Notes from North of 49ºN

A few days ago, a mini-controversy erupted when this vidcap from the sports network RDS started making the rounds. Here’s the Deadspin article. Two Montréal Canadiens {nicknamed Habitants or Habs} fans donned the jersey of a hot prospect, P. K. Subban, who happens to be Jamaican Canadian. They also painted their faces black and wore afro wigs.

Toronto Mike blogged about the incident and one of the Habs fans came on to comment. The words got pretty heated, but in the end, the fan apologized and Habs and Leafs fans once again could resume their hockey-based hatred of one another.

What struck me as interesting was how this drama played out. The French language cable network covering the 11 March game against the Edmonton Oilers chose to air 10 seconds of the two friends. Was the intent to be controversial? Was the intent to be a facepalm moment? The back-and-forth on Toronto Mike’s blog was interesting, as the polarizing effect of race brought up assumptions about the Habs fan and his intent by commenters. In the end, I thought the Habs fan handled himself well, given how people were responding and what was being said. Toronto Mike did a good job of not divulging the fan’s name. This was one of those rare moments where Web 2.0 seemed to actually foster a dialogue and didn’t degenerate into a protracted flame war. That said, it wasn’t always pretty, but a lot prettier than what one typically sees on news article comments on issues of race, which are often tantamount to text equivalent strangers yelling at each other at the top of their lungs in an open hall.

Here on ThickCulture, we have examined race in the post-racial era. Racism isn’t dead, it’s just gotten to a late stage where there is a consciousness about what is offensive and debates of this now enter into the public discourse space. I get a sense that race gets so intertwined with speech and knowledge structures that it often becomes a confusing and convoluted morass for many. This impinging upon liberties of speech, in terms of what one can and cannot say or should and should not say, creates a tension, which may result in a backlash.

Where are the lines in the post-racial era? Here in Toronto, last fall there was a party where a group of guys dressed up as the Jamaican bobsled team, depicted in the film, Cool Runnings {1993}. This story caused a stir and points were argued through social media comments on whether or not this was racist.

Four guys darkened their skin and one guy lightened his. The Torontoist chronicles how the story unfolded and offers a tutorial on what blackface is and its cultural significance. The students offered their explanation for their choice of costume::

“First and foremost we would like to apologize if anyone was offended…Throughout our childhood, Cool Runnings was something we reflected on with fond memories and therefore in the process [of] choosing Halloween costumes, seemed to be a promising candidate. With this idea in mind, we took notice of how the primary cast, consisting of four black characters and one white character, coincided with our group ratio of four white and one black member. This sparked the idea to add another comedic element to the costume, and have the black student go as John Candy and the white students going as the four bobsledders. At this point, several of us was already of aware of what blackfacing was and therefore took out various means of investigation to further our knowledge of the topic and ensure that what we were doing be doing may not be considered similar in anyway. The conclusion that we came to that simply painting our faces dark brown would not be a portrayal of blackface….understand that we did not act in a negative or stereotypical manner [at the party]. We acted ourselves the whole night, and did not internalize the characters.”

Here’s the theatrical trailer for Cool Runnings::

University of Toronto Sociology professor Rinaldo Walcott offered a different take::

“I think that in particular [Cool Runnings] became a part of the popular culture imagination of [white] Canadians in a way that [they] took responsibility for that film as though it was somehow an extension of them. And one of the reasons that I think Canadians identified with that film so deeply is because that film weathered something that many white Canadians come to believe strongly—that black people don’t actually belong here. That we are an insertion into a landscape that is not actually an landscape where we naturally fit.”

“For black people who understand this history [of blackface], Cool Runnings was never a funny film; it in fact replicated all of the techniques of blackface. It is in fact one of the ways that we have come to see that blackface does not require painting of blackface anymore. Just look at the work of Marlon Riggs. We know that in North America there is a deep resonance around producing images of black people that make black people look disgusting. Cool Runnings is a milder version of that. So we should ask… why do they remember Cool Runnings so fondly?”

