Ep. #85: Ethnography & Cultures of Curiosity with John L. Jackson, Jr.

Our job is to remember that there's nothing on this planet that isn't worth contemplating. But our natural inclination, in a way, I should say culturally constituted inclination, is to think that it's very little that's worth our time and effort, right? And so where much more laser-like focus is on what we think is the most operative, the most valuable, the most lucrative, as opposed to saying, well, let's spend some time looking at this stuff we take for granted, and that we don't usually spend a lot of time thinking about it. Hey, I'm glad you're here today. I'm Lynn Borton, host of Choose to Be Curious, a show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it's conversations about how curiosity shows up in work and life. Welcome! Come! Choose to be curious with us. Research wrote Zora Neal Hurston, "It's formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose." An exciting perspective that validates rigor and the life of the mind. And yet, some people who study curiosity question how purpose-driven it actually is, that perhaps curiosity is about poking and prying with no purpose at all, other than the sheer joy and the doing and vague sense that someday, maybe, something useful will come of it. So who's right? Is anyone? What if everyone is right about everything we say about curiosity? Then what? What I enjoy about making a study of curiosity is this wild mix of perspectives and explanations for this quintessentially human experience. It isn't a cacophony exactly because it isn't discordant. So much as it is like one of those incredibly complex choral pieces where six different parts are being sung simultaneously. It's melodic, harmonic, dramatic, ultimately transcendent. If ever there was something worthy of our study, this is it. So how do we study it? Whatever this it is, and what about curiosity? Do we desire to model, to cultivate, to teach? John L. Jackson is Dean of the Annanburg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He was previously Dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice and Special Advisor to the Provost on Diversity at Penn. His research examines ethnographic methods and media analysis, the impact of mass media on urban life, media making as a form of community building and knowledge production, globalization and the remaking of ethnic, racial diasporas, visual studies, urban anthropology, critical race theory and ethnographic film. And he's a student of an advocate for curiosity. In context, both large and small. I've spent the last week or so reading and listening to his talks on everything from his book, "In polite conversations" and "Five ways to unlearn racism." To navigating the rocky landscape of a post-truth terrain and reflections on being part of the team producing the film, "Making Sweet Tea," the lives and loves of Southern Black gay men. And finding the language to address all the ambiguities around us. Snippets of his insights have been finding their way into my conversations and even my dreams lately, I think you'll see why. And as a fellow fan of media making as a form of community building, I want to welcome him, so welcome, John. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Me too. Me too. So, I'm going to borrow a page from my colleague and teacher Kevin Samson's playbook. By the way, shares your passion for filmmaking and created the DC Black Film Festival. And ask you a variation of his question, which is, when did you first know you were curious? So if I'm honest, first of all, that's a fantastic and very difficult question for me. I'm not sure I ever believed myself to be particularly curious. I think it's one of the things that drew me to curiosity studies because I find that I bump into people all the time who do have, to me, what seems like a much more organic and normative sense of being curious than I feel like I ever did. Like as a kid, I think now about all the questions I never asked. Things I just, yeah, I didn't know about. They were opaque and dense to me, but I mostly, most of the time, didn't even try to figure it out. And so I'm really curious about the fact that I think, again, people might dispute that. And clearly, I went on and did tons of cool things, I think as a kid. And I feel like it prepared me for the wonderful work we're trying to do now. But I always kind of have this sneaking suspicion that I could have been even more curious as a kid. Well, you know, it's so interesting that you say that because I would actually say the same thing about myself, I would describe my brother, for instance, as much more sort of observably curious as a kid. And it's part of what drives my kind of introduction of this bringing this show into being was also this idea that, but we could all choose to be curious. The title is no mistake, right? It's really like, let's make that choice. We could make a lot of different choices. Let's make that one. And bringing that forward, so it's interesting that you say that. And I wonder if you, when you go back and you reflect on things, do you see instances of curiosity that you wouldn't have thought of as curiosity? Maybe. And I can definitely think of times when, for some reason, I got caught up in some topic or some aspiration that was completely in objective terms, cockamate me. So for instance, when I was a sophomore going into junior year of high school, still pretty late, right? But I had this idea that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian for the rest of my life. Now I'm not funny now. I wasn't funny back then. But this is what I wanted. So what did I do? Reading all I could on it went to the library, got books, started to practice my set. And then as if all that weren't enough, I would sneak out of the house at night when my parents didn't know. I lived in this part of Southern Brooklyn that was so far from civilization that if the bus made it to the train station, you just got on the train for free, right? So that's how far we would go into the city of Manhattan and do my sets. And I'd record them and then bring them back home and work on it. And I realized that was me being curious about how to think through this really odd but seemingly spectacular professional opportunity of being a stand-up comment. So I think that's interesting because it goes to this question of what do we even mean by curiosity? What is it that those of us who think there ought to be