Another idyllic landscape

Political Surfaces

This post by Colleen Morgan (who ALWAYS seems to be doing something cool) got me thinking about my travels to Oaxaca during the summers of 2007-2008. I was there a year after there was some serious political upheaval in 2006, and the reverberations were still being felt. One place where the political tensions were REALLY apparent? Any wall, sidewalk, or other surface where graffiti, posters, or other political street art would stick. Here's a few to give you an idea:

"Dark Side of the Lens"

When I first started this blog I wrote a few posts about what different people do with photography, how they use it, and why. Those were inspired by social scientists and anthropologists who have looked into the social meanings and uses of photography--Pierre Bourdieu, Jay Ruby, Elizabeth Edwards, among others. Some of those posts looked at the lives of particular professional photographers, like Ralph Gibson (or Gary Winogrand), others looked at forgotten images, and there were one or two about family portraits. There were also some posts about photography and tourism (which is one of my favorite longstanding themes--I have tons of photographs of tourists taking pictures): One about Joshua Tree, CA; one from Coba, Mexico; another about how images are used to sell the idea of places in tourism; and also one that speaks to the uses of cameras at zoos.

Jay Ruby's 1981 essay "Seeing Through Pictures: The Anthropology of Photography" is one of my favorites. He writes, "As an anthropologist I am less interested in a critical analysis of "important" photographs than in the everyday use of photography by ordinary people. To paraphrase a Bertold Brecht poem, I don't care which Emperor built the Great Wall of China. I want to know where the bricklayers went the night they finished the construction." Exactly. As someone who started off in the art world before gravitating to anthropology, I can attest to the fact that galleries and art markets are often focused on "important" images--and that whole world of trends, money, and placing value on particular images would be an anthropological study in and of itself. But I'm also really interested in the ways in which people in general--not just Richard Avedon (or insert the latest young photographic genius)--use photography in daily life. Since we're flooded with imagery, we might as well look at how and why different people actually engage with it--from those who use iPhone cameras all the way to people who are addicted to getting (and maybe even USING) the newest overpriced Leica.

Anyway, all that is to set up the following video, which is a pretty interesting piece. It's dedicated to explaining how one person uses photography, and why--all in a very polished, narrative, cohesive media presentation. Check it out:

Jenny Odell: The Satellite Collection

From a pretty fascinating series of images by Jenny Odell. Caption of the above image: "195 Cargo Ships, Barges, Motorboats, Yachts, Tankers, Cruise Ships, Riverboats, Sailboats and Hospital Ships."

A few plateaus out of thousands

A recent short response to reading a few chapters from "A Thousand Plateaus" by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari:

In the “Compiler’s Note” of the introduction to his book “The Atlas,” William T. Vollmann wrote: “What you hold, then, is but a piecemeal atlas of the world I think in. I hope you like it, in spite of its omission of a continent or two. And if you were to keep it by you as a pillow-book, reading through it in no particular order, skipping the tales you find tedious, dozing amidst somniferous paragraphs, I’d feel as that at last I’d done as much good in the world as the manufacturers of our drowsiest codeine syrups” (1997 xv).

In the translator’s forward to Deleuze and Guattari’s “A Thousand Plateaus”, Brian Massumi lucidly encourages readers to approach the book as a challenge: “to pry open the vacant spaces that would enable you to build your life and those of the people around you into a plateau of intensity that would leave afterimages of its dynamism that could be reinjected into still other lives, creating a fabric of heightened states between which any number, the greatest number, of connecting routes would exist” (xv). Massumi tells readers to play the book like a record—replay the bits and pieces we like, and skip the rest. In the end, Massumi argues, the point is not whether or not the book is an absolute account of truth, but whether or not it works. The more important question is whether or not the book has enabled or sparked—in one way or another—some new ideas, thoughts, and sensations. If nothing happens, so be it: “it’s not your tune,” says Massumi. Considering the fact that only a few straggling astrologers, archaeologists, and other scattered individuals were still willing to submit themselves to Professor Challenger’s erudite proclamations by page 57, it seems clear that Deleuze and Guattari A) have a pretty decent sense of humor, and B) realize that this book isn’t going to speak to everyone. Not everyone is going to buy this record.

