Brent's Blog

When a movement lacks a theory

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Allison) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:33:00 +0000

With the exception of the interruption of graduate school, I've been involved in the youth rights (YR) movement in some capacity since I was a youth myself. It should be noted that the movement has historically focused on negative rights, or civil liberties that would enable youth (of 18, 16, 14, or any age depending on the faction) to legally act in ways older citizens of a certain age are entitled to do. Positive rights of youth to tertiary education, transportation, health care, and the like have had little influence. Considering the anti-welfarist context of our times, and that many YR activists are themselves libertarians and fiscal conservatives, this lack of attention to positive youth rights in the movement overall is unsurprising.

Splits across different factions invariably afflict new social movements trying to find its exact narrative and explanatory theory. What are our origins? How did the world become so corrupt or flawed that it demands we fix it? What is to be done? The YR movement is different in that the splits haven't occurred over narrative or theory. It has neither. The YR movement has aligned itself with the classical liberalism of Locke and Mill and struggles to convincingly extend this school of thought to the issue of civil liberties of those under 21, 18, 16, or lower. However, the construct of youth is not theorized as a manifestation of institutionalized oppression and invisible privilege. The social libertarian thinkers of the 1970s that the YR movement relies on, much less the philosophes and Enlightenment scholars never got that far. Consequently, these arguments will remain unconvincing to potential supporters still wedded to this construct's hegemony. Mike Males has done a admirable job of tying the current abysmal state of YR with adult privilege and scapegoating by safety activists in need of patronage. However, he leaves the matter of how the YR movement itself is to respond to these conditions for us to address.

So without a narrative or a theory, the splits in YR have occurred largely over marketing classical liberalism for Gen X, and later Gen Y. There's little doubt that the movement as a whole would like to see age restrictions junked entirely on principle. In an age of hysteria over sexual predators and teen alcoholism, this won't sell. We discovered this the hard way in the 1990s when ASFAR (Americans For a Society Free from Age Restrictions - just what it sounds like) became little more than a fringe novelty group on Web 1.0. The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) created itself from the split - not over who we are, but how radical were we going to be over expressing what we really want. Instead of reflecting on who we were within the context of power, culture, and history, we stood for who we were not; namely pedophiles and teenagers looking for a buzz that anonymous critics on message boards accused us of being. Hence NYRA's current half-hearted support for lower age restrictions on more socially congenial issues like voting and free speech as a matter of political expediency.

In short, the YR movement has found itself in relative paralysis because it only reacts to the hegemonic construct of youth. There's no theorizing, reflecting upon, and directly undermining that construct with a narrative. Beyond being "the last civil rights movement" in a post-civil rights era, where does YR fit in that grand scheme? Movements for advancing the interests of women and people of color didn't simply say, "We are equal." They realized many of the reasons why the yoke of inequity was so short, tight, and all-encompassing for so long. This took an enormous project of inquiry and fortitude to not be defined by those holding the yoke.

Commonsensical appeals to the extension of civil liberties for youth aren't doing the job, because the current "common sense" isn't on the side of YR supporters. Rather, the YR movement has to look beyond Locke and Mill and to a whole new world of critical theories to paint a more systematic story that explains why youth in the U.S. face some of the strictest laws in the developed world. This requires a long and hard look at what "youth" and "adult" have meant, what they mean now, and a willingness to allow the intersecting dynamics of political economy, race, gender, religion, and dare I suggest, sexuality and the body to inform these categories.

Contradicting Steve Jobs in Instructional Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Allison) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:49:00 +0000

Steve Jobs reflected on Apple Computers' corporate culture in the February 2004 edition of Macworld to say, "We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." This quote from a computer vendor made in 2004, when time-wasting websites like MySpace, Fark, Facebook, and YTMND were rapidly gaining users deserves scrutiny. Yet, this philosophy continues to find application in a host of projects meant to address the global digital divide without considering the need for supervision to make it effective for boosting poor students' academic and life chances. It seems that computer use, to no surprise by anyone already on the Internet, can imperil academic achievement as easily as low-quality TV programming.

My first instinct is to compare issuing computers to children to building dams to control the flow of technology without checking the stream for pollution or damage to the ecosystem. It's an easy answer to a problem deeply entangled in issues of economic and sociocultural capital, the role of computing, and not simply technological access. I am a strong advocate of informal learning through the Internet, which children and youth readily accomplish even in activities considered frivolous by most adults. However, I am equally committed to this learning being part of a pedagogical mix that includes a formal pedagogy that weaves these informal experiences into broader issues that a rigorous and comprehensive curriculum addresses.

Yet without access, the issue of instructional technology becomes moot (the "real computer scientists don't use computers" adage notwithstanding). I doubt this type of criticism will hamper efforts to make wider distribution of computing technology a reality. Most experts and laypeople recognize the value in distribution, but studies like this remind us that it should be an expression of involvement by wider school communities, not a replacement for it.

