My slog into research on potential grad schools and their requirements for a grad student continues. Amazing how many different hoops have to be jumped through - I really hope my references will come along for the ride.
I had a chat this afternoon with an alumni of the Communications department at University of Massachusetts - Amherst who is now a professor at Concordia. His input and feedback were very enlightening and fanned the flames of my desire go to UMass.
(He has also suggested Concordia's own Communication program. I like the idea of not having to sell my house and move right away, but I'm not sure there is anyone there interested in the same things as I am. Still worth keeping in mind...)
Plus the discovery of the joint York University / Ryerson University MA in Communications and Culture has got me rethinking the need to go to the USA.
So as of today, I'm kicking off a Grad School Shortlist over there on the right ---->
I've whittled that list down to 5 schools from an original group of somewhere between 12 and 16. Ideally I'd like it to be even shorter, but the application deadlines just won't allow it. Current cities then are Toronto, Amherst (MA), Calgary, Vancouver and Washington, DC.
If you have opinions about any of the programs and/or schools listed, do drop me a note.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Power and agency
Social sciences are dominated by the ideal concept of power explained by Michel Foucault, which is that power is a force at work in social constructs (institutions, social order, etc.) and as such, isn’t something one “has” or “hasn’t”. It isn’t something one uses over someone.
Yet, while this may be the ideal concept, in reality, the research and popular discourse of power still clings to the polarized duality of power as being something owned by one person at the expense of the other. Perhaps this is why the notion of agency gets so troublesome, then, for social scientists. They are supposed to be trained in the Foucauldian sense of power, but their own culture structures power as the result of an interaction, rather than a force at work on all parties in the interaction.
Before I explain my own conception of the concepts of power and agency, I should point out that I have not yet read Foucault in the original – I have only read other people’s interpretations or truth claims about Foucault’s work. Nor have I read much yet on other people’s interpretations of agency. Thus, I refuse to claim that my ideas and conceptualizations are necessary novel or unique or even nuanced per se. One of my personal projects, then, for the next few months will be to work my way through the essays in Power/Knowledge, in order to try to get a sense for myself of what Foucault himself says about power.
So what is power for me? What is agency? Power is a force that is at work in the social. It is a result of past interactions, generalized out to the effects that is then concretized down again into new interactions. Power is initiator and result. It is the ability to accomplish action, whether that action is goal-directed or purely creative in Joas’ sense of the term. Here, then, the social concept of power meets up with the individual concept of agency.
Agency is the sense of empowerment internalized by an individual that allows them to act in life. Action, then, in this sense, is the creation and synthesis of choice. The act of choosing is an action in and of itself. Agency is that creative taking-in of power, merging it with idea, ideals and will and through that recipe, the creation of an act. The act can be a thought crystallized into knowing. It can be a desire acted upon. It can be a goal to which one strived. At work within all action, then, is the idea of agency, the pure ability to act. Agency gives the ability for an individual the ability to work within the world. Agency, then, is power integrated or operationalized within the individual.
In this sense, then, neither power nor agency are binary forces and should not be talked about as such. The nuances and subtleties of power and agency working within and above interaction, structure and social order are crucial to understanding humananity and the world and should, therefore, never be trivialized down to the level of a dichotomy.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Quote diving
As I'm starting to formulate my responses to grad school applications, I'm browsing around Wikiquote, looking for the right quotation to sum up how I feel about the journey I'm about to embark on as a serious scholar. It was inspired, actually, by a TV show that claimed a quotation apparently from Winston Churchill, which says, "The farther back you can look, the farther forward you can see" (although I've found no reliable proof yet that he actually said this).
Others from him I've liked tonight:
Others from him I've liked tonight:
What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
And, as comic relief, this one:
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Joas and creativity
I'm working on a social theory paper for a course, in which I'm following the lead of Hans Joas who argues that an understanding of creativity as a force at work in human interaction would advance our understandings of the question of what it means to be human.
While trying to synthesize his theory in a way that makes sense without dealing with his historical precedents of Peirce, Mead and Dewey, I googled Joas and came upon this excellent interview. Not only does he speak of his theory in more accessible terms, he also talks about why he got interested in it in the first place.
