Phase 1: Go to field (and collect underpants)
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Become an Anthropologist!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Link
Social stratification: MySpace or Facebook?
Of course, Japan uses neither. They got mixi. Which people use their cellphones to access, most of the time.
On a side note, I really agreed with this:
Of course, Japan uses neither. They got mixi. Which people use their cellphones to access, most of the time.
On a side note, I really agreed with this:
Even as I'm diving into this data, I find myself struggling to get my words around these issues because it is patently clear that Americans - self included - do not have a language for talking about issues of race and class and stratification. Academically, we primarily rely on British language but this doesn't work so well in the States.Because (for different reasons) it can be hard to apply this language onto Canada or Japan also. I'm thinking that what she is saying is that a word like "class" has much different meaning in some societies and others. In the UK, and talking with other people there, it seems like rigid class dividers are much more clearly enunciated. Like they are clearly formed, with strong lines, and people know in which category they fit. This does not really reflect my experience in Canada or Japan, nor the US (I think maybe the US a bit more than Canada and Japan though). Hence in Japan there is an ideology of everyone is middle-class, which is then balanced(?) in sociological literature by (usually) just demographic-type statistics (on white-collar/blue-collar, urban/rural, big company/small company, etc.). So the problem with the language is that you either have an idea that everyone is the same--ie middle class society--or you try to force complex social stratification into clearly categorized systems of hierarchy (the "British language"). Like there may be differences in income and other "class factors" in the same way in Canada, but subjectively I don't think its seen the same way---as in both a plumber and a doctor will tell you they are "middle class" (or be unable to answer such a weird question). From what I understand (since this is a bit foreign to me) in many societies this is not so, and the meaning of class is that people such as plumbers are working class and know it, and so on (rather than just being assigned that way by social scientists in analysis). Further, like this article talks about in the US, and Canada as well, this is also inseperable from ethnicity/race/(multi)culture.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Default
"Black" robots in the new Transformers
What struck me watching the film was also in how ideas of race are communicated. I mean obviously they aren't "black" in a physical way, any more than any other robot (except through indirect references such as gold-capped rapper teeth). Instead this is communicated primarily through voice and language style. The line about not being able to read was really a bit cringe worthy... though I think at most it might have been more "unconscious" racism than actually asserting that African-Americans cannot read.
But it also makes me think, what about the other robots? Does this imply that other non-ethnically marked robots are defaulted to "white"? Like Optimus Prime? Is he "white"? Ask that question without the context and I believe the thinking would be that it (or he... up next) is un-raced. But in the context of the other racialized robots it seems more clear that rather there is just an assumption of whiteness. Afterall, what would mark as particularly white? Or for that matter, I suppose the default is also that they are men. If you had a female robot, that would stand out (long robot hair, breasts, etc.) in a way that "default" male robots do not. To complete the Holy Trinity, class I guess must be inserted somewhere in there (for example--that skids and mudflap can be critiqued for their "blackness" while this also is implicitly bound up with certain class ideas about race). Hard to really say what a default class is and how that is communicated within embodiment?
Anyway, further reminds me of something else at the lab. Here there is an android robot which is an extremely good copy of one of the main researchers. This robot is being taken for a conference in Europe. At one point one of the researchers told me he was thinking of using it to see whether Europeans would think of it just as a robot, or as a Japanese robot (because it looks like a Japanese man). I seem to also recall a discussion about whether having such a robot speak German would seem "unnatural" to listeners. Interesting, as I guess Engilsh also again becomes the default here... It wouldn't be unnatural for a Japanese robot (or a Japanese) to be speaking English, certainly. Nor, of course, is it impossible that some actual Japanese people speak German.
I'm not quite sure how to approach the issue of "default" methodologically though. Like how do you ask a Japanese person if their default "race" for a robot is Japanese (like I might guess it is)? I suppose it is possible that it could be white/"foreigner" as well, in particular because a lot of manga (comic book) characters are drawn as white and there is a certain structural logic in that robot are outsiders, foreigners are outsiders (gaijin, which means foreigner, is literally "outside person"). Keeping in mind that asking such a question directly isn't likely to lead to as interesting answers (like asking people whether Optimus Prime is white), how can you figure this out? And whether it matters?
