Friday, December 25, 2009

Happy Christmas

Got
Harry Potter & the HBP DVD
Tom's shoes
Socks
Plain t-shirts
Boxers
A black tie
The Times They Are A-Changin'--Bob Dylan vinyl album
500 GB external hard drive
REI gift card
Target gift card
Harmonica
Chronicles, Vol. I--Bob Dylan autobiography
Typewriter
Embryonic--The Flaming Lips
American Stars 'n Bars--Neil Young

Christmas is a big deal around here, and that's a lot of stuff. Grateful as always.

Do you really know what it's like up there?

Do you really know what it's like up there? 
Must it be an abode without compare?
Do you really know what it's like up there?
It must feel nice knowing you're headed where
No one is fleeced because all are fair.
Do you really know what it's like up there?
It must be an abode without compare.

Around and about the interweb

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://www.howeverythingworks.org/
http://www.dinosaursounds.com/home/index.html
http://www.tedgonder.com/
http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
http://www.livemocha.com/
http://butwhoisthehusband.wordpress.com/
http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1fdCdW/www.marcandangel.com/2009/07/13/50-questions-that-will-free-your-mind/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2qoRDj/bethe.cornell.edu/
http://www.thekavreproject.org/
http://www.writerhymes.com

Check them out.

Winter break projects

Read From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Beirut_to_Jerusalem)
         Ethics & the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Williams)
         The Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy
         Clash of Civilizations (article) by Samuel Huntington
Apply to LSE, Pembroke College-Cambridge University for summer
Apply to Davidson in India program for fall junior year
Apply to spend year following Nicholas Kristof (of the NY Times--http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/)

Read whatever books I may receive for Christmas (best bet: Chronicles Vol. I by Bob Dylan)

