I have now been to many squat events at which food was relevant, and my notebooks are lavishly filled with ink of multiple colors. But taking a step back and making sense of all of these notes feels to me like stuffing the comforter thing into the comforter case when it's all knotted up after being in the dryer and you're not sure which corner goes where and it's too big to spread out anywhere so you just have to grab each corner and hope you've got the alignment right, and somehow you end up with the case over your head and the comforter is all packed into one side but still manages to spill out partway and then you realize most of the case is on the floor and now you should probably go wash it again and start over.
Maybe this isn't so relevant to collaborative work, but the first question I need to deal with, I think, is how to actually organize my data and start to look at it through my framework. Maybe I should have started doing this earlier, but I was ambivalent because I was worried that my framework would unfairly influence or bias my observation. Still.
In terms of collaboration, then, say I come up with some characterization of how squatting culture is reflected through the ways that squatters relate to food. And say that both Cassie and Fiona also have some comparable sorts of characterizations in the terms of their own frameworks. But each of our frameworks is very different. Maybe we can couch our results in the terms of our common definition of culture. Even so, they might not have anything to say to each other; their conclusions might still be unconnected. Can we then just put these three characterizations next to each other and call it a research project?
I'm afraid there are so many conditions that it might still be too early to know whether these questions will be important or necessary. Maybe figuring out how to solve my first problem will make it clearer what kinds of questions will be relevant for the second problem.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
1: The Datum [assignment for VKS Tuesday]
There can really be only one. But no decapitation will be required to demonstrate the truth of this argument. There will also be no soundtrack by Queen.
Photography
Cassie - Since my project is mainly concerned with the information I receive
through conversations with the people themselves, I haven't been too
camera-happy during research so as not to come off as invasive. I have,
however, taken some pictures of political graffiti on the outsides of
squats... such as a freedom of speech one, as well as tons of anarchy and
squat symbols. Other than that, I've just taken pictures of all of us
having a good time at the squat restaurants that we eat at often.
Isaac - I have taken pictures of the food productions at the moment before they are traversed by the eater. This on 3 occasions so far.
Fiona - I’ve been using photography to document:
-certain objects of interest
-large spaces (i.e. wall areas or doors of stickers)
Speech & Hearing
Cassie - As for my interviews with squatters, I have spoken with a man and a woman
at the squat "Molli," a woman from the soon-to-be shut down squat,
"Barcelona," a woman who squats but was just hanging out at the
squat-cafe "Bollox," and a man from the squat called "Joe's Garage."
For these interviews, I asked similar questions, including:
1. Are you from the Netherlands, and if not, from where?
2. How long have you been squatting?
3. Why did you begin squatting? (For shelter or for ideological reasons?)
4. Are you involved in any political organizations?
5. Do you work?
6. Did you go to school?
7. Are you into music, art, etc.?
8. Do homeless people ever come to you interested in squatting?
9. Do you know of any reasons why it might be difficult for some homeless
people to squat?
The people I spoke with are all somewhat politically involved, but
did not necessarily begin squatting for those reasons. Some needed
shelter, and politics came afterward. Some of the squatters are
originally from the Netherlands, while one came from Finland, and another
from Chile. There seems to be a general consensus among squatters that
it is hard for homeless people to squat because many of them have mental
illnesses.
For interviews with homeless / social workers at shelters, I spoke
with a director at De Regenboog, which provides shelter, drug facilities,
and meals; I spoke with a worker at Leger Des Heils, or Salvation Army,
as well as three of the homeless men who stay there; and I spoke with two
directors at the office building of HVO Querido - which offers many
services to the homeless including shelter, drug facilities, social
workers, job programs, etc. For these interviews, I tried to get a sense
of what kinds of people stayed at the shelters there, and asked many of
the same questions that I did for the squatters, but in regards to being
homeless. Once again, I came across many different people and diverse
situations.
Isaac - Data collection of this kind has been disorganized. I have been trying to participate as much as possible in food-related activities in squats, and have been recording my experiences afterward in writing. This participation always involves my asking questions of squatters and others with connections to squatting.
All of the food-related activities so far have been volkskeuken (voku), or "folk kitchens," where volunteers prepare dinner in a situation that is something of a hybrid between a restaurant and an informal social gathering. The information that I have been recording in these situations includes what kind of food is present, how it is presented on the plate, and how it is distributed in the voku. I am also recording social information, such as where people are sitting and with whom they are talking while eating. It is often difficult to separate these aspects, so while I am trying to record as much concrete information as possible, I sometimes resort to more subjective impressions about things like atmosphere and personality. I always inquire about the origin of food ingredients. Finally, I am using narration to record people's reactions to my presence and participation.
I have eaten at squats 4 times so far, at three different squats; three of these events were officially titled "voku," and at one of them I participated not only in the dining but also in the cooking. I have also visited several squats with the intention of participating in an eating-related experience, and have recorded the reasons for my failures to do so.
Fiona - I’ve been informally interviewing people who are in the squats (not necessarily squats, although most are). Questions asked cover the following:
-basics of who they are (i.e. squatter/non-squatter; personal background; relation to current squat; ideologies)
-their thoughts and views on “the scene” (i.e. what types of people do they notice tend to be squatters)
-certain objects of interests (i.e. art piece, posters on the wall, furniture pieces)
-relationship between values/beliefs/ideologies and the above certain objects of interest
Geotagging
None yet.
Video
Nothing at this time.
Photography
Cassie - Since my project is mainly concerned with the information I receive
through conversations with the people themselves, I haven't been too
camera-happy during research so as not to come off as invasive. I have,
however, taken some pictures of political graffiti on the outsides of
squats... such as a freedom of speech one, as well as tons of anarchy and
squat symbols. Other than that, I've just taken pictures of all of us
having a good time at the squat restaurants that we eat at often.
Isaac - I have taken pictures of the food productions at the moment before they are traversed by the eater. This on 3 occasions so far.
Fiona - I’ve been using photography to document:
-certain objects of interest
-large spaces (i.e. wall areas or doors of stickers)
Speech & Hearing
Cassie - As for my interviews with squatters, I have spoken with a man and a woman
at the squat "Molli," a woman from the soon-to-be shut down squat,
"Barcelona," a woman who squats but was just hanging out at the
squat-cafe "Bollox," and a man from the squat called "Joe's Garage."
For these interviews, I asked similar questions, including:
1. Are you from the Netherlands, and if not, from where?
2. How long have you been squatting?
3. Why did you begin squatting? (For shelter or for ideological reasons?)
4. Are you involved in any political organizations?
5. Do you work?
6. Did you go to school?
7. Are you into music, art, etc.?
8. Do homeless people ever come to you interested in squatting?
9. Do you know of any reasons why it might be difficult for some homeless
people to squat?
The people I spoke with are all somewhat politically involved, but
did not necessarily begin squatting for those reasons. Some needed
shelter, and politics came afterward. Some of the squatters are
originally from the Netherlands, while one came from Finland, and another
from Chile. There seems to be a general consensus among squatters that
it is hard for homeless people to squat because many of them have mental
illnesses.
For interviews with homeless / social workers at shelters, I spoke
with a director at De Regenboog, which provides shelter, drug facilities,
and meals; I spoke with a worker at Leger Des Heils, or Salvation Army,
as well as three of the homeless men who stay there; and I spoke with two
directors at the office building of HVO Querido - which offers many
services to the homeless including shelter, drug facilities, social
workers, job programs, etc. For these interviews, I tried to get a sense
of what kinds of people stayed at the shelters there, and asked many of
the same questions that I did for the squatters, but in regards to being
homeless. Once again, I came across many different people and diverse
situations.
Isaac - Data collection of this kind has been disorganized. I have been trying to participate as much as possible in food-related activities in squats, and have been recording my experiences afterward in writing. This participation always involves my asking questions of squatters and others with connections to squatting.
All of the food-related activities so far have been volkskeuken (voku), or "folk kitchens," where volunteers prepare dinner in a situation that is something of a hybrid between a restaurant and an informal social gathering. The information that I have been recording in these situations includes what kind of food is present, how it is presented on the plate, and how it is distributed in the voku. I am also recording social information, such as where people are sitting and with whom they are talking while eating. It is often difficult to separate these aspects, so while I am trying to record as much concrete information as possible, I sometimes resort to more subjective impressions about things like atmosphere and personality. I always inquire about the origin of food ingredients. Finally, I am using narration to record people's reactions to my presence and participation.
I have eaten at squats 4 times so far, at three different squats; three of these events were officially titled "voku," and at one of them I participated not only in the dining but also in the cooking. I have also visited several squats with the intention of participating in an eating-related experience, and have recorded the reasons for my failures to do so.
Fiona - I’ve been informally interviewing people who are in the squats (not necessarily squats, although most are). Questions asked cover the following:
-basics of who they are (i.e. squatter/non-squatter; personal background; relation to current squat; ideologies)
-their thoughts and views on “the scene” (i.e. what types of people do they notice tend to be squatters)
-certain objects of interests (i.e. art piece, posters on the wall, furniture pieces)
-relationship between values/beliefs/ideologies and the above certain objects of interest
Geotagging
None yet.
Video
Nothing at this time.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
fun
"The article presents information on the dinner party at Droog's Amsterdam, Netherlands headquarters. The dinner party entitled as Infinity Dinner, will be a holiday meal of 10 small courses. In the beginning there will be microgreens and young meats like veal. Movable seating will be arranged in a DNA-like shape and diners will slide every few minutes. For this party, one will wear a black dress with an overlay of twigs."
