I have a post all ready about Carnaval, but I want to upload some photos and the photo uploader isn't working. Photos and Carnaval description forthcoming!
In the meantime, I've had some ups and downs regarding my thesis. On the one hand, at a major conference about land concentration and small farmer productivity in Latin America yesterday, one of the presenting professors (who happens to be a professor at my university) mentioned that fair trade was a form of rural terriotorial development that could end up being a sustainable option (oh no! he wasn't paying good attention when I explained the (many) criticisms of fair trade!), and then mentioned that a compañera norteamericana- a North American colleague- in the audience was working on a thesis related to fair trade and cocoa. That's me! I felt important and pleased that he had remembered our thesis discussions from last year. And then this morning I received an email from a chocolate maker that I've been working with that mentioned that a student from the US was coming to Ecuador to study cocoa, and would I be willing to meet with her? Suddenly the interviewer (me) has become the interviewee! I felt like I was a legit source of cocoa knowledge in the country, although our shared gringa status probably plays an important role in my usefulness.
But then I fell back to reality when I met with my thesis advisor's assistant researcher whom I had chatted with yesterday at the conference. He asked me some clarifying questions about my thesis, and suddenly I felt as though I wasn't prepared at all. I hadn't read any of the seminal texts about social networks and markets, nor was I familiar with several of the authors that he mentioned regarding anthropological economic studies. I haven't thought closely about the kind of survey that I want to use to gather information from farmers, and today he informed me that the minimum sample size was 100, which shocked me.
It was definitely good to meet with this guy- he got me back on track in terms of theory readings, and perhaps I was starting to feel comfortable with the progress that I've already made. But it was definitely a good thing that I had a few minor ego boosts beforehand to help cushion the realization that I still have a long way to go.
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