The New York Times BITS blog has an interview with Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17 year old from Moscow that invented the next big thing on the Internet. If you haven’t heard of Chat Roulette by now then I’m surprised you’ve found your way on to a blog to read this post! From Wikipedia:
Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.
The possibilities of this application are fascinating to me. I’m a big fan of any spaces left on the Web that promote randomness and spontaneity. Think about the bravado it takes to subject yourself to a random conversation with anyone, anywhere in the world. This is probably why you see young people visiting the site is greater numbers. I mean you always run the risk of getting this:
The possibilities for teaching and scholarship are immense. How about assigning your student a discussion question to ask the random stranger on chat roulette and then bringing the answers back to class. Stuff like this makes me hopeful about the transformational possibilities of the Internet as a medium. BTW I’m giving a paper on this topic at the Western Political Science Meeting this week in San Francisco…stay tuned for details, or maybe I’ll just give the presentation to random people on Chat Roulette!
Video:: Biden to Obama, “This is a big f*cking deal”
The signing of the healthcare bill last week was significant in more ways than one. I feel it galvanized the Democrats and I also feel it was critical for Obama to make the healthcare bill “personal” and get fellow Democrats to be rowing in the same direction. I think this was quite a challenge, as the liberal factions of the party are ideologically distinct from the more conservative Blue Dog Democrats.
In the wake of the signing, the Democrats got good news in the form of a public opinion poll reporting 49% saying the bill was a good thing, compared to 40% saying it was bad. There was also a spike in donations, with $1M pouring in last Tuesday without a direct ask.
There has been a backlash and alleged incidents of offices being vandalized. The Republicans needed to respond to thwart any momentum, but I’m not convinced their strategy is sound. Sarah Palin started a bit of controversy with her reload and targeting comments in a speech in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, NV::
The media tried to whip Sarah Palin’s “targeting” and “reload” comments into pageview fodder, but I think the big issue for Republicans is a lack of a message that resonates with a country in the economic doldrums. John McCain claims that Palin’s words are just political rhetoric::
While this all makes for good drama, I’m not sure how effective this type of press coverage is in building support. I can’t help but think of the utter carnage of the 1994 midterm elections. Bill Clinton was weakened by a lack of support in Congress from his own party as a Washington outsider and…Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. This C-SPAN footage is a bit dry, but it shows a systematic delineation of undermining public support of Democrats and was more successful than many anticipated. The Democrats would go on to lose 8 seats in the Senate and 54 in the House, earning a majority in both.
I think there was and perhaps still is an opportunity for the Republicans to pick up quite a few seats, but there needs to be rhetoric that moderates can sink their teeth into. Without a more substantial agenda resonating, I predict low turnout, as voters sit the midterms out.
Twitterversion:: Post healthcare, Dems get bump in polls & donations last wk. Rep. backlash ensues. Doubtful if 2010 will be another 1994 @Prof_K
Iceland has recently passed a law banning profit from the nudity of its employees, which may spell the end of the sex industry. The relatively small country is home to 320,000 people, where 100 immigrant women have come to work in strip clubs. The legislation is based on feminist not religious reasons and it is argued that the rise in the number of female parliamentarians (almost 50%) and a strong womens’ movement that is united against the sex industry. Additionally, Iceland has a female prime minister who is openly lesbian, who has been a strong feminist presence in the parliament, the Alþingi {Althingi}. In the US and the UK, feminism is divided, as the sex industry is debated as being degrading or empowering.
What’s interesting is the interaction of culture and feminism in Iceland. The Nordic countries have increasingly negative attitudes towards prostitution and it appears that the feminism is Iceland is less fragmented in its values. I’m curious what the attitudes towards sex are in Iceland and the degree of openness there is towards it, which may explain how feminism is socially constructed in Iceland. I get a sense that places where sex is more taboo and a cultural hot-button topic, the more fragmented feminism will be. I’m not using fragmented pejorativelyJust a thought.