On to 1000 Plateaus (just a few points before I run out of words): While the first two chapters were quite clear (well, relatively clear), incredibly humorous at times, and definitely thought provoking, chapters three and six were, well, metaphorically dense, to put it nicely. Chapter three’s title gives a little hint of the level of allegory that is about to take place: it’s a play on Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals,” of course. Regardless, here are some of the points that I did get out of the readings…

The discussion of the rhizome starts on page six. I think it’s fair to say that one of the main points of this opening chapter to is challenge and move away from totalizing narratives, binaries, dichotomies, and other such nonsense. Deleuze and Guattari use the rhizome—which is non-hierarchical, full of multiplicities, and unordered--as a metaphorical illustration (6-7). Deleuze and Guattari contrast the rhizome with trees, which are rooted in history, symbols of rigid binaries, and “overcoding” (9). This argument attacks both linguists AND psychoanalysts throughout the first two chapters for over-coding and over-determining their conceptions of language and reality (13).

On page 17 there is just one example of this critique of psychoanalysis. According to Deleuze and Guattari the process of psychoanalysis “subjects the unconscious” to a whole series of predetermined (“arborescent”) ideas about childhood, memory, the phallus, and so on, and then ultimately ends up silencing the actualities and multiplicities of thought and experience that exist within subjects. “Psychoanalysis cannot change its method in this regard: it bases its own dictatorial power upon a dictatorial conception of the unconscious” (17). My issue with the categories and explanations of both Freud and Lacan are similar: why should everything boil down to childhood, to some father-complex, and to sex? Why is always about the father? And why should everything come down to sex—why should we assume that this is a primary and traumatic factor throughout humanity? How or why should anyone assume that these themes resonate with a universal human consciousness? Instead of taking account of the multiplicity of selves, thought, experience, and perception, it seems to me that psychoanalysis rams a particular conception of the world upon its subjects and then prescribes treatments and remedies that happen to fit this tyrannical model. It seems that subjects are bent and formed (according to particular western notions about self and psyche) so that they can then be “diagnosed” and “treated” properly. Count me out.

I particularly like the idea of using the nomad as a way to illustrate the differences between the tree-like power and history of the State (23-25). Deleuze and Guattari write, “History is always written from the sedentary point of view in the name of a unitary State apparatus, at least a possible one, even when the topic is nomads” (23). All of this has to be understood, as I see it, in purely allegorical or metaphorical senses—this isn’t about presenting an anthropological study of pastoral nomads and comparing their political organization with state systems. It IS, but not in such a literal sense. I get that. Nomads roam, they are unattached, somewhat unpredictable, bound by affiliation, and often seen as dire threats to sedentary populations (this is true even in a literal sense in many cases…mobility is threatening to people who wall themselves and their crops off from the world around them).

To wrap this up: the critique of Freud in Chapter two is damning and hilarious: “On the verge of discovering a rhizome," Deleuze and Guattari charge, "Freud always returns to mere roots” (27). Psychoanalysis, according to Deleuze and Guattari, works to neutralize and SILENCE subjects (38). The Wolf-Man howls about multiplicities, about individual and unpredictable experiences, about sensations and perceptions, about “packs of wolves”…and Freud responds, “How’s that? Goats, you say? How interesting” (38). A complete erasure! An explosion of possibilities and multiplicities, and Freud, the over-coded scientist, gives us pre-packaged answers about memories, fathers, and repressed sexualities. Here Deleuze and Guattari provide a phenomenal critique of science, of the ways in which "arborescent" thinking can vastly limit how we approach and describe human experiences. The lesson: don’t let your structures, theories, and preconceptions turn your packs of wolves into lame, bleating goats.

One word (and then some more)

So, one word has been keeping me busy for the last month or so: proposal.

That's pretty much all that I have been doing: writing a little, reading a lot, and writing some more. Funny how it can take so much time to jam information into one little document.

