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.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
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!
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!
Monday, February 22, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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…
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…
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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.
Monday, February 15, 2010
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
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.
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
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
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A Definition That Makes Sense to Me (FINALLY)
"Though similar to 'community' in its warm connotations, 'neighborhood' can be defined much more precisely...it is a subdivision of the city, scaled to the practical, physical social, and emotional needs of ordinary human beings" (Fleming 45). The neighborhood is the physical space where communities can be formed. And there are probably a lot of different communities within a neighborhood.
This helps me immensely since I used to think of a community as a purely physical or shared space, but reading Fleming has helped me move past that and think of community more as a feeling - positive or negative. Community is a purely human creation - I think. Although, I also think that it's natural for people to want to feel a connection to something.
It is interesting to note that communities are usually described positively. For example, the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago. "It was a place that also exhibited all the features of social organization - including a 'sense of community, positive neighborhood identification, and explicit norms and sanctions against aberrant behavior'" (Fleming 73). People always want a sense of community - well-defined social norms and a sense of belonging.
Later Fleming discusses integrating public housing residents into suburban areas (which are another whole mess), but "public housing residents apparently do not want to leave the central city, do not want to abandon their family, friends, and neighborhood to live among potentially hostile whites in automobile-dependent suburbs" (Fleming 123). No matter how "terrible" a neighborhood may be (due to various reasons), people still develop a sense of community. Which further reinforces my idea that community is a feeling.
I find the case of North Town Village very interesting. It is very artificial, forced community building. At least the developers realized that "simply putting residents side by side...would not be enough to promote community among them" (Fleming 137). They "solved" this problem by making a community covenant (Fleming 137) and with the Story Telling Project (Fleming 148). However, the community covenant still treated the low-income residents as "others." And they had to define language that would be used to describe low-income community members in a non-offensive manner. Couldn't they just call them residents like the "market-price residents"? At least they tried.
In reading this, I was thinking of ways that community could be negative even though it has such a positive connotation. I started thinking of online neighborhoods (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that allow for communities that are potentially destructive to the members. These neighborhoods allow people with, for example, eating disorders to come together and share stories. This is not inherently harmful, but there is nothing and no one that really regulates these communities. Sure there is acceptable behavior, etc., but who is to say that people really follow it. So these communities develop into negative places because instead of sharing "positive" support, the members post tips and tricks about how to hide food, stave off hunger, and pictures of Holocaust victims for "Thinspiration."
So I'll relate this back to a community in a physical, rather than internet, neighborhood. There are neighborhoods where the community is formed by mutual terror. Like the north end of Flint. The social norms of the community are set by the lack of safety. So that is another more physical example of a negative physical community.
In general, I am just annoyed by urban redevelopment projects because they don't take into account the residents who actually live there. And in trying to create a community, they destroy one instead. Maybe it's not the "ideal" community (whatever that is), but it's a community.
This helps me immensely since I used to think of a community as a purely physical or shared space, but reading Fleming has helped me move past that and think of community more as a feeling - positive or negative. Community is a purely human creation - I think. Although, I also think that it's natural for people to want to feel a connection to something.
It is interesting to note that communities are usually described positively. For example, the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago. "It was a place that also exhibited all the features of social organization - including a 'sense of community, positive neighborhood identification, and explicit norms and sanctions against aberrant behavior'" (Fleming 73). People always want a sense of community - well-defined social norms and a sense of belonging.
Later Fleming discusses integrating public housing residents into suburban areas (which are another whole mess), but "public housing residents apparently do not want to leave the central city, do not want to abandon their family, friends, and neighborhood to live among potentially hostile whites in automobile-dependent suburbs" (Fleming 123). No matter how "terrible" a neighborhood may be (due to various reasons), people still develop a sense of community. Which further reinforces my idea that community is a feeling.
