I obtained sufficient funding to live in Oak Park for one year. As several people have asked me about my funding, I will elaborate. I received a study leave from my university for the academic year 2000-2001. The university pays my salary and benefits. I have a small summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and have applied to NEH for additional funding. I will know about that fellowship in January. All other expenses come out of my pocket.

I arrived with my wife on June 1. We live in an apartment in the center of the village owned by the Oak Park Residence Corp. I obtained it through the Oak Park Regional Housing Center. The process gave me a chance to see how these two pillars of Oak Park's diversity policies actually work. This is going to be an exciting year. There will be general elections in April and the Village Managers' Association, the non-partisian political party for organizes slates for Village elections, will be meeting throughot the Fall. There is a regional Oak Park Exchange Congress planned for November. It is a place where Oak Park and other communities that are "diverse-by-choice" come together to compare ways in which they are trying to maintain diversity in their communities. A Diversity Task Force has been formed as a result of some community member's anxiety about the changing ethnic composition of some schools and the low test scores in certain schools. The Task Force will examine housing, education, and community life in order to recommend new ways to insure that diversity continues to be preserved. I wish I could say that I knew all of these activites would be happening during my stay and that I therefore planned to be here because of the many chances to see how Oak Parkers try to mold their future. But the truth is that I applied for a study leave from my university and additional outside funds long before I knew what an exciting year it would be. I really am at the right place at the right time.

I participated as many relevant events in the Village as possible during this month. To name a few, I attended the Gay and Lesbian Association's Gala; interviewed the police officer assigned as liaison to the gay and lesbian community; attended meetings of the sub-committees of the Diversity Task Force and Exchange Congress planning committee; gave an informal talk at the Lowell Society (They have invited my wife and I to be honorary members for the year); attended meetings about Police Profiling of African-Americans in Oak Park; and so forth.

I regard last summers' work as preparation for this year's ethnographic explorations. While I will continue to participate in as much of the life of the Village as possible and I will continue to interview people who I believe can provide me with new insights into the community, I will concentrate my efforts on the production of several ethnographic videotapes. I will also produce scholarly articles, talks and a book but the production of these videotapes will be the primary focus of this years' fieldwork. I plan to produce at least four multi-part tapes:

1. A study of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center. It is the centerpiece of Oak Park's plan for integration. It is over 25 years old and international renown. It plan to spend the summer shooting this tape. I am the receptionist at the Center on Monday mornings - an excellent way to get a sense of the day-to-day activities. I discussed my plans with the Center's staff, video interviewed the Director and the retired head of the Village's Community Relations department. I observed several clients going through the process of locating an apartment and a marketing person previewing an apartment that was to be added to the Center's listings. I plan to have the bulk of the videotaping about the Center completed by the fall. Link to a description of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center Film

2. A videotape about a family of three generations of Oak Parkers. Through their lives I will be able to show how the core values of this community are embodied and enacted. As I am still in discusssion about this tape with some family members. I cannot be more specific.

3. A videotape about a gay couple with children. Through their lives I will be able to explore the place of the gay and lesbian community in Oak Park.

4. A videtape about an Evangelical Christian and politically conservative family. As Oak Park is primarily known as a "hotbed" of liberalism, the conservative Christians are a minority that has been almost invisible except for the period in the 1990s when they opposed attempts to pass ordinances to give the partners of gay and lesbian Village employee health benefits and to offer a registry for same sex ceremonies. The fight over the registry caused both the gay and lesbian community and the conservative community to become politically self-conscious and active. This famly confounds my cliched assumptions about Evangelicals. They adopted African-American children and moved to Oak Park to live in a diverse community that accepted families of mixed ethnicities.

A number of Oak Parkers have commented upon my selection of topics for the videotapes I plan to produce. They point out that I am not discussing some vital elements in the village. That is a correct observation and one that requires some explanation. For example, if I plan to make a videotape about a gay couple with children, I will not be properly representing the full range within gay and lesbian community that contains lesbian couples with children, gay and lesbian couples without children, single gays and lesbians, young gays and lesbians, and so on. I could not possibly represent all manifestation of gay and lesbian life in Oak Park. I cannot possibly try to adequately cover all aspects of any portion of village life. I am not attempting to make a general overview of this community. I am trying to produce some ethnographic studies of some elements that exemplify and personify the culture. I cannot represent all of village life nor would I ever suggest that the "ethnographic stories" I will produce could stand for all of the complexities of this place. Hopefully the topics I have selected will provide some insight and understanding. To continue with the example of my choice of a gay couple with children, one characteristic of the gay and lesbian community in Oak Park is the desire of some of its members to fit into this place and to actively participate in village life. Many social science studies of gays and lesbians have concentrated on the urban life of young single people. The work of anthropologists like Kath Weston and Ellen Lewin focus on the initial construction of gay and lesbian families and their marriage ceremonies. We know comparatively little about how middle-class gay and lesbian couples live in the suburbs on a day to day basis. One very interesting aspect of Oak Park's social experiment is the incorporation of gays and lesbians into the community at large. I believe the film I propose would tell an ethnographic story about an aspect of gay and lesbian life that is important to understand and not well known..

Am I uncritical of Oak Park? (6/18/00) - Several people from Oak Park have suggested that my web page statement is naive because I declare Oak Park as "a success" in maintaining diversity. I need to qualify and clarify the statement - see Harsh Reality.

Making Ethnographic Videos While I am attempting to get a general overview of Oak Park and participating in as much of the life of the village as possible, I am focusing my work around the making of some videotapes as a way of expressing the knowledge I gained and the interpretations I will make. This is a departure in the way anthropologists do ethnography and the way in which ethnographic films have been made. I need to explain why I think this experiment makes sense.

