In Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, Matt Sakakeeny explores how New Orleans is very different from the other stereotypical American city as he writes about it as “utilize voices and instruments as technologies for producing subjectivity, identity, and culture” (p.6). Sakakeeny also uses fieldwork to learn about and explain different power-related processes, such as personal and professional mobility, which will be discussed in greater detail. Because Sakakeeny’s approach of fieldwork has multiple potential benefits and few drawbacks, when exploring the theme of personal and professional mobility and how that relates to power, our conception of New Orleans society shaped into a fuller picture.
To understand how Sakakeeny’s …show more content…
the local people on-site. There are both effectiveness and limits to his approach of field work. One of the things he did while doing his field-work was using interviews with the local cultural workers in New Orleans to get information and perspectives, which ultimately leads him to a conclusion. His approach to understand many different people increases the viability of his conclusion, but these interviews are ultimately subjective, meaning that these are the accounts of how people are feeling, which is not hard evidence when using to prove something. In the end, it felt to me as if Sakakeeny is using these accounts from different people in New Orleans to try to find reasons to justify those accounts. Another limit, but also somewhat beneficial, to his field-work is that because “the subjective experience of those that [Sakakeeny] encountered varies greatly, but each of them has exerted agency through words, through action, and above all, through music” (p.179). The varied subjective accounts are very different, so it is very hard to pinpoint anything specific that might have an impact how New Orleans’s system work, but the way they there is umbrella theme over these different accounts is what defines New Orleans, and makes it
To understand how Sakakeeny’s …show more content…
the local people on-site. There are both effectiveness and limits to his approach of field work. One of the things he did while doing his field-work was using interviews with the local cultural workers in New Orleans to get information and perspectives, which ultimately leads him to a conclusion. His approach to understand many different people increases the viability of his conclusion, but these interviews are ultimately subjective, meaning that these are the accounts of how people are feeling, which is not hard evidence when using to prove something. In the end, it felt to me as if Sakakeeny is using these accounts from different people in New Orleans to try to find reasons to justify those accounts. Another limit, but also somewhat beneficial, to his field-work is that because “the subjective experience of those that [Sakakeeny] encountered varies greatly, but each of them has exerted agency through words, through action, and above all, through music” (p.179). The varied subjective accounts are very different, so it is very hard to pinpoint anything specific that might have an impact how New Orleans’s system work, but the way they there is umbrella theme over these different accounts is what defines New Orleans, and makes it