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Phoenix airport at night


            I missed my connection.
            I really didn’t miss it; I missed it because my flight arrived an hour behind schedule, which happened because of something else which happened because of something else. There are no more flights to the Bay Area until 0725 tomorrow morning, and it is 10 p.m.
            I have ascertained all of this because I am savvy. I successfully found a US Air customer service kiosk and—surprise!—yelling is not the best way to get things done at such a place. I am always surprised by how surprised people are that their flights don’t go exactly the way they expect them to. It’s like betting on all the high seeds in the NCAA tournament; even though it should, by all means, happen, it never does.
            At the customer service desk I talked to a woman who looked uncannily like my grandmother, if she were ten years younger and had blonde hair instead of grey. I spoke frankly and respectfully and was responded to in kind, which is something I do not think they are used to. I spoke with my parents on their phone, and she seemed to find it refreshing that I didn’t share my father’s attitudes towards my difficulties. The truth is that I find it refreshing about myself; when recently asked what I liked about myself, I had to say that I like that I tend not to give meaning to meaningless events or things. In this case, this means not insisting that my case was special and I just have to be on this next plane and the airline industry is in a conspiracy with the Illuminati to prevent me from getting home. My decade-younger grandmother printed me a new boarding pass, $30 worth of vouchers for the flight (how am I going to spend $30 on an hour-and-a-half flight in the morning?), and told me I was “very mature for my age.” I really think that it’s just that most kids my age are not very mature for their age, but this could be wrong. Though this metaphor could be inappropriate, it struck me as sublime at the time: this experience was a lot like my doubts about school. A lot of people in authority told me that I was great and was going to go far and even that I was beyond my years, but I was still stuck, just like I’m stuck sleeping at Gate A4 in Phoenix tonight.
            If there is such thing as liminal space, surely the airport is an example. It’s a place of mingling, where tourists from Japan rub elbows with American businessmen and crying children. No one owns the airport, really; airports are sterile and full of only the most carefully preconstructed notions of culture, like People and gift shops selling the hats of the local sports franchises. Sometimes there is a token store dedicated to local culture, but commoditization renders it impotent or at least dilutes it. The store across from me—Indigenous—sells mostly hand-crafted jewelry made on Indian reservations in Arizona, and this is a good thing. I support Native American jewelry, on the whole, as a concept. But I’m quite sure this is a huge market for them (tourists, and, more generally, non-Natives) and as such their target audience has shifted from internal to external. They make jewelry not because that is what they have done for centuries but because it is how they get the money to feed their children. Moreover, these days literally a sizable chunk of the world’s population is alienated from the U.S., and so ethnic minorities tend to hide their ‘otherness’ for fear of the ‘random’ checks that become routine to some. I have a friend who is a Punjabi Sikh; this means he wears a turban and has a beard. Even though Sikhs have pretty much never done anything wrong, he’s random-checked every time. Does that keep us safe? I really have no idea. It feels wrong, but I can’t objectively know because I can’t experience both realities.
            Everyone is equal in an airport; what that means in practicality is that no one cares about anyone. Notably, this changes once you get on the plane, in which case you have something in common with someone (a destination, at the least) and therefore have a topic of conversation. Inside the airport, though, no one looks anyone in the eye. It could be one in the morning and I could start doing shirtless calisthenics in the terminal and people who were thoroughly concerned would pretend I was not there. Try it sometime, I guess. Businessmen are the funniest. There was a stereotypical upper-middle class guy across from me, doing the Blackberry dance who absolutely would not look up even though I was staring at the seat next to him like Harry Potter was sitting there with Hedwig. Just to test this theory, I started air-drumming to Pearl Jam’s ‘Dissident.’ No reaction.
            A woman in uniform passes by, and it comes to mind that stewardesses are the most paradoxical creatures. For one thing, they all seem to be the same ages (either 35 or 50; it’s like they come in waves). I also swear that I get the same ones all the time. This could be the truth; I almost always fly US Air (I don’t know why), but I don’t think I fly often enough for this to be the case. I think that it is because it must take a particular breed of person to become a stewardess. Their job is vaguely matronly, but it’s paradoxical in that they are the definitive authority figures for hours at a time on a flight but they spend a lot of that time serving others. They’re simultaneously authoritative and subservient. I think that a lot of stewardesses do consciously propagate the stewardess-as-sexpot myth. A lot of them are vaguely attractive, in a way that mostly works if you don’t actually look at them but rather at the way they carry themselves. This must be a devastating way to live your life, because I’m quite sure there is a lot of disconnect between that myth and reality.
            Strangely enough, I just had an unreasonable hankering to listen to the Stereophonics’ ‘Maybe Tomorrow,’ which I now realize contains the principal lyric ‘Maybe tomorrow/I’ll find my way home,’ which is exactly what I hope happens to me. Music in airports is an interesting topic. I guess a lot of places use Brian Eno-inspired Muzak, but the sole redeeming quality of this sort of music seems to be that one doesn’t realize that it is playing. What does that say about our society, that in one of our most shared locales we play entirely sterile music that can’t possibly offend anyone because it’s designed to be forgettable?
            A lot of videogames have a feature like this (in fact, this basically characterizes why people like Grand Theft Auto), but in GoldenEye for N64 you used to be able to run around and keep playing even after you failed a mission. ‘Abort Mission’ would flash in red in the middle of the screen, but this was really often a very liberating experience. Since you’d already screwed up it was a no-lose situation, and you could experiment with things in ways you’d be too scared to do while you could still fail the mission. What I’m trying to say is that I often wish life were like this—I think a lot of us do—and I particularly wish this were true right now. I basically did fail the mission, having missed my connecting flight and getting stuck here all night, but I could still get sent to jail or something.
            I am definitely getting tired. Not only did that last paragraph make very little sense, but I keep having flashbacks—the kind where you start to address someone who isn’t there. Finally, the designs on the floor are flat out ridiculous. I want to know who came up with this… it’s a hypnotic mix of concentric circles and plane-shapes flying in every direction. I wonder if there is some sort of symbolism going on with the circles. At this point, to me they symbolize why I need to go to sleep: because if I am awake much longer these circles will turn into eyes and I don’t want to be around for that. 
            After speaking with some people, I wonder if there is something wrong with me. I’m essentially unconcerned about this, and my attitude doesn’t seem to be normal. Everyone else is full of advice and worries: sleep with your shoes on, use your laptop as a pillow, put your wallet in your pants (not just in a pocket, but in your pants). I’m just worried about whether I’ll wake up on time tomorrow morning (cell phone battery as dead as Kurt Cobain). Though I’ve been assured I will wake up due to the morning hustle and bustle (or that I won’t sleep at all), I am definitely worried about this.  To this end, I wrote on a paper towel requisitioned from a bathroom, “PLEASE Wake Me Up at 06:00 A.M. Thanks!” (Also: why hasn’t “Hey Hey, My My” been on a Guitar Hero game?)
            Why are all the damn lights on? There is no one here. There are no flights landing. CNN is playing everywhere and I want to kill Larry King (who, I’ve realized, has switched to more contemporary glasses in a conspicuous effort to stay current). US Air is now serving Oslo, Tel Aviv, and Birmingham, and I will be reminded of this 8941 times before I can fall asleep. I would right now if I could.
            There are an extreme number of cleaners in this airport. Speaking of specialization of labor, there are vacuumers, sweepers, and polishers (that I am aware of), as well as cleaning people particular to each restaurant. Working in an airport must be a real suck on someone’s zeal for life; I think I would rather be a taxi driver than have just about any job involved with airlines. Despite all my overbearing pessimism, I think there is a shadow of romance left in the airport. Men at payphones calling their loyal (or not-so-loyal) beloveds. People go places, I assume, because they think the grass is greener on the other side of America. Whether or not it is or isn’t probably isn’t as important as the fact that people still have hope.

