Saturday, April 28, 2007

Blog Assignment, Monday, April 30

Hello Group,

Your reading assignments due on Monday, April 30 are Chapters 4 and 5 in Buruma
and Wouters and Beaulieu article (see course syllabus for link).

Let's continue with the Irony theme and also consider Dutch pragmatic tolerance (or "regulated tolerance", now that sounds ironic...). Please post a short response to both readings considering these quotes:

"Irony ...is such an essential part of the Dutch make-up. I really notice this
after Theo's death. It's so much part of our tradition" Irony can be a healthy antidote to dogmatism, but also an escape from any blame" (Buruma, 112).

"It is as though religious attire is often worn as a fashion statement, or an
assertion of difference, as much as a sign of devotion" (Buruma, 123).

"Rappers play at being murderers. Perhaps they were Dutch enough to have adopted the national penchant for vicious irony" (143).

Extra points for those who find connections between the Buruma and Wouters readings. Some thoughts from a shamelessly biased interdisciplinary humanities researcher:
Wouters and Beaulieu discuss intervention as a means to rethink knowledge
production and research practice. The applications of e-research can potentially create new modes of knowledge production which will influence our questions and our approach to the topics. In other words, the methods, i.e. tools, influence the research, i.e. the concept. How then will the messiness of bringing in multiple disciplines to the practice of e-science, which changes then to E-RESEARCH, influence how we process and focus knowledge gathering. Intervention and self reflexiveness will result in a rethinking of knowledge production and research practices in the digital world(s). However, too much knowledge limits knowledge, ah the irony. Knowledge needs accountability or researchers are just ESCAPE(ing) FROM ANY BLAME.
**********************
Here's another random thought as I was reading...lots of things we could discuss from the reading....
2nd generation immigrants who are born in the Netherlands, speak Dutch and also speak the language of their parents, can feel alienated. They don't fit in with their parents generation nor do they fit in with the Dutch population. So the danger is isolation which can produce extreme alliances and extreme actions. (Buruma's theory)

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

ironic urban space?

Frank Gehry’s Dancing House, in Prague

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

jessica's assignment

BEGIN.

Thanks for your time today; I enjoyed it, even with the vertigo attendant upon compressing 15 years of study into 1 hour of talk. What I'd like you to take from the time is:

1. Under the rubric of modernity, selves/subjects and environments/objects are in mutual, and mutually constitutive, relation. Ex: Agoraphobes were "invented" in the 19th century in that sense by the spaces they inhabit.

2. Always historicize. The range of history at stake will differ, from centuries to days (yikes). Ex: The flâneur gave us the urban anthropologist. Emotions or affects are not simply transhistorical experiences: 21st century students experience boredom; 16th century monks and nuns are sinners, having indulged in/succumbed to either acedia or aboulia: the technical sin of will-lessness.

3. The everyday is an archive: one's clothing, a city street, Vogue magazine, graffiti are all means by which a culture generally and a society specifically bears out its intentions, ideals, and repressions.

4. Fashion is systemic—the fashion system dictates what you wear—but qua style--in the sense of an individual's "enunciation"-- it is a tactic, and perhaps a means of resistance to the system in which is it (doomed to be) embedded. I mean "enunciation" to refer to the conscious or unconscious exercise of choice regarding what one wears. We perform our bodies, speaking them as one does a sentence, with intention, ambiguity, and the problematics of reception (does someone read you right?) imported wholecloth. N.B.: I say conscious performance because babies and small dogs do not have style: they are regarded as objects by the fashion system: prosthetic extensions of their owners' sensibilities. This is why Upper East Side Ladies from Manhattan carry small dogs in their purses, and the 30 year old teenager sitting across from you on the #49 bus in Capitol Hill has adorned his dog's neck with a tattered bandana.

