present in the past

Since returning to Canada I've been having a hard time living here. Don't get me wrong; I have a great place to live a fantastic roommate and friend to live with, and enough money to support myself. What I mean is that I have been having, I think, a hard time accepting that I have to be in Toronto on an emotional level.

Rationally, it makes complete sense that I live here now - my sources of funding require me to be here, my resources in terms of libraries and supervisory support are here, and frankly, I ran out of long-term visa options that would allow me to stay in the Netherlands even if everything else was in order. And, while it was suggested by a colleague that I should just stay in Amsterdam forever (a tempting thought!), I have to admit that I needed the geographical separation from the site of my research to actually be able to think about it and analyze it in the ways I need to. In short, in terms of actually completing my dissertation in a timely fashion, I need to physically be in Toronto.

Yet, analyzing all this data requires me to dwell on everything I've learned and experienced over the past year. I have to pour over my old journals, collected papers, articles, meeting notes, etc. sifting through all those details and memories to try to extract the research gold that will form the very foundations of my dissertation.

Doing ethnographic fieldwork is, I think, a bit different than other kinds of research in that your own reactions and emotions, experiences and memories, questions, and yes, even crises (real or imagined) all come to form the archive of your research. Try as you might, these things all creep into how you understand what you're studying and how you study it. And, really, these can turn out to be some of the most important things! The sheer amount of information you absorb simply by living your daily life comes to be important in ways you never would have expected at the time.

Now, I have to say that when I first entered the 'field' I think that I had some ideas about what I would be doing and how I should be doing it that were just plain romanticized, ridiculous, or wrong. I had read a bit of another PhD dissertation by an American anthropologist who had done her fieldwork in Amsterdam. In it she described how she had been surprised to find that the fieldwork experience in a Dutch urban centre was very different than she had originally imagined:

Unknowingly, I had continued to imagine my fieldwork as if it were to take place in a small town filled with lively streets, welcoming people, and conviviality. But, instead of informally socializing with people, I had to schedule appointments; generally speaking, just “dropping in” on someone is frowned upon. Instead of being constantly surrounded by people and struggling to find private moments, I found myself alone most of the time, except when I sought out interviews, committee meetings, and public gatherings. Instead of being able to integrate myself into daily neighborhood life, becoming inconspicuous over time, I found I was often the only person lingering around outside, with no one to observe. (Martineau 2006:12)

Armed with this knowledge on how to 'do' fieldwork in Amsterdam, I thought I had things all figured out. Of course, later I realized that I too held idealized notions about anthropological fieldwork. For example, my choice of waterproof hiking shoes that I thought I would need in the perpetually rainy climate of the Netherlands (the romanticized field!) were actually very uncool and definitely marked me as a foreigner (which was often pointed out by some of my more blunt Dutch friends - who, like all Dutch people wore very fashionable shoes), and that I only needed to wear my rain pants once during the whole year (also very uncool). But perhaps the biggest error in judgment came from my ideas about what an anthropological archive was. I thought that my field-journal should only be filled with important facts and observations that clearly related to my research questions. When I started writing in my journal I promised myself that all the mundane details and emotional crises not directly related to my research (e.g. 'culture shock' and 'ethical dilemmas') would never make it into this archive.

Of course, it wasn't too long after I was living in Amsterdam that this resolve quickly dissolved. I had an emotional crisis very decidedly unrelated to my ability to do research. Yet, it was then that I realized that contrary to the naive ideas I came to Amsterdam with, in fact everything I did and thought affected how I did research, and was usually worthy of making it into this archive in one way or another. So, yes, now I am pouring over not only interestingly productive frustrations with trying to learn Dutch (such as trying to practice with the woman at my local vegetable stall only to be replied to in English), or the experience of going to a Balkans Film Festival one weekend (an international event mainly in English), or learning the reason that the Dutch political cartoon characters Fokke en Sukke have exposed genitals (because of Dutch liberal sensibilities poking fun at the American Donald Duck who also doesn't wear pants), but also more seemingly unconnected jottings about things going on in my personal life and relationships.

So, with the process of analyzing my research data, I have to relive, remember, and dwell on what my life was like in the Netherlands. Really, it's no wonder that I'm having a hard time committing emotionally to Toronto. I am still in Amsterdam every day.