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In my education class, we were discussing bullies and the students they bully. One of the questions asked as a conversation starter, was whether bullies or the bullied deserved more attention in a school/ class setting. As in, who is the victim in the a bullying situation? and who deserves more attention?

As  I was reading Path to Paradise, I thought, "Could we all be victims? Victims of the environments that surround us and the pressures that are imposed on us to maintain certain standards?"

Suicide bombers first entered military training, it seems, to earn respect and/ or recognition they were not receiving in their everyday environment.We, here in America, are trained to see our nation as the center of the map, so much , that we fail to critically think about why a person might want to commit such an act of deviance. Most people saw 9/11 as an attack on the U.S., but it is difficult to understand what it is that 9/11 really was when parts of the story are consciously not shared.

There is a difference, I think between being able to illustrate a whole story by combing all available facts and that of illustrating a story that purposely selects facts.

I think ethnography is very useful in that it does not limit what truth can be. It helps establish ideas through more than one outlet. For instance, you can look at the individual as a part of a larger society that is the world, or much closer to home and the family life, or race, or gender, sex, or occupation, etc.