I find the case of North Town Village very interesting. It is very artificial, forced community building. At least the developers realized that "simply putting residents side by side...would not be enough to promote community among them" (Fleming 137). They "solved" this problem by making a community covenant (Fleming 137) and with the Story Telling Project (Fleming 148). However, the community covenant still treated the low-income residents as "others." And they had to define language that would be used to describe low-income community members in a non-offensive manner. Couldn't they just call them residents like the "market-price residents"? At least they tried.
In reading this, I was thinking of ways that community could be negative even though it has such a positive connotation. I started thinking of online neighborhoods (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that allow for communities that are potentially destructive to the members. These neighborhoods allow people with, for example, eating disorders to come together and share stories. This is not inherently harmful, but there is nothing and no one that really regulates these communities. Sure there is acceptable behavior, etc., but who is to say that people really follow it. So these communities develop into negative places because instead of sharing "positive" support, the members post tips and tricks about how to hide food, stave off hunger, and pictures of Holocaust victims for "Thinspiration."
So I'll relate this back to a community in a physical, rather than internet, neighborhood. There are neighborhoods where the community is formed by mutual terror. Like the north end of Flint. The social norms of the community are set by the lack of safety. So that is another more physical example of a negative physical community.
In general, I am just annoyed by urban redevelopment projects because they don't take into account the residents who actually live there. And in trying to create a community, they destroy one instead. Maybe it's not the "ideal" community (whatever that is), but it's a community.
Proximity and the Post Colonial Part 2
". . . crossing borders previously thought to be impermeable" (Flemming, 24).
By itself this sounds so lovingly optimistic. The breakdown of controlled access. However, Flemming is not Post Colonial, and he sees this as the destruction of proximity, a vital component of citizenship and community. It is literary the kriptonite of democracy. An empirical Post Colonial observation of these permeable borders reveals something more negative than positive. (Warning: I am going to speak generally and broadly) The transition from Colonial to Post Colonial is the traditionally defined by the change in proximity from the colonizer and the colonized. I.E. the colonizer leaves. What they usually leave behind is a discursive influence that determines political structures, socioeconomic status, and communication networks. The utopian idea that when the Colonizer leaves, the Colonized take control of the community. What has been happening however is that the colonized have regained control over the geographical network but not the discursive network.
Thus borders between post colonial communities and the colonizer are only permeable because their discourses are now shared and parallel due to a previous close proximity, which gave way to a colonized community. Thus values of community, discourse, production, economics, genre etc. are fed continuously in the post colonized.
Blogging for instance has grown widely in Post Colonial networks. Groups like Rising Voices provide grants and instruction for implementing the technological and educational needs to bring blogging platforms to these communities. They even have an instructional manual on how to set up a local wifi network in poor agricultural communities. They even had a discussion on their listserv about whether or not blogging hurt or helped indigenous knowledge.
The idea is that these communities become more self sustaining through blogging. In a word, blogging is a forum where communities resolves conflict (going with Flemming's lexicon here). That conflict, matters of concern, or something to that affect, in these post-colonial communities has been everything from preserving a language (though many blog in English) to protecting indigenous land.
I guess what I am getting to is that issues of proximity are more complex that Flemming seems to want to admit. The colonized history of the wold prevents us from limiting conversations of community direct and current proximity. I'm not saying that shared discourses between two geographic, political entities makes a community, but it does have impact how community functions in each of those places.
By itself this sounds so lovingly optimistic. The breakdown of controlled access. However, Flemming is not Post Colonial, and he sees this as the destruction of proximity, a vital component of citizenship and community. It is literary the kriptonite of democracy. An empirical Post Colonial observation of these permeable borders reveals something more negative than positive. (Warning: I am going to speak generally and broadly) The transition from Colonial to Post Colonial is the traditionally defined by the change in proximity from the colonizer and the colonized. I.E. the colonizer leaves. What they usually leave behind is a discursive influence that determines political structures, socioeconomic status, and communication networks. The utopian idea that when the Colonizer leaves, the Colonized take control of the community. What has been happening however is that the colonized have regained control over the geographical network but not the discursive network.
