bvlsingler

July 15, 2013September 23, 2013 bvlsingler Life, Writing

Thoughts arising from the Writing Summer School

After spending all my four working days last week at the Summer Writing School I am now waaay behind… But I do genuinely feel like I have learnt some useful skills for dealing with writing issues, as well as making lots of new PhD friends who are in the same boat.

A couple of phrases kept repeating that are worth having a quick look at before I write myself this week’s to-do-list:

Kill Your Darlings: Great advice and something I always told the writers I worked with when I was a script editor. But, as a huge geek, I tend to think of my darlings as potential zombies… there’s always a chance for resurrection. When I cut a larger piece of text I put it in a ‘spare notes’ document, one for each writing project. But what I have noticed is how rarely those darlings make it back from the grave… there is usually a reason why they had to die in the first place and no black magic is going to make them stagger back into my main document.

Imposter Syndrome: Lots of people I spoke to at the Summer School were definitely displaying the symptoms of Imposter Syndrome: here’s the well written definition from PhD Confessional:

“Suffering from Impostor Syndrome. For those unfamiliar with the term, here is a definition:

Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.”

Many hadnt come across the term before, but I think at Cambridge its almost an endemic disease. Cambridge can be a hive of supersmart people who never quite think that they fit in, and that the bee over there is doing so much better than them, and the one over there is coping so much better and being so much more productive than they are. We constantly measure ourselves against each other, when really, when it comes to our PhD’s, we are all Queen (or King!) bees. Some might realise that a PhD is not really for them, or an academic career isnt a good fit, but the actual work of getting a PhD is measured against what we can do, not what others can do.

Two Body Problem: For some of the coupled up PhDs this can be a major problem. Academia is a transient field these days and maintaing relationships and a career seemed to be problematic for a few people I spoke to. I wish I had the answer. I have a husband and a son and I know there is going to be a crunch time when I have to choose between the awesome job and the right location for all of us. Unless of course someone wants to pay me the big bucks and I can be the breadwinner for a while!

Just some thoughts… 🙂

July 9, 2013July 9, 2013 bvlsingler Introduction

Learning How to Write (I Probably Should Have Done That a While Ago!)

I have been a little quiet on here for the last couple of days as I’ve been attending a Summer School on writing skills for grads.

I’ve always assumed that I am a pretty okay or even a good writer as I’ve been paid to do it for various mediums over the last ten-ish years. But I do find academic writing tricky. I think in part its because I presume that there is an authoritative, neutral academic ‘voice’ to emulate. Doing this course has shown me some of the fallacies of that voice. Its unclear, its unnecessarily mystifying, it might even be a bit elitist (“What, you dont know what I mean by ‘detraditionalization’! You ignoramus! Please do get out…”). I am now aiming to bring some clarity, and some elegance (!) to my academic writing… wish me luck!

Which brings me to the other aspect that this course has helped me with (so far, two days still to go). We’ve been discussing some of our problems with just sitting down and writing the bloody thesis. There seems to be a common thread of anxiety running through the participants, whether they are first years or fourth. A PhD is a BIG thing to do. But writing it doesnt have to be if we tackle a little at a time, or warm ourselves up by writing small chunks of texts regularly. That’s what I am hoping to do with this blog: practising writing regularly as well as drawing out ideas and themes from my research.

Oh, and the course is being held in this awesome location I’ve never been to before. They do maths here:

July 5, 2013July 5, 2013 bvlsingler To Do Lists

Current Projects (Apart from PhD Thesis):

Right, now for a bit of work planning and summarising. I find writing out lists like this reminds me to get on and write the darned things!

BASR/EASR Conference Papers (to be written for September 3rd-6th Conference):

Big, Bad Pharma: New Age Biomedical Conspiracy Narratives and their Expression in the Concept of the Indigo Child

5.7 million American children aged 3 to 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. Approximately two thirds of those diagnosed have been prescribed amphetamine based drugs such as Ritalin as a treatment. Diagnoses and prescriptions are also increasing exponentially in the UK. Diagnostic checklists include: fidgeting, answering questions before they are finished and being unable to stick at long and tedious tasks.

In this paper I will explore New Age conspiracy narratives which accuse the pharmacological industry, or Big Pharma, of collusion with schools to turn naturally active children into compliant drones. In particular, I will describe the category of the Indigo Children: allegedly a special, intuitive, spiritual generation appearing since the 1980s. This category celebrates the inability of some children to fit into mainstream systems while actively attacking the commercial machinations of ‘Big Pharma’ involving children: over-medication, but also harmful vaccinations and genetically modified foods.

Blame Sheila: The 2011 UK Census, ‘Other Religion’ and the Rhetoric of Narcissism

This paper will consider the 2011 Census question on religious affiliation, specifically responses under the category of ‘Other Religion’ where the public was able to write down a choice instead of box ticking. Answers included, ‘Jediism’, ‘Scientology’, ‘Wicca’, ‘Spiritual’, ‘New Age’, ‘Heavy Metal’, and ‘Own Belief System’, amongst others.