For thirty-plus years I have been writing about the role of film in anthropology. As a historian, critic, and theorist of this genre, I have repeatedly voiced my discontent about how ethnographic films are made and their relationship to anthropology. I have put together some of the essays I have written about this position in book form under the title, Picturing Culture. The University of Chicago press will publish it during the fall. Briefly, it is my contention that anthropologists should view film/video making as a way to disseminate their research findings. They should not defer to professional documentary filmmakers nor produce work that is primarily designed to satisfy the marketplace demands of the educational world or of public television. These works should be scholarly communications designed for people with a serious interest in the subject matter. I have written an Ethnographic Film Manifesto that outlines my position in a deliberately provocative way.

While I have participated in the making of many films as a consultant and had the major responsibility for only two, I have not explored these ideas by attempting to make work that would exemplify my theories. There are several reasons why this is so. I am, by nature, more of an historian, critic, and theorist than a practitioner. Perhaps as important is the limitations of technology and funding, 16mm films - once the standard for ethnographic film - and even non-digital videomaking required expensive equipment, large budgets and people with extensive technical competence. Within the last few years, the world of the mini-dv digital cameras and digital editing software that is within the budgets of most academics has emerged. The "prosumer" level three chip cameras produce an image of exceptional quality and, with the addition of a mini-shotgun microphone, excellent sound. The editing systems are also relatively easy to learn and use. Video production systems can be acquired for less than $10,000 reducing the cost of production to the cost of the videotapes. Scholars can now afford to experiment without the necessity of obtaining large grants that require the production of materials designed either for the classroom or public television nor must they hire professional crews whose goals are often at odds with those of a scholar. Professional filmmakers cannot afford the luxury of being experimental.

Instead of bringing a professional crew of documentary filmmakers in for a relatively brief time to make a film designed to satisfy the professional demands of the film world (a common approach in the U.S.), I am able to have the camera with me for the entire year and to shoot materials to be used in a variety of finished works. While I do not intend to abandon the traditional outlets of scholarly and popular articles and books, it is the need to conceive and produce coherent ethnographic videotapes that gives focus to my research. I will make these tapes for an audience similar to the one that would read my articles and books - other scholars, students and the seriously interested lay person.

There are several disadvantages to this plan. I am only marginal competent with this technology and with ways to shoot material that will reflect what I am learning and what I want to say. I am experimenting and learning as I go. I am anxious that I will not be able to shoot material I need or that I will do something technically incompetent and ruin the shot. Formal interviews are of course the easiest. I simply place the camera on a tripod (I tried shooting hand holding the camera and found that I could not keep it steady enough and that when I asked a question I really giggled the camera). Sound is a problem in that it is summer and most people have fans or air conditioners turned on. The Housing Center, the site of the first film I am shooting, has ancient air conditioners that sound like cement mixing machines. I am taking "room tone" (30 seconds of recorded sound of only the sounds of the room) and hope the noises can be filtered out. The action scenes like following a client through the process of locating an apartment with the assistance of the Housing Center will be much more difficult. I will begin shooting them in July. As this month is the busiest for the Center, I will be able to continue to shoot clients going through the process until I have the material that exemplifies the process of locating an apartment through this agency.

As important as these technical considerations are I have a much more important concern. There are no precedents for what I am doing. I cannot look to other people and their experiences for advice. There have been multi-part films or television series like the 1970s PBS series, An American Family, but that work tended simply to deal with the development of the characters of the various family members and the drama of a divorce and its impact on the family. For each of the videotapes I propose to make I am dealing with complicated situations and very complex and layered ideas that will take a lot of screen time to present. They will be very demanding of a viewer. We are not used to being challenged in this manner.

I have come to the conclusion that I must break with the assumption that an ethnographic film must conform to the requirements of television and/or the classroom, that is, being 30, 60 or 90 minutes long. Anthropologists that write do not place similar restrictions on their writings - that is, make the length determined by what is useable in the classroom or to a general reading public. So the videotapes will be as long as they need to be. The Housing Center and three generations of Oak Parkers tapes will have to be multi-part and be seen in a way that parallels reading a book with several chapters. I must explore ways to educate viewers so that they will take the time necessary to understand the work.

I begin this exploration with much anticipation and anxiety. I am determined to follow the process where ever it leads.

Questioning Managed Integration Oak Park's diversity policies are based upon the assumption that in order to avoid resegregation, African-Americans must live in all parts of the village and that there should be no "majority-minority" neighborhoods. In those areas where African-Americans are becoming the majority, white demand for housing must be encouraged. The Housing Center acting in accordance with the instructions given to them by the Village's Community Relations Department actively seeks to encourage white renters to move to those areas that appear to be in danger of resegregation. The whole of the Village's many ordinances, programs, and services are founded upon this notion of managed integration. I have discovered some Oak Parkers - black and white, who question this idea. I need to locate people with direct personal experience with the Center that share this view. Those I have talked to thus far are basing their view on political and moral grounds rather than actual experience. They argue that perhaps at one time in the past trying to manage which people lived where was needed but after thirty years, the policy is no longer necessary. and is, in fact, morally wrong because it merely reflects the racist values of white society. "Racial" balance, a concept vital to Oak Park's policies, is not in actuality, a 50/50 balance but instead is 70% white and 30% black and is a manifestation of the notion of tipping. It is assumed that if more that 30% of a neighborhood becomes black, the whites will leave. It remains to be seen if these dissenters will make their critique public at the meetings of the task force and other places, for example, during the selection of candidates for the forthcoming election or not. Should the opponents of managed integration succeed in convincing Oak Parkers to abandon their thirty year plan for diversity, the entire complex of organizations and ordinances and programs would have to be fundamentally modified. The Housing Center would have no reason to exist. I will watch with fascination what transpires over the coming months.