Speaking of mind to action...

Ok so the sociology trading cards I get. And I like. A lot, as long-time readers of this space will probably know, this is about the fourth time or so I've blogged about them.

Heck, a pack of these peoples are even duly noted on my 2005 Christmas list (send me an email and I'll send the list to you...if you were thinking of getting me a gift, that is....)

But...Lego? Really? What are those people over there in England eating these days?

Okay maybe I'm just miffed because I don't know most of the people in the lineup, except by name hearsay. Okay...maybe Stuart Hall...but Michel Foucault? Just seems so plastic.

Now....the Foucault action figure, though? Oh yes....

Fragmentary experience = Holistic life

If I'm correctly reading Joas' (1996) philosophical overview of John Dewey's conceptions of art, religion, action and ideals in Joas' text, then these ideas could be brought to bear on theories of adaptation to the digital and multiple simultaneous presentations of self/identity...

Discussing Dewey's ideas, Joas says "a holistic self tends to sublate the rapid sequence of different scenarios that is our reality into a totality. It is through the creative powers of imagination that human beings gain access to the ideals" (p.143). Again looking through Dewey's conceptions, Joas notes that ideals are a person's "unquestionable binding values" and that they are "not something that we decide freely to set ourselves; rather they take hold of us and are at the root of our individual wishes and goals" (p.143).

Not sure what I'd need of this to make some arguments about the reality of the digital and the whole nature of the human living through that reality...or the conceptions of trust/risk in the digital (my current pre-occupation research and paper-wise) ...but at least by capturing it here, I've thought it out a bit.

Pragmatic pretzling

On this gloriously sunny late-September afternoon, when I'd much rather be outside walking in the briskly warm air, I'm instead hunkered over my desk and laptop, trying to suss out the concepts, logic, objections, refutations and adaptations of the philosophy known as Pragmatism. My poor brain just doesn't fire as fast as it used to, so it's taking a while to get pretzel it around these concepts.

I'm doing this by reading an expert of a book written by Hans Joas (1996) called The Creativity of Action, in which he conceptualizes action according to Pierce's pragmatic approach and G.H. Mead's approach to the integration of mind and self, in both the individual and social sense of the terms.

I do wish that the excerpt provided more meat about his take on Mead. I just finished re-reading swatches of Mead's Mind, Self & Society for my Contemporary Social Theory course and the professor seems rather enamoured of the whole school of pragmatism. So I'm sure Friday's class will be another exercise in pretzling my brain around new theories and takes that aren't quite in line with what I thought I read.

Cute commuter

My current car, a 2002 Honda Civic sedan, goes off-lease in a few weeks and with 93,000 km klicked into it, I'm looking to retire it and replace it with something else.

So...I'm car shopping.

If I lived solely in the city and never had to drive the 40 or the 401 anywhere, I'd definitely be looking more seriously at buying one of these new s.m.a.r.t. cars - turns out that they're CAD$16,000 which is less than I thought they'd be.

Doesn't hurt that the colour can be customized on a whim and they get amazing gas mileage. Plus they've got that cool euro hip factor going on.

Sadly, though, I'm a suburbanite these days. And when I move southward next summer, I'll need something that can really go on the Interstates. This probably won't be it.

But it's so cute!

Blogging it real

Clicked over to Spencer Steel's piece of the i-space, expecting to see information about the Straight Edge subculture (as my professor calls it) that I could use in my paper, only to find this blog entry.

Wow.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for smart, real and emotive prose. Especially from Brits.

Fighting the culture vultures

A few years ago, for an intro level field research course, I wrote a research proposal that proposed a study of how youth viewed music and software sharing and downloading. While I ended up dropping the class due to a clueless professor who didn't believe the study of things digital was a worthy sociological topic (?!) the idea of that research never quite left me. Back then, most of the info I found on the net was preaching how awful it was and how illegal. There was little in the discourse from the other side, or at least little that was actually informed, organized and overt.

Things have definitely changed. Today, while browsing the net for information on the Straight Edge youth subculture/movement/philosophy for my SOCI 398 Youth Culture course, I came across the website of a non-profit organization called Downhill Battle. They have a lot of information that presents the other side of the argument for music and software sharing. They've also done more street activism that I would not have thought possible. Their Thanksgiving 2003 warning sticker campaign on large US retailers of CDs is a case in point.

Perhaps it is time to revisit that idea of mine. Maybe for my new senior-level field research course? hmmm......

It's raining links

So this is what I've been needing to do to generate thoughts and links for this i-space. I needed a web-based, net-centric research project, like the one I'm doing on youth subcultures for my SOCI 398 course.

I've spent four hours googling tonight for this assignment. Here's the assignment:

Construct a history of one of the following youth subcultures:

a) riot grrls

b) straight edgers

c) rude boys

d) skinheads

e) Goths

f) metalheads

g) hippie kids

h) hip-hoppers

i) ravers

j) punks

Collect information through websites and tell the story of this subculture as it is told through the sites. You will produce a written testimony about what motivates youth to participate in the subculture as well as the experiences that constitute being a part of the subculture as presented through the websites.

Include as much of the following information as possible in your narrative:

1) Where and how did this subculture begin?

2) What are the signs, symbols and meanings attached to this subculture?

3) What does this subculture declare to be its principles and intentions (manifesto)?

4) What problems does this subcutlreu attempt to confront?

5) How does membership in this subculture attempt to deal with these problems?

6) Are there areas of disagreement between sites?

7) What is the story fo the subculture being told through the sites and for what audience is this story designed?

This narrative is to be between 4 and 5 double-spaced word-processed pages.

Shouldn't be that tough, but I'm having trouble choosing a topic. So....While trying to decide whether or not to do my project on Goths or Straight Edgers turned up the following interesting sites:

- Have a burning important question that you'd like experts to answer? Dropping Knowledge is setting out to do just that.

- Curious about what is important to youth? Alternet.org is a website dedicated to news and musings on all things youth.

- Looking for a really alternative goth/fetish club and just happen to be in Vancouver or plan to visit? Apparently the apt-named Sin City is the place to go.

- According to Morbid Outlook, my gothic name is Melusine Metalwing

I could put about a half-dozen more but I'll try to get back into googling.

Oh..and at the moment, topic-focus-wise, I've flip-flopped back to Straight-Edgers. Story seems more linear and therefore possibly easier to tell.

Micronations

School has started again and I'm beginning to think I'm a wee bit nuts. Five courses, of which 3 are senior/honours/uber-geek tough courses, replete with thick and chewy social theory and the requisite huge mind-pretzeling papers to write.

Ok so it's true that I'm not working full-time for a living anymore (note to self - must adjust my footer for this blog now that I'm "just" a student). But I am still working for cash. I've taken on the role of research coordinator/assistant for the GameCODE project at Concordia.

Enough about that...I have to post some real insight here or my friends won't stop sending me email asking me if this space is dead, and forcing me to respond that, no, it's not, it's only sleeping....

While googling today, looking for information on Goth youth subcultures for a sociology course project on youth music scenes, I stumbled across the concept of micronations on Google. Given that my head is very much into the distinctions between macro and micro manifestations of social phenomena (don't ask), I clicked over to Wikipedia to check it out and it presents micronations as a neological term to describe state-like entities. Hmmm...like digital communities?

Sort of, is the answer. This article then peaked my interest, so I delved further and according to this article on a seemingly academic site run by a Dutch PhD student, it is a valid social phenomena. Might have to look into this more, or at least keep a Google alert going on the term, in case it should go big (or is that macro?).

(and yes...neologism is the best new word I learn this week.....)