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66 3  Dig Up Our Voices Kalo and Her 'Ohana Shortly after my dream about the mist rising, I began to prepare to do preliminary field work on O'ahu. Initially I planned to observe, record, and transcribe Hawaiian cultural events. I also planned to tape and transcribe interviews with participants in cultural production—particularly kūpuna active as teachers, and young people. After this preliminary work I planned additional field research either on- or off-island, depending on the nature of the preliminary fieldwork, and suggestions for comparative work. Most of the field research and interviews were to take place on O'ahu, mostly in and around Honolulu. Much political activity on the part of sovereignty and activity in cultural production was taking place in urban areas in Hawai'i. Pedagogies of cultural production in an urban setting seemed a fitting subject for my dissertation in the sociology of education. I planned to take field notes on the events I attended and interview people involved in those events. Even though I was adhering to the proper research protocols, somehow it felt as if I would be “using people.”1 Ethnomethodology, as a way of doing research, allows us to receive people’s stories that might provide a contrast to political economy and the invention of tradition debate. Ethnomethodology privileges the role of the “talk” people use, as it evinces how they construct their own realities.2 There is no privileged discourse, no “one true reality.” However, we can ask: “How is the ‘real’ socially constructed as real?” Rather than directly producing a theory about how people create knowledge, ethnomethodology asks how people construct knowledge. In everyday situations as they interact, people “do knowledge” in a particular way, creating meaning as an ongoing enterprise Through the sequencing of acts and talk, people organize their interaction, construct meaning, and accomplish knowledge (Heap, 1990). Not only do they constitute individual selves through their narratives, they also shape collective selves. We can assume that the people who are interviewed will not only say what they know and mean but they’ll also, perhaps unconsciously, show how they produce knowledge and meaning in their talk. Through the content, form, and sequencing of their talk, people will accomplish “social Dig Up Our Voices 67 I felt caught between my Hawaiian-style ideas of learning and my University-style ideas of research. In my own experience in the Hawaiian community, there was an aversion to being intrusive and overly curious. It was extremely impolite to “take control” of interaction with someone who was teaching you or telling your something. On the other hand, at University, community people were “informants ,” and I was encouraged to focus on “getting data” that would be relevant to a preformulated research question. As I was working through these issues, I decided to call Kalo, my friend who had been involved closely with me in the Hawaiian Club in San Diego. After she had moved back to Hawai'i, I had visited her and kept in touch with her. When I had last visited Kalo on O'ahu, she was involved in a self-determination organization. She knew of my attempts to find out my ancestry and had helped me with that project in Hawai'i. However, many moves and changes in the last eight years or so had separated us. I had not spoken to Kalo in a while. When I called her, heard her voice, and we began to share our news, those years seemed to fall away. Kalo told me she was a public school administrator and was involved in a Hawaiian women’s civic club that supports Hawaiian culture and communities , helps its members, and which is an auxiliary to a men’s civic organization. Kalo offered to help with my fieldwork and suggested we holoholo (travel around). We could attend some events and interview kūpuna whom Kalo knew through the civic club. Some structure” as they see, describe, and propose a definition of a situation. We can also assume that the interviewer’s words will tell us her feelings about the interview, her relationship to the kūpuna she interviews, her take on Hawaiian identity, and her personal agendas. The interviewer will not just be “asking questions”; she will be actively guiding the production of knowledge. Certainly political and economic forces have shaped social structure and social change in Hawai'i. Perhaps less noticeable is everyday talk that people creatively produce . Hawaiian identity is embedded in...

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