Well, as the strip clubs in Iceland fade away, perhaps they can sell the brass poles on eBay. This NYTimes article from a few years back reports that the owners of the strip club used as a location shoot for The Sopranos auctioned off the stripper poles due to an impending remodel.
Satin Dolls club in Lodi, NJ. Location for Bada Bing in The Sopranos.
Twitterversion:: Iceland banning strip clubs for feminist, not religious reasons. Intersection of culture, sex work, & feminism. #ThickCulture
Andrew Sullivan links to a chart produced by Will Wilkinson. The chart compiles data from the world attitudes survey and shows a convergence in attitudes towards more tolerance for homosexuality.
Important advance IMHO but my question is whether these are abstract changes that signal a shift in those practices we deem as tolerable, rather than concrete changes where we accept gays and lesbians into in our daily habitus as full and equal members. Tolerance does not equal political equality.
There are two relatively recent articles on US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner. One is in The Atlantic, which is more critical, while the one in the New Yorkeris more sanguine. The above video is from The Atlantic talking about Geithner’s svengali appeal and Jedi-mind-trick abilities—except with Wall Street and those in the public who know him and what he does. Inside the beltway, it sounds like he’s a veritable David Watts in many circles. This is pure Erving Goffman à la The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life.
Ironically, he’s become a target of both conservatives who think he’s been too tough on the banking sector and the left who think he should have moved towards nationalizing the banks. He allegedly got the Treasury secretary job because of a good interview with Barack, despite being in the running with his old boss, Lawrence Summers, and the stalwart Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee who helped get the economy under control under Ronald Reagan’s watch.
The biggest problem I have with Geithner’s approach is that he’s operating under the assumption that there is nothing unsound about the capital markets and is seemingly ignoring the fact that there are structural issues with the US economy that can keep the nation in recession for years. Geithner is reluctant to do anything drastic, such as nationalizing the banks {a last-resort strategy}, because he’s afraid that this will effect a policy change that will have enduring consequences. So, while he’s content with a supply-side bailout with a jobless recovery—employers are working their employees harder, there’s a reluctance to get to the heart of the matter. The oligarchies of the banking sector ran aground with their policies and this needs to be addressed. The banks and the politicians have been systematically allowing for the concentration of power, which was accelerated in Clinton’s second term and continued W. MIT professor Simon Johnson, an IMF chief economist with experience with emerging market crises echoes the sentiment that the banking sector needs to be scrutinized to say the least. Geithner’s response is that the US economy is not an emerging one, but I say that all bets are off given the structural changes going on with permanent middle-class job losses and the productivity wave being over. His remarks may go down in history as the heights of arrogance, particularly if the US economy languished like Japan’s since 1990. There are parallels between Japan then and the US now, which should be examined.
A year ago, apparently Obama himself was playing pollyanna with Geithner in hoping the US would grow itself out of the recession. The economic sturm & drang and bailout drama played out over the course of the year and Obama has stood behind Tim, through thick and thin. A cautious, measured approach has been the code of the day with the aim of patching together the economy and nor falling prey to populist temptations to mete out justice, mediæval-style à la Marsellus Wallace.
While much of the framing of managing the economy has been couched in terms like vengeance against the greedy Wall Street robber barons and how that affords political capital, the reality is that he’s a centrist. Barack’s faith in Tim Geithner is somewhat telling. More telling is how the Obama administration has done so little to frame the Geithner agenda and to “sell” the policy and from a marketing and PR perspective, change this ain’t. More problematic is the fact that I don’t think these policies are going to help the US economy recover. Sure, the Geithner plan stemmed the hemorrhaging of public funds and served up a cosmetic recovery on the cheap, but is this so much window-dressing on an economy that still geared towards concentrating power and wealth AND subject to similar meltdowns without increased regulatory oversight? I feel there are structural issued that need to address failpoints in how financial intermediaries are managed, which need to be addressed in order to prevent future meltdowns and fully restore the faith in US capital markets.
