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Tim CarlinWRIT 1133: Writing and Researching Local Food
CommunitiesProfessor Megan Kelly
CAMPBELLS CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE STAMPS:A PerformAnce
ethnogrAPhy
44 WRIT LARGE: 2015
Growing up in Northeast Philadelphia has largely shaped who I
have become and how I feel about culture, art, equality, and
diversity. Thinking back to my childhood, I remember colorful
people and streets dotted with undertones of poverty and hardship I
was too blind to see. Not to say I dont love my roots, but the
reality of the situation is that I witnessed people depend-ing on
the very government that was holding them back. When I came to DU,
I began taking classes in whatever seemed interesting to me,
especially theatre classes like Aesthetics in Performance and
Slavic Is Sexy and sociology classes like Gender in Society and
Un-derstanding Social Life. These courses all made me question what
privilege is and where the causes for social problems like the
achievement gap lie. I began to question my own life and the social
inequities I witnessed, without realizing, my whole life.
Entering WRIT 1133, my professor asked us to consider how people
define their relationships
to food. I thought about my experiences growing up and how those
memories have crafted my own relationship with my plate. As I
started researching food in my hometown, it quickly became clear to
me that there was a story that needed to be heard. I found that
Philadelphia is one of the poorest big cities in the country, has a
plethora of dietary and health issues, and has a staggering amount
of the population living off of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP), or food stamp, benefits. Possibly the most shocking
information I learned was that my
own neighborhood has been identified as a food desert, meaning
that people living there have
limited access to and funds for acquiring healthy foods for
their families.
I created a performance ethnography as my final piece for this
WRIT 1133 class. I want to give
a special thanks to my best friend Amber (which is not her real
name) for her contributions to this project and her willingness to
be a voice for her community. In the end, it is my hope this piece
may spark an interest in performance ethnography and also allow the
reader to identify his or her own assumptions about this community
by engaging with the text.
In WRIT 1133, I was tasked with developing my own research
questions about food and then producing an ethnography. The first
questions I
developed related to food access, and I was taken back to my
childhood in Philadelphia. I gathered information about the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other food
as-
sistance programs around the world, and I real-ized there were
too many voices in this commu-nity to bring together in one project
in less than ten weeks. I decided to conduct primary research on
one voice in one food community and sup-port that research with
secondary sources.
When I began to consider how to tell this
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45VOLUME 4
Performance ethnography is a way of researching a
community by using peoples words and enacting them
verbatim. These performances involve in-depth study
of peoples body language and life styles and are often
accompanied by some form of written analysis or dis-
cussion on how the community is portrayed through the
piece. The transcript for my final ethnography has been
included here, as well as a description of my research
process and techniques.
story, I looked to my love of theatre and specif-ically the
ethnographic performances of Anna Deavere Smith, whose works
explore the top-ics of race and ethnicity. Smitha well-known actor,
playwright, and professorconducts her research by interviewing
people and then cre-ating full plays centered around one theme that
emerges from these interviews. Smith uses her interview subjects
actions and words verbatim in these monologues, giving an authentic
rep-resentation of peoples feelings about the issues being
investigated. For example, in her play Twi-light: Los Angeles 1992,
Smith takes on the roles of people she interviewed following the
violent responses to the 1992 Rodney King trial. In her TED Talk,
Smith says, If you say a word enough, it becomes you. This
observation has largely shaped my interest in carrying out
per-formance ethnography. I realized that many Philadelphians,
myself included, have discussed their difficulties with money, food
stamps, trans-portation to and from the food store, and every
painful aspect of our food shopping experiences so much that these
conversations have become us. All of these experiences have shaped
our re-lationships to food and also made us accept our situation,
while at the same time we stopped questioning the world around
us.
COLLECTING INTERVIEWS: BEING IN IT, OUT OF IT, AND ALL AROUND
ITInspired by Smiths performance ethnographies, I interviewed my
best friend from back home, Amber, to construct an accurate
monologue de-picting her changing relationship with food. My
best friend growing up, Amber lived down the block in her uncles
home with her mother and little sister. Ambers family has been on
food as-sistance of some form since she was a child. This situation
has greatly determined her relationship with her family and how her
own developing
family is handling food in a hard economy; it also has made her
appreciate a new level of ac-cess to food that she has recently
acquired now that she has a car and a better-paying job. I have
known Amber my whole life, and her family once opened their doors
to me, adding me into their thin food budget. Knowing her family
well was an incredible help with my research because it increased
my investment in the project. I cared about Ambers story and
thought it needed to be told. Being in it helped me focus on her
expe-rience, even as I kept in mind the implications her story has
for the community for which she is speaking.
