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Contents 1 Discussion 2 Reaction papers 2.1 Desirae Kim 2.2 Philibert Leow 2.3 Adena Stevens 2.4 Latonja Taylor 2.5 Myrtle Jones 3 Archives

Discussion

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Reaction papers

Assignment

Each reaction paper should be between 500 and 1000 words long. Each should minimally focus on one of the issues raised in one of the required readings in term of one of the other required or recommended readings. Maximally, and particularly as the course progresses, the reaction papers should cross reference more of the required or recommended readings, including those for earlier sections.

The assignment should be on StudyPlace by the time class starts on the day that it is due.

Guidelines

1. Write up your paper on a word processor like Microsoft Word
2. Find your name on the list and click on "Edit". It should open up a box that shows a space for you to enter text
3. Copy and paste your paper from the word processor onto the StudyPlace window
4. Click on "Show Preview" if you want to see what it looks like
5. Click on "Save Page" to finalize your changes
6. Email a copy of your paper to Professor Varenne. If you are stuck at any point, feel free to email me.
7. Feel free to comment on other students' assignments. You can put your comments at the bottom of the other student's paper. Be sure to sign your name by typing ~~~~. This will automatically sign and date your comment.

You can also watch a video tutorial of this on Youtube.

Desirae Kim

Although the complexities of taste may be oversimplified within the framework, the cultural constructs of taste could be better understood when viewed from the approaches of deprivation, difference and culture as disability, as outlined by McDermott and Varenne in “Culture and Disability” (1995). From the standpoint of the deprivation approach, some people cannot taste and distinguish between good food and bad food – these are people who are considered not to possess a good palate, or perhaps unable to appreciate one of the finer things to be enjoyed in life. According to the difference approach, some people simply appreciate tastes that vary from those of others, and one is not superior to any others. Some people’s tastes will run toward fine cuisine or expensive food, whereas others will prefer cheaper dishes or ingredients – this is not meant to indicate better taste in either way.

When considering the ability to taste from the culture as disability approach, the way we regard taste becomes much more complicated. Taste becomes imbued in socio-economic status and cultural niches more than it is in actual taste. We set up various social and cultural constructs that determine what is good food versus inferior food. One particularly prevalent example of this is the ongoing emphasis on French haute cuisine as the highest form of food, superior to that of other countries or forms.

Taste is the basic ability to distinguish different things on one’s tongue. It serves to help us consume things that are edible and hopefully healthy, a fundamental and seemingly simple function. However, in a society increasingly obsessed with both food as a health issue and food as ‘culture’, taste is a sense manipulated from nature into culture in multiple ways. The way we ‘taste’ things has been transformed, in many ways handicapped. The culture of food has evolved into one that encompasses social status, politics and the environment, and it has essentially disabled us in terms of trusting our own sense of taste. Particularly in developed countries, perhaps, our complicated culture of food serves to tell us not to trust our own tongues – our judgments on what tastes good or bad are strongly influenced by cost, origins and other factors.

There are several salient examples of this collective disability. One is the common feature of ‘blind taste testing’ – something that reflects our own assumptions that we cannot distinguish what we prefer to eat by taste alone. In popular culture, seen in advertising or promotional events, food companies and restaurants often administer these tests, in which eaters are blindfolded and asked to compare a few different samples of one food. In most cases, the process climaxes in inevitable surprise, when it is discovered that the cheaper or perhaps less reputable company’s food is voted to be tastier. In the conceptual framework of the blind taste test, a judgment of taste is not deemed valid when it is accompanied by the knowledge of what the food looks like, how much the food costs, or where the food came from; although these are crucial facts, they are considered factors that handicap our ability to taste and choose. This perpetuates the notion that social constructs of what constitutes good food consistently affect how we taste, even as we are the ones who create these constructs.

The question of taste becomes both more serious and complicated when considering the issue of obesity, a growing health epidemic in the United States and other industrialized nations. According to recent statistics, two out of three Americans are overweight or obese, a problem that has become more prevalent in children and has materialized as a social cause championed by Michelle Obama. Here, in the way that it provides pleasure and sustenance, taste is a true disability in its excess. However, the disability results from the cultural constructs of taste rather than the sense of taste in itself.

Obesity is a uniquely modern disease. Although there is much dispute about what causes obesity, it is greatly attributed to the overeating of heavily processed, artificial foods. The disease is rooted in taste as culture rather than nature, for food in this context is often manipulated to an unhealthy, unnatural extent. In this case, our modern-day food culture stems from major social changes – a burgeoning agro-industrial complex, a different approach to food in the family routine, and an increasing collective estrangement from how we grow, raise and gather what we eat. From the standpoint of culture as disability, the acquired taste for bad food is a dangerous disabler that has come from the way that we have set up systems for acquiring and consuming food.

