A Thick Description of the Fake ‘n’ Bake.

By Richard Birch
STAS 2127 Research Methods & Data Analysis
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch

Thin Description: Going to the tanning salon, undressing, applying indoor tanning lotion, putting on protective eyewear, lying down on the tanning bed, turning it on for 20 minutes, frying my ass, getting up and redressing, walking out of the private tanning room to the front desk to book another session for the following week, saying goodbye to the sales clerk at the front desk, and then leaving.

Thick Description: Every time I walk into the tanning salon that I provide a weekly visit, there is a part of me that asks, “Richard, why the fuck do you do this? This is insane, destructive, borderline violent behaviour!” And yet, I continue walking through the front door of the salon and say hello to the person who works behind the counter of whom I every week try to decide if I have developed an unconscious attraction for.

I walk into my private tanning bed cubicle, undress, apply extremely expensive indoor tanning lotion, lie down on a very cold, plastic, mechanical, uncomfortable, corporate looking platform and wait for the magic to begin. But alas, there is no magic. There is only really painfully bright ultra-violet light seeping through my protective goggles, yet surprisingly not bright enough to shed light on the fact that I have fallen into a trap of corporate ideology. Somewhere in my history I have learned that I need to manipulate my physical image, however skin-deep, in order to achieve something. At some point artificial tanning has become a symbol of something that is an extension of my role in society. My skin colour in manipulated form, as artifice, is something that ties me to the productive order of modernity. I am no longer human when inside one of these tanning machines. I am as much a commodity as raw material in any production line in any factory anywhere on the globe. I am in essence that material, which is used to construct a form of ‘me’, which can be classified and sold as property in the singles market. In order to fashion a type of ‘me’, which may be viewed as acceptable or attractive according to socially constructive notions of what is physically attractive, I insert myself into this machinery as if I was producing another commodity. It’s quite clear that Karl Marx is in the other tanning cubicle next to mine screaming through the paper-thin wall that I am acting quite the way I am ‘meant’ to. I get up after the clock has stopped, redress, go to the front desk one more time to book another session of sadomasochism, flirt with the sales clerk one more time as if it were to actually mean something, and then go off to my insane life.

Human Nexus of Knowing

By Richard Birch
STAS 2127 Research Methods & Data Analysis
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch

“The central assertion of this book is that the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality” (Wolf, 1997, p.3)

Social inquiry is problematic. At best, inquiry and the methods we as students of social science engage in at times represent our own personal strengths and requirements for knowing. Because the social scientist is a human being, he or she is thus of humankind. From this positionality it can be difficult for the social scientist to ignore his or her own desire to know their own specific world, even when inquiring about the world of other societies. At times method is based in the unitary frame of reference of the researcher, the subject, or the individual. These snapshots of the problematic provide microlevel understanding of what the social scientist is inquiring about, a broken down understanding of the social as unitary disconnected separate entities. According to a criticism written by Eric Wolf of the social sciences, “sociology continues to divide the world into separate societies.” (Wolf, 1997, p, 4)

Eric Wolf endeavours to understand why the social sciences, even in an age when ‘globalization’ of cultures and societies is apparent and when economic and political forces have linked and continue to link societies to others around the globe, “persist in turning dynamic, interconnected phenomena into static, disconnected things.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 4) For Wolf, the method of social inquiry should not be based in simply examining the cultural entities and their contained social realities, but rather inquiry is meant for the processes that link these cultural entities to each other and thus the inter-societal processes that in turn help shape social realities. Examining the mise-en scène of splintered, regionalist social milieux provides a fundamental failing of inquiry according to this criticism. Method that is based on the microlevel frame of reference can only serve to develop a fractured understanding of the human experience the social scientist may endeavour to appreciate. However, method based on that, which guides interconnectivity between what is socially constructed as “independent of and in opposition to other societies and civilizations” (Wolf, 1997, p. 5) might reveal knowledge outside this construction not just within it. In this critical analysis of what is portrayed as mainly Western methodological convention, the notion of mutual exclusivity is challenged in light of the master global process of capitalism.

As Eric Wolf points out, “the social sciences constitute one long dialogue with the ghost of Marx” (Wolf, 1997, p. 20). But it seems for the social sciences to fully understand the messages within this dialogue it must return to questions asked by Marx of the nature of class, production and power. Capitalism is not a system nor is it type of society. It is a process, the master process from which all material and social production is developed and achieved. To inquire of social realities is to examine the historical development of the modes of production that transformed the world. There are no borders on our globe, only constructions. There are no nations, or states, or provinces or regions. These are all mere constructions as indicated by the master process. However since the social sciences, along with economics, political science and anthropology have splintered off from a master discipline of political economics they have lost sight of this process as an extension of material conditions.