Post-racial means navigating these choppy waters where intent collides head-on with history and its interpretations. Not to get all postmodern here, but while the metanarrative is dead, social media is a site where clashing mini-narratives that structure perceptions of the world, culture, society, etc. battle it out. I think the fellow Contexts blog Sociological Images is a social media site where clashing mini-narratives are de rigueur. I’m wondering if we will ever “get over” issues of race. I’m beginning to think we won’t, given globalization, etc., but perhaps it’s due to the fact that what this is really all about is identity.

What troubles me more than this is when the “right” language is used by individuals doing so strategically. The talk is talked, but the walk isn’t walked. That’s a topic for another blog.

Twitterversion:: RDS airs footage of Habs fan dressing to resemble P. K. Subban —controversy ensues. Social media mediates differences. @Prof_K

Song:: Fun Boy Three/Bananarama-“It Ain’t What You Do, But It’s the Way That You Do It”

Notes from North of 49ºN

A recent Globe and Mail article by John Ibbitson states that Québec has immigration policies that hinder diversity and that the province lacks cultural integration. He starts by comparing Ottawa in Ontario and Gatineau, just across the river in Québec. The former has 19% of the population being a visible minority, while the latter has 6%.

Québec is allowed to set it own immigration policy. I knew this to be the case in 1992, as when I filled out my paperwork to visit at McGill, I had to have documents for Canada and Québec. The policies for immigration favours French speakers and those willing to integrate into Québec society. This tends to work against potential immigrants from China and India who are much more likely to have English-speaking skills or intentions to obtain them. Compounding the matter is that the province doesn’t have the resources to help immigrants integrate into Québec society, along with cultural clashes, such as a niqab-wearing woman getting kicked out of a government-funded CÉGEP French language class.

Ibbitson also makes the curious allegation that francophone sending regions tend to be impoverished areas which aren’t the most “vibrant regions,” when compared to China and India. He goes on to argue that the lack of immigration will cause cities in Québec to start dying. This is an elitist argument couched in pragmatics.

What Ibbitson fails to recognize is the context in which Québec immigration policy takes place. Québec contains a distinct culture, but within a predominantly anglophone nation. Historically, the Québec experience is one that exists within and at times resists the dominant cultural order of anglophone Canada. The immigration policies are meant to preserve the cultural order in Québec in light of this, but it puts immigrants in a bind. Immigrating to Québec means living in a region with a distinct culture that’s a minority within the nation of Canada. That’s a double-whammy or perhaps better termed, double-jeopardy. This “disincentivizes” immigration to Québec, reflecting the difficult terrain where culture, region, and nation intersect.

Within this era of globalization, can Québec realistically preserve its culture through its various policies? I’m not sure I have the answer to this, but I feel that Québec needs to figure this issue out on its own, for better or worse, despite my federalist tendencies. While there may be delicious irony in pointing out that Québec, which has brought upon bilingualism to Canada, appears to be closed to multiculturalism; the more interesting issue is how to foster better economic integration. Montréal is becoming increasingly diverse, with the immigrant population projected to go from 21% in 2006 to 31% in 2030, although these percentages are below the percentages of other major Canadian cities. The main problem is one of jobs. Despite immigrants oftentimes having better qualifications than native Quebeckers, they lack the networking with the francophone majority and subsequently face much higher unemployment rates.

I don’t see much point in encouraging more immigration to Québec if policy doesn’t address the issues of jobs and opportunities. Programmes that foster more economic integration of immigrants could be viewed as undermining the preservation of Québec culture, so there’s the rub.

Nevertheless, I think Ibbitson has it backwards. Rather than attracting a “better class of immigrant” from “vibrant” areas of the world, I think Québec should work on creating vibrant regions {most likely Montréal and certain areas of the Eastern Townships/Les cantons de l’est that are close to universities and open to diversity} that attract the flows of globalization, in terms of people, finance, technology, etc.