- Walsh, S. Kirk. "Grand New Party." New York Times; 12/2/2007, Vol. 157 Issue 54146, Special section p176-176, 1p
- Walsh, S. Kirk. "Grand New Party." New York Times; 12/2/2007, Vol. 157 Issue 54146, Special section p176-176, 1p
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
public scholarship
Domke argues that scholars have an obligation to make their ideas and findings accessible to the public. I completely agree with this idea, and not just because many universities are funded by taxes. Thinking about this way too abstractly, if ideas and information travel from the World to the University, but not back again, then, for one thing, there's no immediate reason that the integrity of the University's reflection of the World matters. The implication of this is two systems that need not have anything in common, where all of the ideas or laws in one are completely irrelevant in the other. Consider a city and a university in a world where such a scenario exists. The city has long ago stopped sending people to the university or funding it, and the citizens live as though the university doesn't exist; in the university, the dominant theory holds that the city is a fiction created by philosophers who had nothing else to study. Both places can exist autonomously, which is fine, but I am going to make a value judgment and say this situation is bad. Don't contradict me.
Both Domke and Ellison speak about hope. This is directly associated with caring--with being invested in an outcome. Impartiality is traditionally considered the most objective, scientific stance. As we've been talking about in class, however, the scholar is never without bias, so perhaps the most objective position is one of open, authentic subjectivity. This is what I think these authors mean by hope.
In terms of my group's research project, this reading has provided great arguments for why it is important for us to make our results available outside of academia. I am also inclined to be more transparent about my own opinions about all this--still being careful not to let this become an excuse not to do authentic research. That is--and maybe I should really have emphasized this above--it's important to acknowledge one's subjectivity while still striving toward impartial research methods!
Both Domke and Ellison speak about hope. This is directly associated with caring--with being invested in an outcome. Impartiality is traditionally considered the most objective, scientific stance. As we've been talking about in class, however, the scholar is never without bias, so perhaps the most objective position is one of open, authentic subjectivity. This is what I think these authors mean by hope.
In terms of my group's research project, this reading has provided great arguments for why it is important for us to make our results available outside of academia. I am also inclined to be more transparent about my own opinions about all this--still being careful not to let this become an excuse not to do authentic research. That is--and maybe I should really have emphasized this above--it's important to acknowledge one's subjectivity while still striving toward impartial research methods!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Heights of Fashion
The first thing to notice about this troika--and the central accessory--is in the third (bottom) partition: the piece of chair wood in the lower left corner. The hierarchical opposite of the blue knee monolith, it asserts itself as an essential subject, without which the knee's power would seem vain, if not ridiculous. Humble yet unassailable, it stands apart from the rest, and for viewers it provides almost a surrogate perspective or vantage point. It is through this item, then, that the outfit assumes a character of preeminence.Studying the knee in particular, we observe four primary dark, nearly triangular patches along the river of the seam--a metaphor for the countryside, no doubt. The serpentine though trough-like extension to the southeast further suggests an irrigation channel; the even texture on the opposite side evokes uniform fields of wheat or spinach.
The next partition is clearly a communications grid, whereby we recognize that we are at the central nervous system. White hubs in the center are not merely decorative formalities, but serve as informational relay points. Messages are combined at these units into complete and lucid memories, which facilitate the direct communication between left furrow and right furrow, or Idea and Praxis, respectively. The colors indicate that the bearer is of or related to the Malcolm Clan.
Finally, at top, the outfit puts on a more leisurely expression for the end of the day. The thick, coarse weaving pattern and chaotic but dichromatic incorporation of materials recalls the Hungarian revolution of 1956--the hope, the daring, but ultimately the disaster; just so, the two colors attempt to integrate, but lose cohesion and ultimately distract. Whence the element of repose? It is just this transduction from historical event to vestimentary appendage that produces the energy required for genuine peace of mind. Blocking out all other detail, the sock cannot be denied.
-------------------------------------------------After reading what the author of the above has written about what I'm wearing, I have to say that I'm not sure that I completely buy his analysis. I could try to give an account of the reasoning that went into my dress in order to contradict him, but on a broader level this would be irrelevant and, even worse, arbitrary: how can a series of rational actions have anything to say about what is immediately, obviously, and empirically apparent? And rational is just the right word--any memory that claims to be the authoritative account of an event is really just a rationalization.
So I won't try to oppose what he has written, especially not by crossing levels. I could, however, add my own level of description, which could serve to complement the other. The sections of sock, shirt, and jeans shown here are part of a larger set of clothing that includes a complete pair of socks, a pair of jeans (one item), and the rest of the shirt, as well as a black t-shirt underneath, and olive-green boxer shorts under the jeans. The jeans are much lighter than they were originally, and the bottoms are slightly torn. This suggests either that I like this worn look, or I don't buy clothes very often. Maybe I'm not interested in my clothes, or maybe I just don't get very many opportunities to buy them. Or maybe it represents an ideal of getting the most out of items and only replacing them when necessary. Being myself, and believing that I know at least certain levels of my thoughts about these things, I can say that the truth is probably a combination of all of these things, to varying degrees. The plaid shirt is very difficult for me to read. It looks newer than the jeans, and obviously has more color, but I think it's pretty mute in another sense. As for the socks, they cannot be denied.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Mieke Bal Question 2
..THURSDAY, YES! (why not?)
In discussing Ken Aptekar's After his license was suspended, Bal points out that the reframing of the Herbert Regnault original, rather than creating or maintaining a distinction, as frames usually do, serves to "de-otherize" or familiarize the subject of the original portrait. Is that just because it is reframing something in a way that is less otherizing than the original frame, or can an original framing also lead to an "embrace" in some way? In the context of social research, then, can a theoretical frame be empowering to or embracing of a group only if it reframes an existent, divisive frame? I mean, I guess the answer is yes, because there can only really be no frame around something if no one is aware of it as a distinct category. And in that case, any indication of a distinction is necessarily divisive in some way. But maybe that's taking this idea too literally. So how does a researcher use a frame to empower? Bal says that "for art to empower, it must be performative." I'm not sure I understand this concept, or the concept of theatricality in this context. And if Carrie Parker was necessary to make Aptekar's piece empowering, who is the Carrie Parker of research?
In discussing Ken Aptekar's After his license was suspended, Bal points out that the reframing of the Herbert Regnault original, rather than creating or maintaining a distinction, as frames usually do, serves to "de-otherize" or familiarize the subject of the original portrait. Is that just because it is reframing something in a way that is less otherizing than the original frame, or can an original framing also lead to an "embrace" in some way? In the context of social research, then, can a theoretical frame be empowering to or embracing of a group only if it reframes an existent, divisive frame? I mean, I guess the answer is yes, because there can only really be no frame around something if no one is aware of it as a distinct category. And in that case, any indication of a distinction is necessarily divisive in some way. But maybe that's taking this idea too literally. So how does a researcher use a frame to empower? Bal says that "for art to empower, it must be performative." I'm not sure I understand this concept, or the concept of theatricality in this context. And if Carrie Parker was necessary to make Aptekar's piece empowering, who is the Carrie Parker of research?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
they rob gas stations
Question 1: What is the gastronomy of squatting in Amsterdam?
____Attendant question: Is squatting a counterculture, or a subculture?
________Attendant question: What is the difference between a counterculture and a subculture?
________Preliminary response: A subculture is "a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture" (OED). A counterculture is a subculture that has beliefs or interests directly opposed to those of the larger culture. This doesn't address what these two terms might mean in a social research context, but it's a start. For one thing, it makes the distinction seem less consequential for a research question that doesn't address it directly.
Question 8: M. de Certeau writes that "Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others. How (a) do squatters (b) use this idea of "poaching"? How is this related (c) to the gastronomy of squatting?
(a) "How do squatters _____?" assumes that the answer to "do squatters _____?" is positive. This will need to be accounted for either by incorporating it into the question, or using earlier research to establish it in the background.
(b) "Squatters" could stand for a movement in general, or it could stand for a particular group of squatters (which has yet to be located).
(c) Either one could influence the other, or both (or neither...).
=====================================================
In general, having a conceptual framework can make observation a lot easier, because it can give a picture of what one would expect to see, so then one knows what to look for, and what to look for the absence of, and can frame one's research in terms of how the image(s) observed are similar to or different from the expected or reference image(s).
For an analytic frame, I've been thinking about M. de Certeau's idea of productive consumption, or "poaching" (i.e., squatting). This, or any theoretical framework, would be useful in framing (by case) observations (of behavior and of physical traces) in terms of how well they fit this model. This frame suggests some questions I could ask about my observations: are they examples of using finished products (especially of the "larger culture") in ways that turn them into something different? In the broadest case this is pretty obvious: squatters use empty buildings and turn them into places to live. What about with respect to gastronomy? Do squatters appropriate other "products" and resources creatively to produce and consume food? Or do they acquire, prepare, and consume most of their food the "conventional" way?
The connection between this framework as applied to squatting, and the concept of gastronomy, still seems tenuous. So I'm in search of another, food-framing theory. Also, I don't know if M. de Certeau's theory is going to be common to the whole group, and it would be a good idea to have at least one overarching theory, within which the focus-specific frames could vary.
In other words, we're not finished with this part yet.
fun with formatting
_____Another thing about M. de Certeau's essay:
_____as he himself says,
_____it's not a complete framework in itself;
_____it's more of an outline for future frameworks to be made from.
_____Its biggest contribution is its emphasis of usage,
_____as opposed to only social relations and behaviors.
_____M.C. develops this usage idea further with his conception of it as a productive consumption,
_____but this is still rather domain-general.
_____This is why I need to find another framework that either gives a more specific account of squatting and/or gastronomy,
_____or else provides a more complete body of theory.
_____M.C.'s framework is really an appendage,
_____or else a meta-framework that can filter my application of other frameworks
_____--or else an inter-framework,
_____mediating between other frameworks and evidence by crossing buses.
____Attendant question: Is squatting a counterculture, or a subculture?
________Attendant question: What is the difference between a counterculture and a subculture?
________Preliminary response: A subculture is "a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture" (OED). A counterculture is a subculture that has beliefs or interests directly opposed to those of the larger culture. This doesn't address what these two terms might mean in a social research context, but it's a start. For one thing, it makes the distinction seem less consequential for a research question that doesn't address it directly.
Question 8: M. de Certeau writes that "Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others. How (a) do squatters (b) use this idea of "poaching"? How is this related (c) to the gastronomy of squatting?