The question that seemed to be on the table at the end of our talk was the role of irony in terms of collaborative and personal enunciation. I found myself arguing that irony could be read at the individual (personal) level—in this case clothing--rather than the collaboratively engineered level—in this case public space. I.e., an instance of sartorial fashion could manifest irony, whereas a building would not. I remain unconvinced that an instance of public space can be rendered ironically, although Clifford raised the terrific instance of deconstruction as an architectural style… But here's what to do:

ASSIGNMENT

Reading (and Blogging) the Body: A Sartorial Exercise

"It is only superficial people who do not judge by appearances." –Oscar Wilde
"I got my brand new fetching red leather jacket on." –Rufus Wainwright

Write a 600 word or so account of what you wore to class on 23 April. (If you didn't make it to class, what did you wear between 3.30-4.50 PST?) "What you wore" includes the following: the clothing, accessories, and any other means of adorning the body in a means visible to a third party. We do not need to know about underwear, or for that matter its absence.

--This exercise divides into two parts.--

I. Part one is to be a third person, objective rendering of the terrain (i.e., you) rendered in as neutral terms as possible. Adopt the perspective of a third party, torqued toward the language of anthropology, sociology, literature, or case study--whatever set of rhetorics with which you are comfortable, or with which you wish to become comfortable.

II. Part two is to be written in the first person. It may or may not be a direct reply to part one. You may wish to pay particular attention to the following:

A. Account of motivation behind general or particular choices made or factors in terms of what you wore (I hadn't done my laundry, so my outfit was wrinkled, having been recycled from the closet floor earlier that morning)

B. Significance of (Acquisition of) clothing, accessories, etc.: If a particular aspect of your style bears remark, this is the place to do it.

EXAMPLE
I'll go first, prompted by the wonderfully invasive question leveled at me today.

Subject: Visiting professor. Sex: Female. Age: Uncertain [indulge me]. Race: Caucasian. Religion: No visible markers thereof. Red string on right wrist may indicate adherence to Judaic Kabbalah, although a female's adoption thereof suggests some level of irony in, play regarding, or secularization of religious orthodoxy.

Clothes: Subject wore pants and shirt. Both shirt and pants were oversized in regard to subject's bodily frame. Both appeared to be of natural or natural appearing fabric: e.g. cotton, linen. Shirt was marketed for males: evident from buttons present on the right, rather than the left (as is primarily the case for mainstream women's garments). Shirt was unbuttoned until second button, allowing display of necklace (see below). Shirt sleeves were buttoned at cuffs, and unbuttoned at forearms. While primary effect was monochromatic, with the absence of any overt design or pattern on clothing, pants were a dark midnight blue. This may or may not indicate aesthetic discrimination (subtle contrast of colors) or failure (pants and shirt do not match) on the subject's part. Clothing, while loose, was kempt: no stains, wrinkles, or alterations were visible.

Hair was cut short, and presumably untreated by color given the subtle [indulge me] occurrence of grey hairs. While short hair generically indicates a certain level of maintenance—for it would not otherwise be short—the precise degree of maintenance was indeterminate. No hair accessories or overt modification (barrette, pick, part).

Bodily accessories include aforementioned red string, a silver-colored necklace featuring chain and pendant, an absence of earrings (marked, given that ears were pierced), and while no tattoos were visible, the subject appeared in class with writing on her right hand (suggesting subject is either left handed or ambidextrous). Overt brandification was limited to the logo present on shoes: black and white trainers were branded with "Jack Purcell/Converse" logo. Shoes were laced, and double-tied.

Given the presence of masculinist and gender neutral garb (see shirt above; the absence of makeup as accessory, and the ambiguous red string) the subject seems to be relatively unconstricted in any adherence to strict notions of clothing as a normative indicator of gender. In the context of the site—that is, not only speaking before but introducing herself to a class, and one ultimately focused on the body and fashion—the clothing must be read performatively.

