Goodbye, You Crazy Fool

My major problem with the readings from last week stemmed from the binding theme of the book: interactions with the public. When interacting with the public, some of the writers acted like an astranged wanderer who happened upon unattended egg and was trying to decide if it should hatch it or eat it. In reading some of their pieces, you could hear the author replaying the moment they told their fathers that they are going to spend 4-7 years getting a PhD in Rhetoric. Like voting for Adlai Stevenson wasn't enough to piss off their parents (that was maybe an unfair shot at age, I realize that most of those writers, if they were ever alive at time, were probably not old enough to vote).

What I like about Mathieu is her understanding that we need tactics when interweaving academic work with public discourse, but we also do need to act we discovered fire either. She seems to make that apparent of the first page:

"Writing instruction conceived this way goes beyond notions of academic competence to encompass discursive projects in many areas of community life. This public turn in composition studies more generally asks teachers to connect the writing that students and they themselves do with 'real world' texts, events, or exigencies." (1)

Now, in my time teaching writing I learned two things:

1. I hate teaching writing, and I will hopefully never do it again.

2. Writing instruction is one of the most important commodities in a society.

My contempt for writing instructions begins with people who we read for last week. They always come across as overly Romantic. Like their professors made them read too much Emerson. So when they start talking about the pragmatic side of writing instruction in relationship to public discourse, they act like they are inventing the wheel. In fact, you can make the argument that Emerson, while very romantic in his syntax, had a vivid understanding of the political climate in which his texts were operating. Even he was engaging the public without tripping over his feet.

I never wanted say this because I never wanted to sound like my Father, but this shit is common sense. Of course student are going to apply the communication skills we give them beyond the academy (a very short part of their professional lives). Most of these students are going to be living and working in the public when they leave. Why does the acadamy have to be considered a bubble they step into for 4 years.

I think that is why I am leaving the academy.

As I was reading tactics of hope, I was appalled by what the English professor from the story starting on 122 did. This proves that "when institutional priorities intersect with community needs, people can get hurt. Projects can lead to bitterness and disillusionment" (122). The professor only thought about his own needs and desires and basically USED Jane's organization. I was pisssssed off. This guy just makes academics look like horrible people in general.

This is only one example of a community engagement project gone horribly, horribly wrong, and I'm sure there are others, but I'm glad that Jane did not discount working with a university forever. I wouldn't have blamed her if she did.

However, this, again, reminded me a lot of my experiences with the COE because it seems that we only think of our needs (we meaning the students). We used our "community partners" to fulfill our own needs without even really focusing on what the schools needed. At the same time, there is an institutional problem because we were never taught how to address the schools' needs. We then wrote about these students and "profited" (through good grades) from our work with them. I like to think that I brought something to them, but in the case of my first "service learning" experience, I'm not really sure that they did. Maybe I helped a few kids from getting cuts from the metal edge on the aluminum foil box, but I'm not really sure I made a lasting impact on their academic lives.

Even in my more advanced field work, when I was with a class for an entire year, two to three times a week, I was usually only focused on how this work was going to benefit me, and I admit, as much as I loved the students in that class, I did it to complete an assignment. I think that's a huge problem with service learning programs. Complete the required hours and write a paper and get a good grade. Done. There's no chance to build a relationship with the partners, and those relationships are so important.

I think that the COE (and the University in general) should do a major overhaul of the service learning programs. That way, we can actually bring hope to our community partners instead of just bringing some sort of literacy that we believe is superior to their own literacies.

As I was reading through Tactics of Hope, I began mulling over some thoughts about community literacy and service learning. The main idea/concern that kept running through my mind revolved around questioning why most of what we have read involving community literacy is situated as “us” going out to “them.” Or, as we discussed in class last week, rhetoric as academic discipline—where the scholar is the agent, but acting in a space in which he or she is not native. Then, I began questioning why the majority of scholarship I’ve read on the subject (both in class and on my own) situates community literacy in communities/publics of low socio-economic statuses.

This makes me wonder what community literacy looks like in a more upscale (and possibly) stable community. Like, I’m imagining community literacy enacted to help serve the Potter Park Zoo (where I currently volunteer). Perhaps that type of work simply doesn’t have the same hotness factor as does working with women’s shelters and soup kitchens? Or perhaps working with those we perceive as equals is such a totally different dynamic that it’s considered boring? Or maybe, just maybe, as selfish researchers, we have to do something, anything, that will allow us to perceive ourselves as giving something back?

I’m not being facetious here; this is an actual line of inquiry in my mind. Why is it that the bulk of what we see focuses on “bad” neighborhoods, “unfortunate” circumstances, and on those perceived as somehow “less than?” I suppose if I were to look at this in a less cynical way, I could imagine that, as privileged academics, we may feel the responsibility to use our powers for good and not for evil, and that, for some reason, we feel we can do the most good in areas populated by “underprivileged” people.

My fear, in writing this, is that Jeff will answer this question in, like, one sentence. Interesting, right? Seriously, at the beginning of the semester, I would have wanted Jeff to give a quick and definitive answer. But now? Since my goal in this class has shifted from “getting all the answers” to “generating good questions,” I’ll be seriously disappointed if this line of questioning sucks.

On a side note, I picked up Paul Loeb’s Soul of a Citizen at C’s this year (for only $2.00!!!), and I was thrilled to see Mathieu reference it on page 47. It’s on my summer reading list…

Lots more to say, but not enough time in which to say it…

Outreach=Out There

As a person who works for Outreach and Engagement—obviously we do the type of community outreach work that Mathieu is writing about. And I am sort of offended (in a naïve sort of way) about how she feels about community engagement work through Universities and how she feels that Universities exploit and ultimately do not help the communities they are “serving”. However, I also recognize that she is in fact right about a lot of her views and I have seen first-hand how researchers don’t really care if they help the community they simply want grant money and data to get more grant money.

The University Outreach and Engagement department website says that they “foster a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship between the University and the Public.” Then in the next paragraph they say that “outreach and engagement provides university scholars with new information for publications.” Perhaps the extent to which each study or research project is “mutually beneficial” depends on the researcher and the type of project. I like to think that when I am a grant writer or a principal investigator on a community project my work will truly be mutually beneficial (or maybe my view is a little too romantic and I need to acquire a little bit of healthy cynicism). I would think that this type of work HAS TO be mutually beneficial or else we wouldn’t be able to continue doing it.

Looking at the UOE website a little further I think that we do our best. We appear to be helping communities with the projects that we do. Maybe it would be beneficial to do a study on whether or not the community wants us to help 

My brain is convulsing...

I
Jarratt quotes Bruner as saying, “one way we can do the public work of rhetoric is by mapping the distance between history and memory, understanding how far those imaginaries are from historical fact, and with what consequence.” My questions here are partially fueled up by the work I did in Malea’s class last semester and partially by the readings done for this class early on in the semester: First of all, how can we consider history as “fact,” and are “facts” always true. I believe that if we call “facts” into question, then this whole argument becomes upset. Now, from this reading, I see that Bruner is discussing “large-scale public memories of war,” so it seems that we are talking about perception vs. fact. Hmmm…this brings up all sorts of questions and ideas…

II
Reading Cintron’s piece was a bit depressing. (God, I hope he doesn’t happen to stumble upon this blog posting…) As he de-essentializes democracy, and calls into question the very meaning of democracy. When he states “’democracy’” is a concept open to inquiry, a rhetoric whose substance and meaning are opaque until the motives behind its deployment are understood,” my brain kind of shuddered. Not because I disagree with him, or think his ideas evil, but, rather, because being able to use the word “democracy and all its attendant terms as “quintessential topoi that exhibit sufficient malleability to mobilize the most disparate collective desires and actions,” makes things a bit more handleable. On the other hand, if we continue with wrong/faulty assumptions about a situation/challenge/idea/etc., then we can never ask the right questions, thus disallowing valid and workable solutions.

