Search results for social capital

Should higher education be thought of as a public infrastructure?

While in many European countries, higher education was often treated as a public good, a market ideology is increasingly being allowed to allocate access to it. The rationale is that higher education is well-suited to market mechanisms. It’s scarce, not everyone wants it, and is often available at a price. Recent trends towards market capitalism and neoliberal economics have globally hastened the transition towards a market-based view of education. Is this a good thing? Are there market failures?

First, there are political pressures in many countries to reduce public expenditures in higher education. Exploring configurations of public-private funding makes sense. In terms of market failures, or potential failures, one big issue with respect to higher education is the uncertainty of outputs. Higher education offers no express guarantees or warranties. One of its characteristics is that it has “credence qualities”, i.e., those which are hard to gauge even after purchase. Many services have credence qualities, such as consulting or legal or medical advice.

While assessment tries to address this quality issue, Mark Granovetter’s work on embeddedness shows that auditing functions are often subject to social and political forces. In a sense, assessment is really only as good as the localized culture.

Impacting the quality issue are market forces. Higher education institutions compete for students and there is a upward limit on price. The “business” of higher education tries to increase efficiencies to lower costs, by increasing “productivity” {e.g., larger class sizes} or utilizing part-time labour, graduate students, or lower-wage online instructors. The Nordic experience is one where national quality assurance agencies allow universities to develop their own quality initiatives, factoring in the multidimensional nature of quality and institutional contexts. The result is a diversity of approaches that allows flexibility, but also has sanctions for non-compliance.

I think one of the worst places for higher education to be is having an identity crisis with factions supporting radically different views. Teaching versus research can be a dichotomy, but I’ve also seen institutions struggle over going from having regional status versus national status, i.e., “we want to be great.”

Twitterversion:: Higher education & regulation.Does market ideology & the “business model” clash w/quality & accountability?#ThickCulture http://url.ie/5o75 @Prof_K

Song:: Bishop Allen-‘Charm School’

So a side hobby of mine is trying to figure out what this President Obama guy is up to politically.  I might be proven wrong, but I have a strange sense about this president’ political skills, backed up with very little empirical evidence (health care notwihtstanding).  These is something unique and mercurial about his political style than I think is an outlier in studying trends in American politics.  Maybe it’s his mixed-race, multicutlral background or his age or his intellect, maybe it was David Plouffe, amybe it was the Internet but I have a sense that this fall isn’t going to go as my political science brain tells me it should, with big off year gains for the Republicans.  So I’ll go out on a limb and say that the Dems lose fewer than 10 seats in the House this fall. 

All I’m saying is, anybody who can reference a song which contain lyrics that say “If you’re feeling like a pimp, …go on brush your shoulders off” and make it work is playing a different game than the rest of Washington.

The problematic lyrics notwithstanding…it is a meme in his approach to opponents. What I get from his first year and a half in office is that he’s happy for the opposition to get all exercised about socialism and death panels and the like while he waits to expend his political capital when it really counts, like two weeks before a vote on health care. Play it cool, recognize that you’re in charge and strike carefully and methodically. He’s the first hip-hop president and it might work for him.

Here’s a good example, Ezra Klein. is puzzled as to why the administration is opening up offshore drilling opportunities in the face of its own environmental interest groups. Frankly I am too….is he “feathering the bed” for a big victory on cap and trade? What about immigration? Is he going to act on this to energize the Latino base? Whatever he does, he’s going to let his opposition get all angered and annoyed at the “government takeover” of something or another and slowly build the coalition necessary to get things done. He’s playing another game, or as Jay Z would say —

“I’m not a business man. I’m a business. Man! Let me handle my business, damn!”

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::

1. Field. Social space where individuals and groups vie for dominance
2. Habitus. The social norms and rules affecting behaviours
3. 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

Song:: Ministry-“So What”

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”

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”

Notes from North of 49ºN

This is a follow-up post to:: Postcolonial Canada, National Identity, & the Nature of Hegemony :: The Trajectory of Canada. This post will focus on the political implications of the current postcolonial circumstance.

