Night Before

Last minute preparation: I bought some videotapes for my recorder. Since I've been taking a Visual Anthropology course at UMass I feel hyperself-conscious about videotaping. Funny. I'm thinking such technical thoughts as "experience-near" and "indigenous" and "research questions" and "habitus" and "participant observation" -- I mean -- since it will be a small collection of us going, I figure that effectively we're a focus group for this company. Trying to learn what feels right -- whether the trip is too long -- whether food should definitely be built into the ticket. So that's one level of research. But -- I feel like I'm also curious about something else: a real research question. Which is something like: What happens in "browsing"? What is it about the experience of browsing in a bookstore that is unique? It seems to me that this goes to the heart of the argument against online book-shopping. I think there's an ethnographic film here. Somehow, if it were possible to depict the experience of browsing in a bookstore, in cinematic terms -- as an aesthetic, embodied social enactment (there's the anthropologico-speak...) -- well -- anyway, maybe I'll get some interesting footage tomorrow. Hope so. Will post. Here!