The good, the bad, and the researcher

Open Space Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:48:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I attended a workshop promoted by the Center for Excellence in Teaching at my school. The email invitation gave attendants one task in preparation to the session: to think about “What are the ideas, questions and possibilities I want to explore about enriching the classroom experience?”

The professor who facilitated the session used Open Space Technology – a technique to run meetings or classes where participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme. Our theme for the session was “enriching the classroom experience”. As it usually happens in these events, I learned a great deal from exchanging classroom tips, stories, and practices with other participants. Nevertheless, discovering Open Space Technology - and the myriad of its potential applications - was the highlight of the meeting for me.

Chairs were disposed in a circle, and there were flip charts around the room. There were signs posted on the walls with quotes like “Whoever comes is the right people” and “When it’s over, it’s over.” Cute pictures of bees and butterflies also decorated the walls of what is usually a neutral, impersonal meeting room. An appetizing table with sandwiches, fruits, deserts, and refreshments was set for participants to serve themselves at the back of the room. Before starting, we received handouts and a brief explanation of how the technique works. The pictures and quotes on the walls started to make sense after this introduction, and in a couple of minutes we were all “shopping” in a marketplace of ideas which would later develop to fill in pages and pages of the flipcharts spread throughout the room. As bumblebees, some of us moved from group to group, cross-pollinating discussions with ideas generated elsewhere. As butterflies, others stopped by one chart or by the refreshments table, listening, thinking, and condensing information. In the end, everyone moved back to the circle and we made sure to have identified, explored and addressed all of the most important issues, gathered new ideas, resources and people and connected them to these issues, documented all of this in notes, and established strategic themes, clear priorities, immediate actions steps.

I left the seminar (re)energized and action-ready! Right after the meeting, I did some research on Open Space Technology and discovered a worldwide community of practitioners and plenty of online resources to support those who want to learn more about the technique. Here is an article that is a good start for anyone interested: “Working in Open Space – a guided tour”

This can be a great tool to use in the classroom for the analysis of complex business cases, for example, or to identify issues of interest to students in an elective course. It has been applied to healthcare, participatory planning, organizational change, corporate strategy development, and leadership among other contexts, and it has been the focus of research in several disciplines.

Let me know if you have an experience with OST or know any other interesting and innovative way to facilitate learning and idea generation. I will love to hear about it!

The gold mine of e-books

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:30:00 +0000

[Jeff Stahler]

I had just finished reading the good news kindly sent by Amazon in a promotional email today (the first version of their cute wireless reading device, the Kindle, is on sale) when another nice email popped up in my inbox. One of the members of the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list (which is great - you can subscribe here) posted a link to the most complete list of websites offering free e-books I've ever came across. Of course I'm passing it forward here :)
I love print books and I usually spend a couple of hours every week browsing the university library shelves, but sometimes one just wants to scroll the screen instead of flipping pages, I guess. I have browsed most of the websites for academic business, consumer culture or other related topics, and there are not many books available. Still, some of the websites are really good and there are lots of interesting readings in many different categories.
So here's the list with some comments (the ones in italics are mine) and the link to the original post at Hongkiat.com.
Enjoy!

Free Ebook Download Links

Credit: Raj

+ Don't get disappointed by the small number indicated beside each category. When you click on Zen (1), for example, 18 titles come up as a result.

eBoook3000

free ebook downloads

Credit: Myo Kyaw Htun

+ Most titles relate to internet, networking, web development and programming. There are some interesting titles in Political and Social category, but most of the links I've tried were broken.

SlideShare

Credit: La Ode Adam

PDF Search Engine

book search

engine search

message boards

Credit: iphoner

+ No categories to browse, so it works better when you're looking for a specific title. It has PDF on the title, but you get books as .doc too :)

eSnips

Credit: sandeep

syokkahwin

Suresh

Book Gold Mine

Credit: Gio

eBooks-Space

Free downloadable ebooks

software development

design

Credit: mongther

+Again, most titles are internet related, and the yellow text on red background is a bit overwhelming.

drebooks

Credit: peter

E-Books Directory

Credit: Stam

+I like its browsing system. Check their Computer and Internet Culture category, it has some neat titles. It also includes its own list of links and resources for e-books related websites.

UFindBook

Credit: sobookee

Books-PDF

Credit: ganesh

PDFoo

Credit: Delaserna

Free Ebook Down

Credit: ebook

eBooks Download Free

ebooks download free

books free download

free books

Computer books

php

ADO.NET, AJAX

Exchange Server, Sharepoint

ASP.NET

Credit: bookm

PDFGeni

CHM PDF
eBook-X
Spotbit
Ebook Share

On the original post there was also a link for "Free e-books Canada", a website that is not accessible. I couldn't locate it on Google either. If anyone knows this website, let me know!

More Free eBook resources

PlanetPDF – A small collection of classic novels all in PDF format.
DailyLit – Read books online by daily email and RSS feed.
Wikibooks – Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit.
Dwalin – Free novels in text format.
Project Gutenberg – Free ebooks from producers.
Adobe Free eBooks – In Adobe’s Free eBooks area, you can download, unlock, and read electronic books on your personal computer or reading device.
Alive & Free – A page of links to some recent books from living authors available free online.
Franklin – Thousands of free titles in text and HTML file formats.
Read Easily – An ebook online library which has been designed to provide you an adaptive reading experience!
PDFbooks – This new site offers around 4,700 downloadable public domain e-books.
Witguides – An online source for a wide range of useful e-books that are completely free with no need to sign-up or buy anything.
Diesel eBooks -Offer free ebooks formatted for both Microsoft Reader and Mobipocket.
Free eBook Miners –
Free eBooks for your education, research or amusement.
Planet eBook –
Free classic literature to download and share.
e-Library – Plenty of free ebooks available for download.
BookBoon – Provides free ebooks for students and travelers in PDF format. No registration is required.

And...there's more!

Filebook – Free eBooks download in zipped format.
ebooksboard – Free eBooks download portal.
Computer-Books.us – Highest quality computer books all of which are available for free download.
76eBook – Free ebooks download for IT, business and multimedia.
Linux Related Free Ebooks – 68 Linux Related Free E-books.
TechBooksForFree – Free books on technology subjects.
Wowio – WOWIO is passion for FREE BOOKS + FREE MINDS.
Freeebooks – Free ebooks are divided into different categories from business, art, computing and education.
Witguides – The premier online source for a wide range of useful e-books that are completely free with no need to sign-up or buy anything.
Issuu – Issue lets you find and share the web’s most interesting publications.

