does traditional culture affect the daily of ordinary citizens? What role does the former colonizer play in defining traditional culture? How does traditional culture vary from rural to urban areas? How does traditional culture affect people of higher and lower class differently? How does the acquisition of images from magazines and newspapers focus our understanding of traditional culture? I could hypothesize what the answers are to these questions but studying ethnographic methods on campus has shown me the critical importance of observations and in-depth, in-person conversations as a way of unraveling these complexities. The people who live this culture everyday were the key to these questions, not the lectures that attended or the readings that we did. I went on Global anticipating the enrichment that these relationships would provide, but unfortunately my interaction with locals was more limited than I expected, especially in East Asia as a result of urbanization and modernity. This lack of access forced us to simply address outward signs of culture like food and clothing because we were unable to uncover the nuances found in the entrenched social institutions of the given culture.
In addition to the enormous task of quantifying traditional culture, our study of globalization on the other side of the interplay was rather lopsided and lacked a critical component. Using Thomas Friedman’s working definition from The World is Flat, we were required to operate with the assumption that globalization is not only inevitable but it is good too. In our analysis, we were not allowed to examine the negative consequences of this economic phenomenon and the resulting poverty within the context of its relationship to culture. It was challenging to witness children begging with outstretched hands firsthand in India and not be given the academic forum to discuss globalization’s role in this resulting socio-economic disparity. The failure to explore structural causes of social inequality goes against everything that a liberal arts education claims to be. I was not satisfied with the easy answers that neglected the multiple layers underlying the popular buzzwords.
My natural inclination is to evaluate an issue with attention to gender, sexuality, race, class and ethnicity as theoretical concerns. My sociological and anthropological sensibilities were assaulted by the lack of social science awareness embedded in this project. This class operated within a narrow cultural frame; the things we choose to pay attention to (or fail to in this example) inevitably shape how we see the world. Jeffrey Nealon’s (2003) understanding of ideology explains the theory behind this particular window in which we were inculcated:
Ideology is that group of intertwining beliefs that makes possible certain kinds of cultural consensus or knowledge, but precisely because it is everywhere and nowhere, ideology tends to disappear ‘into’ the things that it makes possible. Paradoxically, ideology is the metaphysical ‘airy abstraction’ that is simultaneously a kind of concrete ‘common sense’ (87).
Instead of taking things at face value like we were pushed to do in this class, I was eager to question the assumptions behind them. Social theory works helps me most when it becomes the very lens I look through, when I can’t imagine what it is like to not to see the world in this way.
Approach to Vocation
My understanding of service strongly resonates with the Lutheran conception of vocation, where my passions intersect with the world’s greatest needs. While my desire to make a difference in the world has not wavered, my specific approach has varied and deepened as a result of my sociology/anthropology major. In high school, I sought to change the world by volunteering with causes that I cared about, ranging from youth empowerment through mentoring elementary school girls to faith formation through my church. I believed in the power of direct service as the most effective way of helping others.
Coming to college, I continued the pursuit of service in my extra-curricular activities as a counselor at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp, a mentor with Emmaus Baptist Church Student Ministries, junior counselor through Residence Life, and St. Olaf volunteer program director for two affordable housing and food agencies. While I still continued volunteering in college, this work was accompanied by a shift in perspective. It was no longer enough just to provide a direct service; rather it was crucial that I become aware of the root structural causes of the very social problems that I was seeking to alleviate. In my Sociological Theory class, I was introduced to the power of conscientization, a term coined by Paulo Freire that refers to “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Feagin and Vera 2001:21). Ingrained in liberation sociology, this consciousness-raising enabled me to see the world in a new way through increased awareness about social justice issues.
I am a sociology/anthropology major because it helps me live in the world. The major provides a style of thinking that encourages the questioning of conventional categories. This framework has the potential of contributing to a deeper understanding of how society works, which makes it perfectly suited to the effective pursuit of social change. The fusion of my social science skills with the compassion that I have enables me to thoughtfully investigate local and global problems while assessing a range of approaches. My coursework within the major as well as classes like Social Policy and Ideals to Action have confirmed my desire to work at the grassroots level as well as on a policy level. This two-pronged attack addresses the importance of attending to imminent needs as well as addressing root causes by forging a new equilibrium that alleviates the suffering of a targeted group.
My interest in the major always comes back to praxis, the desire to use my academic class work to envision another world in a practical way. With this in mind, I am pursuing a year of service through Americorps where I can fight against social inequality in a deliberate and effective manner. I will be able to use the tools articulated in this essay and many more to vocalize my thoughts and perceptions in a socially responsible way.
As my college graduation draws near, I am faced with the challenging questions of worth and value that often accompany a major transition: What was my education good for? How have I used these four years to develop my interests and passions? How has my college experience shaped my understanding of vocation and my place in the world? While I am still processing the complexities of these questions, I am confident that St. Olaf has produced a thoughtful, global citizen who is anxious to get her hands dirty.
References
Dillard, Annie 2001. “Seeing.” Pp. 440-453 in American Spiritualities: A Reader, edited by Catherine Albanese. Purdue, IN: Indiana University Press.
Feagin, Joe R. and Hernán Vera. 2001. Liberation Sociology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Nealon, Jeffrey Thomas and Susan Searls Giroux. 2003. The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Rowman & Littlefield.
