Sociology Lens

According to a recent New York Times article (see below), the consumption of Kosher foods is expanding; the market for these products once mostly consumed for religious reasons has widened well beyond the Jewish community – certainly to a much wider audience than Jews who abide by the laws of Kosher eating. While, historically, kosher foods were uniquely consumed by the Jewish community, health reasons have become a driving force behind the expansion of the market. For instance, the Times reports:

“According to the market research survey, 62 percent of people who buy kosher foods do so for quality reasons, while 51 percent say they buy kosher for its “general healthfulness.” About one-third say they buy kosher because they think food safety standards are better than with traditional supermarket foods. Only 15 percent of respondents say they buy kosher food because of religious rules” (Karren Barrow, nytimes.com).

As we can see quite clearly, the smallest percentage of people consuming kosher foods do so for religious reasons. This provides us with a nice example of how a cultural (e.g. religious) phenomenon can be co-opted by other groups and even society at large.  It gives us a little insight into what “taste” actually is – or how people come to have preferences for certain items, whether they be food or other consumer items. In other words, the purchasing of this kind of product has become a trend – much as buying green products has.

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by nathan jurgenson

The New York Times gathered experts to discuss the disappearance of the physical book, especially important in light of the announcement of the iPad media consumption device. The predictable narrative throughout the article is that the digital is trivial and the physical has more “depth.” I’m interested here in troubling this narrative. It goes well beyond this article. Bring up Twitter in certain circles and people will laugh, calling it trivial. Talk to someone over thirty about Facebook and you very well might get the same reaction. I discussed this trend previously on how unfair it is to quickly label discussions of politics on social networking sites as “slacktivism” (slacker+activism) simply because they are done online. Why do we belittle the digital as trivial when, as danah boyd points out, our everyday material world interactions are equally as trivial as what is posted online?

In the article, Matthew Kirschenbaum claims that the “stillness” of physical print is more conducive to “deep concentration.” Liz Gray agrees, arguing that people reading screens have lowered attention spans and less skill at engaging complex issues. Nicholas Carr states that physical books develop deep comprehension and learning because screens sacrifice single-mindedness and lead to shallow learning. William Powers also describes physicality as “deep” and claims it is “best” because it leads to more thinking. With the exception of Kirschenbaum’s point that the loss of depth might be of diminishing concern, this line of thought is deployed throughout the article without “deep” counterpoint or reflection.

Let’s trouble this. Perhaps digital learning lacks depth for these critics. This might be true for them becuase they developed their outlook in a world of physical books. However, new realities, such as the digitization of text, breed new ways of learning about and viewing the world. Those developing in today’s augmented world (that is, the massive blurring of the physical and digital that is occurring) will not lose the ability to focus or concentrate. The increased amount and access to information and communities of knowledge will be utilized in ways that the physical-only folks cannot (yet) comprehend. Historically, the development of the book, the telephone, and every other communications technology has faced similar claims about the loss of “depth.” With hindsight, we look back at these claims with amusement because we develop new ways of learning to best cope with and utilize new realities. The criticisms come from those who have not developed these new standpoints.

When faced with our new augmented reality, the reaction of the physical-only folks in the article is to claim that their outlook or standpoint is universally better. Thus (following Nietzsche, Foucault, Harding, etc.), these “trivial” and “deep” narratives are claims to power focused on the superiority of one way of learning the world at the expense of another. Let’s acknowledge and analyze these different outlooks instead of trying to universalize our own by claiming our perspective as fundamentally “deeper”, “better” and more true. Last, let’s ask who benefits from constructing digital learning as inherently deficient? ~nathan

Read More: “Do School Libraries Need Books?”

by nathan jurgenson

I’ve written many posts on this blog about the implosion of the spheres of production and consumption indicating the rise of prosumption. This trend has exploded online with the rise of user-generated content. We both produce and consume the content on Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube and so on. And it is from this lens that I describe Apple’s latest creation announced yesterday: the iPad. The observation I want to make is that the iPad is not indicative of prosumption, but rather places a wedge between production and consumption.

From the perspective of the user the iPad is made for consuming content. While future apps might focus on the production of content, the very construction of the device dissuades these activities. Not ideal for typing, and most notably missing a camera, the device is limited in the ways in which users create content. Further, the device, much like Apple’s other devices, is far less customizable than the netbooks Apple is attempting to displace (which often use the endlessly customizable Linux OS).

Instead, the iPad is focused on an enhanced passive consumption experience (and advertised as such, opposed to their earlier focus: can’t resist). Unlike netbooks, the iPad is primarily an entertainment device. Instead of giving users new ways to produce media content, the focus is on making more spectacular and profitable the experience of consuming old media content -music and movies via the iTunes store, books via the new iBookstore and news via Apple’s partnership with the New York Times.