Thus borders between post colonial communities and the colonizer are only permeable because their discourses are now shared and parallel due to a previous close proximity, which gave way to a colonized community. Thus values of community, discourse, production, economics, genre etc. are fed continuously in the post colonized.
Blogging for instance has grown widely in Post Colonial networks. Groups like Rising Voices provide grants and instruction for implementing the technological and educational needs to bring blogging platforms to these communities. They even have an instructional manual on how to set up a local wifi network in poor agricultural communities. They even had a discussion on their listserv about whether or not blogging hurt or helped indigenous knowledge.
The idea is that these communities become more self sustaining through blogging. In a word, blogging is a forum where communities resolves conflict (going with Flemming's lexicon here). That conflict, matters of concern, or something to that affect, in these post-colonial communities has been everything from preserving a language (though many blog in English) to protecting indigenous land.
I guess what I am getting to is that issues of proximity are more complex that Flemming seems to want to admit. The colonized history of the wold prevents us from limiting conversations of community direct and current proximity. I'm not saying that shared discourses between two geographic, political entities makes a community, but it does have impact how community functions in each of those places.
Proximity and the Post Colonial Part 1
Flemming introduced a lot of ideas about how productive dialectic occurs in the various ways people organize themselves in terms of proximity and conflict.
He states:
"We remain physical creatures, inherently embodies, inextricably situated, resolutely sensitive to proximity; and the weakest and most vulnerable among us remain the most spatially dependent of all." (Flemming, 15)
And . . .
"The case study at the heart of this book has presented strong evidence for a close relationship between physical location and individual and social welfare in our society and thus good reason to think that place and rhetorical well being are linked as well. The scenes depicted in Part 2 were materially so different from one another, and associated with such dramatic differences in socioeconomic status and opportunity that it seems noncontroversial to claim that different places in the country offer residents different changes for health, prosperity, and happiness. Place matters, and this is as true for rhetoric as for education and employment." (Flemming, 184)
And . . .
"Some of this can be explained, of course, by the changing conditions of residence, work, and play in our time, changes that have allowed us to think that we are less dependent on place than we once were, that physical proximity is no longer relevant, that cities have become obsolete, that new modes of transportation and communication have accomplished 'an awesome technological destruction of distance,' that the 'new' economy, driven by these less attached to and less dependent on place than ever before. The evidence for these changes has been summarized elsewhere: corporations dispersed across the globe ,their components linked by high-speed communication and transportation networks; a dramatic rise in the mobility of capital, with international trade increasingly comprised of financial services and investment funds rather than raw materials and agricultural goods; and labor astonishingly mobile as well, with jobs relocating overnight from one place to another, crossing borders well, with jobs relocating overnight from one place to another, crossing borders previously thought to be impermeable." (Flemming, 24)
He states:
"We remain physical creatures, inherently embodies, inextricably situated, resolutely sensitive to proximity; and the weakest and most vulnerable among us remain the most spatially dependent of all." (Flemming, 15)
And . . .
"The case study at the heart of this book has presented strong evidence for a close relationship between physical location and individual and social welfare in our society and thus good reason to think that place and rhetorical well being are linked as well. The scenes depicted in Part 2 were materially so different from one another, and associated with such dramatic differences in socioeconomic status and opportunity that it seems noncontroversial to claim that different places in the country offer residents different changes for health, prosperity, and happiness. Place matters, and this is as true for rhetoric as for education and employment." (Flemming, 184)
And . . .
"Some of this can be explained, of course, by the changing conditions of residence, work, and play in our time, changes that have allowed us to think that we are less dependent on place than we once were, that physical proximity is no longer relevant, that cities have become obsolete, that new modes of transportation and communication have accomplished 'an awesome technological destruction of distance,' that the 'new' economy, driven by these less attached to and less dependent on place than ever before. The evidence for these changes has been summarized elsewhere: corporations dispersed across the globe ,their components linked by high-speed communication and transportation networks; a dramatic rise in the mobility of capital, with international trade increasingly comprised of financial services and investment funds rather than raw materials and agricultural goods; and labor astonishingly mobile as well, with jobs relocating overnight from one place to another, crossing borders well, with jobs relocating overnight from one place to another, crossing borders previously thought to be impermeable." (Flemming, 24)
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
"It is important to realize that communities like these are not physical but symbolic entities, constructed for a complex mix of reasons around affinities rather than visible borders, which means they are notoriously hard to pin down as an identifiable thing, a stable group, or a discourse with explicit defining features. In fact, the most significant feature of a community is not what or where it is (with its shifting features and overlapping boundaries) but how it functions," (Flower, 10).
