Kim TallBear speaks to “studying across” in contrast to the traditional mode of “studying down,” or even the anti-colonialist turn of “studying up.” For her, this means locating oneself in the overlapping space between the researcher and the object of study. She is personally able to do this by studying indigenous researchers. In doing so, she is able to generate authentic investment in/with her subjects, at the same time she engaged in studying the “colonizers rather than the colonized.” But of course she IS studying the colonized, just not exclusively. Her gaze remains pointed at an indigenous population, but one who has been able to attain object position within the domain of academia.

One thing that interests me about Tallbear’s approach is that she is studying groups with whom she shares membership. Though she doesn’t mention it, this seems to be a defining characteristic of her proposal to “study across.” Without membership, a research cannot help but be “studying down” (or at least “studying at,” depending on their positionality.) Tallbear has the unique position of membership within both a target and agent group (researchers and North American indigenous people). It seems that having this duality represented in project leadership is key to being able to maintain and balance both insider and outsider perspectives. While it might seem ideal in one sense to have dual identity located in one person, it may actually be more powerful to have the identity spread across the group, allowing for greater embodiment, activation, and reflection/dialogue about the relations between these roles both within the research group and between the research group and those they encounter through their study (as long as the leadership group is able to actively address the inevitable power/status dynamics inherited through their respective memberships).

Tallbear alludes to the intertwined leadership of community-based participatory research. In Indigeneity in the Contemporary World: Performance, Politics, Belonging, a project which “explores how indigeneity is expressed and understood in our complex, globalising world,” a level of investment in the target community seems clear, but the level of involvement of the target group is not apparent, aside from the multi-identified members of the research team, many of whom are performers.

To what degree do the staff have dual membership such that they can study across the issue? And with regard to the products of their research (especially the public events) how can readers be invented to “observe across” rather than “observing down”? Given the publication-orientation of research, products and artifacts are distributed beyond their collaborators, and potentially beyond the necessary context to ensure that representations can maintain the sovereignty of their subjects. If we can’t protect their integrity, should we consider not making it such products accessible?

http://www.indigeneity.net/

https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/indigeneity-in-the-contemporary-world-a-transnational-and-interdisciplinary-study-of-performance-politics-and-belonging(e220edc0-074a-4dcf-b3aa-a4a02102c78a).html

Indigeneity in the Contemporary World: Performance, Politics, Belonging “explores how indigeneity is expressed and understood in our complex, globalising world.”

“As well as developing their own research, core team members host yearly symposia and conference events and will collectively prepare an educational DVD as well as a public exhibition. Visiting research fellows and practitioners have been invited to contribute to the project over the five-year period.”

http://www.intellectualhistory.net/mill/index.html

I was delighted to see this project to generate an “electronic resource” of James Mill’s common place books, and also enjoyed the quaint phrasing of calling it an “electronic resource,” as in, “James Mill’s Common Place Books— Now with electricity!”

I have had a fondness for commonplace books as a way to organize information and ideas as they come up, which is handy for people like me who frequently want to capture thoughts. In my experience, they utilize an organizing principle of having an index at the front in which you enter a subject (often through an alphabetized list of each consonant followed by all the vowels:
B—
A-
E-
I-
O-
U-

C—
A-
E-
I-
O-
U-

When you have an idea, you its topic in the appropriate place, then simply insert the page number upon which you write things down. In this way, the book can be read chronologically, but also be organized by subject. It seems that Mills did not organize his books this way, however, and so one of the accomplishments of the project was to organize the information.

This project of James Mill’s commonplace books is appreciable in its user-friendliness and transparency of process. There is a clear user’s guide that orients the reader to use, clarifying the structure of the electronic object, but also providing insight to the structure of the original artifact, serving as a pleasant reminder that what the screen shows references a separate object that also exists out of sight. The introduction provides interesting context to why this artifact was chosen to “electronicize.” Of particular interest to me is that one can view the “editing principles” used to translate the book into its electronic form. The object in question is founded in a transcription of the Mill’s books by Prof. Robert Fenn. The editing principles reminds us that its electronic form could have been different, had it been transcribed by someone else, or had different design principles been engaged.

In addition to accessing the contents of the original books, enhanced through the organization of material into topics, this object invites readers to participate in an ongoing organizing scheme through the creation of tags. I value this, again, because it serves to overcome the limitations of the initial coding scheme.

The interface is rather simple and unimpressive, but also unencumbered and easy to use, which may be helpful to those overwhelmed by too many “intuitive” buttons. Overall, this project is a very interesting case of how to extend the life and relevance of a textual object that is necessarily bounded by materiality and temporality (its chronology of creation). This, on top of the interesting purpose and structure of the original medium, serves as a sort of double look into how we can organize ideas, personally and collectively.