(a) "How do squatters _____?" assumes that the answer to "do squatters _____?" is positive. This will need to be accounted for either by incorporating it into the question, or using earlier research to establish it in the background.
(b) "Squatters" could stand for a movement in general, or it could stand for a particular group of squatters (which has yet to be located).
(c) Either one could influence the other, or both (or neither...).
=====================================================
In general, having a conceptual framework can make observation a lot easier, because it can give a picture of what one would expect to see, so then one knows what to look for, and what to look for the absence of, and can frame one's research in terms of how the image(s) observed are similar to or different from the expected or reference image(s).
For an analytic frame, I've been thinking about M. de Certeau's idea of productive consumption, or "poaching" (i.e., squatting). This, or any theoretical framework, would be useful in framing (by case) observations (of behavior and of physical traces) in terms of how well they fit this model. This frame suggests some questions I could ask about my observations: are they examples of using finished products (especially of the "larger culture") in ways that turn them into something different? In the broadest case this is pretty obvious: squatters use empty buildings and turn them into places to live. What about with respect to gastronomy? Do squatters appropriate other "products" and resources creatively to produce and consume food? Or do they acquire, prepare, and consume most of their food the "conventional" way?
The connection between this framework as applied to squatting, and the concept of gastronomy, still seems tenuous. So I'm in search of another, food-framing theory. Also, I don't know if M. de Certeau's theory is going to be common to the whole group, and it would be a good idea to have at least one overarching theory, within which the focus-specific frames could vary.
In other words, we're not finished with this part yet.
fun with formatting
_____Another thing about M. de Certeau's essay:
_____as he himself says,
_____it's not a complete framework in itself;
_____it's more of an outline for future frameworks to be made from.
_____Its biggest contribution is its emphasis of usage,
_____as opposed to only social relations and behaviors.
_____M.C. develops this usage idea further with his conception of it as a productive consumption,
_____but this is still rather domain-general.
_____This is why I need to find another framework that either gives a more specific account of squatting and/or gastronomy,
_____or else provides a more complete body of theory.
_____M.C.'s framework is really an appendage,
_____or else a meta-framework that can filter my application of other frameworks
_____--or else an inter-framework,
_____mediating between other frameworks and evidence by crossing buses.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Godzilla vs. Mothra
Message:
The video medium and the print medium inherently convey different kinds of messages. There are plenty of ideas that are broad enough or simple enough that they can be communicated through both adequately, but there are many more whose contents are affected. I won't go into what these inherent differences are, mainly because I don't know where to begin. But I might return to this.
Audience:
Another difference is in the audience that either medium is more likely to reach. This is partly a result of the kinds of messages that are usually conveyed through each--so that an "academic" is traditionally more likely to be exposed to a message published in a book or scholarly journal than one posted in a video on YouTube, because the kind of messages that many "academics" would be interested in are usually printed. Of course there are some dramatic exceptions to this (depending on the field, for instance), but in any case the converse is almost certainly true, and a message disseminated via YouTube is more likely to be viewed by a lot of non-academics than is a scholarly article.
Time:
A video is also more likely to reach more people in general, in part because of its relationship with time; videos take less time, but--unlike a book, which can be read at different speeds, and picked up or put down at any time--they also demand a fixed amount of time to watch (it's pretty uncommon, I think, for someone to watch the first 30 seconds of a YouTube video and pause to come back to it later). Hence, for the typical internet flâneur/flâneuse, they relieve him/her of the "responsibility" of surfing/wandering; they demand attention--often forcefully--and for the duration of the video, the viewer is committed to a worthy (read: focused) undertaking.
Context:
Another important and related effect is created by the context or connotations of the chosen medium. To grossly over-generalize, a printed article is typically expected to give a well-researched, sober argument, with a thorough (lengthy) discussion, and should appeal primarily to the intellect. A video, on the other hand, is often informal and entertaining, brief, and emotionally affecting. Of course it's possible (and desirable) to reverse these tendencies. For instance, if we publish our research as a video, we will still need to be just as rigorous in our research as if we had printed it (though we may also put more effort into making our video entertaining).
Goals:
I would like my group's research project to reach a large number of people, and change both they way they think about squatting in particular, and how they apply the associated values to their own lives in general. The most effective way to affect people's values is with an emotional argument; the most effective way to affect people's ideas is with a rational one. To these ends, I think a video would be the most appropriate medium, because it is most capable of a mix of these two types of appeal.
Update:
Exchange:
Before video, the screen was, along with radio, the most linear of communication media. A message that was broadcast--either to theaters via film or to homes via television--was in some sense "injected" into the veins of culture. This still occurs today of course, but, since the emergence of video, the screen has also become a medium capable of multilateral exchange. Or maybe it was just since the rise of video on the internet; it's hard to imagine a lot of people actually communicating by mailing VHS tapes back and forth (unless you've seen Videodrome enough times).
Internet videos have become, like academic publications, media of discussion.
Well, I lost my train of thought. More later...
Update 5/14:
Goals 2: I might have been too hasty in this part. If we're doing social research as it is described by C. C. Ragin, then emotional appeal is not a concern, or at least shouldn't be more than a secondary goal. He does say that social researchers "use traditional text media almost exclusively." I understand that we're not being typical social researchers, but I'm not sure to what extent (beyond medium of presentation) what we're doing differs. Are we being innovative with respect to just form, or form and content, or formal content, or contentious form?
The video medium and the print medium inherently convey different kinds of messages. There are plenty of ideas that are broad enough or simple enough that they can be communicated through both adequately, but there are many more whose contents are affected. I won't go into what these inherent differences are, mainly because I don't know where to begin. But I might return to this.
Audience:
Another difference is in the audience that either medium is more likely to reach. This is partly a result of the kinds of messages that are usually conveyed through each--so that an "academic" is traditionally more likely to be exposed to a message published in a book or scholarly journal than one posted in a video on YouTube, because the kind of messages that many "academics" would be interested in are usually printed. Of course there are some dramatic exceptions to this (depending on the field, for instance), but in any case the converse is almost certainly true, and a message disseminated via YouTube is more likely to be viewed by a lot of non-academics than is a scholarly article.
Time:
A video is also more likely to reach more people in general, in part because of its relationship with time; videos take less time, but--unlike a book, which can be read at different speeds, and picked up or put down at any time--they also demand a fixed amount of time to watch (it's pretty uncommon, I think, for someone to watch the first 30 seconds of a YouTube video and pause to come back to it later). Hence, for the typical internet flâneur/flâneuse, they relieve him/her of the "responsibility" of surfing/wandering; they demand attention--often forcefully--and for the duration of the video, the viewer is committed to a worthy (read: focused) undertaking.
Context:
Another important and related effect is created by the context or connotations of the chosen medium. To grossly over-generalize, a printed article is typically expected to give a well-researched, sober argument, with a thorough (lengthy) discussion, and should appeal primarily to the intellect. A video, on the other hand, is often informal and entertaining, brief, and emotionally affecting. Of course it's possible (and desirable) to reverse these tendencies. For instance, if we publish our research as a video, we will still need to be just as rigorous in our research as if we had printed it (though we may also put more effort into making our video entertaining).
Goals:
I would like my group's research project to reach a large number of people, and change both they way they think about squatting in particular, and how they apply the associated values to their own lives in general. The most effective way to affect people's values is with an emotional argument; the most effective way to affect people's ideas is with a rational one. To these ends, I think a video would be the most appropriate medium, because it is most capable of a mix of these two types of appeal.
Update:
Exchange:
Before video, the screen was, along with radio, the most linear of communication media. A message that was broadcast--either to theaters via film or to homes via television--was in some sense "injected" into the veins of culture. This still occurs today of course, but, since the emergence of video, the screen has also become a medium capable of multilateral exchange. Or maybe it was just since the rise of video on the internet; it's hard to imagine a lot of people actually communicating by mailing VHS tapes back and forth (unless you've seen Videodrome enough times).
Internet videos have become, like academic publications, media of discussion.
Well, I lost my train of thought. More later...
Update 5/14:
Goals 2: I might have been too hasty in this part. If we're doing social research as it is described by C. C. Ragin, then emotional appeal is not a concern, or at least shouldn't be more than a secondary goal. He does say that social researchers "use traditional text media almost exclusively." I understand that we're not being typical social researchers, but I'm not sure to what extent (beyond medium of presentation) what we're doing differs. Are we being innovative with respect to just form, or form and content, or formal content, or contentious form?
Monday, May 5, 2008
Convoluted Living
Boredom, Eternal Return
How does one recognize boredom? There are at least two types of boredom: reflexive, and reflective. Reflexive boredom is unconscious--it is a restlessness that seeks occupation. In other words, it is a mind that seeks confinement in some external routine--an escape from itself. Reflective boredom requires an opportunity and a capacity to recognize that one is bored, to consider the reasons for this boredom. It is equivocal; in this state, one is never completely sure that one is actually bored (having nothing to do is no longer so easy: just recognizing boredom is an action that might reverse it). Through this ambiguity it severs its connections with external expectation (of an antidote), and the boredom becomes a mirror. Suddenly the environment that one inhabits stops being an other in a dialogue, and instead becomes a projection in a monologue: One turns one's house into one's own.
Squatting arises from this kind of boredom--the boredom that instigates a return to oneself, both of oneself, and of one's environment. In incorporating the environment, the squatter takes responsibility for it. And as one body, the squatter-and-his/her-environment no longer relies on a feeding tube, but generates his/her/its own food. Reflective boredom is a revolving doorway to self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
---
"The readable transforms itself into the memorable [...] the viewer reads the landscape of his childhood in the evening news [...] A different world (the reader's) slips into the author's place." De Certeau, Michel. 'The Practice of Everyday Life.' The Consumption Reader. 259-65.
"Rather than relying on use-by dates to tell them what food is edible and safe, freegans use their innate senses of touch, taste and smell. This attitude marks a conscious shift away from corporate control enabling the diver to reclaim a connection to their senses and to the natural world." Edwards, Ferne and Mercer, David (2007) 'Gleaning from Gluttony: an Australian youth subculture confronts the ethics of waste', Australian Geographer, 38:3, 279 - 96.
