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?

[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.