Thus, the story of the iPad’s first 24hours, for me, is the degree to which the tasks of producing and consuming content have been again split into two camps. The few produce it -flashy, glittering and spectacular- and the many consume it as experience. And, of course, for a price.

Does this serve as a rebuttal to an argument that the trend towards the merging of the spheres of production and consumption into prosumption is inevitable? Or is prosumption indeed the trend for a future Apple seems not to grasp? Or will the applications developed for the device overcome its limitations? ~nathan

Read More: Times Topics: the iPad

Read More: Read More: The Intersecting Roles of Consumer and Producer: A Critical Perspective on Co-production, Co-creation and Prosumption

The New School held a conference last week that may be of interest to many Sociology Lens readers, so I have decided to devote this week’s entry to sharing some notes from the conference.

The implosion of work and play was the most recurrent theme in the panels that I attended.  The term “playbor” was frequently used to describe the product of this implosion.  Panelists generally seemed to assume that playbor was a relatively new and increasingly prevalent phenomenon.  However, one dissenter, an artist named Stephanie Rothenberg, argued that play and productivity have coincided from the earliest days of capitalism.  She explained that hobbies (e.g., collecting, handicraft, parlor room singsong, gardening, and animal raising) are voluntary forms of play that produce objects with no intent to exchange them on the market.  These activities often have significant social aspects and some hobbies, like music or quilting, are even done collaboratively.  Given the resemblance to hobbies, Rothenberg urges that we view playbor as the latest instantiation of a historical trend, rather than newly emerging paradigm.  In fact she claims that online environments like Second Life mimic the world so hyperbolically that they offer an unprecedented opportunity for us to turn a critical eye on ourselves.  In our distanced view of these “simulacrums,” we find our own distanced reflections.

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by pj.rey

While the term “augmented reality” uttered in a sexual context might immediately conjure the perennial problematic of the boozed, buzzed, and befuddled (commonly referred to as “beer goggles”), more nuanced analysis may prove fruitful.  Fellow Sociology Lens news editor, nathan jurgenson, recently argued in “towards theorizing an augmented reality” that we need to anticipate an ascending paradigm where “digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other.”

To anticipate this new reality, I argue that we ought to turn to another trend in consumer culture that has prevailed for several decades.  Pornography and the sex industry have consistently been a bellwether for future technology adoption in the population writ large.  Remember polaroids, VCRs, camcorders, DVDs, and high definition television?  Sure you do.  Ever wonder why so many of our parents and grandparents bought these items so early on, even though they were expensive and still largely untested?  They were probably producing and consuming pornography.  Yep, that’s right: porn.  Okay, so, some people had other motivations.  The conspicuous consumption of such commodities certainly confers a form of social capital which appeals to many.  Yet, ample evidence exists indicating that the pornography industry has influenced the adoption of a wide range of technologies (see citations below).  Even the founder of Wikipedia and one of Time Magazine’s most influential people, Jimmy Wales, began his entrepreneurial career leveraging user-generated content for profit by hosting a series of user-generated porn web rings. (more…)

by pj.rey

Smokers, if I told you that I could get you high-quality cigarettes for half the usual price, you’d probably smartly ask, “What’s the catch?”  “The catch,” I might respond, “is that I need five minutes of your labor-time per pack.”  This is precisely the bargain customers are making with a Brookline, New Hampshire store called Tobacco Haven – a bargain we social theorists might call prosumption.  The shop houses a roll-your-own cigarette machine into which customers feed piles of loose tobacco and assemble their own packs.

The prosumer (who combines consumption and production into a single activity) has been discussed widely on this blog (see, for, example: prosumers of the world unite, Light capitalism, prize economics, and the prosumer, Out of Print: Prosumption and the Triumph of New Media, the prosumer and intimate profit).  Most analysis has focused on examples connected to the digital world.  A recent story, however, illustrates how relevant this concept is even offline.

Customers are happy to spend a few extra minutes to get dirt cheap cigarettes, and Tobacco Haven is happy with the tidy little profits it sweeps up facilitating the work of the consumer.  The state of New Hampshire, on the other hand, isn’t amused and is suing the tobacco shop.  New Hampshire claims that regardless of who does the production – company or consumer – the place where cigarettes are assembled should be considered a “cigarette manufacturer” and thus be bound by the decade-old tobacco industry settlement as well as obliged to pay state and local taxes.

The ruling on this issue, however, has broader implications than the price of cigarettes in Brookline.  Essentially, the courts are going to rule whether or not the labor a consumer performs to obtain a commodity for personal use is taxable as if it were manufacturing activity.  If we start down this path, what’s next?  Pumping one’s own gas?  Filling one’s own fountain drinks?  Assembling Ikea furniture?  Updating a Facebook profile?