Edit: brilliant
What struck me watching the film was also in how ideas of race are communicated. I mean obviously they aren't "black" in a physical way, any more than any other robot (except through indirect references such as gold-capped rapper teeth). Instead this is communicated primarily through voice and language style. The line about not being able to read was really a bit cringe worthy... though I think at most it might have been more "unconscious" racism than actually asserting that African-Americans cannot read.
But it also makes me think, what about the other robots? Does this imply that other non-ethnically marked robots are defaulted to "white"? Like Optimus Prime? Is he "white"? Ask that question without the context and I believe the thinking would be that it (or he... up next) is un-raced. But in the context of the other racialized robots it seems more clear that rather there is just an assumption of whiteness. Afterall, what would mark as particularly white? Or for that matter, I suppose the default is also that they are men. If you had a female robot, that would stand out (long robot hair, breasts, etc.) in a way that "default" male robots do not. To complete the Holy Trinity, class I guess must be inserted somewhere in there (for example--that skids and mudflap can be critiqued for their "blackness" while this also is implicitly bound up with certain class ideas about race). Hard to really say what a default class is and how that is communicated within embodiment?
Anyway, further reminds me of something else at the lab. Here there is an android robot which is an extremely good copy of one of the main researchers. This robot is being taken for a conference in Europe. At one point one of the researchers told me he was thinking of using it to see whether Europeans would think of it just as a robot, or as a Japanese robot (because it looks like a Japanese man). I seem to also recall a discussion about whether having such a robot speak German would seem "unnatural" to listeners. Interesting, as I guess Engilsh also again becomes the default here... It wouldn't be unnatural for a Japanese robot (or a Japanese) to be speaking English, certainly. Nor, of course, is it impossible that some actual Japanese people speak German.
I'm not quite sure how to approach the issue of "default" methodologically though. Like how do you ask a Japanese person if their default "race" for a robot is Japanese (like I might guess it is)? I suppose it is possible that it could be white/"foreigner" as well, in particular because a lot of manga (comic book) characters are drawn as white and there is a certain structural logic in that robot are outsiders, foreigners are outsiders (gaijin, which means foreigner, is literally "outside person"). Keeping in mind that asking such a question directly isn't likely to lead to as interesting answers (like asking people whether Optimus Prime is white), how can you figure this out? And whether it matters?
Edit: brilliant
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
No Machine Can Do My Job As Resentfully As I Can
indeed!
A machine can break down mechanically, but can it break down emotionally, mentally, and spiritually?
I can, and I have. Every day, a little piece of me dies. Could a machine say the same?
I've worked at this unventilated shit-prison 12 hours a day for nearly 25 years. I have developed no skills other than that of silently counting down the minutes of each workday while cursing my misfortune.
No matter what else they take from me, my utter and total hatred of this nightmarish fish-stick factory will always be mine. After all, isn't that what makes us truly human?
Monday, June 15, 2009
Interpretation
Clifford Geertz, for those not in the know, is an anthropologist famous for writing about "interpretation". One of his best known examples is the difference between a wink and a blink. According to him (actually, according to someone else he borrowed this example from... Gilbert Ryle I think), these two things have completely different meanings but the same behaviour. A blink is a just a physiological response, whether voluntary or not. A wink indiciates something, say irony or seduction. Or it can be an ironic wink based on the meaning of an ordinary wink... and so on. From this, he argues that anthropologists job is to do the "thick description" which allows us to interpret the meaning behind the wink or the blink. Simple observations won't due. You need to understand the "web of symbols". Thats my cliff note version from what I recall by memory.
Anyway, so a couple months ago I came across this article in the New York Times. Basically it is talking about New York/Wall Street types who have lost their jobs with the economic recession but still, everyday, get up in their best work clothes and go out, sort of "pretending" that they are still working. The article then jumps off into psychology and how this can be a good thing, "an effective social strategy [for coping]".
