In a Tent Way in the Alps

Perhaps the most daunting part of what I do is finding a place to live in a foreign country. I have begun the process of planning a two month stay in Stuttgart Germany so that I can conduct preliminary research on issues of urban renewal, development, and political life Germany's most successful Bundesland. This involves me not only securing a flight to Germany, but actually finding somewhere I can stay for two months while I do field work. The last time I was in Europe, my accommodations could be secured at a hostel, or were taken care of by the study abroad program I was on. The most I had to worry about, really, was transportation. But now, the game has changed.

It appears that Stuttgart's housing issue is that they just don't have enough of it. I have looked for sublets (does the concept even translate?) and student housing, but the pickings are slim. Every day I scan listings in hopes that someone is going to need to leave their place for just long enough that I can squat in their space. Its sad, really, that the biggest concern right now isn't so much my research as it is having a place to put my stuff at night.

The fact that I will be gone for two months is beginning to get very real to me. I have begun writing grant proposals and setting up an itinerary. With each subsequent step, I realize more and more that I am on the verge of something that very well could define the next six years of my life, if not more. There is undoubtably a tremendous amount of excitement on my part- the world is open to me, and I am going to pry it open in a very real way. I cannot visualize the places I will go, but I know that in a year's time these places will be a part of my own mental landscape.

With every opportunity, of course, there are a great many things to be left behind. I am having to leave my girlfriend and my dog to set out on my own and figure out the process of fieldwork. For someone who is so comforted by the very notion of 'home,' this is daunting, to say the least. Somewhere outside the comforts of the familiar I must define myself in a new context and bring that back with me.

There will be new people I have to force myself to meet, and the limits of my own knowledge to test. And at the end of the day, I have to go back to a place that isn't home and try to find solace in that. What is so exciting is that I am now being told to explore the unfamiliar and find a register to put it in so that others may find some wonder and familiarity in it all the same. I am to take my love of discovery and translate it into words that resonate beyond my own experience. Anthropologists don't simply question or explain, they reveal the familiar plurality that populates this world. I get to be a part of that, but its not going to be a comfortable process.

There is still a lot left to do here in Princeton before the summer, but nonetheless I can't help but plan ahead just a little. I mean, I don't want to land in Stuttgart and then have to go live in a tent in the Alps.

Wash Your Mouth out with SOPA

The role of the Internet in the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East has been discussed ad nauseam by this point. Analysis of the events has focused on how the popular social networking websites had a role in helping protesters organize in the early stages of the mass uprisings, though there have been arguments to downplay such a perspective. And it is true, there may be a tendency to overemphasize how important the Internet actually was in these revolts. To continue to debate that point would be to dwell on counterfactuals to such a great degree that it is unlikely to yield anything substantial.

But what can be examined is the way the Internet is working within different contexts and how issues centrally focused on the Internet are becoming increasingly volatile. Perhaps the most obvious, and most important, example of this has been the reaction to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). On January 18th, for those of you who think your convection oven is a computer, Wikipedia, Reddit, and several other websites went dark. Google used the might of their all-powerful doodle to further draw attention to the opposition to these two pieces of legislation. Leading up to the January 18th blackout, members of Reddit were buzzing about the possibility of an "Internet strike" and when it came to fruition, it appeared that the major media outlets refocused on the issues inherent into these two pieces of legislation.

I want to have full disclosure here: I think SOPA and PIPA are horrible bills written by people who are either completely ignorant of the way the Internet actually functions or are too busy to care to craft a more articulate bill. The bills, as they stand, would open the door to a massive amount of litigation and needless crack downs on various websites.

What I want to really consider, however, is not the shortcomings of the bills, but how the opposition to these bills played out. The discourse around the bills was framed as an issue of free speech and personal freedom. The notion that any website could be brought down because a wayward link to material claimed under copyright certainly raises grave concerns regarding the nature of execution and enforcement. To frame the issue in terms of free speech, however, is certainly curious to some degree. The bills were not designed to silence political opposition or the ability for individuals to voice their opinions- they were designed to clamp down on the distribution of materials which were still claimed under active copyright. I suspect that what was being claimed was that because any website could be shut down under the laws, regular users were exposed to an unfair danger of losing their ability to upload content or share messages. This is where the bills were really at their weakest; in an effort to pursue illegal behavior, too many individuals were opened up to the consequences of enforcement. I don't see any concerted effort on the part of lawmakers to infringe on the first amendment. I do see a remarkable degree of negligence on the part of lawmakers which exposed too many people to an unnecessary response on the part of enforcement agencies.

