virtual reductionism

so today, we had two guest visitors, anthropologists in our school. (seriously, i am making an attempt to write a prose here). they came here to share their experiences and well ideas basically. i was not much excited about it but anthropology is something that really interests...i am just not used to the whole interaction sessions (lately).

so the sharing began, everyone was introduced..i awkwardly always start with "my name is...". i do not know why. i mean if it were Nursery, it is expected but now, nobody wants a full sentence and every time my turn is about to come, i think to myself, ok..how am i supposed to introduce myself? yet, by the time i have blurted out "my name is..." it is too late.

to cut it short, the discussion was basically on some really intriguing ethnographic anthropological experiences they had...it dated back to 60s and 70s actually. i kept wondering how awesome it would be to be in 60s and 70s of Nepal and experience it the way they did. the session was pretty interesting..but their vigor to share it was much more.

there is this huge debate on reductionism; that is basically reducing something, especially people and their experiences into numbers, statistical data and such. so, theories like ethnography, critical theory and feminism claim that they are anti-reductionists. but i could not help but wonder: what is reducing? is it just numbers that reduce someone's experiences so there are other forms of reducing them? i mean when we conduct a research, are we not all, at some level, reducing someone's experience into bulky reports with words all over it. aren't we all trapping those experiences in some form or the other. of course, numbers become very exclusive in that sense that they try to reduce representations into some kind of measurement. but in large, aren't language, symbols and images some way of reducing something into something else. the debate over which research becomes or does not become reductionist stands on a very, very thin line. research in itself, of any kind, is one way or the way, reducing experiences, stories and culture into some form.

(so as i blog about it, i am reducing my experience of the session (1) through words and (2) through cybernetics.

D