In the examples above, it is clear that the sense of taste is something that we have transformed – sometimes into a pleasurable culture of good food and culinary delight, but more often to great detriment. The most troubling fact of how we approach food is how handicaps in taste affect so many; we are all disabled by our sense of taste, in that we often respond positively to a range of food that is engineered to be bad for us. We rarely seem to enjoy eating in a healthy or sustainable way, and we are consequently mistrustful of the ability to use our sense of taste for our own benefit.

Philibert Leow

Adena Stevens

I found the paper, Culture as Disability by Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne, to be an interesting look at disabilities or more explicitly how different cultures and communities define and deal with disabilities. The example of the community on Martha’s Vineyard that had the high rate of deafness was a fascinating study to me. The fact that everyone in the community could sign and people could not remember who was deaf and who was not showed to me a way of embracing the “disability” into their community and did not isolate those who could not hear. It was only when outsiders came to Martha’s Vineyard was the community forever changed. Outsiders could not sign and the visitors tried to “fix” the problem. As we talked in class the first day about John Dewey and community, it was discussed that people generally live in communities where they have at least one thing in common. In the case of the community on Martha’s Vineyard, before the outsiders came and tried to fix everyone, they had figured out a way to embrace everyone in their community by making sure everyone could sign. Deaf and hearing people would sign and be able to communicate with one another and didn’t see the deafness as a disability or an encumbrance. Their culture on Martha’s Vineyard had signing in common and their livelihood as a community was able to not let this physical ability/disability be made consequential to them.

In another example relating to sign language, a new trend in America is to teach babies sign language, as they are able to sign before they can verbally speak. Is this again a work-around of the “handicap” of nonverbal language that takes time to develop in children? If human beings look at the body as a machine and a form of technology, then is teaching babies to sign a way of amplifying the technology we can grasp with the body?

Is this people’s way of rushing what naturally takes time in developing language skills? Or is it a way to communicate with their new babies in an inventive way that brings joy and understanding to all involved? As my friends are starting to have kids, I can see though their experiences how it can be frustrating to not know what their baby wants when they cry. (Note: none of them have taught their children sign language). Yet, I have also been able to share in their excitement as their children begin to say their first words and comprehend language. Teaching babies sign language could then be looked at in two ways: is it a way to further communicate with one’s child at an earlier stage than talking, or is it being implemented because parents think it’s another way to get their kids ahead in our culture, a culture that is placing a lot of emphasis early on in personal accomplishment, especially in regards to school accomplishment.

There was an article in the New York Times the other day about parents being on waiting lists for good public schools in NYC. For their kindergarten-age student. It has been fascinating (and disturbing) since moving to this area to see how competitive it is to get into public and private schools in NYC and its surrounding areas. I grew up in suburbia, outside Philadelphia, where most of the community sent their children to public school. It was done by districts and geographic location and people moved to certain neighborhoods based on the school systems. From what I’ve observed in NYC, and in the article I read, people in the city sometimes have to apply to send their child to the school across the street. And this process of starting at the “right” school starts with preschool and continues throughout students’ education process. I think putting an emphasis on a good education is a good thing, but maybe someone could look at why there is such a disparity among the schools, so instead of many people fighting for a few spots, the level of education being offered was more consistent across the board.

McDermott and Varenne’s paper states clearly that it is not about disabled people, but how cultures institutionally treat the disabled. Whether people want to define disabled as deaf, non-communicative, or going to a lesser schools, the cultures are reacting to what they see as a problem and trying to “fix” it the best way they know how, even if what they have defined as a problem isn’t really a problem. It appears our current culture is happy to put a label on everything. It feels like an institutionalized way our current culture operates. Labeling is fine if it gives people a way to know more about their (or other’s) “disability” but if labeling is for labeling sake only, that does that label just serve as a hindrance onto who is now being labeled?

Latonja Taylor

Technology and Culture

Technology is developed by the human mind to create ease in people’s daily activities. Such activities include cleaning dishes or clothes, using phone devices to communicate, using appliances to prepare food, building objects using mechanical tools, and employing machines to develop interior or exterior structures. In colonial period most documents were store in cabinets manually, but now most filing are done by computers. The filing is the same, but the process in the way it is done changed.

