Hi Alan, Personally, I would find it hard to address some of these issues without some mention of Paul Virilio's ideas on globalism especially as he portrays it in "Open Sky" (i.e. the world as just one vast floor). A good example of what he's talking about is the recent and ongoing events in Iran. What's throwing things off for the Iranian government is the fact that these events are being judged on a global scale by people who have no knowledge of nor interest in local political and religious culture. You could say that what offends us most is the fact that the Iranian government is displaying behaviour that we would not accept from our own government. But who is to say that our way of doing things is "more correct"? Much of the news, as we see it, is being written by people who aren't necessarily even embedded in the scene where the events are occurring and this has a profound effect on the way in which we evaluate the information we receive. Add to that the fact that we also have access to seemingly unfiltered commentary both from within and without and the whole thing becomes very complex. It's entirely up to the individual to evaluate the information. But is it really fair to evaluate it without knowing anything about the culture from which these events arise? Without physically travelling to the event's location to experience it outside of our own cultural bias? Without getting a true physical sense of how far removed it is not just from our own culture but also our own location? One has to wonder.
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi - I'm teaching this course as an adjunct/replacement; the description > covers > racism, feminism, queer theory, religious factionalism, the shrinking planet, > and so forth - more or less of a grab-bag. I want to emphasize the global > aspect. For reading materials, I'm hoping to use Ryan's Culture Studies: An > Anthology (as background), and all sorts of online materials (as foreground). > The approach will be less theory and more description, etc. than usually the > case (perhaps). Anyway, below is a description of the first two classes' > material, which is designed to create a kind of backdrop; it's divided into > 'Picture' and 'Framework' - the former, a rough description of global issues, > etc.; and the latter, a close division emphasizing theory, practice, and > example. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated, including URLs of relevant > sites. > > Thanks greatly, Alan > > > > Notes for course on 'cross-cultural human relations': > PICTURE and FRAMEWORK > > PICTURE: > > EXPONENTIAL, SINUSOIDAL, and LINEAR models: > CATASTROPHE THEORY: > The UNIVERSAL and the CASE: > Global resources: ecological constraints: water, territory, food, > climate, population. > Group resources: cultural inhibitions, identifications. > Carrying-capacity of earth: EXPONTENTIAL POPULATION INCREASE. > Wars and their causes, increased weaponry, numbers and power. > Expansion gap between haves and have-nots: enclaves, gangs, 'rogue states,' > and > shifting territories. > > FRAMEWORK: > > Heredity and environment: entangled (Waddington's chreod). > Essentialism and 'choice': what is taken as a given in human experience. > Prosthetic technologies: transformations of essentialism. > Identifications, a-identifications, non-identifications, issues of - > tolerance, prejudice, advocacy, all the way up and down. > Projections and introjections. > Purity and abjections. > What are the cultural and political manifestations?) > Race (how defined, how divided, how is it culturally and > biologically manifest, what sorts of groups are created?) > 'Traditional' male/female divisions: political and biological issues > (wage, pregnancy, life-span, crime, socio-cultural issues). > Cross-gendered, trans-gendered, gays, lesbians, heterosexuals: queer theory. > Religious divisions: issues of inerrancy, truth, world-view. > Subcultures: punk and other divisions. > Class and caste divisions: related to economic divisions. > Cultural and economic capital (Bourdieu, Distinction). > Age divisions (individual and national/international demographics). > National divisions. > Bias, stigma, bullying: symptomology and theory. > Sociobiology, anyone? > History and historiography of divisions, individual and group memory. > Technological capital increasingly important. > Related to technological capital: information/communications capital. > Related to all of the above: attention economy. > Can one speak of an entertainment economy? > Global culture identifications: Michael Jackson, football (soccer), etc. > -- Their relation to corporate production and local cultures. (Think of > radio/television in this regard.) > Splintering of identifications online: Youtube or Facebook for examples. > Hardening of identifications online: Stormfront, jihad sites, political > blogs. > Animals: extinctions, bushmeat, starvation, habitat shrinking, disturbed > systems ('extreme' sports etc.). > > How are all of the above entangled/interrelated? > Ecological constraints: the carrying-capacity of the earth, limited > resources (water, energy, food, shelter, transportation, medical care, > wilderness, changing climate, pollutions, extinctions, etc.). > Labor force. (Slave, wage, surplus, global, etc.) > > What are the lines here? > 1. Ecological constraints. > 2. Inherent identifications: sexual?, health, age, race? > (What constitutes inherency?) > 3. Cultural and territorial identifications: subcultures, religious, > national, global: ~~ selves and others. > (Primatological, psychoanalytical, sociobiological explanations.) > 4. ECONOMIC and SYMBOLIC CAPITAL. > > Think of a playing-field of continuously-changing structures, virtual- > particle vacuum. > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- ***************************** Pall Thayer artist http://www.this.is/pallit ***************************** _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