The mobilization of online communities, however, is at risk of being overstated though not by much. Certainly, the very fact that Internet giants Wikipedia and Google stood in opposition to SOPA certainly added a tremendous amount of weight to the opposition. The question to ask is whether or not legislators were actually moved by the vocal online community, or it they only caved because powerful business interests made a very serious statement about the bills. We return once more to the perennial question in America; who are our legislator's real constituents? Its a fairly trite question by this point, but one that must be asked by anyone who's experiencing too much euphoria over the bills' current shelving. Where the role of the Internet and social networking in the revolutions abroad can remain a point of contention and debate, we may want to look a little closer for an answer to what the Internet can do for social movements and their impacts on governments.

While I am elated that there is at least a temporary victory for people wanting to avoid poor legislation over the critical infrastructure that is the Internet, I am also skeptical that the average Internet user had much more of a role than simply being consumers. The issue is, if it was in fact the business interests that impact the legislative process, what was really was accomplished was a reaffirmation of our roles as interchangeable consumers. And the problem with that is that the business, not the consumer, gets to speak to the government. We are constantly one level removed from where our impacts should really be placed. Perhaps I am being too cynical here. Perhaps the signing of petitions and vocal opposition really did have a significant impact. But this is something experts in the field should really question now, before we start thinking the Internet will be a way to save our democracy.

Who do We Endorse?

When I entered the University of Chicago in 2007, I was a convinced Political Science major with aspirations to enter the realm of International Relations. UChicago was home to many well respected International Relations scholars, including John Mearsheimer, one of the foremost neo-realist scholars. Over the course of my education I began to question the neo-realist position, and eventually all of International Relations and its approach to the study of political conflict and cooperation. I have not maintained close ties to the UChicago political science department or its professors. That is, until very recently.

John Mearsheimer is no stranger to controversy. In the summer of 2007 Mearsheimer and his Harvard colleague Stephen A. Walt published The Israel Lobby in which they argued that lobbyist groups that were pro-Israeli were exerting undue influence over American foreign policy. Mearsheimer and Walt were charged with Anti-Semitism, which was a charge I found really out of place. The arguments they made were that Israel is not a country that should receive disproportionate aid from the United States, and that Israel should not be allowed to be free of criticism. This is most decidedly not anti-Semitism; its a legitimate criticism. But this didn't stop a firestorm from brewing around the book. During my time working with people in the Political Science department I heard the debate go on and on. People who worked with Mearsheimer swore up and down that he wasn't an anti-semite. People like Alan Dershowitz begged to differ. And on it went.

Then, this year, Mearsheimer wrote a blurb for Gilad Atzmon's book The Wandering Who? which has generated significant criticism in its one right. The student newspaper at the University of Chicago, The Maroon, published a letter written by Dershowitz in which he cites, at length, some of Atzmon's more despicable rants. At issue seems to be that Atzmon's writings, beyond his newly published book, are riddled with some fairly controversial statements and that Mearsheimer was simply not careful when he chose to blurb Atzmon's book. As a matter of fact, Mearsheimer has come out and said

 I was asked to review Atzmon's book and see whether I would be willing to blurb it. This is something I do frequently, and in every case I focus on the book at hand and not on the personality of the author or their other writings. In other words, I did not read any of Atzmon's blog postings before I wrote my blurb. And just for the record, I have not met him and did not communicate with him before I was asked to review The Wandering Who? I read only the book and wrote a blurb that deals with it alone.

 He chose to focus only on the book in question and has explicitly denied any knowledge of Atzmon's other works. The issue I have with this defense is that it raises serious questions about anyone's responsibility when reviewing and endorsing someone else's work. How much should one scholar know about an author before he or she choses to endorse their work? Is there some minimum standard that must be met? Certainly people rarely agree completely either with a work they endorse or with the author who wrote that book. But is it one thing to disagree about somethings, like political views or philosophy, and another when it comes to prejudicial views?

