My posts for the remainder of the semester will be located here, so continue to follow me and I'm always open to hear your suggestions!!
so check out our site and learn why you should buy local
It may seem as though my blog has gone dormant, when in reality the medium of my blog has changed. I have been working, with my groupmates on our collaborative reseach project that can be found here.
My posts for the remainder of the semester will be located here, so continue to follow me and I'm always open to hear your suggestions!! so check out our site and learn why you should buy local
0 Comments
The purpose of this blog post is to relate the article titled "Good, Clean, Fair: The Rhetoric of the Slow Food Movement" by Stephen Schneider to my collaborative research project. The focus of our project is currently leaning towards a view of how to upstart a local farmers market and how it can impact a community both positively and negatively. The three quotes to that I feel apply to our project are:
"The rise of organic labels in supermarkets, the growth of local farmers markets, and the emergence of chains such as Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and Trader Joe’s all attest to consumers’ desire to avoid the perceived pitfalls of industrial food." (Schneider 384). I feel this ties into our project as one of the reasons someone might want to start a farmers market and it may possibly be the reason that our interviewee for our Oral History Project , Mrs. Sarah Kirby, may have wanted to open her own farmers market. "School gardens, farmers markets, and the Salone del Gusto are all understood as opportunities to educate consumers about food and gastronomy and to further persuade them to seek out those products that are good to eat and good to think." This quote applies to one of the impacts that a farmers market can have on a community. It is also one of the reasons that a comsumer may choose to go to a farmers market. "Furthermore, the money from farmers market and artisanal sales ideally goes to family farmers and other small producers, thereby contributing to less affluent and often underrepresented sectors of the community." This quote applies to some of the negative connotations that many people attach to the slightly higher prices that a farmers market charges. I feel all these quotes can all be used as viable sources in our presentation. Below are my contributions to our collaborative research project in the form of possible research questions as well as possible oral history project interview questions: my group members consist of - Michael Youngkin, Stephanie Bowser, and David Lucas
Research Questions - 1. In what ways do the "Organic Movement" differ from stores such as Wegman's or Whole Foods and Shoprite? 2. Is going local and organic better in the long run for an average consumer? Possible Interview Questions - for the possibility of a Shoprite nutritionist, but could be modified for the person mentioned in Michael Youngkin's blog. 1. Have you ever had a person come to you trying to be organic and on the go? 2. Can you give any quick tips on how to make organic choices and still live an on the go lifestyle? 3. What are some organic staples that can be eaten in an on the go diet? 4. Do you believe organic is starting to catch on more with younger customers? Why or why not? Reflective and reflexive thinking, as well as, research are the differences between askng why something happened and asking what do we do now. Qually says that reflexive inquiry is "the act of turning back to discover, examine,and critique one's claims and assumptions in response to an encounter with another idea, text, person, or culture."(3). She then goes on to say that reflection is "adequate for monitoring our concious beliefs."(13). I see the differences, as they apply to research, as being the level that the researcher is willing to dig deeper into the topic. If reflection is adequate for monitoring our concious beliefs and biases then we need to think reflexively to look at our biases and beliefs that are subconcious. We need to think, and research reflexively to be objective and if we want to be moderately subjective we can stick with mere reflection. The different forms of collaboration are best described by Fontaine and Hunter as dialogic, when members all work closely together and roles are interchangable and often are swapped as necessary,and hierarchical, where members often work seperately and then combine their individual pieces together to complete the project or assignment. While we have not done much collaboration in this class as of yet, I feel that with the group members I have for the collaborative research project and oral history project we will be doing a lot of dialogic collaboration. In classes prior to this one I learned that I would much rather do dialogic collaboration. In past experiences I felt that with hierarchical collaboration it is noticable who completed which portion and the overall assignment did not flow as it should have, I feel leads to a choppy project and that it makes the project suffer.
