anthro

A while ago Kerim wrote a post on the difference between ‘mining’ and ‘harvesting’ strategies of publication. It touched off a lot of interesting discussion, but lacked a concrete example of what Kerim was talking about. So I wanted to offer one here: how I am mining my World of Warcraft research for publications.

My ultimate goal for my WoW (as World of Warcraft is known) research is a book — now in its third draft. Along the way, however, I am ‘mining’ my research by producing several other publications. The two I want to discuss here are Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (full text is OA — the publisher forget to get me to sign a CTA so I can release the work as I like. They are OK with this). The second is a draft paper I recently gave at a theater studies conference entitled Feeling Powerful and Being Powerful: Virtuosity and Expressive Individualism in World of Warcraft.

If you read these papers, you can see that there are a lot of similarities between them. Both chronicle my work with my guild. Because WoW is way more exotic to Americans then Papua New Guinea (“Black people in a forest? Got it. People killing monsters online? What now?”) I spend a lot of time describing what goes on online. But there are important differences in them as well.

Each paper was written for a different occasion. “Being in WoW” was written for a special issue of Anthropological Quarterly dedicated to ‘knowledge production’. As a result, I felt like I had to shoehorn my piece into that category. “Feeling Powerful” was written for a panel on “Economies of Showing” and so it had to be fit into that category.  Ironically, the panel organizers just wanted to do something on ‘showing’ but the conference theme was ‘economics’ so they changed to title to make sure they’d be included.

I think this is a good example of a general phenomena in the life of the mind: you are always thinking, thinking thoughts that are very abstract and in flux. Then particular occasions arise and they act like molds that you pour your molten thoughts into.

The papers address their occasion, but they don’t pander to it. They both reach through their occasions to address wider points in the literature I’m addressing.

“Being in WoW” made two and half points: first, it argued against the idea that virtual worlds were compelling because they looked ‘real’. Rather, I argued that they were compelling because they were places where people could socialize. Second, I took issue with the idea that we ought study virtual worlds ‘on their own terms’ and do ‘the culture’ of ‘a world’. Rather, I argued that virtual ethnography should study communities of people and how those communities used multiple spaces, some real and some virtual, to create themselves. My half point was that Coming of Age in Second Life legitimated ‘the culture’ of ‘a world’ ethnography by comparing it to ethnography of the Pacific, and as a Pacifcist I pointed out that this was a lousy description of how Pacific Islanders and Pacificists actually thought of themselves and their cultures.

“Feeling Powerful” made a series of related, but different points: that success in WoW affirm’s player’s ego ideals, that a virtual space affects actual personalities, and that this is what we should expect given that American WoW players have a western culture of ‘expressive individualism’. One reason WoW is so popular is because it is a place where this dynamic is powerfully performed. Once we realize this, we can see it is more compelling a virtual world than Second Life: Second Life was built around Western presumptions that all human beings want to be creative artists, which I argue is not true — romantic creation is just one species of expressivity. For this reason we should expect to see SL fascinate Americans because it speaks to their culturally-laden perceptions about what people want out of life, but more Americans to actually play WoW, which actually gives it to them. And this is in fact exactly what we see.

Basically, both of these papers make the same broad claims, but they differ in the specific points they make, the audiences they address, and the concrete data they use. In the final book version a lot of this material will be incorporated. The ethnographic exposition will be all the better for having been written and revised mutliple times, and I’ll be better able to make my points better because I’ve already made them in ‘rough draft’ form in the published articles. Best of all, the length of the book will allow me to connect them together and to add a broader overview since details on these arguments can just be cited in the book, rather than made there.

There are some people who feel you should ‘never present the same paper twice’ and I think that this is true. There is also reason to be cynical of the culture of ‘minimally significant differences’ used by people who make minor tweaks to present the same basic paper at different conferences over and over again. However, taking the same project and turning it over and over again to fit the situation and as part of creating a larger and more integral work is good academic practice — as well as good for the CV — if you can take different bits of data from your fieldwork and slot it in to whatever intellectual preoccupation you have that fits the occasion.

This past Thursday I spent the morning floating in a sensory deprivation tank. I saw it on sale through Groupon and I thought, why not? An interesting experience, it was very relaxing and left me with a kind of euphoria which permeated my being for another two hours after the event. It put me in a gentle, mellow mood for the rest of the day.

I found out about this place by following a link from an io9 post to a website called Float Finder, which puts people in touch with their local sensory deprivation center and also seems to be a hub for a whole tank-subculture. The io9 piece is really worth a read too, especially the bit on sensory deprivation pioneer John C. Lilly, a man who took intramuscular LSD until he discovered he could speak to dolphins.

Or as io9 puts it–

Calling John C. Lilly eccentric would be akin to calling the Beatles a popular band – somehow “eccentric” just doesn’t do the man justice.

Perhaps it was the mystique of Lilly that inspired Altered States (1980), something of a cult flick among anthropologists, which stars William Hurt eating muscimol and floating in a tank until he manages to somehow de-evolve into a rampaging hominid. Personally I find the movie a bit of a dud (its been 12 years since I first saw it and haven’t really been tempted to revisit it) and I’m a fan of creature features and so-bad-its-good flicks.

The movie is best remembered for its funky, toxic freakouts: Ok, so, you just saw the best part. But if you want to put it in your Netflix queue, you’ll be in good company among the consciousness studies crowd. Your enjoyment of the film may or may not be improved by being an actual altered state.

I arrived at Float First early to watch an instructional video which emphasized safety, comfort, and not touching your eyes. “The only thing that can ruin a float is getting salt water in your eyes,” the attendant told me. While I sat through the orientation an older woman arrived for her second float and proceeded directly to her session. I, on the other hand, got the full tour. The attendant showed me the I-sopod and shower. I used the bathroom and rinsed off before climbing into the pod.

Because I had read the business’ website ahead of time I intentionally consumed less coffee than usual, but I did ingest 60mg of pseudoephedrine for my sinus congestion. I was not high, people. Just saying.

The room was a bit chilly when I stepped out of the shower. I climbed into the pod, which was lit with gentle colored lights and closed the bay door shut that was hinged like a hatchback trunk. Inside the water was warm and inviting, maybe less than a foot deep. Soon the air became moist and heavy. I pushed the button to kill the lights and began to experiment with getting comfortable.

Some soft New Age music played as I sloshed around. The density of the water was so high it was pushing my shoulders up while my head was tilting back and I found it slightly uncomfortable to keep my arms at my side. The attendant had recommended keeping one’s arms above the head. Eventually I found it worked best to support my head by lacing my fingers together and resting that way.

I thought back to the advice the attendant gave me, “Try not to let your thoughts race. Don’t think: ‘How long have I been in here? When will the cool stuff start?’ The best thing to do for your first floating experience is just try and take a little nap.”

I stretched out. In the darkness and silence I could hear my muscles move. A full body stretch sent my heart racing, a pleasant sensation. In the distance I could sense vibrations. Perhaps these distant sounds came from the pod’s plumbing or maybe from the restaurant next door but I don’t think I hallucinated them. In fact I don’t think I had any auditory hallucinations at all. I have, in the past, have purely auditory dreams with no visual component so I wondered if that would manifest itself somehow in the tank, but not this time.