Twitterversion:: Globe&Mail’s Ibbitson says Quebec must fix its lack of diversity, but bigger issue is econ. integration for immigrants. http://url.ie/5cpv @Prof_K

Song:: Les Trois Accords-“Loin d’ici”

I’ve been thinking of the future of higher education with the advent of Web 2.0 for some time now. Will new technologies be a “game changer” for colleges and universities and what are the stakes? Currently, there is the issue of legitimacy that accredited schools and programs afford to both students and employers, taking a narrow and pragmatic view of higher education, and web 2.0 education alters the higher education business model. While costs are reduced, particularly with the use of online adjuncts, there are questions of quality. Technologically-mediated instruction still needs to be refined so it affords the same educational experience of face-to-face instruction. I’m interested in the specifics of this, with respect to the use of newer video codecs and interfaces that foster engagement, as well as the use of both synchronous and asynchronous modes of instruction and interactivity.

Online lectures are interesting, as they reduce education to digitized content. The instructor, lecturer, and professor are in the same boat as the photographer, music artist, film producer, and journalist. The digitization of what drives value allows it to be readily obtained, retransmitted, repurposed, remixed, etc. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a recent piece on whether or not lectures should be online. Most of the article focuses on what I see as side issues, but this hits on what I think is one of the key points::

“And lectures might just fall out of popular use in physical classrooms, because professors could just point to their past recordings or those of others and assign viewings for homework. To keep students interested in the classroom, some professors would focus more on discussion or group projects and things that can’t be easily captured on video.”

I think moving away from the “canned lecture” rehashing the text is a good thing. Way back when I was an undergraduate, back when dinosaurs roamed and PC meant pre-Cambrian, the best courses were those which built upon the readings, not parrot them. Fast forward a few years when I taught my own “preps” at the University of Oregon. I felt that my teaching was at its best when there was limited lecturing and more discussion of the material and the derivation of knowledge, particularly with the use of cases, articles, or blog posts by myself or students. Sometimes, I felt that being a good talk show host was what I was striving for.

I feel for what I teach, marketing, strategy, methods, economic sociology, consumer behaviour, etc., the lecture isn’t the true value added. It’s the moderated discussion afterwards, face-to-face and online, synchronously and {to a lesser extent} asynchronously. Web 2.0 can help universities rethink curricula, in terms of::

1. What is optimally offered online given current technologies?
2. How to address courses with different types of content/knowledge?
3. How can courses be tailored towards students with different learning styles/abilities?

An old boss of mine scoffed at students claiming “alternative learning styles”, using quotation fingers, but over the years I’ve seen students who flounder in other classes come alive with thoughts and ideas just by allowing them to use different modes of expression, both online and face-to-face. While the Chronicle of Higher Education ponders issues of intellectual property, copyright, and even professors subject to ridicule, the weightier issue is how will universities offer courses, certificate programmes, and degrees in the context of lifelong learning that deliver value for its students and other stakeholders?

Future posts of mine will examine issues of Research 2.0 and a possible future for technologically savvy professors that understand how Web 2.0 and beyond can leverage efficiencies in teaching, move towards better learning outcomes, and foster a research agenda. Is this pandora or panacea?

Twitterversion:: Blog on the professor’s role as teacher w/advent of Web 2.0. Will digital content kill the teaching stars? #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Belle & Sebastian-“Family Tree”

Notes from North of 49ºN

This EKOS poll was before Prime Minister Harper’s throne speech {the name of which brings out the eternal 10-tear old in me} and before the release of the federal budget.

Lower taxes? Controlling the deficit? Nope. Social investment, in areas like health, education, and jobs.

Over a month ago, I analyzed the Canadian federal voting landscape and came to the conclusion that a huge risk for Harper and the Conservative Party is poor performance in Ontario. What Ontarians want is pretty much on par with the nationwide numbers above and the Conservatives have closed the gap in the polling numbers in the province at 34.9%, compared to the Liberals at 38.0% and the New Democrats at 14.3%.

The Finance Minister Jim Flaherty noted last week that the Conservative’s budget is focusing on reducing corporate taxes to make Canada more attractive for business along with deficit reduction. He acknowledged the 8.3% unemployment rate, lower than the double digits in the US, and announced $178M CAN for job sharing agreements and youth employment.

Harper also ended a study to change the Canadian anthem, “Oh Canada” to a more gender neutral version reflecting the 1908 poem that it is based on. The current line, “True patriot love in all thy sons command,” while the poem has the line ,“True patriot love thou dost in us command.” According to an Ipsos Canwest poll, the Conservatives and Liberals were statistically tied in their support by women.

