Science is a view from nowhere. (from Thomas Nagel’s 1989 The View from Nowhere) Who among you observe your subjects from nowhere?

Right now I’m exploring public deliberation on Facebook through an analysis of members’ writings about California’s Proposition 8. I entered the term “Proposition 8” on Facebook’s search function, analyzing the first 10 pages of wall postings on each of the first 50 groups created (examining only groups with over 25 members). Between the pro and anti-Proposition 8 sites, one clear finding has emerged—the opposition to Prop 8 engages the walls of pro-Prop 8 sites far more than vice versa (e.g. compare the walls of groups like “Repeal CA Proposition 8” with “Vote YES On Proposition 8!”).

Supporters of Prop 8 seldom write on the walls of anti groups. The pro-Prop 8 sites evidence a great deal of clash, however. For anti-Prop 8 advocates, Facebook groups appear to mostly offer spaces for testing and exploring arguments, that is, intra-movement advocacy. Occasionally a supporter of Prop 8 will write on an anti-site wall, but this usually consists of an isolated, inflammatory comment. Anti-Prop 8 advocates largely have to jump onto pro sites in order to engage in argument with the other side. My question is, what do you think explains this phenomenon? My initial thought is that anti-Prop 8 advocates are the ones with an uphill battle here, so they simply need to work harder to overcome the status quo. But that seems a bit surface and inadequate, given the sheer effort that the pro-Prop 8 supporters have put into their campaign. All in all, why is there more engagement by one side rather than the other on Facebook’s wall posts?

In the classroom and with conversations with researchers, I’ve discussed the idea that the environment is a luxury, in light of more pressing matters, such as food, jobs, etc. So, if we have a negative by-product of an activity {an externality such as pollution}, it creates a social cost that may be unfairly borne by others.  A key question is how to allocate such social costs, in light of competing interests?  What if these social costs in the form of taxes harm employers to the point where jobs are threatened?  Which should prevail?

The problem is that the value of the environment is not straightforward, as they often relate to a quality of life that is embedded in particulars, not universals.  When I lived in southern California, life without a car outside of Los Angeles would have been challenging.  My housing choices would be limited, possibly affecting my quality of life.  As it turned out, my decisions were independent of my environmental impact.  I had a 20 mile commute, albeit in a hybrid, but my choices affected everyone’s quality of life in terms of pollution, as well as the amounts of global greenhouse gasses.  Should policy affect choices like this?

In our everyday lives, we all have a set of practices that we take for granted.  In Pierre Bourdieu’s parlance, this would be habitus.  These practices are tied to environmental outcomes, whether we’re aware of them or not.  We only seem to be aware of them through consciousness or cost.

I don’t think the environment is a luxury that should take a back seat in an economic downturn, as it holds sacred the current mode of production and the current practices tied to it.  Of course, this could be disruptive, but should something that’s disruptive be avoided because of the uncertainty it generates?

Let’s assume the environment is a luxury when it comes to sustainable foods.  Organics should be toast in a recession, considered to be an overpriced luxury for most consumers.  In the UK, a Guardian article notes that consumers are less willing to spend on ethically-produced products {e.g., fairtrade} and organics, but are still want quality and are willing to pay a price-premium for locally-grown produce.  This shows how complicated markets can be, how consumers’ preferences shift, and creates implications for local production and land-use in Britain, creating challenges and opportunities for sustainable agriculture.  Habitus.

Policy can “incentivize” innovation, by enforcing standards such as those mandating increased fuel efficiency {CAFE standards in the US; CAFC guidelines in Canada}, state emissions testing, and the sale of lower-emissions vehicles.  Such approaches often are mired within institutional battlegrounds, places where economic sociology offer great insights.  While environmental policies enforcing change are disruptive and force auto manufacturers to move towards a different mode of production, the end societal results can be positive.  I agree with Alexandra Shimo of Macleans that the recession is bad for the environment, as oil prices fall, the incentives for the development of alternatives to fossil fuels wane.

