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Thoughts on Representing the West

Recently, I was in Denver, Colorado for a wedding and had the opportunity to visit two museums with radically different ideological projects:  The Black American West Museum and the Denver Art Museum.  It was interesting to have the opportunity to view these museums both on the same day and also with a group of lay people (my family), who had never thought about the role of museums in constructing a particular sense of history.

The Black American West Museum was founded in 1971 by Paul Wilbur Stewart, and developed out of his personal mission to uncover the history of black cowboys.  He began simply by speaking to patrons at his Denver barbershop, who began to bring him memorabilia and family photos, which he kept on display.  Once his collection out grew his barbershop, he established the museum by fusing his project with the project of commemorating the life of the first African-American female physician licensed in Colorado, Dr. Justina Ford. 

Constructing Memory in the Absence of History: Embodying Conflicting Narratives at Historic Brattonsville

The distinction between memory and history is subtle, often ephemeral, and rarely considered except at the moments when their invisible forms collide in material representation.  Conflict over representation is nothing new, but almost always seems to occur when collective memories come into contact, calling a present vision of the past into question in a way that makes obvious that it is the future that is somehow at stake.  No cultural form seems immune to questions about content and ideology, but museums seem particularly ripe for the picking.  Unlike films, novels, and artwork, for example, museums carry with them the expectation of historical accuracy, the belief that truthful representation of “reality” is possible.  As the postmodern realization that it is the present that contains both past and future has sunk in, claims on knowledge associated with museums have been called into question.  As Pierre Nora proposes, with the loss of history, we have only memory left.  This memory, like history, is collective in its nature, yet replaces tradition and ritual with representation in all its varied forms.  In this context, it seems only natural that conflicts over representation frequently have as subtext questions about power, ideology and group identity.  Further, it seems only natural that these conflicts tend to play out as struggles for control of and access to narratives.

The Beautiful Social Life of Non-Duality

Recently, I heard on TV that by the time you’re five years old you’ve already decided where you stand in relation to art. The source and surety of this statement may be suspect, but the general idea may actually hold true. It does appear that for some art occurs as an elixir; while for others, art is something to be pushed aside in favor of science, possibly admired, but nevertheless subjugated. Ultimately, this existential choice is really not a stance on art at all, but rather a stance on our human relationship to the realm of knowledge. Is knowing an individual activity or is it inherently a collective process? Does objectivity exist in “reality” or does it just appear that way due to the subtle workings of hegemony? Is it possible that knowledge is to be found in connecting, intersecting, overlapping subjectivities? This questioning is really about the essence of the social bond: is it found in reasoned organization or organic interconnectivity? The proposition that I want to make and observe through my reading of Eiko Ikegami’s Bonds of Civility is that duality is mediated through the arts, and artistic beauty occurs when duality is mediated. It is inside of the artistic act of pure subjectivity, that the object, and thus the other, disappears and we experience oneness. It is this sensibility that we refer to as beauty. It is this striving to express the beauty of this oneness on the part of the Japanese people that is the true subject of Bonds of Civility.

Download The Beautiful Social Life of Non-Duality

Hiding Subjectivity in Narrative’s Shadow

In Coercion, Capital and European States, Charles Tilly takes on a twofold challenge: to understand why European states reached the same destination of “national state” form via distinctly different paths, and to validate his anti-narrative, “mechanistic” methodology for the social sciences. The wide scope of the book, both in terms of its thousand year span and its examination of numerous European countries, regions and colonies, provides a synthesized but detailed analysis, and substantial contribution toward understanding the European historical process. In the context of the intellectual tradition of which Tilly was a part, the work provides an alternate account of the dynamics of modernization, perceiving deeply historic roots that unintentionally led to current international power dynamics between states, as well as current citizen relationships to states. The work also stands as “a proposal of how to move ‘beyond the cultural turn,’” as well as a critique of the “big case comparisons” method of historical sociology (Norkus, 2007: 165). The book provides a challenge to understandings of what satisfies the requirements for sociological knowledge, proposing the detailed study of historical phenomenon coupled with a sociological stance that resists the creation of narrative links at the expense of accuracy. In this memo, I want to argue that in spite of the enormous contribution of the book, Tilly fails to satisfy his own objective of elucidating the “why” of European state formation, due to his failure to perceive the interconnectedness of narrative, time, memory, and thus, history. Ironically, although Tilly perceives the embeddedness of story in our social world, even calling for a study of the sociology of story, he does not perceive the futility of attempting to remove narrative, and its subjectivity from his analysis.