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/20-best-websites-to-download-free-e-books-part-ii/#ixzz0uFKA9NeM

Fordlandia and Belterra

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:42:00 +0000

Currently, there are two ways to get to Fordlandia, the city build by Henry Ford in the middle of the Amazon jungle: departing from Santarém by boat (a 12-hour trip) or by car (330km of hell roads, great option for someone looking for a 4x4 adventure). Nearby is Belterra, the second village built by Ford after abandoning Fordlandia in 1934. Belterra’s rubber plantation actually reached the rubber-production stage around 1941, but the village and plantation were also abandoned in 1945-6, when the project was proved unprofitable. Both, Fordlandia and Belterra survive down to the present day, being administered by the Brazilian federal government after Ford’s exit.

In a series of email exchanges, I learned from Mario Pinheiro, who was born in Belterra, that all employees who worked for the Ford Company in both villages were admitted as employees by the Brazilian agriculture ministry department. After unsuccessful attempts by the Brazilian government to promote cattle raising in the area, the few employees who were still living in the villages were transferred to larger cities to work in governmental departments.

For decades, the Federal government administered the cities, requiring that consent was obtained for any local development, which probably hampered the growth of the two villages. It was only in 1997 that Belterra became an independent township, while Fordlandia is currently considered a subdivision of another township, Aveiro.

Belterra, Aveiro, and two other townships are part of the “Floresta Nacional do Tapajós” (Tapajós’s National Forest), a 550,000ha national conservation area. While being part of a conservational area imposes limits to external investments in the area, having an independent administration and budget has allowed Belterra to advance the local economic development and also to preserve its history. Belterra’s beautiful river beaches attract many visitors to the city, so tourism is currently an important source of income to local dwellers. In contrast, Fordlandia seems to have stopped in time, and its early buildings are in a pitiful state of conservation. Few families still live in the place, practicing subsistence agriculture, and receiving their income from government retirement pensions.

Fordlandia and Belterra were failures in terms of generating profits though rubber plantation, but the social aspects of Ford’s envisioned cities can be said to be more successful. Participants on the Fordlandia online community seem to be nostalgic of the city and its “good times”. As Mario, one of the participants, explained, in contrast to most of Brazil’s northern region, both villages had excellent infrastructure, with sewage and water treatment, electricity, schools, a hospital and a movie theatre, all of which have positively influenced the cultural development of the local population.

Many people got to know each other while living in the villages and working for the Ford Company. This was the beginning of families who, to the date, populate both places. Belterra and Fordlandia are frequently visited by researchers, journalists, and film makers. Dona Olinda, one of the few remaining people who have worked for the Ford Company in Belterra, has given countless interviews. Her 100th birthday, celebrated last month, was a community affair, as she is considered the one who keeps the city history alive.

That’s it! I might be planning a visit to the area in my next trip to Brazil... If you want to know more about Fordlandia, here’s an article published a couple of years ago in the Brazilian Rolling Stone (If you don’t read Portuguese, take a look at the article’s picture gallery) and a short documentary in English from the History Channel, which was part of a larger program called "Amazon Adventures". The link was posted by Scott Chandler, who recently came back from a two-month research trip to Fordlandia and Belterra.

All pictures on this post were taken by Mario Pinheiro - thanks Mario!

History is more or less bunk

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:07:00 +0000

The title of this post is probably one of the two quotes most of us can rightly attribute to Henry Ford. The other being "People can have the Model T in any colour - so long as it's black". Here's the first quote in full:

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today." (Chicago Tribune, 1916).

The reason for me quoting Ford is that I just finished reading Greg Grandin's book Fordlandia. Fascinating read for a Brazilian who knew nothing about the city envisioned and built by Henry Ford in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Given that Ford is considered the "father" of consumer culture, it's probably also an interesting read to all those who like to think critically about consumption.
Ford's plans to profit from a rubber plantation in Brazil were probably his greatest failure ever. But Fordlandia, as the Amazonian village built on the margins of the Tapajós river was called, was not meant to be only a rubber source for Ford industries in the U.S. It was also one more of the several social experimental civilizing crusades Henry Ford undertook during his life.
Several reviews of "Fordlandia" have been published since it was released in 2009 (how can one ever catch up with all that there's out there to be read???) and the book was among the Chicago Tribune favorite books of 2009 and the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2009, and it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the category history.
Instead of trying to provide an original review here, I offer instead a bit of what is missing in the book - visual and personal information. The few photos included are posed, almost institutional - most coming from the Ford archives. Of course Greg Grandin did an amazing job in the book, yet I couldn't help but wonder: who are these Brazilians whose life stories intertwine with the history of Ford's grandiose dreams of civilization?
So I did a little research (light speed netnography?) on the town' online community on Orkut (still more popular than Facebook in Brazil), and I'll post here what I found - as soon as I get a reply of my request for consent to post some pictures of the city as it is today.
In the meantime, check Grandin's interview on YouTube (part 1 and part 2) which contains excerpts of original footage of Fordlandia made by Ford's employees in the mid 1940's. Then come back soon for more!

Give work to those who want it

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:55:00 +0000

A colleague recent posted a link on his Facebook wall to the Samasource website. Samasource is a non-profit social business. They offer "microwork opportunities" to marginalized people, from countries such as Pakistan, Kenya, and Uganda. The management team works by mobilizing socially responsible companies, small businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and other professionals in North America to contribute by buying services from their workforce. Prices are fair, and the quality of the microwork and the allocation of resources earned through it are closely monitored by Samasource.

A quick look at the list of services offered shows that many of these are services academics frequently outsource:

...data entry and digitization, web development, image and site moderation, application testing, video and audio services, project management, research assistance, virtual assistance...

All workers are trained and you can have transcription work, for example, delivered within 24 hours, for a very reasonable price. It's great for those who need the job done, and for those who want to do it. I plan to send some interviews to be transcribed very soon, and I write a post to let you know how it goes.
Here is a video of the founder of Samasource. Laila, speaking at TED. Take a look, give them some work, help make a difference :)

Leila Chirayath Janah: Ending Poverty in the Digital Age from TEDx Silicon Valley on Vimeo.

Conference Season is approaching!

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:56:00 +0000

There are several upcoming academic conferences in Marketing and Consumer Research, and I imagine that the same holds true for many other disciplines - Summer is the Conference Season!
Conferences are a great opportunity to meet other scholars, learn about the latest research developments in your area, and present and discuss your own work. Add to that a nice location, a couple of days out of your work routine, and the chance too see old friends from all over the world. Could be great, right? But could also be a nightmare...
That's why I've compiled a list of resources to help you make the best out of the conferences in the upcoming season, or at least go through them without much damage!

