Like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which states that a particle's momentum and position cannot be measured simultaneously, Cultural Relativism has a similar conundrum that could also be referred to as an 'uncertainty principle.' The paradox is this:
1) Cultural relativism contends that any truth is only true according to the cultural paradigm within which it functions.
2) If truth is relative to a given cultural paradigm, then the fact that all truths are necessarily relative must itself be relative to the paradigm of cultural relativism.
3) Therefore, cultural relativism must recognize that its assertion that all truths are relative is itself relative and thus that the universalist assertion that truth can be absolute is true as its own paradigm.
4) Thus it is also true that when universalism asserts that the relativist claim that knowledge and truth are paradigm-dependent is false, that must be a true statement according to both universalism and relativism, in that relativism acknowledges this truth as valid within its paradigm.
The question becomes what basis, if any, relativism maintains for declaring any truth paradigm-dependent, since to make such a claim itself requires a universalistic claim that relativism itself stands above or outside of paradigm-dependence.
In other words, relativism cannot make any claims about paradigm-dependence as a universal qualifier of truth because doing so would undermine the relativistic view of relativism itself.
This fascinating paradox means that social cultural scientists will never be able to go beyond either cultural relativism or universalism in the future. The two are now bound up in 'uncertainty entanglement' in which paradigm-relativism is asserted as universal and paradigm-dependent truths must be asserted in universal terms within their own relative contexts.
To say that creationism's truth that God is responsible for initiating the universe into being is only true by qualifying it as a limited cultural paradigm undermines the universality of paradigm as the basis for any and every truth. I.e. it implies that there is some other truth that is somehow less paradigm-dependent. An atheist physicist, on the other hand, who claims that the existence of God is not a necessary condition for the forces of the universe to generate the big bang, must according to relativism operate under an equally relative paradigm of God-absence. The two paradigms can incorporate one another by, for example, attributing the big bang to God or by describing evolution as a divine process of "going forth and multiplying," but neither paradigmatic approach to knowledge can simultaneously claim its own claims or those of another paradigm to be true in either an absolute or relative sense because all truths are simultaneously universal and paradigm-dependent insofar as paradigms are neither useless analytical constructs nor absolutely independent contexts for knowledge-construction. They are simply patterns of interdependencies and resonances apparent in constellations of knowledge generated in relation with each other.
The great irony of paradigmatic separation is that for two paradigms to be compared or even simply known as separate paradigms, they must be appropriated within a common discourse. Once two or more paradigms are brought together in this way, they become unified if only through the act of differentiating and contrasting them. The gravitational theories of Newton and Einstein are regarded generally as incompatible models of the motion of objects and bodies yet by virtue of them both referring to the possibility of empirical observation and testing, they may also be regarded as both theories within the paradigm of empirical physics. In this sense, are claims made within either paradigm true relative to the paradigm of empirical physics but not within, say, that of Aristotelian philosophies of motion? Or can we even say that there is a paradigm of ultimate universal truth where Aristotle's ideas have failed but Einstein's carry on without sufficient challenge to undermine them?
Maybe what is needed is a philosophy of overlapping paradigms and relative universalities, not to mention universal cultural contextuality as a component of the construction of legitimately universal knowledge. In other words, without culture, there could exist no universal truth because there would be no basis for constructing and refining it and thereby asserting it as universal. I.e. Universal truth claims are the ultimate assertion of culturally relative knowledge. More importantly, their truth value can only be questioned by recognizing and operating within the paradigm of their construction. In other words, noting that a truth claim is relative to some paradigm says nothing about whether it is ultimately true universally or not. What's more, it isn't paradigmatic conditions and specificities that govern the ability to critically question a truth claim but rather open critical reason. In other words, any reasonable critique of a truth claim automatically fits within the paradigm of that claim simply by virtue of the fact it can be construed as a reasonable critique or question. If something makes sense in the context of something else, how can it be of a different paradigm?
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Culture is Individual
A recent google search revealed that there is yet little clarity in the understanding of how individuals are related to culture. While there are a few sites that talk about cultural processes at the individual level, most still seem to assume that culture is essentially collective and that individuals are subsidiaries of social collectivity in the culture they acquire. In case anyone is interested enough in this topic to search for and discover this blog post, I will briefly clarify this issue by addressing what collectivity and individuality really are, what culture is, and how they are related.
Individuals have a body, brain, and senses, among other things. They communicate with each other in various ways but whatever method they use to think, feel, and act, that method has to be first uploaded (or downloaded, depending on how you look at it) to the individual. So while culture gets 'shared' among individuals, it has to be internalized, or at least interfaced, at the individual level to be acted upon by individuals. What's more, individuals have the power to modify existing culture or create their own cultural ideas and techniques. So without recognition of this ability for individuals to act relatively independently, at least in some situations, culture is inadequately explained as a group phenomenon. While it may be popular to identify cultural patterns with reference to group identities, this does not mean that groups are the material basis for culture.
Collectivism is an interesting social phenomenon and ideology (various ideologies are collectivist, actually) in that it can only exist through the volition of individuals to conform, yet conformity is done with regard to 'collectivities,' which are imagined as actual entities whose existence goes beyond (and is even responsible for) the individuals who are identified as part of the group. The culture of collectivism is very popular among individuals precisely because it allows individuals to attribute responsibility for their actions to an external entity. Since informal collective entities have no single individual who could dispute claims about the collective, individuals can usually construe collectivity without resistance. Disputes can arise with regard to collective-attributions, but as popular attributions gain acceptance, individuals can stick with attributions that tend to escape dispute and thereby avoid conflict. This is just one form of collectivist cultural behavior among many.
Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your perspective), there is a cultural tradition of collective representation and attribution within various social sciences to which many writers conform. Because of this, it seems, few writers are either willing or able in their writing style to describe culture and other social interactions in truly individual terms. Notice that even at the beginning of this paragraph, I used the phrase, "there is a cultural tradition . . ." instead of saying that many individuals use collective representation and attribution. Describing the situation in terms of individuals would be more accurate, considering that individuals can be empirically observed while cultural traditions can only be inferred as patterns based on analysis of other observations, yet stylistic habits and assumptions of what will appeal to readers leads me to talk in terms of institutions instead of individuals. 'Institutional realism,' the term I use to describe language that describes and treats institutions as empirically observable objects, is a curious extension of collectivist ontology.
So in order to properly understand how culture actually works at the empirical level, it is necessary to understand how culture gets created, how it gets institutionalized, how institutions get communicated, and what the parameters are for humans to think, feel, and act. While it is necessary to perform at least some detailed thought experiments/explorations regarding specific cultural practices in the various applicable social contexts, I will cut to the chase here for the sake of brevity about the individual's relationship to other individuals, culture, and the so-called collectives/groups.