While trying to synthesize his theory in a way that makes sense without dealing with his historical precedents of Peirce, Mead and Dewey, I googled Joas and came upon this excellent interview. Not only does he speak of his theory in more accessible terms, he also talks about why he got interested in it in the first place.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Hyping brands
As my interest in digital studies wanes a bit and my interest in consumer culture intensifies, I've been paying more attention to sites and blogs that deal with this issue. A project spearheaded by a Concordia University professor is making the issue of product placement in entertainment media a central area of inquiry and the project's website is very illuminating.
This area is one I find very interesting. I tend to turn brand spotting into a critique game that I play when I watch TV or go to movies -- I'll notice how often brands appear and then critique whether the brand shown was realistic in its context. As an example, does Apple really think that we believe that FBI agents would use a Powerbook, as seen in a recent episode of Numb3rs?
Even more interesting is how this tendency carries over into the digital world, particularly in video games. While many PS2 games use spoof ads and products, Kelly tells me that this is increasingly giving way to real products appearing in digital worlds. I'm not as interested in the economic spin to it, the way Costranova would be. I'm more interested in ideas such as how it contributes to a feeling of realism and how it alters or strengthens power relations between players and world designers/owners.
Ok so maybe my interest in the digital hasn't waned - it's just slumbering, waiting for a new focus and passion to emerge. Is this it? Wait and see.
This area is one I find very interesting. I tend to turn brand spotting into a critique game that I play when I watch TV or go to movies -- I'll notice how often brands appear and then critique whether the brand shown was realistic in its context. As an example, does Apple really think that we believe that FBI agents would use a Powerbook, as seen in a recent episode of Numb3rs?
Even more interesting is how this tendency carries over into the digital world, particularly in video games. While many PS2 games use spoof ads and products, Kelly tells me that this is increasingly giving way to real products appearing in digital worlds. I'm not as interested in the economic spin to it, the way Costranova would be. I'm more interested in ideas such as how it contributes to a feeling of realism and how it alters or strengthens power relations between players and world designers/owners.
Ok so maybe my interest in the digital hasn't waned - it's just slumbering, waiting for a new focus and passion to emerge. Is this it? Wait and see.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Blogs become journals
I'm sure a lot of "old skool" bloggers (circa 1998) are gnashing their teeth over the fact that blogs are increasingly viewed as little more than online confessionals. There used to be a clear-cut difference between a journal and a blog, but not so much anymore, apparently. Not in the mass media, anyway.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
The black, white and gray of life
I'm becoming profoundly interested in doing macro-analysis of dominant discourses in western life. I have had a hard time, though, articulating to people what I mean by this concept. Saying it this way tends to get me blank stares.
But now, after having burned through half of Hewitt's amazing! book, Dilemmas of the American Self, I have found a simpatico soul who has enabled me to put into words what it is I want to do, in a way that people should "get it"
Hewitt argues for the need for less polarized theories of culture, self and society. He argues that, while Americans live life on a balancing beam somewhere in the middle of the continuum between communaltiy and individuality, they talk about themselves, others, and their society in a polarized way. His aim in the book is to show that this is what happens, and to highlight the fallacies of various social theorists who, themselves, contribute to this polarization.
What Hewitt has done in this book is exactly what I want to set out to do with regards to digital culture and consumer culture. I want to examine, analyze, articulate and be critical of the polarized discourses around digital life and consumer culture. I want articulate how life is actually lived, and push for more theories that deal with life in this more nuanced area.
Now I can frame my interest by saying:
Too bad Hewitt has retired - he might have made a very interesting grad school adviser. But it has got me looking seriously at UMass Amherst as a school.
But now, after having burned through half of Hewitt's amazing! book, Dilemmas of the American Self, I have found a simpatico soul who has enabled me to put into words what it is I want to do, in a way that people should "get it"
Hewitt argues for the need for less polarized theories of culture, self and society. He argues that, while Americans live life on a balancing beam somewhere in the middle of the continuum between communaltiy and individuality, they talk about themselves, others, and their society in a polarized way. His aim in the book is to show that this is what happens, and to highlight the fallacies of various social theorists who, themselves, contribute to this polarization.
What Hewitt has done in this book is exactly what I want to set out to do with regards to digital culture and consumer culture. I want to examine, analyze, articulate and be critical of the polarized discourses around digital life and consumer culture. I want articulate how life is actually lived, and push for more theories that deal with life in this more nuanced area.