Conference listings:
http://www.h-net.org/announce/
http://www.conferencealerts.com/
General Advice:
What to do before, during, and after a conference
Surviving your first academic conference
On presentations:
Five golden rules
The most complete guide to a successful conference presentation

Fun:
Strategies for eating well at conferences
How to hack a conference

Many of these selected sources will link to extra resources, so you'll have plenty of advice on how to prepare for conferences. For the sake of comparison (how bad it could be???) just watch the video below and make sure to enjoy your conference season!

The evolution of geocaching density

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:21:00 +0000

This is so cool! It illustrates the development of geoaching in Germany throughout the last decade. Each light dot is a new cache and the final density is unbelievable...Groundspeak currently displays 135.481 caches in Germany. Considering the country's small surface (357,022 sq km, slightly smaller than Montana in the U.S.), this is a paradise for intensive geocachers!

I also think the script used to create the video might have great applications on academic presentations and teaching... it would be nice to illustrate, for example, the increase in the number of competitors in a new market, participants in a community, or consumers in a given segment without recurring to the old column graphs. What do you think?

Using podcasts as research data

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:29:00 +0000

A podcast is a collection of digital media files (mostly audio files, but some may contain images or other type of media) that is distributed over the internet for playback on portable media players, cell phones, and personal computers. The term “podcast” (so much better than audioblogging!) was inspired by the Apple’s IPod and is formed by the combination of the acronym POD (which stands for “portable on demand”) and the term “broadcast”. Podcasts differ from other audio files available at the internet in that users can subscribe to them. Subscribers have new content automatically downloaded to their personal computers or Mp3 players as soon as it is released.
There are many websites dedicated exclusively to podcasts and their themes can range from education to yoga going through news, comedy, food, music, sports and sexuality. Many of them are professionally developed. The Apple online store alone offers more than 150,000 different podcast episodes produced by big media names like HBO, ESPN, CBS Sports, and The New York Times, but also by independent creators. Any person with some ability to make use of software can manipulate the technology needed to produce and broadcast audio files. Audio-recording devices are user-friendly and tools for editing audio files can be found at the internet for free or at low cost.
Because podcasts may combine audio, images and text in a single file, many events can be transmitted in this format. Television and radio programs, lectures, concerts, language courses, sport matches are a few examples of events that have been recorded and broadcasted as podcasts. Podcasting is evolving quickly and new features for categorizing, navigating, and indexing podcasts are already offered to users.

Podcasts can prove to be a rich source of data on researching consumer related topics. The exploration of this new format of computer-mediated communication and interaction can be achieved through netnography, as endorsed by Kozinets’ reflection on the adaptation of the method to the ever-changing nature of digital environments: “Anywhere there is online consumer activity and interaction, there are interesting sources of data for consumer and marketing researchers and the potential for netnography to reveal insights about online communal consumer culture, practices, and meanings.”
Netnography may suit better to the investigation of podcasts that are based on a website or webpage. A host webpage usually offers extra channels of interaction (such as forums and comment features) between the podcast producer and its listeners and also increases the amount of online activity around the podcast’ theme. The podcast host pages can be weblogs, commercial hosting services (like Podcast Alley) or, for professionally produced podcasts, corporate or personal websites.
One of the advantages of applying the method to podcasts is that the researcher can receive automatic updates on the field whenever new content is available. Because podcast files can be easily stored, accessed, moved and manipulated, the researcher can work with the data in its original format (i.e. audio, image) without incurring on the potential loss of contextual information that may happen when non-textual interactional data is transformed into text.
However, participant observation is not easy to define or manage in this research setting. There are no clear guidelines to define what participant observation accounts for when the research field is a website comprising alternative communication channels such as podcasts, forums, and a blog-style comments section. From previous studies on other computer-mediated environments we know that people may assume several levels of involvement with an online community, blog, or website. Involvement and participation in new online environments vary largely. For instance, one can merely listen to podcasts, while others will actually create a website of their own, link it to others and actively promote conversation at the web.
In my next post, I'll tour the geocaching podcasts and discuss them as an example of research data.

Transcribing interviews

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:46:00 +0000

One of the most time consuming tasks related to qualitative research is that of transcribing interviews. Of course one can pay someone else to do the job, but graduate students on meager bursaries hardly have an option other than doing the hard work themselves.
People stare at me when I say that, but I actually like transcribing my own interviews. I believe listening to an interview or audio file brings much richer insights than reading a transcription. When you take the time to listen to your informants in detail (something that usually doesn't happen during the interview, at least for me), you learn a good deal more about what's being said - and what's not being said. The voice, the tones and pauses, the laughing and background sounds are all information that you can take into account when analyzing an interview. They are usually not well translated into text.
I recently spent some time testing different transcription software and decided to stick to one developed by two PhD. students in Germany (well, they've got their degrees by now), which is called F4.
The name of the software says it all - that's the key you're going to hit to pause, play, and repeat the audio. F3 rewinds and F5 forwards. Each time you pause, it will start a few words back on the audio, so you can keep a good typing pace without losing any word. You can type on a word document, use shortcuts to enter different icons for interviewer and interviewees, and it interacts with Mac, Windows, and Linux. There is also a foot switch option that goes with it.
I really like it, and recommend it. It's free (you can help them with a small donation), quick to download, and really simplifies the task. If you're doing the hard work yourself, check it out!

A postmodern puzzle

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:03:00 +0000

There’s only one article that I am aware of which looks at geocaching with cultural lenses, so I’ll offer a more detailed read of it. Christele Boulaire and Bernard Cova, two marketing scholars, analyse the creation and development of geocahing as a game that is used by adults to create a ludic space at the fringes of society. They understand geocaching as “a postmodern game, a tribe, experiences, emotions, narratives, passions, rituals, a whole parallel universe created and sustained by its players”*

I put together a Flickr set to illustrate this “postmodern bricolage” which geocaching really is – feel free to browse through it before or after reading this post :)

The authors affirm that this playful universe requires a liminoid zone to exist, meaning that the game is situated outside everyday life, but lacks formal boundaries and transitional stages. This situation is linked to the condition of the postmodern subject, whose complex and fragmented life is reflected in a frequent desire to escape of routine and quotidian life. However, as observed by Boulaire and Cova, sometimes individuals become so immersed in the game that they allow it to become something else, something serious, a regular part of daily life, so that it no longer works as an escape zone (and that’s my next post!). While geocaching is conceived to make the treasure hunt possible in within the constraints of everyday life, and the fantasy accessible in terms of time, difficulty levels, resources, location, challenge, and immediate gratification, it also facilitates the transformation of the game into an ordinary activity, a routinely, serious hobby.