Anyway this is just an inkling I had. Then today I was reading this article in New York Review of Books (gated unfortunately) by Ian Buruma. Partly it is a review of a new movie Tokyo Sonata. According to him, the movie is about a middle-ranking Japanese salaryman who gets laid off work, who "like so many of his real-life counterparts...prefers to spend his days on a park bench rather than tell his family about his lost job". This is not an uncommon occurrence, Buruma says:
This article is not really so much cultural troping as I imagined such a thing would be. In fact its quite right in a number of ways about Japanese history and politics, at least it seems to me. On the other hand, still I think it does do a number of things. First off, as it relates to America, and despite this article acknowledging the recent failure of the "America model," it seems to miss a few things. Like a militarized right? How did that work out in the US the last 8 years? Or perhaps the last 30? And while Japan has some trouble with banking, perhaps, this doesn't seem to be so serious as banks in one other country in particular. The current Japanese slump he correctly points out is based a lot on Japan's heavy reliance on exports. But that just means Japan is slumping because the US is slumping. Further, since he is then comparing Japan to China, China is also an exporter and is also slumping (recent factory closures and resultant protest action in Guangdong). Not being an economist, and with China such a closed place, I can't say for sure, but I really can't think China can still be the same darling-child now that everyone has been pegging it as for the last few years. In fact, its comical that he could blame the "Yoshida deal"---trading middle class political activity for economic prosperity---when if there is one single place on earth where, as a tacit agreement between the state and the citizenry, political freedom is exchanged for a rapidly expanding economy, it seems that place would be China.
That's the economics and politics. But also, even though it is quite light, it does seem like some cultural imagery is slipped in there. None of it is explicit in the vulgar way such things often are: "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down", so-called collectivism, "saving face". But these are all referenced implicitly---salaryman and politicians don't try to be exceptional or challenged things, laid off workers can't tell their family and friends because of humiliation. But overall the main troping is that Japanese live in a fantasy world, one of manga and anime, of melodrama, of ignoring economic problems. It reminds me of when sometimes people say that Japanese are immature/child-like because they like cute things or whatever. This seems to completely miss the point that a Japanese might think a Westerner is child-like because they can't properly control their emotional outbursts, or any number of other things. And the infantilizing also I think has a lot to do with exoticism mixed with fear.
So it does reinforce stereotypes of Japanese. Meanwhile, the New Yorkers each have their therapist telling them that pride is a good, healthy thing.
One last thing:these interpretations have a hint of truth. In fact, work is quite important in Japan, in the sense of work as making you a certain kind of valuable person. That is that working itself is a value, relatively speaking to an American, rather than the results as such (in a grossly generalized way). The motive for hanging out in the park may be more about other people's opinions of you as a person for a Tokyoite while more about personal feelings of failure and fufillment for the New Yorker. Or another way of putting it---maybe the Tokyoite is worried about not having a job as such, the New Yorker is worried about not having an income as such. Slightly different things. So how do you mix Clifford Geertz with Edward Said (and other post-colonial theorists)?
Anyway, so a couple months ago I came across this article in the New York Times. Basically it is talking about New York/Wall Street types who have lost their jobs with the economic recession but still, everyday, get up in their best work clothes and go out, sort of "pretending" that they are still working. The article then jumps off into psychology and how this can be a good thing, "an effective social strategy [for coping]".
“I have a new client, a laid-off lawyer, who’s commuting in every day — to his Starbucks,” said Robert C. Chope, a professor of counseling at San Francisco State University and president of the employment division of the American Counseling Association. “He gets dressed up, meets with colleagues, networks; he calls it his Western White House. I have encouraged him to keep his routine.”It then goes on to discuss lots of psychological research on "pride." At the time, what really struck me is how radically different I thought this would be interpreted if you had the same behavior/"data" in Japan, while also being something I could easily envision happening here. I figured if you had a story about Japanese white collar workers, who had lost their job, waking up everyday and putting on their suit, but not to do anything in particular, it would be not cast at all in terms of universalist psychology of pride but of the specific and unique culture of Japan, with particular attention to a "culture of work". On the other hand, it was somewhat amusing because its a good example of how similar the US and Japan really are in some ways, as I kind of also thought this seems like the sort of phenomena that would happen much more there than, I don't know, Canada or Italy. The discrepancy I can't help but feel is partly about how these are interpreted through certain kinds of (orientalist) prisms. To clarify the part about orientalist, that means it is based on the fact that the West (especially the US) is powerful and sort of dictates what is "universal" and thereby relegating everyone else to "particular"--like Japan. This universal/particular dichotomy is sort of ubiquitous, and Japanese help it along by themselves. So much, so, I figured, that identical behaviours would be split along these lines and interpreted radically differently. Its not so simple as "webs of meaning" when those meanings also come from somewhere (like colonialism in a broad sense, though Japan was never officially colonized, as well as nationalist projects of state-building spread through the education system and mass media).