To embark further into this, it can be argued that processes that connected interrelated societies is about how we help to permeate production into the everyday mise-en-scène. If all that is societal is mere construction our actions as actors is not based on creating societies, but based on how we feed ourselves, how we drive to work, how we wait at the coffee-shop drive-thru window, how we work at our computers, how we pick up our children at the daycare everyday after work, how we micromanage decisions regarding what to feed our children for dinner, how to decide what car to drive, what book to purchase, what course to enrol in, what film to see, what government to vote for, and what set of corporations to be ruled by.
Yet conventional and current methods of inquiry in the social sciences fall short of recognizing this interconnectivity for it’s ability in directing attention to what is valuable knowledge about societies. Looking at the master process of capitalism asks a more important question, ‘how have these societies came to be as they are now’, rather than ‘what are these societies and how do they function?’ In simply examining the microlevel unit of analysis, society, this naming and thus “turning names into things we create a false model of reality.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 6) When failing to reassemble and reinstate interconnectiveness into method, we think we are learning of social reality when we could be knowing of the organization of social labour as it relates to the production of wealth.

Wolf sets up the parameters for engaging in his macrolevel method of social inquiry. It is a four-step process: 1) understand the development of global market and capitalism, 2) devise a theory on how global markets and capitalism develops, 3) connect theory to how this development has affected humankind systemically and as a process, and 4) this theory of global market and capitalist development must be joined with the historical knowledge of humankind to help form accounts relevant to the experiences of the societies affected by this phenomena (Wolf, 1997, p. 21) not created by this process, but in actuality absorbed, transformed, and sometimes destroyed by it. Through solely engaging in the sociological study of societies we run the risk of discounting the unique and integral histories that are specialized and sensitive to the unique cultures and peoples permanently changed by macrolevel processes.

History is written by those societies who have embraced modernization theory as an “instrument for bestowing praise on societies deemed to be modern and casting a critical eye on those that had yet to attain that achievement.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 12) Static traditionalism has consistently been equated with the lack of development in Western modernity. “Above all, by dividing the world into modern, transitional, and traditional societies, [the social sciences] blocked effective understanding of relationships among them.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 13) Through constructing societal relations as autonomously arranged entities we negate any inter-societal exchange and discourse relating to imperialism, colonialism, and societal dependency (Wolf, 1997, p. 13) The accounts of those who are organized as social labour are lost without the potential study of the processes that have lead them to play important roles in the capitalist process they serve.

If the social history of people constitutes a manifold of processes of homeomorphic exchange of production, then how can social inquiry set itself up for understanding the formation of processes that connect societal relations? Wolf asks of the social sciences to always first expand its thinking outside it’s own narrowed habitat. In the social sciences “the compass of observation and thought has narrowed, while outside the inhabitants of the world are increasingly caught up in continent-wide and global exchange.” (Wolf, 1997, p. 18) By understanding capitalist macrolevel processes and how this process effects change globally is in Wolf’s opinion the only way in which the social sciences will ever understand the true relevance of not what capitalist production of wealth and cultural entities are, but how they have come be as they exist today as interdependent forces.

Reference
Wolf, E. (1997). Europe and the People Without History. Los Angelas, CA: University of California Press.

Oceania photo Copyright 2004 Bjork.com

Oceania 

Deconstructing Oceania

The following was a test paper I composed recently, which was an experiment in deconstructive sociological analysis. I decided to try something simple before attempting the larger end-of-term project required for my Methods class at university. I decided to analyze, or deconstruct the song Oceania by Björk. Enjoy.

Deconstructing Oceania
Richard Birch
Research Methods and Data Analysis STAS2127
March 2005
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch

Oceania (lyric)
(Music composed by Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Lyrics composed by Sjón, Performed, Produced, and Recorded by Björk)

One breath away from Mother Oceania your nimble feet make prints in my sand. You have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore. Every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl. Sweet like harmony made into flesh. You dance by my side, children sublime. You show me continents- I see the islands; you count the centuries- I blink my eyes. Hawks and sparrows race in my waters; stingrays are floating across the sky. Little ones- my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - I am why I am why I am why your sweat is salty - I am why I am why I am why
(Guðmundsdóttir, B. & Sjón, 2004)

In response to the exactness of life, the sands and waters of human animalistic existence, creative, insurmountable extremities are of the contextual implicitness of the lyrical text. “One breath” in its exactness – one blowing of life, ‘the breath of life’, the creative forces used to harness positive energy from oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and all elemental intricacies of breathing life into the everyday problematic. There is mastery in motherhood as implied in the lyric. There is female mastery in creation. It is mastery in effecting all elements to reorganize and integrate into physical life. It is from her breathing where she – the mother – the creator of the human animal – from which she gives birth and transports human existence to its clumsy beginnings. Clearly there may be an obsession with breath in this text. An obsession with all that is life giving. “One breath from Mother Oceania” is all there is in the world, all there is outside the womb. From the womb of Mother Nature all else must return and fall back onto itself for all goes back to nature, back to the first breath. “Your nimble feet make prints in my sands”, walking alone, with agency, but still grasped in the obsessiveness of mother’s breath and always linked to her in every step. The sands are her sands and thus her skin on which her children are cradled to, still sucking on her breast of connective powers and female creativity. The sands are what give us stability, but nevertheless, the sands connect us to Oceania. Oceania has water and sand dishevelled around her. Where we walk is the demarcation point on which Oceania’s breath and her children will always connect. It is on these sands from where the authors of this text suggest where social reality meets is death.