Boulaire and Cova refer to the concept of “ludic agency” to explain players’ capacity of total immersion in a game while keeping the ability to exit from it and to alternate phases of play and non-play. With the maintenance of the contrast between play and non-play, value is constantly added to the game. The authors also look at the role of the Internet in contributing to the quick dissemination of new possibilities for the game and simultaneously increasing the impact of new rules and additions to the activity. Similarly to other games which largely depend on the internet to develop, geocaching is interactive, open, participatory and collective. Boulaire and Cova highlight these characteristics and understand online interactions between players as attempts to expand and constantly develop the game. The authors observe that with an exponentially increasing number of caches, managing them becomes time consuming and demands more technological capabilities. Therefore, the continuance and maintenance of the game require that some players make a central life activity of it or, at least, be willing to work in order to improve parts of it. Isn’t this interesting?

Looking at the narratives present in online texts available on websites dedicated to geocaching, Boulaire and Cova conclude that geocaching is an ongoing narrative to which all players contribute as part of a “collective of production-consumption”. Focusing on discourses, they describe the neologisms created by players as examples of bricolage. Other salient post-modern traits of the activity are, as pointed by the authors, the reinvention and repurposing of items; and the bridging between opposites (for example outdoors and indoors, offline and online). Boulaire and Cova suggest that geocaching also bridges indifference (play) with responsibility (maintenance of the game). It links children and adults (or the child and the adult in one’s self); loneliness and togetherness; nature and advanced technologies; objects and subjects; past (treasure hunts) and present (location-based games). All these characteristics conflate into three different liminoid zones: experimental theatres, narrative forests, and home ports, in which the “fire of the game” is kept alive by the collective of players.

So you geocachers out there, do you think this is a fair description of the game? Why? Speak up :)

*All quotes in this post are my liberal translation, since the article is originally in French

Improving (the already oh, so useful!) Google Scholar

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:25:00 +0000

A nice tip from Doug Belshaw (one of the nice blogs I've added on my reading list) on how to link your library account to Google Scholar. You'll be able to get full papers without having to search for them twice.

Play in consumer research

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:18:00 +0000

Individuals' experiences and hedonic motivations have been frequently explored in consumption contexts. In a seminal article published almost 30 years ago, Hirschman and Holbrook relate playful consumption to other intrinsically motivated activities (e.g. leisure, creativity, hobbies) and find that satisfaction, enjoyment, fun, and other internal, affective and hedonic elements (in addition to personality traits and player performance) motivate consumers to play. Since then, many authors have explored different aspects of play in its relationship with consumer consumer behaviour and consumer culture.
I will offer short reviews of some of these articles, hoping this can be useful for those interested in similar topics. At the end, some extra references!

1. Mathwick, C. and Rigdon, E. (2004). Play, Flow, and the Online Search Experience. Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (2), 324-332.

Emphasizing the motivation, cognitive aspects, and psychological characteristics of playful activities, Mathwick and Rigdon introduce the notion of “perceived play” while investigating the antecedents and experiential outcomes of flow (see Csikszentmihalyi work for more on flow). They define perceived play as a compound of two dimensions: intrinsic enjoyment and escapism (a state of full engagement, or psychological immersion). Perceived play is, then, conceptually similar to “the affect- and arousal-based indicators typically associated with the flow state”. The authors conclude that play (in the adjective form of “perceived play”) serves as a link between the experience of flow and the consumer attitude formation.

2. Unger, L. S., and Kernan, J. B. (1983). On the meaning of leisure: an investigation of some determinants of the subjective experience. Journal of Consumer Research, 9: 381-392.

A similar definition is the conceptualization of leisure developed by Unger and Kernan. These authors understand play and leisure as intertwined concepts, particularly because both are frequently defined in more subjective terms. In a review of the literature on leisure studies, they identify six determinants of subjective leisure, all of which have also been used to define play: (1) intrinsic satisfaction, (2) perceived freedom, (3) involvement, (4) arousal, (5) mastery, and (6) spontaneity. The authors investigated all six variables across a variety of contexts using survey data and found three of them to be the basic determinants of subjective leisure experiences: intrinsic satisfaction, perceived freedom, and involvement. The other three variables are found to be more activity-specific.
They also point to intrinsic satisfaction as “the quintessence of leisure”, observing that leisure activities are intrinsically motivated and seen as an end in itself. Perceived freedom, as the authors properly acknowledge, has also been proposed and empirically proved by several researchers as the single precondition of subjective leisure.

3. Holbrook, M. B., Chestnut, R. W., Oliva, T. A. and Greenleaf, E.A. (1984). Play as Consumption Experience: The Roles of Emotions, Performance, and Personality in the Enjoyment of Games. Journal of Consumer Research, 11 (September), 728-739.

Subjective perspectives on play also have appeared in the marketing literature as a dimension of experiential value. Holbrook and his colleagues have produced a series of articles investigating play, enjoyment, and hedonic experiences. Holbrook also offers a typology of consumer value in which play is seen as self-oriented, meeaning “actively sought and enjoyed for its own sake” behaviour that is intrinsically motivated and typically involves having “fun” (the opposite of boredom?).

4. Grayson, K. (1999), The Dangers and Opportunities of Playful Consumption in Consumer Value: A Framework for Analysis and Research, ed. Morris B. Holbrook, London: Routledge.

Looking at the relevance of the concept of play to marketers and consumers, Grayson affirms that definitions of play centered on subjective dimensions lead to the convenient conclusion that virtually all products and services can be sold and consumed as play, depending only on the consumer approach to them. The confinement of play in a subjective realm of “self-oriented activities” or “states of mind” is problematic in that it does not clearly trace the boundaries between the concept of play and similar others (e.g. flow, leisure, aesthetic consumption) and situates it almost exclusively on the mental engagement of the player.

5. Holt, D. B. (1995). How Consumers Consume: A Typology of Consumption Practices. Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (June), 1-16.

A less subjective conceptualization of play appeared in Holt’s taxonomy of “how consumers consume”. Observing spectators at baseball games, Holt distinguishes play from other related concepts (such as experiential consumption) by adding an interpersonal dimension to it. From his perspective, play occurs when consumers use objects to socialize or commune with other individuals having no other end beyond the interaction itself. However, reactively watching a sport is different from actually playing a sport. The various reactive aspects of consumption included in Holt’s typology blur the phenomena he classifies as play with aesthetic consumption experiences. While emphasizing the relevance of the consumption object to playful consumption, Holt also downplays the relevance of the object, which is considered a mere (and substitutable) resource used by consumers who engage in autotelic interactions. In this sense, any object (e.g. the weather), not only a consumption object, could serve as basis for a playful relationship between consumers.

