Twins Talk. Dona Lee Davis
got their own bias. You know what I mean? I think it’s reasonable for twins to study twins because you have a better understanding of the relationship, OK? Whereas it would be like a man interviewing a woman trying to find out what it is like being a woman. Or the other way around. . . . Because the sexes are so different, a man would never truly understand a woman, and a woman would never really understand a man. All we know is that we [twins] are different. Even though everyone has their own opinion about it, like males and females, single births don’t understand the dynamics of multiple births. Obviously!
At several junctures in the interview process, a twin would say something like, “Well, you guys know what we mean, because you’re twins too.” Usually Dorothy or I would ask for an explanation, but sometimes we were so caught up in the conversation that we would just let some of these loaded statements pass. Toward the end of Pat and Phyllis’s interview, Pat told us, “The best thing is you guys are twins, so you understand. As researchers, it’s really nice that you are doing this as twins. It’s a good idea.” Many of the talking partners are interested in the outcome of this project. I have sent them copies of papers I have presented. Response to the papers has been positive, and I remain in touch with a number of the Twinsburg twins. Those who continue to keep in touch are enthusiastic and interested in how the study progresses.
The Talking Partners
The talking partners came from an opportunistic sampling format. Although the sample includes women and men and shows some variation in terms of age and educational, socioeconomic, regional, and ethnic background, it is in no sense a representative sample. Rosambeau (1987) notes that volunteer twin samples almost always end up with a preponderance of identical girls or women. The twins talk sample is overwhelmingly female. We have no way of knowing whether those twins who refused to participate in the study, or those who do not attend twins festivals, would have had significantly different discussions on being twins. Certainly Dorothy and I had never been festival twins and continue to resist the overweening emphasis festivals place on looking alike. Nevertheless, the commonalities of our own experiences of being twins with those of our talking partners, regardless of age, gender, and class, amaze us. The sample, although small, is commensurate with other twin studies that feature twins’ narratives (Klein 2003; Rosambeau 1987; Schave and Ciriello 1983; Segal 2005).
Our talking partners could either use their own names or invent ones for the interview. Unfortunately for the reader, a number of twins had the same names. For example, there were four Ginas and two Karens. I have provided alternate spellings, not necessarily for clarity, but so that the twins can recognize themselves in the text. All conversations were two on two, except in one instance when we interviewed two sets of twins (Karan and Kim, and Cindy and Sandy) from the same family. The sample includes 6 men and 38 women who range in age from 22 to 77. Regarding education, the sample included 7 with a high school education, 3 with some technical or college education, 9 with college degrees, and 4 with graduate school degrees. The majority worked in business or sales (21), followed by teaching (8) and nursing (3). There were 2 social workers, 2 housewives, and 2 military personnel. The remaining interviewees were either still in school or retired.
In terms of life cycle stages, the sample seemed to break into 4 age categories. Those twins ages 22 to 26 were just starting out in careers and were not married. The 36- to 46-year-olds were fairly established in their careers, and at least one of the twin pairs had children still at home. The 54- to 58-year-olds had grown children and had begun to enjoy more indulgences, like vacationing and dining out. Those in the 61 to 77 age group were retired or approaching retirement, enjoyed their grandchildren, and spent more time together than they had since they were children. Chapter 7, “Kin,” gives the most detailed account of how the Twinsburg twins depicted themselves and what key experiences and challenges they have faced during their lives. The reader may want to read chapter 7 next to become more familiar with the Twinsburg twins.
Although this study features the narratives of the Twinsburg sample of twins, Dorothy and I were interviewed at Twinsburg by our research assistant Kristi Cody. Because we are the twenty-third interview, and there is a marked autobiographic or reflexive component woven into the text. Actually, Dorothy and I, with our different-colored shirts and different hairstyles, felt that our talking partners might doubt our identical twin status. We even brought pictures of us looking very alike at various junctures of our lives as proof of our twinship. Although eager to look at pictures and show their own, our talking partners never questioned our being twins. Instead, they said, “When we talk to you we know you are twins.” Our conversations with other sets of twins of all ages have led us to reflect on our own twinship. Initially, the Twinsburg study was to be the beginning and end of the Twins Talk Study. Like many ethnographic studies, however, it would develop unforeseen and much longer-term avenues for further research and reflection. These include autoethnography, performance, and twin research conferences, as discussed below.
Autoethnographic Perspectives: A View from the Pod
Early in her career as a twin researcher, Nancy Segal (1999), who has a fraternal twin sister, was advised never to mention that she was a twin because it would compromise her objectivity in the eyes of her colleagues. Fortunately, I, in contrast to Segal (1999), come from the intellectual tradition of participant observation anthropology, which not only gives legitimacy to multiple voices and perspectives but sees our best methodology as our experience of ourselves (Cohen 1992, 225). Twins Talk, as person-centered (Hollan 2001; LeVine 1982), experience-near (Wikan 1991), or a kind of interpersonal, minimalist ethnography (Jackson 1998; Rosaldo 1986), is certainly up close and personal. As written by a twin studying twins, however, Twins Talk also contains elements of what anthropologists call an autoethnographic, autoanthropology or self-reflexive, approach (Behar 1996; Ellis et al. 2011; Strathern 1987;Visweswaran 1994).
Autoethnography, according to Ellis (Ellis et al. 2011, 1), “is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno).” Autoethnography is both a process and a product aiming to critique scientific ideas that include what research is and how it should be done. Grounded in personal experience, autoethnography draws on one’s self and one’s home as ways of bridging artificial divisions among the personal, physical, psychosocial, and phenomenal aspects of living (Rapport and Overing 200, 18). Being multidimensional, autoethnography is also sensitive to identity politics and recognizes that different people make different kinds of assumptions about themselves and the worlds in which they live (Ellis et al. 2011, 1).
For once in my career I am the native. I have firsthand and lifelong personal and interpersonal experience in this field of study. As the “others” in a singleton-dominated world, Dorothy and I have lived our lives in what Hastrup (1995) refers to as the contact zone.6If ethnography can be described as the “thickest form of information” (Ortner 2006, 10), in Twins Talk I bring my own lifelong, autoethnographic perspectives to the thickening process, filling in holes in the data, giving additional examples, and adding subtext to text. Although the fieldwork portions of this study include little more than two weeks’ time, Dorothy and I have over 120 years of living in the field.
As an identical twin, I have had the firsthand physical experiences of living in a twin’s body and intimately sharing childhood spaces and places with my identical sister, Dorothy. Hollan (2001, 8) suggests that one of the key problems for those who study the embodied aspects of experience is ascertaining how we can know that the senses, perceptions, and bodily experiences we attribute to our subjects are not actually the researcher’s own perceptual projections or preoccupations. Certainly I make no pretense of being Pete and Emil, Donna and Dianne, or Janet and Judy (or even Dorothy), but as an identical twin I have a firsthand experience with the embodiment of twinship that gives me my own perspectives on my body, as well as on what I see as a researcher’s own perceptual projections and preoccupations when it comes to me and my own embodied self as a twin. Yet, the Twins Talk Study is not just an exercise in reflexive anthropology or mutual navel gazing. Talking to other sets of twins and attending twins festivals developed my sense of being an anomaly, an “other” in a singleton-dominated world. It also provided me with a kind of stranger status and embodied standpoint