Download Hiding Subjectivity in Narrative’s Shadow

 

 

The Fiction of Unemployment Numbers

Immediately after the jobs report came out yesterday saying that unemployment had dipped to 9.7% from 10%, the administration took the opportunity to state, albeit cautiously, that employment, and the economy in general, are improving.  But if you look at the numbers carefully, you find out that there are multiple flaws with this analysis.  First, the change was due to an adjustment to the total number of jobs - so there was no actual change – just a change to the figures.  In other words, things were .3% less bad than initially thought.  So, the same number of people were unemployed, the numbers just better reflect that group.

But, an even bigger flaw in these numbers is how irrelevant they are now that there is a middle category between employed and unemployed:  namely the self-employed.  Because many turn to self-employment when their actual employment options have run out, and because self-employed people are lumped in with the employed, these numbers quickly become a mish-mosh.  Those counted as employed range from the traditional full time worker with benefits to self-employed workers selling products and services from home, but not making a sustainable living off of their “businesses.” 

Finally, last night on The Ed Show, an economist admitted this fact.  Peter Morici, an economics Professor at The University of Maryland, pointed out that employment statistics change more based on the number of people looking for work than based on the actual quantity of people working.  So, if you worked one hour last month, you’re counted as employed.  Anyone can state that they are self-employed, and after unemployment benefits have run out, there’s no reason to continue to categorize yourself as unemployed.

And there’s another problem.  Many people, who were categorized as self-employed before the crisis, were commission only salespeople.  The entire economy slid, and obviously if larger businesses have been struggling to sell products and services, the little guy is even worse off.  It’s safe to say that many self-employed people, for example real estate agents, have become unemployed in the sense that they can no longer make a living within their industries, yet they may continue to trudge along because they cannot collect unemployment benefits anyway.  Therefore, they are completely ignored in labor statistics.

Employment has changed radically over recent years due to the growing population of freelancers and so-called self-employed workers.  This growing category of workers receives no access to benefits, such as health insurance and retirement savings plans.  They are completely ignored by politicians, because they are not counted.  While it was exciting to hear an economist speaking frankly about this reality on national television, until the self-employed are accounted for in labor statistics, the numbers will remain a convenient fiction.

I’ve begun exploring how self-employed workers fit into the new economy in my essay, Self-Employment in the Age of Knowledge – it’s a work-in-progress, but you’re free to take a look.

Download Self-Employment in the Age of Knowledge.pdf

Links:

• Labor Market Shows Signs of Reawakening in New Data

• Unemployment drops to 9.7% despite more job losses

• Unemployment Rate Drop Is Good News But It's Likely To Rise Again

• Labor Market Shows Signs of Rebirth in New Data

• After Escaping Jobless Rolls, Trauma May Linger 

• Groundhog's Day Budgeting: Again, Obama Underfunds Job Growth

Progressives Need a Narrative that Resonates

Let’s face it - January was an unimaginably rough start to the New Year for progressives.  First, the painful and surprising loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to a crass, pickup truck driving teabagger, who tried to sell his daughters on national TV, and who promised the country to derail health insurance reform.  Then, the announcement of the big, unfathomably huge, gargantuan Wall Street bonuses totaling almost the exact amount that taxpayers had forked over in the bailout, ultimately culminating in a 100 million dollar payday for Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankenfein, and the need for anti-nausea drugs for the rest of the country.  With the administration’s most important social policy change unlikely to result in anything meaningful, and the financial crisis turning into a coup for banks, burning rage for the people, and a public relations nightmare for the beleaguered administration the week before the State of the Union speech, things didn’t seem like they could get any worse.  And then - whammo – seemingly out of nowhere, the Supreme Court rules that corporations can make unlimited campaign contributions, expediting the retreat of democracy to an insidious and uniquely American form of corporate fascism.  On the year anniversary of the election of the first black president, and just after our national reflection on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., there’s every reason for progressives to ask, “why, oh why?” 