So, is the environment a luxury?  Well, it may well be akin to the diamond-water paradox.  Why are diamonds so expensive relative to water, where the latter we need to live.  Scarcity.  If we just allow the market to dictate decision-making, we unfortunately will only value the environment when we perceive it as growing scarce.  Will that be too late?

Twitterversion:: Some argue that environmentalism and sustainability is a luxury, as when push comes to shove, pragmatics dictate pressing concerns prevail. @Prof_K

Song:: Honey Honey (BBC Sessions) – Feist on the Green Owl compilation – lyrics

Video:: Talking Heads- “Nothing But Flowers” w/ Johnny Marr & Kirsty MacColl

Last week, the Young Republicans got into a dustup over yet another Facebook flap.  This spring, we discussed how Facebook derailed an NDP candidate to provincial office in British Columbia, when the BC-Liberal opposition got wind of “racy” photos posted.  In this incident, there’s differing opinions which are arguably representations of fragmentation in the Republican Party.  According to the DailyBeast, it started with Audra Shay, vice chairman of the Young Republicans hosting a discussion on Wal*Mart endorsing Barack Obama’s health care plan.  Things unravelled when an “Eric S. Piker” made racially charged comments using the word “coon,” another ThickCulture topic from the spring {See above}.  Audra agreed with the statements, adding a LOL.

Subsequently, there were others criticizing these remarks, Cassie Wallender {a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation} and Sean Connor {chairman of the D.C. Young Republicans}.  While these critics were “de-friended” by Audra, “Piker,” for the time being, remained a “friend.”  On Thursday, a black Republican activist, Lenny McAllister condemned these remarks and prior statements by Shay::

McAllister references a culture war going on in the Republican Party and regarding the racially charged remarks going around, he stated “You can cover cyanide with chocolate, but you still can’t call it candy.”

Her own recounting of the events, possible unaware of the screencap, paint a different picture of the events.  In her statement on 3 July, Shay went on to denounce the remarks and attributed the dustup to her political enemies capitalizing on an opportunity.  Irreparable damage may have already been done, as her upcoming bid to be Young Republican chairman may have been derailed.  

I’m not going to engage in any admonishing finger-waving on the dangers of social media, a bete-noire of mine.  I think this is beyond a matter of “political correctness” or freedom of speech issues and do reflect a growing divide between moderates and a more divisive fringe.  Indicative of this is how moderates are often criticized as being RINOs, Republicans-in-name-only, who are not sufficiently conservative. The RINO label was thrown at Wallender by Shay supporters after her criticism of the racial remarks.  In order for Republicans to move forward, they will have to deal with these issues head-on.  Will they use social media to do this?

Twitterversion:: #YoungRepublican schism over racially-charged #Facebook flap. Indicative of a larger #CultureWar within the party?  @Prof_K

Song:: Space Oddity (1990 Digital Remaster) – David Bowie

  

I wanted to take up some valuable blog real estate to encourage you to consider submitting a manuscript to a new interdisciplinary journal I’m helping to edit entitled The Journal of Integrated Social Sciences (JISS). The journal is a particularly good fit for manuscripts that are taking a systemic and integrative view of social issues.

JISS attempts to provide a platform that fills the void of a unified approach in the social sciences. Our hope is that students and professionals alike will take advantage of this new outlet for their ideas and quality work, to be shared with others, thereby bridging the isolation that often exists between the various social disciplines. We are therefore particularly interested in interdisciplinary and/or holistically oriented projects and invite you to share such investigations with the rest of the scholarly community.

From the Journal’s Mission Statement:
A major focus point of JISS centers on the concept of “transformations”. We do not see the world as a static, unmoving entity. Rather, social nature is developmental and thus transformative in its characteristics. Hence, we especially encourage authors with a key interest in examining how phenomena transform to submit their research. We are especially interested in those works that share a wide perspective for analysis and synthesis — i.e. on what the nature of the “whole” is. This approach stands in opposition to elementaristic observations that focus on parts, which without their relation to the whole phenomena become artificial and meaningless. We believe that works aimed at capturing the dynamics, fluidity, and synthesis of individual and social phenomena are all too often underrepresented in scholarly journals.

