The Librarian Mystique

  One of the first tenets we learn in the social sciences is the value of human beings. An ethnographer learns not to call the people they interview "subjects" but participants. When we find someone who introduces us to a subculture or a helpful participant, we call them an "informant". These distinctions may seem redundant, after all, they may mean the same thing to other scientists.  However, in the qualitative sciences, the use of terms to describe someone is a conscious effort to affirm the agency of a person. They are contributors to a body of information you would never have had without them. The way they talk, walk, work and play reveals precious data for an ethnographer.  However, even that expression of a "participant" appears to me unethical, after all, what I just expressed is that their value to me as a researcher is in providing me information for my research. This reductionistic description of a person is against my foundational ideas of onto...

 Now the Star-Belly Sneetches  Had bellies with stars.  The Plain-Belly Sneetches Had none upon thars.   Those stars weren't so big. They were really so small.  You might think such a thing wouldn't matter at all.    (Dr Seuss, 1957) In Erving Goffman’s 1963 book Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity, the term stigma is explained.  “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to an attribute that is deeply discrediting, but it should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed” (Goffman, p, 13). What Goffman means by this is that stigma is not an automatic standard response from one person to another, but one determined by context. There is often an automatic stigma about certain indicators of “difference” in society. For instance, if we meet a person in a wheelchair, we may be tempted to treat them differently than others as an automatic response to their perceived inability to perform things ...

  What is a person? What makes a person valuable? If we strip away our social, economic and civilised definitions, what is left? Who are you? What makes you, you? We live in an age where economically, persons are not particularly valuable. If we work and produce money to contribute to society through taxation or perhaps through some altruistic purposes, or through social and communal engagement, we can depend on a pretty good eulogy, from someone. But what if we cannot do those things?  The elderly in aged care are seen as a burden on families, the health system, and even society. We do not interact with the elderly in our siloed zones of school, work and socialising, unless one of our sectors is deliberately designed for them. An elderly person, unless known and loved by their families, loses their social value in a society where policy separates them from the rest of the world.  In their homes and segregated places, the process of ageing is in many ways humiliating. Bec...