The individual is ultimately the site/level at which culture happens. There are aspects of culture that emerge through social interactions, which could be described as "collective behaviors" but even these can arguably be broken down into components that occur at the individual level. The reason it is important to break these things down to the individual level is because individuals are never directly determined by forces external to themselves. While they may feel like that is the case sometimes, closer analysis will reveal that social forces are never determinant unless, perhaps, they are physical. A person can be pushed or carried physically without their volition but non-physical force requires coercion, manipulation, or some other technique that necessitates their cooperation. They may cooperate unhappily, but without cooperation, nonphysical social forces can't function.
Culture, therefore, works as an interface between/among individuals. Often non-human delegates such as media and other technologies are involved. Often institutions and habitual behavioral patterns are involved. But in the end, individuals are the site of cultural implantation and expression. Even the thought of collective existence can only occur in the individual mind because there is no collective mind for it to occur in, that is unless individuals formulate a conception of what a 'collective mind' might be and interpolate thoughts according to that framework. Yet, until now at least, no direct connectivity has been devised to allow individual brains to think each others' thoughts or perceive through the physical senses of another body. It may be possible to wear electronic glasses that display video images of cameras mounted on someone else's head allowing the simulation of interindividual vision, but none with a direct biological nerve connection, as far as I'm aware.
So clearly the relationship between the individual and culture must be a direct one, whereas the relationship between individual and collective identity is a more complex one that relies on culturing the subjectivity and identities of individuals so that they think, feel, and act in terms of the collective entities they imagine existing outside of themselves. Of course, the social negotiation of such collectivist culture can be very insistent and violent, which is why Emile Durkheim described culture as "obligatory." Social pushing, sanctions, violence, and so forth might install such high levels of fear in individuals as to prompt them to oblige whatever cultural programming they feel obliged to accept, enact, or reproduce - but this nevertheless cannot make it true that culture is by nature collective. If it were possible to make something true simply by intimidation or preference, there would never be any doubt about any claim as being less than true. Individuals manage culture at the individual level and the collective appearance of culture is the result of individuals perceiving patterns at the social level and/or second-hand accounts of culture described in collective terms.
Individuals have a body, brain, and senses, among other things. They communicate with each other in various ways but whatever method they use to think, feel, and act, that method has to be first uploaded (or downloaded, depending on how you look at it) to the individual. So while culture gets 'shared' among individuals, it has to be internalized, or at least interfaced, at the individual level to be acted upon by individuals. What's more, individuals have the power to modify existing culture or create their own cultural ideas and techniques. So without recognition of this ability for individuals to act relatively independently, at least in some situations, culture is inadequately explained as a group phenomenon. While it may be popular to identify cultural patterns with reference to group identities, this does not mean that groups are the material basis for culture.
Collectivism is an interesting social phenomenon and ideology (various ideologies are collectivist, actually) in that it can only exist through the volition of individuals to conform, yet conformity is done with regard to 'collectivities,' which are imagined as actual entities whose existence goes beyond (and is even responsible for) the individuals who are identified as part of the group. The culture of collectivism is very popular among individuals precisely because it allows individuals to attribute responsibility for their actions to an external entity. Since informal collective entities have no single individual who could dispute claims about the collective, individuals can usually construe collectivity without resistance. Disputes can arise with regard to collective-attributions, but as popular attributions gain acceptance, individuals can stick with attributions that tend to escape dispute and thereby avoid conflict. This is just one form of collectivist cultural behavior among many.
Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your perspective), there is a cultural tradition of collective representation and attribution within various social sciences to which many writers conform. Because of this, it seems, few writers are either willing or able in their writing style to describe culture and other social interactions in truly individual terms. Notice that even at the beginning of this paragraph, I used the phrase, "there is a cultural tradition . . ." instead of saying that many individuals use collective representation and attribution. Describing the situation in terms of individuals would be more accurate, considering that individuals can be empirically observed while cultural traditions can only be inferred as patterns based on analysis of other observations, yet stylistic habits and assumptions of what will appeal to readers leads me to talk in terms of institutions instead of individuals. 'Institutional realism,' the term I use to describe language that describes and treats institutions as empirically observable objects, is a curious extension of collectivist ontology.
So in order to properly understand how culture actually works at the empirical level, it is necessary to understand how culture gets created, how it gets institutionalized, how institutions get communicated, and what the parameters are for humans to think, feel, and act. While it is necessary to perform at least some detailed thought experiments/explorations regarding specific cultural practices in the various applicable social contexts, I will cut to the chase here for the sake of brevity about the individual's relationship to other individuals, culture, and the so-called collectives/groups.
The individual is ultimately the site/level at which culture happens. There are aspects of culture that emerge through social interactions, which could be described as "collective behaviors" but even these can arguably be broken down into components that occur at the individual level. The reason it is important to break these things down to the individual level is because individuals are never directly determined by forces external to themselves. While they may feel like that is the case sometimes, closer analysis will reveal that social forces are never determinant unless, perhaps, they are physical. A person can be pushed or carried physically without their volition but non-physical force requires coercion, manipulation, or some other technique that necessitates their cooperation. They may cooperate unhappily, but without cooperation, nonphysical social forces can't function.
Culture, therefore, works as an interface between/among individuals. Often non-human delegates such as media and other technologies are involved. Often institutions and habitual behavioral patterns are involved. But in the end, individuals are the site of cultural implantation and expression. Even the thought of collective existence can only occur in the individual mind because there is no collective mind for it to occur in, that is unless individuals formulate a conception of what a 'collective mind' might be and interpolate thoughts according to that framework. Yet, until now at least, no direct connectivity has been devised to allow individual brains to think each others' thoughts or perceive through the physical senses of another body. It may be possible to wear electronic glasses that display video images of cameras mounted on someone else's head allowing the simulation of interindividual vision, but none with a direct biological nerve connection, as far as I'm aware.
So clearly the relationship between the individual and culture must be a direct one, whereas the relationship between individual and collective identity is a more complex one that relies on culturing the subjectivity and identities of individuals so that they think, feel, and act in terms of the collective entities they imagine existing outside of themselves. Of course, the social negotiation of such collectivist culture can be very insistent and violent, which is why Emile Durkheim described culture as "obligatory." Social pushing, sanctions, violence, and so forth might install such high levels of fear in individuals as to prompt them to oblige whatever cultural programming they feel obliged to accept, enact, or reproduce - but this nevertheless cannot make it true that culture is by nature collective. If it were possible to make something true simply by intimidation or preference, there would never be any doubt about any claim as being less than true. Individuals manage culture at the individual level and the collective appearance of culture is the result of individuals perceiving patterns at the social level and/or second-hand accounts of culture described in collective terms.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Bike Road vs. Car Road: which is more pleasant?
This is a photography project I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. The idea is to take pictures of bike roads and car roads, either from the same vantage point or from different vantage points that shift the focus from one road to the other. Hopefully the photos will convey the same sense of contrast one feels in being on the bike road compared with the car road. Also, sorry about picture and text alignment; this editor is hard to use. You can view bigger versions of the photos by clicking on them.