Parallel with an overview of sociological approaches to new religious movements and spiritualities I will discuss how the numbers in this category of ‘Other Religion’ have been reported on, including their changes from the 2001 census results. I will explore how reactions to this part of the census have replicated a rhetoric of narcissism and individualism, such as seen in Bellah’s (1985) definition of ‘Sheila-ism, while they have also dismissed answers voluntarily made as cynical parodies or ‘spoilt papers’.

Bellah, Robert (1985) Habits of the Heart, (California: University of California Press; 3Rev Ed edition (7 Sep 2007)

Harvard Conference Abstract for October Graduate Conference (Submitted, waiting to hear, end of July)

The Indigo Child as Other, the Indigo Child as Self: Forms, Categories and Experimentations within a Contemporary Online Spirituality

“…today’s children are different – more challenging, more intelligent, more confrontational, more intuitive, more spiritual, and in some cases even more violent – from any generation we have yet seen”.[1]

The Indigo Child is a category that has emerged within the New Age Movement that expresses several important religious and spiritual themes and scientific speculations. Indigo Children are considered to be an especially psychic, sensitive and innovative generation which first appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Interpreted variously as psychic warriors, revolutionary trouble makers or messianic heralds of the New Age, Indigo Children are both a source of celebration and of parental concern. The category has been used to explain behavioural issues in children, including those that the mainstream would consider biomedical in origin, such as autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and the therapies advised by Indigo experts represent technologies of the self and a way of employing scientific discoveries which has its origins in the broader history of metaphysical religion in the West.

However, the category can also be a description that individuals choose for themselves.

This paper introduces my PhD research into the Indigo Children as a contemporary spirituality, or New Religious Movement, and will problematize the distinction between self-labelling and the labelling of others, a distinction that is often unremarked upon by the community itself. I have explored this issue through fieldwork with New Age groups, interviews with Indigos and their parents, and through a historical consideration of the origins of the concept from both New Age and scientific, secular source material.

[1] Virtue, Doreen (2001). The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children. Pub. Hay House UK Ltd.

Book Chapter: New Religious Movements, the Internet and Legal Pluralism: Scientology and Jediism (Title to be worked on! And it needs a new Abstract): Rewrites due end of September

Rewrite of journal article on Pro-Ana based on MPHil research for resumbmission (I have a writing course next week I am going to be using this project as a sample to work on, so hopefully that will get this project going again!)

PHEW!

July 5, 2013July 5, 2013 bvlsingler Fieldwork

I love Excel… no seriously

This morning I am updating my makeshift database of contacts. At the moment I am in (ir)regular contact with almost 60 possible interviewees with various pseudonyms, skype aliases, and e-mail names – who live all around the world. I’m organising face to face interviews, skype interviews with time differences, e-mail conversations, and sending out surveys. And then on top of that I have 33 online sources I want to refer to (oops, still need to add a list of online blogs… add that to the to do list!).

Without an excel spreadsheet I simply wouldnt be able to keep up to date! I did wonder how ethnographers did this before programmes and even digital notebooks existed. But then I realised that mosts ethnographers lived in their villages. I am trying to live ‘in’ a global village that is really a network of often anonymous individuals ideologically bound beyond time and space. I’ve really given myself a difficult job but I wouldnt have it any other way 🙂

Although, studying a village somewhere sunny does have its appeal when the Cambridge rains keep on pouring!

July 4, 2013July 4, 2013 bvlsingler Fieldwork

Looking back… Fieldwork Interviews and Noisy Neighbours

While the tiny Tazmanian Devil I live with sleeps I’ve just been quickly uploading the last interview I did to a safer location than my dictaphone.

One theme I notice with my interviews so far (a massive 5 done already! ummm… only another 35 to do according to my supervisor) is location. Noisy coffee shops with inquisitive neighbours might not be all that ideal.

However, its interesting to me that in considering the location for the Skype interviews I am scheduling I am very concerned about who will be able to overhear us… my husband at home, other grads at my college, should I book a private room at college, at my faculty? And yet I have a much more laissez-faire attitude to members of the public sharing our air-space.

I think its in part that I am feeding off of my interviewees’ attitudes. They really dont mind if Joe Bloggs hears them discussing the 5th Dimensional protection that they recently received from Archangel Michael. Because for many of them, they want others to know about the world changes, or the Ascension as some of them call it, that is taking place as we ALL start to operate at a higher vibrational frequency. So while I might plan my Skype interviews ahead of time and dictate the space I am in, when its face to face, the space that they are in is mostly influenced by their message. Something I need to bear in mind in my paper responding to the idea that being spiritual is to be overly individual and non-social in some way. Everything they do is about spreading out their message, even if their original journey is inwards, inwards to find the authentic self.