-
Chapter 13. Final Thoughts: Pensamientos Últimos
- Michigan State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
n 295 CHAPTER 13 Final Thoughts: Pensamientos Últimos There are several goals in this chapter. One goal is to cover some of the main findings by linking them back to some basic ideas from phenomenology. Another goal is to connect some of what has been uncovered in the previous chapters to the work of others. In the latter part of the chapter some consideration is given to applications in mental health. For example, it is noted that bracketing from phenomenological philosophy finds applications in mental health work, particularly in the study of empathy. Specifically we note that empathy is used by Husserl to understand the consciousness of another human being. It is important to extend some of what was learned in this study and to relate it to other possible sources of Hispano typifications and research. We started this book by asking a question that Roberta Imre and others have proposed. Her comments can also apply to those who use interpretive methods to study Hispanos. Imre wondered why the helping professions had not adopted a different ideology for practice given that helping professions deal with a variety of people with various and differing worldviews. In her view, it did not make much sense to use a perspective that came from the physical sciences. Client epistemologies (i.e., their ways of knowing the world) are derived from many nationalities, subgroups, and 296 n Chapter 13 ethnicities. Imre reasoned that some “knowledges” that come from Western cultures are assumed to be highly developed, “civilized,” and superior. Imre proposed that studying other cultures with an open mind to possibilities, and a reflective attitude towards one’s orientation, leads to other ways of knowing. Such reflective methods often incorporate phenomenological approaches involving the effort to bracket preconceptions in order to make it possible to see differences not encompassed by present theories. (1995) This book assumes that an Hispano epistemology exists and is deserving of study through the use of interpretative methods. Plenty of material surfaced during my research. Several core ideas merged, such as the three manifestations of the ciclos in chapters ten, eleven, and twelve. Amplifying the concept using a variety of media extends the core idea, giving it a generalizability. By using multiple examples one reduces the question to its elemental forms, a type of reduction reaching the essence of the concept. The book has focused on some well-known Hispano typifications, such as envidia, envy, joda, and other areas of discourse. Perhaps it was this latter idea that surprised the author. I did not give it a full discussion in the desmadre chapter, but will append it to this chapter. It is likely that there are many examples of joda as “being badly off” and more social interactional than one of its more vulgar connotations. Se muele la idea hasta que algo sale (It is a matter on chewing on the cud, or the kernel of an idea until one can situate it better in social life). This is in keeping with sociologist Denzin’s idea of linking concepts to social interaction (Denzin in Douglas 1970). This study might also be considered to be existential phenomenology because it is primarily concerned with the meaning of everyday events, activities, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors important to Hispanos of northern New Mexico. I proposed in chapter 1 that intentionality of consciousness, meaning, intersubjectivity, reflection, bracketing (i.e., the suspension of belief of the natural attitude), freedom, the lived body, are all part of an existential phenomenology framework. Each of these categories is endorsed in the large sections devoted to them in the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (1997). I have been calling these conceptual ideas categories (concepts) and identified them as useful for any study of Hispanos. These categories are often not discrete but are still useful in anchoring categories in phenomenological philosophy. Intersubjectivity , body, and consciousness come to mind as they are interdependent and will be considered below. The categories are useful in understanding typifications so that one does not deal with “mind things” or “body things” as separate entities. Ethnomethodology provided the license to take seriously elements of everyday life, talk, and conversation and the methods people use to make the social world Final Thoughts n 297 understandable. It focuses on what is important as people make sense of their social reality. It seems to me that ethnomethods are less about theory than about depiction of the social. Chapter 7, where inmates in a prison argue...