more of it in the world are really asking? So I want to actually pick up where you ended your talk at the Humanities Center at the University of South Florida and you were talking about your 2013 book, "Impolite Conversations about Race." And you said then and perhaps you've said it elsewhere that we are the folks who are responsible for the version of the culture we want to pass on. And that was one of those, there were sticky things that I was listening to and reading of your work in the last week. This was really one of them because I thought it's such a great jumping off place for us in our conversation and in your role as dean of a prestigious institution of learning, especially one that's devoted to communication. So what's the version of a culture of curiosity that you want to pass on? So the short version of an answer which I know is going to maybe sound like a little bit of a cop out is I always try to tell people that what we need to cultivate more of is a sense of everyone's intrinsic and vernacular ethnographic sensibilities. So I think what's great about ethnography and I think what's nice about the fact that as a methodologist, as a social scientist, that's where I landed is ethnography is one of these ways of being in the world, of making sense of the world, of gathering knowledge from the world that says it doesn't matter who you're speaking to, could be a prince, or a queen king, doesn't matter that every single human being is a powerful ambassador for their social world. And if you listen carefully enough, if you take them seriously enough, you're learned so much about where they come from and what's important to them. And that is at heart what ethnography is. And it's a version of what my grandma mother would have said was suffering fools, right? There's some people who aren't at time to listen to other people, to feel like they're folks that they can learn from even if they don't have a high station in life. And I think that perspective, that sensibility is about saying we have to be curious as interlocutors for one another, anyone you interact with, anyone you meet can teach you so much if you're willing to learn. And there's a version of that, I think, that's the core at its best of what the ethnographic gambit entails, right? What it demands of a research. Yeah, so how do you begin to teach that? I think it does start in the classroom. It starts by saying there's so many reasons why when you're an undergraduate or grad student, even a high school student, you'll sit in a class, doesn't matter what the subject is, doesn't matter who the teacher is, and be frustrated and be angry either because the conversation is going in these weird direction, you know, like or because you can't understand one of the moves and one of the terms. And what you usually do, and I think it makes sense, it's natural, is to, in some ways, either check out and get frustrated, tune out, or find some other way to act out in that space because you can't get what you need. And when I try to tell the students in courses that I teach, they usually not complaining about my course, of course, but other course. - Oh, now, of course not. - Is to turn yourself into an ethnographer in that moment. And try to understand what's happening, what sparks are flying that are creating the kind of connected reaction you have. And then I'm sure other people probably have in those instances. And once you begin to pull back, it's maybe a little counterintuitive and ironic even, but pull out of the space a little bit and look at it ethnographically, then it becomes differently personal to you, and whether it allows you to make sense of it without making sense of it in a way that stops you from really engaging. And so treat, I tell them, treat the classroom like an ethnographic space. And understand why the dynamics are the way up. Not to solve it necessarily. Nogamists don't usually have the answers, but if they can help us figure out exactly how the problem is formulated, how it's calibrated, then the answers at some point can come. - So what I like about that is it's really encouraging people to get past just reacting to reflecting, potentially, responding, but even just slowing it down to the place where they're actually reflecting on what they've just heard. Instead of that kind of, like I instantly have to respond, I have to answer, I have to best you on whatever, or I have to have a story that's more relevant or whatever. - Can I just say also, I think that this notion of being reflective or reflective is also really the core sort of trump card or endgame for the ethnographic position, because ultimately, even though it might seem like, and the conversation at some level is about the person you're in conversation with, right, or the social community you're a part of, but you're also really trying to figure out what you take for granted and what you can't see about what you take for granted in the world. And so the ethnographic lens, I think, in the final analysis, is ultimately this sort of introspective lens as well, to say, well, I can always see the critical ways in which I can dissect someone else's worldview, someone else's ideology, but can I use some of those same tools to tease out why I assume things about the world that maybe I didn't necessarily have to assume. And that, I think, is the most difficult thing to try to do. And ethnography really is also about that dynamic. - Right, so it's both an outward and an inward directed curiosity looking for the stories and the residences in both directions. - I think it can and should be. In some ways, it's inevitable that to do it well, you have to be operating, I think, on those different levels and scales. - You're listening to "Choose to Be Curious," a show all about curiosity. I'm your host, Flynn Borton, and I'm joined today by John L. Jackson Jr., anthropologist, ethnographer, filmmaker, and dean of the Annanberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. We're talking about ethnography, cultivating cultures of curiosity, and curiosity in the college setting. So you've also written that curiosity is somewhat more internally directed than innovation, which is sort of the external manifestation, the thing that everybody gets excited about, curiosity is foundation of innovation, it's commercial, there's money to be made, with curiosity in that direction. But you've talked about curiosity as a more private affair, and it doesn't have that