6. Deighton, J. and Grayson, K. (1995). Marketing and Seduction: Building Exchange Relationships by Managing Social Consensus. Journal of Consumer Research, 21, (March), 518-526.

Departing from Holt’s typology, Deighton and Grayson rethink the interpersonal aspects involved in the definition of play while maintaining the subjective dimensions of the concept and analyzing it as a prerequisite to relationship building. In their perspective, playing represents “an agreement (or social consensus) among two or more individuals to follow a unique set of rules; rules that players consider to be different than those which govern their everyday lives.”
The authors look at the formation of exchange relationships between marketers and consumers. The authors contrast broader forms of social consensus (e.g. socialization) with the narrow and mainly inconsequential consensus which constitutes play. Another example of activity sustained by narrow social consensus is the con-game, in which, contrary to play, the gains achieved by some participants are lost with the discontinuity of the consensus and the participant who faces loss (in their analysis, the consumer) is said to have been “conned or defrauded.” Ultimately, the distinction between con-games and play proposed by Deighton and Greyson relies on evaluations of the intentions of marketers and the legitimacy of their actions.
Play involves following or deviating from the norms and expectations implied in a situation. It is important to note, however, that given the essential role of intrinsic motivation and self-orientation in determining play, it is possible that not all instances of following or deviating from social expectations will result in play.

7. Grayson, K. (1999), The Dangers and Opportunities of Playful Consumption in Consumer Value: A Framework for Analysis and Research, ed. Morris B. Holbrook, London: Routledge.

Looking at the rule-following characteristics of different activities, Grayson reviews Caillois’s (check last post’s reference list) typology of play and adapts it to the understanding of playful consumption. Callois defines play as essentially free (“voluntary, a source of joy and enjoyment”), separate (“carefully isolated from the rest of life”), uncertain (“the course of which cannot be determined”), and unproductive (“it creates no wealth or goods, thus differing from work or art”), yet regulated (“by precise, arbitrary, unexceptionable rules that must be accepted as such”) or make-believe. His typology categorizes playful activities in four groups, depending on whether competition (agôn), chance (alea), simulation (mimicry) or vertigo (ilinx) is the dominant characteristic. The four types are arranged into separate quadrants each containing games of the same type. Within a quadrant, however, the activities can be organized in a continuum: at one extreme is ludus, representing calculation, and subordination to rules; at the other is paidia, which is active, exuberant, spontaneous, rule-breaking.
Grayson further relates the types of play discussed by Caillois to a catalogue of consumer activities to determine seven ways in which consumers play with (or along) marketers. Four of these are subtypes of ludus: (1) imitation, (2) initiation, (3) participation, and (4) competition. The remainder three are types of paidia: (5) deception, (6) subversion, and (7) innovation. Relating these playful activities to role-theory, Grayson analyzes the dangers and possibilities of paidic and ludic playful activities in the context of marketing and consumers relationships. He concludes in observing that play can be “harmlessly pleasant or threateningly subversive”, depending mostly on whether consumers follow or break the rules expected (proposed?) by the marketer. It is important to observe, however, that sometimes marketers and consumers do not agree on whether an activity is rule-breaking or rule-following.

8. Kozinets, R.V., Sherry Jr., J. F., Storm, D., Duhachek, A., Nuttavuthisit, K. and DeBerry-Spence, B. (2004). Ludic Agency and Retail Spectacle. Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (December), 658-672.

Building on the theorization of play and consumption proposed by Grayson and relating it to theories of consumer agency, Kozinets and his colleagues investigate the roles of consumers and marketers in creating and subverting rules (for playing) in spectacular environments. Adopting a celebratory view of agency, in which producers and consumers negotiate meanings and practices equally serving the interests of both parts, the researchers found a more nuanced conception of play than the opposition paidia-ludus. The authors illustrate the complex allocation of agency between marketers and consumers by observing that, in the spectacular environment investigated, “play involves ceding great latitude of freedom to consumers, who use their freedom to work within the rules of play, to break other rules, and to create new rules”. These observations indicate that more than following or breaking rules put forward by marketers (as suggested by Grayson), consumers can also create new rules – where there is space for rule creation and rupture of the initial consensus between marketers and consumers, there is also the possibility that the marketer is tricked – facing losses in the relationship which is no longer play, but a con-game.
Kozinets and his colleagues acknowledge that in corporate, commercialized contexts such as the spectacular themed environment of ESPN Zone Chicago, consumer creative and subversive actions are promptly co-opted and appropriated by the marketer as only another feature of the spectacle intended for commercialization. In this sense, the consumer may play the “trickster”, but the marketer is never deceived. On the one hand, while the “ontological setting apart in real space” of spectacular environments represents a liminoid zone in which consumers can manifest their playfulness, it also allows the marketer to control and re-appropriate whatever subversion might happen within the boundaries of the enticing spectacular environment. The question remains of whether outside spectacular environments it is possible to observe similar dynamics of agency between consumers and marketers in determining rules of play.

9. Celsi, R. L., Rose, R. L., and Leigh, T. W. (1993). An exploration of high-risk leisure consumption through skydiving. Journal of Consumer Research, 21, (March), 518-526.

In their ethnography of a sky-diving community Celsi, Rose, and Leigh investigate the experiences of consumers seeking high-risk leisure activities. While exploring the context of high-risk experiences, the authors observed that individuals have been increasingly convinced that their jobs should provide them with a strong sense of self, autonomy, and self-efficacy. In the current state of social specialization of the workplace, however, most people find themselves distanced from the outcomes of their labour. This paradox, according to Celsi, Rose, and Leigh the authors, provides “tension to be released, and the means, such as discretionary time and income, to seek denouement through play.” Despite focusing exclusively on high risk leisure as a form of releasing the tensions originated in the workplace, the authors suggest that feelings of catharsis, identity generation, mastery, flow and community may also be obtained from less risky activities such as running or biking.

10. Belk, R.W. and Costa, J. (1998). The Mountain Myth: A Contemporary Consuming Fantasy. Journal of Consumer Research, 25 (December), 218-40.