 

Some answer that it was a failure of the democrats to support Martha Coakley that led to the humiliating loss of the key seat.  Others blame her for an untimely holiday vacation.  Others say she was simply a bad candidate, and mean that she didn’t come across well enough on television.  Some argue that we should have let the banks fail.  Others that they had a gun to their head and a bomb strapped to their back, and we had no choice but to hand over the dough.  Still others feel that allowing corporations carte blanche contributions won’t change much at all – either the people will still prevail, or it’s merely the breakdown of an illusion anyway. 

 

But while all of these points speak at some level to the issues at hand, they also all fail to address the big picture:  the progressive narrative of interdependence, a “level playing field” and social welfare is failing to strike a chord, while the conservative narrative of freedom, individuality and the invisible hand sounds in tune with what many in the country believe on a gut level.  I would argue that the impact of changing media technology on these classic American narratives is the strongest and most difficult force to reckon, blowing back very rational progressive solutions to problems that will determine the future success of this country.

Corporate Branding and The White House

In her recent article on AlterNet entitled How Corporate Branding Took Over the White House, Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, revisits branding, examining how the phenomenon has changed and developed over the 10 years since publication of the bestselling book.  In the context of Barack Obama it seems self-evident that he and his team are branding virtuosos.  And, as is the case with virtually all brands, when Klein looks behind the brand, she sees little substance.  To have substance, she feels that social movements will need to be "the real thing" - yes, like the Coke ad. 

But, the question is why are social movements having such difficulty forming in the midst of corporate corruption, the influence of lobbyists, and a populous that clearly wants change?  Absent from Klein's work is an accounting for the change to social dynamics and political economy that revolutionary technological change has precipitated.  I recently revised my essay, The Failure of Culture Jamming: Resistance in a Post-social World - it addresses why some of the dynamics needed to form a social movement may have changed, and where to look for change in the future.  Unfortunately, there are still no clear answers...

Download The Failure of Culture Jamming - Pamela Brown

My Response to: "Compared to Other Rich Countries, U.S. Had Big Job Losses"

I tried to change my NYTimes moniker to "radical thinker" but somehow it reverted back to "pambrown15" - oops!  Since everyone knows who wrote the comment already, I figured I'd post it here as well...

Here's the article:

Compared to Other Rich Countries, U.S. Had Big Job Losses

Here's my comment:

It's really not surprising that this post comes via a professor at U of Chicago, the home of Milton Friedman, and the intellectual foundation of the neoliberal thinking that has caused the loss of the middle class in America, and in every country where markets have been deregulated throughout the world.

I have a feeling that most human beings would favor income without expending the energy of labor. And there are many Americans doing just this right now via investing in the stock market, where you make money not from work, but from money. Unfortunately, for most of us, we lack the money to exploit capital in this way, and are left with the crumbs.

The Material Force of Story

Story is something that everybody knows.  It is intuitively understood, naturally communicated, and all around us.  From nursery rhymes to folktales to myths, from news to the novel, from culture to culture, and political campaign to brand, the power of story to create and challenge our perceptions about the world around us and our relationship to material and immaterial realms seems undeniable.  But how does story function?  What is the process by which story constructs “reality”?  Perhaps, because story itself is invisible, the content of story is more frequently examined than its function, operation and power. 

The Failure of Culture Jamming: Resistance in a Post-social World

A night sky is lit up by bright neon lights and video screens displaying products – first a camera, then a car, next a bank logo.  The lights form letters and the letters form names of global corporations, two-dimensional images embodying multifaceted ideas, relationships and lives.  A side of a building is painted with letters that connect us to an object, something we instinctively, reflexively desire.  A square, once skirted by small shops, is now surrounded by big signs, logos, brands, global entities that dominate our public space.  It is a city, it is a town, it is any day, and any where in the world.  We find ourselves living amongst products, immersed in a world of objects, connected to things that have been animated by other things we call corporations.  This shift to a world of objects coincides with a shift from an economy based on the manufacturing of products to an economy based on the manufacturing of brands.  This shift in global mode of production has resulted in our immersion in global economic “realities” that seem to lead some toward extreme wealth, others toward extreme poverty, and still others toward life on the treadmill, constantly running to stay ahead in fear of falling into an abyss, but never getting very far.