Please consider submitting a manuscript, or encouraging a promising student to submit their work.

The Sociology Division editor is Alan Hansen at Carroll College.

For more information on JISS, visit the website at www.jiss.org.
For information on submitting a manuscript, visit www.jiss.org/submissions

From the Monkey Cage: Charles Blow empirically debunks the cocktail party anecdote that Republicans are more likely to engage in illicit behavior (have affairs, get divorced, watch pornography) than Democrats. At that same time, he reminds us of the perils of ecological inference.

Using GSS data, he finds no statistical relationship between political ideology and divorce or infidelity. What’s more interesting to me is why those of us on the left like to grab on to this narrative. There seems to be a trenchant meme in popular culture about the repressed puritan who longs to “let loose.”

My wife and I recently saw Woody Allen’s Whatever Works. An otherwise funny movie except for the tired stereotype of the repressed Southern evangelicals that get enticed by the “big city’s” charms. In this image, a good Christian woman played by Patricia Clarkson is seduced by a philosophy professor and encouraged to indulge her animal spirits.

We also discover that the upstanding southern father, played by Ed Begley, is a repressed homosexual. He only discovers this in New York, of course.

Don’t get me wrong, we can go on for days about the level of hypocrisy present among the “family values crowd.” Republican politicians are having affairs so often that it’s not even news anymore. But it strikes me as interesting that we on the left so readily accept the narrative of conservatives being more sinful than liberals. It reinforces our sense of rectitude. In the same way, I imagine, that conservatives think all of us in academia are a bunch of un-reflective radicals.

Over on OpenSalon, Mary Elizabeth Williams did a post on author’s social media e-sponses to negative reviews .  At first, I was amused by the spirited rejoinders.  Williams cites Ayelet Waldman’s response to Jill Lepore’s review of Bad Mother in the New Yorker, was allegedly a succinct “The book is a feminist polemic, you ignorant twat.” My favorite was Alain de Botton’s response to Caleb Crain’s review in the New York Times on the latter’s blog::

“Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.” [Emphasis added]

I chose to show the full comment, not just the last sentences in bold that many are quoting, since I wanted to provide context and show that it wasn’t just a two-line virulent jab.  Some might call this churlish, but I saw it as a writer showing he has the chops as a writer to defend his book against criticism.

I do understand why Williams offers her advice of being careful about ranting at critics.  Such angry behaviour can make can one seem shrill and immature, although I do enjoy the sheer drama of it all.  Publishing, as it stands today, is hypercompetitive and there are influential gatekeepers like critics.  I wonder if these interactions in social media are showing how the “authority” of the critic is being decentered.  Social media allow for dialogues and will expectations shift, in that critics will have to justify their reviews to authors and audiences alike.  Interestingly, Caleb Crain chose not to respond to Alain de Botton’s comment, only offering an unsatisfying::

“Folks: Thanks for all your comments. A broad range of opinions have been expressed, and I’m going to close comments on this post now. all best wishes, Caleb”

That said, I wonder what the future of publishing and criticism are, given Web 2.0 and beyond.  The critic serves a winnowing function, granting {or taking away} legitimacy and status.  Will this function be replaced by an increasingly intelligent Web 3.0 with “crowdsourced” reviews?  What are the implications for acadème and peer-review journals?  Will the “wisdom of the crowd” topple the institutional fiefdoms controlling knowledge?

I know critiquing work can be tough.  While not that in-depth, the act of reviewing Soderburgh’s The Girlfriend Experience was illuminating for me, particularly after seeing how many reviewers were taking the easy road.  I’ve done peer-review for over 15 years now and have been through the double-blind review process, as well.  I’ve always tried to be constructive with my reviews, even with what I see is a flawed manuscript, offering citations and {hopefully} theoretical or methodological insights.  I’ve read that Will Ferrell is very constructive as a colleague, often taking the time to help others work through something not working with their comedy, and I’m trying to pattern myself after this.  My take is that if you can’t be constructive and if you tear something down without backing it up, you better be prepared to fight it out and social media is the perfect venue for this.