Certainly, there is a standard in academia to avoid ad hominem argumentation and to, instead, deal with the ideas at hand. But is this always responsible to ignore an author's previous works and views in favor of remaining focused on the writing at hand?  I can't speak to the quality of Atzmon's book itself- I have not, nor do I have a desire to, read it. But the entire controversy has raised questions for me about how much scrutiny individuals should be under when they choose to read and represent others. The banner of "academic freedom" has been flying for quite some time, and it has continuously found itself under fire. I think academic freedom is important, but I also think personal responsibility is important.

I'm not a fan of Mearsheimer's work. I'm actually not a fan of his theoretical framework. And now, I can't say I'm a fan of Mearsheimer's judgement. Beyond this, I have never actually read or heard Mearsheimer say anything anti-semitic. I have, however, seen him now exercise some fairly questionable choices in what he wants to endorse. But I have to thank Mearsheimer for one thing. He's made me think much more carefully about what it means to endorse a work and how much I should know about the author of that work before I chose to say anything publicly about it.

In Pursuit of Relevance

I am studying Cultural Anthropology, a field under particular attack in the state of Florida where Governor Rick Scott recently disparaged the discipline as being irrelevant and useless to the job market. And indeed, if you do a simple news search for the term 'anthropology' you will find articles that back up the dismal job placement of anthropologists both in the private sector and in the academy. There is no denying the fact that anthropologists have a hard time securing jobs after any extended period of time in the field, but what is implicitly being stated here is two-fold.

First, relevance is assumed to be tied to the job market and the ability to be a field in which people can get jobs. This is a particular kind of relevance. Rick Scott's comments seem to fall under the category of thinking where colleges and universities should be diploma factories. His vision, and those who share it, is one in which the degree is ultimately irrelevant and the only thing that matters is that it can be hammered out and made to fit into a pre-prescribed slot in the work force. This is what happens when the defending logic runs "anthropologists can be consultants for a number of international firms." This is most certainly true, but not really a great explication of the field of anthropology or what it can uniquely contribute. Economics majors can, and do, go into consulting with the same expectations placed on them by the job. As can English majors. Responses to Scott's statements have been to show that anthropologists can and do find places on the job market, but this doesn't really address the question of why anthropologists may contribute in a unique fashion to their chosen job site.

Second, the notion of relevance itself is bound up in a very limited way. Very few people would deny that economists or political scientists are relevant. After all, these are the people who show up on talk shows and analysis programs most frequently. The social scientists I have heard most frequently on NPR (I know, a great example of relevance, right?) have been political scientists and sociologists (not to mention the fetishism of economists). To be relevant is to be consulted by people who view you as an expert. When something happens abroad, the anthropologists who has spent years in the field there isn't consulted- its the economists or the political scientists who have studied the area who get the call. This is a pretty standard gripe among people in anthropology, but it comes with another angle. When anthropologists are brought into a role of expertise, like in the Human Terrain System, members of the anthropology community immediately become upset. I personally have problems with HTS, but it seems curious to me that the pulls within the field happen in two directions. We want to be heard because we can contribute to thinking through a wide variety of problems, but if we are listened to in certain registers there is an immense backlash.

I think Rick Scott is a bit of a myopic fool for making the comments he did, but he isn't a unique case. Throughout my undergrad years I had many people I knew disparage the social sciences as being "unrigorous" or pale imitations of the "hard sciences" where objectivity is claimed to flourish. And it is the hard sciences that Rick Scott and others believe should dominate the realm of higher education. But I can't help but think that this begs so many problems that people aren't looking into. Anthropology isn't, or at least shouldn't be, modeled after the hard sciences. Their methods and perspectives work well with certain sets of conditions, but they too are fraught with limitations. What I personally think anthropology can do is defend us against our own arrogance and remind us of ourselves when we become too involved in something. While I do think there are a myriad of cases where anthropologists should be consulted (in realms of policy making especially) I think that, more fundamentally, anthropologists can take a moment like the one in which Rick Scott decided to attack the social sciences and see how these are indicative of much larger trends and patterns within a community.

The STEM fields should receive a lot of support, I don't doubt this. But to believe that the STEM fields are superior to the social sciences is a fallacy that begs problems. I very much doubt that an engineer will have the tools at his disposal to answer questions of inter-communal conflicts or the integration and interrelations of ethnic groups in metropolitan centers. And to think that these problems are unimportant is to invite a world of consequences.

