Levi-Strauss success

I am happy with the way the Levi-Strauss session on methodologies went. That is not to say that it was perfect but I can confidently say that we were al different by the end of the session. We all learned something, me included.

As I have mentioned, I was covering for Malcolm who
a) has a PhD
b) is a great and entertaining lecturer
c) has first experience of methodologies

An added problem is that EV and CF did already do a close reading of this text with Malcolm as part of their induction. So they knew, and maybe they knew more than me about it.

I think the main think that worked today was the fact that I embraced the limitations of the session. I acknowledged EV and CF's knowledge of the text by asking them to present it and informed the students that this was the first time I ran the session. I explained how I decided to run it, the reasons and the particularity of close reading technique. Then asked them about their own perception of the text (I was particularly interested in the MA students as I myself found the text and the discipline -Anthropology- obscure). There were obvious difficulties with it.

I had prepared a overhead projector with some definitions (which links to my Action Research Guidelines for problem management) of key concepts that perhaps escape us (Boas, moieties etc...) and I was right to assume that students hadn't look for their meaning. So, after all, there was some knowledge transmission there.

Then I began close reading, asking them to stop me whenever they saw a connection. We each read about a page and, although I began adding the context and meaning to the text (I had pencil notes at the margin from my previous reading), they soon started to intervene. The change in this was when they realized we had to trascend the discipline of Anthropology and see the underlying research values, which is their own subject specialism. In fact, that's what JF said she got out of it, the fact that you can read a text for other reasons than the content.

even I began to get really excited about what Levi-Strauss was saying, making all sorts of connections (although I didn't voice all), some of them valuable some less, but all creative in terms of thinking.

Students took it in turns to read and no one shyed out, which shows that we were comfortable with our thoughts and analysis and the environment allowed discussion. In the end, I asked students to sum up what we learned and to establish a parallel with Art and design research and, maybe with their own projects if they could. The discussion was fruitful and wrapped up the session very well.

What I though was going to be difficult to keep up for 2 1/2 hours, indeed lasted that amount of time. The reasons were the good choice of material (indeed the text is an extraordinarily good example of methodological approach), good method (it invites close reading because of its difficulty) and my transparency (acknowledging limitations, we were all more comfortable).

Even CF and EV, who had seen the text before, aid it made more sense now. Having gone through it carefully, I am not sure if we should ever put it as part of an induction (they had it on their first day!). It certainly would have frightened me off...