So, where is the public? The quote above seems to fit in with Dewey's concern that the public is something that needs to found. In this case, Flower offers a description of community that also identifies how to find it. A place to start may be what affinities can cause a community to gather around them.
Flower states,"The community literacy I am hoping to document is an intercultural dialogue with others on issues that they identify as sites of struggle," (Flower, 19).
These "sites of struggle" are approached by community members in order to solve them. Can this process create a community? "Community literacy happens at a busy intersection of multiple literacies and diverse discourses. It begins its work when community folk, urban teens, community supporters, college-student mentors, and university faculty start naming and solving problems together," (Flower, 19). Thus enters Dewey's idea of inquiry, which allows allows these problems to be solved.
But the definition of community can become more complicated especially when trying to distinguish it from the term "public."
"And public, collaborative engagement often starts with but does not end with personal inquiry. Community literacy, then, attempts to move writers toward transformative action and collaborative engagement guided by a particular image ofpublic and rhetorical action. These choices can be defined by the ways this symbolic or rhetorical community tries to function," (Flower, 20).
So, where is the public? The quote above seems to fit in with Dewey's concern that the public is something that needs to found. In this case, Flower offers a description of community that also identifies how to find it. A place to start may be what affinities can cause a community to gather around them.
Flower states,"The community literacy I am hoping to document is an intercultural dialogue with others on issues that they identify as sites of struggle," (Flower, 19).
These "sites of struggle" are approached by community members in order to solve them. Can this process create a community? "Community literacy happens at a busy intersection of multiple literacies and diverse discourses. It begins its work when community folk, urban teens, community supporters, college-student mentors, and university faculty start naming and solving problems together," (Flower, 19). Thus enters Dewey's idea of inquiry, which allows allows these problems to be solved.
But the definition of community can become more complicated especially when trying to distinguish it from the term "public."
"And public, collaborative engagement often starts with but does not end with personal inquiry. Community literacy, then, attempts to move writers toward transformative action and collaborative engagement guided by a particular image ofpublic and rhetorical action. These choices can be defined by the ways this symbolic or rhetorical community tries to function," (Flower, 20).
Monday, February 8, 2010
And one other thing...
The more I read, the more I wonder how community literacy fits in with conflict resolution. It seems as if it can be used in that capacity, but where exactly does it fit?
Open Mind & Understanding Discourse
OPEN MIND: a mind willing to accept new ideas according to Google Define.
I have always thought that keeping an open mind is one of the most important things a person can do in order to help society to run smoothly. I think that things would be a lot different if only people were willing to give unknown ideas a try.
Anyway, I feel that these readings today just solidified that idea. Especially Peck et al. It was fascinating to read about their program and how it was able to make a difference in the school. Sadly this type of program would not be possible everywhere. And I fear that situations like this where one group of people doesn't understand the other is only getting worse with the "digital divide," not just in class, but also in generations.
Understanding Discourse.
In the readings for this week I was definitely able to understand discourses better. According the Higgin's piece "Community Literacy to them was "search for an alternative discourse" ...a way for people to acknowledge each other's multiple forms of expertise through talk and text and to draw on their differences as a resource for addressing shared problems. "
In Peck et al. "the aim of community literacy is to build a discourse in which people not only acknowledge difference (e.g., where urban teens and university mentors can talk about race), but in which people do productive work together."