Once the lights were out it didn’t stay dark for long. Specks of visual apparitions were present almost immediately. It wasn’t until later that they became really bright. I spent most of the time floating with my eyes open, but I tried closing them too. In general the visuals were more intense with my eyes open though it was pitch black either way.

One difficulty in my experience was in keeping still. Any gentle movement could disturb the float as the body slowly, softly touched into the side of the pod where it was bounced back and forth like a pin ball in slow motion. The more calm the body became the more calm the mind. I think the sensation of the mind leaving the body probably works best if you’re motionless, but I became fidgety and curious about exploring my surroundings. In addition to stretching my limbs I tried sitting up a few times too.

At their most intense the visual effects were quite remarkable. My mental state was a bit like being caught in that threshold right before you fall asleep, but somehow lucid. Quieting the mind was the primary benefit I was looking to gain but I found it was not easy to do. At first I found myself thinking about work, about my mother’s death, about family problems concerning the foster family of my adopted daughter’s siblings. By concentrating on my breathing (one of the only things you can hear inside the pod) I was able to calm my mind with limited success. It was in this state of calm that I experienced the most pronounced visual hallucinations.

There was one hallucination in particular that, like an old friend, I’ve known since childhood. Every now and then I experience it still just as I’m falling asleep. It’s a bright slowly moving flash of white light. If you can, picture the rotating lantern at the top of a lighthouse. From a stable vantage point it would seem dim as the lamp was turned away from you then slowly sweeping across your field of vision becoming brightest as it shown directly at you before diminishing when he lamp rotated away.

My old friend the lighthouse was particularly well defined in the tank, usually moving from right to left across my field of non-vision. The light blobs had an amoeba-like shape, getting thick and then thin as it moved or growing tails like fish. They were yellowish to white, but not blindingly bright (those are especially unwelcome while falling asleep as they startle me awake). Accompanying this was a crackling lightning, a sort of shimmering Northern Lights in electric purple. This hallucination moved much faster and its shape more vascular. Typically these two hallucinations coincided although they didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another – meaning they didn’t interact or interfere with each other.

The really intense light shows were relatively brief and seemed to coincide with letting my mind go, concentrating on breathing, and not trying to force myself to see things.

Something special was happening with my sense of touch and awareness of body. The water is heated to the temperature of your skin and the air inside the pod quickly comes to match it. With the high density of the water countering the effects of gravity and it being total darkness one does not have a sense of the body as being discretely bound in the ordinary sense. Over time you stop feeling the water and only have the sensation of being suspended – floating like a grape stuck in a Jello mold. Sometimes this would bring about a sensation like falling or flying. I found I could trigger this with a stretch prompting my heart give a little race as I squeezed the blood in my muscles. In that rush there was a feeling like coming down for a landing.

The sensation of flying, the visuals, and the mental state of calm weren’t all neatly packaged. It took a little effort, but one gets the feeling that with practice you could get better at it.

After an extended period of time of not being able to orient my body I found I could convince myself that I was standing up rather than lying prone. Then, as an experiment, I tried to convince myself that I was standing on my head. This was somewhat harder to do. In a third experiment I tried to image that I was actually floating face down instead of face up, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Around this time my arms began to feel very heavy and moving them took real effort. It was a bit like Han Solo must have felt trapped in carbonite, as I pushed against what seemed to be a solid surface but was only air.

Well into the session now, my thoughts began to change too. I was tumbling through memories from the recent past going backwards. I thought of my life here in Virginia, my wife and how fetching she was in college. I saw others of my friends from college and the places we would go. I saw my high school and people I knew then. I remembered family vacations as a little boy and thought of my mother.

With my hands I touched my belly and legs. The Epsom salts had made my skin soft and pleasantly slimey. I brought a finger to my mouth and the salt tasted terrible, it made me spit. My muscles loosened and I could hear my stomach gurgle to itself. A knot in my back unkinked itself and my spine gave a crack like a knuckle.

In the distance the New Age-y music crept back in. This was my cue that an hour had passed and the session was over, but I didn’t want to leave. I waited a minute longer and the music gently made itself more present (you never know, I might have hallucinated it so I wanted to be sure). I made my way over to the light switch and the dim purple light was like a bold sunrise. I squinted. It was time to wake up, it was day even if my pupils still thought it was night. I pushed open the pod bay door and cold air rushed in. I scampered wet feet to the shower and turned on the hot water and steam. The salt sloughed off; my cell phone rang. It was time to go back to “reality”.

I dressed and prepared to leave. The attendant at the front desk offered me a bottle of water and spoke to me briefly about the experience. I told him about the difficulty I had in fidgeting and quieting the mind, which he assured me were typical of first time users. He quickly excused himself to ready the room for the next customer.

The drive home was truly pleasant and then I enjoyed a short walk around my neighborhood, stopping for tea at a friend’s house. I felt so mellow and peaceful, like having just stepped out of a hot tub after receiving a full body massage and waking from a satisfying nap all combined. Colors seemed brighter and the real world a little more magical.

The floating experience was worthwhile. I can definitely see how like massage or acupuncture the effects of floating would be cumulative. It was a treasure to have such a peaceful respite from what had been a stressful week. Highly recommended.

Holy hellions, Batman, 2012 is off with a bang.

Too bad about SWTOR and the LEGO Universe, but Guild Wars 2 might actually ship this year, and there are some other exciting things brewing.  Here's what I'm watching for...

The Secret World(April 2012) - This one is exciting even among the 'I'm not an MMO person' crowd.  To me, it's like the game I've been waiting for.  Here's why:

• The lore is wide-ranging and accessible, if you're one of those people who has paid attention to mystery schools, secret societies, fairy tales, monsters, alien conspiracies, black ops, and the like.  Basically 'everything is true' in a rich 'what if?' environment.  Tied into history, popular culture, etc. 
• The game is set in the real world, and takes advantage of all the amazing beauty of this planet, its cities and its citizens.  The details and how they are leveraged are really incredible-looking.
• There are threee factions - the Templars (England), the Illuminati (New York)and the Dragons (Seoul).  The initial experiences are very different depending on the chosen location.
• Visually STUNNING, based on the Dreamworld engine used for Age of Conan.  Feels like a quantum leap.
• The game takes an alternate reality (ARG) approach by embedding the game with puzzles that must be solved via research online.  Building information literacy, of course, and mimicking the skill development that all we digital denizens need.
• Character classes are thrown away in favor of a flexible abilities system.  It works a bit like a card-based game like Magic: the Gathering - the player has the option of selecting 7 active and 7 passive abilities and can re-organize them at will.  There are also templates that allow the player to map abilities toward certain configurations (like the Monk, a healing/magic using hybrid).  But the player is never locked in.  So if I want to tank today and heal tomorrow, I can do that with the same character.
• The creation of characters seems to have some of the fun aspects of creation in games like City of Heroes/City of Villains.  Many of the characters portrayed in the trailers are female, too, and cute/powerful without the mega boobage and bare assed armor we progressive women balk about.  Clothing is customizable and stat free, but your abilities also progress with equipment and items.
• Players affect the environments via their actions.
• There are various mechanisms for rallying players into group pursuits.
• Quests involve exploration of the world to uncover what needs to be done, and NPCs lead players through the locations.
• The developers (Massively) are based in Norway and were also responsible for Anarchy Online and the Age of Conan.  The interviews make it clear that this game has been really well thought out.
• This one is for Ted - the algorithms for NPCs and monsters are based on population mechanics rather than respawning.  I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but it sounds very interesting.
• The learning curve is well managed with in situ introductions to the game mechanics, lore and skills.
• PvP is well supported.  Guilds are called 'cabals'.  Encounters involve all 3 factions.
• Quality writing and voice acting!