Around Canada Day last summer, I talked about the role of media in terms of nation and globalization. I was contemplating the concepts of “nation” and “citizen” within the sphere of North American capitalism. If nation doesn’t matter, do we just become consumers?

In my last post, I echo these ideas, but derived my thoughts on the “fuzziness” of Canadian identity by rooting it in its postcolonial circumstance. The concept of Canada as a nation is problematized by its history and trajectory; going from a colony of Britain with a sizeable minority culture {Québec} to being a next-door neighbour to a superpower. This isn’t to say that Canada has no identity. Ask “Joe” from the classic I Am a Canadian Molson ads series.  This one is titled “Rant”::

While within the context of the cultural product of advertising, I find the ad interesting, as it plays upon the notion of Canada as stereotyped and misunderstood by its powerful neighbour to the south. It juxtaposes Canada by delineating what it is not—the United States. The ad inspired several parodies, including this one from a Toronto radio station titled, “I Am Not Canadian”, which illuminates stereotypes of Québec. At any rate, I think there is a Canadian identity, but I’m not sure how unified it is across the country.

Perhaps one of the products of fuzzy identity is a steady trend of increasingly decentralized federalism since WWII. This set the stage for the rise of regionalism, perhaps starting with Québec opting out of federal programmes. Decentralized federalism also means that Canada as an institution will have less and less meaning over time. Pragmatically, it opens the door up for political gridlock::

“There is disagreement not only between the provinces and the federal government, but also among the provinces themselves. Canadians are losing patience with the endless cacophony. They want high-quality services, delivered in ways that are transparent so that they can track results. They are pragmatists. Fix it, they demand. When it doesn’t get fixed, they grow impatient with institutional gridlock.” [1]

Perhaps a product of this impatience is tuning out. Canadian voter turnout has been the lowest it’s been in 100 years, in the low to mid 60s the 00s and dipping to 58.8% in 2008.  Moreover, decentralized federalism could explain the fragmentation of politics we’ve seen of late, which I’ve blogged about over on Rhizomicon, characterized by 35% of the popular vote not going to the major parties. Decentralized federalism forces much of the national political discourse on domestic issues to focus on the provincial or regional implications of policy.  One of my observations is the rise of regional politics in Québec and the West.

Here’s a map of the 2000 federal election, before the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/Canadian Alliance parties merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, but after the formation of the Bloc Québecois in 1991::

In the West, the Canadian Alliance {green} won 66 of 301 seats in Parliament, while in Québec, the Bloc Québecois {light blue} won 38 seats.  The predecessor to the Canadian Alliance , the Reform Party, was a socially and fiscally conservative populist party that had the bulk of the support in the western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, making inroads into Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Its policies and rhetoric were, at times, very divisive and anti-Québec, as evident in this ad campaign from the prior election in 1997::

“[Preston] Manning and Reform were roundly criticized by the other candidates when they ran an ad saying politicians from Québec had controlled the federal government for too long.

Chretien [Liberal Party leader], Charest [Progressive Conservative leader] and Duceppe [Bloc Québécois leader] are all from Québec, and the prime minister of Canada for 28 of the last 29 years has hailed from the province. Still, the assertion led to denunciations of Manning as ‘intolerant’ and a ‘bigot,’ though it seemed to play well in his Western base.” [2]

The Reform “style” members of Parliament of the Conservative Party, who are primarily in the West, have effectively formed a Western “Bloc,” as some argue that the policies of the Conservative Party are heavily influenced by the Reform wing. additionally, the Conservative Party has less of a stake in federalism, which frees them to serve regional interests.

Where does this leave Canada in term of its future trajectory? I don’t see identity formation occurring overnight and I see the likelihood of increased political fragmentation based on region and ideology {given the rise in support of the New Democrats and the Greens since 2000}. In light of this, it may be time to think about more centralized federalism, but the challenge will be how to configure it without a serious crisis at hand. On the other hand, what about leadership? Does strong leadership with results give the electorate meaning, a sense of identity, and increased civic engagement?