Ah, in a perfect word, where minds are open :)
I feel that these definitions are pointing towards the same idea, which Jessica describer in her post---if I may quote her---"community literacy was being literate in the forms of communication of the community you are a member of." I agree and I couldn't have put it any better :) I Think these definitions are pointing to this idea. In Higgins they are describing community literacy as a building of a new literacy in which all members can understand and communicate in. In Peck, its is the same thing-finding a way for people to share a literacy and therefore be productive together.
I have always thought that keeping an open mind is one of the most important things a person can do in order to help society to run smoothly. I think that things would be a lot different if only people were willing to give unknown ideas a try.
Anyway, I feel that these readings today just solidified that idea. Especially Peck et al. It was fascinating to read about their program and how it was able to make a difference in the school. Sadly this type of program would not be possible everywhere. And I fear that situations like this where one group of people doesn't understand the other is only getting worse with the "digital divide," not just in class, but also in generations.
Understanding Discourse.
In the readings for this week I was definitely able to understand discourses better. According the Higgin's piece "Community Literacy to them was "search for an alternative discourse" ...a way for people to acknowledge each other's multiple forms of expertise through talk and text and to draw on their differences as a resource for addressing shared problems. "
In Peck et al. "the aim of community literacy is to build a discourse in which people not only acknowledge difference (e.g., where urban teens and university mentors can talk about race), but in which people do productive work together."
Ah, in a perfect word, where minds are open :)
I feel that these definitions are pointing towards the same idea, which Jessica describer in her post---if I may quote her---"community literacy was being literate in the forms of communication of the community you are a member of." I agree and I couldn't have put it any better :) I Think these definitions are pointing to this idea. In Higgins they are describing community literacy as a building of a new literacy in which all members can understand and communicate in. In Peck, its is the same thing-finding a way for people to share a literacy and therefore be productive together.
Community vs. Local Literacies
“Community literacy could be (but is not) another name for what Barton and Hamilton (1998) call ‘local literacies’ – the diverse, daily forms of reading and writing used by working-class people, often overlooked or dismissed in our preoccupation with the elite literacies of school or business” (Flower 18).
What???
I guess I was thinking of community literacy as local literacy - according to Flower's definition. I always thought that community literacy was being literate in the forms of communication of the community you are a member of, and with service learning, you bring a different type of literacy to a community. For example: Our lunchtime programs at local elementary schools. We go out into the East Lansing community - into elementary schools - and bring a new type of literacy, German, to the elementary school kids.
“Community literacy…is an intercultural dialogue with others on issues that they identify as sites of struggle. Community literacy happens at a busy intersection of multiple literacies and diverse discourses. It begins its work when community fold, urban teens, community supporters, college-student mentors, and university faculty start naming and solving problems together” (Flower 19).
However, this problem-solving approach makes a lot of sense, really, but I'm not sure how it relates to the service-learning I've done. My first experience with service learning was in the College of Ed. We went to local urban schools and helped a classroom teacher once a week. Sometimes I worked with individual students or groups of students. Other times I helped the teacher run experiments in the classroom. I'm not sure the College of Ed. really went out of the way to find a problem and a way to solve it. I don't think they really payed attention to the needs of the "customer" (as Flower said). So why did they call it service learning? I thought of it more as field work. Maybe they called it service learning because we were in an urban school helping the downtrodden minority.
Maybe I can make my work with German Outreach fit this definition. So it is increasingly important for students to learn a language other than English these days. There isn't a lot of money to fund these programs (problem identified by university faculty and community partners). So we go into the schools to expose the students to another language at an early age, and even if they don't end up choosing German, they have a positive experience learning a language and choose to study one in the future. Hmm... Not sure that fits either.
Flower does cite Dewey and his active approach to democracy and education, and I think that service learning fits right in with Dewey's approach of being an active participant.
So my question is why can't community literacy be local literacy, too? And don't we, when we go out into the community, pick up the literacy of that community?
What???
I guess I was thinking of community literacy as local literacy - according to Flower's definition. I always thought that community literacy was being literate in the forms of communication of the community you are a member of, and with service learning, you bring a different type of literacy to a community. For example: Our lunchtime programs at local elementary schools. We go out into the East Lansing community - into elementary schools - and bring a new type of literacy, German, to the elementary school kids.
