CONTEXT OF CASE
Introduction
I have been observing Lake Valley community and the emerging communication technology with personal curiosity since the early 1990s. This intrinsic case study reflects a systematic research endeavor in trying to understand the information technologies through the sometimes competing and other times complementary technologies of orality (face-to-face communication) and literacy (text-based communication) within Lake Valley, New Mexico, a rural community within the Navajo (Dine’) Nation.
Instead of a collective case study of the web culture as originally proposed, the case study of Lake Valley itself emerged once I became part of the process in getting Lake Valley connected to the Internet and becoming the Gates Foundation pilot project site monitor. I could have completed a research project at Diné College-Crownpoint campus where there is a computer lab with Internet connection, students, and community members who use computers regularly. I have learned a great deal from my association with these students, staff, and faculty. Some of their voices are represented in the body of the research. However, I chose the path of greater resistance. This case was also chosen because of the researcher’s familiarity and experience having lived six years as a guest within the Navajo Nation teaching for the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). My experience as a guest and educator on and near the Navajo Nation has not only prepared me for the fieldwork experience; it has also committed me to contributing something of value to the community. In the Navajo way, the meaning of k’e establishes the significance of relationships extended to relatives, friends, and all other beings, and underlie the actions of cooperation, solidarity, and kinship (Witherspoon, 1977; Farella, 1984).
In the brief time from August 1998 to August 1999, I have been residing in the community of Lake Valley, NM, trying to get a sense of what is happening within and around this community as computers involving the Internet, world wide web (WWW), E-mail, and chat lines with video, audio, and tactile capabilities infiltrate the community college, elementary schools, and individual homes.
Peshkin (Stake, 1994) describes intrinsic case study where the interest is within the case itself. This perspective also reflects the nature of the technological issues within this community, for each community represents a unique social, cultural, political, educational grouping that is best approached on an individual basis. During the course of the research, I have heard the comment that Rural Indian America is no different from any other place in Rural America. The lack of infrastructure building because of inadequate telephone lines and fiber optics determines economic wealth, sustainability and development within a community. What remains different is the sociological and cultural impact of technology in the lives of the people it serves. Lake Valley community in Rural Indian America is a case unto itself.
Other than knowing the place of the research, I was not certain what my case study was going to be. However, in time, events occurred that provided a natural progression to pursue. Often it seemed I was in the right place at the right time as events unfolded around me. There are two components embedded in the case study, following Baldwin’s (1993, 1995) suggestion that research should transcend looking at only obstacles to connectivity and focus more on interaction.
I have been a participant observer during most of the research, and at other times, direct observer, informant, and advocate. It was only until very recently that I began to discover the voice, the form, and style in which to tell the story. My goal has always been to preserve the voices, events, interaction, and dynamic as accurately as possible. However, this is an interpretation; my interpretation with my own biases and inadequacies. My goal is not toward grand generalization, or theory building. I admit there are many complexities, which I still do not understand, while understanding there are even more complexities, which have been overlooked without intention. I confess, as Cleary (1991), that this research process has not been “without emotion” (p. 26), however, it is a fair representation.
What follows does not represent a completion of a journey but a stop along the way. These frozen frames help to illuminate the exploration, similar to the patterns that emerge during the beginning stages of making a rug. This research represents a moment to stop and reflect before returning to the unfinished rug on the loom.