Squatting and dumpster diving (related through both ethics and culture) are turning inward, transitively and intransitively. In consuming non-consumable food (food that lacks a sponsor), one 'returns to one's senses.' Likewise, inhabiting an uninhabited, (conventionally) uninhabitable building is 'reinterpreting' it as habitable. All of this involves rereading an article as something more familiar (personal), more present, and more functional.
How does one recognize boredom? There are at least two types of boredom: reflexive, and reflective. Reflexive boredom is unconscious--it is a restlessness that seeks occupation. In other words, it is a mind that seeks confinement in some external routine--an escape from itself. Reflective boredom requires an opportunity and a capacity to recognize that one is bored, to consider the reasons for this boredom. It is equivocal; in this state, one is never completely sure that one is actually bored (having nothing to do is no longer so easy: just recognizing boredom is an action that might reverse it). Through this ambiguity it severs its connections with external expectation (of an antidote), and the boredom becomes a mirror. Suddenly the environment that one inhabits stops being an other in a dialogue, and instead becomes a projection in a monologue: One turns one's house into one's own.
Squatting arises from this kind of boredom--the boredom that instigates a return to oneself, both of oneself, and of one's environment. In incorporating the environment, the squatter takes responsibility for it. And as one body, the squatter-and-his/her-environment no longer relies on a feeding tube, but generates his/her/its own food. Reflective boredom is a revolving doorway to self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
---
"The readable transforms itself into the memorable [...] the viewer reads the landscape of his childhood in the evening news [...] A different world (the reader's) slips into the author's place." De Certeau, Michel. 'The Practice of Everyday Life.' The Consumption Reader. 259-65.
"Rather than relying on use-by dates to tell them what food is edible and safe, freegans use their innate senses of touch, taste and smell. This attitude marks a conscious shift away from corporate control enabling the diver to reclaim a connection to their senses and to the natural world." Edwards, Ferne and Mercer, David (2007) 'Gleaning from Gluttony: an Australian youth subculture confronts the ethics of waste', Australian Geographer, 38:3, 279 - 96.
Squatting and dumpster diving (related through both ethics and culture) are turning inward, transitively and intransitively. In consuming non-consumable food (food that lacks a sponsor), one 'returns to one's senses.' Likewise, inhabiting an uninhabited, (conventionally) uninhabitable building is 'reinterpreting' it as habitable. All of this involves rereading an article as something more familiar (personal), more present, and more functional.
Friday, May 2, 2008
noitcelfer (the best kind!)
Here's what I took away from the Wednesday presentations, focusing on research questions:
Media Group - Clint, Dylan, Julia
Notes:
Topic: the convergence of media and technology: New Media.
How do the Dutch interact with their news media sources, and how has this shaped the commercial structures of these sources?
Self-addressed problem: scope too broad. Could focus on specific media or organizations instead.
Also: there could be bias in the medium of survey administration.
Reactions:
This is a great topic, and is highly relevant both to the world and to the "modern spaces" focus of the class, and to the modern spaces where the world and the class overlap.
I agree that it's also too broad, but I don't think focusing on a particular organization or medium is the only solution, although it might make things more manageable in any case.
In particular, you could be more specific about what you mean by "interact" and what you mean by news source. Interact presupposes an interaction, which, depending on your definition of news source, might take place to various degrees.
For instance, say your news source is the radio. Well, if by radio I mean the radio program, then I might just be a passive listener, my only action being to decide when to listen (unless you define the listener purely as one who listens, and then I can't even decide that). If, on the other hand, I'm indicating the radio itself, then I'm much more active, since I can turn it on and off, and change stations, etc.
I think that both of these things--the radio and the radio waves--could be seen as mediating the information that passes through them. But maybe that's what you're getting at.
Tourists & Natives Group - Flannery, Mimi
Notes:
How do natives and tourists differ within the tourism industry, and how do natives and tourists differ among themselves?
With respect to: accents, conceptions of Amsterdam...
Reactions:
This topic also has a lot of potential, and it's cool that you have two sort of "opposite but possibly similar in unexpected ways or maybe entirely different but there's always the possibility of being both here and there" categories that you can divide between the two of you.
As Clifford mentioned, you might want to get specific about what you'll include in the "tourism industry" category, because it could be very huge.
I'm also still unsure about the parameters you're using for differences between tourists and natives (and also, as someone said, you should make sure you define "tourist" and "native," because there are clearly many subcategories of each). Your research question might do well to incorporate this information explicitly.
Architecture Group - Jenny, Kelsey
Notes:
Jenny: How do the content & layout of shopping centers reflect shoppers' personalities, culture, etc.? How are shopping centers "used" by Amsterdam (with respect to culture)?
Kelsey: Interaction between people and spaces. Does the design of a structure influence the individuals who visit it?
Reactions:
Hmm...influence who visits it, or influence the people who are already visiting it in some other way? It's probably just my notes that are ambiguous. Sorry about that. I'm actually really interested in this idea! And when a space influences people, does it influence the way that they create or re-work spaces further, so once a building or district is built, you could say it takes some responsibility for its own future? Maybe that's a stretch...
I think these questions, again, are very broad (I'm sure you know this), and your focuses could benefit from some condensation. Particular terms could be "personalities" and of course "culture," and "influence." You might even approach your questions from the opposite direction: ask something that's too specific, and then draw more general evidence into it, and more general conclusions from it.
Brands & Advertising Group - Eddy, Haylee, Katherine
Notes:
How do aspects of branding in Amsterdam reflect differences in population (w/r/t religion, class, gender; businesses defining their own culture; Amsterdam's history as an economic center)?
Eddy: "Store tourism": How do Amsterdam stores attract their customers (especially novelty stores)? w/r/t atmosphere.
Haylee: "Advertising; portrayal of women": How does this reflect Dutch culture?
Katherine: "Dutch fashion; gender roles": How does Amsterdam couture/fashion communicate, project, and reflect the image w/r/t gender, class, and social group?
Reactions:
Eddy, I think your question is pretty clear, and relatively simple to address. It should be really interesting to find connections between stores and subcultures in Amsterdam, and how these influence each other, but I think you could address this more explicitly in your question, because just reading it, I'm worried that this could become primarily a discussion of marketing techniques.
Haylee, this looks like a fun topic to pursue. You can do a lot with images of course. I think, as has been suggested to numerous people and groups, that a comparison to advertising to another group, or advertising to women somewhere else, could be very useful. Also, I might be careful about the generality of your question; are you really looking to draw conclusions about Dutch culture in its entirety?
Katherine, I'm very interested in how you'll go about connecting fashion to these societal concepts. Again, a comparison could be helpful. Other than that, it seems like a pretty sound research question. Though I'm interested in what you mean by "project" in this context--project onto what?
Media Group - Clint, Dylan, Julia
Notes:
Topic: the convergence of media and technology: New Media.
How do the Dutch interact with their news media sources, and how has this shaped the commercial structures of these sources?
Self-addressed problem: scope too broad. Could focus on specific media or organizations instead.
Also: there could be bias in the medium of survey administration.
Reactions:
This is a great topic, and is highly relevant both to the world and to the "modern spaces" focus of the class, and to the modern spaces where the world and the class overlap.
I agree that it's also too broad, but I don't think focusing on a particular organization or medium is the only solution, although it might make things more manageable in any case.
In particular, you could be more specific about what you mean by "interact" and what you mean by news source. Interact presupposes an interaction, which, depending on your definition of news source, might take place to various degrees.
For instance, say your news source is the radio. Well, if by radio I mean the radio program, then I might just be a passive listener, my only action being to decide when to listen (unless you define the listener purely as one who listens, and then I can't even decide that). If, on the other hand, I'm indicating the radio itself, then I'm much more active, since I can turn it on and off, and change stations, etc.
I think that both of these things--the radio and the radio waves--could be seen as mediating the information that passes through them. But maybe that's what you're getting at.
Tourists & Natives Group - Flannery, Mimi
Notes:
How do natives and tourists differ within the tourism industry, and how do natives and tourists differ among themselves?
With respect to: accents, conceptions of Amsterdam...
Reactions:
This topic also has a lot of potential, and it's cool that you have two sort of "opposite but possibly similar in unexpected ways or maybe entirely different but there's always the possibility of being both here and there" categories that you can divide between the two of you.
As Clifford mentioned, you might want to get specific about what you'll include in the "tourism industry" category, because it could be very huge.
I'm also still unsure about the parameters you're using for differences between tourists and natives (and also, as someone said, you should make sure you define "tourist" and "native," because there are clearly many subcategories of each). Your research question might do well to incorporate this information explicitly.
Architecture Group - Jenny, Kelsey
Notes:
Jenny: How do the content & layout of shopping centers reflect shoppers' personalities, culture, etc.? How are shopping centers "used" by Amsterdam (with respect to culture)?
Kelsey: Interaction between people and spaces. Does the design of a structure influence the individuals who visit it?
Reactions:
Hmm...influence who visits it, or influence the people who are already visiting it in some other way? It's probably just my notes that are ambiguous. Sorry about that. I'm actually really interested in this idea! And when a space influences people, does it influence the way that they create or re-work spaces further, so once a building or district is built, you could say it takes some responsibility for its own future? Maybe that's a stretch...
I think these questions, again, are very broad (I'm sure you know this), and your focuses could benefit from some condensation. Particular terms could be "personalities" and of course "culture," and "influence." You might even approach your questions from the opposite direction: ask something that's too specific, and then draw more general evidence into it, and more general conclusions from it.
Brands & Advertising Group - Eddy, Haylee, Katherine
Notes:
How do aspects of branding in Amsterdam reflect differences in population (w/r/t religion, class, gender; businesses defining their own culture; Amsterdam's history as an economic center)?
Eddy: "Store tourism": How do Amsterdam stores attract their customers (especially novelty stores)? w/r/t atmosphere.
