observations of a girl in a black dress

Part One:

Overview: Subject is a female, young 20s, medium height. She is Caucasian, with brown hair and blue-grey eyes.

Physical Appearance: She has tanned skin, with a few freckles on her arms. Her hair is wet, except for her bangs which are styled and side-swept. She is wearing little make-up, but it appears there is a little mascara and eyeliner. There are numerous bruises on her shins, and several scars on her legs. She also has a 2 inch long scratch on her right arm that looks pretty recent. This could signify abuse, but due to the lack of bruises on her upper arms, probably is just a result of clumsiness.

Clothing: She is wearing a black dress, short sleeves, cotton knit fabric. It fits loosely from the empire waist downward, and stops just above the knees. It has a relatively deep scoop neck with button closure, and some ruching at the bust. It looks as if it were chosen for comfort mostly, and also to go along with the style of wearing dresses in the springtime.

Accessories: She wears no jewelry except for a small silver chain bracelet on her right wrist, but is wearing silver strappy sandals. They have no heel, though, so were also probably chosen for a mixture of style and comfort. Her toenails are unpainted, as are her fingernails. There are no idealogical symbols anywhere on her person, such as political buttons or religious jewelry.

Items: She is carrying a backpack, and has a wallet, keys, cellphone and computer charger in her hands. It is strange that she does not put any of those things in her backpack to carry them. Her wallet is large, black and rectangular, with red accents and interior. This may suggest a slightly racier side. Her cellphone is very large; it looks like a pda device of some kind. Her keychain has at least 15 keys on it, signifying that she has access to a lot of place. The computer charger she is carrying is for a Mac, so that means that she probably owns a Mac, which means she is doing fine financially. The backpack is blue and grey and is a Jansport bag. It has a lot of pockets and looks well used, although it isn't particularly full on this occasion.

Part Two:

So, I'm wearing the dress, because I made a pact with myself to not wear pants except for on days that I have to: namely, Tuesday and Thursday when I have organic lab. However, it's been about 3 weeks since I've done laundry, and I'm running out of dresses and skirts to wear. I can't really remember when was the last time I wore anything, so I'm hoping that it was long enough ago that it is socially acceptable to wear this dress again. It's really comfortable and is decently cute. I wore it to work the other day at the Gap, and some girl asked me if I got it there, cause she wanted one. (It's not from the Gap.) I could have gotten it in other colors, but I'm not sure that I'd want to wear a bright magenta version of this.

I'm in love with my shoes. I bought them in both silver and black and they're really comfortable for strappy sandals. Really, I bought them because we're not going to be allowed to wear flipflops in Rome, and I needed to find some cute shoes that I can walk all day in.

For some reason, I'm not a big jewelry fan. I have a silver bracelet that I'm always wearing, but I don't really like earrings. They give me migraines and make my ears itch. And I don't wear necklaces because I don't want a tan line from the necklace.

I don't have painted finger or toenails because my best friend hates chipped nail polish, and I'm so rough on my hands and feet that polish usually doesn't even last a day with me. I try to keep them nice looking, though.

On the subject of my tan... It was really nice this weekend, and I wanted to wear shorts, but I never wear shorts, but I bought a pair of shorts, but I wasn't going to wear them unless I got a tan, so I went and got a fake tan, and then proceeded to get as much sunshine as was possible.

I'm not sure why I was carrying all my crap in my hands when I had a perfectly good backpack on, but I think my thought process was something along the lines that I needed my keys to lock my apartment door and my cell phone to check the bus schedule, and my wallet for my upass, and I forgot my computer charger, and had to run back in for it, and I was too lazy to take off my backpack and put them in. I was going to catch the bus, but I missed it, so I ended up walking to school anyway, with all my crap in my hands. It was a nice walk, though.

Oh, and by the way, I'm bruised and scarred because I am the absolute klutz of klutzes. I bang into things so often that I don't even know where my bruises are from. The cut, though is from the wall at the Gap. It got me.

Anyway, comment if you want me to explain anything else.

research question and conceptual framework

Research Question: (still somewhat tentative - Emily and I need to discuss and narrow down our topic, which we'll be doing at tonight's meeting)
In the Netherlands, do Muslim women receive a different quality/quantity of care than non-Muslim women? How does culturally appropriate/sensitive care affect perceptions of the care received? What is being done to overcome this gap?