Anyway this is just an inkling I had. Then today I was reading this article in New York Review of Books (gated unfortunately) by Ian Buruma. Partly it is a review of a new movie Tokyo Sonata. According to him, the movie is about a middle-ranking Japanese salaryman who gets laid off work, who "like so many of his real-life counterparts...prefers to spend his days on a park bench rather than tell his family about his lost job". This is not an uncommon occurrence, Buruma says:
[A] common sight these days in public parks, as well as libraries, are men in dark business suits quietly reading the papers, for hours on end. These are the middle-ranking corporate men who cannot face the humiliation of letting family and neighbors know that their companies have no more use for them. So they pretend to go to work, even after being laid off. Economic misery and rising unemployment are hitting older people especially hard.Buruma's bone to pick is really the "Japanese system" as such, with all the main tropes that this includes: so-called lifetime employment, powerful bureaucrats, a stagnant democracy, US patronage. He traces this to post-war recovery but specifically the Yoshida deal:
The middle class was offered a deal: material wealth in exchange for political acquiescence, a virtual one-party state with no more protests, and the dutiful army of salarymen would be taken care of. Labor unions had been pretty much tamed, sometimes with the strong-arm help of gangsters. And Japanese pacifism was guaranteed by a constitution, written by Americans in 1946, which banned the use of armed force...Buruma basically links these macropolitics together with the laid off salaryman and his park reading together quite tightly:
This system, put in place in 1955, when the LDP [Japan's main political party and in almost constant control for the last 50 years] was formed, and cemented in 1960, suited the Japanese political and business elite who could now concentrate on industrial expansion. It suited most Japanese, who wanted nothing more to do with war...And it suited the US, which wanted Japan to be a reliable bastion against communism. So CIA money stocked coffers of the LDP for several decades, to make sure all signs of leftisim were kept at bay.
There is in this behavior a link, I believe, with the unemployed salarymen reading their papers all day on park benches. It is a deliberate rejection of reality, a flight into make-believe. And this, in turn, is echoed by the behavior of the Japanese government itself. One of the most commonly cited reasosn for the depth and length of the economic slump that started in the 1990s was the refusal of the government to acknowledge the diastrous state of Japanese banks, as though problems would go away if everyone pretended things were all right.So there it is. The Japanese salaryman, a stagnant relic of the bubble years, is just like the Japanese government. Of course, China is also in here somewhere, as the rising superpower in Asia who will soon (perhaps inevitably) eclipse Japan. Rather puzzlingly, Buruma then seems to focus a lot on Japan's pacifist constitution, almost hinting that a re-militarized right would be just the thing for Japan. This is somehow mixed in with the call for a more vibrant, dynamic democracy. The latter sounds nice like apple pie, but its hard to see how that relates much at all to economics when you compare Japan to China and the US.
This article is not really so much cultural troping as I imagined such a thing would be. In fact its quite right in a number of ways about Japanese history and politics, at least it seems to me. On the other hand, still I think it does do a number of things. First off, as it relates to America, and despite this article acknowledging the recent failure of the "America model," it seems to miss a few things. Like a militarized right? How did that work out in the US the last 8 years? Or perhaps the last 30? And while Japan has some trouble with banking, perhaps, this doesn't seem to be so serious as banks in one other country in particular. The current Japanese slump he correctly points out is based a lot on Japan's heavy reliance on exports. But that just means Japan is slumping because the US is slumping. Further, since he is then comparing Japan to China, China is also an exporter and is also slumping (recent factory closures and resultant protest action in Guangdong). Not being an economist, and with China such a closed place, I can't say for sure, but I really can't think China can still be the same darling-child now that everyone has been pegging it as for the last few years. In fact, its comical that he could blame the "Yoshida deal"---trading middle class political activity for economic prosperity---when if there is one single place on earth where, as a tacit agreement between the state and the citizenry, political freedom is exchanged for a rapidly expanding economy, it seems that place would be China.
That's the economics and politics. But also, even though it is quite light, it does seem like some cultural imagery is slipped in there. None of it is explicit in the vulgar way such things often are: "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down", so-called collectivism, "saving face". But these are all referenced implicitly---salaryman and politicians don't try to be exceptional or challenged things, laid off workers can't tell their family and friends because of humiliation. But overall the main troping is that Japanese live in a fantasy world, one of manga and anime, of melodrama, of ignoring economic problems. It reminds me of when sometimes people say that Japanese are immature/child-like because they like cute things or whatever. This seems to completely miss the point that a Japanese might think a Westerner is child-like because they can't properly control their emotional outbursts, or any number of other things. And the infantilizing also I think has a lot to do with exoticism mixed with fear.