Belk and Costa identified several positive outcomes related to what can be considered an extreme, or serious form of play. In their ethnographic study, the authors describe the re-enactments of the Mountain Men rendezvous as a transient consumption community characterized by a fantastical time and space. They identified elements of primitivism, mystification, and nostalgia for simpler times and values in the participants’ discourses, which motivate their active engagement in the creation of a consumption enclave in remote natural settings. The intense involvement of participants in the Mountain Men community and the effort and resources they invest in producing and acquiring the objects and abilities necessary to this recreational activity suggest that the re-enactments are a form of serious leisure (more on this in the next post). The modern mountain men studied by Belk and Costa repudiate work and find in the mountain men fantasy the necessary elements (including work and play) for a meaningful life. Belk and Costa (1998) also pay close attention to the playful elements of the rendezvous. The authors find on the mountain men community all elements of play as defined by Huizinga, including freedom of choice, rules and order, some level of competition, a delimited place and time, and the awareness of a make-pretend. In relating play to serious leisure and a world of fantasy, Belk and Costa extend the realm of play to cover not only fun and enjoyment, but a site for the pursuit of meaning, the development of identities, and the expansion of possibilities for self-transformation. The authors suggest that the same “sacred and fantastic time and place, providing escape, renewal, play, and a sense of community for its participants” created in the modern mountain men rendezvous can be found in other consumption enclaves or alternative realities.

REFERENCES
1. Arnould, E., Price, L. L., and Otnes, C. (1999). Making magic consumption. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 28 (1), 33-68.
2. Belk, Russel W. (2000), “May the Farce Be with You: On Las Vegas and Consumer Infantilization,” Consumption, Markets, and Culture, 4 (2), 101-123.
3. Celsi, R. L., Rose, R. L., and Leigh, T. W. (1993). An exploration of high-risk leisure consumption through skydiving. Journal of Consumer Research, 21, (March), 518-526.
Cova, B. (eds.) Consuming Experience. New York: Routledge.
4. Deighton, J. and Grayson, K. (1995). Marketing and Seduction: Building Exchange Relationships by Managing Social Consensus. Journal of Consumer Research, 21, (March), 518-526.
5. Firat, F. A. and Venkatesh, A. (1995). Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantement of Consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (December), 239-67.
6. Grayson, K. (1999), The Dangers and Opportunities of Playful Consumption in Consumer Value: A Framework for Analysis and Research, ed. Morris B. Holbrook, London: Routledge.
7. Hirschman, E. C. and Holbrook, M. B. (1982). Hedonic Consumption: Emerging Concepts, methods and Propositions. Journal of Marketing, 46 (Summer), 92-101.
8. Holbrook, M. B., Chestnut, R. W., Oliva, T. A. and Greenleaf, E.A. (1984). Play as Consumption Experience: The Roles of Emotions, Performance, and Personality in the Enjoyment of Games. Journal of Consumer Research, 11 (September), 728-739.
9. Holt, D. B. (1995). How Consumers Consume: A Typology of Consumption Practices. Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (June), 1-16.
10. Joy, A. and Sherry J. F., (2003). Speaking of art as embodied imagination: A multisensory approach to understanding aesthetic experience, Journal of Consumer Research 30 (2), 259-282.
11. Kozinets, R.V., Sherry Jr., J. F., Storm, D., Duhachek, A., Nuttavuthisit, K. and DeBerry-Spence, B. (2004). Ludic Agency and Retail Spectacle. Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (December), 658-672.
12. Lanier, C. D. and Arnould, E. J. (2006). Creating and Negotiating Collective Fantasy at Modern-Day Renaissance Festivals. Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research, Gary Gregory, Teresa Davis, and Margaret Craig-Lees (eds.), Vol. 7.
13. Martin, Brett, A. S. (2004), “Using the Imagination: Consumer Evoking and Thematizing of the Fantastic Imaginary,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (1), 136-149.
14. Mathwick, C. and Rigdon, E. (2004). Play, Flow, and the Online Search Experience. Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (2), 324-332.
15. Ritzer. G. (1999). Enchanting the Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press
16. Schau, H. J., Gilly, M. C., and Wolfinbarger, M. (2009). Consumer Identity Renaissance: The Resurgence of Identity Inspired Consumption in Retirement. Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (August), 255-276.
17. Schouten, J. and McAlexander, J. (1995). Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers. Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (June), 43-61.
18. Sherry, J.F., Kozinets, R.V., and Borghini, S. (2007). Agents in paradise. In Carù, A. and

and I am back to the game!

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:30:00 +0000

“The spirit of play is the source of the fertile conventions that permit the reinvention of culture. It stimulates ingenuity, refinement, and invention. At the same time, it teaches loyalty in the face of the adversary and illustrates competition in which rivalry does not survive the encounter. To the degree that he is influenced by play, man can check the monotony, determinism, and brutality of nature. He learns to construct order, conceive economy, and establish equity.”
(Caillois 1958-2001, p.58)

When I first started thinking about geocaching as a research topic, I thought it was plain fun, so I started all things published about “play”. Soon enough, the task of simply reviewing the literature on play in all social science and humanities disciplines revealed itself a massive (if not impossible) work. Expanding the overview to include related concepts such as leisure, entertainment, fun, amusement, games, pleasure, and fantasy – and oppositional ones such as boredom, work, earnestness, and seriousness is a task even the most relentless researcher would very likely give up accomplishing.
So I read as broadly as I could and, let me tell you, there are some fascinating texts in this literature... The theoretical notion of play was initially developed in the fields of sociology and history (see, for example, Caillois 1961 and Huizinga 1955 from the reference list below). The definition of play is ambiguous and varies according to the perspective adopted by the author (e.g. cultural, educational, or psychological). Despite a cumulative body of interdisciplinary literature on the topic, play as a concept still intrigues and eludes many researchers. Nevertheless, most authors providing overviews of the literature on play refer to the definition written by the historian Johan Huizinga in 1955 as one of the most relevant ones:
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an ordered manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means. (1955, p.13)

Checking the definition against the main characteristics of geocaching raises many interesting points:
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity...
I haven’t heard of anyone being forced to do geocaching (though I suspect some kids or spouses may see it as an unpleasant task...). It is indeed a free activity – you only do it if you want to. And, at least so far, it is free of charge (assuming one already has the basics: a gps and an Internet connection).

...standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’
Geocachers frequently joke about using a multi-billion dollar satellite system to find Tupperware hidden in the woods. Plus the events, the gear, the “geocaching backpack”... I get the feeling that once the GPS is on, the ordinary life is really put aside.

... but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.
It’s easy to spend a whole afternoon looking for that multi cache....In fact, for many geocachers, this is a serious leisure activity (but I will discuss this in another topic)

It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it.
This is a more complicated match, because some geocachers have started their own business out of the game, like these guys here: http://landsharkz.ca/ http://www.cachingcontainers.com/ http://www.todayscacher.com/ http://t-shirts.cafepress.com/geocaching . Not so sure if they keep playing with the same freedom and intensity (is geocaching still a hobby for them or did it become work?)