For example, Cintron states: “Perceived need or real need, perceived fear or real fear—when people feel subject to these lacks, they assume that material conditions are the causes of their woe, and from that base rhetors search for the available arguments that have the power to win what is needed or defeat what is feared.” Honestly, this totally freaks me out. Umm…yes, I do assume that material conditions are the causes of my (and others’) woe. It would be so much easier to just blame it on the lack itself…but, I realize that it is much deeper than that. What about the substance (Locke) of that material condition…it cannot be itself, so there is definitely a reason for the material condition. I suppose that is what I’m interested in finding/researching, and then discovering answers to in my own work: what ideologies/assumptions/political philosophies are causing/contributing to that material lack and how can rhetoric be utilized to cause changes.

Rhetoric FTW!

Then and now, the measure of rhetoric’s responsibility to and involvement in public and political life has always been a question of distance. How close do we get to political discourse when it is consumed with violence? How close do we get when solutions to social injustice transcend the limits of scholarly discourse and criticism? How close do we get when the interlocutor is our neighbor, and that neighbor is in trouble? (Coogan and Ackerman, 4)


In the Novella by Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, a man by the name of Marlow is hired to search for Kurtz, a English captain lost in the African Jungle: the heart of darkness. His dying words: The Horror. The Horror. Kurtz was the standard Victorian hero: running off to savage lands with only a hunting rifle and sweet Handlebar Mustache only to become a god to what ever less-than-holy race he encountered (he was actually considered a god in the novel). What he discovered in the darkness was too much for him to handle, and it eventually claimed his life.

Why does Coogan and Ackerman remind me of Kurtz. Kurtz is to Coogan and Ackerman as the Heart of Darkness is to the public. Why is that every encounter that I have with Rhetoric talking about the public goes something like The Heart of Darkness. Rhetoricians seem to go all Victorian on us and act like were hunting lions on the African steppes. Come on man. Like the public is something that has to be colonized and controlled before it can be helped.

I have to credit where credit is due. Miller at least takes a somewhat sensible approach:


I do not mean here to dismiss rhetoric as a sham art or to reject it in favor of some other, better description of our communicative dilemmas. I mean, rather, to honor the dangers and powers of rhetoric, which the ancients well understood and which our enthusiasm about the revival of rhetoric may sometimes lead us to forget. We cannot, as Garsten says, avoid the “twin dangers” of pandering and manipulation that arise from the nature of rhetoric itself (2).[i] Some theorists have encouraged us to reconceive rhetoric as a cooperative rather than an adversarial art, Booth prominent among them. At the same time, he confesses his own failures and inabilities in attempting to practice the cooperative listening-rhetoric he preaches. (16)

In this case, sensible doen't seem to be helping anyone. I feel like there standing over a glass jar and looking down at something they don't know quite how to deal with but they feel they have to help any way. Coogan and Ackerman seem only to be able to enter that jar under the pretense of some cultural protest. In that sense, I'm starting to see why 1960 and 70s became a resurgent period for Rhetoric studies.

I'm not saying that Rhetoric can't be valuable to the public (Once we find it that is. Dewey's concept never rang so true at it does with Rhetoric's efforts to do so). I think our program is proof of that. But when we approach the public like Cicero addressed the Forum, we are playing a game of power and not a game of agency.

FTW!

Ramblings...

I will be honest, I read the readings this week only one time and I feel that I didn't read them very closely--however I am going got go with my initial impression on this one and hope that it isn't too far off. I feel like these readings were very theoretical.. I feel like it (community based work)shouldn’t be complicated this much. The intro talks about taking rhetorical work "public" and "doing rhetoric" but really what they are doing is complicating things and imposing their views and believes onto everyone else. "communities can benefit" blah. As if we (rhetoricians) have all the answers.

I realize that theoretical interpretations are important---even when the topic is seemingly simple and straight forward---I guess I just didn't like the way this book chose to go about it.

~~Stray thought~~~ Perhaps it is important to pose a theoretical interpretation of community based work at a time like this when the field is so new and people are just starting to pin down exactly what community literacy is and how to do that work or what is considered to be community literacy work? I don't know.

I guess I prefer to see the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the community literacy work (or any work for that matter)rather than the theoretical background and influence of such work. However this has proved to be a weakness of mine---so this is a not always a good thing.

There were a few things I liked about the readings---the Space to Work in Public Life was interesting. Except for the part where they said "Cleary, these communities can benefit from the increased attention of rhetoricians in pursuit of democratic ideals" and then continued to qualify that with "but rhetoric can also benefit from community partnerships premised on negotiated search for the common good." Yes. Because it is that simple.

I apologize for my ramblings... its 5:30 in the morning :)

Use of Rhetoric

While reading the first "On Being Useful: Rhetoric and the Work of Engagement," I thought of my hypothetical community engagement project. The problem I identified is that "it is common to think about community engagement in terms of ourselves—the work that we are doing, the impact that we hope to have, and the way that our presence changes a community (Grabill 1). The way we think of our own work is rhetoric. Our actions reflect this rhetoric.

I like how Grabill made the turn to focusing the "public work of rhetoric" on others, and I think that's exactly how it should be. What if we help develop a new rhetoric? This rhetoric should combine the original rhetoric of the group and the rhetorical tools that we, as scholars engaged in communities, bring to the community.

What I found the most interesting was that Grabill and Hart-Davidson marketed WIDE under the name of Capital Area Community Media Center to argue that it was engaged and needed in the community. Grabill goes onto explain that "Rhetoric is always material, and it is most powerful when it makes things that enable others to perform persuasively" (Grabill 14). This use of rhetoric was designed to make a Thing.

I guess i never thought of using rhetoric in this way before.

Social Media Marketer as Community Organizer

While much of American political organizing caters to particular group
interests and identities, the IAF works to create bridging social capital by
bringing leaders from different faith communities together in what it calls
broad-based organizations. Warren, 32

The reading I did for this week made me think of how communities are organized and how communities function based up that organization. Now, this blog post is going to bridge back to community informatics a little bit, but I think Warren's chapters apply to this post.

Both Starbucks and Toyota are limited in their social media teams; Starbucks has six people on their team, and Toyota has three people on theirs. In addition, I doubt anyone on the Starbucks team can make a Frappuccino or anyone on the Toyota team can explain how the sticking accelerator is being fixed. But each company has employees that are experts in these areas.

So, when Starbucks created MyStarbucksidea.com, the social media team wasn't creating content and responding to ideas posted by customers. Instead, "Starbucks set out to ensure the departments impacted by the site (which includes practically every department) had a representative who was responsible for being the liaison" (from Engagement Database Report found on the website). The Mini-Starbucks Card was actually a customer idea that made its way to Chuck Davidson, an employee at Starbucks. He traced the comments, wrote a proposal, and put it into action.

Toyota has as similar breakdown in roles:

"Take a look at the Twitter account and you’ll see that in addition to DeYager, three public relations specialists from sales, environment/safety, and public affairs/community outreach contribute posts. The Toyota Twitter team uses monitoring software to identify tweets mentioning Toyota, then responds from a respective area of expertise using technology from CoTweet to manage multiple authors on the single Twitter account. This same mode is utilized on Toyota’s Facebook pages — response requests are sent out and come back from around the company, depending on the topic" (from Engagement Database Report found on the website).

What is interesting about social media is that that Warren's dynamic, as explained by Walter, Kretzmann, and McNknight on page 68 of their text, fits into effective organization social media strategies.

Warren i1 963, ix) identities two dimensions of community involving either, relations of units (whether individuals, groups, or organizations). The horizontal dimension involves "the relation of local units to one another"; this is what we think of as the community. The vertical dimension involves "the relation of local units to extracommunity systems" in the larger society and culture. (68)

We can think of employees and internal communications as being on the horizontal axis and consumers and external communications (PR and brand affinity) as being on the vertical axis.