Want more?  Check out the initial announcements at PAX 2009, or more recent trailers and interviews.  Register for the beta, if you haven't already.

Also, don't forget that DiGRA (the Digital Games Research Association) is holding its semi annual conference in Tampere, Finland (where all the very cool kids are).  They need papers and reviewers, so get in touch!

A recent call to local people to report anything unusual that they have spotted at the shoreline or under the sea has already resulted in several promising sites for a new archaeological project. Tip-offs from islanders led to a possible medieval fishing village and finds of 5,000-year-old pottery submerged in a loch. A local man – JJ McDonald – told the team that he knew of a “medieval fishing station”. Photographed from above, the landscape shows high potential for new site discovery of all periods of history. Notably, this area near North Loch Euport is called ‘Havn’ (the Norse word for harbour) on Ordnance Survey maps. A previously unknown complex of fish traps and evidence of coastal occupation south of Lochboisdale on South Uist was discovered during flight surveys. At Loch Duna – a freshwater loch – a local diver has discovered ceramics which date to the early Neolithic period. He reported his discovery of the 5000-year-old pottery to the local museum just days after attending the first public lecture on underwater archaeology given by the Outer Hebrides Coastal Community Marine Archaeology Pilot Project (OHCCMAPP) team in July. The call went out in 2011 to fishermen, beachcombers, divers and residents in the Western Isles. The project searches for previously unidentified prehistoric and historic remains in the coastal and marine areas of the Isles, all the way from Berneray to the Butt of Lewis and all islands in between. Many of these places are only accessible for short periods each day due to the tides – or are now fully submerged because of rising sea levels – and have not always been looked at in detail by archaeologists. As a result, it is hoped that this project could lead to a number of significant new discoveries. Speaking on behalf of the project, Dr Jonathan Benjamin of WA Coastal & Marine said: “As full time archaeologists, we don’t have the benefit of observing the shoreline between the low and high tides, day in and day out, year after year. That’s why we’re relying on the knowledge of people who live and work on or near the sea, and who might have noticed something out of the ordinary, either in a fishing net, or at an especially low tide. Their tip-offs can lead to significant discoveries. We’re also explaining to people the sorts of things that we’re interested in, because they may have seen or noticed things in the past, but disregarded them as not important. “Until now, there’s been no major study focused on the marine archaeology of the Outer Hebrides, and by beginning with the intertidal and shallow waters, aerial survey and community engagement, we hope to be able to demonstrate that there is a vast amount of knowledge, literally waiting to be discovered by archaeologists working with local residents on land, in the air and underwater.” Now members of the project team have had a chance to fly over some of the remote sites they’ve been told about, with a Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) aerial survey team. Aerial photographs have been taken with the advantage of low winter sunshine which tends to highlight archaeological features in the landscape. Already they have identified several sites as warranting further investigation – possibly even full ground and underwater archaeological surveys – in the future. The project – a partnership between RCAHMS, WA Coastal & Marine, Historic Scotland and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (CNE-Siar) – aims to get local people involved in sharing their knowledge about features in the landscape in order to build up a picture of how people lived and worked on the islands over the last 9,000 years. Remains found on the coastline, or even now fully underwater, can then be recorded, cared for and preserved. With rising sea-levels and the power of the tides, many of these sites are at risk of being lost. Speaking about one of the most promising tip-offs received to date, Dr Alex Hale, archaeological investigator at RCAHMS, said: “Meeting JJ MacDonald was one of those fortuitous moments that can only happen when you are in the field. We bumped into JJ at his boat shed, by chance, and the amount of knowledge he has of the local environment is incredible. He’s obviously very knowledgeable about the area of South Uist where he lives and was able to help us identify sites that we’ll now be able to investigate further, such as the fishing station.” _____________ References: Past Horizons. 2012. "Outer-Hebrides survey builds a new picture of the past". Past Horizons. Posted: Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2012/outer-hebrides-survey-builds-a-new-picture-of-the-past

Ed Note: Another flashback from the archives of AiP this Friday, though a sombre one at that. It’s rainy and dreary here in New York City, and my thoughts are a bit dark today.

How are social technologies changing the experience of death for those charged with remembering?

Death has been referred to as the great equalizer—it is the one fate we cannot escape. And cultures around the world have developed highly ritualized approaches to coping with death. For example, Alan Klima (2002) documents the funeral casino in Thailand where rites of exchange work to mediate the relationships between the living, and between the living and the deceased (7). In Thailand, Klima reports, wakes are transformed into impromptu casinos. He describes the wake scene of the death of a beloved father:

“Dealers came and set up roulette wheels. Or they came with a bowl of dice and a big betting rug, each one good for a crowd of ten or twenty gamblers to sit around and cast their lots. The house family let loose, on the crowds, quart-sized bottles of Mekong brand rice rum to navigate through the spaces between bodies, with mixer bottles of Coke, Pepsi, Singha soda, water, and tin buckets of ice in hot pursuit. Packs of slicing and dicing cousins and aunts were spinning out plates of fried meats, raw pork, and saucy vegetables from their encampment in the kitchen. Family members were send forth onto the casino floor, to extract from time to time a cut of the dealers’ profits. And the dealers were raking it in all over the place, starting from gambling operations set up right next to and under the coffin of the dead father, fanning out over the whole living room floor space, out onto the porch, and beyond that, spilling into the open air of the yard in the front … And they kept coming—mourners, gamblers, and dealers … Of course, no one would sit down to play without first bowing to the corpse—could you imagine that, placing your precious money at risk with a big coffin standing over you, to which you haven’t paid respects? (2002: 248).”

Ravina Aggarwal (2001) writes of a funeral feast she attended in the village of Achinathang:

“They had come for this last farewell, bringing gifts in memory of this expert weaver who had woven so many robes to clothe their bodies. There was so much beer that the keg was filled. A neighbor collected the offerings on the family’s behalf, announcing the house names of the donors. The joking and laughter of the men (who had taken up positions on the right hand side of the threshing ground) merged with the elegy of the widow and her chil- dren (seated on the left) and the incantations recited by the astrologer (who sat at the center). More and more people came (554).”