Twitterversion:: No love for Treasury secretary Tim Geithner? PR #fail, but are policies fiddling while Rome burns? #ThickCulture @Prof_K
Butler Library, Columbia University, 20 August 2005, by Kenneth M. Kambara
Recently, in the Chronicle of Higher Education {I sometimes refer to it as the “chronic of high ed” on Twitter, cue rimshot }, there have been articles on the dearth of jobs for academics in the humanities. “Thomas Benton’s” “The Big Lie “ was countered with James Mullholland’s “Neither a Trap nor a Lie“.
I won’t weigh in on the discussion about the state of academic careers in the humanities, as the above articles and comments have done that for me. My focus is on the structural issues of this situation. Moreover, I think many should heed what is going on here, as it’s a case of too many applicants searching for too-few jobs. Unless the job losses from the Big Recession are replaced, I’m afraid many middle-class wage earners will be facing the same situation, resulting in employees being at a disadvantage in the power dynamics of the labour market.
The humanities offer a rich corpus of knowledge that can be used to address issues of the day. I recall heading to lectures by Jacques Derrida on forgiveness at the UC-Irvine Critical Theory Institute, as well as talks by scholars such as W. J. T. Mitchell on images and Anne Friedberg on the metaphor of the window. Universities see value in offering courses in the humanities, but in the business of higher education, the model results in an oversupply of labour. In a gross simplification, humanities {and social science} graduate students are taken on to teach discussion sections as cheap labour that results in more doctorate degree holders than the market will bear. Even if graduate students are warned of the job market, nobody expect’s the Spanish inquisition. Universities seeking to maximize efficiencies not only draw upon graduate students, but also well-qualified adjuncts at discounted wages. The humanities, in my opinion, often suffer from a public relations problem. In a sense, they can be the ivoriest of the ivory tower, often communicating in a dense linguistic code that causes lay audiences to scratch their heads. Phallogocentrism? Huh? While I’m not advocating that the humanities need to be applied in nature, I feel there is a need for their staking of a claim for relevance.
Is there a need for a rethinking and a restructuring of academe? Are departments creating silos of knowledge based on fields? Should curricula be reconceptualized?
I’m sure these questions will resonate with many and strike fear into the hearts of others. Hence, these questions are ones that can be readily addressed by organizational sociology. Academe is one of the last feudal systems. This doesn’t mean that all universities are terrible places, but that context is everything, as they are structures with power relations and resource allocations that are highly idiosyncratic. Moreover, they are businesses with cost and profit centres. While Bourdieuean {huh? what?} analysis that incorporates::
Field. Social space where individuals and groups vie for dominance
Habitus. The social norms and rules affecting behaviours
Capital. Economic, symbolic, knowledge, and relational resources used by individuals and groups.
could illuminate institutional dynamics, I’m afraid it will also illuminate how difficult change will be without a radical discontinuity, e.g., financial exigency. There also is the question of values, as well as what is valued.
I’m actually in favour of a life of the mind and I see the value in humanistic inquiry to society and in an everyday sense. I feel how the humanities are currently situated within universities is often problematic, in that there’s a social reproduction of humanistic fields that, in my opinion, limit how the humanities can impact society. I hope for more cross-disciplinary modes of inquiry that span how fields are currently defined. While some may balk at this, I’m also for the humanities {and social sciences} as being more popularized, but which institutions would take this on.
Twitterversion:: Thoughts on the life of the mind & the role of the humanities. #ThickCulture @Prof_K
Montréal Habs fans on RDS network wearing "Subbanator" jerseys in support of P.K. Subban, from Deadspin.
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.
Photo of Halloween partygoers dressed as the Jamaican bobsled team inspired bu the film Cool Runnings {1993}, MacleansOnCampus
“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”
Downtown Montréal signage, en français, August 2006 after American Sociology Association Annual Meetings. Kenneth M. Kambara
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
MIT Open CourseWare Staff Pick Screenshot, February 2010, on YouTube
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::
What is optimally offered online given current technologies?
How to address courses with different types of content/knowledge?
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”
About ThickCulture
A multi-disciplinary blog about what makes cultures "thick": public discourse, multiculturalism, technology, and civic engagement. Read more…