Twitterversion:: Thoughts on rising politics of region in Canada, stemming fr.”fuzziness” on concept of Canada as a nation #ThickCulture http://url.ie/4r5l #ThickCulture @Prof_K

References::

[1] Stein, Janice G. (2006) “Canada by Mondrian: Networked Federalism in an Era of Globalization.” Banff Forum. Accessed 24 January 2010, http://banffforum.ca/common/documents/Reading_polit_sust_stein.pdf

[2] CNN (1997)  “Canada poised for vote that may deadlock parliament”.  Retrieved 21 January 2010, from http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/01/canada.elex/index.html

Notes from north of 49ºN

José’s post from late November, Exploding Empires, got me thinking about Canada’s postcolonial experience.  While the remnants of the British empire linger with political structures {including the viceregal Governor General} and the Queen on the money, before 1663 most of Canada was a part of New France.  If the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the siege of Québec City went differently, it would have been interesting to see the trajectory of Canada, if New France stayed under French control or if there was a long protracted war with Britain.  That’s neither here nor there, but the reality is that Canada does have the legacy of being a part of the British empire, while arguably subjugating the First Nations and francophone Québec, which I’ll come back to later.

So, in 1867, Canada became a Dominion in the British Commonwealth with its own Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald {who is on the $10 bill}. This was a trend with its “white settler” colonies. In 1931, The Statute of Westminster made the Canadian Parliament independent of British control and Canada ceased being a colony.  Nevertheless, there were and are ties to Britain. In fact, during WWII, many of the archives for Canada were destroyed in the Battle of Britain, which were housed in London, England, not Ottawa.

The relationship between Canada and Britain has shaped Canada’s character.  The obvious way to characterize the relationship is one of parent and child, but how to characterize it further? Canada as the abused Cinderella? Benign neglect? For decades, the British sought to assert imperial authority and reduce the influence of popular control of the government, which was viewed as a precursor to the American revolution [1]. Once British control began to wane, the rapid industrialization of the United States resulted in a dominant cultural and economic power at Canada’s doorstep.  Many argue that Canada traded one hegemon for another. Many Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, saw this pattern and sought to “decolonize” Canada, but what exactly does that entail?  What does a decolonized Canada look like? Is a strong national identity required?

The simmering legacy of the ghost of an old colonialism, i.e., New France, along with First Nations and immigrant communities, serve to further complicate matters by generating tensions from within.   Québec, a province with about 23.9% of the population where 40% of its residents support some form of sovereignty for Québec.  Urbanist Jane Jacobs around 1979-80 even went as far to say::

“Montréal cannot afford to behave like other Canadian regional cities without doing great damage to the economic well-being of the Québécois. It must instead become a creative economic centre in its own right… Yet there is probably no chance of this happening if Québec remains a province.” [2]

Despite hundreds of years passing since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, there is definitely a strong francophone cultural identity in Québec and a resurgence of separatist politics enabled by the Quiet Revolution/Révolution Tranquille of the 1960s.

Add to the mix, globalization and the resultant Appaduraian flows of financial capital, human migration, media, ideologies [3, 4], and brands [5].

I feel all of these four factors::

1. Historical trajectory of British colonialism
2. Proximity to US cultural {media} and economic forces
3. The subjugation of francophone culture under a trajectory of British colonialism
4. Current state of globalization with flows of people, media, capital, ideologies and brands

serve to strongly decentre the very concept of Canada and Canadian identity, i.e., Canada as an “imagined community” in the Benedict Anderson sense [6]. Extending Anderson’s ideas about print capitalism being critical in defining the concept of nation, I would argue that Canadian identity is being undermined because of the dominance of US media, particularly film, television, and Internet content. I’ve argued for increased funding of the CBC and I feel it can and should play a role in defining nation.  This post isn’t meant to be an accusation or to sound an alarm, but open up a dialogue about the future trajectory of Canada.