 
Can you imagine that before this road was here, the tree cover would have looked the same as on the bike road? Notice, btw, that the car road is also for bikes :)
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Here’s the view of the above intersection from an old railroad bridge on the bike road and the view of the creek from the bridge.
Power lines also make a difference. The color setting on the camera was set to automatic, btw. I didn’t intentionally make the color duller for the car road.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Here’s some houses just off that bike road above. The first one is made out of shipping containers. The second just need some windows and personalizing touches; and maybe a bike ramp with steps down to the bike road.
These condos/apartments are a recently built higher-end development just a block from the last houses. Architectural diversity makes for more interesting biking through the dense cityscape.
The road on the left is a runway at the airport. The road on the right is the bike road the picture of the runway was taken from.
On the left is car parking for SuperWalmart. On the right is bicycle parking.
The streetlamp in both pictures is the same in case you hadn’t guessed.
Three paths diverged at an intersection . . . and I took the one less travelled.
Finally, the road home. Thank goodness, it’s getting dark (yawn).
Some extra bike road pics I didn’t have any car road comparisons for.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
CONVENING VIRTUALLY FOR CONVENIENCE: THE CONTINUING EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRATIZATION IN ACADEMIC CONFERENCING
Adam Garcia
argarcia76@hotmail.com
http://adamgarcia.blogspot.com/
VIRTUAL ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION PLATFORM AND PAPER PROPOSAL FOR
Strategies of Critique XXIV: The Future (TBD) CONFERENCE
Instructions for virtual convening: Please read the following text and engage with those you are in contact with in regards to the topics covered and issues raised. If you choose, you may email the author and/or participate in an online discussion of the issues. As an additional exercise, please be mindful of your visceral and communicative experience of attending the conference physically.
Reflect on what meanings and effects physical attendance and participation has on you and your engagements with others.
Consider how these engagements would be the same or different by engaging/convening virtually instead of physically.
Consider a future in which virtual convening becomes more commonplace and physical convening more costly or more occasional and select.
Consider a future in which individuals are more independent, both from academic standards and economic structure, and how critical intellectual discourse can and will be transformed in fostering democratic life.
CONVENING IN COPENHAGEN: VIRTUALITY IN THE SHADOW OF ELITE PHYSICALITY
The spectatorship of the recent Copenhagen summit on environment and climate was a success insofar as it achieved a sense of global presence while pervading global-local consciousness. Ironically, while the summit's focus was billed as CO2 emission-reduction, it was taken for granted that participants should expend fuel and CO2 to convene physically in Copenhagen rather than engage in online discourse that would have saved fuel and CO2 emissions. While recognition of this irony could serve as an easy prompt to reject physical travel in favor of online networking, a more critical gaze might question whether a virtual summit could have achieved the same status and pervasiveness without the expenditure of fuel/CO2 and convening of physical bodies. This presents a tension between the continuing development of electronic media for facilitating interactive discourse and the premium it generates for translocal physicalities through scarcification of translocalism and desire for materialization of translocal sociality.
While this topic is generally and pervasively relevant, I would like to localize my treatment of it here by, first, situating my submission to this conference as a virtual one where I must decline to travel and attend as much as a consequence of personal economic-institutional constraints as a will to democratize the future of intellectual discourse by achieving indifferent status for virtuality as for physicality of participation/attendance. Second, I would like to explore one potential future (form) of intellectual discourse in which formal communicative institutional constraints of academic discourse, such as refereed publishing, heavy emphasis on review and citation of academic literature, and so forth are supplanted or at least supplemented by more open and less authoritarian forms of writing and communication, which while apparently lacking in formalism may still be rigorous in their application of critical thought, intellectual richness, scientific value-control reflexivity, and be authored with a general interest and intent of exchanging data, thought, and experiential-wisdom among the globally literate.
While addressing the general themes of fluidity global digital communications and its tension with the elitism of scarcified materiality in physical translocalism, this contribution will shift to address the decentralization (rhizomatics) of alocal online dialogue and consider how online discussions may grow to greater centrality as a medium for democratic exchange and how intellectual writing may develop greater flexibility with the relaxation of high-authoritarian standards of citation and formalism. In support of this paper's theme, it will not contain academic formalities or citations.
THE DIGITAL ECONOMIC PARADOX
Digital media have the ability to reproduce data infinitely while distributing copies to any receiver connected to the internet at any point. The economic consequence of digital abundance, like any other form of abundance, is that the exchange value of a digital text of unrestricted access becomes very low, since its consumers have no reason to sacrifice other consumption opportunities to gain access to something they can already get for free. While the use-value of any text or other good is what it is regardless of exchange-value, it is the exchange value that is measured in monetary units - and therefore it is the exchange-value that is often responsible for catching public interest for a text. One has only to consider the widespread interest in works of art traded for millions to recognize this relationship between exchange value and public attention.
The countereffect to abundance-driven exchange-value depletion is scarcity-driven appreciation. Not all scarce goods appreciate in value as a result of their scarcity, but reduced availability makes it impossible to find an adequate substitute for a lower price, and this prompts some to pay the asking price. Digital media therefore have often been feared for their ability to create unlimited access and therefore unlimited abundance of media texts. The question, however, is whether they may also promote scarcification of non-digital (i.e. analog) media.
Ironically, perhaps, while the Copenhagen summit was distinguished for its analog status as a non-virtual conference among 'real' political leaders and not just delegates from bureaucratic institutions, it was only known so widely because people were able to connect with it virtually. Granted the connection was read-only, at least it was for me, and the information partial and fragmented - but I was connected nonetheless. I was even able to use data about CO2 emissions to conduct a class discussion that could be construed as an analog satellite of the conference in Copenhagen, with internet media linking the two. Although it can be easy to lose sight of the virtualized connectivity of the Copenhagen conference in the shadow of its analog portion's status, in reality the virtual connectivity of the conference was probably far greater than the amount of analog discourse that took place physically at the convention center where it was held.
So despite the overwhelming virtuality of the conference, it was the physicality of it that worked to motivate so many to participate virtually at all. Had the conference been conducted as a textual online discussion among the same participants, the question is whether the same public interest would have been generated. In other words, was its virtual success due to its physicality? Clearly physicality offers a sensual richness that is lost with each level of reduction to pure text. One may wonder whether such sensual richness enhances or impedes the intellectual transparency of the message, but certainly it functions to draw attention and stimulate interest.
But the strange thing is that as pure text, and even relatively sensually rich digital data become more abundant and increasingly prevalent in daily media consumption, this may actually increase a sense of scarcity with regard to physical convening. Even while digital access provides the opportunity to connect with, contact, and consume so many texts and artifacts beyond reach through physical travel to all the places that would be required, increased virtuality may still have the effect of making physical access seem that much more exciting. Just as advertising tries to taunt consumers into temptation to buy the product, virtual access may work just as easily to sell physical access at a higher price.