The Conservatives are in the drivers seat but on thin ice. The policy emphases in the budget are risky, in my opinion, particularly given Ontario’s higher than the national average unemployment rate of 9.2% last month.  The anger over proroguing has melted like so much Whistler slush. The Liberals have an unpopular leader in Ignatieff and the Dippers have a relatively popular leader of a relatively unpopular party.

Twitterversion:: What Canadians want: investment in social areas. Harper & Conservatives in driver’s seat but on thin ice. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Five Iron Frenzy-“Oh Canada”

Should taxpayer dollars be used to finance infrastructures like sports stadia? Economists tend to say no. The implication here is that they won’t get built, as its notoriously hard for private entities to finance them. Peter Magowan was able to do it for the San Francisco Giants due to the region being awash in Silicon Valley money in the late 1990s, but it’s unlikely this could happen today.

The City of Toronto was part of a public/private venture that built and managed the Sky Dome {now Rogers Centre}. Sadly, it was a comedy of errors with huge cost overruns that included the building of a luxury hotel and underpricing of luxury skyboxes and advertising rights. The Sky Dome costs mushroomed to $570M CAN in 1989 and the project was saddled with huge debts. Despite the Blue Jays doing well attendancewise and the venue being booked for large concerts and home of the CFL Argonauts, the revenues weren’t enough. By 1994, the Ontario New Democratic Party government, who inherited the financial headaches from the Ontario Liberal government in power before 1990, paid off the debt and sold the venue for $151M to a private consortium. The venue went into bankruptcy protection in 1998 and in 2005, Rogers Communication bought and renamed the facility for $25M. Talk about depreciation.

In contrast, the Major Soccer League’s Toronto FC home, BMO Field cost $62M CAN with $44.8M coming from public sources in another public/private partnership. Built in 2007, BMO Field is now turning a small profit and Toronto FC attendance has been strong, so strong that there’s talk of expanding the 20,500 seat facility. The capacity was restricted when building BMO Field to maintain an intimate setting that was specifically designed for soccer.

Is there a moral to this story? A big part of the equation is realistic expectations of costs/revenues and good management. Nevertheless, even if it may not make “economic sense” to use public money to build these venues {in terms of jobs, tax revenues, increased business activity}, are there other reasons why taxpayer money should be used to build them?

An argument could be made that Toronto is a better city for having BMO Field or the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre, but for different reasons. BMO Field is bringing soccer to a diverse city, full of people who can relate to soccer. The Rogers Centre, like the Air Canada Centre used by the Toronto Maple Leafs {NHL} and Raptors {NBA}, signify Toronto’s place as a city by being a signifier of North American capitalism. The city is the largest in Canada and seventh in North America. Like it or not, being home to major sports teams gives the city status through media exposure and corporate marketing. The Buffalo Bills {NFL} have played games here, hinting that the first non-US NFL franchise may be Toronto and could use Rogers Centre, although there are potential stumbling blocks. The mega concerts can be accommodated. Despite it now being 21 years old, it still is iconic as place-as-spectacle, with its opening roof and downtown locale.

Freud would have had a field day with the opening and closing Sky Dome/Rogers Centre being next to the phallic CN tower.

Does it make sense for cities to invest in stadia? I don’t think it’s strictly an economic decision and why cities still invest in them is better explained by sociology. While public funds can be spend a myriad ways, how they will be spent has everything to do with the local political and economic actors. This book, Public Dollars, Private Stadiums, shows that these decisions to finance stadia can circumvent the will of the people, showing the power of embeddedness.

As for success of these public/private ventures, that’s a managerial issue depending on the circumstances, the terms, oversight, local politics, and a city’s long-term prospects.

Twitterversion:: Should public funding be used 4 sports stadia? A look @ the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre history & the emerging BMO Field story. @Prof_K

Song:: Saint Etienne-“This is Radio Etienne”

Well, that might be stretching it, but social movements and revolutions are often borne of the bourgeoisie. The nationwide protests which started in the University of California system were part of the March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education. Across the nation, students, and in some instances staff, instructors, and faculty, protested budget cuts, rising fees, and mandatory furloughs. Protests over cuts at UCSD, as well as over recent racial tensions stemming from a “Compton cookout” party held during Black History month.

