IsabelleSoifer Annotations

Isabelle Soifer's picture
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What does this visualization (including caption) say about toxics?

Friday, March 6, 2020 - 2:55pm

I am not entirely certain at this point, but it would appear that toxicity is complex when it comes to place and identity as impacted by environmental and social precarity. In addition, the manner in which toxicity is sometimes inescapable: even if one leaves a site that is toxic, one risks coming across other forms of toxicity in another place. Thus exposure to various forms of toxicities can at times be informed by choice. Or even if a site is toxic, one may not want to leave due to its significance in one's lifestyle. 

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Can you suggest ways to enrich this image to extend its ethnographic import?

Friday, March 6, 2020 - 2:47pm

It may be helpful to zoom in a little bit more and/or to have an explanation of the site, so as to enhance understanding of what is significant about this particular location that is being visualized in the place the ethnographers are looking at. What are the construction workers doing? Where are the surfers going? Where is toxicity located in this place/image? Presently it is unclear and could use a bit more direct interpretation/explanation by the ethnographers. 

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What kind of image is this? Is it a found image or created by the ethnographer (or a combination)? What is notable about its composition | scale of attention | aesthetic?

Friday, March 6, 2020 - 2:21pm

The photo appears to be made by the ethnographer(s). The contrast between the sufers and the construction workers and their vehicles is extremely interesting and unexpected--one would not necessarily expect to see both in one site. In addition, showing the path the surfers take as opposed to the water itself is an interesting move. There appears to be a sort of tension in the image, even as the surfers appear to signify the calmness of a recreational activity, there is a sense of them being out of place. 

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Can you suggest ways to elaborate the caption of this visualization to extend its ethnographic message?

Friday, March 6, 2020 - 1:58pm

It would help to have more explanation of the significance of this place as a toxic site and how that toxicity pervades it. In addition, it would be helpful to provide a bit more context about your research team and why they are there, as well as why your team was interested in gender and what this says about the place and toxicity. It may also help to shorten the caption to the main points you wish to convey regarding how this image fits within your project on toxicity of place. Including at least a sentence referring to the image itself may be useful for creating more cohesion between the two, with the visual ethnographically opening up the caption or the caption opening up the image, or both at once.

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How does this visualization (including caption) advance ethnographic insight? What message | argument | sentiment | etc. does this visualization communicate or represent?

Friday, March 6, 2020 - 1:49pm

The visualization and caption indicate how toxicity is often about choices that people make, and that toxicity can be layered and multidimensional (social, physical, geographical, environmental, etc.). The visualization gives off a sense of the multiple forms of labor taking place in the site, and the precarity of a space that is so vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis. Yet the toxicity of leaving the place is even more unbearable to the people who identify themselves with the blue spaces, and so they select to stay despite the dangers involved. Yet by building the structures deemed necessary to protect people from the effects of tsunamis (seawalls), this in turn blocks off the very people who depend on the sea for their well-being as well as hurts animal habitats. The message is one of precarity and choicemaking in a toxic place. 

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