On Petrol and the Culture of Consumption

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Allison) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:39:00 +0000

As homo economicus, consumers are expected to make rational choices in order to maximize their individual utility. Yet, economists had expected motorists in the U.S. to make concrete changes in their driving activity based on an irrational fear of gasoline priced at $4 a gallon. Exactly $4? If humans were truly as rational as economic models make them out to be, then taking such drastic measures in response to an arbitrary price (Not at $3.68 or $4.37?) seems out of place in that discipline.

Perhaps these economists are implying that consumers are rational, but North American drivers with a fixation on round numbers associated with a product so central to a national culture do not count as "consumers" in the classical sense. It's a tad reminiscent of early modern England's tumultuous shift from valuing the "fair price" of, say, a bushel of barley to the "market price". Apparently the former concept still means something a few centuries later, despite that the "fair price" of a gallon of gasoline ($0.50? $1? $2? Low enough for a night on the town when one was in adolescence?) emerged from market forces in the first place. Cultures informed by capitalism have a way of romanticizing its earlier conditions, even if capitalism is itself an impersonal force of rapacious cultural change. As a devotee of anime, even of some shallow and disposable titles, I'm as guilty of this phenomenon as the next person.

Still, at first I would like to think that, since motorists are driving less for the first time in 26 years, this would mark an important change for a national culture and its obsession with quick and individualized mobility. That is, even if it is a mobility to places much like the last place 50 miles back the way one came. No doubt people are staying home more often, though to watch cable TV, or play with the console and/or Internet. Additionally they are forced to do more things in their local communities, which probably involve spending at chain restaurants and big-box stores.

Gas prices were around $3/gallon in today's dollars in 1982 and had declined to the lows of the late 1990s accompanied with an upsurge in driving. Relying on historical analysis or even my memory as a small child, I can't recall any sort of move towards sustainability in the early 1980s, short of motorists buying small gas-efficient German and Japanese cars. Nor was there any real revitalization of community life before $1/gallon came back to tempt motorists back to spending more free time on the freeway (pun unintended). Still, unlike 1982, there is the chance that community life might migrate to and be emboldened by the Internet, though that's not without its well-publicized problem of online communities as socially superficial exercises. Not to be glib, but that likely depends on the community.

In short, higher gas prices then, while obviously improving air quality and automotive efficiency in the short term, did little to force the U.S. to question its most fundamental assumptions about consumption and mobility as an absolute good. I doubt current trends will hold steady for long, as the linked article from the Tribune above concurs, and certainly not long enough to force these questions to the forefront of a discussion of the nature of consumption, mobility, and communal life in the U.S. Ethanol, touted as a quick fix to this "crisis", has had a notable effect on developing countries' agricultural sector. The affordability of rice for entire villages is hardly an afterthought amidst the complaining and search for short-term solutions that contribute to this problem. Without that conversation, the price spike really is little more than an inconvenience to the middle class, a burden to the car-bound poor, the death knell for many a trucker's livelihood, and literal death for the developing world's less upwardly mobile.

Reactions to the Stabbings in Akihabara

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Allison) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:03:00 +0000

It is likely that this blog's readers already know of the recent stabbings in Akihabara. While always tragic, news of violence is often a valuable tool for academics to obtain a fuller sense of people's otherwise unspoken sentiments about the Other and, less commonly, about the Self.

Beyond the coverage of the facts of the case by the mainstream Anglophone press, their attempts to put the incident in the context of Japanese culture predictably generalized and exoticized it. From the Reuters story:

Shooting deaths remain rare in Japan, although there have been some recent cases involving "yakuza" criminal gangs.

As well as electronics, Akihabara has become known in recent years as a centre for Japan's expansive "nerd" culture of video games, comic books and outlandish fashion -- including street performers and cafes with waitresses dressed as French maids.

Instead of invoking the Yakuza and Japan-as-carnival narrative, in this report the BBC used the other side of common Western constructs to blame a culture of overwork and conformity:

There are some here who fear this country is becoming a more violent place, even though the levels of violent crime are still so far below those of other countries.

They blame the pressure people feel under - Japanese society can be intolerant of failure, or of difference.

If you do not fit in, do not get a job or do not behave like everyone else you can be ostracised.

The story's reception on forums where anime fans are likely to congregate has relied less strongly on these tropes to discuss a series of different issues. One reader of Anime News Network, who interestingly claims to live in Tokyo, used a device similar to the BBC to explain his fear:

I live in Tokyo and goddamit if people start being able to obtain guns readily here that'd be BAAAAD.

In my opinion Japanese people are even more likely to go "postal" in the classic sense than americans (sic) (due to the stress of their working lifestyle), it's just that when they do, they rarely harm anyone but themselves. With the semi weekly suicides on the train tracks, I could only imagine the havoc if those suicides turned into platform shootings.

Beyond this common type of characterization of Japanese people, the story invited North American anime fans (and non-fans in the same virtual vicinity) to discuss the ramifications of the stabbings for fandom on both sides of the Pacific. As it happened in Akihabara, the assumption that this somehow involved otaku was potent enough for one user to include it in the title of a thread on the Something Awful forums, "Otaku Stabbing Rampage in Akihabara, Tokyo". The post immediately succeeding the opening post asked, "This has what to do with otaku?", followed by a discussion of how relevant the relationship is between an incident of mass murder in Akihabara and Akihabara as a center of otaku culture.

