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.

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 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.

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.