The social anthropology major spent three months observing the behavior of merchants and consumers in Turkey. She even had to experience the merchant's perspective, as one of her subjects bargained her into selling for two hours in exchange for her sitting in his booth.
The cunning selling practices used by the Turks to allure tourists--from yelling in the streets to grabbing tourists--shocked Hoilman. The Turks made haggling an art, says Hoilman. After figuring out where a tourists was from, they would tailor their sales pitch in terms of the person's taste which they deciphered from his nationality, clothing, and demeanor. "They could pick out the Americans better than I could," Hoilman says.
The root of negotiation problems lies at the gap between cultures, Hoilman says. "The problem is not one of substance but of culture. For example, states negotiate and there are many problems of disagreement, such as the time of the negotiation, the location, and even sometimes, the size of the table.
"How can there be negotiation where there are cultural differences that are misunderstood?" Hoilman asks, adding, "It's interesting to contrast the Turkish idea of bargaining with that of the fixed price notion here in America."
The Quincy House resident discovered this during her clerkship in the merchant's booth. "It was so embarassing," she recalls. "Because in our culture, we do not go out on the street and yell at the customer and drag him into the store and talk to him until he buys something, I was not good at this aggressive selling technique."
Hoilman has been interested in Turkey since high school. During her junior year, she tried to do an independent study course on Turkish haggling practices but found no published material. Because of this, Hoilman could not write her thesis unless she was given the CFIA grant.
After she graduates, Hoilman says she hopes to study haggling practices in other countries. But, she admits, she will never be a good haggler herself, because "you can barely stand to see yourself haggling after you've just spent a whole summer watching hagglers."
A Summer of Living Dangerously
Without his CFIA grant, Peter K. Hannam '87 would not have been able to research his thesis on small-scale development in Indonesian villages. "If I hadn't gotten the grant, there would have been no way for me to do this thesis. I had no money, and there are no library books on these Indonesian development attempts," Hannam says.
Harvard's name and the credibility that the grant gave him allowed him to get many needed interviews with important officials, the Social Studies concentrator says.
The Australian-born Hannam took a risk in researching his thesis as the authoritarian Indonesian government had officially outlawed foreign studies of villages during the summer. However, Hannam decided to go ahead with his project.
"I'm sure people wondered what I was up to, because I was going to places tourists don't visit," Hannam says. "I'd have to make up stories all the time. I made up so many that I couldn't remember to whom I had told which story." Hannam ended up photocopying his notes and sending them home to Melbourne in case he was caught.
Since his studies at the United World College in Singapore, Hannam has known that he wants to study development. After reading a New York Times article on cooperatives in Indonesia, he decided to see if this alternative to large-scale development solved some of the problems of the third world country.
Arriving in Indonesia with a skeptical mind, Hannam did not find anything positive about the place. Hannam says, "There were only 25 co-ops not 150 as the leader had told me, and the effectiveness of the co-ops was dramatically exaggerated.
He was not sure whether the indigenous people were telling him the truth about the success of these co-ops since they claimed, "99 percent efficiency which is impossible." In frustration, he turned to foreigners for answers. "It was from the foreigners that I got a critical perspective; they are more realistic than the indigenous people," he says.
Hannam questions the commitment of organizations, such as the World Bank and the Harvard Institute of International Development which are supposedly attempting to solve development dilemmas. "I wonder if these development officials are really devoted," he says. "They come to developing countries and stay at the best hotel, are waited on, and chauffeured around. They live like little princes." He adds, "How can these people understand the poor when they have a passport for exit?"
The Lowell House resident says he plans to spend time after graduation studying development in third world countries. "Development is when other people don't need me and can rely on themselves," he says.