Voyagerix / Shutterstock.com
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46 WRIT LARGE: 2015
Tim is a transfer student in his junior year at the University
of Denver. He is current-ly pursuing a double major in psycholo-gy
and sociology with a minor in theatre. Tims interests include
acting, directing,
camping, baking, eating baked goods, and spending the summers in
Estes Park exploring the Rocky Mountain National Park. He hopes to
further his research in performance ethnography and encourag-es
people to find a way to bring art into
their research.
One hurdle I faced was how to shape ques-tions and create an
environment that would be conducive to eliciting responses people
would want to hear and watch on stage. Since I would be composing a
performance from this interview, I needed Amber to be active while
she spoke: this is the key for performance ethnography. My
first
thoughts were to put Amber in a situation where she would be
actively food shopping and I would interview her over some form of
video chat. We quickly realized that food shopping, staying in
budget, and keeping track of a 2-year-old was al-ready too large a
task to add an interview into the mix. While it was a shame to lose
out on inter-viewing her in the store, it did give me an even
deeper understanding of the experiences Amber was having with
food.
We settled on a Skype interview that took place while Amber was
putting away her grocer-ies. This allowed for a calm environment
where
Amber could think while also physically inter-acting with her
surroundings. Interviews can be very informative when the
researcher pays atten-tion to the circumstance in general: What is
the interviewee doing? Where are they? What time is it? What will
they do right after the interview? What did they do right before
the interview? A thorough understanding of the interview subject
prior to the interview allows the researcher to structure a
productive research environment.
After collecting my interview data and en-grossing myself in
Ambers relationship to food, I began to feel overwhelmed with the
amount of information I had. I was losing perspective, see-ing my
friend and her life as opposed to an eth-nographic inquiry. While
being very involved in my topic gave me great insight, I quickly
realized that it was also something that could potentially hold me
back. Could being Ambers friend and knowing all of these things
about her life be giv-ing me a bias too significant to notice from
the
inside? It was time to get out.I got out of it by focusing my
research on
the larger context of the issue. I read news arti-cles and
academic essays about food assistance programs, as well as reports
by public health of-ficials and other public health data. Though
none
of these resources directly addressed my specific
topic, they helped me craft a new set of interview questions and
also helped me compare Ambers situation to other cases. This
process of review-ing the literature also afforded me a chance to
consider how this performance ethnography could reach a variety of
audiences by including a wider range of themes. One of the best
lessons I
(left) Tim Carlin / LP Picard
(right) mikeledray /Shutterstock.com
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47VOLUME 4
learned from this project was the importance of being deeply
involved and connected to your re-search but also being able to
disconnect and look objectively at the data to see how they connect
to other research.
WHY IS THAT?Another influence on my ethnography was the
framework for Understanding Social Life with Dr. Paul Colomy,
which I took in my spring quar-ter while enrolled in WRIT 1133. In
this class, we consistently considered the question: Why is that?
Though simple in theory, this question forces you to figure out the
essence of the sub-ject. For example, I had noticed that many of my
friends who were on food stamps had been on them for their whole
lives. I noticed that their parents and siblings remained a part of
the pro-gram throughout their whole lives as well. I didnt
understand why assistance programs were somehow not giving people
the aid they need-ed to get themselves back to stability. Starting
with this simple questionwhy is that?led me to many more questions
than answers: ques-tions about social power, food access, and food
quality.
Analyzing the function of power in society is, for me, one of
the most important roles of research. The essence of my research in
this eth-nography, like Smiths, is questioning inequity and
injustice to understand how the world works and find solutions to
better the human condi-tion. In life, as well as in research, the
key is to question everything and always dig deeper, never falling
into dogma or bias.
I encourage you to read and watch this per-formance ethnography
to better understand life on food stamps from my friend Ambers
per-spective.
ETHNOGRAPHY TRANSCRIPTThe scene opens in a dilapidated kitchen
in Northeast Philadelphia, an old row home from the Frankford
neighborhood. The home seems as if it could have been worth
something at some point but has been abandoned or forgotten; the
whole neighborhood has. The paint is peeled everywhere, the floor
is aged and dirty, and mes-sages written in pen by children can be
seen on the wall. The hardwood floor is cut up; on the right, the
cabinets
and the countertops are yellow. There is a microwave with an old
coffee maker and a dirty coffee pot that sit on top; the sink is
filled with dishes, and the gas stove is
covered in dirty dishes. To the left is a pantry with white and
green cabinets that are peeling off paint; the panty has shopping
bags on it from Wal-Mart. On the back wall is a fridge and freezer;
there is also a staircase on the left and a door to the back yard
on the right. It is a humid May night; Amber enters fighting the
desire to
go straight to bed. She unpacks groceries as she speaks.
Amber: I guess it really all started (puts bags down on floor
and takes a breath)...I guess when I was 10 (pause, plays with
hair) or maybe 12? I can re-member problems with food and money
starting around then. Somewhere in between there, uh (loses train
of thought)...I mean it hasnt been for-ever. Once we were on,
though, weve had them ever since. (silently puts groceries away for
a moment).
