Review of 'Dignity In Exile Stories Of Struggle And Hope From A Modern American Shantytown' on 'GoodReads'
2 stars
Short version: This book should be called "Eric Weissman, Ethnographer and Reader of Theoretical Texts, Visits Dignity Village, Sort Of"
Long version: Having briefly visited Dignity Village, the "shanty town" Eric Weissman writes about here, I had high hopes for the book. Unfortunately, the book centers primarily on Weissman's relationship to the village. Weissman constantly reminds the reader that he is an "ethnographer" and "social scientist" and that the people living in the village are his "informants." While he shares certain life experiences with his neighbors at the village, and details some of his own struggle, it seems more like a pointed expression of empathy designed to recenter the dialogue around himself, rather than a way for him to contextualize what he experiences in the village. I met one particular resident on my trip, and reading Weissman's impression of him here was fairly jarring--certain personality traits of particular residents are …
Short version: This book should be called "Eric Weissman, Ethnographer and Reader of Theoretical Texts, Visits Dignity Village, Sort Of"
Long version: Having briefly visited Dignity Village, the "shanty town" Eric Weissman writes about here, I had high hopes for the book. Unfortunately, the book centers primarily on Weissman's relationship to the village. Weissman constantly reminds the reader that he is an "ethnographer" and "social scientist" and that the people living in the village are his "informants." While he shares certain life experiences with his neighbors at the village, and details some of his own struggle, it seems more like a pointed expression of empathy designed to recenter the dialogue around himself, rather than a way for him to contextualize what he experiences in the village. I met one particular resident on my trip, and reading Weissman's impression of him here was fairly jarring--certain personality traits of particular residents are harped on throughout sections of the book, while personal histories of those residents are made to seem incidental.
These are not the only expressions of what I see as a certain disrespect of the villagers. For one thing, Weissman does not attempt to hide his revulsion at certain aspects of living in the village, and gives the impression that he believes his bluntness in these passages to be "straight talk," despite how they appear to the reader. Similarly, despite acknowledging that one particular resident "preferred me to not use traditional pronouns like 'him' or 'his'," shrugs it off with "I simply find it hard to write without doing so," and defaults to "he," rather than inquire about a preferred pronoun.
Can one call themselves an "ethnographer" and then refuse to actually experience the culture you are purporting to study by making up your own rules for your subjects' engagement with their surroundings and cohorts? I'll leave the question to other readers, but my sense is that there is some serious cognitive dissonance happening here.
Cap this all off with constant reference to Weissman's graduate studies and escapes from the village to the city for the food and environment he desires, nods to theorists (his favorite seems to be Foucault) shoe-horned in among questions to his "informants" painfully littered with "dude"s, and a self-portrait of the author suffering from a sinus infection at the hands of his chosen living conditions in a chapter dedicated to his struggles as an impartial observer, and it's a perfect storm. As a final project, I hope the book helped Weissman achieve his academic goals, because otherwise I'm not sure it's of much value.