The methods section is especially difficult to frame out in a detailed sense, especially since the actual data collection is quite far off in the future. The proposal guidelines was some pretty specific information about how data will be handled--but the catch 22 is that any analytical methods necessarily depend on the ethnographic data, which doesn't really exist. I understand the reasons why reviewers want specifics...they want to make sure that people have a plan and know (somewhat) what they are doing. That makes sense. At the same time, sitting here two years in advance of the time when I will start really analyzing all of my (future) ethnographic data, it's a little difficult to predict how I will connect research question 2 with research question 4b. Just sayin.

In related news, I am putting photography in my methods section, even though that might not go over all that well with the powers that be (grant reviewers). We'll see how that works. What I find interesting is the fact that photography is (for some reason) still seen as something that is more subjective or less scientific than the written word. Didn't we move past that in the 1990s? I thought so, but apparently not. The ironic thing to me is that many ethnographers use photography and other visual tool in their work all the time--but they don't all include these tools in theoretical or methodological discussions. Interesting. This happens with photography all the time--ethnographers use cameras as supplementary tools without explicitly including them with the standard "tools" like participant observation, interviews, surveys, etc. Still, there are a lot of anthropologists who use visual methods--and use them quite well. The book "Righteous Dopefiend" by Phillipe Bourgois and Jeff Shonberg is just one example. Joao Biehl's "Vita" is another example. And there are tons of others.

Speaking of photography check out this link about the work of Susan Meiselas.

Reading update: I spend the last couple of weeks reading A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari. Final analysis: some good ideas in there, but it's best to approach the book with a little humor. At least, that's what worked best for me. And that strategy makes sense, because D&G kinda use the book to mess with readers a bit (the chapter on "The Geology of Morals" is a case in point). I definitely found some good ideas in the book, along with plenty of really dense passages that I was not all that interested in trying to decode for secret, embedded meanings.

Lastly, how about this:

Video: When did you choose to be straight?

Sometimes people find a way to make a really important point with a very simple and direct question. This short video really makes the interviewees rethink their answers. Take the time to watch this. It's quite good.

Histories on glass

My wife and I found a few old glass plates in a junk/antique store one weekend when we went driving around outside of Lexington. This was earlier this year--maybe sometime during the spring. Old boxes of photographs--especially just everyday snapshots of families and regular everyday stuff--have always fascinated me. I always wonder about what happened to all of the people...and I also wonder about the moment that the images were made. Who took the picture? In this case, what kind of 4x5 was used? What was happening in that moment? How and why did this men pose together? I am really fascinated by the social and cultural conventions that go into posing for and taking photographs. Glass plate negatives are incredibly fascinating. Just the fact that they can survive for so many years completely amazes me.

Masters of Subjection

The following is a reaction to reading Judith Butler's Psychic Life of Power:

Power exists prior to the subject, and power is also the “willed effect of the subject” (Butler, 14). We all enter a world that is completely symbolized, structured, ordered, and arranged before us. We step onto a cultural, political, and social stage as somewhat unwitting participants who have to adapt, to figure out the rules of the game in order to figure out what it means to be a part of that stage. We have to learn the rules of the game in order to exist as parts of the social body, and in order to be individuals within this pre-given system. This is the process of subjection. As Butler writes, “the subject emerges both as the effect of a prior power and as the condition of possibility for a radically conditioned form or agency” (14-15). We become individuals after being subjected to a powerful system in which we learn what it is to be named—resistance becomes possible only when one is named, ordered, and shaped by the social system that they are born into.

This process seems to be viciously circular—but Butler argues that power is never complete, never absolute (17). For me, this is where Butler provides a useful blend of Foucault and Lacan that moves beyond the arguments that Copjec provided a few weeks back. For Butler this incompleteness is the Lacanian real—that which the social order can never fully envelope. Identity is flexible, instable, and in flux because social identities can never fully account for the full being that any single person is. Agency, it seems, stems from the gaps, from the incompleteness of power. Agency, Butler writes, “is the assumption of a purpose unintended by power, one that could not have been derived logically or historically, that operates in a relation of contingency and reversal to the power that makes it possible, to which it nevertheless belongs” (15). Agency—or resistance—is an unexpected deviance or anomaly that takes place within a bounded system, but which stems from that very system. Humans resist violence and oppression with new forms of social organization, with weapons, and with the very language and sets of social symbols that were used to create oppression and violence in the first place. We write protest signs in the very language that represses; we march in places that are designated for free speech.