Gang Leader for a Day: A case study

While reading the assigned texts for this week, I was also reading a book I’ve been interested in checking out for quite some time now: Gang Leader for a Day A rogue sociologist takes to the streets by Sudahir Venkatesh. While I was hesitant to read a trade paperback (New York Times Bestseller) with such a wildly dramatic title, the contents basically detail Venkatesh’s methods for doing research, as well as offer an interesting version of Adele Clarke’s (Situational Analysis) project memoing. Basically, the book details Venkatesh’s fieldwork in the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago’s Southside. He started out wishing to do a simple survey on urban poverty and ended up hanging out with the Black Kings doing research on the underground economy of the urban poor. The book discusses his misconceptions, his mess-ups, and his relationships with the community. It seems to me that it might have been more accurately titled, “A naïve sociologist takes to the streets.”

Interestingly, the readings intersected with the readings we did for class this week. In fact, Gang Leader for a Day (GLFAD) almost seemed an example of what NOT to do when working with communities. Venkatesh worked with a prominent African American sociologist in an attempt to help find solutions to urban poverty. But rather than just accept the status quo, he wanted to understand the people and the situations he studied; he saw and experienced life on the streets and decided that sociology’s attempts to understand the people it studies were far from real. Certainly, Venkatesh’s motives seemed altruistic, but, as he admits in the book, his presence caused great harm to many of his subjects. For example, after granting him interviews, some community members end up on the outs with those in power—even suffering physical violence—because Venkatesh leaked information.

The valuable intersections I recognized while doing these readings in tandem were especially connected to “For Communities to Work” and to “Community Building Practice.” When looking at GLFAD, one can see at play multiple points from the readings. For example, Venkatesh is sometimes invited to sit in on Ms. Bailey’s (building president of the Local Advisory Council) tenant meetings. It is interesting to see that during these meetings, it is apparent that a “public” is definitely at work in the Robert Taylor Homes. In fact, some of them are even “engaged.” They show up at meetings and make suggestions for helping the community. However, where things begin to break down is evident on page 2 of “For Communities to Work:” “the amount of political will available in a community seems to depend on the extent to which people claim responsibility for what happens to them. They have to own their problems rather than blaming them on others.”

In many ways, this quote makes perfect sense: People have to take responsibility for the problems in their community and work to change them. In addition, they must take on the role of agent rather than of victim if they are to work toward changing their communities. But, this smacks suspiciously of what Victor Villanueva refers to as a bootstrap mentality. I wonder how this could work in a community that is so oppressed that it feels it can only embrace its victim status because to do otherwise would seem nonsensical. Ms. Bailey, the LAC president illustrates this point beautifully when reprimanding Venkatesh for asking the wrong questions and focusing on the wrong things in his study. She adeptly uses the Socratic method to show him the error of his thinking. This short excerpt from page 147 of GLFAD illustrates the point:

“You planning on talking with white people in your study?” she snapped, waving her hand at me as if she’d heard my spiel a hundred times already.
I was confused. “This is a study of the Robert Taylor Homes, and I suppose that most of the people I’ll be talking to are black. Unless there are whites who live here that I’m not aware of.”
“If I gave you only one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”
I was thrown off by this seeming non sequitur. I thought for a minute. “I guess I would say I’m starving because I’m not eating enough,” I answered.
“You got a lot to learn, Mr. Professor,” she said. “Again, if I gave you one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”
I was getting even more confused. I took a chance. “Because you’re not feeding me?”
“Yes! Very good!”

So, what is basically going on here is that Ms. Bailey, a force to be reckoned with in the community, wants the researcher to understand that the community is at the mercy of those outside it. I wonder what the Kettering Foundation would do with that.

Creating Citizens, Creating Community?

Governments can't create citizens (Matthews).

For some reason this line sparked a train of thought and personal memories, which I have basically outlined here. While reading the readings for today I am reminded of a TV special on Meth addiction and how it started in Oregon and spread East all across the US in record time, which led me to think about my home town and it's special issue with Meth.

There was a serious meth problem in my hometown (Ovid, not Westphalia)---so much so that a meth house blew up a block away from my house---I was at home when it happened--it felt like an earthquake, or what I assume an earthquake would feel like. No one was at the house that blew up--thank goodness. However, the house was completely destroyed. It just so happened that the firefighters were having a fund raiser that night in the Town Hall and there was drinking involved so none of them were in any condition to fight a fire.

Anyway, more to the point. Why didn't the community come together to fix this meth issue? What would have happened if they did? Knowing what I know now I realize that the meth problem (at least in the schools) was strictly the "stoner kids" it didn't directly effect the jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, or anyone besides those "lost cause, stoner kids." But what would have happened if one of the stoner kids shared with a jock or cheerleader or other student who was higher on the high school hierarchy? I assume that their parents would get involved and then there would have been community action. But since we have a marginalized group of people whom have been deemed unhelpable or whatever, nothing was done.

This is a example of citizenship not taking place. No one stepped up to fix this serious problem. It wasn't addressed in the school. Even after the meth house blew up NO ONE talked about it! At least not to the students, whom it was obviously effecting. Knowing what know now this is rather frustrating and disappointing…

Random Thoughts
People being citizens---doing citizenship---is this always a good thing? The people on the flight that crashed in Pennslyvania on 9/11 were being citizens---practicing citizenship---saving lives.
But what about protesters---standing up for what they believe in ---are they doing citizenship? What about terrorist doing what they believe to be citizenship? Are there right and wrong ways to do citizenship or is it more a matter of moral versus immoral ways of doing citizenship?

Kinda like Martin Luther King Jr. versus Malcolm X (before he went on Hajj) Both were doing work for the black community--trying to change the world--just in different ways.

"Some of the most striking instances of the force of political will come from stories of how people have acted in times of crisis" (Matthews). Reminds me of learning about the Civil War--when so many Westpoint graduates stood out as leaders---changing our country.

“Own their problems rather than blaming them on others” (Matthews)
What if the problems really aren't their fault---I am told repeatedly that "urban youth" are the way that they are because of certain systems that are in place which ultimately keep them there and perpetuate the cycle of poverty…

Perhaps communities wanting to solve an issue may benefit from producing a logic model?

Conceptualizing Community

"How we conceptualize community powerfully influences what we see and do in community practice" (Walter 67).

This quote, although seemingly obvious, really made me start thinking (again) about what community is and how we can define it. I've been constantly thinking about defining community for the last 12 weeks, and each week it seems like my old definition is thrown out the window, and I start all over again. Or maybe I don't. Maybe I build on the fallacies of my previous definitions to create a more concrete (and perhaps "better") definition of community for myself. Because, let's face it, community is a pretty complex thing. There are so many ways to define it, and these definitions, as Walter says, influence our work in the community.

The traditional definition of community (Warren 1963) is a boundaried social or demographic unit (Walter 67), but, as Walter says, it doesn't take into account our work in the community. Our work in the community influences and, in a way, defines the community. And there are also multiple consciousnesses in play here that are not always taken into account. To ignore these consciousnesses issues may be oversimplified (Walter 68). Oversimplifying issues is never a good way to help the community.

This got me thinking about my own work in the community through various institutions. I'll use my service learning for TE 250 as an example. I really think that the issues here were oversimplified, and therefore, did not help the community as was originally intended. In TE 250 it was assumed that urban schools needed our help. Fine. That sounds great. I know that there are usually lower reading scores, etc., in urban schools, and I'm all for raising them. However, I was placed in a science class and was basically just there to help manage the classroom. Sometimes I tutored kids or gave them extra help, but I don't really think it enhanced their learning in any meaningful way. What if all the students in my class had chosen one school to work at, picked an issue with the help of administrators and professors and then did our service learning focused on that? That would've gotten to the heart of the issue and provided real help to the students.

We didn't take into account all the forces and all the relationships that helped to define that school community. So we oversimplified and didn't provide any real help. I just got my hours and my grade. If we're going to go out into the community, we should help the community more than ourselves.