“Community literacy…is an intercultural dialogue with others on issues that they identify as sites of struggle. Community literacy happens at a busy intersection of multiple literacies and diverse discourses. It begins its work when community fold, urban teens, community supporters, college-student mentors, and university faculty start naming and solving problems together” (Flower 19).
However, this problem-solving approach makes a lot of sense, really, but I'm not sure how it relates to the service-learning I've done. My first experience with service learning was in the College of Ed. We went to local urban schools and helped a classroom teacher once a week. Sometimes I worked with individual students or groups of students. Other times I helped the teacher run experiments in the classroom. I'm not sure the College of Ed. really went out of the way to find a problem and a way to solve it. I don't think they really payed attention to the needs of the "customer" (as Flower said). So why did they call it service learning? I thought of it more as field work. Maybe they called it service learning because we were in an urban school helping the downtrodden minority.
Maybe I can make my work with German Outreach fit this definition. So it is increasingly important for students to learn a language other than English these days. There isn't a lot of money to fund these programs (problem identified by university faculty and community partners). So we go into the schools to expose the students to another language at an early age, and even if they don't end up choosing German, they have a positive experience learning a language and choose to study one in the future. Hmm... Not sure that fits either.
Flower does cite Dewey and his active approach to democracy and education, and I think that service learning fits right in with Dewey's approach of being an active participant.
So my question is why can't community literacy be local literacy, too? And don't we, when we go out into the community, pick up the literacy of that community?
Sunday, February 7, 2010
For this week’s posting, I will be considering Flower’s Chapter 1, Peck’s (et. al) Community Literacy, and Gere’s Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms (not required for this class). (I will complete Flower’s Chapter 2 and and Higgins’ (et. al) Community Literacy: A Rhetorical Model for Personal and Public Inquiry later today, but it will be too late to include it in this discussion.)
I guess I will start by offering several definitions of community literacy that I found useful. One early definition (dating back to 1989, I believe), offered by the Community Literacy Center (CLC) in Pittsburgh seems simple: “action and reflection—as literate acts that could yoke community action with intercultural education, strategic thinking and problem solving, and with observation-based research and theory building” ( Peck 200). However, later in the article, a more developed definition is offered: “Community literacy, as we define it, is a search for an alternative discourse [and] embraces four key aims…social change…genuine, intercultural conversation…a strategic approach to [the] conversation…[and] inquiry” (Peck 205). The introduction of “intercultural conversation” makes me wonder whether community literacy, by this definition, could exist in a homogenous community. Or, if a homogenous community even needs community literacy. Seems to me that it would, but only, perhaps, if we consider a broader definition of community literacy (like that of Gere’s).
Flower offers this definition of community literacy: “Community literacy is a rhetorical practice for inquiry and social change” (16). From here it only got more confusing as I tried to work my way through to a clear understanding of what community literacy is (if that is possible…).
To start with, I’m not sure how critical literacy and community literacy are different, especially if we use Flower’s definition of critical literacy: “critical literacy sees literacy as a way to resist power, challenge injustice, and insist on alternative images of social and self-development” (17). Perhaps critical literacy is, as Flower quotes Finn, “literacy with an attitude” (17). But if critical literacy “questions the way things are and imagines alternatives,” I still don’t see how that is different from community literacy, unless we are talking about action…
After immersing myself in the reading for this week, and absorbing a lot of information, it seems I was left with more questions than anything. The major question that has been fretting at the corners of my mind for several days now is this: is community literacy a theory, a methodology, or a something else? I’m not even sure that question makes sense, but it won’t go away, and it seems important to my understanding of this whole concept somehow. I haven’t been able to answer it for myself, so I’m really hoping someone can help me figure this out.
