SoC 2:4

Techno-shamanism and Educational Research

 

W ho am I?

I started my project as a qualitative analyst of children’s literacy practices. In particular, I was looking at the end point of the education system in the UK, the ‘sixth form’—16-18 year olds, or the ‘youth’. By this time, students had perhaps been in the system for 13 years, and their educational mores had been well established. As I sat in the classroom, and watched them use computers for various assignments or to surf around on the internet, I was struck by the way in which the group were intimately constructed. They had been together in restricted spaces for many years: What chance did I have, an older university trained researcher, of discovering anything new or exciting about the way in which they were learning language by using technology?

I suspected from the start that the project that I was embarking upon had a lot to do with identity. I eagerly devoured books on the subject, and became lost in the intricate discussions and arguments about how we become the people that we are. I was especially intrigued by what I termed as the ‘Nietzschean heritage’ in social thought, encapsulating the work of Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault and feminism. They spoke about desire, bodies and power; the factors that I felt actually motivated us to become the people that we are. I began to move away from the scientific evaluation and description of the processes that I was scrutinising, and looked for a more personal, emotional, affective approach to understanding techno-literacy.

It was clear that I had to somehow get involved in the actual practices that my subjects were doing in and out of the classroom to have any chance of understanding them. I conducted interviews, gave out questionnaires, held focus groups and on-line forums as my supervisor suggested, yet to find out what my cohort were getting up to I had to lose my identity as a mainstream researcher and find a way into their world outside of school.

My chance to do this came by accident. I had been seeing an undergraduate philosophy student. She was very interested in living a bohemian lifestyle, and assiduously sought out contacts in the local creative community that could be summarised by the phrase, ‘the underground’. She told me about a party in a stately home. Apparently, the owner was an eccentric aristocrat, whose estate was so large that he didn’t mind people having parties on his property. I arranged to go to what she confidently declared would be a ‘real rave’ with a teacher that I had met during fieldwork collection in a secondary school. He was a dedicated and hard working teacher of the creative arts who also enjoyed going out and exploring whatever nightlife there was on offer.

We drove to the event in his newly acquired car that seemed to splutter and spurt at every bend in the road. I had been told that raves were conducted in remote places, and this was no exception. Eventually, I noticed that the agricultural countryside was transformed into the rolling landscape of an aristocratic estate. We drove past the shadows of a lake and straight lines of cypress and elm. The turning to the party was an unmarked brick gate on a small road, almost impossible to find in the middle of the night.

To my surprise, as we drove up the tiny winding unpaved path, we came across a large field full of cars. As my friend carefully parked, I wound down my window and caught my first aural blast of dance music. Even at this distance, I was captivated and moved by the sound; it gripped my whole body in a way that rock music never could. It was as if a deep tribal memory had been shaken out of me. My friend and I walked towards the sound in silence and anticipation of what we might find.

The party had been organized at the side of what looked in the gloom like a series of out-houses. They were arranged in a square with shadowy retreats and a section that had been cordoned off with a large tie-dyed sheet. I lifted the sheet and found groups of people sitting around and dancing. We made our way through the individuals and sat down against a barn wall in order to survey the situation. The people were an incredible, eclectic mixture of ages and backgrounds. It was impossible to say definitely that there was one type of person that attended the rave. My friend and I looked at each other and smiled in non-verbal agreement that we had definitely found a ‘place-to-be’.

The music went off, and people came out of their hiding places in the array of shadows. They all stood and looked towards the DJ table and the sound system that was arranged on either side in two sombre black towers. At this point, the music began in earnest. It was louder, more minimal and driven. The crowd was immediately sparked into motion. My friend and I felt ourselves swept along by the pulsating and insistent noise. We danced for what seemed like hours without feeling tired or self-conscious. At several points we were joined by fellow dancers who we may or may not have known, yet for several moments we were fused with them and we shared an intimate, real, emotional connection. As dawn came up over the English countryside, and the pumping techno set came to a close, we found ourselves close to the DJ table and the source of the communal trance. I noticed with astonishment that the DJ was one of my student subjects who had been taking part in the techno-literacy research.

On the way back in my friend’s car, I wondered about what I had witnessed and how it would affect my research. I wanted to immediately pore over the interview transcripts and questionnaire data for some sign that would connect the reality of the educational inquiry to the talent of the adolescent for moving large numbers of people that I had experienced at the rave.

However, I could find no such connection. If we may call this subject X, he was non-committal in the questionnaire about technological language; he had expressed an interest in virtual reality, yet had suggested no positive applications. I had interviewed him in a group and he had not responded or participated. I had been advised by the school authorities that he was a failing student with low levels of literacy. By this they meant that he had failed a linguistic test at 15 that had measured his spelling and grammatical ability. Yet I had witnessed the same student at the centre of a rave orchestrating a crowd. This contradiction sat in the middle of my research. I was convinced that the disparity in evaluation of the subject X was due to testing regimes. The standard literacy assessment principles were designed to generate individual linguistic profiles. These are essentially hollow vessels, not containing any information about the substance of identity: i.e. what a person is like, or how they express themselves. X, in the context of the rave was a sublime and competent generator of atmosphere and meaning. In the environment of the examination hall or the classroom, he was limited, hesitant and withdrawn.

I had to find a way of expressing this difference that did not diminish either activity. Through extensive research on the internet I found out about techno-shamanism. It immediately stuck me as a means to discussing a linkage between the changes that I had experienced at the rave and the ways in which we may express ourselves through technology. At the rave, the DJ is the techno-shaman, initiating the group into a ritual of collective celebration through dance. He or she, through skilful choice of track, subtle mixing and a powerful sound system may create a unified and coherent group environment that expresses the values and affective growth of collective power. Technologies such as the internet also have the potential to augment multiple identities, though these processes of change are not as clear or unified or personally affective as those that are exhibited in the rave. On the contrary, in the context of a school, the usages of the internet that the students demonstrate such as research for assignments or the following of personal desires tend to individualise and reflect the surveillance and control procedures that are in place.

Conclusion

I am now ensconced in the sedentary life of an academic at the University of Tasmania, and yet I believe that the evidence and ideas contained in this work are still acting on my behaviour. Techno-shamanism is a positive and life-affirming practice. It is also a guide to the many contradictions and tensions that present themselves when one is describing complex transformations of the self, and in this process one might be experiencing complex changes (Land, 1995, p. 193). This salient point is directly relevant to the social sciences as techno-shamanism defies qualitative analysis just as it is competently categorised. It simultaneously works on the behavioural aspects of the imaginary and the pragmatics of everyday life.

 

 

Reference
Land, N. (1995) Meat (or How to Kill Oedipus in Cyberspace), in Featherstone, M. & Burrows, R., (Eds.) Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, pp. 191-205 (London: Sage Publications Ltd).