These are both acts of remembering, which are echoed in the rites and rituals of cultures around the world. The purpose for the gathering for the deceased, in whatever form it may take, is both for the benefit of the corpse and that of the family. Many cultures believe the deceased may be confused and requires company until the body can be interred or otherwise disposed of (Klima 2002; Dernbach 2005). And it’s a time the network to which the deceased was a member to gather and comfort each other. But wakes and other funeral rites also mark the beginning of a process of distancing. The deceased was fully integrated into a network, the “social and emotional lives of those left behind are intimately tied to the deceased person, and adjusting to this change and loss is a difficult and long- term process” (Dernbach 2005: 100). Conklin (2001) writes that through the grieving process, mourners are “transforming their perceived relationship to the dead person by going through a process in which they gradually confront their memories of the deceased one by one, accept the reality that their relationship to the deceased has ended, and let go emotionally of their attachments to the object of their loss” (171).

The process of memorial is also a process of forgetting. There is a mourning period for the community. For example, in the Jewish religion, the deceased are meant to be buried within 24 hours of death foregoing any extenuating circumstances. The family then sits shiva, or mourns for a week, or less depending on how observant they are of the religious practices. While private grief may continue long after the “prescribed” mourning period, there comes a point where the deceased’s public memory is reduced to a death anniversary. The deceased is removed from the network. But Web 2.0 is changing the experience of death—both for the deceased as well as the survivors. Web 2.0 is making death an interactive experience, providing mourners with an opportunity to access a community for support, while sharing their grief and preserving memories of the deceased.

The growing popularity of the memorial pages on Facebook suggests that grief and death have moved online. Of course, we had clear indications that this was the case as the Twitterverse responded to the deaths of celebrities like Michael Jackson in 2009. Memorial pages, however, allow mourners to collectively gather and share mementos with one another in a single place—sentiments, photos, videos, even music can all be stored in a single virtual location to be accessed whenever desired. It provides a digital address for the deceased where mourners can continually visit, whereas Twitter more provides an opportunity for an immediate response. And it’s not limited to those within the deceased’s network. Memorial pages prolong the process of distancing, but they also reinforce the connections that members of the network have with each other—even with the deceased gone. For example, a student who created a memorial page for a victim of the Virginia Tech tragedy felt that Facebook allowed the community to pull together: “We were all scattered around the country, but this was a way we could be together.” In this way, the social network is not ruptured or forced into reshaping itself to account for the loss of a member, as may be the case in off-line mourning. The process process for distancing is gradual in this model. Furthermore, the digital management of death appears gives people more control over how the deceased will be remembered in terms of what they choose to share and post about the deceased.

This does potentially raise some issues, however. For example, what if the family is not comfortable with the content of the memorial? Or wants the memorial removed? Does the digital community that participated in the memorial have any say? And should they even be considered in this decision? As grief and mourning become more public, these may be issues that have to be contended with. Of course, some feel that Twitter has handicapped our ability to mourn. What are your thoughts?

—- References: Aggarwal, R. (2001). At the Margins of Death: Ritual Space and the Politics of Location in an Indo-Himalayan Border Village American Ethnologist, 28 (3), 549-573 DOI: 10.1525/ae.2001.28.3.549

Conklin, B. (2001). Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. Austin.

Dernbach, Katherine Boris. (2005). Spirits of the Hereafter: Death, Funerary Possession, and the Afterlife in Chuuk, Micronesia. Ethnology, 44 (2), 99-123

Klima, Alan. (2002). The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand. Princeton: University Press.

Two articles in the latest issue of Nature prompted this note. The first claims that China’s historical culture inhibits science:

“Two cultural genes have passed through generations of Chinese intellectuals for more than 2,000 years. The first is the thoughts of Confucius, who proposed that intellectuals should become loyal administrators. The second is the writings of Zhuang Zhou, who said that a harmonious society would come from isolating families so as to avoid exchange and conflict, and by shunning technology to avoid greed. Together, these cultures have encouraged small-scale and self-sufficient practices in Chinese society, but discouraged curiosity, commercialization and technology. They helped to produce a scientific void in Chinese society that persisted for millennia. And they continue to be relevant today.”

The second article is titled, Research in Asia Heats Up: US Indicators Reveal Challenges and Opportunities as Science Momentum Shifts to China. It reports that:

“Asia, led by China, is on track to displace the United States as the world’s science and technology powerhouse. That message is loud and clear in the 2012 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators, a nearly 600-page snapshot of the state of global research that looks at education, academic infrastructure, the knowledge-based workforce and international markets.”

So what has happened to the two “cultural genes” of Confucius and Zhuang in China? And what is going on with what one might caricature as the U.S. “cultural genes” of curiosity, commercialization, and technology? Just thinking.

H/T 3quarksdaily

Stand in the place where you live Now face north Think about direction Wonder why you haven't before Now stand in the place where you work Now face west Think about the place where you live Wonder why you haven't before If you are confused, check with the sun Carry a compass to help you along Your feet are going to be on the ground Your head is there to move you around ("Stand" by R.E.M. from the album Green released in 1988) I doubt R.E.M. was thinking about Japan, the Hinomaru and Kimigayo when they wrote this song. Perhaps it is time for a re-make of the video featuring the Hinomaru flag in the background with Tokyo Govenor Ishihara Shintaro and Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru singing and dancing. VAOJ has long been following the lawsuits of teachers who refused to stand for the national anthem and flag at school ceremonies. There have been a few updates recently. Top court calls for care in punishing teachers over flag, anthem (from The Mainichi Daily News,1/17/12) The Supreme Court on Monday nullified some punishments meted out to current and former Tokyo public school teachers for refusing to stand for the hoisting of the Hinomaru national flag or to sing the "Kimigayo" anthem at school events, saying careful consideration is required. "In choosing a punishment greater than a reprimand, such as a pay cut or a greater punishment, careful consideration is needed," Presiding Justice Seishi Kanetsuki of the top court's First Petty Bench said in delivering rulings on three lawsuits brought by around 170 plaintiffs seeking nullification of their punishments. The court annulled the suspension from work of one plaintiff and the pay cut for another, saying such punishments amounted to an abuse of power and were therefore illegal. However, the court found the suspension from work of one plaintiff and reprimands meted out to the remaining plaintiffs were appropriate. The decision concerned three suits filed by current and former teachers and other staff members at public schools run by the Tokyo metropolitan government. Last year, the Supreme Court found constitutional school principals' orders requiring teachers at school events to stand up for the raising of the national flag and to sing "Kimigayo," but said such orders indirectly restrict a person's freedom of belief and conscience. Monday's ruling called for care when punishing teachers for not following those orders. The ruling could also have an impact on debate in the Osaka prefectural assembly over a proposal calling for a "three strikes and you're out" rule to dismiss school teachers who repeatedly defy principals' orders to stand up and sing "Kimigayo." The proposal has been advocated by a regional political party, the Osaka Restoration Association, led by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto.  Link to entire story: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120117p2g00m0dm038000c.html Japan Focus has an informative post about this recent development as well (1/22/12). Japan's Supreme Court Limits National Anthem Punishments for Teachers Link: http://japanfocus.org/events/view/125 And here's more... Osaka mayor orders officials to bow to flag (from The Daily Yomiuri Online, 1/23/12) Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto has instructed high-ranking officials of the city government to always bow to the Hinomaru national flag as they take a seat in the municipal assembly's main conference hall and when replying to questions when the assembly is session, it has been learned.  Hashimoto e-mailed the instruction earlier this month to bureau chiefs who sit on the platform of the conference hall during the assembly's deliberations.  Titled "Paying homage to the national flag at the conference hall," the mayor's e-mail read, "You are asked to bow to the flag when seating yourself on the platform," assembly sources said.  The e-mail also said senior city officials were required to bow their heads to the national flag every time they step on the hall's platform or respond to a question posed during assembly deliberations, they said.  Furthermore, the instructions said officials must bow to the flag again when deliberations are resumed after a recess, according to the sources.  Hashimoto has expressed his intention to present a draft ordinance in the coming assembly session in February that will call for the national flag to always be hoisted at the municipal government's facilities. Link to story: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120122003982.htm Mastering Manners In today's Daily Yomiuri Online (1/27/12) there is a story about manners and the proper way to bow. Here is an interesting quote: Japanese etiquette was developed during the era of the samurai, when strict relationships between superiors and subordinates were a key part of class-based societies. The tradition has been passed from generation to generation, but some people today may find its practice cumbersome. "The idea behind Japanese etiquette is to use actions to express your deep feelings for other people," Kondo says. "As long as you acquire the basics, you can act with grace and confidence, while those around you will treat you with respect." Link to entire story: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/arts/T120119005653.htm Manners and etiquette through the use of body movements are for showing respect to people. Such gestures should not be forced upon people to display patriotism or national pride.