Haylee: "Advertising; portrayal of women": How does this reflect Dutch culture?
Katherine: "Dutch fashion; gender roles": How does Amsterdam couture/fashion communicate, project, and reflect the image w/r/t gender, class, and social group?
Reactions:
Eddy, I think your question is pretty clear, and relatively simple to address. It should be really interesting to find connections between stores and subcultures in Amsterdam, and how these influence each other, but I think you could address this more explicitly in your question, because just reading it, I'm worried that this could become primarily a discussion of marketing techniques.
Haylee, this looks like a fun topic to pursue. You can do a lot with images of course. I think, as has been suggested to numerous people and groups, that a comparison to advertising to another group, or advertising to women somewhere else, could be very useful. Also, I might be careful about the generality of your question; are you really looking to draw conclusions about Dutch culture in its entirety?
Katherine, I'm very interested in how you'll go about connecting fashion to these societal concepts. Again, a comparison could be helpful. Other than that, it seems like a pretty sound research question. Though I'm interested in what you mean by "project" in this context--project onto what?
Monday, April 28, 2008
[Presentation[Summary[and[other(things)]]]]
So just to summarize my ideas (feedback would be more than welcome!),
My overarching question would be "In what ways does squatting make Amsterdam more habitable?" And of course habitable could mean a lot of things in a lot of contexts. My particular context is gastronomy, especially looking at it through the lens of Michel de Certeau's concept of consumption as a form of production, in the same way that reading is a form of writing (this idea comes from my reading of the essay "The Practice of Everyday Life" in the anthology The Consumption Reader).
Whereas the conventional conception of a consumer is as one who simply "consumes" what is made available by the "established order"--a role devoid of power--de Certeau's consumer practices production by consuming things in particular ways, and thereby turning things into other things. And whereas one conventional view of squatting culture is that it is "anti-consumerist," by this other concept of the consumer, squatters are actually empowered by their consumption.
That is not to confuse this kind of consumption with the act of eating, although they're related. The empowering consumption of the squatting movement is in how it consumes vacant buildings, and turns them into habitable places. What I want to look at are the ways in which practices around food (growing, buying, scavenging, cooking, dining, etc.) serve this "habitable-ization."
This is all subject to drastic change. I'm thinking now that I might need to either make gastronomy more central to my question (rather than being just one focus, or one example), or else change my topic to be more inclusive of other forms of habitable-ization.
My overarching question would be "In what ways does squatting make Amsterdam more habitable?" And of course habitable could mean a lot of things in a lot of contexts. My particular context is gastronomy, especially looking at it through the lens of Michel de Certeau's concept of consumption as a form of production, in the same way that reading is a form of writing (this idea comes from my reading of the essay "The Practice of Everyday Life" in the anthology The Consumption Reader).
Whereas the conventional conception of a consumer is as one who simply "consumes" what is made available by the "established order"--a role devoid of power--de Certeau's consumer practices production by consuming things in particular ways, and thereby turning things into other things. And whereas one conventional view of squatting culture is that it is "anti-consumerist," by this other concept of the consumer, squatters are actually empowered by their consumption.
That is not to confuse this kind of consumption with the act of eating, although they're related. The empowering consumption of the squatting movement is in how it consumes vacant buildings, and turns them into habitable places. What I want to look at are the ways in which practices around food (growing, buying, scavenging, cooking, dining, etc.) serve this "habitable-ization."
This is all subject to drastic change. I'm thinking now that I might need to either make gastronomy more central to my question (rather than being just one focus, or one example), or else change my topic to be more inclusive of other forms of habitable-ization.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Respect, Beneficence, and Justice for Persons
From that Belmont Report:
"The Hippocratic maxim 'do no harm' has long been a fundamental principle of medical ethics. Claude Bernard extended it to the realm of research, saying that one should not injure one person regardless of the benefits that might come to others."
The particulars are left to the physicians' (or researchers') "best judgments." But I think this outlines a pretty big dilemma: utilitarianism vs. "tyranny of the majority" (or, in a related problem, tyranny of the lab scientists (has anyone reading this seen Muppets From Space?)) would be one way of characterizing it. The question that it leads to for me is this: can suffering be quantified?
I don't know if this is going to be relevant for my research (I hope not).
The main issue is probably going to be one of privacy.
There seems to be a correlation between vegetarianism (let's classify veganism as a type of vegetarianism), organic food, and squatting. One source here, another here. I would speculate that this has something to do with squatting emphasizing the values of self-reliance and sustainability. Obviously, this is inconclusive, but as Jessica pointed out in response to my post Wednesday last week, the process of formulating a research question isn't simply linear: sometimes it goes quote backwards end quote. So, from this "intended result," I'll ask (VERY preliminarily):
Is there a correlation between vegetarianism, organic agriculture, and urban agriculture, [...] and squatting culture (which has been pretty well established (see paper) as existing), and if so, why? That is, is it more a manifestation of values or ideals, or is it mainly pragmatic?
I'm waiting for a bunch of books to arrive at the library which should help me clarify what I mean by culture. The definition of organic can really vary from place to place, but in this case I really mean food production that bypasses all industrial processes (now define industrial...). My definition of urban agriculture would be food that is grown within the city on a small scale (so what is "small"?).
My research methods will probably include a lot of participation and informal observation of squats and their food chains; especially how food is integrated into everyday life.
Privacy could become an issue if I want to refer to people I observe or quote them. In this case I'll have to ensure their anonymity, which may involve a cumbersome amount of regulation. We'll see...more thoughts on this to come.
"The Hippocratic maxim 'do no harm' has long been a fundamental principle of medical ethics. Claude Bernard extended it to the realm of research, saying that one should not injure one person regardless of the benefits that might come to others."
The particulars are left to the physicians' (or researchers') "best judgments." But I think this outlines a pretty big dilemma: utilitarianism vs. "tyranny of the majority" (or, in a related problem, tyranny of the lab scientists (has anyone reading this seen Muppets From Space?)) would be one way of characterizing it. The question that it leads to for me is this: can suffering be quantified?
I don't know if this is going to be relevant for my research (I hope not).
The main issue is probably going to be one of privacy.
There seems to be a correlation between vegetarianism (let's classify veganism as a type of vegetarianism), organic food, and squatting. One source here, another here. I would speculate that this has something to do with squatting emphasizing the values of self-reliance and sustainability. Obviously, this is inconclusive, but as Jessica pointed out in response to my post Wednesday last week, the process of formulating a research question isn't simply linear: sometimes it goes quote backwards end quote. So, from this "intended result," I'll ask (VERY preliminarily):
Is there a correlation between vegetarianism, organic agriculture, and urban agriculture, [...] and squatting culture (which has been pretty well established (see paper) as existing), and if so, why? That is, is it more a manifestation of values or ideals, or is it mainly pragmatic?
I'm waiting for a bunch of books to arrive at the library which should help me clarify what I mean by culture. The definition of organic can really vary from place to place, but in this case I really mean food production that bypasses all industrial processes (now define industrial...). My definition of urban agriculture would be food that is grown within the city on a small scale (so what is "small"?).
My research methods will probably include a lot of participation and informal observation of squats and their food chains; especially how food is integrated into everyday life.
Privacy could become an issue if I want to refer to people I observe or quote them. In this case I'll have to ensure their anonymity, which may involve a cumbersome amount of regulation. We'll see...more thoughts on this to come.
Monday, April 21, 2008
...containers
The general topic that Cassie, Fiona, and I are working with at present is something like "how is anti-consumerism (we still have to define this) a cultural (we could probably afford to clarify this as well) movement (why the hell not...)?" We're each planning to pursue different foci within this broad shape. My focus will probably have something to do with food.
This picture (credit to Joel Heller) was taken at a table at De Peper, an organic, vegan restaurant at overtoom 301, "a legalised squat with a large performance/rehearsal space, cinema, and gallery with an inspired programme of [sub]cultural activities," according to the De Peper website. What makes this squat a gathering point for all of these cultural (and culinary) activities? I'm going to go out on a limb (following a prudent period of fasting, of course) and try to connect this to de Certeau, by suggesting that this squatting/DIY culture is related to an attempt to restore "habitable" spaces and create new "narratives." That is, it tries to resist enumeration (or regular arrangement) and, you know, to make places more "believable."
<- images credit to Annie Wu
Our synecdoche is the building housing De Peper and this cinema/performance space/gallery; since it collects all of these things, it is a synecdoche for whatever movement might be characterized by them.
This picture (credit to Joel Heller) was taken at a table at De Peper, an organic, vegan restaurant at overtoom 301, "a legalised squat with a large performance/rehearsal space, cinema, and gallery with an inspired programme of [sub]cultural activities," according to the De Peper website. What makes this squat a gathering point for all of these cultural (and culinary) activities? I'm going to go out on a limb (following a prudent period of fasting, of course) and try to connect this to de Certeau, by suggesting that this squatting/DIY culture is related to an attempt to restore "habitable" spaces and create new "narratives." That is, it tries to resist enumeration (or regular arrangement) and, you know, to make places more "believable."
<- images credit to Annie Wu
Our synecdoche is the building housing De Peper and this cinema/performance space/gallery; since it collects all of these things, it is a synecdoche for whatever movement might be characterized by them.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Research Polynomial
In line with the thoughts at the end of my last post, I’ve kept pursuing the topic of food (production, distribution, and consumption). The source of production seems like a logical place to start—and it makes sense to begin with the Netherlands’ official account, provided by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Apparently,
“The Netherlands is one of the world’s three largest exporters of agricultural produce.”
But what really surprises me is this:
“The agricultural sector’s productivity has grown enormously in the past few decades. This is largely due to high-quality training, first-class research and an effective system of disseminating practical advice to farmers. But growth is no longer a priority. The priorities now are the environment, animal welfare and the quality of produce.” [my italics]
Could they really be that sane? The site also says that “thirty per cent of Dutch consumers now regularly buy organic produce.” I wonder which thirty percent this is, and what is meant by “regularly.” There seems to be a conflict in me between a cynicism about all government and business, and an idealization of Western Europe. So while I can't believe that a sector of the market would responsibly self-regulate like that, I also want to believe that such a thing is possible, if only in Europe. It's challenging to balance these two prejudices and see things as they really are (or might be, depending on your perspective).
