Ingrid's outline

INGRID’s Outlines BELOW 1.1 Macro-context of the study follows in broad strokes the history of the trains as it has been viewed as a history of America as a frontier nation and capitalist expanding system. You draw from historical materials (x,y,z) …. Be clear about what you consider to be evidence: government documents? Popular novels, stories, magazines, etc? Textbooks? Railroad journals or hobbyist journals? Zines? Life-Time generalized historical accounts? Museums? Here you are establishing the main trope of trains as an American enterprise. Even the “robber barons” figure in this broad narrative of the story of capitalist America. You may want to include film as well—especially early black and white. 1.2. From these materials you construct a time narrative with basic era characteristics that you will use as part of your theoretical interpretive backdrop and ending with 9/11 which you seem to want to show marks a new moment in this historical imaginary and life of the underbelly of capitalism. 2.1. Aside from researching documents (and if you can travel to relevant libraries and/or museums that shows good scholarship) you also have an ethnographic component. Using grounded theory you use open-ended interview structures to see what is meaningful to train hoppers using the rails. You are interested in their categories of meaning and so you are gathering their stories and ways of talking about riding the rails. You also will include your own participant observations as you describe the shared experience of train hopping. 2.2. Locate yourself: a map? Which rail lines are you following? How did you choose these? How important are they or meaningful are they vis-a vis- the larger map? Are their regional variations in “train culture”? Do you need to describe your research as limited to a regional zone? 2.3. Describe how you contact people: on trains, at stations, around the yards? Describe how, like Geertz in Deep Play, you gained insider status in order to get their confidence … what is your status vis-à-vis the people you are studying? Show that you are aware of this issue in your proposal. 3.1. Other locations you will be situated to take in information? Are their other perspectives worth including? Train conductors? Police? Border patrol? State government officers? Other fringe actors, like musicians or other artists who imagine themselves, like Gutherie, part of this landscape? Train hobbyists? Basically, this section is to show where your feet will be located. Think practical. Think time and space. Don’t be abstract here. This isn’t theory or story this is the grit of face to face or face to document or face to exhibit. This is the data for the study. 1: A typology of the subculture of transients. Plus interviews. 2: A description of the spaces. The maps and the keys. Description of the train yard. Thick description of the hitch-hiking hubs. (one of the grids could be one that they fill in themselves in a way rating their own disposition or location, etc on a curve of Deep Play or necessity versus choice, etc. Check bookmark bar for examples and composition book. 3: Participant observation of the process of being a hitch-hiker. –first person narrative. –interviews: People who give rides and people who hitch-hike. 4: Participant observation of the experience of train hopping. –first person narrative. –code of conduct. Safety. Customary law. Rules of jungle. Etc. Interviews. Time as an important element. Stepping into a time-machine or a timeless realm. The waiting is a different kind of waiting. Some of the same buildings remain but they are abandoned. Some of the same geography exists. You are reduced to bare essentials. The actual tracks run a course that has been the same since they were laid down. The palimpsest can be witnessed as far as it’s construction. The different layers and levels of evolution of capitalism. The way you cook and sleep. The hard aspects of the experience. The reasons for jumping still all exists. 5: Social networking. The new tools for social networking. -Uses of the internet. New forms of sociality. Couch-surfing. Ride-sharing. Top down. Bottom up. Historical context. 6: How is this movement learning? Theoretical reflection. Top down from the internet. Bottom up. Historical processes. 7: How is this space from the bottom up contested. Who belongs. Who is authentic. Discourse. [codes of conduct] +Security culture. The video argument about whether one should post them or not. The arc of the discourses. Who is dissing what. The more it becomes mainstream. Contributing causes of migration. Codes of conduct. Customary law. Social networking. Sense of belonging? Heroes journey. Underground travel as heroes journey. Individualism and risky and illegal in heroes journey. We are looking at hybrid in which many kind of social actors are participating in this space. Day one. Starting with talk of deep play. How to public symbols become things that are collectively shared. How do we construct these meaning worlds. Fragile spaces where meanings get perverted, inverted, etc. In that sense you offer an opportunity to understand if there is a cognitive opacity in the way in which symbols get used. Meaning-making with freight trains. Geertz’s idea about how public space works for people to make sense of things. Let’s begin with his definition. Popular notion grew out of intellectual notion. How did the idea grow or gain leverage in the popular imagination.