Ohh! We get $529 a month from our food stamps now though. People
tell me how much
Tim Carlin
Interviews can be very informative when
the researcher pays attention to the
circumstance in general: What is the
interviewee doing? Where are they?
What time is it? What will they do right
after the interview? What did they do
right before the interview?
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48 WRIT LARGE: 2015
(goes and puts things in the fridge) they got and Id be like,
(expressive) Thats it? Like only a tiny bit (comes up and leans
against the open fridge). Who was it? Who was(trails off). Carlina!
Carlina and her family only get $170 a month! I was surprised, but
I do believe for the four of usme, Mommy, Lilly, and Alex that
is(trails off, continues putting groceries away). I want to say
that we get more for Lilly (beat) probably...maybe; its hard to say
with WIC stuff too. I mean Im not working but Lee is at Home Depot
(stops, thinks), ummm, on like a MET team or something (short pause
followed by excitement). I uhhh dont really know what it is, but I
can get back to you on that one! I just know hes like building and
fixing stuff. We tried to
add Lee to the case once (sits on the counter while she takes a
break); it was crazy! They cut us off...not for a whole month, but
(expressive) he makes enough. We had to say he lives somewhere else
before theyd give us our benefits back; same
thing with Uncle Johns retirement money. Its just too much, and
(beat, she looks around and half whispers) Id also never add Phil
to the case, not stable or anything (she sighs, and returns to her
work at a slower pace). I mean, its just a lot of people.
Its always veryyyyy (searches for the right word) interesting
splitting the cost of food right in half with the stamps and
everything, so me and Lee just buy some stuff for ourselves and
hide it in our room (suddenly offput, seemingly by her own words).
But yeah, we have some separate foods because theyre stupid with
their money! They eat too much and waste everything; we manage our
money, or at least we try to, and they just waste so much on Wawa
and the corner store (suddenly upset). Like,
you dont need that! I just cant depend on them to save for the
whole month. And poor Alex at the end of the month (pause. beat.
she takes a deep breath and continues). It just makes me mad. Wawa
trips and the corner store and theyre out of mon-ey, scrounging for
food around the 20th.
But Lee and I, like I said, we can get by. Like today, we just
spent $50 at Bottom Dollar, got some stuff for the house and stuff
for us. We buy a lot of deli stuffs (references the still open
fridge with-out really looking but becomes more excited and
dreamlike as she talks about her purchases): American cheese and
ham and turkey, like good deli stuffs for the house. Kraft Mac and
Cheese, if that counts (smiles, gets distracted then continues).
Brand name cereals! Thats for me and Lee. Tyson chicken nuggets for
Lilly, and her little apple pieces to go (realizes she forgot the
most important thing, stops dead in her tracks and looks down at
the gift in her very hand, she turns from the pantry). Campbells
Mothafuckin Soup. Ohhh with some flavored Doritos and a
glass of milk(holds can to her heart and contemplates for a
moment, she places the can by the microwave instead of in the
pantry). Haha and Lee and I get lots of soda (with a wink)brand
name soda! I can get this all now from Bottom Dollar or the
Wal-Mart on Aramingo (begins putting food in a separate bin).
We used to, like two months ago, we used to go to the ghetto
Wal-Mart up the block from my house with Lillys stroller. It goes
some much eas-ier now that we have Lees pay, now we have the car.
(Exaggerated) Soooo much better. We can get more stuff like cases
of water and bulk and heavy stuff, and were not limited to stroller
capacity (takes a moment of pride for her newfound
independence).
(left and right) Tim Carlin
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WORKS CITED
Smith, Anna Deveare. Four American Characters. TED Talk. TED
Conferences. 21 Dec. 2010. Web. 18 Nov.
2014.
49VOLUME 4
I love shopping trips now, like knowing every-thing will be here
and how much money we can spend. Were happier now as a family, and
a cou-ple. We can afford to eat and now its easier to get food
(smiles and begins discarding bags). I mean, I can enjoy the foods
more now that I can worry less about getting them and affording
them. I think thats why weve been buying things completely based on
how they taste; we buy food that makes us happy now that Im not
running around try-ing to add everything up or putting yummy stuff
back because its expensive (returns to her soup and
begins to make it). Its kinda weird to think that Im still on
food
stamps; I mean, there are people who abuse it and people who
cant get off it, like my mom but(long pause, the microwave beeps).
Its weird to think that Im not everyone. Things are different now
with Lee and the baby here; were not insecure, and were happier now
(beat. pause. she looks at her soup and smiles). I love soup. Its
sad, and I dont know why, but I just do. Soup makes me happy.
Amber grabs her soup and her food and heads upstairs.
I-5 Design & Manufacture
Watch Carlins performance ethnography online:
http://www.vimeo.com/97675017
https://www.flickr.com/photos/i5design/6075050600
