Monday 31 January 2011
Saturday 6 February 2010
Internet, democracy, absence and justice
On one level, it's a nice story of how a relatively simple idea can challenge the powerful in favour of the poor. On another level it's an unusual twist on the symbolic power of money. When academics talk of monetary symbolism, they are usually focused on the institutionalised trust that is necessary for a monetary system to work. In this case, the note is symbolic of the protests against corruption and the sanctions that may come with them. Its materiality and its liminal position is destabilising to those who thought it was something entirely different.
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Containing China
Roy Bhaskar
Ranging from the completely anecdotal to the philosophical, here are a few insights into the workshop, Roy and Critical Realism:
1. Roy is one of the nicest, happiest and most generous people I have ever encountered. Despite having recently had his foot sawn off, being confined to a wheelchair and being buffeted by aggressive questions from professors who are either jealous or in comprehensive of his work, and various other burdens which I won't go into, the man appears to genuinely value every idea or person he meets.
2. Critical realism is not very critical, at least not in the critical theory sense, in that it doesn't really have a strong normative persuasion. This does not put it at a disadvantage to most ontologies as, unless one prioritises value above existence (e.g. Pilsig's work) the IS doesn't become the OUGHT. Bhaskar might disagree on this point but he didn't seem to put up a robost defence.
3. Critical Realism is a new project and, as such, contains a number of flaws, but the basic realist structure it proposes (shared by some other forms of realism) provides the best explanatory power and the most accurate ontology I have encountered.
4. Given the obvious weakness in their positions, most post-structuralists are retreating from their discourse is everything / nothing outside the text position. However, in my opinion, unless they accept a realist ontology (which is entirely compatible with ideas of discourse) it is impossible to adequately explain choice, resistance and change.
5. Bhaskar is a VERY nice man. Did I say that already?
Research Design
This piece from the Big Four Blog, which purports to be showing what a marvellous, resiliant lot entrepreneurs are, is typical of the flawed research evident in much management literature.
The intention of the piece, to paint E&Y with the magic paint that is 'entrepreneurialism' is nonsense upon stilts. A fact which may have been hinted at by the early statement that:
"Entrepreneurs are hardy folks. Undeterred by current circumstances....".
Which flies in the face of all evidence that minor things like, say, unavailable credit, cuts in consumer spending and buyers hammering their suppliers, hit SMEs and start-ups disproportionally.
On top of the general twittery of the article direction, it is evident on further reading that the 'evidence' has been taken, not from balance sheets, VAT returns or VC analysts but by, ahem, asking entrepreneurs questions like:
'are you pursuing growth opportunities?'
'do you wish to implement technology for higher business efficiency?' etc...
Note that these are aspirational, rather than actual. It's like asking Gordon Brown 'do you wish you were popular?'. The answer has little to do with the reality.
Saturday 15 August 2009
The Amtrak Zephyr
As we have 51 hours on the train I thought I’d write you all a short letter telling you about the Amtrak Zephyr that we’re riding from
The first thing to know about the Zephyr is that it’s big. Big and Shiny. Each of the 30 odd carriages are double-decker, about 16 foot high, with cabins, showers, toilets and ‘viewing galleries’ on both floors. On the outside, all the carriages are a polished chrome, which gives the whole thing a 1950s feel before you even get on. We’re in a (very) little roomette: about 6 foot by 4, dominated by a big rectangular window in which the post-Chicago mid-west is flickering by. The room is only big enough for two seats which, at night, are folded down to make a bed.
The second thing to know about the Zephyr is that our room attendant is called Tom, or "TAAAM!!", a tall black guy with a thick, southern, SHOUTING accent that I thought was a creation of 80s American sitcoms. As with most Americans we’ve met, he’s a ball of enthusiastic, positive energy that meets you with wide-eyes and a big smile. We’re only half an hour in and he’s already told us all about himself, the other passengers and the train.
Many of the Americans we’ve met have all had this boundless, innocent enthusiasm for life, which makes them shout things like “AWESOME, THAT IS JUST TOO GOOD!!” when booking a train ticket. This should be tiresome, but it’s not. It’s a welcome relief and, for the most part, seems genuine, and a welcome response to British cynicism.
This frontier spirit that has bred a nation of entrepreneurs is infectious and you find yourself chipping in a quiet “yeah!” and nervously glancing around should there be any cynical English looking at you. Leaving a music festival in Chicago the crowd of 'yoofs' who were surging out of the gates, spontaneously began chanting “
The third thing to know about the Zephyr is that the food is free. This is, obviously, the most important thing.
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We’re about one hour into the journey and we’re trekking at about 60mph through the ‘bread basket’ of America, where single fields of corn stretch as far as the eye can see, and small planes, spraying the crops, swoop dangerously low to the ground.. From inside this dark blue cabin, the light is sometimes broken as impossibly large cargo trains loaded with coal, tanks and large silver things zip by in the opposite direction.
True to O’Mahoney form, Mary and I have filled our cabin with food that we picked up this morning from a M&S-like supermarket. For the sake of the non-O’Mahoneys reading this I won’t spell out every food-stuff we’ve squeezed in, but suffice to say, if we were stuck on here for seven, instead of two, days, we would be fine.