commodifying, that commercializing way. Is that a good, bad, indifferent, or simply different? - Well, to me, I definitely think it's different. I can't imagine that if we're just trying to balance the scales, there's something good about saying, well, hold up, let's not automatically jump to the marketization of great ideas. Let's sit with them for a while, let's play with them. I do think your point earlier is a very valid one, because sometimes I think we can concern that you can be too curious, and you become so curious about things that are ostensibly not important, quote unquote or not relevant, quote unquote, or can't be translated into a job or profession, that somehow you're gonna curious yourself out of gainful employment or out of a part of the body politic in some substantial way. I almost feel like one never sees that, but I know why people are afraid of that idea. So I don't know, but part of me does think our job is to remember that there's nothing on this planet that isn't worth contemplating. Period. Nothing. But our natural inclination in a way, I should say, culturally constituted inclination, is I think there's very little that's worth our time in effort, right? And so we're much more laser-like focused on what we think is the most operative, the most valuable, the most lucrative, as opposed to saying, well, let's spend some time looking at the stuff we take for granted, and that we don't usually spend a lot of time thinking about. - So let's bring that back around to you as an educator in terms of working in the higher education world of today, which is very laser-focused, very kind of goal-oriented. What's the culture of learning that you think we should really be cultivating to kind of work against the really considerable forces of kind of commercial interest on these things? - That's a good question. And most good questions are hard ones. - Right, right. - So just move, muse. - So I'm also one of these people who tends to push back against the too easy dismissal of some institutions of higher learning as being, quote unquote, pre-professional, right? I mean, I think students are thinking about professions, but students are also always in these really sometimes bizarre but often inspiring ways, incredibly curious about stuff you wouldn't imagine that. - Yeah. - And one of the most interesting things students do is they put different parts of the academy that don't usually speak to another. Couldn't imagine being in the same conversation, and they smash them together and see what's happening. And that's, I think, what curiosity is, even in a higher education landscape, at its most magnificent. Because we have all these disciplines that have histories that are rich and important, but we have this buzz word now, interdisciplinarity, which means we're also trying to talk across disciplines. Well, to really do that seriously, often means a paradigmatic shift in how we think completely. And then the kinds of questions we're able to formulate and ask, and that's the stuff I think students still do very well, and that most really good universities are trying to cultivate as well as they can. Like we know the literature, that's what the experts have. We know what the theoreticians have said before. What couldn't they possibly have known to say that the students in the present moment can help us to begin to formulate for the future? - Right, right. - That's the exciting. - So they can kind of mix those dots and connect them in any way. - Exactly. - Yeah, yeah. I ran a networking event for a group of high schoolers recently, and I asked everybody to introduce themselves. How were they described what they do, but then also what they love to do, which is often two really different questions, and it brings forward all of those things you don't anticipate. And of course, the richest conversations were the ones that kind of leapt between those different points of, I do this thing, I love to do this thing, and you do this other thing over here, and we've suddenly made sense of those things as a connection, very nice, very nice. - Sounds like a great conversation. - Ah, it was fun. It was fun. We also had everybody talk about something they had observed, or a lesson they had learned from networking, as well as something they were curious about, sort of this idea of networking, so that everybody was modeling, that we all had learned and observed things about that, whether you were advanced professionals or high school students, but we all had questions and curiosity about it. And it was a lovely kind of modeling of this continuous learning approach, which I think is some of what you're talking about, and this kind of across generation, across expertise, across fields and interests, that that's where the rich conversations are. - I think you're right. And if I have a bias and it might sound overly romantic, but what I try to convince students is that you should do what you love, and don't worry about whether or not there's a market in it necessarily, you'll create the market for it, and that that kind of life, nine times out of a hundred, is a better life than just doing things you think will earn your living, but won't really inspire you, and give you the kind of sense of fulfillment and engagement you deserve as a human being. - Yeah, well, you know, it's hard to work hard at something you only sort of care about, and it doesn't feel like work, when you work in hard for something that you really love. - And we say it all the time, but sometimes, you know, where the rubber hits the road, especially for students is, you know, I need a roof over my head, and it's easy for a professor who's been doing this for a long time, who has a job who's 10 years to tell them, well, just, you know, exactly. But I do feel like even at your most pragmatic and utilitarian, if you're gonna place a bet on what's gonna make you successful, doing things you care about, I think are always gonna give you the better. it's separating yourself from the path. No matter what the domain. - Yeah, yeah. So I'm curious, your dean of a school of communications, and I think when I think about communications, I think about sort of delivery of message. But that only works if somebody's on the receiving end, right? So do you teach people how to be good recipients of communication? Is that part of that instruction as well? - I think it absolutely is. And it depends on the kind of reception we're talking about. So probably one