We’re seeing a large cadre of middle-class students protesting rising fees at public universities with rhetoric that makes educational access sound like social infrastructure. Rhetoric that often sounds like the dreaded “S” word, socialism. While students protesting fee and tuition hikes are nothing new, the sociopolitical zeitgeist is, in my opinion, different. Social movements and revolutions are sparked by gaps between an “old guard” and those feeling it is out of touch. If the middle class and the bourgeoisie in particular start to feel disenfranchised by deep structural issues in society and the political economy—look out.

Right now, I feel the socialpolitical zeitgeist is one of dissatisfaction with the status quo, which is beginning to lump Obama into the category of the powers-that-be. The squeezing of the middle class, evident in the rising gini coefficient in the US now over .40 {Canada’s was lower at .32 in 2004, on par with much of Europe}, are sensitizing the middle masses to perceived inequities and slights. Public university funding cuts that undermine the acquisition and development of cultural capital, so intertwined with the potential to generate economic capital, is political dynamite in a floundering economy.

If the middle classes feel politically and economically thwarted over time, I can see the youth rebelling. I’ve been having France on my mind, so the question I have is would such a middle-class rebellion be more like Paris, 1968 or The Great Cat Massacre?

Twitterversion:: Seeds of discontent brewing w/student protest movemnt started in Univ. of Calif. sys. Bourgeoisie rebellion in the cards? http://url.ie/59g1 @Prof_K

Song:: The Sterehoes-“May 68”

It may seem like all I do is bitch about other articles on here, but I am getting old and cranky. Today’s target, I mean subject is an article from The Chronic{le} of Higher Education by Thomas Doherty, The Death of Film Criticism. Doherty laments the rise of blog film critics on the wild expanses of the Internet that don’t have much to say beyond the trivial by scribes who don’t even read books. He does a good job of describing the rise and fall of film criticism in the 20th. century and it’s worthwhile reading. Where he loses me is how he doesn’t see how utterly predictable this all is. The main target market for films is the youth. That’s not to say older people don’t see movies, but for the most part, they matter far less than the teenager. Why? The blockbuster needs repeat viewings by throngs of theatregoers. So, the medium is increasingly targeted towards teen audiences, along with the current infatuation with celebrity culture. The Hollywood machine caters to the “head” of the long tail, i.e., the blockbuster, which is all about delivering spectacle. It’s not about artistry, how Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia {1999} has umpteen layers of symbolism and references couched within, or what Lars Von Trier and the Dogme95 movement are doing with films like Antichrist {2009}. The rise of the bloggers, who could care less about allusion or auteurs, goes hand in glove with where much of the industry is today. These days it’s about horror, action, and vampires.

Where Doherty gets interesting is how he says the Internet is also spawning interesting intellectual dialectic discussion on film by academics. Unfortunately, such work isn’t weighted the same way as publications, bringing up the issue of how institutional logics lag behind the new technologies. I see this as a big problem for two reasons.

First, while I “get” the idea that peer-review publications and books in journals and presses serve a legitimation function, this same function serves dominant paradigms in fields and places academic knowledge behind paywalls. Should academic knowledge be free? I feel that what distinguishes higher education research from applied industrial research is that it serves the public good, so I feel university knowledge should be towards no or low cost to obtain. Even in the areas of innovation, I believe universities can be a catalyst for “open innovation”, where technologies are licensed to multiple entities at a lower cost structure to spur distributed collaborative work. The idea is to speed up the innovation process by allowing knowledge to flow through networks, not silos {within companies or even departments}.

Second, I think that higher education may be at a crossroads. Right now, it has a monopoly on providing the legitimizing totem of the accredited degree, which has a ceremonial function in the workforce. In 2007, I was at an event where a local employer discussed what skills they are looking for from recent college graduates. What were they looking for? Critical thinking? Domain knowledge? Sure. But what came through as highlights were “meeting” skills and knowledge of Microsoft Office. This made me cringe, as I thought this was a harbinger as the university as merely vocational education.