To sort of synthesize the reading dealing with qualitative research by Beverly Hancock, I feel that qualitative research focuses more on the human aspect of research, whereas quantitative research is strictly numbers and imperical data. I see qualitative research as humanizing research methods in a way. It deals more with the social and societal aspects of the research than simply the nuts and bolts approach you get from quantitative research. It is almost an opposite side of the coin scenario where quantitative focus on the "how much, how many, and how few" type of questions you will find more questions that are focused on why those answers were received. Qualitative research focuses more on why people behave the way they do and how their opinions and attitudes are formed. It also deals with how people are affected by events and how certain cultures develop in the ways they have. I feel that qualitative research is very important to a project like the collaborative research and oral history projects. I feel without the human aspect in research there would be no place for a project like this one. This entire collaborative research project revolves around qualitative research, I am sure that many of our research questions will come from why people do the things they do and how they feel about certain issues. Without the qualitative aspect of research their would be no room for a project like this.
When it comes to narrative inquiry that it is extremely closely related to qualitative research and it is a key qualitative research method. My understanding of narrative inquiry somewhat comes from the article from the Handbook of Narrative Inquiry. In their article they claim that narrative inquiry uses stories to provide vital and pertinent information about a specific topic. How I see it is that the narrative mode is used to give information but at the same time the narrative mode engages the audience and provides room for a connection to that person to be made. I feel that narrative inquiry gives you information but in a more memorable way. A big example is the farmer Joel Salatin from Food Inc. I had previously seen this documentary, and his message and personality was the one thing that I remembered most. I feel that this research method is going to be imperative to our collaborative research project and at least for the oral history component will be the primary form of research done for this project. After reading the articles by Pollan and Berry, coupled with the extreme visuals of the Food Inc documentary I am having a moral and ethical dilemma. I now know how unhealthy and unsustainable the food I am currently eating is, but at the same time I know that I have become accustomed to these salt fat and sugar triggers that my brain craves. I have been thinking of spending a little more and going organic rather than meat free like most people in my class have discussed. I still need to find some good that can come out of these articles and this film, but one thing is for sure, I am definitely contemplating what goes into my stomach anymore.
Question 8 - In the film, author Michael Pollan says,"We've skewed our food system to the bad calories, and it;s not an accident." What does he mean by this?
I feel that Pollan is talking about how the foods in the supermarket and at fast food restaurants is cheaper than the healthier food and the organic food. This has been done purposely to target the foods humans are hardwired to crave; salt,fat, and sugar. This multinational companies, often with ties to the government, can cut labor costs to the point that they dont need to sell their products at a high price and can still turn a tremendous profit. These companies have made it easier and cheaper to eat poorly and that leads to the addiction to bad foods. question 12 - Farmer Joel Salatin in the film says, "We're willing to subsidize the food system to create the mystique of cheap food when actually it's very expensive food." What might he mean by that? Should price be the most important force behind our food industry? Why or why not? How might our food system change if it was driven by other values, like health or environmental sustainablity? He means that while it may seem like a cheaper way to produce food it actually costs more money. He mentions the cost of using the mix of meat in the groun beef that then becomes contaminated that then costs the companies money to clean in ammonia. He mentions other times when companies must take precautionary measures to cover up their unhealthy practices that costs them even more money. I feel that price shouldn't the the cost driving factors in our food system, when it is you have companies like the ones we have now that use feed lots and corn by products to produce a cheaper meat that often is not a safer meat. If it were driven by factors such as health and sustainability then you wuld see a fair equitable market that would not be much more expensive than it is now, and would be significantly more healthy and safe for the consumer. Question 14 - In the film, Noel Kramers of the California Farm Bureau says that he bureau is against labeling because it "creates unnecessary fear in the consumer's mind." Do you agree with this reasoning? Why or why not? I feel as though the consumer has the right to know if the products they are buying are made from cloned animals or not. I could only imagine the number of burgers or chicken breasts that I have eaten that could possibly be made from cloned and genetically modified animals. Some people are highly opposed to this and the consumer has the right to know what they are buying. Sam C. - Her place is her family room, but more importantly the people who make her family room a true family room. Her project revolves around her family and most importantly the new relationship with a brother that she did not know she had. She was having trouble with figuring out what exactely the story she was trying to tell specifically is. I feel like if she talks about how the seperation of her parents actually made her family stronger. I think it would be interesting to add some sort of graphic that shows her family tree, and if she decides to focus on how the loss of some relationships made her family stronger that she should show a broken branch or something like that in the graphic. Also a video in which she gets the feeling of how finding out about her parents divorce and her new family made her feel.