Currently: Occupied

Apparently the Occupy Wall Street movement is something that has been going on for a while, and is large enough to merit its own Wikipedia article. I say apparently because, as someone who just started school and didn't have internet at my home for nearly a month, I've had a hard time being connected to the world.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement is interesting to me. On the basic principle, I am fully sympathetic with the protestors. Trying to deny that the financial sectors of our economy represent undue influence on the political sector and have lead to some highly egregious breaches of public moral norms is rather difficult. I suppose the people who would disagree are those who are either uninformed at the most basic level, or who actually believe in the Utilitarian model and its application to corporations. Unfortunately, I think that position is untenable and rooted on some seriously flawed axioms. But that is neither here nor there.

What I find problematic, however, is the following. There seems to really be more of an amorphous shape to these protests rather than the kinds of directed and well focused protests this country has seen in the past. This is perhaps evidenced by the Occupy movements lack of central demands that appear actionable. I am not saying that what they want is not just- I believe that it largely is- but that what they are after is really unclear pragmatically. I will borrow a quote from The New York Times contributor Gina Bellefante as quoted on Wikipedia, "The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out." I agree with Bellefante's point here. The movement may capture the general ideals of a great many of us who have grown up in an America market by run-away corporations, but that does not mean our ideals are well articulated; yet. When writers look "behind the scorn" they most certainly do see precisely what it is that is bothering the protestors, but they cannot translate this into an articulated grievance- only a laundry list of complaints.


There is something to be said, however, for the fact that the amorphous demands that these protestors hold have actually converted in to action. While I agree with Bellefante at this point and time I also hold out hope that action itself may lead to an articulation of demands. And I also hold out hope that the protests themselves will become the trigger by which more people come to identify their grievances with the ways in which finance and governance intersect in this country in a very baffling way. 


The article from Salon.com that I linked above has a fairly interesting point that I would like to put out right now. The author of the article, Glenn Greenwald, writes:

Given the costs and risks one incurs from participating in protests like this — to say nothing of the widespread mockery one receives –  it’s natural that most of the participants will be young and not yet desperate to cling to institutional stability.  It’s also natural that this cohort won’t be well-versed (or even interested) in the high arts of media messaging and leadership structures.  Democratic Party precinct captains, MBA students in management theory and corporate communications, and campaign media strategists aren’t the ones who will fuel protests like this; it takes a mindset of passionate dissent and a willingness to remove oneself from the safe confines of institutional respectability. 

This passage troubles me because it does presume that the demographics of the protest are acephalous because of some deficiency with young protesters and the absence of those skilled enough to bring direction. Firstly, I would have to say that these are moments when leadership is forged and structural thinking outside of the "safe confines of institutional respectability" leads to remarkably change. The protests against the Vietnam war were made of a similar demographic, but they have now become venerated for their powerful effect on American political-culture at the time. I tend to agree with Greenwald's overall point- the protestors do deserve support from those who share in their ideals. But they also deserve that those of us who cannot protest begin to articulate the frustration in words and thoughts at the same time action takes form. Those of us who share in their general sentiments have a responsibility to begin a much bigger discourse on the nature of what troubles us. We have an obligation not to march in the streets, though many would like to, but to lend support to those who do by creating a voice.

At this juncture I do not know if this movement will actually begin a substantive shift in the way the financial, political, and civic spheres interact, though I do hope there will be some lasting effects beyond the protests. These protests have the potential to represent a serious moment for this generation growing up in the world after 9-11 and on the downward slope engendered by decades of reckless faith in a system of markets geared towards wealth disparity. While I support the protestors and feel that they are embodying something very important, I do not think it has taken a meaningful shape yet. I hope that a voice will be found soon, and that a peaceful but powerful change will come.

Lost in a City of Nostalgia

I visited New York City this weekend and I really had a wonderful time. The vibrant energy and sheer volume of everything in that city really is something to behold. But as my girlfriend and I were walking home from the train station, I realized that beyond enjoying the city I had also become faintly homesick.

Chicago is not as densely populated as New York. The things to do are not quite as plentiful and there isn't quite the same vibe. But at the same time I couldn't help but get caught up in the affective memory of the architecture of the city running along the Chicago River. The sheer wonder of standing on the bridge flanked by the Wrigley Building or of the wonderful escape places like Hyde Park could afford for those weary of the pressures of the Loop. Skyline scenes standing in Grant Park at night still provide me with a deep sense of joy.