I should not give the impression that this is a done-deal. It is no more difficult to resist seduction into valuing physical over virtual access as it is to recognize the convenience of navigating websites from home compared with the hasels and costs of travel. It should also not be assumed that an increased sense of scarcity in physical discourse derived from increased online discourse will necessarily make travel and physical convening more expensive. By the same logic of relative abundance, the more people forego physical travel in favor of virtual interactions, the less competition there is for transportation and accomodations. This presumes that people forego physical attendance out of emissions concerns and other preferences instead of being seduced into attending by the bargain of it.
Certainly, achieving parity between the value ascribed to virtual convening and that ascribed to the physical variant would be beneficial both in terms of emissions-reductions and social-economic equality. Yet, if such parity were actually achieved the question would become whether it would be desirable for no physical convening to take place at all. And if physical convening would occur, but as an increasingly small proportion of virtual convening, what factor(s) should guide the distributive logic of who should convene physically and why. Should it become a luxury for a class elite, a functional necessity claimed by certain professionals for certain purposes, or a broadly yet occasionally consumed delicacy or bitter medicine (depending on how it is socially-constructed)?
A FUTURE FOR DEMOCRATIC ACADEMIC DISCOURSE
Democracy and authority are in a perpetual love-hate relationship. To the extent that we want to be free to express ourselves and engage contructively with others, democracy is an indestructible desire in our hearts and minds. Yet, on another level we are unnerved by the threat that freedom can spiral out of control, or that without control democratic discourse will produce nothing of value or substance. The fear of democratic discourse underpins the various authoritarian control-institutions of academic publishing. Without peer-review and other content filtering, scientific and academic rigor are expected to degenerate into unscrupulous propaganda. Worse yet, without any means of elevating the status of some writers and works and dismissing that of others, how would the value of any text or author be marketable at a level that would command the publishing sales/revenues, tuition payments, grants, subsidies, and other funding that are bestowed on prestigious academics? In a radically democratic discourse, where all voices are regarded as equal and all information must be equally critically filtered by the receiver, what justification would exist to pay anyone anything? The industry of academia would become bankrupt, not intellectually to be sure but financially.
But rather than discussing the economics, ethics, and other pros and cons of academic authoritarianism verses democracy, allow me to move directly to addressing the relationship of style and formatting to promoting more critical democratic discourse 'outside' of academia. I bracket the word, "outside," because it is highly debatable whether anyone who has ever come in contact with academia in any way can ever again become "outside" of it. The metaphor of outside-status vis-a-vis institutions and discourses always requires some boundary be defined, and once it is the question becomes what it means to be connected to a discourse through knowledge, a shared past, etc. while also being labeled as "outside" of it. Everyone who attends university classes or otherwise engages in academic study of one form or another has the capacity to critically re-produce, engage, and communicate with ideas and knowledge; arguable even if they learned to do so by some other means than academia. Yet few people are liberated in self-expression and discursive participation by constraining expectations of style, formatting, citation, and bibliographic reference that are constructed as normative among many if not most academics and academic publishers.
So while strict standards for academic writing and discourse may certainly have some positive effects on the quality of research and writing, they can be discouraging or even prohibitive for some who nevertheless have critical insights to share and a will to participate in rigorous intellectual discourse with others. In order to liberate such people, and really it's not just "some people" because even those quite comfortable with acquiescing to academic writing criteria have interests in subjects that we would never presume to claim expert authority yet still wish to learn more about through active participation in a critical developmental/learning process with others. So in order to liberate the spirit of free learning and critical discourse that is so conducive to democracy, it makes sense that many if not all the restrictions internalized regarding academic style, formatting, citation, and so forth must be bracketed, or ignored altogether, in order to substitute them with other means of rigour.
It often amazes me what I hear when I engage in discussion of academic writing conventions with those who revere them. Citation and bibliography are doggedly indoctrinated from the earliest moment possible. As a result, many people are trapped in dogmatic adherence to them as unreasoned necessities without which valid textuality is impossible. Who knows the purpose or function of source-citation and references well enough to replace them with an adequate substitute? I went through a period where I thought the purpose of bibliographic reference was to express professional recognition and solidarity with other scholars for purposes of professional networking. It was some time before it occurred to me that citing the source of a particular piece of information or claim allows a writer to avoid retracing all the steps necessary to explain or defend something they have derived from other knowledge. Ironically, since that realization, I have discovered that many people believe that simply citing a text with status imparts status onto their own work; as if academic discourse was a magic-factory where everything that touches gold turns to gold, where "gold" is truth, validity, and/or legitimacy.
Liberating critical discourse from dogmatic academic standards is hardly the utopia it may at first appear. With freedom comes responsibility, and where responsibility is absent or lacking, ethically or otherwise, the consequences are evident in the direct results of actions. There are no disciplinary actions to protect you from the consequences of things you say or do that can be abated to allow you a second-chance. My son watches a movie about Jonah the Prophet where the moral lesson is that God gives second-chances and so should people, but people are human and sometimes fail in their benevolence if they even bother to try at all. So, with total academic freedom also comes greater responsibility and awareness of the reasons for one's choices and the consequences of actions.
Less generally, it takes practice to replace citation with explicit reason. It is difficult to reason independently without consciously avoiding the compulsion to cite known scholars and texts and reproduce them in a constant advertising campaign of one's personal canon of influences. It takes patience to recognize when something you are attempting to communicate is lost on the person you are communicating with because they simply don't yet "get" or don't get the relevance of something you are expressing. Disciplinary foundationism affords people the luxury of communicating without having to negotiate vast amounts of pre-knowledge, and while this is wonderful in facilitating specialist discussions, it can actual impair an individual's ability to explain or engage the foundational knowledge and ideas they take for granted when confronted with the need because of either relative ignorance or critical challenge.
Although I could address more such specific issues, perhaps such issues can evolve in discursive exchanges. Academic authoritarianism is a shadow discourse in many ways. Rarely are the need or reasoning behind citation, refereed-publishing, style and format, discussed openly and critically. More often they are simply presented as conditions for survival in academia. If you want to get published - you just do it. "Jumping through hoops" is an expression I've often heard. "Publish or perish" is another. Consciously and ethically, probably few people actually have the intent or desire of symbolically threatening others with their life in demand of absolute submission to unnegotiable standards and conditions, yet that is what many people are doing under the spell of "that's just the way it works."
Democratic discussion and negotiation of valuable academic writing practices would be a refreshing alternative to the hoop-jumping negotiations, externalization of conditional imperatives, and so forth that make up the authoritarian discourse. The question that ensues is whether the growth of democratic discursive practices 'outside' academia could have a negative effect on academia. Sadly, while democratization of quality discourse multiplies exponentially the value and access to such discourse beyond academic elites, it also has the potential to threaten the funding of intellectual work insofar as intellectual work goes unfunded for the most part, outside of academic institutions.