Moving beyond Foucault (or maybe taking him along for the ride), Butler argues that power not only subjects social bodies—it also shapes the formation of the psyche. If norms are internalized, she argues, then power is what creates the distinction between “interior and exterior life” (19). She writes, “Just as the subject is derived from conditions of power that precede it, so the psychic operation of the norm is derived, though not mechanically or predictably, from prior social operations” (21). Reflexivity is when the subject turns itself into an object of reflection (22), in which the Freudian drive and the Lacanian desire are in a constant tension with the desire for subjection itself (22). In order to become a working part of the social order everyone loses their unique inner drives or desires—or when they submit to dominant social and psychic order they suppress those original desires. In order to achieve the categorical status of a social individual every subject undergoes a dramatic loss.

The idea that complete subjection requires “mastery” is fascinating. Butler writes, “The more a practice is mastered, the more fully subjection is achieved…Though one might expect submission to consists in yielding to an externally imposed dominant order and to be marked by a loss of control and mastery, paradoxically, it is itself marked by mastery” (116). Here I think Butler pushes the argument beyond one of pure oppression to something that is even more ironic and insidious at the same time. By learning social codes, by learning from a young age who it is that holds power, when to cross the street, how to talk to authority, and the “proper” modes of interaction, every subject slowly masters his/her own subordination. A piano player can be seen as either a genius or a rigid slave to a particular set of routines. The same goes for a graduate student who, after years of reading the right books, parroting the right phrases and discourses, and turning in the proper papers at the proper time, finally masters the system and obtains a PhD. However, what have they become at that point? What is lost?

Final point. Butler writes, “Psychoanalysis insists that the opacity of the unconscious sets limits to the exteriorization of the psyche. It also argues—rightly, I think—that what is exteriorized or performed can only be understood by reference to what is barred from performance, what cannot or will not be performed” (144-45). When it comes to subjection, socialization, and power, what is it that cannot be performed? How is power something that sets the stage—even for resistance—and bans certain ways of acting and thinking from the “acceptable” social order? To continue using graduate school as an example, what forms of behavior are restricted in this particular setting? Are students expressing resistance when they form on-campus clubs to discuss political action, or are they confined to a relatively safe place that cannot effectively infect the rest of the social order?* What forms of thought, which ways of thinking, are mastered in higher education? Are we all learning how to think differently, or are we all learning how to think and act within a certain prescribed social system that allows for long-winded discussions of agency and resistance within convenient time slots? Deep exploration and discussion about “what cannot or will not be performed” is encouraged, as long as, in the end, we all think within certain boundaries and turn in the right papers at the right time.

Is it merely "academic" to cite your sources?

This one is pretty frustrating. Michael David Murphy (MDM) is a photographer who runs the site "2point8," which focuses mostly on street photography. It's a pretty great site, and it's one of the places that I like to check in every now and again when I want to see what's going on in the photography world. In this post, he talks about a new book that was recently published called "Street Photography Now." Murphy writes that he was really looking forward to the publication of this book--but then he noticed something that seemed a little TOO FAMILIAR about it. When he ran some text through the search engine on his site, he realized that the editors/book publishers had directly lifted text from a couple of interviews that he did and published them without any attribution.

So MDM wrote about this on his site. Interestingly, two people involved with the project responded in the comments section by basically dismissing the whole idea of giving proper credit as mere academic issues. If you're interested in these sorts of issues, take the time to read how they dodge the issue and ultimately tell Murphy, in a nice way, that they don't really care about the issue that he brought up. Both comments insinuate the idea that giving proper credit would somehow get in the way of the creative spirit of the project (or something like that), which is one of the lamest excuses for plagiarism I have heard in a while.

MDM writes:*

I’m all for the free and open Web, but when you freely copy text from websites, and use that content in a published book for sale, it seems uncool (at best) to not cite your references, and illegal (at worst). The quotes used in the book have the appearance of being created in direct interviews that Howarth and McLaren conducted with the included photographers, and that’s just not true — they copied-and-pasted passages off the Web and failed to cite their sources.

