Hospitality is Not Sociality: Focus Group Follow up on FaceBook

Hospitality is Not Sociality: Focus Group Follow up on FaceBook For five years I conducted field research in Kazakhstan on Kazakh proverbs. I became especially interested in the appropriation of Kazakh oral tradition to negotiate contemporary issues in Kazakhstani society. Currently, I am based in southern California which makes such investigations more challenging. After I presented on my research at the Silk Road House in Berkeley two years ago, I asked a Kazakh who attended how best to network with Kazakhs residing in California. He recommended my getting connected via Kazakh FaceBook groups such as his own “Kazakhs in San Francisco and the Bay Area”. Later, I came across scholarly research supporting this suggestion. Mieke Schrooten explores how internet groups serve a diverse daily function for Brazilians residing longer term in Belgium (Schrooten 2012). For transnationals in all stages of their life overseas, Internet groups serve a vital function for support, access to resources, and expressing nationalism. I established a FaceBook group entitled “Ethnographic Research with Kazakhstanis in California”. Here I provided information about my research and the group. I posted invitations to the various regional Kazakh FaceBook groups, briefly presenting my background and my current project. On the ethnographic group page I explained that my primary expectation of them was to read the selected Kazakh folktale before taking part in a focus group. Sessions were announced and details worked out through the group. I had never met with any of the participants before they attended the session, but each of the gatherings was characterized by lively discussion concerning significant issues. Kazakhs residing in the Los Angeles area were eager to meet with me. Participants were primarily students who were working toward advanced degrees at the University of South California. In fact, one of the participants who helped organize the second session wrote an article for the University of Southern California Language Institute’s newspaper describing our second session (Mussin 2013). In organizing and facilitating the focus group sessions, I had three goals in mind: 1. Hear their evaluation of the folktale and my thesis that the appropriated version expresses two contrasting topics; 2. See whether they would resonate with topics address in the contemporary appropriation of a Kazakh folktale. 3. Evaluate whether the participants would put themselves in the story and consider how they might be the “New Kazakhs”. Here I understand “resonate” to refer to both their affirmation and embracing of linguistic ideologies put forth in the Aldar Köse adaptation. I was looking not only for their verbal affirmation of my analysis, but also for the metaphors and lines of reasoning that would emerge in the course of our discussion. If participants resonated with the presentation, then they would be able to provide complementary material (Maranda 2011) to fill out what I considered in my own analysis. The response could utilize either traditional material or new metaphorical content (Maranda 2011, 97). At this point, I want to consider some of the theory that guided the development of the focus groups and then move into the experience in the groups. They also serve as a unique environment for reflection. Providing the Space for Understanding In our transnational world, folklore provides a significant opportunity to connect and consider current issues (Garlough 2013, 4, 6). As I developed the focus groups, I considered Garlough’s book on how transnational performances by South Asian women help develop understanding and affirmation on the part of performers and their audiences. Her discussion of acknowledgement in a “creative caring community” was an excellent fit for the focus groups that I carried out (Garlough 2013, 185). The focus groups were like a third space between Kazakhstan and the U.S. As one who had lived long-term in Kazakhstan, I could function as facilitator for the group that made the time and opportunity to listen, interact, and reflect on the appropriated folktale. Coordinating with FaceBook and Organizing Focus Groups Although the sessions lasted no more than two hours, matters of significance were shared. One participant talked of an experience from early in her time in the United States. She entered an elevator with other international students. They asked her where she was from. When she replied “Kazakhstan” they burst out laughing, since their only familiarity with the country was the movie Borat. One of the challenges of facilitating the group was deciding on the primary language from among the three options of English, Kazakh, and Russian. There is no such thing as a neutral language with these three choices. If I go with English, then some participants will be more limited and a number of the responses will be “translated” by participants into English. If we go with Kazakh, then this makes it easier for some, but others might consider my Kazakh better than their own and lose face. Finally, Russian is spoken fluently by nearly all participants, but does not fit with the ongoing revitalization of Kazakh in Kazakhstan and I am not fluent enough in Russian to guide the groups. In the end, the discussion was generally in English, but all participants had the freedom to interject in Kazakh or Russian. Why do I think that this approach worked for me? I see four reasons for the success: 1. The contrast between the Kazakhs’ purpose in coming to the United States to study “practical” subjects such as computer science and engineering and my decades long commitment to understand the ongoing significance of oral tradition for Kazakhs. 2. My established presence on-line as a scholar of Kazakh culture. Based on search engine data from academia.edu, I know that some of the students googled me to see if I were legitimate. 