So what do I think a community is this week?? Well, I think that it's basically formed by interactions of people with similar concerns and that there are many factors that come into play when forming a community.

I have three more weeks to come up with a concrete definition... Can I do it?? ;)

Changing Military Invention and Documentation

The way I have been approaching digital media has been through leveraging groups and communities that previously did not exist. They used media to create channels of communication that were previously not there in order to address a matter of concern. The interesting thing about Jeff's Book is that it is focused on how existent communities adopt communal writing (inventing) technologies. And it made me wonder, what other examples can I find out there of communal writing. Shiky, who I have drawing from all semeseter, offers examples about how groups arise out of thin air. What happens when groups adopt new writing technologies.

The Military

The US military recently wikyfied their army field manuals. Soldiers have had problems in Afghanistan and Iraq with enemy combatants adjusting to field procedures. To address this problem the army implemented technology that allowed updates to be made on the fly. Now, field soldiers can update the procedures as they encounter new enemy tactics. This technology turned every member of the military into a writer. The advantage of a wiki is that it allows the community members who experience the problems in the field to post a solution. But it also maintains military hierarchy. Writers, in this case, are still on the low end of the pole. Higher ranking officials still control how this technology is used and who can use it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3aJ3zeAv6g&feature=player_embedded

In this example, there is an existent community that adopted an new technology that changed the way they produced and shared knowledge. This is the way that infrastructures adjust to support invention that ultimately improves the function of a community. As Grabill mentions in his book, Star and Ruhleder believe that infrastructures become invisible as they break down (91). The standard infrastructure that supported the production of field manuals was no longer adequate. If you will, that infrastructure became exposed and open to attack.

One other interesting note that the normal rigid connection between expert and status breaks down. Now the experts on the enemy, the soldiers in the field, can update the manual as needed while still keeping their status as field soldiers.

"People working and writing within communities need help, and they know it. But they do not need certain kinds of help" (63).

Reading this, I thought, "Wow. That seems kind of like common sense." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this could probably be ignored by people working in communities. To use the example from the book, community member Barbara says that it's helpful when experts present scientific information and facts, but people from universities come out and just want to talk to them (63). What do people hope to accomplish by just talking to community members? Are they trying to give them a voice? Because it seems to me, the people in Harbor already kind of have a voice. They just need more information to make their voice and rhetorical tools more powerful.

This got me thinking about the Cushman piece. What if Cushman had just gone into the community and talked to the residents and then published her findings. I think the piece would've been much less convincing. Instead, the lived in the community and worked with the residents. She helped them navigate the complex social services system. She gave them the kind of help and expertise they needed.

So if experts go into a community like Harbor and interview the residents about the effects of the pollution and then publish their findings, sure it gives the community a voice, in a way. But it also takes their voice away, and makes them less able to write for change.

Communitation, Commodities... and others

Linear Communication
The concept of linear communication was mentioned in the book, and my first thought was in what way is communication every linear? Sure there is face-to-face communication, but in today's world I think communication is hardly linear at all.

In my experience I get a lot of my information that at one point in time would have been communicated by family members to me personally, through facebook or twitter. I see an announcement or a status change or something and I will "Like" it or say congrats, but this is a rather indirect form of communication. When someone becomes engaged there is no longer a phone call letting everyone know, your status changes on facebook and it is assumed that everyone knows.

Information as a commodity
In some ways yes, information is a commodity. It can be bought and sold. However I agree that this analogy is "insuffient because it assumes use." Commodities are used, they are (for the most part) considered useful. In many cases information isn't used. It isn't read, understood, or if it is read or understood then it isn't applied. It is rather dangerous to assume that the information sent out to people in the community via fliers, door to door visits, emails, mailings, or other things are read, understood, and used.

The census is an example of this. We are trying to bring together our entire "imagined community" the United States of America in order to find out just how many of us there are. WE have seen advertisement after advertisements on TV on the internet, in the paper, on the bus. Everywhere. But half of Americans (people in our community) didn't know when the census was coming, what it was used for, what questions are on there, or when it was supposed to be mailed back. The information was presented to them, but it wasn't read, understood, or used.

Community Change

Documents or writing pieces that promote community change or cause change are mundane pieces of work. I don't have much to say about this concept because I feel that it alone says it all. I just felt it was worth mentioning because it is so true.

It reminds me of why I want to be a grant writer. Grant proposals don't get awards. They are read once and filed away. (in some cases they are used later for other things). They are not applauded for the wonderful prose and excellent use of imagery. They will not be found in text books or taught in classrooms. But they MAKE a difference in the world, in the country, in the community in which their plans are implemented. That is why I want to write them. To make a difference. :)

Discussion Paper for this week.

Digital Divide

I apologize for the tardiness--- just another example of the terrible internet connection out in the Boondocks :)

The Digital Divide. Mentioned briefly in the articles we read for this week and it was quite brilliantly described as being “about places left behind.” I never gave the digital divide too much thought, sadly I had the outlook that the internet was everywhere because it was everywhere that I had ever been. But then I moved to Dewitt, or rather I moved to the boondocks, where internet is not available, where streets aren’t plowed, and when a storm hits and takes out power we are the last to get it back. But mostly let’s focus on the internet issue.

As a person who has always had the internet and a cell phone in order to connect me with anyone and everyone at any given time, being without the internet is rather frightening. But then you get over the initial fright, which turns into annoyance. What if I want to work from home? What if I need information? Why should I have to drive all the way to town in order to get a good connection? Why did I take the internet for granted for so long?

Luckily the Federal Broadband Stimulus is working to fix this issue. Go here for more information: http://www.broadbandusa.gov/

Also mentioned in the same article is the fact that though the internet creates new ways of communicating, connecting, organizing etc, It is also creating new inequalities among people. Between those who have the internet and those who don’t and those who know how to use it and those who don’t, those who create web content and those who do not.

This also broadens the divide between those who are literate and those who are not. Those who are literate can use the internet and gain more information---those who are not literate cannot do this and therefore remain even farther divided. The informed get more informed and the ignorant remain ignorant.

Pentalk

I really found the Hagar and Haythorne article interesting because it was a practical, yet uncommon (at least for me), example of the value of technology to communities. I say uncommon because I don't often put agriculture and computing technology together in my mind. This is not to say that I view farmers as less intelligent; it's just something that I really had never thought of before. It seemed to me that Pentalk was well-organized and thought out, and it really brought two types of literacy to the affected community: literacy in computer operation and literacy about (then) current methods of disease prevention. I liked that they provided the computers on a rent or rent-to-own basis. I think it gave the farmers more of a choice, rather than just jamming literacy down their throats. It was also interesting to read about the formation of new communities not based on a shared physical space.

It then got me thinking about different ways that those types of technologies apply to my own life (excluding Facebook, Twitter, etc.). There is/used to be an emergency text message system on campus available to notify students and staff of emergencies on campus through text messages when e-mail wasn't readily accessible. Too bad I never subscribed to this service and will therefore, presumably, be unprepared in the case of an emergency situation on campus. This doesn't really bother me. Otherwise I would have subscribed already.

Back to Pentalk. What if the farmers chose not to subscribe? They could call neighboring farms owned by farmers who had subscribed to get the same information almost verbatim. The neighbor with the service could read from the Pentalk service. Just like my friend could forward an emergency text to me if he or she deemed it necessary.

Then I thought about literacy being violent. The farmers who chose to use the Pentalk system gained a new literacy that made them different from their peers. The relationship is changed because of this new literacy. Maybe resentment becomes a factor. "Why didn't you subscribe and therefore always calling me for information?" So couldn't this resentment, in turn, tear apart the physical community? Does the physical community matter now that the virtual one is in place?