Song:: There Is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics (Cd) – Of Montreal

Video:: Office Space “The Going Away Present”

Twitterversion:: Authors using #socialmedia to lash out at negative reviews. #Fail or #Web2.0 decentering of critics as #gatekeepers in publishing? @Prof_K

A few months ago, I blogged on how no-frills universities were catching on and have been reading on how higher education may be in a state of impending crisis.  Plus, I saw how one university was offering commencement in the online virtual realm of Second Life.  All of this had made me think about the future of the university::

• Will the traditional “university” setting give way to the “business park” mode?
• Will online degrees become increasingly prevalent?
• How will the functions {research, teaching, community engagement, etc.} of the university change in society over time?
• Should the university be treated like any other business and at what price?

I’ve always seen universities as communities, rare places where one interacts with others about ideas and knowledge. In the mid-1990s, I had the chance to be a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and remember it being a place open to inderdisciplinary perspectives, where interesting research was being done and intelligent conversations could be had.  I read somewhere that a few decades ago, the Stanford University Faculty Club was once a vibrant place where professors from the various schools and departments would kick around ideas.  I was talking to a recently retired computer science professor who was at my alma-mater, UC Irvine, in the 1970s, recalling conversations and debates with post-Marxist historians and scholars in the humanities.  From my perspective, it’s the community that a university creates that matters and I feel that uses of technology should be working not only on online instruction but on helping to foster a virtual intellectual community.  In terms of non-traditional settings and online instruction, I think there are challenges of legitimacy.  Online and “business park” universities taught primarily by adjuncts need to address the quality issue and ensure that the pedagogy is not just having students jump through hoops.  Students also need to adjust to learning in these environments.  I used synchronous chat in a recent class.  I heard from students I never heard from in the face-to-face discussions and it became clear who prepared and who didn’t.  Some students were quite candid in confessing this in front of everyone, virtually.

The “crisis” that universities face in my book is not just a financial one, but also one of relevance.  Relevance to individuals and to society.  While there is a business aspect to running a university, treating it too much like a business by focusing on efficiency metrics and revenue opportunities, rather than how it fits into a community structure, is a sure-fire way to balkanize faculty.  I think it will be challenging for universities to keep an infrastructure in place and deliver value that students want.  I do expect a shakeout, especially in a globalized world connected to the Internet, unless universities adapt to being more competitive and rethink pricing.

Finally, I think universities can learn from the writer Ray Bradbury, who thinks libraries are more important than universities and a staunch library advocate::

“Libraries raised me…I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

It makes me wonder how ideas like Chris Anderson’s “free-conomics” could be applied to universities, an idea I’m mulling over and would love my colleagues to chime in on.  Can a university business model be created that offers up free education, but brings in revenues through non-tuition means, begging the question, what business is the university really in?  Is a degree the “product” or is “lifelong learning,” as in the building cultural capital?  I leave with this Anderson quote, with my mind on how free knowledge, rather than free electricity, could transform society and improve democracy::

“What if electricity had in fact become virtually free? The answer is that everything electricity touched — which is to say just about everything — would have been transformed. Rather than balance electricity against other energy sources, we’d use electricity for as many things as we could — we’d waste it, in fact, because it would be too cheap to worry about.”

Twitterversion:: What’s the future of higher ed? Can it be #Free: #ChrisAnderson #freeconomy ideas? Peddling degrees or lifelong learning? http://url.ie/1xzu @Prof_K

Song:: The Headmaster Ritual – The Smiths

Despite the plethora of podcasts out there, there are few that do a thoughtful, yet entertaining job of addressing issues in the social sciences. I want to draw your attention to one of these podcasts. BBC radio four’s Analysis is a great resource for social scientists. The last two episodes in particular have dealt with the question of how norms, in their various forms, affect behavior. Though Experiments does an amazing job of synthesizing the emerging research in moral psychology and experimental philosophy (how the latter is different from social science, I’m not sure). The episode “doesn’t everyone” does a nice job of discussing the role of institutional norms in affecting behavior. Both are a must have on your Ipod…right next to the Contexts podcast.