Nevertheless, I’m wondering if with globalization that higher education needs to be relevant more than ever. Relevant to all of its stakeholders, which may mean a swifter adaptation to changes afoot, in terms of the institutional character of higher education and what it rewards and values. Future blog posts of mine will develop my ideas on this and provide a blueprint for the university in Web 2.0+.

Is the film critic dead? Well, no, it’s just her/his audience may be a lot more fragmented.

Twitterversion:: Death of the film critic? WWW killng the profession-also fostering academic dialectic while higher ed scoffs.#ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Steely Dan-“Reeling in the Years”

I honestly believe Salon.com needs a laughtrack these days, as I find much of it to be unintentionally hilarious in its gender-war-pot-stirring making sure the culture war is alive and well to its readers. For over a decade, Salon has done articles on sexuality that push liberal minds to the edge by contrasting prevailing mores that are in conflict with more traditional ones or longstanding notions of “propriety.” Ah, living in the postmodern condition of intellectualized discourse in an era when everything is an untethered floating signifier and the rules are nebulous at best. The target audience seems to be those who struggle with being hip and urbane, but having some vestiges of a more socially conservative order keeping them from totally cutting loose and raising their kids in a bohemian hedonifest. In the process, the social conservatives take their shots and pageviews go up.

Last Friday, Kate Harding posted an article on Salon.com’s Broadsheet on “Hook-Up” culture. She links to another article on a study finding that hook-up culture may not be that detrimental, but goes on to cite the Teen Vogue editor, Rachel Simmons, and sociologist Kathleen A. Bogle’s interviews for a book on the subject, as evidence that hooking up might not be such a good thing because women are often left in “relationship” limbo. Harding uses this as a springboard to lambaste the media for promoting a “please your man” culture.

While Harding tries to reconcile this with a utopian pining for a world where a multiplicity of sexualities can co-exist without feeling a pressure to conform to a media-manufactured social orthodoxy, I feel she’s totally missing the boat here. Harding thinks that those caught up in the emotional wreckage that hook-up culture can bring are being taught the wrong things and that women aren’t taught to value their own desires::

“It’s that the girls in question don’t feel comfortable admitting what they want. They’ve been taught that saying ‘I want a relationship’ or ‘I’m falling in love with you’ will terrify any red-blooded American male — that is so not What Guys Want! — so young women who are interested in something more serious are terrified of being alone and completely unwanted if they say so…

If we encouraged girls and women to place real value on their own desires, then instead of hand-waving about kids these days, we could trust them to seek out what they want and need, and to end relationships, casual or serious, that are unsatisfying or damaging to them, regardless of whether they’d work for anyone else.”

I find this ironic condescension towards women wrapped up in empty Dr. Phil-esque emancipatory rhetoric a bit too much to take. Ironic, as Harding assumes her own orthodoxy of desires that’s a polar opposite of what the media, in this case focusing on the likes of Cosmo and  Maxim, are portraying. While much of the media have been quick to point out for decades that if you’re not desirable or aren’t in a relationship, you don’t matter, i.e., alone = loser, Harding as an agent of media is advocating what may well be a fiction—longing for the “right” answer of true female desires. Harding implies our real desires are being subjugated by media, but the fact of the matter is that our real desires are intertwined with media and culture. I would argue that much of the rhetoric in the division of values in the US evident in the “culture wars”, well-trodden territory for Salon.com, is about desires intertwined with media and culture.

We want meaning from our desires. We want meaning from our actions and the constellation of products and brands we surround ourselves with to gain identity. So, what is the meaning of the “hook-up”? I think for many youth, there isn’t a lot of meaning and I don’t mean that pejoratively. I think this is more of an issue for those writing on “hook-up” culture as a wedge issue of morality or bitching about media and society.

The “hook-up” can be reduced to a consumer behaviour, a mode that fits us all like a glove, whether we want it to or not.. We consume things to satisfy our desires, but out desires are never satiated. Is it media? Is it culture? Both. The fuss is that relationships shouldn’t be an act of consumption and that sex shouldn’t be cheapened by commodification. These concepts are just a tad too close to mail-order brides and prostitution, no?