A few years ago my wife Veronica (who is also a cultural anthropology graduate student) was doing her M.A. fieldwork in Yucatan, Mexico.  I was there with her.  We were staying in a decent sized pueblo, about three thousand people (although it seemed like much less for some reason).  We rented a room from a family for the summer–we found out later that two of the kids in the household were actually moved out of that room to make space for the two visiting anthropologists, but that’s another story of micro-politics for another time.  Lets just say that these two kids weren’t all that happy with the arrangement, and they made it pretty clear.  If only we had known!  Anyway, we worked out a deal.

Moving on.  While my wife was doing interviews, I ended up playing games and hanging out with a lot of the local kids.  Not a bad gig, eh?  Well, I was also the free research assistant, and I went along on many of the interviews, too.  In addition I did a stint of archaeological survey work for a few weeks–just to let you know that it wasn’t all just homeruns and striking out little kids for me that summer (kidding, of course, I let some of them get hits).  But I did play a lot of baseball with the kids when there was downtime.  We used to play tons of games in the solar (i.e. yard) of the house where we were staying.  These games included about 4-5 kids from the family we were renting from, and a whole slew of kids from around the pueblo.  Pretty fun.  Whenever I got back to the house all the kids wanted to play.  Often, they totally wore me out.   It became a pretty regular thing.  But then, I noticed something.

The kids who came over to play were only from certain households.  Other kids never came by, or were explicitly told to stay away by the kids in the household where we were renting.  I didn’t know this was happening at first…but I slowly started figuring things out.  Certain kids would approach me and ask about baseball when I wasn’t at our house, and I thought it was strange that they never actually came over…until the whole mystery started to make more sense.  I also remember some kids hanging out on the edge of the yard, leaning on the wall watching us play.  I’d ask them if they wanted to play, but they would politely refuse every time.  Why didn’t they every want to actually  play?

Well, it’s because those kids who didn’t come over, or who refused to play, knew more about the surrounding community politics than Veronica and I did at the time.  Sure, in some cases, this was a matter in which some kids just don’t like some other kids.  But in many other cases, there was more to it–some of the histories and politics of the adults in the community were filtering down through the kids, and this was showing up in something seemingly innocuous like these afternoon baseball games.  And these kids knew all about it.  In short, some of the kids in the pueblo were persona non grata at this house because of the bad relationships among all their parents.  Now, this isn’t really a shocking reality, but in the context of doing anthropological fieldwork, it was an important lesson.

Why?  Because we realized that where we were staying had its own small, but definitely important, politics effects.  Some members of the community felt comfortable coming by–and others did not.  This was a pretty important lesson, and both Veronica and I learned a lot from the whole experience.  The first thing we did was move the baseball games from a specific residence to a public place–we started playing in the plaza, next to the old stone church that’s hundreds of years old.  This worked out much better, and managed to help put the lid on some of the simmering kid politics (certain kids were less prone to little power plays once we were in public).  But what we also learned was that we have to pay close attention to the effects of the place where we actually end up living–and find ways to deal with issue that crop up.  Of course, there is probably no way to find a place that is completely apolitical or neutral in ANY community.  But it does help to recognize these kinds of things–whether they show up in kids games or elsewhere–and adjust accordingly.

A Healing Garden in southern Belize. Photo courtesy of douglas reeser.

Here in Belize, I'm working on a number of what might be called "development" projects. Basically, I've been partnering with a few different organizations, all working on a type of traditional healing garden, each one of which aim to preserve and pass on traditional (indigenous or local) knowledge, educate youth, and provide a means of income generation. Each organization is built on ethnic background, and so each project is working with a traditional knowledge system specific to each ethnic group. Still, there is a good deal of overlap, as each group's knowledge is derived from the same environmental conditions. Each of the projects are at various stages of development or execution and each has faced its own challenges. I have come to realize that this is likely the path that each must take to have a chance at success. Most agree that success will include a multi-ethnic healing garden in a central location that offers a space for the wider community to spend time and share.

This is a Prezi of a paper I presented last year at the 6th Asian Graduate Forum On Southeast Asian Studies at the NUS Asia Research Institute. Here is the abstract:

Whereas the great majority of blogs are of the 'personal' genre - i.e. diaristic accounts of individuals' lives - academic research has focused mostly on the 'social-political' blogging genre and its relevance to the democratisation of the public sphere. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and drawing upon anthropological critiques of economic theory, this paper discusses the complexities of the articulation of personal blogging with existing models of media advertising in Malaysia. By conceptualising personal bloggers' provision of advertising space and 'advertorials' (paid blog posts), this paper argues that the monetisation of personal blogging has resulted in a new blogging genre, the 'lifestyle blog'. The advertising industry in Malaysia has responded to the destabilisation of the advertising market enabled by blog affordances by seeking to internalise the bloggers who represent "voicy consumers" in the "economy of qualities" (Michel Callon). Robert Foster has argued that surplus value is created for brands "through the everyday practices in which consumers use branded goods to create social relations and shared meanings and affect." In effect, the diaristic practices of personal bloggers create both an opportunity for this process to take place and, for the more popular bloggers, a platform for advertisers to reach significant portions of a younger, more affluent, audience. By paying bloggers to incorporate brands in their blog posts, the advertisers seek to entangle the brand with the bloggers and their audience's shared network of meaning, or dynamic assemblage. While these findings are based on the Malaysian context, they have particular relevance for Singaporean blogging, as well as potential relevance for blogging worldwide, which has seen an increased interest in blogs as an advertising platform embedded in local and contextualised markets. Keywords: advertising, affordances, anthropology, blogs, Malaysia, marketing, media

I may or may not throw up some comments, depending on what transpires. .... Gingrich wants English to be "the official language of government." ... Santorum clams that the US supports leftist governments in Central and South America.  What planet is this guy living on?  Paul on the other hand wants to back off supporting governments militarily and instead use "free trade" to develop relationships. Of course this is one of maybe two things a reasonable person might agree with Paul on; otherwise, he's a racist social darwinist sociopath. ... A break.  I don't know if I can keep taking this at all seriously. .... Gingrich wants the Tea Party's "flat tax," maybe at Romney's 15%, to apply to everyone.  Gingrich wants 0% on capital gains.  Paul wants to eliminate all federal tax (get rid of the 16th Amendment). ...