It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space (checked) according to fixed rules and in an ordered manner.
There are controversies here – some people play according to their own rules (or their team rules), but the basic guidelines stated at http://www.geocaching.com are the ones most people consider valid when playing geocaching. I think these rules have been evolving organically with the development of the game and naturally adopted or abandoned by the community of players.

It promotes the formation of social groupings
Definitely! There is a large number of associations, groups, teams, and events related to geocaching. I actually think this is one of the main pillars of the activity. Meeting other geocachers is always great fun.

which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.
Caching names, acronyms, intriguing t-shirt sayings, and disguising from muggles... this is what geocachers do best.

So yes, geocaching is play – according, at least, to one of the most traditional definitions of play. What then? Because I am a marketing researcher, I narrowed the focus of my theoretical search to, well, the marketing literature. But that’s the topic of my next post!

I leave you with some references on play – all of them very interesting and worthy checking out.

1. Ackerman, D. (1999). Deep Play. New York: Random House.
2. Björk, S., J Falk, R Hansson, & Ljungstrand, P. (2001), “Pirates!-Using the Physical World as a Game Board”, Human-Computer Interaction – Proceedings of Interac 01. IOS Press: IFIP.
3. Caillois, R. (1961). Man, Play, and Games. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.
4. Caillois, R. (2001). [1958]. Man, Play, and Games.University of Illinois Press.
5. Castronova, E. (2005). Synthetic Worlds: the business and culture of online games. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
6. Ellis, M. J. (1973). Why people play, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
7. Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo Ludens. Boston: Beacon Press.
8. Kline, S., Dyer-Whiteford, N., and DePeuter. G. (2003). Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
9. Lauwaert, M. (2009). The place of play: Toys and digital cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
10. Michaelis, B. (1985). Fantasy, play, creativity and mental health. In Recreation and Leisure: Issues in an Era of Change. T. Goodale and P. Witt (eds.). Venture Publishing, State College.
11. Poole, S. (2000). Trigger Happy: Videogames and the entertainment revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing.
12. Taylor, T. L. (2006). Play Between Worlds. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Information overload

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:10:00 +0000

No, I'm not complaining about Twitter blackouts - believe me or not, I never got the whale so far. It's just too much information outside there. And we increasingly need filters to keep us going through all these posts, articles, texts, messages, and emails.
I tried to embrace the task of daily reading "a little bit" of what has been published about a couple of topics that interest me, but I now officially give up. I'm overfed with information!
I'm sure Oscar Wilde faced a different issues in managing information at the late Victorian era, but his moan still holds:
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
What do you think? Are you also overwhelmed by the amount of information circulating on the web? How do you separate what is interesting from what is not worthy your time? Is there any cure for "Torture by information overload"?

How to be(come) a creative anthropologist

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:10:00 +0000

I spent all the 4 years of my undergraduate program (in Advertising) learning how to be creative (among other practical matters). The literature and professors used to defend that creativity can be learned. I was told that some specific techniques allied to the practice of creative thinking would work even for the most hopeless case. To become creative seemed to demand hard work, patience, and perseverance. However, that was not for me. I was feeling fine and blessed in my condition of "naturally creative". I wouldn't take me more than a couple of minutes to come up with a great slogan or jingle; I imediatly sensed what would be an appropriate media strategy for a specific client, and I could shoot ideas endlessly during brainstorm sessions with my colleagues. I never had to think how painful it would be if I had to make the effort to be creative.

However, at some point I decided to leave the comfort zone and years after I find myself learning something new - something I would say some people are simply born to do. I'm trying to do good ethnographic field work. Yes, like an anthropologist.
And - what a coincidence - this learning process requires the practice of a specific way of seeing the world and thinking about it. I need to learn many techniques that are pretty new to me and it also demands hard work, patience, and perseverance.
Well, I'm willing to make the effort.

PS: The link on the title will take you to Grant McCracken's blog - and his great post ""How to think like an anthropologist".

Fat acceptance and the market

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:29:00 +0000

I’ve been burning my neurons in trying to find “the” link that better connects the Fat Acceptance movement to consumer theory. There are some highly relevant concepts I can borrow from sociology and psychology and I’m already reading a lot about stigma, new social movements, and online communities. However, I find recurrent posts on the fatosphere dissecting, analyzing, questioning or criticizing market practices and I do there is something there…Something we - consumer researchers – do not fully understand.

This feeling was reinforced today after I read this post at Shapely Prose (which I consider one of the nicest blogs on the fatosphere). In this post, Kate refers to another blogger who had a “dilemma”: whether to support an online store’s efforts to continue carrying larger plus sizes or to discard them as a retailer because they had just cut her size off their selection.
As I was reading both posts and the comments left by people who had read them, I realized that in this situation, the general attitude was not that of criticizing the market. They were actually attempting to help marketers to better serve “the plus market”. In this mood, Kate published a long email she got from the owner of the store involved in the dilemma, and even invited her audience to help the store owner:

“How do we help her make B & Lu a successful store that at least fulfills the promise of carrying sizes 14-30 (better yet, 30+)? If you wear a size in the high 20s, did you even know you could shop at B & Lu (before the selection became so limited, anyway)? How do they get the word out? What else can they do to improve? And of course, if there are things you do love about B & Lu right now, positive feedback never hurts.”

What this post tells me (I’m aware that there are many other relevant issues here – this is just the perspective of someone sited on a business school office) is that these individuals are trying to help marketers to serve them better. They want to fully participate in mainstream domains, and being the market is one of these domains, they want to have the same product choices and consumption experiences of other people, no matter their size.
From other posts, I know these bloggers and commenters are fully aware that the stigma associated with fat is frequently reinforced and fuelled by market practices – the market who excludes them is the very same market they are trying to get into.

So far I’ve read the activities of Fat Acceptance bloggers as a “collective form of stigma rejection” (Gofman 1974, p. 112) and I though marketers were simply caught in the middle of these fight against the stigma.
But this notion of collective stigma rejection does not fully account for the practices of the FA bloggers who sometimes praise market practices and attempt to “educate” the market on how to serve them better. Henry & Caldwell (EJM, 2006) already suggested that “in contrast to withdrawing into an enclave, the stigmatized individual may respond by challenging the stigma label by attempting to participate in the mainstream domains” but we have no data so far on how stigmatized individuals develop workable ways to interact with the mainstream (some studies on immigration deal with similar issues: e.g. Askegaard, Arnould & Kjeldgaard 2005; Penaloza 1994; Mehta & Belk 1991).
To fight the stigma also involves fighting its underlying economic and social aspects. Since the market practices are deeply rooted and strongly influential in these two arenas, they become one of the most evident targets for activists in their rejection of a stigma.
Being part of a group (in this case the Fatosphere) probably allows stigmatized individuals to access more information and share resources that are eventually directed to criticize market practices that reinforce the stigma they are fighting.