framework that speaks to some of what that question wants to get at, is we want to train students to be media literate, to be able to really engage this landscape critically, not be doops, not look at things superficially or trivially. So that's one important way that we're trying to cultivate a sense of receiving that is clearly informed by the literature and allows them to be agents of their own communicative practice. And so that's one thing. But I think we also spend a lot of time saying, let's like, we learn what we even think conversations can be. Often tell people, you know, I don't think we know how to have conversation. We know how to have debates maybe, but we don't listen to learn. And to hear why the people can live in the same world we live in and read the same books, see the same television films, and think such different things about this world. And that's the kind of stuff we need to understand. That's again, what drew me to anthropology. Say, like, how do we understand what that difference means? And it's a difference in the context of sameness too, right? So we also know there's so much that, no matter how radically different our opinions are, there's so much more we always share as members of the species than we don't. - So you're an anthropologist. It sounds like we would benefit from all being acting like anthropologists. I mean, sort of prioritizing listening, 'cause that's really what you do in anthropology, isn't it? - Absolutely. I say at its most humble, that's what makes anthropology special. 'Cause it says, you gain from being willing to hear what people have to say. And of course, it only works. Because, you know, there's so few people willing to listen to others that if you're gonna spend a year and a half, somewhere listening to what people think and feel about the world or aspirations and dreams, you know, they're gonna tell you a lot of, they're gonna probably tell you more than they have any business telling you. And that's why your job is to be very careful with what they give you and to treat it like the precious item it is. And to try to use what you learn to get other people to think differently about the world they live in and how it connects up with other parts of the planet. - Mm, mm, it's kind of a nice list for people to sort of think about those things in terms of listening respectfully and really listening, not just sort of cherry picking. Are there other things that you would use as kind of a layman's list to be more like an anthropologist? - So one thing I tell this maybe is just a variation on the theme that we just had. But one thing that I tell my students is when I talk about class participation, that part of what that means isn't just how many times you raise your hand or how eloquently do you speak, but you should demonstrate to me conspicuously that you're listening, right? I wanna see you listen, right? Can you, can you embody listening? So that I know you're hearing your colleagues when they talk and that, you wanna use them in some laugh 'cause I do all these different gestures on what look listening should look like. But it also just hammers home this idea that this is always not simply about trying to vomit out everything you think and know. It's really about trying to figure out how much you can take in about the world that other folks have already digested and figured out, doesn't mean you have to believe it. But in which you can assimilate it in some way into how you think about navigating the planet. And irony I think is I spend a lot of time now talking, but I got into ethnography simply because I like listening. I like shedding up your audience would believe this now. But I like shedding and listening to other folks and trying to learn a little bit more about this world as a consequence. - Yeah, yeah, lovely. Well, before I let you go, I'm gonna tap into your creativity here and we have my big jar, wanna be analogies, you ready for this? Okay, so, reach in, pick out a slip of paper. I'm gonna take that. - And we both do it, right? - We do, we do. And we pull one for the audience as well. So you can go first, I can go first. What would you like? - A kite. - You wanna go? - A kite, that's a good one. - Okay. How is curiosity like a kite? 'Cause I think if you, like a kite, if you just allow yourself to open up to it, it can take you anywhere. And fly high. - Hi, yeah, go where the wind takes you. So I have octopus. (laughing) And I think, you know, Octopi are actually very smart creatures, like wildly, wildly creatures. And I think curiosity is like an octopus and it sort of got the tentacles that sort of reach in all sorts of places, but it's really smart. And it can move through space and media that would surprise us. And it's sometimes kind of weird looking, but really remarkable when you think about it in all of its formations and audience. Yours is statue. How is curiosity like a statue? Let me know. #an analogy, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Well, John, thank you so much for this. - I really appreciate it sitting with you. Thank you. And I look forward to continuing our curiosity conversation is going forward. (gentle guitar music) - John and Pam Grossman, the Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania wrote the forward to the Anthology Curiosity Studies, a new ecology of knowledge. They, the contributing authors and the devoted editors challenge each of us to reconsider and reimagine curiosity. I hope you'll join me in doing just that. I have carried many of the insights from that collection into my days and thinking in these episodes. And I cherish John's reminder that there's nothing on this planet that isn't worth contemplating. Isn't that wonderful? You've been listening to Choose to Be Curious. You can find this in all my previous episodes on my website at ChooseToBeCurious.com. Also find me on social media at Choose to Be Curious. Don't forget to send us your statue analogy, #an analogy. A shout out to Anne who wrote via Facebook, a lunch box is like curiosity and that it often contains many different components. Thanks, Anne. Many thanks to my guest, John L. Jackson Jr. links to his impressive and diverse body of work on my website, along with links to curiosity studies, of course. Our theme and other music are by Sean Ballack and research and other support by Carolyn Kish for this episode. I hope you'll join me again next time. Until then, Choose to Be Curious. [MUSIC PLAYING]