I’m sure there’s some “explanation”, right? How many other sources are quoted and not cited?

In these days of copyright grabs, when photographers are the first and loudest to rightfully declare theirs as theirs, it’s interesting that in a book about photographers, the accompanying text isn’t treated with the same care.

I completely agree. Too bad the people behind this book--which actually looks pretty cool--didn't take the time to do things right.

*Apologies for interrupting the creative flow by referring to the person who actually wrote the words that I quoted. I know, I know! The whole zen of this post has been thrown off by these terribly restrictive academic conventions.

Hey, it's just a game: Virtual War, Violence, and Real War

Have you seen some of the new commercials for the US military, by chance? One thing that I have noticed with some of these is that they often look a lot like video games. Here's a slightly older ad that has the video game feel to it:

And here is an ad about a video game that the US Army supposedly developed (from 2007):

A new post by Max Forte over at Zero Anthropology got me thinking about all of this. Apparently, there was some controversy about a new video game that allowed users to play the part of the Taleban:

So what are these video games for? What purpose(s) can they serve, if any, besides entertainment? How seriously do users take them? How seriously should we think about these sorts of questions? For me this brings up questions about the relationship between violence, realistic video games like this, and desensitization. I was pretty young during Gulf War I, but one thing I remember clearly is how much the TV news coverage looked like a video game. It was all so detached, clean, and put together. But the video games today--like Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor--aren't exactly detached. These games are realistic, close-up, and bloody. Still, they generate detachment because they are "just games" and fall under the "entertainment" category. All of this makes me think of the Wikileaks release of footage from Iraq earlier this year, and how the soldiers sounded like they were just playing another game. Do video games cause violence? I doubt it. But can they help generate a kind of systematic, dehumanized detachment? Good question.

UPDATE 10/5: I found one of the new commercials that I talked about at the opening of this post. This one is a USAF commercial that looks a lot like a video game. Interesting to think about why they choose to present recruiting commercials in this way. Check it out:

Participant Observation of grad school, continued

Week seven, I think.

Rule #1 in grad school: there isn't enough time. Get used to it. Rule #2: When you use your Netflix account to get a break from grad school, be sure to intersperse some uplifting films in the queue every once in a while. This weekend we watched "The Road" here at home, and it just wasn't the RIGHT movie for this time during the semester. Sure, they did a pretty good job of adapting the film to the book. But the film itself was a bit bleak for a couple of grad students who don't get a lot of time to go outside and have fun away from computers and books. Noted.

Right now I am buried in seminars, writing up a research proposal, and doing TA stuff. It's the usual life of a mid-semester grad student. Suddenly all take-out and restaurant food sounds really good, all the time. This is the time of the semester when I feel like I need to go make coffee--or do something--in order to really start getting stuff done.

One big project that I am working on is writing up my dissertation proposal. Suddenly I am chasing down any article I can about the whole proposal process--articles about style, about methods, and about accepting the fact that a multitude of people will be going for the same grants. This site, by the way, has some pretty helpful stuff for any of you folks who happen to be working on dissertation or other proposals. I also have a renewed interest in all of my methods books. Now, I want to have H. Russell Bernard with me at all times.

In one seminar, which is basically about Power according to Michel Foucault, we just went through another interlude with the work of Lacan. Psychoanalysis: interesting, yes. But then what? I'm not really sure what to do with all of those ideas about "the real" and "the void" in a methodological sense. Ya, I get the basic idea that we exist in a symbolized world, and that our cultural and linguistic symbolizations can't really envelope all of reality. There are gaps in what we can explain, depict, and even recognize--and sometimes our little symbolic webs pretty much limit how and why we think certain ways.

Great. But how or why should I or anyone else assume that Lacan has THE right version of reality? Does it even matter? I mean, it seems like it all requires a leap of faith. Either you accept the starting assumptions that Lacan (and others) put forth, or you're a die-hard materialist reductionist who is blinded by the symbolic order/fish tank that you don't even know you're in. Who knows? I always wonder how Lacan is able to realize all of this--what makes him one of the people who able to realize that "the real" exists? Maybe that's just his own symbolic order conflating the issue. This is a tangent that I am going to walk away from, abruptly.

