Hi Alan, I tried to cover a number of issues in a class I taught at UCSD last quarter. My syllabus is here, with lots of links to relevant projects and readings:
http://bang.calit2.net/wiki/Vis147a In particular regarding ecology the book Silicon Valley of Dreams is amazing at tying together issues of ecology, gender, class and race with regards to technology. My students responded really well to it. I also think that Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel is an amazing intro to critical race theory, and I always have my students read his list of strategies for avoiding blame when discussing race. Every quarter my students start to use those strategies in their discussion, and if they've read the list ahead of time its easier to point out to them what they're doing (counter-attack, minimization, etc) and it totally work for gender as well. Fortunately its online in this pdf, pages 6 and 7: http://www.uoregon.edu/~tep/workshops/teachdiversity/idontseecolor/idontseecolor.pdf As regards gender I love the cyberfeminist writings like the Cyberfeminism: Next Protocols book and a lot of subrosa's writing, like their book Yes Yes. I also try to use simple games from Augusto Boal's book Games for Actors and Non Actors to get discussions started and always find that students refer back to them in discussion or even when presenting their work in critique. thanks for starting a great discussion! micha 2009/12/29 Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> > > > 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 > -- micha cárdenas / azdel slade Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego Artist/Researcher, Experimental Game Lab, http://experimentalgamelab.net Calit2 Researcher, http://bang.calit2.net blog: http://transreal.org
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