If Canadian identity is indeed decentred, doesn’t this imply a fuzziness in people’s meaning systems regarding Canada and does this fuzziness lead to less resistance of hegemonic forces?  Does any of this even matter?  Aren’t these just market forces in action?  Antonio Gramsci says hegemony requires acquiescence [7], but as global consumers, aren’t we all willing to submit to hegemony if it strikes our fancy?  Sweet, glorious hegemony. Hasn’t China proven that global consumers are willing to purchase in ways that are detrimental to their own economies?

I think national identity matters, as does resistance to hegemonic forces.  Identity matters, as a shared sense of communitas and comradeship should guide policy and everyday actions. Citizens should derive meaning from the institution and social construction of nation. Resistance to hegemony matters, as this allows for culture to remain dynamic by allowing its redefinition, rather than continually self-replicating in the same fashion in the style created by the powers that be, i.e., the corporation and the state.

My next blog post will extend these ideas to Canadian politics.

Twitterversion:: Thoughts about “postcolonial” Canada given its relationships with Britain, USA, & Quebec. Interplay b/t media & identity. http://url.ie/4q9t @Prof_K

Song:: Weakerthans-“One Great City”

References

[1] Smith, Simon (1998). British Imperialism 1750-1970. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052159930X.

[2] Philpot, R. (2006) “She Stayed Creative Until the End: The Rich Life of Jane Jacobs” counterpunch.org, retrieved 21 January 2010, from http://www.counterpunch.org/philpot04262006.html

[3] Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large. Cambridge, MA: University of Minnesota Press.

[4] Appadurai, A. (1990) “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” Retrieved 21 January 2010,  http://www.intcul.tohoku.ac.jp/~holden/MediatedSociety/Readings/2003_04/Appadurai.html

[5] Sherry, J.F. (1998) ‘The Soul of the Company Store: Nike Town Chicago and the Emplaced Brandscape’, in J.F. Sherry (ed.) ServiceScapes: The Concept of Place in Contemporary Markets, pp. 305–36. Chicago: NTC Business Books.

[6] Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities. Verso. http://books.google.com/books?id=4mmoZFtCpuoC&dq=benedict+anderson+imagined+communities&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=cZ9YS–eFcLO8QaZq-jKAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[7] Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Lawrence and Wishart.

Crossposted on Rhizomicon.

Sometimes when I read The Chronicle, I think of the slang term “chronic”, as quite a few of the articles/opinions are really hard to take, let alone take seriously.  A recent offering by William Deresiewicz on “Faux Friendships” on social media sites like Facebook struck me as a pining for an institution lost, akin to those decrying the demise of the institution of marriage.

My Best Simulacrum Forever

Many of you may find Deresiewicz’s article to be an interesting read.  He discusses friendship over time {I think he romanticises it quite a bit} and ponders its meaning in this current era of late capitalism.  Alas, he feels friendships aren’t what they used to be and Facebook isn’t helping.

“With the social-networking sites of the new century—Friendster and MySpace were launched in 2003, Facebook in 2004—the friendship circle has expanded to engulf the whole of the social world, and in so doing, destroyed both its own nature and that of the individual friendship itself. Facebook’s very premise—and promise—is that it makes our friendship circles visible. There they are, my friends, all in the same place. Except, of course, they’re not in the same place, or, rather, they’re not my friends. They’re simulacra of my friends, little dehydrated packets of images and information, no more my friends than a set of baseball cards is the New York Mets.”

Simulacra?  Well, isn’t that a consequence of being willy-nilly in friending, a promiscuity of sorts?  Not to judge it, but if you choose to have hundreds of Facebook friends, shouldn’t this be expected?  He goes on to talk about how Facebook offers a “sense” of connection, as opposed to real connection.  My “sense” is that this is a case of YMMV, i.e., your mileage may vary.  Now, I’m not a huge Facebook user and my presence on it is inflated by posting my Twitter tweets to my wall.  That said, yesterday, a Facebook friend posted on her wall that she would be hosting a table at a craft fair in The Annex neighbourhood of Toronto.  I saw it and made it over there and had a chance to catch up and have a few drinks.  My Facebook network tends to replicate my real connections and I tend not to “collect” second and higher order ties {friends-of-a-friend and so on} or very weak ties from my distant past.  Perhaps I’m an anomaly, but my point is Facebook is what you make of it and the meaning is in the usage.