3. The significant role of internet networking resources such as FaceBook for Kazakh expats living in the U.S. 4. Participants” strong desire for significant discussions about their homeland. Contents of the Focus Groups Since the selected folktale posits the emergence of “New Kazakhs”, it was natural for much of the discussion to concentrate on contrasting tradition and change in Kazakh society. Participants in both sessions emphasized the constancy of tradition, but also had significant points as they considered recent historical changes. Constants Both groups described three significant constants: Traditions passed down through generations; Hospitality Valuing education regardless of one’s socioeconomic status There was extensive discussion concerning “hospitality” in terms of Kazakhstani society, the appropriated folktale and even our group. One student said, “Hospitality is the reason that we came to the group.” Included within the concept of hospitality is the ability to both adapt and to show tolerance. As the Soviet stereotype of the Uzbeks emphasized their hospitality (Adams 2004, 106), so I would argue that this was part of the wider Soviet stereotype of Central Asian hospitality. I am not saying that Central Asian hospitality is not a reality, since I can attest to it based on my own experience, but in this case it is used as part of the way to represent Central Asians as unobtrusive. The focus groups were an excellent opportunity to interact with the appropriated folktale. Participants stressed continuity with tradition and affirmed the innocence/gentleness frame, providing new terminology as well as metaphors. They were not as affirming of the cunning frame, but did list societal changes in line with this secondary frame. When provided with a specific, contemporary case they also utilized the primary frame in representing the two Kazakh youth as both victims and perpetrators. Evaluation of the Focus Groups I was encouraged by how well the focus groups went. They proved to be a significant time for me to gain additional insight for my research and a unique opportunity for participants to consider the ongoing significance of their own traditions and oral tradition. Looking back on the group experience, I am struck by how closely it matches up to how Blank and Howard have recently defined “tradition” as what we enact in relationship with others, gaining authority from the past and pressing into a hopeful future together (Blank and Howard 2013, 10). The focus groups themselves don’t enact tradition but they do express hospitality, one of Garlough’s list of three aspects of the community as being-for-others, being-with-others, and hospitality (Garlough 2013, 185). The focus groups served as places for listening, affirming, and reflecting together. I am not claiming that the few focus groups that I facilitated is enough to establish what the Kazakhstani societal movement looks like. Such a societal analysis and claim would require a substantially larger sample and lengthier process. What we have been able to see is that linguistic ideological analysis of an appropriated folktale combined with focus groups with the intended audience of the appropriated material can help provide the necessary varied forms of data in terms of situated key terms, metaphors, and lines of reasoning to make societal analysis possible (Quinn 2005). Conclusion The appropriation of the Aldar Köse story in question is an effort to respond to significant socioeconomic changes by positing the “New Kazakhs”. In playing off the cultural frames of “gentleness” as a primary frame and “cunning” as a secondary frame, the intelligentsia seek to transform perspectives and open new avenues for Kazakh self-presentation. Kazakhs residing in the Los Angeles area who participated in the focus groups resonated with these two frames, providing additional situated terms, metaphors, and lines of reasoning to fill out the analysis. The methodology of combining linguistic ideological analysis with use of local focus groups was an effective combination. FaceBook proved a helpful resource in recruiting focus group members. However, focus group participants interacted to a limited degree on the group site after the sessions. Thus the ethnographic page on FaceBook operated more like a bulletin board and did not effectively bring people together to form a network or on-line sociality (Miller 2012). Adams, Laura. 2004. "Cultural Elites in Uzbekistan: Ideological Production and the State." In The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence, edited by Pauline Jones Luong, 93-119. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Blank, Trevor J., and Robert Glenn Howard. 2013. "Introduction." In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Location the Role of the Past in the Present, edited by Trevor J. Blank and Robert Glenn Howard, 1-21. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. Garlough, Christine, L. 2013. Desi Divas: Political Activism in South Asian American Cultural Performances. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Maranda, Pierre. 2011. "Echo Chambers and Rhetoric: Sketch of a Model of Resonance." In The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture, edited by Christian Meyer and Felix Girke, 84-100. New York: Berghahn Books Miller, Daniel. 2012. "Social Networking Sites." In Digital Anthropology, edited by Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller, 146-164. New York: Bloomsbury. Mussin, Askhat. 2013. "Kazakh Language Becoming Popular." The Academy News, Nov. 15, 2013, 6, 8. Quinn, Naomi. 2005. Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods. Edited by Douglas Holland, Culture, Mind, and Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schrooten, Mieke. 2012. 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