Part 2.
I thought a fair amount about what I was going to wear to your class. I am teaching a graduate seminar this quarter on fashion and modernism on Tues/Thurs; it's very intense, and while I typically dress carefully when I'm teaching (that is, on the days that I have class), when I teach a class on clothing, I am especially conscious of my decisions. But I met with you on Monday, not a teaching day, and so I was not in High Professor Mode. I was coming into your class and talking, but I very deliberately chose not to adopt the persona of the one adjudicating the proceedings. In that mode, I'm aware of being a professor who's just been awarded tenure and promotion, and so this year I'm far more cavalier about what I allow myself to be seen wearing on campus. Prior to this year the only pair of pants I would have worn into a classroom were my pinstripe Armani trousers. This year, I am far more relaxed and ironic—to use the language we began to play with today—about my sartorial choices.

So: my black shirt is a man's DKNY I found at Goodwill for cheap, and regularly pair with generic dojo workout pants when I'm going to the gym after campus, as I did after class. I suppose I wanted to err on the side of the casual, since usually as a professor I err on (or lean to) the side of the hyper-professional. My talk with you reflected this.

The humanities is very subject to identity politics—how what you teach may be read to intersect with who or what you "are"—and today's clothing's gender play indulges this. I like to think it is either blandly innocuous (not distracting to someone who is trying to understand an intellectual argument) or a uniform.

I am horribly attuned to jewelry--my own and others. Freud would read this as yet another indicator of fetishism and/or the castration complex (females born un-penised; the perception of lack leads to the focus on bodily adornment as a mode of compensation, or some such rhetoric). I've never bought this (literally or metaphorically). I read fashion and adornment as modes of expression and with that creativity. Typically I wear a ring or two, and earrings, but today I only wore a necklace I've had for 10 years that displays the Sanskrit for what I colloquially gloss as Relax, Kid. One of the things I love about being an academic is the freedom that comes with it, and I play with such symbols, periodically adopting them as talismanic and then relinquishing them. The red string is personal, and evolving; it's not something I care to explicate here, but of course insofar as I wore it I draw attention to the fact that I wish not to discuss it. Don't take that personally. I look forward to reading your offerings. Best, JB

END

Thursday, April 19, 2007

research question

now that you have had some time to engage your research topics, it is time to begin making some research design decisions. as a group, submit a proposed research question and field sites, as well as your preliminary thoughts on methods.

the objective of this stage of your project is to identify a researchable topic and to articulate it concisely. use 300-500 words to state your question, the field site(s) where data will be collected, and the methods you'd like to use. the brevity of this articulation (think abstract or executive summary) is meant to evoke only that which is necessary to communicate the project. but dont panic! this is the first iteration and there will be time for changes and adjustments.

specifically:

1) complete this exercise to help you determine what a researchable question looks like (do all 6 sections noted in the upper left hand corner of the page and take the review quiz -- the exercise is brief but helpful).
2) work with your groups to discuss/brainstorm/negotiate a research question that specifically captures what you will study.
3) identify field sites (both online and in amsterdam) where you will collect data to answer your research questions.
4) develop an abstract that a- introduces the topic, b- clearly states the question(s), c- identifies the field sites, and d- states the methods you will use.

if you are one of the groups pursuing the category of "pilot study" or "academic research" you also need to situate your study in the literature.

5) once you have an abstract, post it on each of your blogs. the abstract should be the same on each blog, but if you want, you can add personal comments about the proposal in a separate post.

6) identify one person in each group to create a page on our course wiki. create the page in the "group projects" category on our wiki home page. post your abstract on your group page.

stuff to remember: abstracts, although short in length, can be deceptively difficult to write. spend time working through ambiguous ideas and statements to make them more clear. this exercise will go a long way in helping you focus on a project. this is an iterative process so there are opportunities to evolve your ideas and even change your topics later on.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

urban methods

this is the mid-week (small) post. choose one of the following three articles and write a reflection based on your "reading the city" excursion.

1) Lynch – A Walk Around the Block (ref syllabus)
2) Zeisel – Inquiry by Design (ref syllabus)
3) Castells – European cities & information Society (ref syllabus)

each person in your group should choose a different article. in other words, if you have three people in your group, all three articles will be covered.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

reading the city

The goal of this assignment is to use the urban studies methods that you read about and the ideas presented by Professor Ryan, to explore possibilities related to your research topic. What I mean by possibilities is to explore and observe a setting in Seattle that will help you understand how to approach a similar setting in Amsterdam.