As I read through the articles about community informatics, I was reminded of a series of events that took place several years ago in my old neighborhood (surprise, surprise). As I drove down Damen one day, I encountered a police roadblock. There really was nothing too unusual about this, as the cops frequently terrorized community members. In fact, just the week before, a roadblock had been set up at one of the busiest intersections. Ostensibly, it was to conduct seatbelt checks, but everyone in the neighborhood knew the real reason for the roadblock: the cops were trying to ferret out undocumented residents (more commonly referred to as “illegal aliens”) for deportation.

Anyway, on this particular day, I got angry as I was forced to sit through the backed up traffic in order to deal with Chicago’s version of the Gestapo. As I neared the front of the line, I readied to berate the cop and give him a piece of my mind. However, this time, it was a different story. The cops were handing out flyers that featured a drawing of a man who had just raped two neighborhood middle school girls. I was horrified that something so brutal had occurred just two blocks from my apartment. I was also thankful (for the first time) for the police presence on my street. On the other hand, I was still pissed off because this was the first time in two years that I had seen the cops do anything close to “serve and protect” this community. I remember saying something to the officer along the lines of: “Oh, wow. I didn’t realize you guys actually did anything good for this neighborhood. Usually you just mess with the residents. What a nice deviation from the norm. I hope you catch the guy.”

I suppose I started thinking about this in regard to Community Informatics after I read the piece “Crisis, Framing & Community.” I began thinking about how information in my neighborhood was disseminated and how we could have responded to a crisis. The official response of authorities in the incident above were problematic in several ways. First, it seemed ridiculous that the same institution that had been oppressing the people was now attempting to assist them, and the total lack of trust between the community and the police made this a difficult stretch. To me, this indicates the absolute necessity of good working relationships, which might be why Pentlak was able to assist the farmers as they did. Second, much like the farmers in the article, most of the people in my neighborhood did not own computers. In fact, most of the people in my neighborhood did not speak English. So, while the idea of handing out flyers in a neighborhood in which people were not computer literate seemed a good one, the results were not as good as they could have been because the flyers were printed in English.

Who Defines Citizenship?

I read this article about Ottawa's Indian Act and it reminded me of some of Benhabib's work:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/03/10/native-status.html#ixzz0iG8KVGMe

Language as a Tool

I guess I always knew that language could be used as a tool, but I never really thought of it until I read Cushman's book. (Odd because I am a language major.) Anyway, the ways that the members of the Quayville community used language were INCREDIBLE, and I found this book incredibly fascinating.

If you think about it, the only tool that these community members had was their knowledge of language and how it worked in gatekeeping situations. They didn't have money or a formal education to help them meet their needs and the needs of their children, so they had to develop their language skills to help them get what they wanted out of gatekeeping situations. They also used Cushman as a language tool. They used her language to their advantage. They also used her status as a Ph.D. candidate to their advantage when applying for housing - another example of their language proficiency. They knew how her status would appeal to landlords, and they knew it would offset the fact that they were receiving Section 8 to help pay for their housing.

I think a great example of this is when Disco was arrested for grand theft auto and went before a judge. Disco pleaded guilty, and Chaos thought that he could've used language skills differently to get a different outcome, so he thought that he would "help" Disco by interrupting the court proceedings to tell him that he was being, basically, an idiot. However, Disco had the language skills necessary to get out of that situation, but he wanted to stand up to authority, so he chose not to use his language skills. Lucy also had the language skills to get him out of jail. However, she wanted her son to go down a different path and she also didn't want to have to worry about him for a while, so she let him go to jail so that she could get him out of the situation. She held back and let the judge send him to jail to get what she wanted.

I think we all use language as a tool to get what we want, but in some discourses, it's not as obvious because there isn't such a huge gap between the authority and ourselves. (By we, I mean, the "we" at MSU.) One could say that professors have the power here. However, there isn't the same gap here as there is between the residents of Quayville and, say, the social workers. The professor and the student are both in an academic setting, and both are familiar with the language of academia. The professor has also been an undergrad and a grad student. So it is easier for the student and the professor to communicate because they have a shared experience. However, the social worker has probably never applied for Section 8, and the community member has probably never been to college. When there is less of a gap between the gatekeeper and the one who wishes to open the gate, the use of language as a tool is less obvious, but it is still there.

The Costs and Instituions

It seems here that Cushman makes the argument that these institutions derive their power from the ability to reuse. Ok, she doesn't say that exactly, but that is my interpretation. After reading Clay Shirkey's book, The Power of Organizing without Organizations, I have come to realize that institutions largely rely on how much capital it takes for them to operate. His basic argument is that institutions are so bureaucratic because it cost effective to be so. That only allows for so much variety. Shirkey argues that the obstacle of costs only allows for certain types of tasks and tools to be profitable. So institutions are designed to allow certain tasks and disallow others in order to operate efficiently. This mode of operation can be considered the least common denominator. When organizing a large group of something, like Welfare programs, an institution is the best plausible method since it functions at high levels efficiency at the lowest possible cost.

In the same way, the use of institutional language tools are prioritized by cost effectiveness. As when Lucy, the 42 year old African American woman with six kids, needed her daughter's birth certificate, but forgot it. The woman at the desk refused to go and get her other file across the building probably because it cost too much to do so. As in, she had other work that needed to be completed that was more important than this individual woman sitting before her (This is an optimistic interpreation).

However, this concept of institutions works both ways:

"While individuals had to be fluent in institutional language tools to gain status in this community, they could not become too immersed in the discursive convention of any one of wider society's institutions, or they would be stigmatized as 'selling out'. . ." (228).

Looking at greater American society as an institution, there are certain ways of acting that are prioritized simply because it is more cost effective to prioritize something (I'm not making the argument that they were prioritized because they were cost effective. I am making the argument that they remain prioritized because it costs too much to change). It allows for reuse and repetition; and recycling is never a bad thing. But, as we saw in last week's readings, these institutional cycles can spawn alternative discourses set in opposition to their prioritized tasks and tools. This dynamic is going on here.

So, how can we apply the concept of Cost to Institutions and to our study of community literacy?

Knowledge and Mapping

Ok, this is frustrating. I spent a lot of time mapping what constitutes legitimate knowledge in both Cushman's piece as well as in the Barton and Hamilton chapters. To account for the different sources of knowledge, I have created three categories that I feel are present in the two pieces: institutional knowledge, community knowledge, and personal knowledge.

Making this map helped me by allowing me to visualize what community research looks like in these situations. However, now I can't figure out how to post it. I did it in a word document on my mac. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm game! If nothing works out, I'll bring my map to class on Tuesday.

Being a Good Reader

For this post I decided to give a more personal response to the readings, specifically Barton and Hamilton. I am not sure if this exactly kosher, but it’s the immediate response that I had to the readings.

One thing that I read over and over in the books I read for the book review and the Barton and Hamilton book was that people weren't viewing themselves as "good readers." "Apparently, the only real writing occurs in the classroom; the only real reading occurs when reading Shakespeare." (Sohn, Women of Appalachia, 115). I think that we need to re-think the idea of "reading" and "writing" instilled in us from the education system . Since there is more than one way to skin a cat I am sure there is more than one way to be a good reader, or considered "literate."

In light of this line of thought I decided to do my own "case study" on myself and Michael… cause those are the only people whose daily routine I know.

The use of literacy in my everyday life.

Lately the first thing I do when I wake up is look at my emails. I have no idea why. Like I am going to get anything important over night.
If I have texts I read them…
Then I get ready for work.
If I am making dinner in the Crockpot I read the recipe to make dinner, I always have recipes on the fridge and will usually look at them before I leave for work so I have an idea of how my evening is going to look. I always use a recipe--not matter what---not matter how many times I make it certain dish I use a recipe. If there were a recipe for cereal I would use it.

I drive to work, listen to music, read the titles and artists on my mp3 player
Get to work…start my computer and my day full of reading and writing begins.
On any give day I read recipes. I read instructional manuals, books, news articles, tweets, facebook statuses, emails, charts, etc.