Part of my online life includes editorial duties at ResearchBlogging.org, where I serve as the Social Sciences Editor. Each Thursday, I pick notable posts on research in anthropology, philosophy, social science, and research to share on the ResearchBlogging.org News site. To help highlight this writing, I also share my selections here on AiP.

Bloggers in the social sciences have been busy in the last week. You’ll find no shortage of interesting posts. There were some tough calls to make, but choose I must:

• The fall of one of the most powerful empires to have existed continues to fascinate us 1500 years after the fact. At Powered by Osteons, Kristina Killgrove investigates whether lead poisoning might have played a role in the Roman Empire’s undoing.

• One in ten people are on the spectrum for dyslexia. Dr. Stuart Farrimond makes a brief case for the genetic preservation of dyslexia, suggesting that it would have granted our evolutionary ancestors much needed benefits for survival in a world that was vastly different from out.

• Have you ever been in a situation where you just didn’t feel smart? Greg Laden explains that intelligence may be a socio-cultural signal that varies from context to context.

• What big teeth you have, A. bosei! At Lawn Chair Anthropology, Zachary Cofran tries to make sense of A. bosei‘s dentition, which does not seem suited for its diet.

I’ll be back next week with more from anthropology, philosophy, and research.

By contributor Sean Carey

Mauritius is in the premier league of the world’s democracies, according to the newly released London-based Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. The Index, which monitors 167 nations ranks Mauritius, a small Indian Ocean island, with a population of 1.3 million, 24th out of 25 “full democracies,” just ahead of Spain.

Norway is in first place followed by three other Scandinavian countries—Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Canada is eighth, Ireland is 12th, Germany is 14th, the U.K. is 18th, while the U.S. is ranked 19th.The remaining 90 countries which make it into the “democratic” category are divided into 53 “flawed democracies,” which includes France and Italy at 29th and 31st respectively. The next category consists of 37 “hybrid regimes” and includes Hong Kong (80th), Singapore (81st), Turkey (88th), Tanzania (90th) and Kenya (103rd). The remaining countries in the Index, including Bahrain, Chad, Fiji, Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, are described as “authoritarian.”

The Index is based on five criteria: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. However, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that almost all of the “full democracies” belong to a group of the world’s advanced economies, whose populations are well-practiced in placing marks on ballot papers and tossing out unpopular or incompetent governments.

Little wonder, then, that Mauritius’s inclusion has caught the eye of some commentators. “In some ways, of the 25 ‘full democracies,’ Mauritius is now the most notable,” writes Neil Reynolds, economics correspondent for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. Reynolds cities Mauritius’s endorsement by the World Bank as the best among African economies, and its top position in the Sudanese-born telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim’s Index of African Governance.

Reynolds also goes on to note Mauritius’s ascent in the Index of Economic Freedom jointly produced by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. In 2010, it was in 12th place at 179 countries. In 2012 it had moved up to eighth place. The piece finishes with a rousing cry: “Economic freedom is as much a prerequisite for democracy as voting. Let’s hear it for the prosperous little democracy with a dodo on its coat of arms.”

But free-market economists are not the only tribe to endorse Mauritius. Last year, for example, Joseph Stiglitz, after a brief visit, wrote an article for The Guardian, heaping praise on the country for the provision of free education, transport for schoolchildren and free healthcare, including heart surgery. The former chief economist at the World Bank, and a leading light in the neo-Keynesian “third way” movement, reckoned that North America and Europe could learn lessons from Mauritius in terms of how the country managed “social cohesion, welfare and economic growth.”

Despite the brevity of his stay, the Nobel prize-winning economist was observant enough to point to some of the island’s problems, especially the colonial legacy in inequality in ownership of land and other forms of capital which differentially affects the life chances of various segments of the polyethnic population.

Then there is the vexatious issue of the US base on Diego Garcia, which was illegally detached before independence from the UK in 1968 and now forms part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. “The US should now do right by this peaceful and democratic country: recognise Mauritius’s rightful ownership of Diego Garcia, renegotiate the lease and redeem past sins by paying a fair amount for land that it has illegally occupied for decades,” argued Stiglitz. He should have added that those 1500 or so islanders, who were forcibly removed from the Chagos Archipelago in the late 60s and early 70s by the British authorities to make way for the military base and dumped in Mauritius and the Seychelles, should be allowed to return to their homeland if they so wish.

Deaf people who use sign language are quicker at recognizing and interpreting body language than hearing non-signers, according to new research from investigators at UC Davis and UC Irvine. The work suggests that deaf people may be especially adept at picking up on subtle visual traits in the actions of others, an ability that could be useful for some sensitive jobs, such as airport screening. "There are a lot of anecdotes about deaf people being better able to pick up on body language, but this is the first evidence of that," said David Corina, professor in the UC Davis Department of Linguistics and Center for Mind and Brain. Corina and graduate student Michael Grosvald, now a postdoctoral researcher at UC Irvine, measured the response times of both deaf and hearing people to a series of video clips showing people making American Sign Language signs or "non-language" gestures, such as stroking the chin. Their work was published online Dec. 6 in the journal Cognition. "We expected that deaf people would recognize sign language faster than hearing people, as the deaf people know and use sign language daily, but the real surprise was that deaf people also were about 100 milliseconds faster at recognizing non-language gestures than were hearing people," Corina said. This work is important because it suggests that the human ability for communication is modifiable and is not limited to speech, Corina said. Deaf people show us that language can be expressed by the hands and be perceived through the visual system. When this happens, deaf signers get the added benefit of being able to recognize non-language actions better than hearing people who do not know a sign language, Corina said. The study supports the idea that sign language is based on a modification of the system that all humans use to recognize gestures and body language, rather than working through a completely different system, Corina said. ___________________ References: EurekAlert. 2012. "Deaf sign language users pick up faster on body language". EurekAlert. Posted: January 12, 2012. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uoc--dsl011212.php

Milan presentation notes, IULM University, 26 January 2012

Introduction

Many thanks to Alessandra Micalizzi for the kind invitation. First attempt for me at connecting practice theory with media and social change.