We move from
At dinner, we are seated with a father and son from
Dinner is taken in the dining car which has a waiter service. All the staff, waiters, cleaners and attendants are black. When we were in
As the night drew in, the small cabin with the increasingly blackened view seemed claustrophobic. The dining and the viewing cars are left open at night, dimly lit, so anyone panicking about being stuck inside can go for a wander. To be fair, I would probably be the only person on the train who felt this was, but at any rate, it was a relief to know.
Before we slept, our ‘cabin boy’, as he called himself, told us that breakfast would begin at 6.30am and helped us transform our tiny seats into tiny bunk-beds. I laughed at the idea of people getting up so early when, in all likelihood, we would all have terrible nights.
Throughout the night we were buffeted in small bunks as we winded our way through
The food on the train is good. Not great, but good. You get three sizeable meals a day and a choice of three options. Mary asked the waitress about something called ‘grits’ this morning which, on being told they were ‘bland small things’ decided against them. I had thick French toast with fruit and honey. Again, their communal seating meant we met some interesting people: a couple from
********
We are now moving into
The
At lunch we met another lovely couple from
Cherry had an obsession with Beatrix Potter and clearly believed
We’re entering
There are old Indian caves which have been dug out of the cliff face and wild turkeys scratching in the dry scrubland beside the tracks. People are kayaking and camping along its sides, taking a slower trip than ours. I’ve never seen anything like this.
After 240 miles of tracking the
Good steak for dinner followed by ‘Peanut Butter and Chocolate Torte’. The Austrians would be proud. This time our dining companion was a small swarthy man from
Unfortunately, it looks like the proposed American systems may well fall in the middle, retaining the waste incurred by duplicating healthcare administration and vast advertising budgets, whilst developing the burgeoning bureaucracy involved in any government enterprise. Anyway, I digress.
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We’re ploughing through mining and cowboy country. Old towns were Doc Holiday and Ewart Earp made their names. Bed-time beckons soon and tonight we will fortunately sleep through the deserts of
I have, unfortunately, noticed a tightening of my waistband. I’m sure this has something to do with altitude and nothing to do with the gargantuan five-man portions that the Americans insist on delivering to your table if you ask for a snack. I believe that if I moved to this country it would be no time at all before I could not move anywhere else unless a fork-lift was involved. Of course, sitting all day in a train, plane or hotel room doesn’t help, but in some ways, coming home super-sized is all part of experiencing the American Dream.
********
After a fair night’s sleep we pass through
Over breakfast we were seated with an English couple, both teachers, whose timidity and apologetic natures stood out in stark contrast to our previous encounters. From the train, there is little evidence of the poverty of the state, which has recently forced it to write IOUs to people expecting tax-rebates and pension payments.
On this journey, we have had several hours of commentary from ‘State Park Volunteers’ who give up their time to don green uniforms, give out leaflets and tell the passangers about the various features that we pass. Apparently, one in ten Americans are doing volunteer work at any one time. People we have met have done everything from running soup-kitchens to organising antique bike shows for schools.
Met some interesting older men over lunch: talkative, interested and knowledgeable. A lot of people seem to think that with the arrival of Obama, the
Monday 17 March 2008
Saying the unsayable
The second reason I'm pissed with academia is that it's virtually impossible to say anything vaguely controversial without being bounced away from the good journals. Take you for an example. There are two main approaches to who you are in the social sciences.
The first, promoted by postmodernists, is that you only exist because people talk about you. What you believe to be 'you' is actually a mirage, a transparency that takes the multiple images of the talk that it encounters. Some postmodernists* are more sophisticated and throw in a bit of reflexivity (you think? really?) but none have really tackled the key objection which is, if you are just a 'mirage' that is created by social forces then how the buggery do you do manage to do stuff to change those forces?
The second, bigged up by the realists* out there, is that you do things because you, well, you exist. For a while they argued that we did what we did because social structures and institutions made us think and act in certain ways. However, faced with people who often do the opposite, they have come up with various ways of explain how these entrepreneurs and resisters can do what they do. However, explanations for how choice and innovative action come about are still pretty much in their infancy.
What I would like to add to this debate is that you (the actor, self, agent or - god forbid - person) when deciding to do something, are not simply governed by the rules of society but are also constrained and enabled by your psychological state and your biological architecture. In other words, when you chose to resist social rules or make an informed choice, these processes, whilst heavily influenced by society, can not be explained without reference to very real constraints that are inside you.
This simple statement is self evident to most lay people. Our conversations, assumptions and common sense are all geared towards understanding people that react differently in some situations because of their genes, their 'nature' or their current psychological state. Now, there will be two completely different reactions to this sentence. Lay (i.e. normal) people will not see anything objectionable here and will hopefully be wondering what all the fuss is about. Social scientists will have seen the words genes, nature and psychological, and be screaming essentialism, or, more likely, will have assumed this is a weak argument and turned to a different website.
How can it be so obvious to the lay person that their actions are, in part, explained by their biological and psychological states, yet so anathemaeic to sociologists? This is one of the many reasons, of course, why the public, 'proper' scientists and policy makers spend much of their time avoiding, if not laughing, at academics. I'm starting to wonder who the first person will be to notice that the (expensive) emperor's new clothes don't just fit badly....
* I've obviously simplified the pomo and realist positions somewhat but, seriously, their models of who you are are generally so theoretically unhinged and blatantly unrealistic that I'm not sure how they've got away with it for this long without being horsewhipped through town.