Literacy in the life of Michael the Farmer

Watches the news. Does paper work… lots of it before going to work. Takes a look at prices of certain things before heading to work…

Who knows what kinds of things he reads at work. He uses a calendar and a white board to keep track of over 400 cows. He reads vet bills, feed bills, milk reports… all of these have to be quality checked.

He reads so many magazine articles and other publications relating to agriculture.

He reads bills, organizes bills an expenses and so much other stuff. His desk is an "organized disaster" it’s the one area of the house I refuse to clean.

He will spend hours on the internet reading up on machinery and other type of stuff. The amount of numbers and information he can retain is AMAZING.

Doesn’t read books….

So which one of us is a good reader?

I have to take notes on my reading for class and look over them in class in order to engage in a conversation about them. Until I started graduate school I wouldn't have referred to myself as a critical reader. I would have said I was an avid reader because I love to read ALL kinds of novels. Yes even harlequin romance novels. I have a collection of over a 1000 books ranging from Jodi Picoult to Janet Evanovich to Tamora Pierce to Shakespeare. I love to read.

Mike reads articles and newspapers, websites other stuff to learn about farm equipment and the latest farm practices. He doesn't take notes but at any given point in time he can recall any information that he has read. You can also give him any number between 1 and a 1000 and he will tell you if he has a cow with that number and if he does he will give you her complete history. Mike would say he hates to read and that he is not good at it.

Facebook/Blog Post

So, I realized kind of late that I was not exempt from posting this week simply because I am The Discussion Leader. In an effort to contribute to the conversation, I offer here the transcript of a mighty active facebook conversation that took place on my wall last night. It was based on a quote from Fendler's article (p. 309). While the quote doesn't have much to do with community literacy, it did actually cause community (as action) to occur. Friends who did not know one another began to interact and discuss the quote. They did not necessarily agree, as you can see, but, they were able to engage in civil communication. What I found most interesting was that, while the non-academics may have felt left out of the conversation, several of them chimed in to voice their difference.

LB "the separation of reason and affect perpetuates the assumption that reason is somehow objective and impartial; the separation does not recognize that systems of reason have been produced as the effects of culturally and historically specific power relations that always entail an array of human faculties."
Yesterday at 5:48pm

GG likes this.

AD I need a contextual definition of "affect" and "effect", as used in this article, to interpret what this statement means.
Yesterday at 5:49pm ·

LB "the term 'affect' can be taken to indicate an instinctual reaction to stimulation occurring before the typical cognitive considered necessary for the formation of a more complex emotion."

apply the common definition of "effects."
Yesterday at 5:57pm ·

AD So in other words: logic should not be considered empirically neutral just as instinctual reactions should not be considered intrinsically subjective?
Yesterday at 6:02pm ·

CS Source?
Yesterday at 7:51pm ·

GG But how can we demonize other people with our minds if we pay attention to our emotions :)?
Yesterday at 8:11pm ·

LB ad: pretty much
cs: "others and the problem of community" by lisa fendler
gg: i'm sure there is a way around this pesky theory...lol
Yesterday at 8:20pm ·

GG Ah, Fendler...I knew her...
Yesterday at 8:25pm ·

AD I can't believe Im saying this -- being a snob and an intellectual -- but philosophers really codify their language just to make their ideas sound more complex than they really are.
Yesterday at 8:26pm ·

GG They do, but, then again, who doesn't? I find the discourse of teenage girls very alienating, for example, but then: I'm not a teenage girl (at least I don't think I am).
Yesterday at 8:29pm ·

LB ad: you're no snob. :-)

gg: and you're no teenaged girl.
Yesterday at 8:32pm ·

AD The major difference is that teenage girls talk as they do out of necessity. They simply do not have the vocabulary to speak differently, even if they so desired. Philosophers deliberately choose their verbiage in order to feign a false assent into the cerebral stratosphere. How's my alienating intellectual alliteration? Quite proudly pompous, hehe.
Yesterday at 8:33pm ·

GG See, I would disagree: I'd say teenage girls are far more rhetorical in their word usage than we give them credit for. They don't talk the same way to their say English teacher, for example, as they do their friends.

Though clearly their is an institutional difference between teenagers and academic philosophers: I think at a fundamental level circulation matters more than anything else. Less people speak philosophical discourse, hence it seems more valuable.
Yesterday at 8:35pm ·

LB excellent thread. i'll have to post quotes more often!
Yesterday at 8:36pm ·

GG I'm stealing this quote for my collection, by the way...heh, heh...
Yesterday at 8:38pm ·

AD I consider academics to be like any other segregated subgroup. They feel alienated from the surrounding, mainstream community, thus they formulate their own codified language, which then only serves to accentuate the divide between them and the very people with whom they should be attempting to establish a discourse. Philosophical lingo is really just ebonics for nerds.
Yesterday at 8:42pm ·

LB steal away, my friend!
Yesterday at 8:43pm ·

GG I would pretty much agree with philosophers...but not all academics are engaged in that project. A lot of people in universities want to do engaged scholarship with communities outside the university, for example, and so they develop jargon that translates better.

At the same time, however: would we call doctors an alienated subgroup? Because they use some of the most alienating jargon there is.

Jargon is shorthand. It's a particular term that has a particular meaning in a particular community. The only difference between doctors and philosophers is that philosophers are not considered necessary members of our culture anymore.

Maybe we should continue this conversation on each others' walls rather than L's though. We're using our faculties to co-op her wall :).
Yesterday at 8:52pm ·

AD I would call doctors and alienat-ing subgroup. Their lingo is derived from Greek and Latin roots, which are maintained because of both tradition and choice. My father is a doctor, and I worked at a hospital for four years, so I can quite assuredly say that doctors are extremely proud of themselves and hate being brought down to the level of common folk. Notice that the only time understandable terms are used in medicine is when a company is trying to sell a new treatment: ie, "swine flu".

Complex verbiage is used to organize and maintain power of one group over the other. Look at credit card and cell phone contracts, legal documents, etc. Doctors, lawyers, and all the rest would like the general population to believe that their words are somehow necessary, that they are more accurate or descriptive, but this is not the case at all.

I think Lorelei enjoys this back-and-forth. :) At least I hope so.
Yesterday at 9:00pm ·

LB of course i do. my wall is your wall! :-)
Yesterday at 9:07pm ·

GG Don't get me wrong: I'm not arguing that power isn't a BIG part of this. I'm just saying there's a pragmatic meaning behind all of this. There are very good reasons why doctors, lawyers, philosophers and all kinds of professionals use jargon.

That use-value for them is inseparable from the institutionalization of knowledge that heralded the modern meritocracy. The ability to use these terms fluidly is power, definitely, but it doesn't have to be that way.

These terms can be liberating for people that encounter them and use them to help other people. The difference is between determination and choice. If jargon is always already alienating then it would mean that language is fixed, stable, and meaningful in an unproblematic way.

But language is slippery, complex, has multiple audiences, is contested, etc. Thus: it is never determined. Just because what you're saying is how things play out, often, in our society, doesn't mean that this determined to be the case. It's a product of certain historical conditions created by people. People with a lot of power, yes, but people all the same. THUS: it can be changed by people. It does change all the time. Every usage is a slight change. It's dynamic, not stable and fixed.
Yesterday at 9:16pm ·

GG By the by, I've got to go take Cynthia home and go to the gym, but feel free to respond and I'll respond later...
Yesterday at 9:18pm ·

AS Now THIS is a thread...I may have to augment my feeble coconut with a third hemisphere to fully comprehend all the details, but a fascinating read regardless...
Yesterday at 10:18pm ·


AD My hangover prevents me from commenting further. I am out of gas for now. Perhaps I will return tomorrow.
Yesterday at 10:20pm ·

GVB I agree with this statement but I had to read it about 5 times before I understood it. Maybe you just needed to use a lot more commas to give us pause to think. LOL You'll have to learn the language of the iliterate if you want to become the first woman president of the U.S.A. This academic lingo isn't going to be understood by the masses
Yesterday at 10:46pm ·


LB gvb: brilliant. you are awesome! :-)
Yesterday at 11:00pm ·

AS LB, methinks that "She is brilliant" fits GVB quite nicely as well...
Yesterday at 11:22pm ·

BB in a Chicago accent WTF?
10 hours ago ·

LB bb: that's my bro. keepin' it real. :-)
5 hours ago ·

DS Very interesting thread!

