In America, food-culture changed a lot after the Second World War. People began to cook at home less, especially when women began working more in the 1960s. At the same time, companies created many new ways to make food cheaply in factories, and they sold them as fast food or TV dinners.  Many technologies that had first been used to preserve food for soldiers were now used for American families. This style of eating was faster, and sometimes cheaper than cooking food "from scratch," but it was not natural or healthy. As a way of showing this, a few years ago a man made a movie about what happens to your body if you only eat fast food:

[The whole movie is available here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1432315846377280008#]

In New York, Farmers' Markets
 are very popular.

It is a big problem, because Americans are getting too fat. But not everyone follows this lifestyle. There is a growing movement towards natural, locally grown foods that are grown and harvested in a way that is good for both the environment and our health. In many American cities, there are now farmers' markets, where farmers can bring some of their products directly to the town center and sell them to shoppers. The farmers can sell directly, so they get a higher price, and the shoppers can know where their food comes from. This might seem like a normal thing to you, if you live in Cambodia or another developing country, and it used to be a normal thing in America.

Sometimes, good things are forgotten during development, and we must search through our history to recover them. The Slow Food movement was formed to preserve local foods and cooking cultures, and protect the unusual and special things about food in different places. Their mission is cultural, but also ecological: they help preserve biodiversity in plants and animals.

 Slow Food advocates learn and teach about local traditions and ways of cooking, but they also explore the unique fruits and vegetables of an area. Some of the most delicious examples are heirloom tomatoes. Most tomatoes in supermarkets are breeds that can stay on a shelf for a long time. In the same way, we have only one kind of banana in the US, because only that kind can survive the transport from Central America without rotting. But there are many other kinds of banana, and some of them are very delicious. Heirloom tomatoes are the same way. They may look strange, but they taste so much more delicious than regular tomatoes.

So, the next time you bite into a strange tomato or banana that only comes from your home province, or notice how your aunt uses a particular spice in her soup, ask more about it. It's the most delicious way to preserve your culture.

RESEARCH: Don't be scared, be prepared!

The word "research" sometimes scares students, because it seems very difficult. It does not have to be! If they think carefully about your goals and methods, anyone can do research. (Note: This is a general guide for many majors, but it was originally written for history students, so many of the examples come from historical research.)

Early research often means running through many questions.
(image from Learning Historical Research, "Asking Good Questions")

The first thing you need to do is find your research question. It needs to be something that you can prove one way or another. (The existence of God, for instance, is very hard to prove or disprove--I would not recommend it as a research question.) You may need to revise your question as new information comes to you. Don't be afraid of that. Sometimes you need to get some basic information and data on the subject before you can form a theory. Also, make sure your theory is testable (it can be proven or disproven by the research): if there's no way for your research to disprove the theory, what's the point of the research? 

Once you have a good question and a first draft of a theory, you can get to the real research. 

Styles of Research

There are two main kinds of research, Quantitative (from quantity, meaning 'number') and Qualitative (from quality, meaning a describable but not countable thing, like color or feeling). Good research often uses both styles.

Quantity("Quant")-based research is all about counting and measuring things. It could be the answers to a survey, or the number of miles of paved road at different times, or the number of times in a book that the author says good things about his king. You can be very clever in figuring out ways to measure things that may be hard to find. During WW2, British researchers would listen to German radio and pay attention to seemingly-unimportant things like the price of milk in Paris. If the price was high, that meant that Allied bombing had successfully damaged the infrastructure there, making transport more difficult (and expensive) and therefore causing the prices to rise.  There are two main issues when doing research of this kind: 

1. What do you count and why? You should only measure things that actually give you useful information, and you should be clear about what information a measurement can give you. Logic and creativity are very important when planning your research strategy.
2. How do you analyze all the numbers you have collected? This may require some skill in statistics and probability, (for example, if you are dealing with many survey results or historical census data), and may require a consultation with someone from the sociology or mathematics departments if you don't feel confident.

Since answering question 1 is difficult, sometimes researchers start by doing a few interviews or using other qualitative methods to generate theories and ideas before going out and counting a bunch of things. That way, they can be sure that they're measuring the right thing in the right way.

Quality-based research does not use mathematics. Instead, it is based on analysis and interpretation of human society and culture. It can involve interviews, observation of daily life, or close reading of primary sources. You might think that it is easier, since it does not require mathematics, but it can be just as difficult. If you want to do good qualitative research, you need to know about the society and culture of your source (otherwise, you might not understand their answers or ways of thinking). You also need strong critical thinking skills so that you can think carefully about your source. 

1.  Evaluate the source: Who is the source? What is the context? Why are they saying/writing this? How do they know what they claim to know? (Sometimes villagers will tell NGO workers that they are so hopeless and pitiful (even if they are not), because they want the NGO to give them money or other help. )
2.  Check for bias: Is there anything in the source's background or reason for writing that could affect their answers and make them unreliable? If the source is biased, be specific about what the bias is and what it affects. (A king's official writer will probably not say bad things about the king, for instance. So we should be critical when looking at his statements about the king. But we can probably trust what he says about unrelated things, like if he mentions a flood in a particular province in a particular year.)  The classic example for Cambodian students is how Zhou Daguan's Chinese background and audience affect his report of Cambodia c.1295.



No matter your research style, there
is always a little bit of the other.
(image via vovici)

3.  What can you learn from the source? Maybe it gives evidence for how people felt or thought about a certain subject at a certain time, or maybe it gives important information about culture and behavior

Other Points: Coding and Triangulation

If you are working with only a few primary sources or informants, you can just keep detailed notes of your thoughts and analysis. But if you are doing a study of many different sources or people, you might need some form of organization. One way to do this is called coding, which is a way to turn qualitative analysis into usable numbers. Basically, you think of different categories for your sources and then you group them into different categories. For each interview or primary source, you tag it with terms to describe the source and its content (things like "female author," "pro-king," "blames flood on unusually heavy rains" "blames flood on bad government" or "unreliable on dates"). That's a good way to compare many sources, and see if there are patterns. Probably, many of the sources identified as "pro-king" tend to blame the flood on heavy rains rather than government policy.

Another general principle of research is called triangulation (triangulate means to form a triangle). The idea is, one particular method or source could be wrong or inaccurate, but if you get several different methods and sources that all agree, it is more likely that your idea is correct. 

These are the basics. Also, here is a good website, meant specifically for the methods of environmental history, but useful generally: Learning Historical Research 

If you have questions or comments, please comment below!

Girls versus Boys

When I was teaching in Cambodia, there were many arguments about the rights of women and their place in family and society. We thought that the back-and-forth between these students was very interesting, but also very funny.

 This is a video put together by my friend/sweetheart, Sarah, to start a discussion about these issues:


GIRLS V. BOYS from Sarah Outhwaite on Vimeo.


Do you think that only the man should work in a family? If you think so, is it because of gender roles, or because you think someone should stay home with the family? If that's the case, what about if the woman has a better job? Should the man stay home instead?