However, the thread also devolved into an exercise of second-guessing the racism, blind Japanophilia, and authenticity of knowledge of Japanese culture of other posters. Then, in a pattern I have noticed about Something Awful over the years, a poster inevitably discussed the deficits of the discussion within the context of the history of the forum as a way of elevating their own self-efficacy instead of trying to be helpful.
Guilty posted:
It clearly says in the article that the criminal was thought to have been a gangster. But, we know [Something Awful] and how all people in Japan are otaku

Then various asswipes have to come out of the woodwork to debate what an Otaku is. Typical SA response whenever Japan is mentioned. Now they are getting snippy with each other trying to out Nippon each other with semantics and passive aggressiveness like all useless Japan fetishizing nerds.

This I think explains why I rarely post on those forums, despite their unique combination of popularity and insight on topics I care about. The culture simply becomes toxic when so many users (mostly 20-something suburbanite males) feel that they have something to prove amid a consensus of the alleged inferiority of online subcultures other than Something Awful's.

Going back to Anime News Network, its users put the link between otaku and the stabbings under much more scrutiny. Some had asked outright why the story was posted to ANN's front page in the first place since no links beyond the allegedly happenstance geography of the attacks could be made between them and otaku.

Despite this scrutiny, other ANN users openly worried about the status of otaku in its more benign meaning of "passionate anime and manga fan". They speculated about whether their fellow Japanese otaku would be under threat, either from other Japanese who would unfairly use the incident to associate this harmless type of otaku with the crazed loner stereotype (not unlike the Tsutomu Miyazaki cases from 1988-1989), or if these murders were meant to eliminate otaku as dehumanized obsessives warranting extermination. A few worried about the incident's impact on Akihabara's economy that is heavily reliant on anime and manga sales.

In response to these fears, one user, abunai (his moniker being the Japanese word for "Look out!") discussed the discussion in a manner not unlike the poster from Something Awful did in his own meta-analysis:

Considering that there appears to be absolutely zero evidence to support this, I find it interesting that everybody (both in this forum and in the Japanese fora) are so eager to claim this as something otaku-related. Notice how many simply accept this as truth, without any corroboration. It "must" be true, because it is so convenient.

There are a whole slew of psychological mechanisms in operation, in this case, but among them is the almost ennobled status given victims, and secondary victims (relatives and friends of the victim), by the media. By claiming that the (in my opinion) probably random attack at Akihabara was specifically targeted against otakus, the rest of the otaku community gain status as victims by proxy, and seek sympathy.

Abunai offered no explanation for why this alleged victimhood was sought in the first place. A user named Richard J. countered abunai:

Since it's a semi-subjective view, wouldn't it be kind of odd not to suspect that this has something to do with otaku hate? I mean, it's not like Japan is a violent crime ridden country to begin with and given the location, it's not hard to make a leap of intuition. Also, given the fact this is being reported here, it adds to the natural impulse because otherwise what's the point.

Besides, seeking power in victimhood and the claim of innocence is practically a religion nowadays. (And some folks here may have experienced prejudice on a smaller scale and are thus more inclined to believe an incident is motivated by such.)

While academics tend to celebrate self-reflection in most any subculture they study, oftentimes in online cultures it is an opportunity for critiquing Others from a contradictorily advantageous position of distance and shared community in order to affirm a construct of an unproblematized, rational, and reflective Self. In other words, meta-analysis by participants might well be shortchanging rather than enriching interaction when the full implication of what self-reflection means for the reflector is lost.

However, it is heartening to see that even meta-analysis is not without some scrutiny in fandom, especially when compared to the wholly unreflective mainstream media reports mentioned above that regurgitate old tropes as serious journalism. While the attention in the press on these murders is on the Japanese Other, the attention in fandom circles is on each other and other Japanese anime fans who more resemble the Self. It is from that focus that more meaningful understandings can be made about a tragedy that may or may not have culturally distinct overtones. Despite the unintended efforts of the press and less-nerdy-than-thou forum regulars, an albeit imperfect fandom pedagogy somehow still advances amidst (or because of) conflict.

First Real Entry

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Allison) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:33:00 +0000

Kline, S., Dyer-Witheford, N., & Peuter, G.D. (2003). Digital Play. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

I've been reading this on and off when I lack a computer to dissertate. Though I've only gone through the first two chapters so far, I have good reason to be optimistic about their treatment of the production and consumption of electronic games. They're borrowing heavily from Raymond Williams, who had considerable insights into television as an industry and culture back in his day, while promising to extrapolate his analysis into gaming. This is one possible field I might go into myself when I've said all that I can about the pedagogical practices of anime fans. Only the youth rights movement stands as strong of a contender at this point.

It looks very likely that I will be teaching two course sections next semester. They are:

*EFND 2110 Issues in Education
*EFND 2120 Diversity in Education

After three years of being out of the classroom, I'm both excited and apprehensive. However, I have quite a few cobwebs to clear, and this is as good an opportunity as any to do so.

Test

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Allison) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:11:00 +0000

This entry is meant to test the functionality of my new blog.