Learning Journal #26

With the reality that Ghana is less than a month away (AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!) my mind is starting to reel about what it is actually going to be like. But mostly, right now, my mind is reeling about my proposal.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I switched back to my original project-- nationalism and dance. I've very excited about this switch and in rewriting my proposal, I can see the ideas maturing a lot. It is a really cool experience to go through... just when I think I've reached a deep level of the ideology backing my thesis, I discover a new journal article that sends me deeper into the chasm of anthropological theory. :) For instance, I've been reading up A LOT on dance ethnographies and the ideas pushing it forward into the front-lines of anthropological work. In one of the articles I read recently, the author posed the question of how dance even fits in with the normal studies of social movements and other things that anthropologists study. Here was his answer:

"Kealiinohomoku has talked about the "nonart"of dance. Hanna claims "that dance is linked to the life of a society by affecting cultural patterns, tension management, goal attainment, adaptation, and integration" (4, p. 96). Royce has investigated the social and political aspects of dance in plural societies (36) and dance as an indicator of social class and identity (35). Kaeppler has examined dance as an integral part of social structure (12) and as a surface manifestation of deep structure (13). Others have recognized the importance of dance in ritual, and studies
in progress on the ethnography of performance and on event analysis also
promise new insights." (Kaeppler 1978: 47).

There is SO much to be learned from dance... and I'm just scratching the surface with nationalism.

What do I need to be working on? I realized today that I really need to be thinking of questions that I want to be asking!! (cause I'm surely going to need more than 25!)