Welcome to late capitalism.

Twitterversion:: Salon.com blasts media/society 4 sturm/drang over hook-up culture.Are true female desires being subjugated? #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Vampire Weekend – “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”

This is the latest of several blogs on healthcare on ThickCulture.

While the healthcare reform debate rages, there much emphasis on the costs. Warren Buffett has decried US health care as a “tapeworm eating our economic body”. The interesting thing is that when you look at the numbers that Buffett cite, the US is spending plenty on healthcare and has quite a few healthcare practitioners per capita. This post on the Innovation and Growth blog states the problems aren’t about the costs, but the lack of results. People are paying more, but less aggregate care is being delivered, in terms of actual better health. The blogger, Mike Mandel, also has a post posing the question of whether the US is overweight on healthcare R&D expenditures. As Ron Burgundy would say, “Compelling and rich.”

Where’s the spending going? It’s going towards the current healthcare infrastructure, insurance companies, and the research-intensive pharmaceuticals. Healthcare reform needs to address the industrial organization of the interfirm networks of the US healthcare system, so policy needs to not only have an understanding of economics, but also of organizations, strategy, and marketing. This challenges an entrenched and embedded structure of doing business, with an emphasis on business.

Real Healthcare Reform

In order to truly reform healthcare, it’s important to look at the system. Here’s a dramatically simplified representation for working Americans::

• healthcare providers -> hospitals, medical groups, & insurers -> patients
• pharmaceuticals -> insurers & pharmacies -> patients

Currently, employers and employees both pay for healthcare, with indigent care programmes and Medicare taking up the slack. Health care reform threatens how things are currently done, albeit expensively and lacking in aggregate health benefits. At some point under reform, costs will need to be addressed, which will limit total expenditures to force efficiencies out of the system. Policy aimed at squeezing efficiencies out of the healthcare system will force the players in the healthcare economic ecosystem of firms to maintain their margins to satisfy shareholders, although it should be noted that there are non-profit players in the mix. How will this impact the system?

Hospitals and medical groups will be forced to cut costs, making general medicine much less attractive as a career, due to pressure to contain wages and working conditions focusing on cost efficiencies. Already, there is evidence of this, as health providing organizations feel pressure on both ends, revenues from insurers and the high costs of labour. Under National Health in the UK, there’s increased competition amongst hospitals [1]. I see this as fostering specialization and differentiation within a government-funded system, which sheds light on how hospitals in the future may position themselves, as they compete for patients. Rural health may suffer without proper incentives in some areas, although publicly funded health may create markets for health which are current underdeveloped in others.

There will be considerable pressure to reduce pharmaceutical expenditures, which, in turn will limit the amount of pharmaceutical R&D. The pharmaceutical industry will say that this will kill future innovation, as the high prices in the US are fueling R&D expenditures, given that most of the world has price controls on pharmaceuticals. But, for all of the investment in health R&D, as noted above, it’s not as if it’s having a profound impact on aggregate health. I’m of the mind that the problem is with the traditional approach to drug development that the pharmaceutical industry engages in. A rival paradigm is one driven by medical biotechnology in the areas of using genetics in the drug development process and bioinformatics. It would be naïve to expect technology to deliver solutions in the future, i.e., that the US will innovate itself out of this healthcare jam, but what’s clear is that the current pharmaceutical model isn’t working. More is spent per revenue dollar on marketing than on R&D, so the US research-intenvive pharmaceuticals are differentiating through branding, not theraputic benefits.

The above scenario is akin to the German public/private system of health care with 82M people versus 304M in the US, so there is the issue of scalability. Nevertheless, Germany has a system with 90% opting for a public option, but here are the key points [2]::

1. Both systems have providers employed in the private sector {not socialized medicine, as in the UK}
2. German healthcare is financed through payroll taxes at rates that are similar to the US’ {around 15% split by employer and employee}
3. German wages for physicians are half of that of US physicians at $80K, but there are wide variances in terms of hours worked and wages by specialization
4. The German government sets fixed reimbursement rates and obtains price concessions from pharmaceutical companies due to its market power
5. Fewer uninsured patients in Germany mean less incidence of expensive emergency care
6. German hospitals don’t splurge on the latest technology, such as MRIs
7. There are income barriers to enter private healthcare & older Germans cannot go back to the private system once they leave the public option
8. Unemployed in Germany who have never worked still may obtain care through a social fund, the sozialamt [3]

The German system isn’t perfect and there’s questions of what the future holds, given the rapid changes in medical technologies and who will gain access to them. I don’t see the US system in its current incarnation as viable in the long term.

