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...).

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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.

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.

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"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.