What’s in a blog? (part 2)

This week I have been reading ‘Letters From the Field 1925-1875’ by Margaret Mead. I have long been a fan of Mead, but realised I have never directly read any of her work. This book consists of letters she wrote whilst conducting her anthropological fieldwork in the western pacific, including Bali, so many of the descriptions are familiar – in fact there is one description of rice paddies that is spookily similar to my own (see black, white & green all over).

Mead’s letters were written with a similar rational to my writing also (although I admit to not feeling, or wanting to feel quite as ‘immersed’ as she does). In her introduction she writes:

Letters written & received in the field have a very special significance. Immersing oneself in life in the field is good, but one must be careful not to drown. One must somehow maintain the delicate balance between empathetic participation and self-awareness… letters can be a way of occasionally righting the balance as, for an hour or two, one relates oneself to people who are part of one’s other world and tries to make a little more real for them this world which absorbs one.

Most interestingly though was the audience Mead was writing for. She wrote just one letter & sent it to her friends, family and colleagues so that they would be able to ‘share somehow in what happened so that, when I came home, they would know me better, not as a stranger but as myself’. But these letters were copied and circulated to friends of friends, as Mead puts it ‘unknown readers who were close to people who were close to me – an audience one step removed from intimacy’. This strikes me as very much like a blog, like this blog.

The modern day blog however is in some ways more intimate. The speed of modern communications means that I can ‘relate myself’ and the ‘people who are part of one’s other world’ can read it almost instantaneously. Correspondingly, ‘people who are part of one’s other world’ can respond instantaneously – leaving comments, asking questions, discussing together the experiences I am reporting. I think anthropologically Mead would have appreciated this grounding (she died in 1978, before the advent of such travellers luxuries as the World Wide Web), as I do. So please continue to post comments, letting me know who my audience is & what you would like to know… helping me not to drown.