Conceptual Framework:
Cultural Traditions: Examining interactions between these conflicting (or not) traditions
Western v. Eastern
Gender Relations
Intersection of Liberal v. Conservative

Also, I've been thinking a lot about assumptions that Muslim women do have problems with access to health care that do give them adverse health outcomes. I've been doing some reading about fertility rates, and there's a "Bible Belt" in Amsterdam with orthodox Calvinists (a Christian sect) that has very high birth rates. I wonder if a bigger issue would be fundamentalism - not Islam itself. However, this raises a lot more questions.

Methods:
Case studies - talking with women about their healhtcare experiences with the intention of finding out how they've been treated.
Looking at how religion affects relationships - both patient-provider, patient-spouse, provider-healthcare system

Also see my previous blog, which addresses a lot of these issues.

Scholarship

scholarship : Knowledge resulting from study and research in a particular field.

It's always interesting to look at how information is gained, but the key really isn't in finding out information - it's in putting that information to work. The idea of information dissemination is especially key in health and health promotion. People can know about health risks (and that knowledge is important) but until they can (and do) something about it, there is no difference in their outcome.

This idea is especially important for our group. If we're looking at access to care by women in the Netherlands, that care needs to be accessible. Women can have knowledge about what they should be doing, but if there aren't culturally appropriate clinics available, then quality care isn't possible. Taking it back a step, if women don't have culturally appropriate information, then they can't know.

I feel like the most useful way for us to present our information would be on a pamphlet or info sheet, giving statistics and useful practices. This could be a quick way to illustrate what is being done.

Reflecting on our project- I feel like it's going to take two focuses. Emily, as an anthropologist, is really interested in the differences of knowledge about health, and how the cultural practices of our focus groups interact with and affect health and health knowledge. This would best be researched by surveys. My interests lie more in how health care can assimilate and respect the differing beliefs, while still maintaining the integrity of the care. This would be best researched with interviews with professionals. What is being done? Is it effective? What are they thinking about doing in the future? How can a healthy society be formed when there are so many factors that go into creating health in general.

I think that these two focuses will combine well together to create a good overall picture of health care and knowledge in Amsterdam. Obviously, there's way too much information to present and learn it all, but maybe we can use our interests to focus our question.

Group Presentations: Focus on Ethics

Communication/Media Group:
Question: How do media (social, industry, usage) and technology (news, interpersonal, development) relate to each other and to society?
Methods: Research: history, other studies. Expert interviews for an insider perspective. Surveys: primary interactions and habits. Interviews: digging deeper on perceptions. -- Case study
Ethical Issues: not taking names or identifiable information >>> exemption status

With keeping information gathered from people general, they should be able to keep this out of ethical issues. And really, as long as the questions aren't asking about porn usage, it's not really going to be ethically compromising. (Although, doing a comparative study of porn usage would be interesting, if almost impossible to research.)

Tourists v. Natives in Amsterdam Group
Question: How do tourists and natives differ within the tourism industry and within themselves and their own communities?
Methods: Observation: appearance, speaking, accents, behaviours, interaction with natives, tourists, space. Interviews: casual conversations (accents and conceptions about Amsterdam). Participation: participate in tourist/native activities and experience both sides.
Ethical issues: Minimal risk: Informed consent with the casual conversations, and pictures, relying on observation (which is non-invasive - sort-of.)

This should probably be less than Minimal Risk, because questions aren't going to be too invasive. There aren't really ethical issues.

Architecture Group:
Question: How do people interact with space? How does the design of a structure influence the individuals who visit that location? Is there a central them based on location that transcends the time it was made? How does the content and layout of a shopping center reflect the "personalities" of the neighborhood and it's shoppers? How does this form a culture center in the city?
Methods: Direct observation of a site as active public venue, background into the history of the location. Research on events hosted by the city at this center. Finding differences in content of one shop in 2 different shopping centers in 2 different malls.
Ethics: Exempt, risk in asking questions about SE background, no names, low risk

Branding Culture Group:
Question: How does branding happen in Amsterdam? How do stores in Amsterdam attract customers? How does does Dutch Fashion influence gender roles and identity? How are women portrayed in advertising in Amsterdam?
Methods: Visit stores, observe, and talk to people. Research fashion, analyze photographs, taking pictures of ads, analyzing ads, surveys about advertising
Ethics: Exemption - asking permission to look around, asking permission to take photographs, anonymous survey, language barriers, access

research question and methods and difficulties

Question: What is the difference in access to health care in Islamic and non-Islamic women in the Netherlands?