So it does reinforce stereotypes of Japanese. Meanwhile, the New Yorkers each have their therapist telling them that pride is a good, healthy thing.
One last thing:these interpretations have a hint of truth. In fact, work is quite important in Japan, in the sense of work as making you a certain kind of valuable person. That is that working itself is a value, relatively speaking to an American, rather than the results as such (in a grossly generalized way). The motive for hanging out in the park may be more about other people's opinions of you as a person for a Tokyoite while more about personal feelings of failure and fufillment for the New Yorker. Or another way of putting it---maybe the Tokyoite is worried about not having a job as such, the New Yorker is worried about not having an income as such. Slightly different things. So how do you mix Clifford Geertz with Edward Said (and other post-colonial theorists)?
Monday, May 18, 2009
The ethnographer's mask
Swine flu has now landed in Osaka. This has resulted in a fair amount of panic. Yesterday, the homestay family went to visit grandparents and I was originally planning to go into Osaka, but my plans got cancelled. So I was sitting at home, watching downloaded TV shows on my laptop when I got a cellphone email: "Please put the mask in Osaka. Watch a news program". I think I let out an audible sigh, lucky I was by myself. Apparently they are selling or sold out of masks now. Of course I was told to wear mine on the train this morning. About 25-30% of the people, I'd say, were wearing them. My language teacher told me the other day that when Japanese people went to Canada and came back (I heard Canada is where a couple of the people up in Tokyo got swine flu) they were being asked (on TV?) why didn't you wear the mask??? I told her that Japanese people wearing masks in Canada may reinforce unflattering stereotypes of the Japanese. On the other hand, a friend I bumped into today on the bus, when I asked her about wearing a mask, she laughed and said no, and don't I think it's a little bit crazy? Yeah, a bit. 7000-8000 people have been infected in the world, and what? 70 people have died? And aren't all those people in the Americas, and most of them because they were old or ill otherwise? kawai [scary]?... I'm more scared of second-hand smoke in the bars.
Anyway, so I can't help, again, to feel a bit of, well, contempt for the hysteric. But then I was reminded of something someone said to me about a year ago. He was a PhD student in philosophy, but supervised by an anthropologist. Anyway, he told me, after we had been discussing something which I no longer remember, that I need to work on my "ethnography face" because I have a tendency to give away, in my expression, that I think what people are telling me is sort of idiotic. Like it's in my eyes, mouth, this look of "what you are saying is complete bullshit". He said, really, this is not good for an ethnographer and that his supervisor, for example, has the correct anthropologist's expression mastered. He can just sit there, with a straight and agreeable face, nodding along, while people tell him the most absurd things. At the time this struck me that perhaps he has a bit of a point. He's right, I think, that if you look at people like they are stupid, they're not going to want to talk to you!
So I feel a bit guilty thinking that everyone wearing these masks are acting paranoid. And really trying to bite my tongue. Like I guess its ethnocentric or something. For me, discussions in anthropology about ethnocentricity tend to be more multiculturalist platitude than actual thinking. But is there any thing to do other than just keep telling yourself, a bit stupidly, "when in Rome..."?
Anyway, so I can't help, again, to feel a bit of, well, contempt for the hysteric. But then I was reminded of something someone said to me about a year ago. He was a PhD student in philosophy, but supervised by an anthropologist. Anyway, he told me, after we had been discussing something which I no longer remember, that I need to work on my "ethnography face" because I have a tendency to give away, in my expression, that I think what people are telling me is sort of idiotic. Like it's in my eyes, mouth, this look of "what you are saying is complete bullshit". He said, really, this is not good for an ethnographer and that his supervisor, for example, has the correct anthropologist's expression mastered. He can just sit there, with a straight and agreeable face, nodding along, while people tell him the most absurd things. At the time this struck me that perhaps he has a bit of a point. He's right, I think, that if you look at people like they are stupid, they're not going to want to talk to you!
So I feel a bit guilty thinking that everyone wearing these masks are acting paranoid. And really trying to bite my tongue. Like I guess its ethnocentric or something. For me, discussions in anthropology about ethnocentricity tend to be more multiculturalist platitude than actual thinking. But is there any thing to do other than just keep telling yourself, a bit stupidly, "when in Rome..."?
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