This, however, leads to another economic paradox like the one faced with the infinite abundance of digital textuality. Does democratizing critical intellect and discourse actually work to promote subscription to academic publications, book sales, enrolment in colleges and universities, and so forth, In other words, are free public intellectuals actually becoming free marketing personelle for universities, publishing companies, and so forth? This futher evokes the issue of class formation and division among intelligentia, but this is a Marxist issue that I would rather leave to people who can stomach the prospect of class conflict and violent revolutions. I prefer to maintain the utopian dream that critical discourse, intelligence, and democracy can spread abundantly and only result in a better life among individuals of greater independence, respect, ethics, and insight into how to live well and promote better living among others. Such a dream can be a pleasurable fantasy, but it can also be a compass in working to move forward and coming up with how.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
THE TRUTH ABOUT DOMINATION: AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DOMINANCE AS AN ESSENTIAL TRAIT
THE TRUTH ABOUT DOMINATION: AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DOMINANCE AS AN ESSENTIAL TRAIT
written for Dr. Charles Gattone: Seminar in contemporary theory
This paper looks at the contruction of dominance within the (seemingly) divergent cultures of sociology sub-disciplinarity and race-group positioning. Anecdotal data is used to experiment with a methodological approach in which visceral aspects of social interactions are taken into account. The negotiation of dominant-status, either for a particular ethnic group or sub-field of sociology, becomes both a study object as well as a project of the analysis.
ABSTRACT
Most sociologists would agree that one of the major strengths of sociology comes from its being a composite field, i.e. a field in which divergent perspectives, paradigms, and substantive areas are brought together. Although ethnomethodology, along other constructivist approaches to sociology, are often labeled as marginal within the field, such labeling has negative consequences for the added value of being a composite field. This is because while constructivist approaches simply add a new dimension to essentialist assessments of social phenomena, essentialism reduces constructivism to redundancy when given dominion over it. Most basically this is due to the fact that when constructivists view the social world as one of human apprehension, they are de facto bound to accounting in one way or the other for anything that essentialists can imagine. On the other hand, essentialists have no problem denying the issue of human apprehension in conceptualizing the existence of historical/material 'facts.' As such it makes more sense to raise constructivist approaches like ethnomethodology to primacy, not because more sociologists focus on them or because they attract more funding or result in more salient results, but simply because they account for a superset of social phenomena that positivists/objectivist refuse to acknowledge, at least to a sufficient extent.
The preceding argument is part of the goal of this paper; the larger project of which is to examine how the status of dominance is constructed in language and what results its conceptual application has for framing social fields. Just as we think of the (plural) field of sociology in terms of dominant approaches (positivism, macro-historical comparison, etc.) and more marginal ones (ethnomethodology, critical studies, other constructivist approaches), we apply the same logic to the (plural) social world we live in and study. Although we tout the logic of context-specificity for interpreting social phenomena, rarely do we extend that logic to the meta-level, instead preserving that meta-level as the context-free space from which to talk about the (essential) dominance and marginality of the various other contexts that remain in sight from that position. In this paper I am arguing for a radical ethnomethodological approach to the production of language/knowledge when doing sociology in which the social construction of knowledge is our first priority as sociologists no matter what other methods we employ in doing so. Rather than (or in addition to) engaging in reflexivity, in which the reference points of knowledge are treated as real for the sake of study, we should focus on actively engaging reality in its constructedness. Instead of merely talking about it being constructed, and seeking to describe the processes by which it is constructed, we should recognize our own position in co-constructing it as well, and take responsibility as active agents in that construction process, not just observers/explainers of it. This means taking our language acts seriously, whether they are published, written, or spoken. Instead of downplaying such language acts as (relatively) insignificant by comparison to other actors in the (larger) social field, we should take the view that "it doesn't get any bigger than this" and start working at the micro/local level the best we can. It may help to recall Foucault's emphasis on the power of truth/knowledge: power
lies not so much in the spreading of knowledge but in infusing it with truth. The universal, or at least trans-contextual, imagery built-in to the concept of truth is what lets it extend from the locality in which it is deployed to others.
In examining the labels, 'dominant/subordinate,' along with the logics that usually underwrite them, for this paper, I will include disjunct examples from various discourses. The example of the attribution of marginal status to ethnomethodology within a plural vision of sociology has already been mentioned but we may also think of the perilous position often feared for the legitimacy of anti-racism and counter-discrimination measures if oppressed groups were to be rendered 'dominant' in public discourses. I will show how this is the product of a persisting view that the sole purpose of equality is to legitimate exploitation and domination. Likewise I will explore how alternative conceptualizations of dominance/centrality and subordination/marginality could potentially aid struggles to reduce inequality if freed from the implicit trap in which equality is always linked to competition and the hunting-logic of 'fair game.' In doing so a working demonstration of applied ethnomethodology will be given and it is hoped that the potential sociological and social value of such constructivist approaches to the goals of positivism/progress will be realized, even though the logic of constructivism exceeds positivism's limitations.
written for Dr. Charles Gattone: Seminar in contemporary theory
This paper looks at the contruction of dominance within the (seemingly) divergent cultures of sociology sub-disciplinarity and race-group positioning. Anecdotal data is used to experiment with a methodological approach in which visceral aspects of social interactions are taken into account. The negotiation of dominant-status, either for a particular ethnic group or sub-field of sociology, becomes both a study object as well as a project of the analysis.
ABSTRACT
Most sociologists would agree that one of the major strengths of sociology comes from its being a composite field, i.e. a field in which divergent perspectives, paradigms, and substantive areas are brought together. Although ethnomethodology, along other constructivist approaches to sociology, are often labeled as marginal within the field, such labeling has negative consequences for the added value of being a composite field. This is because while constructivist approaches simply add a new dimension to essentialist assessments of social phenomena, essentialism reduces constructivism to redundancy when given dominion over it. Most basically this is due to the fact that when constructivists view the social world as one of human apprehension, they are de facto bound to accounting in one way or the other for anything that essentialists can imagine. On the other hand, essentialists have no problem denying the issue of human apprehension in conceptualizing the existence of historical/material 'facts.' As such it makes more sense to raise constructivist approaches like ethnomethodology to primacy, not because more sociologists focus on them or because they attract more funding or result in more salient results, but simply because they account for a superset of social phenomena that positivists/objectivist refuse to acknowledge, at least to a sufficient extent.