Anyway, I thought that this government site would be a good resource for primary information, but in a way it seems to be more like a subjective representation than a source of actual “data.” Although there is at least one page with Official Figures (bicycle ownership is 81.4 percent!). And here’s an even better source.
Looking at Amsterdam in particular, I found A Seed Europe, which isn't really primary material in and of itself (unless I'm studying how information about food is organized and disseminated), but does seem like a great resource for finding food in the city, and probably has some links to more direct sources of information.
Here's a list of supermarkets.
And, hooray, a paper about urban agriculture (again, not a primary source, but interesting reading).
I'm starting to realize that "food" is a big category. I'm not sure how to narrow it down, though--I seem to have a tendency to choose a desired outcome and then "reverse-engineer" a research question from that. If I keep looking for various information sources, I'm sure I'll eventually come up with something that works, but I think a better way to arrive at a non-leading question would be to get some influence from elsewhere. Several other people have mentioned topics that I also think are really interesting, so I wonder if I might adopt someone else's subject, and then maybe use "food" as a focus within that.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Blog Assignment 4: Research THING
Because of the rain on Sunday, we (Haylee, Ruben, and I) decided to follow the rest of Seattle (synecdoche!) into the cafes. Our meeting point (and reference point) was Cafe Solstice on University and 41st. Because it was the first cafe that we visited, however, and because we had not yet determined what our research questions would be, it was only after we visited another cafe that we began to notice many factors that are common to these settings, and many telling ways in which they are different.
We implicitly decided that the most effective and realistic position to adopt with respect to observation in the cafes would be as participants, rather than outsiders. Zeisel makes the distinction between marginal and full participants, but it was difficult to delineate this difference in the contexts of these particular cafes, since the activity was always more or less evenly distributed, and being a “normal” participant did not mean being in the center. Insofar as there was no center, then, we could say that we, along with everyone else in the cafes, were marginal participants.
Another reason for participating was that it gave us immediate information about the kinds of forces exerted by the characteristics of each cafe environment, which were felt by other participants. The second cafe that we visited was the Star Life on 50th and University. One of the first things that we noticed about it was the almost oppressive atmosphere of quiet. The music was barely audible, and the few conversations that were going on were always in hushed voices. In this setting, much of our attention was focused on minimizing our intrusiveness. Any words spoken above a certain loudness level provoked glares from nearby participants, which temporarily undermined our roles as marginal participants by making us a local center of attention.
This problem suggested a possible path of inquiry: what factors contributed to the sense of forced quiet in the Star Life, as opposed to the boisterousness of Cafe Solstice? It would be difficult to draw conclusions about causality based on merely two sources of data, so we visited Trabant, another cafe in the area (on 45th and University). Three cafes is obviously still insufficient for any kind of quantity-based analysis, but it allowed us to see a few more important elements of a cafe setting that we might have overlooked or taken for granted had we observed only one or two. In any case, a comparison of multiple sites is really only one relevant type of analysis. Lynch and Rivkin, for instance, tabulate differences between many participants in one large setting. And even without any large quantity of data, interesting ideas can be suggested on the basis of individual observations.
The problem of how environmental factors influenced behavior in these cafes suggests the converse question of how much of the participants independently and consciously or unconsciously influenced the environment. For example, did the low volume of music in the Star Life enforce a level of quiet in the participants, and also attract participants who were disposed to being quiet, or did the participants cause the owner to turn down the music by being quiet in the first place? Or could both be true? This leads to a more general statement of the problem: To what extent is a cafe a public space, and to what extent is it a private space? That is, a cafe is often used as a gathering point, and a place for free interaction and discussion, as well as for solitary activities. In many ways it resembles a park, for instance. Yet, legally, a cafe is private. How does this fact make a cafe different from a park? And, finally, could the ambiguous span between public and private that exists in a cafe allow private interests or individuals to exert influence over supposedly public activities without the participants’ awareness of this influence? I think this last would be the most interesting research question.
In line with Lynch and Rivkin, a continuation of this study might involve more direct inquiry, for instance by asking participants in the cafes why they had chosen their particular cafe (whether they had an activity in mind), or whether they had chosen their activity as a result of the cafe itself. Another type of observation that would be central to this research would be a collection of physical traces and behaviors, as per Zeisel, and this is similar to our original mode of observation. Much of our observation had the goal of impartially collecting details about the physical settings of the cafes, which could then be compared at our leisure in search of correlations. This included drawing maps of the Star Life and Trabant, as well as recording notable environmental attributes (There is of course some partiality in the details we chose to transcribe, and much of this bias can be inferred from our notes below; for example, our record of ratio of laptops to participants clearly shows that we thought laptops might be an important factor). An extension of this type of observation would pay much more attention behavior, since most of what we recorded had to do with the environment itself. Finally, we used photographs as another way of recording attributes of the environment. Photos and maps (both used by Zeisel) complement each other well, because photos are more effective at recording details, whereas maps are more effective for the noticing effects of the overall physical space.
Below are the “floor plans,” photos, and the list of observations. I drew the maps, Haylee was the photographer, and the notes should be attributed to Ruben.
Star Life
Hours: Sun-Mon, 9-11; Tues, closed; Wed-Sat, 9-10:30
• One window
• Classical music (followed by non-classical, but still instrumental music)
• Small
• Barista not visible from many parts of the café
• Medium lighting
• Looks like a house
• Pastel colored walled
• Low ceilings
• Lack of view of the outside
• Entrance is not right near the street
• Quiet
• Max of 2 people per table observed
• Mismatched ‘potpourri’ of furniture
• 4 computers; 19 people
Trabant
Hours: Mon-Fri, 6:30-midnight; Sat-Sun, 9-midnight
• Very open; two-story
• More uniform, thematic
o Industrial theme
--------• dark colors: black tables and chairs, brown and blue walls
--------• lot of metal
--------• urban photos on the wall
--------• “unfinished” floors on the second floor; an apparently intentional “incomplete” room
--------• Piping on the outside of the wall
• Barely audible music (w/ lyrics)
• Lot of space between tables; like islands
• Dimmer lighting
• Lots of large windows
• Max of 4 people per table observed
• Acoustics – louder kitchen whose noise is even more amplified by the openness
• Bar seating
• High ceilings with large hanging lights
• 12 computers; 29 people
As far as Amsterdam goes, I don't intend to continue studying cafes (or coffeehouses, for that matter). But that's not to say that this exercise wasn't helpful in this regard, since it did give me an opportunity to think about doing actual research actually, as opposed to thinking about doing abstract research abstractly. I'm not ready to honestly say, conclusively, what my primary research interest is, but my working response is "food." Specifically, I'm interested in how food is produced, distributed, obtained, consumed, and wasted, and the concomitant ethical and environmental issues. I would also like to believe that this interest isn't entirely due to my reading The Omnivore's Dilemma earlier this year. Anyway, where the interest came from isn't the most important thing.
One possibility for research on this subject would be to interview people about where they get their food, how much they spend, what they typically eat, but this would probably have some misleading results, especially since everyday activities tend to form into habits, which become implicit parts of behavior, and are not necessarily available to conscious probing. One way around this might be through more direct observation. For instance, I could go to open markets, supermarkets, food stands, and other calorie distribution points, and record prices (as they differ with respect to food content, amount processed, and location), advertising methods, etc., and what people are buying, what they are not buying, how much they are buying...
Another approach would be to contact expert and/or government and/or corporate sources about distribution and transportation, and policies about such things as pesticides, genetic modification, animal feed and farm practices, etc. (and I could also ask people for their opinions on all of these things).
Looking at maps would be another idea, since this could give information about how people are expected (by the city) to obtain food, in the number and types of markets in neighborhoods, for instance.
I could also ask how people obtain information about their food. What do packages say? How helpful and informative are vendors and market employees?
Whatever my research plans are, I have a feeling that what will give me the best lead about how to find relevant information will be living in Amsterdam and buying food myself. I might be able to better afford the time necessary to do this if I arrive early.
Or I could apply the Lynch-Rivkin method and follow consenting shoppers, recording their observations and thoughts about their shopping experience (or their experience with whatever alternative food-obtaining means they might employ). Finally, back to Zeisel, traces: garbage.
Some other topics that came up (that I'm interested in), which might be approached totally separately, or might be related back to food, are environmental issues and environmentalism in Amsterdam, homelessness (where do homeless people get their food?), and squatting (similar question).
One of the problems with trying to devise a question about Amsterdam without actually being or having been there is that I can't help but picture it as an amalgamation of places where I have been, so my questions and research method ideas are going to reflect that, and will probably be more relevant to Seattle than to Amsterdam. Hopefully, this next assignment will help me get a clearer picture of what Amsterdam is really like, and then I can start asking better questions, and thinking of other ways to try to answer them.
We implicitly decided that the most effective and realistic position to adopt with respect to observation in the cafes would be as participants, rather than outsiders. Zeisel makes the distinction between marginal and full participants, but it was difficult to delineate this difference in the contexts of these particular cafes, since the activity was always more or less evenly distributed, and being a “normal” participant did not mean being in the center. Insofar as there was no center, then, we could say that we, along with everyone else in the cafes, were marginal participants.
Another reason for participating was that it gave us immediate information about the kinds of forces exerted by the characteristics of each cafe environment, which were felt by other participants. The second cafe that we visited was the Star Life on 50th and University. One of the first things that we noticed about it was the almost oppressive atmosphere of quiet. The music was barely audible, and the few conversations that were going on were always in hushed voices. In this setting, much of our attention was focused on minimizing our intrusiveness. Any words spoken above a certain loudness level provoked glares from nearby participants, which temporarily undermined our roles as marginal participants by making us a local center of attention.