But there is consistency in this connectivity that can never be undone. Or can it be undone? She knows we have tried at times to undo our connection. “You have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore” – she exclaims upon her awakening to see us, her human children. In all of our complexities, nuanced progression, and evolution she sees our attempt to break free from her sands. This is where the author shows humour in the text. One can arguably picture Oceania laughing lightly at us, as if to say – “Oh how cute and silly my children are – you think you want to leave the nest, but none of you are ready for such adventure.”
The industrialization of her sands, her waters, her breath, her energy, and her elemental generosity does not go unnoticed in her waking. She is a reminder that in her generosity there is a dualism to how she herself views texts in the world on which she is included in. “You show me continents - I see islands, you count the centuries - I blink my eyes.” She embodies the reality / fiction duality of her nature. Oceania approaches her mastery in a dialectical way in this quotation. This is her commentary and thus the author’s commentary on the social reality and social fictions of existence. Her criticism is of how regionalist ideals have marginalized our view of ourselves. We have departed from the mastery of Oceania’s organic translucent connectivity and have removed ourselves from breath. We make our existence as problematic as life can be. There is sadness to Oceania’s realization that we have constructed the notion of continentalism and regional entities. All we have are islands, that is all there is in all social construction, yet lyrically it is clear she is critical of our building up of islands to things more than what their own mastery can ever maintain. As we are all of the islands as we are also of her waters. We are also texts living, stumbling, growing, fucking, and dying on the islands, just as if we would if we were still in her oceans. We can be punished. Our punishment is that we are left to eat ourselves. Societal cannibalism – this is action equal to postmodern self-degradation and the erosion from within. Oceania – THE VAGINA DENTATA of which we will eventually return to on a wave of postmodern so-called progression we triumphantly claim to be all and omnipotent.

In our rationalistic ways she is critical of how we have exchanged her cool sands as demarcation for the delineation of socially stratified power. Social fiction directs to the notion that we are never more than what we are. Yet we always try to become more that what is socially real and in doing so we become fictitious in ourselves. That is the wisdom of Oceania. That is why we will always have her to answer to when we engage in war. That is why we will always answer to her when we create inequity in social milieu. She will always be there to pull us under her tide whenever the evolutionary narcotic of post-industrial objectivity shows its presence, and more so when we show our desire for it. The text shows criticism of how we regionalize our individual identities in social reality, thus constructing the notion that we embody that, which is choice, problematically unreal, built on the template of inequity and subordination and the need to discount what is connective to the mother of the social. The breakdown of individual phenomenological existence is sliced by the barriers dropped down akin to a knife in the constituted realm of gender. Oceania remarks on how we have created such a discourse of our bodies, our bodies of which she has never allowed agency to be provided. “Every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl.” We were never allowed to create policies based on the controlling beliefs and ideologies of our bodies in her waters. It has never been written in her sands that gender differential was ever to be a phenomenon we should ever experience. Yet we do. It is a difficult aspect of our existence, of our humanity, which she does not understand, nor care for. Gendercentrism is outside the sands.

Nor is internationalism. The ‘islands’ of which she flows, are to her nothing more than dry human skin, fragmented and cracked by the lack of that which ties us to Oceania. “Little ones - my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - I am why”. Our sweat, our liquidity, our fluidness, and all waters constantly tie us to Oceania. Her aim is to ultimately remind us of this. We are the “hawks and sparrows” racing in her waters, as well as the “stingrays” floating across her skies. That is all we are and will ever be to her. Yet we have become socially fragmented. In this quote she is commenting on the fragmentation of humanity into that which is cracked apart by the borders on our islands, on our continents, on our skins. In reality there are no islands or no borders, just as there are no distinctions between hawks, sparrows or stingrays. All are systemically diverse and homogenous at the same time. All creatures are the same to her as well as intrinsically unique to each other. All to her are one in the same held together by the same sweat that excretes from everyone’s pours, the same residue from Oceania’s salty waters.

That is all she sees. She pays no attention to the socially constructed notion of the nation or of the state, of race, of ethnicity, of gender or even of the embodied self. These are of no real purpose or substance, but are fabrications cultivated in our own discontinuity to her waters. All exists are islands, her human children and the islands. To her that is all there needs to be.

References;

Guðmundsdóttir, B. & Sjón (2004). Oceania. On Medúlla [Record]. London: Welhart Ltd./One Little Indian Ltd./Universal Music