The preceding argument is part of the goal of this paper; the larger project of which is to examine how the status of dominance is constructed in language and what results its conceptual application has for framing social fields. Just as we think of the (plural) field of sociology in terms of dominant approaches (positivism, macro-historical comparison, etc.) and more marginal ones (ethnomethodology, critical studies, other constructivist approaches), we apply the same logic to the (plural) social world we live in and study. Although we tout the logic of context-specificity for interpreting social phenomena, rarely do we extend that logic to the meta-level, instead preserving that meta-level as the context-free space from which to talk about the (essential) dominance and marginality of the various other contexts that remain in sight from that position. In this paper I am arguing for a radical ethnomethodological approach to the production of language/knowledge when doing sociology in which the social construction of knowledge is our first priority as sociologists no matter what other methods we employ in doing so. Rather than (or in addition to) engaging in reflexivity, in which the reference points of knowledge are treated as real for the sake of study, we should focus on actively engaging reality in its constructedness. Instead of merely talking about it being constructed, and seeking to describe the processes by which it is constructed, we should recognize our own position in co-constructing it as well, and take responsibility as active agents in that construction process, not just observers/explainers of it. This means taking our language acts seriously, whether they are published, written, or spoken. Instead of downplaying such language acts as (relatively) insignificant by comparison to other actors in the (larger) social field, we should take the view that "it doesn't get any bigger than this" and start working at the micro/local level the best we can. It may help to recall Foucault's emphasis on the power of truth/knowledge: power
lies not so much in the spreading of knowledge but in infusing it with truth. The universal, or at least trans-contextual, imagery built-in to the concept of truth is what lets it extend from the locality in which it is deployed to others.
In examining the labels, 'dominant/subordinate,' along with the logics that usually underwrite them, for this paper, I will include disjunct examples from various discourses. The example of the attribution of marginal status to ethnomethodology within a plural vision of sociology has already been mentioned but we may also think of the perilous position often feared for the legitimacy of anti-racism and counter-discrimination measures if oppressed groups were to be rendered 'dominant' in public discourses. I will show how this is the product of a persisting view that the sole purpose of equality is to legitimate exploitation and domination. Likewise I will explore how alternative conceptualizations of dominance/centrality and subordination/marginality could potentially aid struggles to reduce inequality if freed from the implicit trap in which equality is always linked to competition and the hunting-logic of 'fair game.' In doing so a working demonstration of applied ethnomethodology will be given and it is hoped that the potential sociological and social value of such constructivist approaches to the goals of positivism/progress will be realized, even though the logic of constructivism exceeds positivism's limitations.
CULTURE AS INHABITABLE BUBBLES: INSIDE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MACRO-IMAGINARY
CULTURE AS INHABITABLE BUBBLES: INSIDE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MACRO-IMAGINARY
written for a seminar on the sociology of culture led by Hernan Vera
This paper outlines an approach to macro-imagery and macro-consciousness as embodied in the visceral experiences of individuals at the micro-level. The construction of the macro is viewed in terms of practices of consumption in intellectual life and the resulting implications for empowerment and addiction are considered.
INTRODUCTION
In the popular Dutch comedy movie, Flodder, a lower-class (white) family is transplanted into an upper-class (white) neighborhood as part of a social program. The comedy of the film is the result of the various transgressions and juxtapositions that take place as members of the family come in contact with other residents of their new neighborhood. In one of the various sexual transgressions portrayed in the narrative, Sjonnie Flodder has sex with one of the neighborhood wives in her husband's hobby-room where he, a high-ranking military officer, models military battles using toy soldiers. When Sjonnie asks her if they should move to another room, the woman expresses that rebellion against this aspect of her husband's personality is an important part of her sexual pleasure and the scene continues by showing the vigor of the ensuing sex act in terms of the shaking table as the man's toy soldiers and models are disheveled and thrown in all directions.
This scene can be read as an assault on macro-consciousness. While macro-consciousness is often
depicted in films in terms of military strategists poised pensively around a large table-model, it is usually as a necessary and legitimate part of a war effort or similar collective endeavor. In this scene, macro-theorizing is presented as modeling in its childish sense; as something that men do for their own selfish pleasure. Macrostructural reality is not presumed to exist outside of its material embodiment within microsocial interactions. Instead it is literally reduced to a set of painstakingly arranged toys no more representative of a macro-reality out there than the sexual exchange taking place on the table is representative of a deeper relationship. In this scene macro reality is relativized as just another social activity accomplished in the realm of everyday life.
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE CONSUMPTION OF MACRO-IMAGES
The notion that macro-historical, macro-structural, and other macro- realities are not realities at all, but
instead are products of human imagination, is not palatable to many sociologists. Many of us have a sense that there are things happening in social life that go beyond the context in which they are happening. At the same time we rarely consider how our theorizing of the macro we imagine is radically situated within the materiality of our bodies and the environments directly accessible to them. Instead we appropriate the label 'imaginary' to describe some representations as false in order to allow other 'true' representations to pass as real. In this way, 'good' sociological accounts of society are rarely seen as products of sociological imaginations but rather as simply accounts of what is going on in the [macro] world out there, which is assumed to exist prior to its re-presentation/re-construction by scientists.
Although various critics have pushed us to conceptualize the radical situatedness of social activities, the
position afforded to the macro is contested by at least two different perspectives. The first, which I will term group-positioning, conceives of micro-social life occurring as a result of or vis-a-vis historically determined group-relations rooted in histories and structures of domination such as racism, nationalism, classism, sexism, and so forth. The second, which I will term ethnomethodological, conceives of all reality and social structure as accomplishments of social interaction within the [micro] sphere(s) of everyday life. Although both perspectives posit a radical situatedness of social activities and meaning-making, the group-positioning view imagines situatedness in reference to historical (and structural) conditions outside of the immediacy of micro-social realities. The ethnmethodological view, other the other hand, imagines the situatedness of social action in direct relation to the material context of its achievement. Thus, while group-positioning allows us to make reference to a macro-reality out there, ethnomethodology pushes us to locate the source of everything influencing micro-interactions,
including any macro-phenomenon, in interaction-events.
In this paper I am taking the ethnomethodological perspective in order to privilege the situatedness of the macro within the micro. By doing so, I am not making any claims about the inefficacy of the macro-realities of group-positioning approaches or otherwise, except to maintain the critical stance that reifying the macro too easily impedes the project of conceptualizing the situatedness of its production and consumption. However, it is important to highlight my use of 'situatedness' to refer to processes in which macro-reality is produced, exchanged/negotiated, consumed, imagined, and ultimately experienced; not to refer to an organized set of social positions that influence actions and experiences through and during their construction processes. Only by situating the macro as a certain type of image, i.e. a product of (and for) imagination, can we move from theorizing the macro as reality at a certain scale or level toward theorizing it as a way of seeing and orienting toward others within everyday social life, and as various images and imaginary forms of a realm inaccessible by means of direct empirical observation.
Although it is worth mentioning that macro-thinkers often move between the macro-level images they
cultivate and empirical observations as well as the accounts of others, it is also important to recognize that macro-images are rarely produced in isolation from macro-dialogue with others and/or access to the language of macro-representation. As such, macro-images and their narration are, at least in part, produced and consumed within an economy of the macro for the macro; much in the same way currency markets develop, negotiate, and exchange currencies without reference to goods and services. It is not enough to consider a particular macro-image or (narrative) set of images either in relation to the empirical realities it claims to represent, or to the discourses of macro-images among macro-thinkers. Instead I propose we should consider both aspects in terms of a situated micro-economy of the exchange and negotiation of knowledge. In other words, how do thinkers of the macro interact with other such thinkers (and their texts) as well as with other people and aspects of their social environments in the negotiation, production, consumption, application, etc. of the macro?