A flight is a quietless eternity

A flight is a quietless eternity
A symptom of power in modernity
I will not rush this fraternity
I will not ride
I will only fly
If no one claims paternity.

L'Anthropologie


Hayden Higgins
ANT370
Dr. Lozada
21 October 2009

Review 1:
“Then everything includes itself in power”: circularity in the exercise of power

            Societies change; this is not in dispute. How they change is, on the other hand, a matter of much contention, but any mechanism by which social change is willfully enacted can be termed a mechanism of power. Just as social theorists speculate as to long-term and unwilled processes such as rationalization, communism, and social evolutionism (which are fixed in direction), they have similarly varied ideas about the residency, mechanism, and application of power. Nonetheless, examination of works by Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault demonstrate some commonalities, including Marxist influences and the idea that the application of power is a reciprocal process suggestive of a tautological, circular relationship between culture and power.
            Weber’s most famous case study, outlined in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1930), follows the real social effects—namely, the rise of new capitalist economies in Protestant Europe and the New World—following the advent of the ideas of the Reformation. The paradoxical situation of Protestants, who were taught that excellence in vocation and austerity in consumption were twin ideals, led to the rise of investment-driven capitalism. Ideas such as the sacralization of the calling are the real source of power to Weber; ideas, for Weber, are power. Ideas (power) lead to changes in culture, which produce new ideas (new power), leading to new changes in culture. In this example, Protestantism gives rise to capitalism, which engenders new capitalistic thought systems contributing to the decline of Protestantism. Power, therefore, originates in the individual, effects change through ideas, and is reified in institutions, especially those which reinforce those Protestant ideas that led to economic success. “The Protestants wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so” (Weber 1930:123). In Marxist terms, Weberian superstructure precedes and determines infrastructure.
            Bureaucracies were a favorite topic for Weber, and provide a launching-off point for describing the process by which power might serve not only to change society but also to reinforce its core. Bureaucracies, as we know, make laws, which, according to Bourdieu, “no more than symbolically [consecrate]…the structure of the power relations between groups and classes” (Bourdieu 1977:182). If bureaucracies symbolically consecrate power, what does so realistically? In Bourdieu’s terms, ritualization of practices internalizes a definition of doxa, the realm of legitimate discourse, and in so doing necessarily gives power to some groups over others. This structure is embedded in the social subconscious, becoming habitus. While Weber grounds much of his analysis in hermeneutical examination of spoken and written word, for Bourdieu power resides in that which “goes without saying because it comes without saying” (Bourdieu 1977:163). Habitus reinforce existing power relations as mythologized in collective belief. This collective belief may include a misrecognition of truth; whereas Durkheim might say that religion/culture is society worshipping itself, Bourdieu might qualify this to say that culture is society worshipping the existing structure of power.
            If it be true that “the whole of society pays itself in the false coin of its dream,” (Bourdieu 1977:190), that currency is not always in the form of economic capital: social, cultural, and symbolic capital are all also forms of power legitimized by particular institutions. These sorts of capital are linked circularly with economic capital: as an example in contemporary society, economic capital is required to obtain symbolic capital (by paying for a college education to obtain a degree) which in turn is required to obtain economic capital (no one will hire a doctor, for example, who does not have a doctorate). Power, therefore, resides in symbols. To a Marxist, the misrecognition of symbolic capital constitutes a mode of cyclical, self-perpetuating repression that furthers the dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. This hegemony is maintained over time by overt violence, which may establish the initial conditions that lead to domination, and symbolic violence, “through which the dominant groups or classes secure a capital of ‘credit’ which seems to owe nothing to the logic of exploitation” (Bourdieu 1977:191). One can only surmise that this credit feeds into the ouroboros of economic/social capital. The bourgeois ability to maintain its position of power is due to the process by which arbitrarily designated social/cultural/symbolic capital is converted into economic capital, which has real social effects, whose feedback effect is the recreation of the original conditions. The game of society is rigged.
             “Power is essentially that which represses,” claims Foucault, going one step further than Bourdieu and emphasizing that power exists only in exercise (Foucault 1972:208). He shares Bourdieu’s understanding of the constant struggle for power, a ‘war continued by other means,’ and Bourdieu’s symbolic violence might be located in Foucauldian disciplinary power, “disciplinary coercions whose purpose is in fact to assure the cohesion” of society (Foucault 1972:219). This coercion is masked by the distraction of the power of right—the contract-oppression schema characterized by formal juridico-political institutions. Subjugation is made possible by misrecognition of the power of right with disciplinary power, which, unnoticed, homogenizes society by suppressing alternative knowledges; this mechanism is comparable with the symbolic violence done to the slave in Bourdieu’s example, in that the slave sees his status as a product of the contract (the power of right) rather than repression (disciplinary power).
