N2O

I admit, I fell off the face of the earth for two months.  I was in Halifax, NS, soaking up the last feeble summer sunshine rays that exist in the upper northern hemisphere.  Then I moved halfway down the east coast back to Williamsburg.  Not having much experience with moving from A to B, it was an arduous process from which I am just now, three weeks later, recovering.  Back to research…

After I got back from Montreal doing honours thesis research (yes, there’s still a bit of Canadian in me yet, so honours with a “u”) I spent a good deal of time trying to get data for my Monroe project.  Whereas my honours thesis is on Quebec nationalism, my Monroe is on Scottish nationalism.  Specifically, I’m looking at how the Scottish National Party (SNP) markets itself and its cause to the UK.  Not surprisingly there was more current research available for me at Dalhousie, one of the premier research universities in Canada.  Aside from the fact that they are a research university, Nova Scotia = New Scotland.

I’ve noticed this about research: there are trends in who researches whom.  For example, Quebec, Belgium and France are just about the only countries to seriously study Quebec.  The Frenchies stick together.  For another example, England, Scotland, Australia and Canada are just about the only countries to study Canada and Australia.  The (former) Brits stick together, too.  Thus the presence of a good amount of Scottish research in Nova Scotia did not really come as a shock.

As far as data, since I didn’t get to Edinburgh this summer I am depending quite a bit on current scholarly articles, a few books (all written by UKers…) and the SNP website.  The website is quite interesting, especially after reading background on what is important to Scotland.   Like any political party worth a vote, the SNP caters to the traditional Scottish identity in education, health and law.  But please don’t forget the oil: the stuff under the North Sea apparently belongs to Scotland for exploitation, not England.

It seems rather silly since at this point most of the liberal/progressive world has decided that fossil fuels (like oil) won’t be around long, and we have to find other methods of energy production to survive.  If you’ve seen Barack Obama’s recent alternative energy campaign televised ad, you’ll know what I mean.  Fossil fuels are passe’.   But the SNP is adamant about its right to oil - doesn’t this seem like an instant-gratification fix?

If I were the SNP, which already struggles to convince voters that Scotland could indeed go it alone without England (its largest and most reliable market while in the Union), I would be less visibly concerned about the oil in the North Sea and more emphatic about the possibility of tidal energy harnessing,  or other alternative sources.  That would be sustainable for longer than a few years, and would mean that Scotland could support its need for energy without dependency on foreign fossil fuels - it could perhaps even make a profit selling the oil in the North Sea, making self-sufficiency even more possible.

When the biggest concern for the independence project in Scotland is creating a viable plan of action, short-term fixes and instant gratification are not convincing enough to earn a majority vote.

So that’s what I’m working on now:  going through my data on the SNP to figure out how they work.  The semester approaches, and I am preparing for the battle ahead.

Do you ever get the feeling that, to do well in field research, you have to be a little sneaky?  The little half-truths that are used can be handy when you’re just starting out.  The non-disclosures about your pre-fabricated conclusions fog the glass between you and your subject.  But is it too much?

For instance, I can say that I’m a student doing research for my thesis.  Period.  The fact that I’m an undergrad doing research for my honours thesis is obscured by the assumed norms.  Normally, and I’ve been told this several times throughout my time in Montreal, normally it would be a doctoral candidate (thus graduate student) working on his PhD dissertation (called a thesis) who would be mucking around in the field for clues and hints and data to stand on.

All this and more, just to lure people into my web of digital voice recorders and tiny laptops for an interview that could take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours - I’ve had both! - but I assure them it will take fifteen minutes, up to but no more than an hour.

I’ve had a lot of fun on my trip to Montreal.  I can’t tell if I’ve enjoyed more the conversations with people, the walking around, or being able to use such a fantastic library.  Then, next fall, I’ll pull out all my notes (and possibly take some more) just to critique everything that these nice people have told me.  I’ll obscure their names with pseudonyms so they won’t be able to be sure if it was their interview or someone else’s.  Then I’ll send copies back to a few of them, in the hopes of being published.  Now, I’m not stupid on this subject, exactly.  I’ve done a lot of hard work for this paper, and I’m not nearly done.  But I’m not exactly francophone, not a Quebecker, not Haitian, not an immigrant, not even Canadian.  I’m just a girl from a small southeastern city in ol’ Virginny who got interested in something vastly different from her life thus far.

Sneaky?  I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it is.  I have to play dress-up with the facts and figures and faces I’ve gathered, and try to re-create a story that I could never truly experience.  To share with an audience that has the same zero chance.  I feel like I’m spying on an unsuspecting group of people who have, for the most part, welcomed me wholeheartedly into their community.

I’m not sure how many people will understand the title of this blog, N2O. Nitrous oxide. Laughing gas. That stuff will make you happy instantaneously, and then pass out. I’ve only tried it once when getting a tooth pulled. I liked it so much, I decided to name my blog after it.

So, I suppose I should say something meaningful now that I’ve deleted the first post I’d written a while ago. My research takes me into a few different areas: history, anthropology and political science. I’m working toward undergraduate degrees in the first and last, and am toying with the idea of a graduate degree in the middle one. Right now, at this very moment, I’m in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, studying the relationship between a francophone immigrant community and the discourse of sovereignty. When I’m not struggling to understand what exactly to call the sovereignty/separatist/independence movement, I am burrowing in the Bibliotheque et Archives nationale du Quebec, affectionately known as the Grand Bibliotheque, or speaking with members of the francophone immigrant community about their opinions on politics. I’ll be synthesizing some sort of thesis paper out of all my notes when I get back to WM next fall. I’m also going to be studying the Scottish independence movement later this summer by looking at how the SNP (Scottish National Party) constructs its discourse and presents or “markets” its goals. The SNP study is being funded by an upperclass Monroe grant.

I got into all this by getting a freshman grant last summer to study the social and economic effects of some 1977 legislation in Quebec. The bills I looked at mandated the use of French in all business, public and academic ventures, thereby assuring the “perennité” of the French language in Quebec province. My conclusions in that study led me to question the role of immigrants in the failure of the last independence referendum in Quebec in 1995, because Quebec’s demographics show that immigration is what keeps the population viable at the moment.

Now that I’ve lived in Canada for almost six months, I believe I am qualified to say that I’m not obsessed with Canada, in spite of common accusations. The (lack of) national identity, and subsequent inner fears about not having an identity, of Canadians is really starting to grate. Especially in the Maritimes, whose economy has been brutally beaten in the last few years with changes in the fishing industry and the booming oil industry in Alberta, Americans are not that welcome. And, once they’ve decided they like you despite your being an American, they still only talk about three things: hockey, I hate America, and the American Democratic primaries. Confusing, eh?

What does interest me is the interactions between immigration and nationalism, both of which are on the rise. Yes, we are a global… globe. People move from country to country with ease nowadays, and cultural exchange is as fast as your internet connection. Yet, in spite of opening up our doors, we cannot seem to open up our hearts: we don’t want to forget our national identity just because some non-nationals are coming in. Quebec is, honestly, an accessible example for me to study, and I get to keep up the only other language I know, French. It is also an interesting case in itself. The only other people who study Quebec seem to be francophones, and the only things Quebeckers seems to study are francophone things. There is more communication between France and Quebec than there is between Ottawa and Quebec City (the federal capital and the Quebec provincial capital, respectively).

We’ll see what happens with this blog. I’m not always reliable when it comes to writing about my writing.