And I would suspect myself of having "the grass is always greener" syndrome except that I loved Chicago when I lived there. That is, of course, not to say anything against New York. Its just not my home. It captures a different kind of energy for me that, while exciting, doesn't quite give me the same kind of peace that Chicago does.

I am settling in fairly well to life in Princeton, make no mistake about that. I do enjoy many things about not being directly in the city anymore and I'm starting to (slowly) figure out the pace of things here. But still, I just can't quite shake this feeling I have for the city I grew up with and love. I think about driving at night, east bound on the Kennedy, when the colorful displace of the City of Broad Shoulders comes into view. I imagine the cavernous Loop with is massive walls on all sides. The marble and steel and glass form a brand new environment along the wide streets. The wonderfully abrupt sight of the L hovering over the street still, for whatever perverse reason, gives me a sense of home.

This may simply be the nature of home sickness. I bring to the fron everything about a place that I liked and I sideline everything that I didn't care for. But that may also simply be the nature of any place we come to call home. Even standing on the top level of the Target parking garage and looking to the city brings me a smile. The quieter, tree line streets who have stolen their peace among the buzzing of the city streets remain fond memories. Even the decaying landscape of the South Side as we ran through the streets on a training run still stand out in positive lights.

I got lost in my memories again.

I don't really have much of a point save to remind people that the places we call home rarely every disappear in our minds. And when we find new homes they are defined in the terms of the places we left behind. But this can be a great source of joy, and one that I relish.

Its Ok, We Can Not Understand Science Together

Since I still have time to read news sources in the morning, I spent a little time on NPR this morning. On the right-hand side I saw this little gem: "In GOP Presidential Field, Science Finds Skeptics." My blood pressure is elevated here.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have no problem admitting that intelligent people can be conservatives in a sense of the word that extends beyond our vernacular use of it. There have been many people who I have met who have rooted their beliefs in a philosophy that is often coined "conservative" on the American spectrum. I'm perfectly fine with that because I can understand and respect that. What I have a huge issue with, however, is when something like this happens:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has publicly doubted the science of climate change and says creationism should be taught alongside evolution, is the new front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination.

I know many people who are global warming deniers, and they all seem to formulate their opinions based not upon the actual scientific principles behind the phenomenon and instead on the political ramifications they perceive from the "pushing of the global warming agenda." Look, it's really not difficult to understand that the evidence for global climate change is not based upon local weather but on chemical reactions occurring in the atmosphere and in the oceans. The fundamental principles of these chemical reactions are extremely simple and not negotiable. These are things that any one, irrespective of their major field of study, can understand. But instead, the understanding of the science is dominated by some political point being made.

The fear of "big government" has become the driving force in global warming denialism- not a skepticism of the science. I have come to understand that there are many who believe that global warming is a plot to simply generate more taxes- which makes it all the more peculiar that it is not only American scientists who see evidence of global warming. This misapprehension of the way in which one should disagree or agree with a scientific point is precisely what leads to presidential candidates who lack a fundamental understanding of scientific findings can somehow find themselves in front of their primary.

By the way, at least two of the candidates in the GOP field also deny evolution on grounds that they mask as being scientific but which are firmly religious.

This ties in well to a point I have tried to make with many of my friends in the so-called "hard sciences." They have asserted that the rigor of their fields and the objectivity of their work give the hard sciences some sort of privileged position among other fields of study. I have contended that science works very well among those who understand it and who are willing to engage it on more neutral terms (though never wholly neutral). However, science only matters to non-scientists in so far as it confirms or improves the reality they have constructed and perceive. Controversial science among the non-scientific public is not that which is still up for scientific review or the findings are still left for interpretation, but rather that which upsets the socio-political order that people wish to maintain. In this case, it is a move away from federal government and towards a "free-market" state.

I suppose the only point I want to pull out from all of this is that the idea that denying global warming is not being a skeptic- its confusing science and political posturing. My suspicion is that a few of the "conservative" lawmakers and candidates are fully aware of this and are deliberately stating these positions to garner votes. However, I have a much more sickening suspicion- namely that a few of them actually believe what they are saying.