The Great Unlearning

It seems that life of late, and really since I started my PhD, has been about undoing. At the risk of embarking on a rant of academic drivel, the existential journey I call a dissertation has become about deconstructing my entire education. This all came about because of my efforts to do a dissertation based in the social sciences after years of training and work in the health sciences. Suddenly I found myself dealing purely with thoughts and ideas, with maybe a little qualitative data thrown in to back them them up — quite a shift from that other world where numbers reign supreme and you throw in a few token ideas at the end in the "interpretation and application" section of a research report, taking care of course not to say something that couldn't be referenced back to some form of data elsewhere.

It was a very conscious choice to stick to the thoughts and ideas brand of research for my PhD. The more I learned about epidemiology and data, the more I understood how easily numbers can be manipulated — not falsified, just purposefully interpreted — to give the answer that best fits with one's worldview. It seemed to me that it made more sense to be up front about these biases and openly acknowledge the fact that ideas and opinions are very influential in the creation of research, so I set off on my search for understanding about the relationships between food, society, and culture in the facing of changing political and economic worlds. Still, even though the rationale for qualitative work resonates more closely with my heart, I have struggled and felt pulled in two different directions. I had been thinking this was simply the result of doing something for which I lack in training and experience, having to learn a new way of doing as I went along. It quickly became clear that I was not only learning how to do things in a new way, but I really had to unlearn everything I'd been taught.

A scientist walks into a coffee shop and sits down with three anthropologists.....

Something happened last week that made me realize this is something more. I joined a small thesis writing group in an effort to break down the mental walls that were preventing me from moving forward. I was sitting in a cafe sharing writing troubles with three anthropologists. I described all my difficulties in applying social theory to my work and how it was keeping me from beginning analysis of all my interview data (something I've been ranting about for 3 years now). They asked where the initial idea for my research came from, and I started in about The Decline of the Modern Cookbook* and the social determinants of health. They looked at me slack-jawed and told me I already had a theoretical perspective and I should just get on with it and ignore Foucault, Bourdieu, Levi-Strauss, critical theory, post-structuralist constructivism, and all that.

Theoretical problems solved, we moved on to analysis. My science brain figured I needed a detailed paper trail of 'proof' for everything I claim to have found through my research. (I should note here that this is not because I think that's necessary, but because I thought nobody would consider it legitimate research otherwise). Anyway, I learned that anthropologists consider spending months in a place, interacting with people, interviewing them, observing what happens, and then clarifying what you learned from that to be entirely legitimate. No need for complicated software and pages on end of code (which of course, would be constructed in my mind, but somehow the codification process lends legitimacy to those folks who think social research is 'unscientific'). So, I told them the main things I learned and why, and suddenly I'm halfway to an outline for my thesis and a plan for how to write it up.

Unscientific Un-learning

All this got me thinking. A lot. And I think I've learned a few things about myself and the academic process in general.
1. Most mainstream education has the effect of slowly killing our creativity. I thought this happened in university, but I think it began much sooner. In high school I used to skip my science classes to attend music rehearsals. Back in grade one, there was some concern about my progress on account of shoe tying issues. To the educational system, I wasn't good at tying shoes. To me, they just didn't appreciate my creative methods. I mean, my shoes never fell off....

2. The loss of food culture and cooking skills and knowledge — all the things that led to my thesis research — are related to a loss of culinary creativity and the homogenization of diet. Interestingly, around the time I was being criticized for creative shoe tying, I was given the Beatrice Potter Natural Foods Cookbook to which I attribute the origins of my intense attraction to good food.

3. There's something going here between my own creative processes, my dissertation, and food. Somehow it's all going to connect. Oddly enough, it was the sense that my education was killing my creativity that led to my dropping out of music school way back when, and ultimately to my scientific education. I've decided to reclaim it by learning to play the tabla. This has the nice side benefit of having a connection to Indian culture and spiritual traditions, which conveniently will be a major theme in my thesis.

I of course have no hard data to prove any of this.

*Some fodder for a future post, where I show how cookbooks in the 1980s began to look more like IKEA furniture assembly instructions than guides for preparing food.