In another seminar the word of the week is "development." This has been the word of the week before, of course. This time around, I'm glad we're reading through James Ferguson's Anti-Politics Machine. Why? Because he makes the point that it might be a good idea to look at the unstated results of development. Don't just look at the stated goals of development projects, also look at all of the other consequences.

The news of the week: 22 tourists were kidnapped in Mexico. I think this happened in Acapulco. Not good. Did you know that almost 30,000 people have died in Mexico because of drug wars and related violence? Ya, this is a serious problem. Felipe Calderon has tried to battle the situation, but he has basically been outgunned on most counts. His newest plan is to revamp the entire police force of Mexico.

Finally, from the environmentalist front. Sometimes when environmentalists talk about human-environment issues, they forget about the human part. There is a real danger in this, especially considering people like the Discovery Channel gunman who go completely overboard. Another recent case occurred with the British environmentalist group 10:10, who released a new promo video called "No Pressure," which is supposed to encourage people to do something about the environment. Here's the video (graphic content warning):

Not surprisingly, there were tons of negative reactions, the video was pulled, and 10:10 issued a heart felt apology, saying they "missed the mark with this one" or something like that. You know, when you start alluding to killing people based upon political or social ideals, well, I think you've gone far beyond "missing the mark." While I certainly understand the reasons why people become passionate about environmental issues, I think it's pretty critical not to completely lose perspective. Kind of reminds me of the biography of the late Diane Fossey. Yes, it is important to rethink how we use the environment, and this is a serious issue. And yes, we need to think about how humans interact with the "natural" world around them. At the same time, it's critical not to turn the issue into some ideological nightmare by making polemic crap like this. Bad move, 10:10. All you've done with this is make yourselves look like extremists. Definitely not going to win any supporters with this sort of thing.

Governmentality: power in parts per million

NOTE: The following is a short reaction to reading Michel Foucault's series of lectures "Security, Territory, Population." And yes, you will see a reference to a spicy chicken sandwich.

What interests me most about this set of lectures by Foucault is the shift in thinking and organization that took place with the transition from sovereign authority to governmentality. The difference between the two, in short, is all about statistical reasoning. Rule shifts from specific rights to a numbers game in which governments learn to deal with expected deviations, digressions, and setbacks as a matter of course. For the sovereign monarch, power and rule was directed toward the control of specific territories, law, justice, and wealth. Govermentality, which is focused on the management of a population in aggregate, is all about “letting things take their course” (45).

Many trends in the 17th and 18th centuries reflect this shift in thinking, from the development of the discipline of economics, to epidemiology, criminology, and even evolutionary theory. This shift in thought moves away from the restrictive control of discipline and toward a laisser-faire understanding of larger social and political processes that essentially solve problems themselves by simply being allowed to run amok. While sovereign forms of power relied on strict discipline, which isolates and controls, governmentality relies on “security”, which is expansive or centrifugal (45). Security radiates, expands, and extends itself into various social and political spheres. While discipline is about regulation, “security” is directed toward opening the numerical floodgates of probability and allowing “inevitable processes” to take their course.

Law is a forbidding force, while discipline is a punishing force. Security, on the other hand, responds to reality “in such a way that this response cancels out the reality to which it responds—nullifies it, or limits, checks, or regulates it” (47). According to Foucault, apparatuses of security do not function according to a restrictive, or negative formulation of power. These apparatuses work through what he calls a “freedom of circulation” (49). Diseases cancel themselves out when they run their course (and when they eliminate certain pieces of the social body); the purposive allowance of starvation staves off problems of economic scarcity. This is governmentality. Decisions are made based upon an aggregate understanding of the health, wealth, or productive power of populations as a whole. Starvation of one segment of the social body allows for the cleansing forces of the free market to strengthen the population as a whole. Or so the thinking goes. Laisser-faire economic theory may be seen as vaccination writ large, side effects and all. The risks of these apparatuses of security, Foucault argues, are not spread evenly throughout the population (61).