Is This What Dewey Meant by Active Democracy?/Characterization of the Characters

While reading Young's article, "Activist Challenges To Deliberative Democracy", I couldn't help but think of Dewey and his approach to active democracy and active education. Although both the characters have opposite methods or participating in democracy, they both participate. Young herself explains that "this essay constructs a dialogue between two 'characters' with these differing approaches to political action" (Young 670). So they take action in democracy - a pretty Dewian idea, right?

Okay. Let me move on from that for a bit. What I thought was interesting was that she chose to characterize the activist as male and the deliberative democrat as female. She explains her reasons for this and claims that she chose to characterize the deliberative democrat as a women because "this assignment more associates the female with power" (Young 671). I'm not sure exactly how she sees that. Is it because society sees those who engage in deliberative democracy was more powerful and women are so often portrayed as members of the downtrodden minority??

If I may delve into a discipline I am more familiar with (German Studies) for a moment:
Reading this made me think of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion [RAF]). This a left-wing terrorist group in Germany founded in 1970. Now, granted, the activist in Young's article does not condone violence against people or animals, but the RAF was a pretty powerful group, and one could consider them violent activists. Where I'm going with all of this is that it was co-founded and by a woman, Ulrike Meinhof (although Gudrun Ensslin was more a leader of the group). My point? Women can be powerful activists and aggressive, too.

I find this characterization problematic because it still portrays women in a weaker light even though the deliberative democrat is associated with power, I think. Because, let's be honest, actions speak louder than words.

The Panopticon as Structural Oppression: Does Opression a community make?

As an opening note, I really hope I don't excommunicated for this title. I like being Catholic.

In the post, I hope to connect the issues of oppression, social movements, social groups, and community. In particular, I want to adapt Foucault's idea of the Panopticon and connect it to these three previously mentioned ideas. And then, where does difference fit into this discussion?

This post is not going to talk about the Papacy, but it is going to talk about the Panopticon as a metaphor for the function of social function. The basic idea of the Panopticon (traditionally a design for a prison) is that there is some central entity (usually ambiguous in his power despite some general and global descriptors) that keeps all individuals in order as defined by that central entity. In a sense, this is a form of oppression. Lets' take the Pope and the Catholic Church as an example. The pope, while not ambiguous in identity, is very ambiguous in terms of power. He is the representative for Christ on Earth. There are some holes there. But, that association carries too much semantic weight to be questioned. So individuals follow rules that determine appropriate social action as laid out by this central figure.

The repetition of these action reinforces the Panoptic structure. Young pulls an idea from Foucault to illustrate this point: "Foucault (1977) suggests taht to understand meaning and operation of power in modern society, we must look beyond the model of power as 'sovereignty,' a dyadic relation of ruler and subject, and instead analyze the exercise of power as the effect of often liberal and 'humane' practices of education, bureaucratic administration, production and distribution of consumer goods [look to Fraser for this one] medicine, and so on" (Young, 41).

As long as the Panoptic structure is in place, the group is maintained organically by repetition of social actions and reuse semantic relationships: Christ is linked to the pope. The pope is trustworthy authority on the divine.

Loosely, this is an example of structural oppression. Young states "[Structural Oppression] causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules"(41).

The interesting part of Young's point is not in the defintion of oppression, but in her view of how groups form as a result of oppression. They are formed almost organically by those who choose not to follow the rules or those who are unable to follow or disallowed from following the rules. Young defines social groups as "a collective of persons differentiated from at least one other group by cultural forms, practices, or a way of life" (43).

So if oppression can help to create social groups, does oppression a community make? Looking at social movements, this question becomes more complicated. Social movements require collective action, which is usually triggered by a shared matter of concern. A forum is then chosen for the discourse over this matter of concern. By this, the black community during Civil Rights Movement was a community in these aspects. They were also a social group, who was oppressed.

But I still remained unconvinced pending further inquiry.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? I found myself asking that very question while doing the readings this week, I even double checked to make sure I was reading the correct articles.

Oppression, The Other, Recognition, Activism? What does that have to do with community? With literacy? With Community Literacy? I wasn't sure… so I began to think outside the box…I think…

I found Young's two articles to be very insightful. I felt that Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy was very well put together, understandable, and insightful but it was very black and white. There seemed to be no middle ground, which isn't how things are in real life.
The way I see Activism vs. Deliberative Democracy is the deliberative democratic can be found in the middle of the spectrum. He or she is not extremely left or extremely right. The activist on the other hand is (or rather, can be) extremist---either to the left or right of the political spectrum. Obviously this theory isn't concrete and is most certainly open to criticism and exceptions.

At first, while reading this article I felt that the Activist was being portrayed negatively, but after reading further I changed my mind. My question is which character is more effective? Though I think that deliberative democracy has its place and can do good in many situations, I know that actions speak louder than words. Activist can get their issues out there for the people to hear about.

If in fact, communities don't exist without conflict, or at the very least, if communities are built around conflict then activism brings communities closer, and makes them stronger.
Deliberative democracy, on the other hand, brings two communities or a community and the opposing force, together to solve their issues.

I think this article could easily be read along side Fleming's book, identifying activism and deliberative democracy throughout the examples provided.


TO BE CONTINUED…

Slumburbia

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/?ex=1281416400&en=beef5f2281325bf7&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=OP-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M136-ROS-0210-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click

Metro Area Map

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Core_Based_Statistical_Areas.png

Charlie Bit My Finger Again

This video just keeps popping up. On ViralVideoChart.com, "Charlie Bit My Finger" is the 16th most viral video of the last 24 hours and the 18th most viral video of all time. 18th is not as impressive as the first 17, but this video has a quality that others do not: repetition. Some how, Charlie and his biting baby brother continually go through a resurgence in the rate at which the video is shared. It will disappear for a while and then come back again. Unlike most of the videos ranked on the Viral Video Chart, Charlie appears through MySpace's video sharing platform and not YouTube. Even though 97% of 165,244,739 recorded views were through YouTube, where it is still consistently getting comments. Viral Video Chart describes the video in this way:

"There is some enjoyment that comes from watching a child who put his fingers in the baby's mouth scream in pain when the said baby cannibalizes the child's finger. A sadistic enjoyment maybe, but an enjoyment nonetheless. The video comes from a long line of home videos which portray cute/irritating children/animals being exploited (and in this case, bitten), for the benefit of their parents/owners YouTube view count."

Sadistic or not, it's getting results.

Handout for Article Presentation

Below are the notes on the articles I read for my article presentation.

Want to Cut Crime? It Takes a Neighborhood. Tim Harford 2008

Uses neighborhood as synonymous with Community
“Clear link between urban architecture and crime”
High rises=less “eyes on the street”=more crime

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202384.html

Compact Communities-Is Density Incompatible With Safety? Argument against Tim Harford

Population density brings “eyes on the street”
Density only possible with the use of high rises
Poses the question—At what building height does safety begin to diminish?

http://thegroundfloor.typepad.com/the_ground_floor/2008/02/compact-communi.html

Related to City of Rhetoric?

Each article discusses issues on link between urban architecture and crime as well as posing solutions to the issue.
The situations described in the articles could easily be the Chicago as described by Fleming.