Hard to tell where to draw the line, but one thing is clear: prosumption will be a significant issue for the courts of the 21st Century.

“Roll-It-Yourself Tobacco Shop Under Fire” by Sheryl Rich-Kern

“The Intersecting Roles of Consumer and Producer: A Critical Perspective on Co-production, Co-creation and Prosumption,” By Ashlee Humphreys and Kent Grayson

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by pj.rey

President Obama recently gave a eulogy for the legendary news anchor, Walter Cronkite, on which occasion, he delivered the nation this message:

We know that this is a difficult time for journalism. Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing.  Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat.  Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line. [...] Naturally, we find ourselves wondering how he would have covered the monumental stories of our time. In an era where the news that city hall is on fire can sweep around the world at the speed of the Internet, would he still have called to double-check?  Would he have been able to cut through the murky noise of the blogs and the tweets and the sound bites to shine the bright light on substance?  Would he still offer the perspective that we value?  Would he have been able to remain a singular figure in an age of dwindling attention spans and omnipresent media?

The president waxed romantically about the old media and spoke with the sort fondness that one expects at the funeral of an old friend (or cherished institution).  He was hopeful about the future of conventional media.  But, eulogies are a post-mortum affair.  And, for all the president’s accolades, “the murky noise of the blogs and the tweets and the sound bites” appear to have won the day.

In fact, these days, one can hardly avoid stories about the death of print media.  Last December, the Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy. Shortly thereafter, Michael Hirschorn warned that “End Times” might be drawing near for the America’s paper of record.  A recent article reports that the crisis is spreading to other forms of conventional reporting such as photojournalism.  Michael Bowden has even gone so far as to announce that we have entered a “post-journalistic age.”

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By HopeForTheDismalScience (William P Bell)

Neoclassical economics is deductive, using a mathematical axiom-proof-theory format.  Arnsperger and Varoufakis (2006) list the three basic axioms of neoclassical as methodological instrumentalism, methodological individualism and methodological equilibration.  In such an approach the basic axioms have to be correct otherwise the whole framework becomes unsound.  In contrast to the deductive approach, the scientific approach is inductive, forming theories from observation and using prediction to falsify the theories (Neuman 2003, p. 51).  Neoclassical economists have become adept at avoiding empirical falsification by creating ad-hoc explanations as to why their theories fail to work when confronted with empirical evidence, for example the Efficient Market Hypothesis predicting dividend volatility in excess of price volatility but the converse is observed (Shiller 1981).  Falsification avoidance is the sign of a degenerative research program (Lakatos 1976).  So, rather than use empirical falsification, a more suitable approach to disprove deductive frameworks is to use a logical proof showing their axioms lead to an absurdity.  The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu Theorem (Debreu 1959) proves the basic axioms of neoclassical economics are logical inconsistent.  The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu Theorem (Debreu 1959) shows that starting with the first two axioms leads to a shapeless excess demand curve.   The shapeless excess demand curve means that there are multiple equilibria and equilibrium are unstable making the third axiom untenable.   To fix this problem, it is assumed that all goods have constant Engel curves.  A good would have a constant Engel curve if somebody spends the same proportion of their income on the good as their income grew (Keen 2001).  This is an unlikely scenario as when income grows then people consume more luxury goods and basic goods become a smaller fraction of their income.   Can you think of a good with a constant Engel curve?  Colander (2000, p. 3) equates neoclassical economics “to the celestial mechanics of a nonexistent universe” for using theory outside its domain assumption (Musgrave 1981).   That is neoclassical economics as a pursuit in pure mathematics for intellectual exercise is fine but claiming applicability to the real world is misleading.

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by nathan jurgenson

Google announced that its new operating system, Chrome OS, will be free of charge. Further, it is designed to operate in the “cloud,” meaning that most of its functionality will exist online, using internet applications like GMail and Google Documents instead of programs installed on a hard drive (as Windows does). The free cloud-based operating system is designed to run on smaller, lighter “netbooks” -a bright spot in the computer market in these tough economic times. I previously wrote about the transumer and virtual goods as evidence of Zygmunt Bauman’s liquidity thesis that exchange online is following a lighter and more fluid path. These developments further underscore the relevancy of Bauman’s thinking, and beg the question: is the digital economy approaching a sort of ‘weightless capitalism’?

Chris Anderson’s new book, Free, tackles just this sort of emergent business trend online. The marginal cost to produce digital items approaches zero because microprocessing, storage and bandwidth are increasingly cheaper. Another factor that applies to many Web 2.0 companies is that much of the content production is out-sourced to the consumers. That is, we are the prosumers of Facebook because we are simultaneously the producers and consumers of it. The result is that we do not have to directly pay to use Google’s services, or for things like Facebook, Flickr, Yelp and so on.

When products are free and labor is often done without pay, we have near-weightless capitalism.

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