In this paper I am specifically oriented toward the economic issues of production and consumption, with special attention for consumption, in order to engage Ritzer's (2005) ideas about revolutionizing the means of consumption and the enchantment of a disenchanted world. I propose that like any other commodified good or service, the practices and images of macro-thinking can and should be studied in terms of their consumption and re-production. Additionally macro-images also serve as lenses through which all sorts of people, things, and events are viewed and appropriated; and as such we may also speak of them as means of consumption for these other things to which they are applied. Although academic sociology is hardly the only field in which the macro is re-produced and consumed, it is a useful field to examine for its proximity.
written for a seminar on the sociology of culture led by Hernan Vera
This paper outlines an approach to macro-imagery and macro-consciousness as embodied in the visceral experiences of individuals at the micro-level. The construction of the macro is viewed in terms of practices of consumption in intellectual life and the resulting implications for empowerment and addiction are considered.
INTRODUCTION
In the popular Dutch comedy movie, Flodder, a lower-class (white) family is transplanted into an upper-class (white) neighborhood as part of a social program. The comedy of the film is the result of the various transgressions and juxtapositions that take place as members of the family come in contact with other residents of their new neighborhood. In one of the various sexual transgressions portrayed in the narrative, Sjonnie Flodder has sex with one of the neighborhood wives in her husband's hobby-room where he, a high-ranking military officer, models military battles using toy soldiers. When Sjonnie asks her if they should move to another room, the woman expresses that rebellion against this aspect of her husband's personality is an important part of her sexual pleasure and the scene continues by showing the vigor of the ensuing sex act in terms of the shaking table as the man's toy soldiers and models are disheveled and thrown in all directions.
This scene can be read as an assault on macro-consciousness. While macro-consciousness is often
depicted in films in terms of military strategists poised pensively around a large table-model, it is usually as a necessary and legitimate part of a war effort or similar collective endeavor. In this scene, macro-theorizing is presented as modeling in its childish sense; as something that men do for their own selfish pleasure. Macrostructural reality is not presumed to exist outside of its material embodiment within microsocial interactions. Instead it is literally reduced to a set of painstakingly arranged toys no more representative of a macro-reality out there than the sexual exchange taking place on the table is representative of a deeper relationship. In this scene macro reality is relativized as just another social activity accomplished in the realm of everyday life.
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE CONSUMPTION OF MACRO-IMAGES
The notion that macro-historical, macro-structural, and other macro- realities are not realities at all, but
instead are products of human imagination, is not palatable to many sociologists. Many of us have a sense that there are things happening in social life that go beyond the context in which they are happening. At the same time we rarely consider how our theorizing of the macro we imagine is radically situated within the materiality of our bodies and the environments directly accessible to them. Instead we appropriate the label 'imaginary' to describe some representations as false in order to allow other 'true' representations to pass as real. In this way, 'good' sociological accounts of society are rarely seen as products of sociological imaginations but rather as simply accounts of what is going on in the [macro] world out there, which is assumed to exist prior to its re-presentation/re-construction by scientists.
Although various critics have pushed us to conceptualize the radical situatedness of social activities, the
position afforded to the macro is contested by at least two different perspectives. The first, which I will term group-positioning, conceives of micro-social life occurring as a result of or vis-a-vis historically determined group-relations rooted in histories and structures of domination such as racism, nationalism, classism, sexism, and so forth. The second, which I will term ethnomethodological, conceives of all reality and social structure as accomplishments of social interaction within the [micro] sphere(s) of everyday life. Although both perspectives posit a radical situatedness of social activities and meaning-making, the group-positioning view imagines situatedness in reference to historical (and structural) conditions outside of the immediacy of micro-social realities. The ethnmethodological view, other the other hand, imagines the situatedness of social action in direct relation to the material context of its achievement. Thus, while group-positioning allows us to make reference to a macro-reality out there, ethnomethodology pushes us to locate the source of everything influencing micro-interactions,
including any macro-phenomenon, in interaction-events.
In this paper I am taking the ethnomethodological perspective in order to privilege the situatedness of the macro within the micro. By doing so, I am not making any claims about the inefficacy of the macro-realities of group-positioning approaches or otherwise, except to maintain the critical stance that reifying the macro too easily impedes the project of conceptualizing the situatedness of its production and consumption. However, it is important to highlight my use of 'situatedness' to refer to processes in which macro-reality is produced, exchanged/negotiated, consumed, imagined, and ultimately experienced; not to refer to an organized set of social positions that influence actions and experiences through and during their construction processes. Only by situating the macro as a certain type of image, i.e. a product of (and for) imagination, can we move from theorizing the macro as reality at a certain scale or level toward theorizing it as a way of seeing and orienting toward others within everyday social life, and as various images and imaginary forms of a realm inaccessible by means of direct empirical observation.
Although it is worth mentioning that macro-thinkers often move between the macro-level images they
cultivate and empirical observations as well as the accounts of others, it is also important to recognize that macro-images are rarely produced in isolation from macro-dialogue with others and/or access to the language of macro-representation. As such, macro-images and their narration are, at least in part, produced and consumed within an economy of the macro for the macro; much in the same way currency markets develop, negotiate, and exchange currencies without reference to goods and services. It is not enough to consider a particular macro-image or (narrative) set of images either in relation to the empirical realities it claims to represent, or to the discourses of macro-images among macro-thinkers. Instead I propose we should consider both aspects in terms of a situated micro-economy of the exchange and negotiation of knowledge. In other words, how do thinkers of the macro interact with other such thinkers (and their texts) as well as with other people and aspects of their social environments in the negotiation, production, consumption, application, etc. of the macro?
In this paper I am specifically oriented toward the economic issues of production and consumption, with special attention for consumption, in order to engage Ritzer's (2005) ideas about revolutionizing the means of consumption and the enchantment of a disenchanted world. I propose that like any other commodified good or service, the practices and images of macro-thinking can and should be studied in terms of their consumption and re-production. Additionally macro-images also serve as lenses through which all sorts of people, things, and events are viewed and appropriated; and as such we may also speak of them as means of consumption for these other things to which they are applied. Although academic sociology is hardly the only field in which the macro is re-produced and consumed, it is a useful field to examine for its proximity.
SPATIAL REFERENCE IN SOCIAL PERCEPTION
SPATIAL REFERENCE IN SOCIAL PERCEPTION
written for Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Methodologies, Imagining Alternatives
subsection: Creating Objects, Developing Methodologies
ASCA International Workshop
Amsterdam, March 28-30, 2007
INTRODUCTION/ABSTRACT
References to space and place are often tacit in social constructions of the reality of one's surroundings. Individuals imagine themselves to be situated within a territory, physical-geographical and social-cultural which they project values and expectations about the nature of reality, social and natural. Expressions such as "when in Rome, do as the Romans," "the language of the land," and so forth testify to this logic. We imagine multiple societies and 'cultures' in the world, and we often imagine that individuals inhabit them, yet why should we assume that we are in one society and not another at a particular moment? Why do we assume that space/territory is singular and homogeneous between borders? Although some would claim that such perception is rooted in our cognitive nature, this need not be the case. Instead, we can look at knowledge of space and place as constructed through discourses and habitually applied conceptual schemas.