The natural desires of the population, also known as the pursuit of self-interest, are unleashed (73). These “desires” reflect a very different understanding of governance; gone is the focus on individual right, status, or responsibility (75). The population exhibits tendencies, convictions, behaviors, and fears that cannot simply be reduced to individuals (ibid). Governmentality is about assessing, predicting, and managing these collective desires, effects, and trends with particular ends in mind (power, health, profit, etc).

I’m going to end with a particular example of governmentality that all of us deal with on a day-to-day basis. We all eat every day, right? Each year, a number of people die from the food they eat, often from contaminants or other “deviations”. This fact come as no surprise to the US government, let alone the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Statistically speaking, a certain number of people are expected to die, and the basic job of the FDA is to do what it can to manage those numbers while allowing food producing industries and the “market” to do what they do best. This means that limits are set, for example, on the accepted parts per million of “contaminants” that are allowed in our food. A whole range of studies, tests, reports, and statistics are used to police food producing industries.

Statistics and reports are the tools of governmentality, all designed to keep the numbers in the right place. While some individuals will have to deal with the adverse effects of a particularly deadly microbe in their spicy chicken sandwich, “natural” forces are allowed to circulate and “cancel out” such minor inconveniences, thereby assuring the supposed health/vigor of the social (and economic) body as a whole. This is governmentality at its finest: a shift away from focusing on individual rights and sovereign rule, toward a greater concern with aggregate costs, benefits, and desires. So, either you die by beheading in the 1300s in the name of SOVEREIGN LAW, or you lose your life to a chicken sandwich in 2010 in the name of statistics and free market economics. Clearly, the violence of power can be delivered in very different ways.

What you really DO NOT want to see while doing archaeological survey work

This one comes from a survey project that I worked on back in 2006. Good thing we figured out this was not live ordnance. Not the kind of thing that you really want to stumble across, period. I love surveys near firing ranges, especially when people gently warn you not to touch anything that looks "hazardous".

Inefficient Assumptions

Maxine Udall is my favorite economics writer these days, hands down. Her latest post talks about one subject that often confounds me: how can so many people assume that government is the main source of all economic problems? How do so many economists explain away our current economic issues as the result of government intervention, while dismissing the culpability of the private sector.

In some circles, while the government is the source of all evil, the private sector, led by that wonderfully benevolent invisible hand, is almost angelic. I have a really difficult time with analytical frameworks that result in automatic responses, period. For example, some neo-marxists will tell you, almost invariably, that the source of all of our problems is capitalism. Never mind the various contexts in which capitalism exists, or the various forms that it takes, or the multitude of ways in which capitalism plays out (positive and negative)--the problem, in the eyes of some, is always "capitalism". Ok, great. For me this kind of thinking is insufficient. And it's cut from the same cloth as the free-market ideologists who always frame "the state" or "government" as the main culprit in almost any economic disaster.

Udall consistently argues, instead, that the true problem that we need to address is the concentration of power--no matter where it exists (government or private sector). Rather than focusing on the same old ideological responses, maybe we should consider how power, corruption, and coercion can infiltrate many different economic and political systems. Read this:

Regular readers know that one recurring theme in this blog is that concentrated economic and political power in the private sector is as much a "problem" as an ineffective, inefficient guvment especially one that has been deprived of the funds needed to regulate a complex capitalist society based on commercial exchange and characterized in some sectors (like health and finance) by several types of market failure. Regular readers also know that as someone who grew up in a private sector family business, I expect private sector employees and their managers to behave better than caricatures of mindless guvmint bureaucrats that populate cautionary tales about totalitarian guvmints.

Read the rest here. Udall's discussions over on her site illustrate quite well why economics is a social science. The "market" is not some magical, predictable force that has a mind of its own--it's populated and shaped by humans with a varying degree of ethical constraints, desires, and motivations. That means that any economic analysis is going to have to take account of political factors, one way or another. Some economic and social theorists attribute certain predictable traits to particular systems or institutions--"capitalism" and "socialism" being two of the main terms that often get completely reduced to useless ideological caricatures. And while the anti-capitalists and the anti-socialists keep yelling at one another from their respective sides, power continues to accumulate and be deployed in ways that cut across these ridiculously simple divisions.