Now I can frame my interest by saying:
Life is lived in the gray, but talked about as if it were black and white.
Too bad Hewitt has retired - he might have made a very interesting grad school adviser. But it has got me looking seriously at UMass Amherst as a school.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Inevitability of net development
Proof that porn drives net development? AlterNet reports that a scant 24 hours after the video iPod was released, a few adult content providers started offering "a girl to go".
Friday, October 21, 2005
Engage
In the past, when I read comments about the seeming "dangerousness" of digital life, I shake my head, sigh, make a note of it and move on. I did not engage in debating it.
However, the response to my paper at the recent AoIR conference got me thinking that perhaps it is wrong of me to do so. If I'm going to deconstruct and understand the debate about fear and risk in the digital, and articulate for a more careful and nuanced understanding of it, I should take up my position within the discourse and defend it from within.
When I came across this blogpost about the idea of the risk presented by corporate ownership of digital space, I felt this presented me with the opportunity I needed to jump into the waters. While I don't normally use my piece of the I-Space to engage with others in debates, I felt it was time I started to do so.
Ethan Zuckerman was responding to a blogpost from a fellow Concordia student, Michael Leczner, on this. Ethan says:
While I definitely welcome the idea of more open source spaces in which to be digital, what I take issue with is the artificial duality and apparent ahistoricity of the arguments put forth.
However, the response to my paper at the recent AoIR conference got me thinking that perhaps it is wrong of me to do so. If I'm going to deconstruct and understand the debate about fear and risk in the digital, and articulate for a more careful and nuanced understanding of it, I should take up my position within the discourse and defend it from within.
When I came across this blogpost about the idea of the risk presented by corporate ownership of digital space, I felt this presented me with the opportunity I needed to jump into the waters. While I don't normally use my piece of the I-Space to engage with others in debates, I felt it was time I started to do so.
Ethan Zuckerman was responding to a blogpost from a fellow Concordia student, Michael Leczner, on this. Ethan says:
He makes the interesting point that, as people start spending more of their time, energy and creativity in these spaces, they're living large pieces of their lives in environments owned by companies that may or may not have their best interests at heart. An important aspect of their life is tied to a specific company, its fortunes and its policies. Michael proposes an open source project to create a community space that's free of some of these encumbrances.
While I definitely welcome the idea of more open source spaces in which to be digital, what I take issue with is the artificial duality and apparent ahistoricity of the arguments put forth.
I have a problem with any aspect of the digital discourse that position life in the digital as being inherently or fundamentally different from life in the corporeal. While I understand that was not the point of their posts, not for Michael nor for Ethan, it is certainly one of the messages that come across.
The idea of living in spaces that are owned by other companies and having important aspects of human life sewn up by corporations is certainly not new or unique to the digital. The dawn of feudalism and the birth of capitalism took care of that. While I embrace the idea of open source, I do not it believe it is the answer to any ills of digital capitalism.
If someone wants to argue for the point of digital life's risks as being a case of the intensification of a phenomenon that's been going on since the 1600s, that is great. I am all for it. But I think it is important to be attentive to the side messages given off when discussing open source or free wireless or what not. The framing of these issues often implies an oppositional disconnect with human experience. These discussions need to be careful that they do not contribute an imaginary panicked discourse that simultaneously mythologizes life in the digital and presents it as a whole new and risky space, effectively therefore disconnecting it from human history.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Gift ideas
I can think of a few gamer types on my Christmas list who would probably love a keyboard like this one for those 3am World of Warcraft raids...
Is Google evil?
I clicked over to Google Scholar last night to do some research for a Contemporary Social Theory class. Somehow, I procrastinated my way over to the Google Labs page and wow! have they expanded! I knew that they were working on a lot of stuff, based on the media coverage I'd been following about them. I guess I didn't realize just how much they'd been adding. Video. Ride Finder. Suggest. The list is long.
Is Google betraying its company philosophy of "Do no evil"? Some think so, says Tim Wu at Slate and the recent spate of negative coverage is an example, he notes, of the clash of Silicon Valley values with old-school Hollywood protectionism.
Oh! if you have any ideas on how to link together the frame analysis work of Goffman with the pragmatist school of philosophy per Joas/Mead/Dewey, drop me a note! I'm desperate!