An innovator can make history by being the first to produce something or build on top of what already exists by way of technology.  As noted in the class lecture, inscription and factualization is something transforming in facts, it correlates to new and old things that evolve due to feedback from society, which in turn create culture as well as past and current history.  In the class discussion on Marx’s philosophy of humanity making history, the professor stated that humans become dependent on things.  I believe that we become dependent on objects because they provide us with comfort either emotionally or physically.  According to Marx (1846), “The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself” (p. 8).  Technology can sometimes be a vision in the human imagination as refer to referential poetic.  In order for the innovator to verbally communicate, according to Jakobson’s ideal of linguistics and poetics, his or her ideals and emotions must take over.  An innovator speaks out about his vision and shares those ideals within a social environment.  I see this as a way to improve his ideals to formulate a better understanding of how to address the needs of society in the use of technology.  In my opinion, this is the way in which technology begins to change the culture and language of a society.  According to Professor Varenne’s discussion in class, anthropologists are more concerned about nature and sociologists about economy.  I think that both have the rights of human interest, but one cannot exist without the other when it comes to technology. 

Technology has a way of affecting culture. It changes the way we do things, and I believe that culture is part of human traditions, lifestyles, and methods of communication. There is the possibility that traditions and lifestyles can change, which could alter the way people interact and communicate with each other. For example, the professor discussed how people used to communicate via coding, including such methods as hand language or arm movement. During the colonial era, telegrams were a way to communicate in written format. When people communicated distantly back then, I am guessing that it was obvious that messages traveled too slowly. As a result, I assume that this created negative effects in people’s lives (mentally, physically, and emotionally), including late reaction to important events and/or late response to urgent issues that needed to be addressed immediately. Technology advanced and the main medium of communication became party lines and switchboard operators. At this point, the culture changed in terms of how quickly people were able to respond to communication, and I assume that lives were saved because of this. Professor Varenne mentioned how disruption has an effect on the environment from an anthropologist’s viewpoint; an anthropologist must recognize that only in action or behavior can you see the culture. Any time a tool or machine advances in technology, a slight shift in human behavior will begin to develop. In “Culture as Disability,” McDermott and Varenne (1995) state: When culture is understood as the knowledge people need for living with each other, it is easy to focus on how some always appear to have more cultural knowledge than others, that some can be a part of everything and others not, that some are able and others not. (p. 1) When older and younger generations socialize and interact with each other, lessons are learned and processes are exchanged. For example, the urban language (hip hop) changes within the culture from generation to generation. According to the class lecture, culture also plays into political power. Sometimes the elites control how culture is structured. I believe that culture has layers. For instance, there is American culture and within that culture there are Asian, African American, Hispanic, etc., cultures. Sometimes, depending on the family structure, there can be a combination of cultures in one. Indeed, technology and culture have an effect on history and societal behavior. Marx’s ideal of human beings creating history with the use of machines causes changes in the human condition. Machines are considered to be technology, and through technology, innovators create needs for the present and meaning for the past, thereby creating history. I believe that, as machines progress within cultures, people’s behavior also changes, and, according to Professor Varenne, culture then reveals itself. McDermott and Varenne (1995) argue that problems must develop in order to understand culture. I think that by comparing two generations, the old and the young, a clear view of disruption in culture can be seen.

Taylorlp 03:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

References

Marx, K. (1846).The first premises of the materialist method. In The German Ideology 
    ([1846] 1932).

McDermott, R. and Varenne, H. (1995). Culture as disability. Anthropology and

     Education Quarterly 26: 324-348.

Myrtle Jones

An “understanding” of technology and culture through the excavation of the works of Latour (1979), Marx ([1846] 1932), McDermott and Varenne (1995), requires first the presentation my definition of “understanding.” The following definition of understanding will be adopted, the power to make experience intelligible by applying concepts and categories (2010). Using one experience collected from summer fieldwork in Harlem in the summer of 2009, applying the concepts and categories of Latour, Marx, McDermott and Varenne, I hope to demonstrate an “understanding” of technology and culture.

Marx postulates several premises of all human history, the first being the existence of living human beings, i.e. the idea that humans exist. Marx argues “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their material life”(4). It is this production of the means of subsistence which starts an understanding of technology. Marx further elucidates that humans’ means of subsistence depends first on the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce, thus ecology is reproduced (5), eventually leading to new needs(10), production evolves into both a natural and social relationship (11). This understanding of technology demonstrates a connection between production, ecology and social relationships.