This problem suggested a possible path of inquiry: what factors contributed to the sense of forced quiet in the Star Life, as opposed to the boisterousness of Cafe Solstice? It would be difficult to draw conclusions about causality based on merely two sources of data, so we visited Trabant, another cafe in the area (on 45th and University). Three cafes is obviously still insufficient for any kind of quantity-based analysis, but it allowed us to see a few more important elements of a cafe setting that we might have overlooked or taken for granted had we observed only one or two. In any case, a comparison of multiple sites is really only one relevant type of analysis. Lynch and Rivkin, for instance, tabulate differences between many participants in one large setting. And even without any large quantity of data, interesting ideas can be suggested on the basis of individual observations.
The problem of how environmental factors influenced behavior in these cafes suggests the converse question of how much of the participants independently and consciously or unconsciously influenced the environment. For example, did the low volume of music in the Star Life enforce a level of quiet in the participants, and also attract participants who were disposed to being quiet, or did the participants cause the owner to turn down the music by being quiet in the first place? Or could both be true? This leads to a more general statement of the problem: To what extent is a cafe a public space, and to what extent is it a private space? That is, a cafe is often used as a gathering point, and a place for free interaction and discussion, as well as for solitary activities. In many ways it resembles a park, for instance. Yet, legally, a cafe is private. How does this fact make a cafe different from a park? And, finally, could the ambiguous span between public and private that exists in a cafe allow private interests or individuals to exert influence over supposedly public activities without the participants’ awareness of this influence? I think this last would be the most interesting research question.
In line with Lynch and Rivkin, a continuation of this study might involve more direct inquiry, for instance by asking participants in the cafes why they had chosen their particular cafe (whether they had an activity in mind), or whether they had chosen their activity as a result of the cafe itself. Another type of observation that would be central to this research would be a collection of physical traces and behaviors, as per Zeisel, and this is similar to our original mode of observation. Much of our observation had the goal of impartially collecting details about the physical settings of the cafes, which could then be compared at our leisure in search of correlations. This included drawing maps of the Star Life and Trabant, as well as recording notable environmental attributes (There is of course some partiality in the details we chose to transcribe, and much of this bias can be inferred from our notes below; for example, our record of ratio of laptops to participants clearly shows that we thought laptops might be an important factor). An extension of this type of observation would pay much more attention behavior, since most of what we recorded had to do with the environment itself. Finally, we used photographs as another way of recording attributes of the environment. Photos and maps (both used by Zeisel) complement each other well, because photos are more effective at recording details, whereas maps are more effective for the noticing effects of the overall physical space.
Below are the “floor plans,” photos, and the list of observations. I drew the maps, Haylee was the photographer, and the notes should be attributed to Ruben.
Star Life
Hours: Sun-Mon, 9-11; Tues, closed; Wed-Sat, 9-10:30
• One window
• Classical music (followed by non-classical, but still instrumental music)
• Small
• Barista not visible from many parts of the café
• Medium lighting
• Looks like a house
• Pastel colored walled
• Low ceilings
• Lack of view of the outside
• Entrance is not right near the street
• Quiet
• Max of 2 people per table observed
• Mismatched ‘potpourri’ of furniture
• 4 computers; 19 people
Trabant
Hours: Mon-Fri, 6:30-midnight; Sat-Sun, 9-midnight
• Very open; two-story
• More uniform, thematic
o Industrial theme
--------• dark colors: black tables and chairs, brown and blue walls
--------• lot of metal
--------• urban photos on the wall
--------• “unfinished” floors on the second floor; an apparently intentional “incomplete” room
--------• Piping on the outside of the wall
• Barely audible music (w/ lyrics)
• Lot of space between tables; like islands
• Dimmer lighting
• Lots of large windows
• Max of 4 people per table observed
• Acoustics – louder kitchen whose noise is even more amplified by the openness
• Bar seating
• High ceilings with large hanging lights
• 12 computers; 29 people
As far as Amsterdam goes, I don't intend to continue studying cafes (or coffeehouses, for that matter). But that's not to say that this exercise wasn't helpful in this regard, since it did give me an opportunity to think about doing actual research actually, as opposed to thinking about doing abstract research abstractly. I'm not ready to honestly say, conclusively, what my primary research interest is, but my working response is "food." Specifically, I'm interested in how food is produced, distributed, obtained, consumed, and wasted, and the concomitant ethical and environmental issues. I would also like to believe that this interest isn't entirely due to my reading The Omnivore's Dilemma earlier this year. Anyway, where the interest came from isn't the most important thing.
One possibility for research on this subject would be to interview people about where they get their food, how much they spend, what they typically eat, but this would probably have some misleading results, especially since everyday activities tend to form into habits, which become implicit parts of behavior, and are not necessarily available to conscious probing. One way around this might be through more direct observation. For instance, I could go to open markets, supermarkets, food stands, and other calorie distribution points, and record prices (as they differ with respect to food content, amount processed, and location), advertising methods, etc., and what people are buying, what they are not buying, how much they are buying...
Another approach would be to contact expert and/or government and/or corporate sources about distribution and transportation, and policies about such things as pesticides, genetic modification, animal feed and farm practices, etc. (and I could also ask people for their opinions on all of these things).
Looking at maps would be another idea, since this could give information about how people are expected (by the city) to obtain food, in the number and types of markets in neighborhoods, for instance.
I could also ask how people obtain information about their food. What do packages say? How helpful and informative are vendors and market employees?
Whatever my research plans are, I have a feeling that what will give me the best lead about how to find relevant information will be living in Amsterdam and buying food myself. I might be able to better afford the time necessary to do this if I arrive early.
Or I could apply the Lynch-Rivkin method and follow consenting shoppers, recording their observations and thoughts about their shopping experience (or their experience with whatever alternative food-obtaining means they might employ). Finally, back to Zeisel, traces: garbage.
Some other topics that came up (that I'm interested in), which might be approached totally separately, or might be related back to food, are environmental issues and environmentalism in Amsterdam, homelessness (where do homeless people get their food?), and squatting (similar question).
One of the problems with trying to devise a question about Amsterdam without actually being or having been there is that I can't help but picture it as an amalgamation of places where I have been, so my questions and research method ideas are going to reflect that, and will probably be more relevant to Seattle than to Amsterdam. Hopefully, this next assignment will help me get a clearer picture of what Amsterdam is really like, and then I can start asking better questions, and thinking of other ways to try to answer them.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Submission, Fitna, and some Parentheses
Fitna and Submission are both films that appeal to emotion more than reason, but they do so with different emphases, and even different intentions.
Submission, as the more personal of the two, appeals more to the compassion of individuals. As a device for drawing attention to a particular issue, and generating sympathy for a particular understanding of that issue, it is effective. It doesn’t help me form an educated opinion on the issue, but that’s not its purpose.
Fitna has a wider scope, portraying Islam not just as a source of internal oppression, but as one of global violence, intolerance, and totalitarianism. Yet its facts are extremely sparse, and most of its scenes are devoid of context, so that what it amounts to is a series of antagonizing images. The first five sixths of the film has no rational argument, but in going way beyond the personal narrative of Submission, its suggestion is much stronger. Projected onto the pages of a Quran, the scenes, though they have already taken place, have the strange appearance of a dystopian prophecy—and of course they are meant to. But in order to be more than an emotional suggestion, Fitna needs to cite sources. Again, this isn’t really the point, but it does mean that the film should fail to convince many who are not already sympathetic; its main effect should be to increase the fervor of those who are.
Fitna, along with Afshin Ellian (MIA, p. 25), claim that Islam is a problem because it advocates intolerance and violence where Western laws require tolerance and freedom of expression, and Islam trumps Western law for many who believe in it. Muslims should not be allowed to live in Western Europe unless they recognize the same laws as other citizens. This is a compelling argument—that Islam and Law are mutually exclusive—but the focus is misguided. The laws have been rejected, revised, and have evolved continually over the centuries. Therefore, if an ideology is in conflict with them, it does not immediately make the ideology problematic. The Enlightenment, for instance, was one such conflicting ideology.
Is there a difference between the Enlightenment and Islam? Or does the legitimacy of one simply come from its popularity? Obviously, I don’t believe that the two are equal, but to say that one is better than the other means that I must believe in some universal set of values against which I can judge them. I know I’m not supposed to use this kind of disclaimer, but I want to acknowledge before I go back to taking my ideological bias for granted that I believe that at a low enough level it’s impossible to make a rational argument for one universal belief over another. That is, any “inherent” benefits that Enlightenment philosophy has over fundamentalist Islam can only be expressed in self-referential terms, and vice versa (unless you go to a really low level, like atoms and photons, in which case value is sort of hard to assign at all). At some point, then, the choice is a matter of preference—and often a pragmatic one. Having said that, I will assert that tolerance is better than intolerance, and peace is better than violence, and, therefore, the laws that uphold these values should take precedence over Islam or any other (possibly conflicting) religion.
But my point is that this is really a conflict of universal ideologies, not a conflict between religion and law. Actually, Buruma makes a similar argument, that the conflict “is not a straightforward clash between culture and universalism, but between two different versions of the universal, one radically secular, the other radically religious” (p. 32). This differentiation between culture and ideology is critical, because it is the only way to avoid the clash becoming a racist conflict. That is, if cultural tolerance is going to work in the face of this ideological confrontation (however much it continues to manifest itself in individuals), Enlightenment ideas must be thoroughly divorced from (and given preeminence over) the specificities of Western cultures, just as the Western conception of fundamentalist Islam must be separated from the Western view of the specificities of Muslim culture. How much of this separation will actually occur I don’t know, but I guess we could always take a survey.
Submission, as the more personal of the two, appeals more to the compassion of individuals. As a device for drawing attention to a particular issue, and generating sympathy for a particular understanding of that issue, it is effective. It doesn’t help me form an educated opinion on the issue, but that’s not its purpose.