The story behind both – until now separate – interests: EASA Media Anthropology Network, first media and practice theory (Bräuchler and Postill 2010), more recently media and social change – Paris meeting 2012 to be co-convened with Tenhunen and Ardevol. See both websites.

Digital media and social change

All digital media scholars study social change- yet surprisingly undertheorised.

We tend to fall into vague present continuous (-ing) of how people and technologies are constantly chang-ing, what people are now do-ing with this or that digital tech, etc.

… in pursuit of next big technology, we often neglect historical and diachronic in favour of contemporary and synchronic.

Dubious idea that a technology now trending in global North will soon be trending worldwide (‘imminentism’).

In fact, different neighbourhoods, cities, countries, regions, are following their own digital paths. No sign yet that the digital cultures of South Korea, Brazil, Senegal, the Vatican and Finland are on the brink of merging into some ‘global’ sameness. If anything, they continue to diverge.

At the same time, we peddle vague postmodern ideas about timeless time, non-linear time, etc. Yet there is no fairyland where time goes round in circles, or chases its own tale, or swings back and forth like a pendulum (Gell). We all go by the modern clock and calendar (Postill 2002), as inescapable as money, gravity, ageing, or death.

But how do we go about theorising what we already study but take for granted?

One useful entry point:

Tenhunen (2008) social logistics and mobile phones in rural West Bengal, India. Inspired by Horst and Miller (2006) ethnography of mobiles in Jamaica, but finds that they overemphasize cultural continuity (linked-up) over change; like practice theorists (more later) they play down human ability to strive for, and attain, social change.

More discussion needed on this issue.

 …  a theory of practice approach

Practice theory: a body of work about the work of the body (Postill 2010)

Late 1970s-1980s search for approach that would avoid twin evils of structural/systemic holism and methodological individualism.

Practice theory cannot be panacea for media and comm studies.

Especially apt for three topics:

• Media in everyday life
• Media production
• Embodied media

Not so cool for processual analysis, e.g. of spread of digital epidemics (urban legends, rumours, etc.), for Arab Spring uprisings, or Spain’s indignados/15M movement (Postill 2010) – or is it?

One way of doing practice research: follow the media practitioner

As in qualitative, open-ended, ethnographic research.

We’re all media practitioners these days; various digital media woven into our practice as students, scholars, taxi drivers, activists, rock-climbers, journalists, acrobats, pensioners, etc.

If possible, during research try to learn that craft/occupation/practice too, ‘practitioner observation’

Non-media centric reflection (Couldry 2010, Hobart 2010) on what practitioners actually do with which specific media, with what results, but also what they did 5, 10, 20 years ago.

Follow them as they traverse different ‘stations’ (Giddens 1984) as well as conflict-ridden ‘arenas’ (Turner 1974) in their routine cycles of activities as well as non-routine events.

You will find that what’s appropriate in one station is not appropriate in another, e.g. a personal blog is a very different station from a Twitter hashtag thread which in turn is very different from a web forum; example of Malaysian blogger-cum-politician Jeff Ooi (Postill 2011).

Track biographical changes as well as continuities over time in digital media usage.

… but keep your methodological and conceptual toolboxes handy

 No dogmas please, we’re researchers: No need to adhere rigidly to a pre-set methodology or killer family of concepts (ANT, field theory, practice theory)…

‘Follow the practitioner’ is just one way in, by no means the only one!

In any case, broader organisational, cultural, historical context always necessary, e.g. social media activism in Barcelona cannot but refer to broader Catalonian and Spanish context.

It’s important to acquire a large conceptual and methodological vocab. The more the merrier.

Try out different concepts and methods during fieldwork, see if they work or not – you are under no obligation to honour Latour, Bourdieu, Foucault or any other French theorist whose name has an ‘ou’ in it.

If you can’t get it off the shelf, fashion your own concept or method, e.g. I had to come up with the concept ‘field of residential affairs’ to organise my internet localisation materials (Postill 2011).

Above all, no idols please – idolatry should be smashed, a la Taliban (well, maybe not a la Taliban). Only the better tools for the given job should be used, the rest can stay in the toolbox for future use.

Of particular relevance to digital media practitioners and social change:

• Before-and-after accounts, e.g. before you used Facebook/smartphone, how did you go about your business/leisure/housework?
• Recollections of disruptions to regular digital media use, e.g. when BlackBerry was down in 2011, or in some remote rural area
• Life histories of persons, both as practitioner and other areas of life; persons as (in)dividuals (LiPuma 19.., Helle-Valle 2010)
• Life histories of media artefacts (Kopytoff 1986, Postill 2006)
• Longitudinal studies
• Revisits to previous field sites

Recap

(Digital) media and social change is emerging interdisciplinary field of research and theorisation – first task is to take stock of existing research and theories and bring them under same umbrella. Very exciting area.

We should pay more attention to diachronic, clock-and-calendar time dimension of mediated practice, including our own research and theoretical practice. More dating, please!

Follow the practitioners across socio-technical settings (online, mobile, sedentary, remote, co-present…) and across biographical and historical time. Gauge the continuities as well as the changes.

Avoid conceptual or methodological fundamentalism (but without falling into anything-goes-eclecticism). See what works and what doesn’t.

Class exercise

In groups, how would you go about researching digital media and social change within a given organisation, collective, field of practice, neighbourhood, … Choose a familiar or exotic example and come up with a brief research plan.

References

Coming up shortly, watch this space.

*(Disclaimer: Don't worry - if I mention you in my dissertation, you'll know about it. I'm following research-ethics protocols...you'll have to sign an informed-consent form. :) Back in Poland after a too-brief (two weeks) trip back home to the States for the holidays. I got back New Year's Day, and have been slightly panicked about the progress of my research thus far ever since. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this (although I'm sure I wouldn't be the first fieldworker to do so), but I spent the first few months of my fieldwork not knowing exactly what I was doing, or even being quite sure whether I was collecting any data. (Of course, everything one does in "the field" is somehow relevant, but it doesn't always feel like that as it's happening.) In addition to making research contacts, traveling, setting up interviews, and going about daily life, I've been taking photos of just about everything (at least in public places), collecting museum publications, familiarizing myself with the Polish-language literature on museums, memory/history, and national identity (this kind of "library fieldwork" is an interesting process in itself, to be discussed in some future post) and scribbling down field notes - or something resembling them - when I can. Methodology, and methodological training, in cultural anthropology are notoriously vague - although perhaps necessarily so. For one thing, field sites and research situations are incredibly diverse, so while it's possible to train students in the basics of fieldwork - how to conduct interviews, a basic understanding of what "participant observation" means, etc. - generalizable methods are difficult to teach. For another, a major part of anthropological research, particularly for those of us doing fieldwork outside the culture we grew up in, involves getting to know systems of knowledge that may not necessarily correspond with our own worldviews and assumptions about what "research" and "knowledge" are, and about what counts as important. For this reason our research plans can only take us so far; part of fieldwork is realizing the limitations of our own cultural constructs, and letting the direction of our projects be shaped by what we encounter in our field sites. Still, these realizations are only so helpful when one's train of thought begins to run something like, "I've been here three months and I've barely gotten any data yet! What if I get home at the end of this year and realize I don't have anything I can use? Is that even possible? What am I even doing with my life, anyway?!?" In an effort to keep on track - to give my research some direction outside of the interviews and other research activities that are part of my formal research plan, and to remind myself that, even during the times that I'm not actively engaged in formal research activities, I am indeed learning something - I've started keeping a fieldwork log, as recommended in the excellent research methods book Research Methods in Anthropology, by H. Russell Bernard. I write down what I'm planning to do each day, research-wise, on one side of a notebook page (whether it's looking up a particular thing, contacting a particular person, going to a meeting or event related to my research, or otherwise). On the other side of the page, I write down what I actually did that day, including things I've learned or observed that relate to my project, or anything unusual, confusing, or that I'd like to learn more about. So far, it's been helpful, both as a sort of to-do list and in helping me keep track of what I'm learning Any anthropologists/other fieldworkers reading this? If so, what are your methods for writing up field notes? How do you understand "fieldwork," and how do you deal with the ambiguity of what it means to do this kind of research? After this week is our mid-semester break, and I'll be spending the first part of said break conducting research interviews in various cities in Poland. Do następnego razu (until next time)!