Throughout my time in the field cellphones being able to control whether your phone was on, off or on silent was a way to be tethered or untethered, thus connected or unconnected. During the first mom’s meeting in May towards the end of the meeting, Tabitha, a 30-something mother of two, who is a filmmaker and her Husband is an Investment Banker, pulled out her iPhone as we were discussing schools and places for children to play and I brought up that my building had a private playground for residents. She pulled out her iPhone to send me an email reminder to bring the management company information to the next meeting or email it to her. During that first meeting this was the only time I saw anyone pull out, display or use a cell phone. It was after this meeting where I was called the morning of the subsequent meeting and told, “I don’t want any animosity with the other women so it would be best if you not attend the meeting today, all of the Executive Board will be there (at the meeting) next week so come ready to present for next week.” I presented at the meeting the following week, which turned into a focus group where the women talked about how this was their time to be “untethered,” and how “they didn’t understand how I planned on observing ICT use during their meetings as this was not the time.” When I informed them that I was also interested in their opinions about ICT use and specifically ICT use in schools, everyone opened up, talking and answered questions for over an hour. Several of the women gave me their cell phone numbers and took mine at the end of the meeting as everyone was packing up. During subsequent meetings cellphones never rang out loud, if the women expected a call they had their phones either in their hand or out on the table and the phone would be on vibrate so as not to ring out loud. The cellphones were stored in strollers, purses or in pockets.

If indeed Marx’s view “The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking , the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour” (8), then my interlocutors “conceiving, thinking, mental intercourse” regarding cellphones is the direct efflux, or something given off from their material behavior. Marx would assert that the natural conditions under which man finds itself, impacts the production of ideas regarding cellphones. The women indeed felt the need to be part of the mother’s group which impacted their behavior. Although the group was for stay-at-home mothers, an Actress, one of the women quipped during the meeting where we had the focus group, “We may not have traditional schedules but almost all of us do something. The only condition to be a part of the group is that you can meet from 11am to 1pm, when we have our meetings. Most of us do something.” The women’s ideas regarding “technology” could not be separated from ecology and social relations, thus distinctly linking an understanding of technology with production, in this case the production of a specific behavior tied to ecology and social relations.

This understanding of technology based upon my fieldwork example is further elucidated in the work of Latour, whose divergence with (Marxist) kinds of sociology, which he posits claims to know the nature of the society under study, makes room for an understanding of technology which lacks the deterministic view requiring an understanding of the society. Thus Latour opens the way to allow for an “uncertainty” as to the nature of the society and a lack of knowledge as to “where to draw the boundaries between the realm of technical, social, scientific, natural and so on” (279). Applying Latour’s experience in the Laboratory and his ethnographic approach to my fieldwork experience, supports research such as mine, which supports that “distance” was achieved due to “uncertainty and not exoticism” (279). Furthermore, Latour opens up an interpretation of my fieldwork example unbound and untied to entering the field with a clear understanding of the nature of society based solely upon an understanding of production, ecology and social relations. This does not discount the role of production, ecology and social relations but opens up the anthropologist to expand and expound their approach from a place of uncertainty. With this open-ended understanding of technology which includes production, ecology, social relations with the ability to expand and contract and understanding shaped and bounded by experience, taking “culture” into account adds another dimension to the understanding of “technology” and “culture.” McDermott and Varenne offer a comparable expansion and openness to an understanding of “culture.” Using the deaf on Martha’s Vineyard, and “how not hearing (becomes) something that everyone in the community could easily work with, work around, and turn it into a strength” (324) McDermott and Varenne reviews culture through an understanding of “disability” that views deafness not as a “disability” but a different ability that only becomes a “disability” within a culture that constructs it as such.

McDermott and Varenne also offer examples of categories used to describe children in trouble in American education, and illiteracy to reveal how “culture is an account of the world built over centuries for people to inhabit, to employ, to celebrate, and to contest.(332)” This too offers and understanding of culture that it neither static, nor without constant negotiation and renegotiation, as with the case of Martha’s Vineyard where an introduction of new people into the “culture” led to a renegotiation of their understanding of deafness. My fieldwork experience also exemplifies this constant negotiation and renegotiation of understandings of “technology” and “culture” as concepts to be constantly explored based on experience. This perspective makes conducting fieldwork challenging at best, but also demonstrates the contribution of anthropology to general understanding.

Works cited Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar (1979) Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Marx, Karl ([1846] 1932) "The first premises of the materialist method" in The German Ideology

Understanding. (2010). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved June 7, 2010, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/understanding

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