senior thesis
It Will Always Be There
Conclusions and Anthropological Significance
“Our group definitely had its own can of worms... We’ve all kind of been there and back again.”
The RHP family is a social group which bonded extremely quickly and has endured the sort of drama that teen TV shows thrive on. What I have covered in this project is only a broad overview of the group’s history and small portion of its adventures, conflicts, and triumphs. For the sake of space, I have omitted many portions I wished to include, such as specific stories, an investigation of Penny’s symbolic role in the group, what RHPers have learned, and a further analysis of the group’s interpersonal dynamics.
The environment of Deans Halls and the history of the program facilitated the formation of a social group, but it was the needs and desires of its members that was its driving force. The profiles and summer e-mails set the stage for a group mind, while several key personalities provided vigor. On arriving at USC, there was a shared sense of being different, so RHPers reached out to those perceived as being the same. Ironically, RHPers were probably more different from each other than we were from the rest of the university. Our differences provided strength and excitement to group. During our first semester together, “big” events provided a framework for smaller day-to-day group bonding activities; the big events made us feel special, while the small events made us feel unified. A sense of RHP pride was maintained because of this unity. The group’s structure was similar to that of a web, network, molecule, or family, with a variety of different roles.
Towards the end of the first semester, and throughout the second semester, members of our group encountered troubles with school, relationships, and drugs. On one level, our differences began to divide us. However, our earlier bonding was strong enough to maintain a sense of group spirit, even when interactions were sporadic and drama was high. Because the group had been such an integral part of our early college development, many members felt a need to believe in its reality. This trend continued though sophomore and junior years, with the group growing more dispersed, yet retaining a sense of connectedness.
Senior year has seen a hope for renewing group ties and a push to create planned interactions before we graduate. This reflects both nostalgia for the past and an uncertainty for the future. In many ways, despite all the changes people have gone through, the group has really come full-circle, and has a strong sense of itself as its members prepare for graduation.
Anthropologically, the RHP family represents a new kind of social group that will become more and more prevalent throughout the 21st century. In Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Arjun Appadurai writes:
“the landscapes of group identity -- the ethnoscapes -- around the world are no longer familiar anthropological objects, insofar as groups are no longer tightly territorialized, spatially bounded, historically unselfconscious, or culturally homogenous.”
In many ways, the RHP family represents a doubly diasporic group: its members came to USC from a variety of geographic locales, and many will travel or move to various places around the world. In the core group alone, experiences abroad have included China, Spain, Germany, India, Scotland, Australia, Bolivia, Egypt, Yemen, and Israel. Post-graduation plans include relocation to all seven continents. This has been an opportunity to capture a group before it disperses around the world. The RHP family is different from other groups going through the “college experience” because it is a discrete, bounded group that offers specific insider/outsider distinctions. Also, it is a group of high-achievers, so the past and future accomplishments of its members will be more diverse.
Most examples of cognitive communities I have found and are united around a common interest, belief, or goal. But RHP is different. We have no central rallying point except for the memory of shared experience and continued mutual affection. In this way, the RHP family is unique.
All groups live in the relationships between its members, but often the group’s stated “purpose” can seem more important. In the RHP family, this is impossible. A lack of outside purpose makes the group self-aware of its structure and helps individuals navigate their own roles in the formation of group identity. At the same time, a lack of unifying activity can be an obstacle in group identity-maintenance; when the group does not seem to be doing anything, roles may seem unclear. Most of the current work of this group is carried out through one-on-one interactions, or internally. In our rewards-based society, emotional work is discounted or ignored, so several members of the RHP group may be unaware that such work is even going on.
Finally, we are in a rapidly changing world. Studying a group of highly talented young people on the eve of their entry into this world as adults offers a glimpse into the future. In Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk writes that “if a group of students from tremendously different backgrounds, with tremendously different futures, can come together and create a cohesive, enduring, and nourishing group,” then RHP makes a statement against the hostile, isolationist aspects of our culture. This group proves that geographic proximity and frequent contact are not necessary for maintaining a cohesive, affectionate group structure.
Here ends my study and analysis of RHP.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!
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