TMI and Verbal Vomitus

Are we sharing too much of the mundane?  Deresiewicz thinks so::

“What purpose do all those wall posts and status updates serve? On the first beautiful weekend of spring this year, a friend posted this update from Central Park: “[So-and-so] is in the Park with the rest of the City.” The first question that comes to mind is, if you’re enjoying a beautiful day in the park, why don’t you give your iPhone a rest? But the more important one is, why did you need to tell us that?”

It’s been stated for a while that all of these Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets may seem like so much meaningless dross, but the sum of these paints can help to paint a picture of the everyday aspects of a person’s life, affording an intimacy that would be hard to replicate without technology.  A friend of mine in California said that SMS texting has brought his family closer together with just mundane <140 character texts.

The Transparency of Everyday Life

I have done blog posts on public political figures getting into hot water for content posted on Facebook, with the latest instalment here.  If privacy is dead on the Internet, is a corollary to this that our lives are now fairly transparent?  While we have a certain degree of control over what people see of our lives with social media, there’s a lot out of our control.  Fake personas and being “tagged” in a Facebook photo in an unflattering way are examples of what’s out of our control, but I think there’s a perceptual shift taking place where people are growing accustomed to “oversharing” and its fallout.  Deresiewicz is concerned by the private going public::

“The most disturbing thing about Facebook is the extent to which people are willing—are eager—to conduct their private lives in public. “hola cutie-pie! i’m in town on wednesday. lunch?” “Julie, I’m so glad we’re back in touch. xoxox.” “Sorry for not calling, am going through a tough time right now.” Have these people forgotten how to use e-mail, or do they actually prefer to stage the emotional equivalent of a public grope?”

I honestly feel that as time progresses, we will get desensitized to “oversharing” of private spheres in public, even at its most lurid.  One day, something like a decades-old “sexting” photo will appear, involving a political candidate or public figure and there will be a collective yawn.  Just like how adult content that would result in convictions in the 1980s are now bookmarked on browsers without batting an eye.

I don’t think friendship is “dying,” but transforming.  Technology has the ability to transform the social and its institutions, i.e., social conventions.  Are social media technologies like Facebook “falsifying” intimacy, as Deresiewicz claims?  That’s an interesting question.  I do agree with Deresiewicz that there is a commodification going on, which has the power to alter meaning systems when it comes to concepts like intimacy.  Along with commodification, I think there can be a tendency in technologically-mediated interactions to treat some {but not all} “relationships” as disposable.  Rejection.  This, perhaps, is the flipside to the immense potential of social media to connect people in ways which are impossible with just face-to-face communications.  It can be a huge “catch and release” system for some.

I think the article taps into an uneasiness shared by many.  Perhaps a dystopic fear that we are losing what makes us human.  The “sex in the future” scene from Demolition Man {1993} also taps into fears of how technologically-mediated interpersonal interactions, albeit in an authoritarian regime with “big brother” overtones::

When this is possible, those who decry the demise of friendship with Facebook, well, their heads will explode.

Twitterversion:: Is #socialmedia & #Facebook killing institution #friendship? CHE art. discussed brings up food 4 thought. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Queen-“You’re My Best Friend”

Here’s a good ethical puzzle for a social problems or public policy class.  Is it morally acceptable for New York City to address their homeless problem by providing them a one-way airline ticket.  Apparently, the city has saved thousands of dollars by giving indigent residents the option of moving to another city or state.