Sources- Islamic hospital in Rotterdam, poll in perceptions of Islamic women, shelters for women in Amsterdam, comparative studies on “cultural competency” in Seattle and Amsterdam

Difficulties- asking personal questions about healthcare, privacy issues, issues with reaching goal populations

synecdoche assignment

Perhaps a little bit of irony for the part/whole ideas in the synecdoche idea.
We can see here that the women symbol includes the red cross (one of the most common symbols for health.) Obviously, this was not the intention of the creator of the symbol, and it's not the same as a part of the woman being used as a symbol as the whole woman, or a part of health. but it's interesting to put forth the combinations of the two ideas in a single symbol.


So, as the synecdoche, a part of the whole, I think it would be interesting to look at street clinics/NGOs catering to women. This encompasses the importance of the grassroots and alternative approaches ( as examples of the social dynamics in the group we're examining). Small group mobilization in a larger context, like clinics in a large national health care system, has a lot of implications in the areas of access to care and personalization of care to the populations it serves.

Online Represent!

So, with the idea of combining my interests in health, I thought it would be interesting to examine how health information is disseminated in the Netherlands/Amsterdam, and if there were "culturally appropriate" health information and practices available for immigrant communities. If there are, do those services improve the quality of care or the perception of the quality of care received?

Harborview International Medicine Clinic provides some interesting services, including native language speaking staff and interpretive services in 70+ languages, house calls, educational material available online about specific different cultures for doctors and staff.

There are programs like this around the world, but the services they provide differ. This one, in New South Wales, Australia, focuses on communication between the provider and the patients and was set up by the national health service.

It might also be interesting to look at non-traditional ways to promote health, like this soccer game for AIDS awareness or the fashion show for positive body image that I co-produced in February.

Observations:
University Village (an arcade of sorts)
Sunday Afternoon around 4:30

I chose University village because it combines a lot of aspects of many different spaces: outdoor shopping, mall, restauraunts, and grocery stores.
Because it was raining, I focused on how the space was being used, in contrast to other times I've been in the Village.

First, the entrance:
We can see that there is a lot of car traffic going in and out. There aren't too many pedestrians walking out, although there are 5 different bus routes that service the area. The signs are uniform and dark green, and generally inobtrusive.








We can see that the parking lots are full, with few spots. This is a bit busy for a typical Sunday afternoon around 4:30. So, we can see that the rain does not keep people at home in the area.





Most people stayed under covered areas. This is interesting because UVillage is an outdoor shopping center. In the rain, we can feel the tensions that the rain causes. All of the outdoor furniture is unused and wet. We can see the parents watching their children play on the playground toy here. There were a lot of families out with their children.

Interestingly, UVillage, which generally has a lot of dog owners walking their dogs, did not have any pet owners that I saw this afternoon. We can also see the one biker I found while walk around the area.


It was interesting to see how few people were walking around with how busy the parking lot was. In this picture, we are looking at one of the biggest crosswalks that bring pedestrians from one side of UVillage to the other. On nice summer days, it's almost impossible to get past this walkway without stopping for at least 30 seconds.


Here's another covered walkway and main thoroughfare. There were significantly more people here than in the more exposed areas, even though the more famous stores were in the exposed areas.








Analysis:

Research Question: How does weather affect use patterns in outdoor/indoor spaces?
Research Methods: Ziesel Environment-behavior method (watch people use space over time and with different weather), close read ( look for clothing selection, how displays are designed.)

Submission/Fitna

Disclaimer: I think that both of these films made interesting and valid points, though I do not necessarily agree with their message as a whole.

The most remarkable parts of Fitna to me were the use of verses from the Qu'ran that generally spoke on "overcoming the infidels," etc. (paraphrased, obviously). Doing something like this is hard to do in a balanced way. I noticed that most of the verses were from one book in the Qu'ran. It's almost like taking all of the verses in Leviticus that say strange things and repeating them over and over again. However, I do not feel like they are taken out of context, except that there are obviously many other verses about many other topics in the scriptures that aren't mentioned in the film.