            Misrecognition, or perhaps incompleteness of knowledge, continues to play a central role in allowing certain mechanisms of power to function. One of these mechanisms is panopticism. In Foucault’s analysis of the Bentham’s Panopticon, the Panopticon serves as a metaphor for the manner in which disciplinary societies project the sense that the individual has incomplete knowledge but some higher individual may have complete knowledge, including of the actions of the first individual. The sense of being watched is enough to compel the first individual to conform, and can enable a system of power “to operate, on the underside of the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute, which supports, reinforces, [and] multiplies the asymmetry of power” (Foucault 1979:223). This asymmetry of power ostensibly troubled Foucault, who gave much of his life over to liberal activism; he does, however, suggest a way out of this asymmetry. Through the insurrection of subjugated knowledges—the same that were before suppressed by disciplinary power—one might speculate that minority groups can rebel against domination-repression and ostensibly escape from economic poverty.
            In application Foucault’s insurrection of subjugated knowledges, like other mechanisms of applied power, is not without a feedback effect. Cornel West speaks of the commodification of black music in twentieth-century America as a feedback effect that negates the redeeming effect of the discovery and appreciation of black music on an international scale (West 1993:396). In a postcolonial situation, Susan Reed argues that, even as tango is lifted up as a symbol of Argentinean identity, it is dependent upon centers of the dominant culture for approval, which ultimately comes only with exoticization and compromise rather than acceptance (Reed 1998:515).
            A synthesis of the positions of Weber, Bourdieu, and Foucault would have interesting implications for the understanding of power. Power is born of ideas and reified in institutions in Weber, and born in overt violence and reified in symbolic violence in Bourdieu. Both of these describe genesis of power as resultant from conflict, a conclusion suggestive of Marxist overtones. Bourdieu and Foucault especially rely on Marx’s view of society as divided into dominant and subjugated groups. Indeed, all three of these theorists maintain Marxist underpinnings, even while expanding on Marxism: Weber argues the materialist approach is inadequate, Bourdieu argues that economic capital is only one manifestation of capital, and Foucault asserts that not all phenomena are reducible to being caused by the dominance of the bourgeoisie.
            Broadly, it is clear that the state of a culture at any given point in time is the result of the powers that have acted upon it. At the same time, the current state of a culture defines where power resides in a society. Weber demonstrates how power changes culture; Bourdieu and Foucault demonstrate how culture defines and reinforces power. These processes are not exclusive; at any time, power changes culture even while culture defines power. The conflict between these processes is contradictory but makes sense holistically: though the cycle between power and culture is not in any way stoppable, when any one of the mechanisms enumerated above—idealism, misrecognition of knowledge or violence, or panopticism—is set into motion, power is exercised and culture is in flux, either speeding up or slowing down processes of real social change.

Works Cited

Bourdieu, Pierre.
            1977. Structure, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power. In                                   Culture/Power/History, Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry Ortner, eds. Pp.                       155-199. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Foucault, Michel.
            1977. Two Lectures. In Culture/Power/History, Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley,                                        Sherry Ortner, eds. Pp. 200-221. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
            1979. Panopticism. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, pp. 195-                                  228. New York: Vintage Books.
Reed, Susan.
            1998. The Politics and Poetics of Dance. In Annual Review of Anthropology 1998,                       27:503-32.
Weber, Max.
            1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge                                             Classics.
            1922. Class, Status, Party. In Anthropological theory: an introductory history, Jon                       McGee, Richard Warms, eds. Pp. 115-127. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield                                              Publishing Company
West, Cornel.
            1993. Black Culture and Postmodernism. In A Postmodern Reader, Joseph Natoli                                   and Linda Hutcheon, eds. Pp. 390-397. Albany: State University of New                                   York Press.



Note: the quotation in the title is from the play Troilus and Cressida, by William Shakespeare.