it's complicated...

OK, I'm going to be annoyed for a moment. There's a certain trick some of my colleagues have. (I'm sure I have it too, but right now I'm annoyed by my colleagues more than I am by myself in this particular regard, so they are going to bear the brunt of my complaint, be it fair or not.) It's a certain high-handedness when describing one's field site seen best perhaps in hesitant, drawn-out responses to relatively simple questions, usually prefaced by drawling the statement, "Well, it's complicated." No shit, Sherlock, it's complicated--as socialities usually are, and that's why it's presumably interesting enough for you to write an entire book on the subject.

Now, I'd like to believe there's a way of describing the sociology of a place one knows, or is coming to know, that lets the listener know that, yes, things are complicated, but that nevertheless attempts to give the listener the benefit of the doubt of average intelligence when it comes to grasping the fact that a short response may not adequately capture all the nuance a the speaker--or listener, for that matter--might want in a description. I like to think that we can sort of give each other the benefit of the doubt when it comes to explaining bits and pieces of places to which our colleagues may never have been and which they may never have studied.

But there's also a way of drawling out the complicated nature of one's field site that I just find off-putting. It's something like, "Well, I'd try to explain it, but you wouldn't really understand, as evidenced by your simplistic questions regarding such-and-such." As if the complexities of the place were really beyond explanation--at least to you--because, well, it's complicated. My stars. Really. As if this conversation were a forum in which we hammer at each other regarding the relative complexities of our field sites: the more complex one's site, obviously the better the ethnographer. At what point did an inability to articulate become a badge of honor? O academia, you make me tired sometimes.