Fitna has a wider scope, portraying Islam not just as a source of internal oppression, but as one of global violence, intolerance, and totalitarianism. Yet its facts are extremely sparse, and most of its scenes are devoid of context, so that what it amounts to is a series of antagonizing images. The first five sixths of the film has no rational argument, but in going way beyond the personal narrative of Submission, its suggestion is much stronger. Projected onto the pages of a Quran, the scenes, though they have already taken place, have the strange appearance of a dystopian prophecy—and of course they are meant to. But in order to be more than an emotional suggestion, Fitna needs to cite sources. Again, this isn’t really the point, but it does mean that the film should fail to convince many who are not already sympathetic; its main effect should be to increase the fervor of those who are.
Fitna, along with Afshin Ellian (MIA, p. 25), claim that Islam is a problem because it advocates intolerance and violence where Western laws require tolerance and freedom of expression, and Islam trumps Western law for many who believe in it. Muslims should not be allowed to live in Western Europe unless they recognize the same laws as other citizens. This is a compelling argument—that Islam and Law are mutually exclusive—but the focus is misguided. The laws have been rejected, revised, and have evolved continually over the centuries. Therefore, if an ideology is in conflict with them, it does not immediately make the ideology problematic. The Enlightenment, for instance, was one such conflicting ideology.
Is there a difference between the Enlightenment and Islam? Or does the legitimacy of one simply come from its popularity? Obviously, I don’t believe that the two are equal, but to say that one is better than the other means that I must believe in some universal set of values against which I can judge them. I know I’m not supposed to use this kind of disclaimer, but I want to acknowledge before I go back to taking my ideological bias for granted that I believe that at a low enough level it’s impossible to make a rational argument for one universal belief over another. That is, any “inherent” benefits that Enlightenment philosophy has over fundamentalist Islam can only be expressed in self-referential terms, and vice versa (unless you go to a really low level, like atoms and photons, in which case value is sort of hard to assign at all). At some point, then, the choice is a matter of preference—and often a pragmatic one. Having said that, I will assert that tolerance is better than intolerance, and peace is better than violence, and, therefore, the laws that uphold these values should take precedence over Islam or any other (possibly conflicting) religion.
But my point is that this is really a conflict of universal ideologies, not a conflict between religion and law. Actually, Buruma makes a similar argument, that the conflict “is not a straightforward clash between culture and universalism, but between two different versions of the universal, one radically secular, the other radically religious” (p. 32). This differentiation between culture and ideology is critical, because it is the only way to avoid the clash becoming a racist conflict. That is, if cultural tolerance is going to work in the face of this ideological confrontation (however much it continues to manifest itself in individuals), Enlightenment ideas must be thoroughly divorced from (and given preeminence over) the specificities of Western cultures, just as the Western conception of fundamentalist Islam must be separated from the Western view of the specificities of Muslim culture. How much of this separation will actually occur I don’t know, but I guess we could always take a survey.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Blog Assignment 2: A Walk Around the Blog
I chose to look at the blog of Aarron Kemp. The title is “Courting Amsterdam.” In terms of content, this, as well as the subheading, are very self-conscious in their characterization of Aarron’s view of his particular relationship to Amsterdam and the study abroad program. Amsterdam is not merely a place to visit, but a construction to be “enfolded.” The title itself stresses a mutual relationship, where one does not subsume the other.
There is also great attention paid to structure. Each blog post, in fact, is organized firmly around a unique “socially-constructed” template. The first post, for example, is in the format of a letter or email, with a formal greeting and sign-off; the last post is a 3-entry-long diary; one of the posts in the middle is organized like a product review. How much of this was spontaneously decided and how much was explicitly predetermined is unknown to me, but what is particularly interesting is the variety of organizations used, and the consistency with which they are imposed. Some of these structures are even nested, as in the list of events contained within the letter (though the list is somewhat more free-form).
In a way, the blog format does not seem to have provided enough structure, or a strong enough template, with which to shape a complete and meaningful communication. Within the blog, each entry is made to fit into a context that originated from somewhere else. And these contexts are actually used skillfully and appropriately to inform the meaning of the entries, but it also suggests a sort of resistance or unwillingness to interact with the blog structure in its own right. The patchwork of external forms is also a kind of encapsulation.
One more odd feature is the repetition of the last post, the diary. The complete entry was posted three times, within a minute of each other. The text of each is identical, or nearly so. The first post, however, has two pictures at the bottom, while the second has only one, and the third has none. I’m not sure if this was an error, or if I have simply not looked attentively enough to discover its real purpose. But I almost suspect (almost almost) that the existence of these three nearly identical posts contradicts my argument above about Aarron’s avoidance of direct exchange with the blog format (whatever that might actually be). Perhaps this repetition is in itself actually part of an observation on this very structure. Then again, does the original intent matter anymore?
There is also great attention paid to structure. Each blog post, in fact, is organized firmly around a unique “socially-constructed” template. The first post, for example, is in the format of a letter or email, with a formal greeting and sign-off; the last post is a 3-entry-long diary; one of the posts in the middle is organized like a product review. How much of this was spontaneously decided and how much was explicitly predetermined is unknown to me, but what is particularly interesting is the variety of organizations used, and the consistency with which they are imposed. Some of these structures are even nested, as in the list of events contained within the letter (though the list is somewhat more free-form).
In a way, the blog format does not seem to have provided enough structure, or a strong enough template, with which to shape a complete and meaningful communication. Within the blog, each entry is made to fit into a context that originated from somewhere else. And these contexts are actually used skillfully and appropriately to inform the meaning of the entries, but it also suggests a sort of resistance or unwillingness to interact with the blog structure in its own right. The patchwork of external forms is also a kind of encapsulation.
One more odd feature is the repetition of the last post, the diary. The complete entry was posted three times, within a minute of each other. The text of each is identical, or nearly so. The first post, however, has two pictures at the bottom, while the second has only one, and the third has none. I’m not sure if this was an error, or if I have simply not looked attentively enough to discover its real purpose. But I almost suspect (almost almost) that the existence of these three nearly identical posts contradicts my argument above about Aarron’s avoidance of direct exchange with the blog format (whatever that might actually be). Perhaps this repetition is in itself actually part of an observation on this very structure. Then again, does the original intent matter anymore?
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Blog Assignment 1: Close Reading
The email that I want to close read is not particularly familiar, but neither is it uncommon. It also isn’t personal, and I will try to take this fact into account in my reading of it.
First of all, the subject: “academic year Job Opportunity available.” The author is immediately telling me something important. This is not just the subject of the email, but the content as well. “Job Opportunity” is capitalized to catch my attention—I am actually looking for a Job Opportunity at present, and here it has arrived. Academic year clarifies, of course, that I will not be expected to work through the summer, because of course I will be going home then.
The letter then begins with “Dear Student.” Indeed, I am a student, but I am also anonymous. Any special skills that I might have are irrelevant to this Job. If I have a lot of qualifications, this tells me that the Job is probably a poor one, since anyone can do it. On the other hand, if I undervalue my knowledge and skills, then this lack of discrimination could be reassuring. If the author doesn’t even care who I am, then surely I am qualified.
The first sentence asks, “Are you interested in working part-time during the academic year?” If I found the subject enticing, then this question heightens my interest all the more. Then, “Our organization offers competitive remuneration…” So not only am I anonymous, but so are they. Nowhere, in fact, does the email specify what organization this is. My first reaction, naturally, is one of suspicion. I generally avoid business with unknown organizations. And yet, “offer” is such an unobtrusive, unassuming word. Then, if I still have doubts, “competitive remuneration” restores my trust. Most con artists I know would never be able to conjure such an eloquent, sophisticated phrase.
Confidence renewed, I only need to skim over the rest of the paragraph. I miss the grammatical incongruence of the last sentence, though the word “offer” stands out, because I have seen it before, as do “comfort,” “computer,” “determine,” “working time,” “express,” “opinion,” and “freely,” being the longest and most unusual parts of the sentence. I glide over the rest, because it is either too technical or neutral, and land finally on “paid well.”
Needless to say, this is all extremely encouraging. But it also seems improbably favorable and easy. Maybe there is a competitive application process? “To start,” it says (at the beginning of a new paragraph, so that I can’t miss it), “you just need to have the willingness to share your honest opinion and have a computer with Internet Access.” “Willingness,” “honest opinion”—these words have the relaxing power of a shady maple or oak in the middle of an August meadow. Yet my reverie is not deep enough that I miss the practical force of “Internet Access.” This is a welcoming door through which to return, however; even if I don’t have a laptop, I can use one of the computers on campus.
“Please reply to this email soon as places are limited.” There, after all, is the catch. Because I need to respond quickly, I don’t waste a lot of time on the rest of the email. “Best regards” is professorial, but friendly. The signature, “prof.David Hill,” tells me that, whatever the Organization is, it has the membership of a professor, yet one with an informal signature and an average-sounding name. David Hill is in his 40’s, but he has a charming boyishness that comes from a combination of warmth and simplicity.
Finally, at the bottom, “Important: If you do not like to receive additional mail from us, please reply to this mail with REMOVE in the subject field.” There is a mix-up with tense here, but the general idea is perfectly clear. One point of interest, however, is the long space between “mail” and “with.” On Monday, we discussed Pound’s use of this technique in “In a Station of the Metro,” if I remember correctly, as a way to emphasize the words preceding the spaces. Does the author of this email intend the same effect? If I am influenced to pause after “please reply to this mail,” might this make me more likely to do so? It should at least focus my attention on the idea of the action of replying, by forcing me to slow briefly, allowing the words to linger in my memory before being displaced by “REMOVE.”
Ideas about close-reading
Close-reading a common email, like repeating a familiar word too many times, is a way of rendering the familiar "uncanny." On the other hand, close-reading an unfamiliar email can have the opposite effect of making it more familiar. Both instances cause the formation of a new "structure," but while the former partially replaces an older, more familiar one with something less well-known, the latter is the beginning of a new perception, replacing nothing, or at least a structure that was very shallow. So a close reading of something familiar should tend to be more unsettling than the alternative. Or maybe the rendering familiar of something strange, if taken to an extreme, can be just as destabilizing. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
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