Additionally, a selection like the one in Fitna presents a one-sided view. There are many Muslims in the Netherlands who are living peacefully. It is so easy to focus on the radical minority, while totally ignoring or mislableling 99% of the population that does not share those radical views. On the other hand, Islam does have a worldwide pattern of subjugation of women and other minority groups. The concerns that Fitna raises cannot be ignored or totally written off, but fighting intolerance with intolerance does not make anything better. It is especially ironic how the intolerance of Muslims is proposed by a "tolerant" Dutch politician.

Again, in Submission, the points about oppression of women are raised. It again is hard to judge the film because it does have an obvious bias. But, how can we, as onlookers, learn and understand about a culture that is not our own? It is much more complicated than the views put forth by these films. There are oppressed minorities within the communities, but we're certainly not ones to judge.

Blog Response

Amsterdam: Sathi Maiti
http://sathimaiti.blogspot.com/

This blog has an interesting mix of casual and formal content. Typical conventions in punctuation and sentence structure are followed, but capitalization is used more loosely. A blog is a unique medium because it has elements of familiarity and a relaxed atmosphere, but writing in a blog for a school assignment creates a conflicting mix of two different attitudes: the formal writing style which is expected for assignments with the casual, conversational style usually taken on a blog. I know Sathi from high school, so I thought it would be interesting to look at her blog. This gives me a perspective that mirrors the conflict found in a blog: both familiar and formal.

Sathi picked the third template and didn't change the presets on the appearance of the blog. This could be seen as a lack of personal buy-in on the blog, because there wasn't a lot of time spent to personalize the structures of the blog. Her name isn't capitalized in any of its appearances on the blog, which may say something about her self-perception, but also might be because of the “coolness” of not capitalizing in online media. There is a progression in the titling of the blog posts from formal capitalization to non-capitalized and more “train of thought” blog titles with a couple of humorous titles thrown in. Additionally, the posts become longer and more casual as time goes on. There are more references to personal feelings and attitudes, with questions written out in the paragraphs, several at a time. This could be construed to be Sathi's increasing familiarity with the blog and with posting in it.

My favorite post was “i hate pants,” where Sathi wrote about a study on herself. The first part has the formal observation of herself, which could have been written by an outsider. Then she writes a somewhat self deprecating, sarcastic and funny personal explanation for what's behind the outside appearance. This was a good reminder for me about research in general. There are a lot of observable attributes of a study, but then the personal story behind it is always much deeper than what is said or seen.

Email Close Read

Email Posted with permission of the Author

Hey Lauren,
I hope your break is going well!!
I know you're in Spain so I don't know if you're checking emails but can I get the student group application link so that I can just finish up the application and get this reservation confirmed? I'm worried we're actually going to lose it.
Thanks, see you soon!

****

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This email is a typical correspondence of a student who is trying to coordinate an event and is waiting on completion of a task. There are 5 divisions: the greeting, the personal message, the inquiry and explanation of the task, the closing, and the name sign-off. This email is written in a casual manner, with the use of exclamation points, the word "Hey," and a loose grammatical structure. The inquiry into the completion of the tasks has four clauses in one long run on sentence, showing the train-of-thought structure of the question. It also emphasizes the urgency that is felt in the situation and shows some of the frustration felt by the writer. She is unable to proceed from where she is, but would "just" like to finish up and close the situation.
Even in the casual format, courtesy is extended with starting the email with a personal inquiry, and giving notice of understanding of the situation which may have lead up to the task not being completed. The frustration is widespread, and not necessarily directed at me, but more at the general situation. The use of the word "just" implies an ongoing, drawn-out process that has been unnecessary, and the writer would like to conclude the saga.
It is interesting that the writing is clear and concise, except for the greeting at the beginning. There is a conflict between the friendliness of the double "!!" after the greeting, and the businesslike tone that the questioning takes. The relationship between the sender and recipient can be assumed to be a friendly one, but there are also elements of being colleagues, and working towards a goal. But the friendly relationship frames the conversation, giving the panicked middle a positive start and end; although, the ending has a bit more of the rushed feeling, with the comma splicing the two thoughts, "Thanks" and "see you soon" together.