Who is listning to what the Scallops say?

This is going to be a long post because I want to start at the begining of this journery.

I never thought a lot about scallops.  They did not seem a likely place for intellectual discourse.  I did not appreciate what I could learn from scallops. 

Several years ago, I was working on a project where we were trying to rethink how certain government benefits were given out.  I was asked to review the international literature and it became clear that more than learning about best practices what was obvious was that the different systems in each country were actually a decision about where to be on a scale of subjectivity to objectivity.

Subjective - we talk to you, understand your world and circumstances and an expert makes a determination based on this data and their knowledge

or

Objective - we have certain criteria that you meet or do not meet

So I went deeper.  How do you construct subjective or objective systems?  What does that mean in practice?  So I started reading.  And I learned a lot.

I read Lauren Datson on how the introduction of cameras changed the development of medical atlases.  Where previously experts choose the examples to be included in the books afterwards the camera was seen to introduce absolute objectivity...until people figured out that the camera could lie.

I read a piece from 1898 about the introduction of the x-ray and it's role in legal proceedings arguing that an w-ray was not a perfect reproduction and could be taken or interpreted in ways that made it subjective even thought it was a picture. 

I real a lot about accounting and it's history.  How come we see accounting as an objective discipline?  What happened that gave it that status?  How does that sheen of objectivity remain even when it was a discipline of white men?

This all lead me to Actor Network Theory (ANT) by Bruno Latour.  Latour argues that we cannot just be objective overseers of systems, but that by observing the systems we are changing them we are making choices about what to observe and what to ignore.  He argues that we are making choices about where we observe from and if we will privalage certain voices over others or if we give things, systems, ideas a voice as well.

In the last 30 years, this theory has provided a powerful tool for many disciplines to understand the connections between the actors, to highlight power relationships and to shine a light on things they might have been overlooking in their analysis.  Things like scallops.

One paper refferenced over and over again was "Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scalloeps and the Fishermen of St Briex Bay" by M Callon 1986.  In this paper Callon shows how a project to get fishermen working by bringing in scallops to reseed the bay failed.  He traces all of the actors, including the scallops and shows where connections broke down or where actors were ignored.  For a key example, no one checked with the scallops if they would grow on a large scale in the same way that they did in Japan, where they came from.

Since then I have read a lot of pieces that use Actor Network Theory to show where things/projects worked or did not work.  It is a really powerful theory that applies well in a number of circumstances and allows us to introduce numeracy to analysis even when their is no clear data set in the traditional sense.  This was a really powerful breakthrough for me to be able to bring economic analysis to places where I felt limited before.

This stuff really fascinated me for some time and I read a lot in the area and applied it where I could, but then a few weeks ago I was sitting in a meeting where the other party was clearly not listning and it struck me that they were not seeing our side as an enrolled partner in the network.  In ANT everyone has a voice.  But then it struck me that ANT was really just the indian way.  Everyone has a voice.  Interconnections matter.  It seems so obvious now.  ANT was an acedmic way to say what indigenous people already knew.

So this weekend I was reading Gabor Mate "When the Body Says No" and Ralston Saul's "The Comeback" both writen by older white guys but it struck me that Mate has "got it" whether from the white philosopher side or the indian side or someplace else, he understands that we need to be real people with each other.  He sees that we can't share "pure knowledge" and that we share ideas steeped in where we come from/where they come from.  He uses the I in his writing and writes about his experiences while mixing these with the acedmic liturature he has read.  It makes an easy to read book that has depth.

In contract was Saul.  While he is writing about aboriginal people and he seems to be sypathetic (wyatever that means), he is the outside observer.  A good acedemic.  I don't know why he is writing this book or why he cares about this issue.  He never tells me and there is no I.  I can speculate, coming from Idle No More that there was money to made on such a book or maybe he really cares, but all it can be is speculation.  I have to say that this leaves me cold in reading his book.  After reading more aboriginal writers, starting from the point where the I was uncomfortable with the personal vioce, I now really see the lack of this in Saul's work.  As I read, I can't connect to Saul as a writer.  He is an old white guy telling me stuff.  I am not sure I have a lot of trust there.

I know that the translation of the oral tradition of indeginaity into written form has been a struggle required by space and the heavy demands on our Elders, but these two pieces made me think about how well some writers are bridging this challenge.  While not the same as building a personal relationship with someone, the thoughtful personal introductions and prayers create another space of diologue that is not there when an "authourity" is writing.  I am excited to see how this space is contructed as more indians join the diologues and as we all get better at listning to the scallops.