I came across this clever image today, comparing Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Of course I came across it on Facebook!

On the left Assange says, “I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I am a villain.”

On the right Zuckerberg goes, “I give your private information to corporations for money, and I am Man of the Year.”

Right before that striking comparison, I had seen this clever cartoon.

The cartoon reads, “How about a compromise? We keep the land, the mineral rights, natural resources, fishing, and timber, and we’ll acknowledge you as the traditional owners of it.”

I can’t help but reflect that Facebook policy is rather like colonial policy. We’re traditional owners of our information, they just get to keep all the rights and sell it as they want.

Lots of internet companies seem to be working this way. Facebook’s approach to privacy – of course you have it, but we get to own and distribute the resulting information – isn’t that different from Apple’s new ibook author software – you create it, but if you use our software to publish it, we effectively own it. But, hey, your name is on it!

The SFU School of Communication Presents:"Beyond the “Great Firewall”: Negotiating Online In-Game Protests in China"A public talk by Prof. Dean Chan - University of Wollongong, AustraliaSFU Harbour Centre (515 West Hastings St., Vancouver)Thursday February 2, 20127-9pm, Room 2270This event is free, and open to the public – all welcome !ABSTRACT:Online in-game protests are part of a burgeoning

I know many people are upset at Twitter’s announcement that it will now be able to block tweets country by country. There has been a lot of excellent writing / reporting on the content explaining that this is not as bad as it looks. (Check out good posts my friend Jillian York here or Alex Howard here). My initial reaction upon a cursory reading of the announcement was also that it wasn’t too bad, given the alternatives. However I’ve since looked at the policy in more detail and my conclusion is that isn’t a mediocre but acceptable policy; rather, this is an excellent policy which will be helpful to free-speech advocates.

I often criticize companies on this blog so I want to take a moment to recognize Twitter for a model policy and explain why these should be the kind of practices that I hope other Internet companies follow.

In my opinion, with this policy, Twitter is fighting to protect free speech on Twitter as best it possibly can. (It also fits with its business model so I am not going to argue they are uniquely angelic, but Twitter does have a good track record. Twitter was the only company which first fought the US government to protect user information in the Wikileaks cas,e and then informed the users when it lost the fight. In fact, Twitter’s transparency is the only reason we even know of this; other companies, it appears, silently caved and complied.)

Twitter’s latest policy is purposefully designed to allow Twitter to exist as a platform as broadly as possible while making it as hard as possible for governments to censor content, either tweet by tweet or more, all the while giving free-speech advocates a lot of tools to fight censorship.

Let’s look at the policy.

1-      The policy is narrower than before. Previously, when Twitter would take down content when forced to do so by a court order, it would disappear globally. Now, it will only be gone in the specific country in which the court order is applicable. This is a great improvement.

2-      The policy is realistic–and non-realistic policies are not better as they won’t work. The idea that Twitter can just ignore court orders everywhere is not only unrealistic, it would result in more countries to try to block Twitter completely–or make it accessible only via proxies and thus greatly restrict its power. The Internet is not a “virtual” space, and cyberspace is not a planet which can float above all jurisdictions forever. In this move, Twitter is acknowledging this fact while complying within the bare minimum framework.

3-      The policy is transparent. Blocked tweets will be shown as “blocked” along with the blocking country. This is excellent! This level of transparency should be the model for all Internet companies. Companies should not remove content globally; rather they should do so in as few jurisdictions as possible with as much notice as possible. (for a negative example, check out the story of how Blogger is censoring Egyptian activist Ramy Raoof’s post on brutality by security forces in Egypt. In that case, Ramy’s content is blocked globally and the post just *disappeared* without a clear indication of the censorship).

4-      The policy provides tools for free-speech advocates. Twitter will publish list of blocked tweets, along with links to the original tweet –so everyone who is not at that particular country can see what it’s about–as well as a copy of the court order or enforceable takedown notice at http://chillingeffects.org/twitter. Free-speech advocates have a transparent and powerful tool.

5-      The policy is not made hard to circumvent. Twitter helpfully included instructions on how to change your country (“manually override” the country setting which is determined by IP). I don’t know about you, but does this sound like Twitter is caving? Also, obviously, Tor users and proxy users will be able to access the content fairly easily.

6-      Twitter spokespeople have repeatedly said they will only block content in “In the face of a valid and applicable legal order.” This is a good standard and I don’t think any company can get around this in jurisdictions where they have physical presence; nor is it clear that they should. Of course, we all need to be watching carefully to ensure that they do so and not just cooperate with governments based on “requests.”

I suspect this policy will cause some governments to continue to block Twitter on the whole because it doesn’t make it easy for governments to block content (they have to at least follow some level of procedure) and it creates a “Streisand effect” on censored tweets

Twitter can’t fight all free speech battles by itself; and it can’t change laws or governments around the world, nor can it ignore issues of jurisdiction. In particular, if faced with a court order that requires Twitter to identify dissidents in a country where torture or severe repression is in place, I hope Twitter first makes this as public as possible, and then choses to pull out of that country rather than comply (as Yahoo did in the shameful case of Wang Xiaoning and others in China – and some these people remain in prison after almost a decade).

There is a lot more to be said about the dangers of centralization, the emergence of corporate platforms as larger and larger portions of our political and social commons, and the conflicts between control, profit motives, and free and civic speech these recent developments raise. I don’t want to sound like I am happy to trust a few corporations and that’s it. On the contrary, I’ve repeatedly tried to warn against these dangers. All that said, I don’t think it is helpful if we don’t recognize a good policy when we see one.

In this particular policy, Twitter has done everything it can do to help free-speech advocates around the world except deliver coffee and bagels in the morning.  This is a model of how Internet companies should behave.  I hope Twitter practices this policy as it outlined, and practices maximum transparency and minimum compliance with restrictive laws.