Here is another small but persistent thought: It seems that the readings for this week use the oppression/empowerment metaphor to talk about literacy. I guess that makes sense if “the premise of community literacy is that such a rhetoric calls us to speak out about and for silenced voices” (Flower 9-10). I’d be interested in seeing what the deprivation/welfare metaphor would look like—or at least identifying it. Has that metaphor gone out of vogue? Is it an outdated metaphor that has been replaced with the oppression/empowerment metaphor? What other metaphors are still commonly used?
Also, I know that ideally those involved in community literacy (or, at least, those whom we read for this week) are invested in social change, but I wonder about a quote from Peck on page 203:”This vision centers on building productive intercultural relationships in which equity is established through mutual learning and the transactional practices of writing and dialogue” (203). (Emphasis mine) Something about this statement bothers me. Perhaps the equation of literacy with equality? I’m just not sure, but something seems off. Can you help me figure this out?
I guess I will start by offering several definitions of community literacy that I found useful. One early definition (dating back to 1989, I believe), offered by the Community Literacy Center (CLC) in Pittsburgh seems simple: “action and reflection—as literate acts that could yoke community action with intercultural education, strategic thinking and problem solving, and with observation-based research and theory building” ( Peck 200). However, later in the article, a more developed definition is offered: “Community literacy, as we define it, is a search for an alternative discourse [and] embraces four key aims…social change…genuine, intercultural conversation…a strategic approach to [the] conversation…[and] inquiry” (Peck 205). The introduction of “intercultural conversation” makes me wonder whether community literacy, by this definition, could exist in a homogenous community. Or, if a homogenous community even needs community literacy. Seems to me that it would, but only, perhaps, if we consider a broader definition of community literacy (like that of Gere’s).
Flower offers this definition of community literacy: “Community literacy is a rhetorical practice for inquiry and social change” (16). From here it only got more confusing as I tried to work my way through to a clear understanding of what community literacy is (if that is possible…).
To start with, I’m not sure how critical literacy and community literacy are different, especially if we use Flower’s definition of critical literacy: “critical literacy sees literacy as a way to resist power, challenge injustice, and insist on alternative images of social and self-development” (17). Perhaps critical literacy is, as Flower quotes Finn, “literacy with an attitude” (17). But if critical literacy “questions the way things are and imagines alternatives,” I still don’t see how that is different from community literacy, unless we are talking about action…
After immersing myself in the reading for this week, and absorbing a lot of information, it seems I was left with more questions than anything. The major question that has been fretting at the corners of my mind for several days now is this: is community literacy a theory, a methodology, or a something else? I’m not even sure that question makes sense, but it won’t go away, and it seems important to my understanding of this whole concept somehow. I haven’t been able to answer it for myself, so I’m really hoping someone can help me figure this out.
Here is another small but persistent thought: It seems that the readings for this week use the oppression/empowerment metaphor to talk about literacy. I guess that makes sense if “the premise of community literacy is that such a rhetoric calls us to speak out about and for silenced voices” (Flower 9-10). I’d be interested in seeing what the deprivation/welfare metaphor would look like—or at least identifying it. Has that metaphor gone out of vogue? Is it an outdated metaphor that has been replaced with the oppression/empowerment metaphor? What other metaphors are still commonly used?
Also, I know that ideally those involved in community literacy (or, at least, those whom we read for this week) are invested in social change, but I wonder about a quote from Peck on page 203:”This vision centers on building productive intercultural relationships in which equity is established through mutual learning and the transactional practices of writing and dialogue” (203). (Emphasis mine) Something about this statement bothers me. Perhaps the equation of literacy with equality? I’m just not sure, but something seems off. Can you help me figure this out?
Monday, February 1, 2010
Students' Right to Their Own Language
"Here in the United States, the call to situate the study of literacy in the public realm has also been framed in terms of language rights. In rhetoric and composition, the clearest example is the 1974 Students' Right to Their Own Language (STROL) resolution" (Long 34).
This resolution sought to bring the literacy of the oppressed into the mainstream in the 60s and 70s. Great. So more pedagogy of the oppressed. And again recognizing different types of literacy - which is important.