Alexa - Her place is the act of buying a house. Her story tells the progression of starting to look at places and the drama that she went through. It goes from her finding a house to the process of trying to find a home and not just a house. She talks about how she never had a permanent home growing up and that it is something that is extremely important. She talks about why it is important to her to have the perfect house. I feel that she needs to add more context to the situation and show some depth of the characters. Some suggestions that I thought would make the project better are to add some screenshots of the places she visited that her mother, her fiance, and she liked the most but that didn't work out for various reasons. Sam O. - Her project is going to showcase the life of her grandfather. She describes his life from start to finish and also some of the hardships that he went through. SHe talks about the different times when he had chances with death. The main focus of the story is how she sees elements of his character in herself. Some suggestions to help her make her project more powerful would be to make either a timeline or a photo essay showing the important moments that she talks about in his life. Her draft was strong so I can't think of many things to tell her to improve her draft. Mike - He was unsure of his place, but had written a short scene piece about breaking up with his girlfriend, that I feel was very powerful and needs to go into this project. The videos he used to show scenes made his relationship and disconnect very powerful. His overall project seemed clustered. We all talked about how his clustered style and disconnect from specific characters and situations made it more relatable and allows us to be able to put ourselves as the characters and make the disconnect our own disconnect. So after presenting, and feeling like my twitterive fell completely short of the other presenters, I got a ton of good feedback to improve my project even more. I loved the idea to narrate the video I have of a child's perspective of the daycare. I have already come up with making it a stream of concious-esque piece to enhance the entire project. Also I realized that I need to beef up the perspective of my character and how he reacts to the situations he is put in. Some ideas I have been thinking of are to add a photo essay of some kind that is made up of pictures drawn by the kids I work with, but I don't know what story I could tell with them. Also I would like to find a way to do either more stream of conciousness type of genres or some commentary while my character is in the scene. I also need to add more "in scene" snapshots to make the reader feel like this whole process has helped me so much and that with this feedback I think I can make my twitterive so much better.
Throughout this assignment, and class in general, I have learned that new and unfamiliar technology is not necessarily something that needs to be feared. Before this class I was unfamiliar with much of the new technology and I often felt like a digital immigrant at times. Prior to this class I did have a twitter account, however I think I had fewer than 20 total tweets, now I find myself almost twitter addicted with nearly 200 tweets to my name.
But twitter is not the only thing that I have become more familiar with through working on this assignment. Since starting my Twitterive I have learned how to create, and effectively use, a worlde to compound what I want to say. Also I have learned how to film, edit, and upload a video. Before this class I had never even filmed a video, let alone edit one almost seamlessly. But the most profound thing I discovered was that through this technology it became easier to write in different modes and genres. The use of Wordle, youtube, and even a fake text message generator I discovered, allowed me to say what I wanted to say in a unique way that I feel would catch the attention of my reader and get my points across. In short, I learned that through technology I can better create effective modes to write in and use different genres that I had never used before. For this I would like to thank the Twitterive assignment for opening my eyes to new possibilities. |
AuthorMy name is Darren Gaunt I am 22 years old and currently studying to be a Elementary school teacher. This blog will feature responses to reading as well as a few of my own thoughts and feelings mixed in. Thank you for reading and feel free to comment and contact me. Archives
April 2012
Categories
All
|