Is Google betraying its company philosophy of "Do no evil"? Some think so, says Tim Wu at Slate and the recent spate of negative coverage is an example, he notes, of the clash of Silicon Valley values with old-school Hollywood protectionism.
Oh! if you have any ideas on how to link together the frame analysis work of Goffman with the pragmatist school of philosophy per Joas/Mead/Dewey, drop me a note! I'm desperate!
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Time wasting for word nerds
I've been accused, yes, of being a word nerd. You know, one of those people who will spend ten minutes finding the perfect word to use to describe some seemingly-to-others esoteric difference of subtlety of meaning.
Plus, with the fact that I've worked in the Internet "industry" for so long and have been subjected to hundreds of acronyms, I've also been known to joke that "Internet = Acronym Hell"
So it shouldn't be surprising that the Acronym Finder has the potential to give me many fine hours of procrastination paradise, right around now when all the mid-terms and exams are starting to pile up alarmingly.
Plus, with the fact that I've worked in the Internet "industry" for so long and have been subjected to hundreds of acronyms, I've also been known to joke that "Internet = Acronym Hell"
So it shouldn't be surprising that the Acronym Finder has the potential to give me many fine hours of procrastination paradise, right around now when all the mid-terms and exams are starting to pile up alarmingly.
[ found via polyglot conspiracy ]
This day in history
I justed added a nice new link over there ------>
Pops you over to the BBC's "This day in history" page, for the notable events of the past on any given day.
Was inspired by a similar linking idea from Mr. Selvarajah who does this by linking to the Wikipedia. But for this type of thing, I prefer the BBC.
Pops you over to the BBC's "This day in history" page, for the notable events of the past on any given day.
Was inspired by a similar linking idea from Mr. Selvarajah who does this by linking to the Wikipedia. But for this type of thing, I prefer the BBC.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Notable conference
Considering my fascination with the question of what it means to be human in digitally-dependent space, ACLA's annual conference next March is utterly fascinating to me. In particular, the streams, After the Post-Human: Beyond the Cyborg Manifesto and Creativity and the Human attract me greatly, though there are about a dozen others that sound utterly engrossing. The latter of the two streams I noted above probably interests me most strongly right now, possibly due to the paper I'm starting to research on sociological theories of creativity in action.
Oh to be able to have the money and time to attend!
Oh to be able to have the money and time to attend!
Monday, October 10, 2005
Walmart Boycott
I have never felt completely comfortable shopping at Walmart. It has been suggested to me that my discomfort stems from the sheer size of the stores compared to the relatively smaller Zellers and Federated Co-op stores that were a fixture of my own childhood shopping landscape. But I don't think that is the reason.
Some of it stems from the way they moved into the Canadian marketplace. They bought out all the Kmarts across the country, shut them down, laid off the workers, then reopened under the Walmart banner. I remember telling people I would boycott Walmart as a result of that and their overly American, overly zealously capitalist philosophy. I remember people looking at me like I'd grown a third head and then telling me about all the bargains they'd gotten recently at Walmart.
Over time, my position softened and I have been guilty of stopping in and spending far too much on cosmetics, housewares, camping gear and the like. I usually leave feeling bewildered, anxious and more than little bit guilty. Seems I'm not alone in my spending habits, though most figures are for the US only, I believe.
They're opening another huge store not 10 minutes from my house. It seems to be about triple the size of the existing Laval Walmart store and the city is busy redoing all the roads and highways in the area to allow access to this shopping behemoth. Robert Greenwald gives me an idea of what is to come in my neighbourhood, though, and yes I'm worried. Not just for the traffic and noise and pollution, but also for the social implications for the small retailers down the street from me and for the family farms and greenhouses that operate near it. Fortune magazine has even written about these sorry aspects of the phenomenon and about the new documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price coming out soon from Robert Greenwald.
Then I read this AlterNet article today about Walmart and while, yes, it is obviously slanted towards being completely negative, I found it refreshingly honest and definitely eye-opening. And guilt-inducing too, I admit.
So I'm renewing my old boycott and strengthening my resolve to avoid the new store's lure. Perhaps I can arrange one of the first Canadian Whirl-Mart protests?
Some of it stems from the way they moved into the Canadian marketplace. They bought out all the Kmarts across the country, shut them down, laid off the workers, then reopened under the Walmart banner. I remember telling people I would boycott Walmart as a result of that and their overly American, overly zealously capitalist philosophy. I remember people looking at me like I'd grown a third head and then telling me about all the bargains they'd gotten recently at Walmart.