Notes from North of 49ºN

I’ve been thinking more and more about the concept of nation, of late.  In summers past, the 4th. of July, Independence Day in the United States, meant being in northern California and perhaps heading to Point Reyes and seeing the tug-of-war between Bolinas and Stinson Beach.  The past three years, I have observed Canada Day, celebrating when Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario became a federation, a dominion with ties to the UK.  Two adjacent countries, which appear to have similarities, but have key differences.  Population is one differentiator. At confederation in 1867, the US population was around over 10 times that of Canada, 38,558,371 to 3,625,000 {1870}.  The twentieth century would see the rise of American dominance, not only in terms of economics, but also in terms of media and culture.

American culture is readily evident in Canada.  On television and in major cities like Toronto, with the prevalence of brands like Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, and Subway.  A quick scan of the TV listings shows how popular US television content is in anglophone Canada.  Canada is aware of this and requires broadcasters to show Canadian content {Can con}.  The CBC, the Canadian national public broadcaster, is a flagship network of the nation, where, through its mandate, the network’s goal is to be a cultural touchstone for the nation.  I’ve blogged about the future of the CBC television on this post:: Will Globalization Kill or Make the CBC Relevant Again?, which touches on how the CBC is struggling to remain viable and relevant in the shadow of big media players in the United States and fending off challengers within Canada.  Unlike the BBC, Britain’s national broadcaster, which is funded through household television licences, the CBC gets funding from the government, but also is subject to market forces through selling ad time, both sources being historically uneven.

The question I have is whether the role of a national broadcaster is even important.  I don’t see the United States as having the equivalent of the CBC, let alone the BBC.  PBS and NPR are, in my opinion, a loose confederation of programming, as opposed to a network with a strong identity, let alone an entity fostering a conceptualization of the United States as a culture or a nation.

The ideas of Arjun Appadurai and Benedict Anderson come to mind.  Appadurai speaks of globalization in terms of flows.  Flows of finance, ideologies, technologies, people and media, each with the suffix scapes.  Mediascapes have two components::

1. The flows of capacity to produce and disseminate electronic information
2. The images of the world created by these media

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities discusses nation as an abstract entity, where meaning is shared within and the mass media address its citizens as a public.

Borders are often permeable under globalization and Canada has seen flows of media flood across its southern border, but what has this done to Canadians’ notion of nation?  Can Canadian content policy and the CBC help to reinforce the imagined community of Canada?  Does nation even matter?  Is Canada to Canadians “our home and disparate land,” as stated in today’s Vancouver Sun?  What about shared Canadian experiences such as Hinterland’s Who’s Who::

I think we need to remember that the context here is capitalism.  Media is flowing, media full of American meanings and ideals, as entertainment content to generate revenues.  In light of this onslaught, I think it is important for Canada to preserve its identity by creating content that increases Canadian cultural knowledge and awareness.  Why?  Without a national identity, i.e., an imagined community of Canada, meaning becomes increasingly derived from imagined communities of brands.  If our Diderot unities reduce to the constellation of brands we surround ourselves with, can we be citizens or are we just consumers?

I think nation does and should matter.  In Benedict Anderson’s words, nation::

“…is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the inequality of that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep. horizontal kinship.”–p.7

Song:: Dreamer – Jenn Grant {Halifax, NS}

Video Extra:: jPod clips of “Cowboy” aired on CBC, Winter 2008.

Twitterversion:: #Canada, national identity, & #Media. Globalization blurs borders, but does #nation matter? #Appadurai #BenedictAnderson http://url.ie/1xu6 @Prof_K