Reviving Cities: Think Metropolitan---Linked to from Fleming’s Chapter Three Notes

Darkside of Metropolitan Areas
Decentralization of American cities
Metropolitan areas are hogging all of the economic growth—perpetuating the economic crisis in the cities
Detroit---Prime Example
“much more needs to be done at the federal level to reverse the polarizing trends”
“In places like Detroit, separate urban and suburban entities administer the public bus system, impeding the ability of urban low-income residents to reach suburban jobs and economic opportunities.”
Example of Segregation as an “achievement”

http://www.brookings.edu/papers/1998/06metropolitanpolicy_katz.aspx

Some thoughts about the U.S. Housing Act

At risk of sounding like a total jerk, I’d like to make a statement/pose a question. I ask that you hold off on any judgments in the interest of productive discussion. So, here goes…

City of Rhetoric makes mention of the U.S. Housing Act (of 1937 and of 1949), which got me thinking. I looked up some info on the Housing Acts, and I read through transcripts of some speeches, which made me wonder about a statement Harry Truman made in his State of the Union Address: "Five million families are still living in slums and firetraps. Three million families share their homes with others." Now, granted, living in slums and firetraps is definitely not a good thing, and safety is certainly a concern worth doing something about. However, I’m not sure why there is cause for concern because three million families share their homes. My family grew up sharing homes in the Chicago-area. Much of my family now still share homes with others—in fact, I recently shared a home with people. And my paternal grandparents and great-grandparents never owned homes; they lived in family groups and rented their entire lives. (And, no, I'm not getting all "bootstrappy" on you here...

I guess what I’m really wondering is why it was/is considered a right to live in a space that is exclusively one’s own. Also (and here is where I especially ask you not to judge…), is it also a right to own one’s own home? It almost seems that this way of thinking could have led to Flemings admonition that “We are the products of an insistent ‘privatism,’ a way of life focused on the individual, his or her family, and their private search for personal happiness” (14). Could this communal living (as generations of Americans had done) have assisted in teaching people “the art of living with different others…and rendering and negotiating difference?” (14). Seems like it might have. Seems like it might have taught us to “acknowledge, even celebrate conflict but also attempt to resolve that conflict through debate, deliberation, and adjudication” (14). But now, instead of having commonplaces at the most basic levels (shared homes), we are free to simply live alone, thus encouraging individualism and discouraging interdependence.

I also found the following passage of interest: “There appears to be a relationship between one’s tenure in a given location—the stability of one’s geographical experience, which is tied to such things as homeownership—and one’s involvement in local politics” (187). As I ponder this statement, I respond in various ways. On one hand, I think to myself: “Yeah, sure. That makes perfect sense. If one is tied to an area, and invested—both financially and emotionally—in the neighborhood/town/city/state, he or she is more likely to become involved in the governing of said neighborhood/town/city/state.”

On the other hand, I think I might get pissed off by the simple assumptions of this statement. I can only fall back on my prior experience living in Back of the Yards. The neighborhood was mostly Hispanic, and many homes on my block were owned by the residents. However, those on my block and in the immediate vicinity had a palpable fear of authority, and didn’t even feel comfortable calling the police in cases of emergency. For the most part, the neighborhood was not very involved in local politics. In fact, when a pregnant woman was killed by gunfire several doors down, people came from outside of the neighborhood to march and protest the violence. The residents stayed in their homes. Now, part of this might have to do with that fact than many of my neighbors were undocumented and had well-founded fears of deportation. However, I suspect a lot of it had to do with hegemony and the reluctance of those in power to “allow” others to step into the roles that rightfully belonged in the neighborhood.

I suppose it is possible that some of this hegemony took root because of a language difference; Mostly Spanish was spoken in the businesses, on the streets, in the library, and in the homes. Fleming, in his discussion of the ancient Greeks, states that "language...was a distinctly political way of being...it was...a social practice of simultaneous separation and connection" (13). This "way of being" for my neighbors might have placed them in a position of less power because of communication challenges that arose when they stepped outside of the community. But, the more I consider it, while the the problems in my old neighborhood were certainly exacerbated by a language barrier, it must be from more than just that. Some of the problems might also have stemmed from the lack of "an accessible, diverse, self-governing community, free from both external control (so that members could direct their collective future without interference) and internal domination (so that each member had an equal say in that future)" (13). I guess I wonder what good it did my neighbors to have had community organizations (of where there were some), if they had no way of successfully representing themselves to outsiders who assumed positions of power and represented the community. So, I guess what I'm getting at is that even if/though my neighbors did have decent and safe housing, it is/was still unlikely that they will become involved in local politics.

If you are interested, here is a bit of background on my old neighborhood (www.nhschicago.org):
Back of the Yards is a working class neighborhood best known as the setting for Upton
Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, which exposed conditions in the slaughterhouses around the turn of the 20th century. The original Union Stockyard gate still stands at 42nd and Halsted as a permanent symbol of the neighborhood’s working class history.

Today, Back of the Yards is a racially and culturally diverse community that boasts a newly developed industrial park and thriving commercial center. The housing stock is mostly one-to-four unit frame buildings that offer ownership opportunities for working families priced out of other markets. Directly to the south is Garfield Boulevard, where large greystones and other interesting architectural housing stock on the boulevard and the immediate blocks to the north and south make it an attractive area for new
homeowners.

While the neighborhood offers many amenities, it faces several challenges as well. Deferred maintenance on the older, frame housing stock in Back of the Yards depresses housing values making it vulnerable to investors who buy buildings, do shoddy rehab, and act as absentee landlords. In both Back of the Yards and Garfield Boulevard, high rates of foreclosure contribute to the already large inventory of vacant and susceptible buildings, which promotes gang and drug activity.

Metropolis, Public Sphere, & Definitions

Alright, let me explain… No there is too much, let me sum up.

There are many concepts in this book that I would like to explore further. The “metropolis,” the Chicago “Public Sphere,” and how Fleming defines public, common places, and community.

Metropolis
First, the “metropolis” basically is my personal community environment. I live in Dewitt, work and go to school in East Lansing, shop at Meijer on Lake Lansing, shop at Walmart in Saint Johns, board my horses in Portland, go to church in Westphalia, and visit friends in Okemos. I am the Great Lansing Area. 

Though all of these places are vastly different in their economic status and demographic makeup not to mention the obvious difference in location, I still consider them all to be a part of my community or rather I am a part of each of these communities. Am I wrong? If I am right, then am I any less a community member in each place since I belong to other communities? Or am I only a community member in the area where I perform my civic duties? Am I making any sense at all?

As Fleming defines it, a metropolis is “any geographical area comprising a large population nucleus… together with all adjacent communities.” All this time I thought that a metropolis had to be New York or Chicago. Nope. I think the Greater Lansing Area qualifies.

Chicago Public Sphere
“Nearly 100 percent of murders in Chicago public housing project occurred in public common spaces” “To be ‘in public’ in a place like this, in other words, is to be at risk for one’s life” (Fleming)

This fact is astonishing to me, yet I didn’t doubt its truth. The ghetto does in fact “silence its inhabitants.” Yet so often you will hear people say “why don’t they just help themselves?” or “why don’t they just move” referring to ways in which these people could “better their lives” when in fact the culture and community created in these areas isn’t like the ones others are familiar with. We created the mess and now blame them for it.


Definitions
Community “the compact face-to-face social group based on likeness, affinity, and proximity—what we often call ‘community’”

I have issues with the “face-to-face” part of this definition, perhaps because I have grown up with access to the internet and I feel like I have established community-like connections there on forums and such. And I feel that if these forums or virtual spaces function like a community can’t we just call it a community? If the shoe fits, where it. Yes, once upon a time it could be argued that community was “face-to-face” and based on proximity, but the world is shrinking and changing at an alarming rate and perhaps our ideas on community and connection should change with it.

“Common places” can link us to one another and the earth, but where we remain free and unique as individuals (Fleming) “where people can come together to discuss and negotiate their difference, where their freedom and equality can be enacted without either alienation and amalgamation.”

Do these places really exist? Besides in a classroom?

“Public” Coming together of persons (Fleming)

That’s it? So, the internet is public? I wish some people on facebook would realize that 