On one hand, this seems to meet the conditions of market exchange — two parties engaged in a voluntary transaction.  And with the city’s unemployment over 10 percent, perhaps helping the homeless move addresses a jobs/labor spatial mismatch?  On the other hand, it seems as if the city is “giving up” on its residents.  It is presuming that providing social services is an economic drain rather than a human capital investment.  More importantly, it is signaling that some residents of the city are more valuables than others.

HT: Planetizen

I’ve been wanting to blog about John Hughes for some time and with his recent passing I’ve given it a bit more thought.  Andrew’s blog on generation was the most recent time, as I was thinking about how each generation has its cultural touchstones.  Gen-Xers might recall their reactions to:: coming of age in the era of Reagan or Mulrooney, the AIDS scare, seeing John Hughes films, hearing the ubiquity of pop stars like Springsteen, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen massacre, political correctness, being typified by a slacker young-adulthood, relating to Cobain’s angst, relating to someone from the cast of Friends, living the era of diminished expectations, dot com to dot bomb, seeing Ferris Bueller 15 years later as a broken Jim McAllister {Election}, relating to the dysfunction of life through Palahniuk or the neurosis of it through David Sedaris, 9-11, celebrating failure with Wes Anderson and the Venture Brothers, the bubble economy, market meltdowns, and seeing that shift from W to O.

I was never a fan of John Hughes films.  The experiences portrayed didn’t resonate with me and the message was about the status quo masquerading as rebellion.  A few years later I would be in a French lit. course realizing that I had the same reaction to the overblown sentimentality of romanticism.  Hughes has a deft hand at skewering adults, portraying them as buffoons, and showing slabs of teenage life with all of its and pain injustices {See above clip of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club}, but at the end of the day, the universe gravitates towards a social equilibrium of winners and losers.  Of course, with a cool soundtrack.

My “heroes” at that time were in the UK, in the likes of Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, Tony Wilson of Factory Records, and designer Peter Saville, all iconoclasts of a sort, whose ideals would eventually clash hard with the vagaries of market capitalism.  In the mid-1980s, I felt these guys were onto something, an æsthetic and an ethos that was far removed from the suburban milieu of Hughes’ territory, which at the end of the day was just more identity posturing on my part.  I remember wanting to go to university in order to start the next Rough Trade, back when alternative was post-punk or new music.  So, imagine my chagrin upon seeing Hughes coöpt music that mattered to me back in the day, e.g., The English Beat {Ferris Bueller racing to get home running through yards to “Rotating Heads”, Psychedelic Furs {“Pretty in Pink”}, and the Smiths {The Dream Academy covering “Please, Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”}.

Hughes’ mid-1980s was squarely in the Reagan era and his films are evocative of the zeitgeist of the times.  I think several of Hughes’ films capture this well and I can’t help but wonder how growing up in this era has affected Gen-X.  Hughes was a conservative himself and the defunct Premiere magazine dubbed him as a Normal-Rockwell-in-Hollywood type of guy.  I think this 2006 Slate article has it right, his “conservatism” wasn’t one that celebrated old money elitism and stuffiness, but rather an optimistic Reagan Republicanism with a party-animal twist.  Put another way, a middle-of-the-road “moderatism” of quiet desperation punctuated by good times.  Rebellion was an incrementalist affair and our individualistic identities navigate seemingly treacherous waters of acceptance, but at the end of the day, nothing really changes.  Misguided as it may have been, this is how I perceived many of my peers.  Aware of the hypocrisy of society, but far too complacent to do anything about it.  I would meet revolutionary characters from Gen-X years later, but it dawned on me that in a generation that often values the status quo, iconoclasts are going to be hard to spot, as they’re often content to be flying under the radar.

On a ThickCulture note, I finally had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Lindner at this year’s ASA.  I now feel pressure to get up to speed with soccer in order to have something reasonably intelligent to say when he and José start talking about the game.

Twitterversion:: Pondering political conservatism of #JohnHughes, captured 80s zeitgeist& a GenX touchstone. Does this inform who GenX is? http://url.ie/27hk  @Prof_K