What I wonder is how realistic this is. I believe it's important to recognize different types of literacy, but I also think that a public school's job is to prepare students to be literate in the literacy of the school that they are attending and the mainstream community. I think that ignoring mainstream literacy in favor of students' own language and literacy further disadvantages students. Whether we like it or not, we are all, in some way, a part of this crazy mainstream community and need to be literate in the majority in order to protect the minority. It's like Dewey said, when you increase technology, you increase democracy because you increase people's access to information. So the more ways a person is literate, the better.
This resolution sought to bring the literacy of the oppressed into the mainstream in the 60s and 70s. Great. So more pedagogy of the oppressed. And again recognizing different types of literacy - which is important.
What I wonder is how realistic this is. I believe it's important to recognize different types of literacy, but I also think that a public school's job is to prepare students to be literate in the literacy of the school that they are attending and the mainstream community. I think that ignoring mainstream literacy in favor of students' own language and literacy further disadvantages students. Whether we like it or not, we are all, in some way, a part of this crazy mainstream community and need to be literate in the majority in order to protect the minority. It's like Dewey said, when you increase technology, you increase democracy because you increase people's access to information. So the more ways a person is literate, the better.
Defining and Questioning
As I was reading Asen and Brouwer’s Introduction, I found much of the information to be new (to me) and fascinating. I especially appreciated some of the definitions included in the text:
Counterpublic spheres (Felski): “critical oppositional forces that seek to disrupt the homogenizing and universalizing processes of a global mass-communication culture that promotes an uncritical consumerism” (p. 7).
Counterpublics (Fraser): “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs” (p. 7).
Public: “may indicate something potentially open to all (as in the bourgeois public sphere), potentially concerning all (as in matters of public interest), potentially known to all (as in public information), potentially constituted by all (as in the general public), and potential movemet toward all (as in attempts to publicize matters)” (p. 9).
Public Discourse (Benhabib): “consists of challenging and redefining established notions of the common good” (p. 10).
Public Sphere (Schudson): includes “a set of activities that constitute a democratic society’s self-reflection and self-governance” (p. 15).
International public sphere (global public sphere/cosmopolitan public sphere/cosmopolitan democracy): “a forum wherein vastly dispersed individuals of a multitude of ranks, roles, and races might come together for deliberation” (p. 23).
Also, because some of the information is outdated, I began considering how the internet (or NCTs) has dramatically changed the public sphere. After reading Asen and Brouwer’s piece, I seemed to come away with more questions than anything else (which is why I especially valued the definitions above!). Here are several (straight from the text) that would be interesting to explore:
1. “How large and dispersed can a population be and still resemble an enduring ‘community?’” (p. 23).
2. “To what extent can communication technologies facilitate such a community?” (p. 23).
Counterpublic spheres (Felski): “critical oppositional forces that seek to disrupt the homogenizing and universalizing processes of a global mass-communication culture that promotes an uncritical consumerism” (p. 7).
Counterpublics (Fraser): “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs” (p. 7).
Public: “may indicate something potentially open to all (as in the bourgeois public sphere), potentially concerning all (as in matters of public interest), potentially known to all (as in public information), potentially constituted by all (as in the general public), and potential movemet toward all (as in attempts to publicize matters)” (p. 9).
Public Discourse (Benhabib): “consists of challenging and redefining established notions of the common good” (p. 10).
Public Sphere (Schudson): includes “a set of activities that constitute a democratic society’s self-reflection and self-governance” (p. 15).
International public sphere (global public sphere/cosmopolitan public sphere/cosmopolitan democracy): “a forum wherein vastly dispersed individuals of a multitude of ranks, roles, and races might come together for deliberation” (p. 23).
Also, because some of the information is outdated, I began considering how the internet (or NCTs) has dramatically changed the public sphere. After reading Asen and Brouwer’s piece, I seemed to come away with more questions than anything else (which is why I especially valued the definitions above!). Here are several (straight from the text) that would be interesting to explore:
1. “How large and dispersed can a population be and still resemble an enduring ‘community?’” (p. 23).
2. “To what extent can communication technologies facilitate such a community?” (p. 23).
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