The logic of separate cultural spaces is one such schema. By learning political geography we develop from a young age the sense that nation-states and other geographical regions are separate and different. The use of contrasting colors as geographical pedagogy extends beyond map-reading to influence our sense of heterogeneity across borders and homogeneity within. Further we are taught that the people living 'here' have this culture and those living 'there' have that one, and in doing so we learn to accept the logic that space, territory, and culture are naturally linked. Later we go on to consume these differences and the eroticized separations they represent. And when we are far from a border, our sense of familiarity, homogeneity, and borderlessness is constructed in the shadow of experiences of spatial difference.
In studies of race and ethnicity, whiteness has appeared on the map as an uncharted territory. Although we know that whiteness has much to do with invisibility where racial/ethnic identification is concerned, visualizing such invisibility can be more difficult. Understanding references to space as cultural- or ethnic- space provide a key to understanding the invisibility of whiteness. The system of political territorialization of space as ethnically-defined nations, regions, cities, buildings and so forth has facilitated the performance of ethnicity through deference to a particular vision of one's surroundings. Thus for whites, how one makes-sense-of and orients-to one's surrounding space-territory is more important ethnic capital than expressions of self or body. Negotiating 'realistic' meanings about the surrounding space(s) and ensuring deference to the authority of realism as well as to the (imagined) master(s) of spaces is a crucial element in expressing white ethnicity.
The logic of spatial territory is reproduced in many ways throughout various discourses but certain modes of sociology, as well as other social sciences, warrant particular attention. The idea that there are populations and subgroups in societies to study as aggregates implicitly reproduce spatial-territoriality by virtue of the way that they construct, a priori, their objects of study. When we deal with demographics and percentages, we need a particular whole as referent for the fragmentation we are describing. When we talk about groups in society and their political interactions, we need a shared political-economic field as well as a sense that individuals are inherently related to the groups we use to make sense of them. Rarely do we acknowledge the radical situatedness of our vision and consider how fragmented social reality really is at the empirical level.
In order to move beyond the cognitive trap of imagining social life in terms of bounded territories and aggregates, I propose an alternative vision derived from the Deleuzian concepts of assemblage, rhizome, and (de)territorialization. In this paper I will explore these concepts and compare them with sociological concepts such as society, population, race, group, sub-group, macro, micro and so forth paying attention to implicit assumptions about what we are capable of knowing tacit in these analytical concepts. In addition I will explore how moving between (abstract) sociological knowledge and (concrete) empirical perceptions and experiences allows individuals to construct synthetic socialized/ethnicized spaces that make it possible for them to function as semi-passive agents of white ethnicity. In addition I will propose an alternative understanding of ethnicity and culture that is inter-agential rather than spatially grounded in the logic of container-contents (i.e. a cultural agent is contained within a culture). Finally I will discuss how the Deleuzian concepts above can be applied in order to rethink ethnicity and culture in this way.
written for Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Methodologies, Imagining Alternatives
subsection: Creating Objects, Developing Methodologies
ASCA International Workshop
Amsterdam, March 28-30, 2007
INTRODUCTION/ABSTRACT
References to space and place are often tacit in social constructions of the reality of one's surroundings. Individuals imagine themselves to be situated within a territory, physical-geographical and social-cultural which they project values and expectations about the nature of reality, social and natural. Expressions such as "when in Rome, do as the Romans," "the language of the land," and so forth testify to this logic. We imagine multiple societies and 'cultures' in the world, and we often imagine that individuals inhabit them, yet why should we assume that we are in one society and not another at a particular moment? Why do we assume that space/territory is singular and homogeneous between borders? Although some would claim that such perception is rooted in our cognitive nature, this need not be the case. Instead, we can look at knowledge of space and place as constructed through discourses and habitually applied conceptual schemas.
The logic of separate cultural spaces is one such schema. By learning political geography we develop from a young age the sense that nation-states and other geographical regions are separate and different. The use of contrasting colors as geographical pedagogy extends beyond map-reading to influence our sense of heterogeneity across borders and homogeneity within. Further we are taught that the people living 'here' have this culture and those living 'there' have that one, and in doing so we learn to accept the logic that space, territory, and culture are naturally linked. Later we go on to consume these differences and the eroticized separations they represent. And when we are far from a border, our sense of familiarity, homogeneity, and borderlessness is constructed in the shadow of experiences of spatial difference.
In studies of race and ethnicity, whiteness has appeared on the map as an uncharted territory. Although we know that whiteness has much to do with invisibility where racial/ethnic identification is concerned, visualizing such invisibility can be more difficult. Understanding references to space as cultural- or ethnic- space provide a key to understanding the invisibility of whiteness. The system of political territorialization of space as ethnically-defined nations, regions, cities, buildings and so forth has facilitated the performance of ethnicity through deference to a particular vision of one's surroundings. Thus for whites, how one makes-sense-of and orients-to one's surrounding space-territory is more important ethnic capital than expressions of self or body. Negotiating 'realistic' meanings about the surrounding space(s) and ensuring deference to the authority of realism as well as to the (imagined) master(s) of spaces is a crucial element in expressing white ethnicity.
The logic of spatial territory is reproduced in many ways throughout various discourses but certain modes of sociology, as well as other social sciences, warrant particular attention. The idea that there are populations and subgroups in societies to study as aggregates implicitly reproduce spatial-territoriality by virtue of the way that they construct, a priori, their objects of study. When we deal with demographics and percentages, we need a particular whole as referent for the fragmentation we are describing. When we talk about groups in society and their political interactions, we need a shared political-economic field as well as a sense that individuals are inherently related to the groups we use to make sense of them. Rarely do we acknowledge the radical situatedness of our vision and consider how fragmented social reality really is at the empirical level.
In order to move beyond the cognitive trap of imagining social life in terms of bounded territories and aggregates, I propose an alternative vision derived from the Deleuzian concepts of assemblage, rhizome, and (de)territorialization. In this paper I will explore these concepts and compare them with sociological concepts such as society, population, race, group, sub-group, macro, micro and so forth paying attention to implicit assumptions about what we are capable of knowing tacit in these analytical concepts. In addition I will explore how moving between (abstract) sociological knowledge and (concrete) empirical perceptions and experiences allows individuals to construct synthetic socialized/ethnicized spaces that make it possible for them to function as semi-passive agents of white ethnicity. In addition I will propose an alternative understanding of ethnicity and culture that is inter-agential rather than spatially grounded in the logic of container-contents (i.e. a cultural agent is contained within a culture). Finally I will discuss how the Deleuzian concepts above can be applied in order to rethink ethnicity and culture in this way.
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