This experience should inform 1) the kinds of things you can learn from an urban place, 2) the way you will approach urban places in Amsterdam, and 3) how you think about your research question.

For this assignment (due before class on Monday) each group will need to:

- Choose a place in the city; a city block, a building, a public space, a neighborhood, an historical site, a piece of public art, etc.

- Meet at this place and explore, observe, inquire, and document (take notes, photographs, etc.)

- begin by walking around (e.g. the block) and assessing the context.

- the “walking around the block” part can be the whole of this assignment or it can be just the context. For example, if your “place” is a building or park, or even the inside of some place, walking around the block will help you situate your object of study.

- blog your experience and how this way of data gathering might help you in Amsterdam. Reference the methods articles (Lynch & Zeisel) in your analysis.

Professor Ryan will join us again on Monday to review your findings.

And finally…

“Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the rap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our century. Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, and look around. Do not jog. Do not run…Walk. Stroll. Saunter…Explore.”

OUTSIDE LIES MAGIC -Stilgoe 1998

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

online manifestation

Blog assignment for Wednesday:

As we discussed in class, find online manifestation(s) of your research topic. Internet search such as google.com, google.nl, and technorati.com will get you part of the way. However, you'll likely need to do a little virtual ethnography to find the core of the interaction and its boundaries. For example, if you find a relevant blog/forum/website, follow its links and pay attention to the context of the link. Depending on your area of interest, you may need to narrow or broaden your question to locate and/or delineate the online component.

on your blog:

1) post the relevant links
2) briefly describe what you found and what you learned about your topic
3) suggest some ways in which you could analyze the online manifestation of your topic

Sunday, April 8, 2007

research groups

As discussed in class last Wednesday, here are the details for your blog assignment due before class on Monday:

a) Try to establish a group of 2 or 3 researchers.

b) In a paragraph, describe the general research idea and a couple of broad questions.

c) Additionally, state your research goals by referencing one of categories from the chart we reviewed on Wednesday; int’l engagement, pilot study, or academic research.

d) Identify any challenges you anticipate in achieving achieving your stated goal

If you are able to establish a group but not a topic, do the above and state where you are in the process.

If you are not ready to commit to a group or an idea, restate your research idea post, reflecting on your current thinking by answering a, b, c, and d above.

Looking ahead to next week’s agenda:

Monday – guest speaker Kirsten Foot: affordances/limitations of virtual methods. I've added one of Kirsten's articles to your syllabus an optional reading for Monday, Websphere Analysis and Cyberculture Studies

Wednesday – guest speaker Dennis Ryan: affordances/limitations of qualitative urban methods

Issue Crawler: Email me if you'd like to participate in an Issue Crawler workshop. I'll set up a time and place to demo the application. Would take about an hour, after which you'd be ready to launch some crawls. In the mean time, you can check out some of Richard Rogers' work on issue crawler: 1) chapt 1 of his book, Information Politics on the Web, and an article on using Issue Crawler as a research method.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

small blog assignment for wednesday

comment on at least two other research idea blog posts. the goal is to engage others in dialog about common interests as you begin to formulate small research groups of 2 to 3 people.

here are a couple of additional resources:

- you can search for blogs at technorati.com

- for those interested in prostitution, i posted the first few pages of "when sex becomes work," a book written by mariska majoor, founder of the Prostitute Information Center (PIC) in amsterdam. i have the book so let me know if you'd like to borrow it.

on wednesday we'll discuss web 2.0 (a contentious term, but useful for our purposes). we'll take a look at a couple of research projects as examples, and revisit the topical themes in your research posts. you'll have 10-15 minutes at the end of class to talk to others about forming groups. the reading assignment is light--it's actually two short video clips and a website -- see the syllabus for details.