What about the poor insurers under health reform, I’ve blogged about in the past? If I were an insurer, I would be shifting my business model towards being what is called a “value net integrator”, a variant of systems integrator. Such an entity would focus on facilitating the data and information flows between patients, physicians, pharmacists, etc., and mining the data to help medical and policy decisions. For example, a patient’s electronic record would be in a database that could be accessed by physicians. Additionally, the “insurance company” no longer makes decisions on care, but facilitates payments from the government to the providers.

Plenty is being spent on health per capita here in the US, but I see reform in some form or another to be inevitable. Why? The private actuarial model {risk-based} of healthcare in the US is expensive, not providing enough health benefits for those covered, and too many {more and more from the middle class} are finding it hard to obtain coverage. I don’t see this as politically tenable, particularly as the economy languishes. The costs are astronomical, but the more pressing issue is that the current system is bulky and dysfunctional to say the least. Policy needs to address the entire “ecosystem” of healthcare provision, including a look at rethinking the organizational sociology, innovation, and technology when it comes to the future of healthcare in America.

Twitterversion:: Healthcare reform in the US? Are costs the focal issue or is the system fundamentally broken? #ThickCulture

Song:: Jein-“Fettes Brot”

References::

[1] Timmins, N. {2010} “Competition in NHS makes hospitals better, study says”. Financial Times. {19 February} http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3099e87c-1cf6-11df-aef7-00144feab49a.html

[2] Raghavan, A. {2009} “Beyond Hysterics: The Health Care Model That Works”. Forbes. {1 September} http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0921/health-obama-germany-health-care-model-that-works.html

[3] Green, D. Irvine, B., & Cackett, B. {2005} “Health Care in Germany”. Civitas. http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/bb3Germany.php

A few years back, I taught entertainment marketing courses with the sly Walter Benjamin subtitle of “The Work of Art in the Age of Infinite Reproduction,” which always brings up the tensions between art and commerce. Now, I’m involved in a social media startup and issues of intellectual property and users use, repurposing, and remixing of it is central to the value proposition.

I’ve thought about intellectual property {IP} issues for almost a decade now and how value is created and economic rents {profits} are captured. The music industry is changing, so that the actual music is becoming secondary to the music experience. The CD or MP3 is the loss leader, but the mainstream music industry has a hard time of letting go of the idea that IP rights need to be defended at all costs, even if it means suing college students and moms.

News of this documentary, Copyright Criminals {Amazon.USA}, came to me via Flavorpill {see link for video excerpts}.  It’s about sampling in hip-hop and brings up some interesting points about IP, copyright infringement, and the musical creativity. Here’s the trailer::

Here’s a sampling timeline showing the trajectory of the practice.

I’m looking forward to screening this. I’m not sure what the answers are in this area, but I think it requires a rethinking of intellectual property rights and creation of value that consumers will spend their money on. So, a lot of this is in the realm of marketing. I feel that rigid IP enforcement that isn’t contextualized is one of the problems with the music industry and serves to further alienate consumers/fans, as well as putting a damper on artistic creativity. Of course, the market could care less about creativity, just like so many consumers could care less about IP laws that are sporadically enforced or easy to circumvent.

In an interview, the filmmakers discussed how one of the challenges was the intellectual property used in the film would have cost $4M, but the fair use doctrine allowed the use. {Canada uses the fair dealing doctrine}. The following song is an example of a mashup that has been litigated literally out of existence, due to IP claims.

Twitterversion:: blog post on new documentary on music sampling and IP rights, Copyright Criminals. Links and trailer. Via @flavorpill  @Prof_K

Song:: Roger & the Goosebumps-“Stairway to Gilligan’s Island”