Over time, my position softened and I have been guilty of stopping in and spending far too much on cosmetics, housewares, camping gear and the like. I usually leave feeling bewildered, anxious and more than little bit guilty. Seems I'm not alone in my spending habits, though most figures are for the US only, I believe.
They're opening another huge store not 10 minutes from my house. It seems to be about triple the size of the existing Laval Walmart store and the city is busy redoing all the roads and highways in the area to allow access to this shopping behemoth. Robert Greenwald gives me an idea of what is to come in my neighbourhood, though, and yes I'm worried. Not just for the traffic and noise and pollution, but also for the social implications for the small retailers down the street from me and for the family farms and greenhouses that operate near it. Fortune magazine has even written about these sorry aspects of the phenomenon and about the new documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price coming out soon from Robert Greenwald.
Then I read this AlterNet article today about Walmart and while, yes, it is obviously slanted towards being completely negative, I found it refreshingly honest and definitely eye-opening. And guilt-inducing too, I admit.
So I'm renewing my old boycott and strengthening my resolve to avoid the new store's lure. Perhaps I can arrange one of the first Canadian Whirl-Mart protests?
Friday, October 07, 2005
Internet Generations 6.0 report
Here it is, the end of the second day of presentations and networking at the AoIR's Internet Generations 6.0 conference in Chicago. I'm tired but happily so. Just got back from the gala event at the Mid-America club on the 80th floor of the AoN centre building. Breathtaking view and great buffet spread too.
the mix of people here seems to be heavily slanted in favour of communications faculty, and so far I've seen a lot of presentations that were survey data and not a lot of contextualization. The surveys themselves were well done by the looks of it though, not that I'm a good person to judge, given that I'm much more into theory and tend to fall asleep in my stats classes. However, I did see a few interesting analyses of website linking practices in political campaigns and another session on mobile technology and GPS usage for cultural public education purposes in a public park in Montreal.
I've also talked to quite a few people about MA and PhD programs in the US and the UK and gotten some great pointers on schools to look into that I hadn't considered, including NorthWestern, UMinn and UWash. I got good feedback too on the CCT program at Georgetown from a few alumni (though oddly no one from CCT was here as a presenter) as well as possiblities at UTA. I've met some nice people over the last few days, including a few students that might be able to contribute to GameCODE. One person even has a semiotics background, which should make Kelly happy.
I had a good response to my own paper, which relieved and pleased me. I got a lot of encouragement to submit it for journals so I might try doing that over the Christmas holidays when other papers aren't competing for my attention. I had a decent number of requests for a copy of it so they could review it and cite it. An interest in Mary Douglas' work on anomalies per my take on her work seems to have struck a chord for a few academics interested in sociolinguistics, of all things.
One more day to go and then it's home to finish my material culture paper. Real life and all of that.
the mix of people here seems to be heavily slanted in favour of communications faculty, and so far I've seen a lot of presentations that were survey data and not a lot of contextualization. The surveys themselves were well done by the looks of it though, not that I'm a good person to judge, given that I'm much more into theory and tend to fall asleep in my stats classes. However, I did see a few interesting analyses of website linking practices in political campaigns and another session on mobile technology and GPS usage for cultural public education purposes in a public park in Montreal.
I've also talked to quite a few people about MA and PhD programs in the US and the UK and gotten some great pointers on schools to look into that I hadn't considered, including NorthWestern, UMinn and UWash. I got good feedback too on the CCT program at Georgetown from a few alumni (though oddly no one from CCT was here as a presenter) as well as possiblities at UTA. I've met some nice people over the last few days, including a few students that might be able to contribute to GameCODE. One person even has a semiotics background, which should make Kelly happy.
I had a good response to my own paper, which relieved and pleased me. I got a lot of encouragement to submit it for journals so I might try doing that over the Christmas holidays when other papers aren't competing for my attention. I had a decent number of requests for a copy of it so they could review it and cite it. An interest in Mary Douglas' work on anomalies per my take on her work seems to have struck a chord for a few academics interested in sociolinguistics, of all things.
One more day to go and then it's home to finish my material culture paper. Real life and all of that.
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