So if any of you from the fatosphere happens to read this – does my interpretation resonate with your thoughts? Would you like to discuss the topic further? I have some great references to share and I would love to talk to anyone who’s also interested in the topic. Just click on the comments link and let me know what you think!

Keep on caching

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:48:00 +0000

I didn’t think the first time I would have to apologize for not posting for a long time would come so soon, but at least I have good reasons to offer. I’m struggling with the need to define the theoretical focus for my research on Fat Acceptance; I’m having trouble in getting into the field for the research on Geocaching, and I’m running out of time – the summer break is going to be over in few weeks and I wish I can do advance these studies before my courses start.

I may have to take another methods course and I’m seriously considering one called “Advanced Research Methods in Anthropology”. I took only one course in Anthropology during my Master’s course and I feel a little ill-equipped to access informants and get insertion into a community to start my fieldwork. Maybe I know some techniques, but I just need to be reassured again and again that it’s ok to get acquainted to people if you want to get information from them to do research and write a paper. And then I find myself wondering if it’s just me or if this is a regular stage of the learning process... I will take the course, just in case.
I’m just going to shoot a list of reasons that may explain why I’m finding it hard to get into the geocaching community. If you ever had similar issues with your fieldwork, let’s talk - I’m willing to consider any counterargument seriously, because I do want to make this work.
- This is the first time I’m doing field work outside my home country and culture. I see how this can be positive because it makes me question things that would be taken for granted otherwise. However, it also poses me so many challenges! For example, I’m extremely resistant to the idea of going to parks by myself to look for geocaches because I still fear violence, even realizing that I’m safer here than I was back in my home country. Or the way I have to re-write a message ten times before posting it at the discussion forums just to be assured that I’m using the appropriate words to say what I mean.
- There’s no structured group or stable community – geocachers are disperse and extremely mobile. This is tricky... Let’s say that, for convenience, I get a group of informants who live in the same city as I do. If I want to participate in their geocaching activities, I will have to follow them all around in their trips, because the first thing a geocacher usually does is to hunt everything around her/his area. Then s/he has to travel around to keep the adventure happening. If I choose attending to geocaching events as a form of participation, I also need to move around to the meeting places and I’ll probably never meet the same group of people twice. Besides, much of the geocaching-related activities happen in the “micro-level”, in short periods of time, and in many cases, the hunts are not even previously planned.
- Geocaching may be not only “something you do”, but a lifestyle. What I’ve noticed is that unless you have a background of traveling/adventure related activities, you don’t simply start doing geocaching and keep your regular life untouched. This was one of my previous misconceptions that were broken as soon as left my first geocaching event. I thought geocaching was something to fill in the boring moments of ordinary life, something that would aggregate a little fun and fantasy to an unexciting routine. Now I tend to think of it as the anchor of, or at least as a complement to, a lifestyle. And the difficulty this re-categorization brings to my field work is: how far am I willing to change my lifestyle to take this research further? Do I need to exchange my urban weekends for a camping trip? Should I forget heels and skirts because it’s impossible to hunt for a last minute cache on them? Will I get used to carrying the GPS in my handbag everyday along with extra-batteries, flashlight, trinkets to trade, travel bugs, and camera?
That’s it for now (oh, except for the fact that Toronto seems to have one of the lowest concentration of caches per area...)!

Next post will give you a brief idea of all the things I’m thinking about while investigating the Fat Acceptance blogs.

We want you - and your audience

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:20:00 +0000

I casually opened my mail box today, waiting for “no comments” to this blog, as usual. Instead, I found a nice message from Kim:

“Hello Daiane,
My name is Kim Montgomery. I recently came across your blog and I love how witty and intelligent your entries are! Your blog totally targets the lifestyles of young Torontonian women... great research and authorship!
The reason I'm writing is, I work for Matchstick Marketing, a hip market-research/ promotions company that spreads "word-of-mouth" marketing for our various clients. The campaign I'm currently working on is looking for women who write popular blogs that discuss topics like lifestyle, fashion, health & beauty and savvy current events, with the hopes that they'd be willing to participate in a short study about feminine beauty & hygiene products.
The survey wouldn't take too much of your time. I'd love to get the chance to connect with you and get your valuable feedback!
Please feel free to email me at kim@matchstick.ca and you can let me know if you're interested in participating in the study and how best to get in contact with you!
Thanks in advance,
Kim”

Oh, oh... Where should I start?
First, I’m quite sure the entries they inserted in the search that pointed to my blog were: Toronto, women, and “sex and the city”. Of course, someone who mentions this movie in a blog can only be discussing “topics like lifestyle, fashion, health & beauty and savvy current events”.
Well, this blog doesn’t “totally target(s) the lifestyles of young Torontonian women”. And if popularity was the spamming criteria, I may not have more than two readers – this is definitely not a “popular” blog.
Anyway, what if I decide to contact Kim and participate in Matchstick’s study? I would probably be more qualified to criticize their survey instrument than to willingly provide my opinion on feminine beauty and hygiene products.
We still don’t know much about online word-of-mouth, but there are great studies going on that will help us understand better how bloggers deal with their audiences and how companies can use them as mediators or initiators of marketing messages. In the meantime, I would say it’s worthy to employ some time doing quality research (i.e. actually reading blogs) before sending recruiting messages all over the blogosphere.
But maybe I’m wrong... Maybe this fishing tactic optimizes results? Or, oh... maybe Kim actually read my blog and sincerely thinks my posts are witty and intelligent?

Geocaching culture

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:20:00 +0000

I’m not a gadgets person. I don’t have an IPod (though I have an “IPauvre” - or “IPobre” to the Portuguese speakers). I don’t have an Iphone, not even a Blackberry. Actually, I don’t access email from my mobile, I don’t even Twitter from it. No PDA, no Kindle, no TiVo, no Blu-ray, no Mac. I think all these things are amazing, beautiful, useful, and super cool. But, beyond the fact that I could not pay for them, I just don’t feel like owning them.

Despite this attitude of mine, I now have a GPS... It’s not the latest-coolest device, but it’s a good one: a Garmin eTrex Legend HC. I got it because a GPS device is an indispensable resource to do Geocaching, which is something I’ve been researching online for a while. Now it’s time to go to the field, literally.
I will post here some excerpts from the article I wrote on Geocaching using online data only. And as my activities of observation and participation in the geocaching community develop, I’ll compare and extend my findings to better understand how online and offline data may complement each other. This is also an attempt to contribute a little bit to alleviate some of the issues faced by researchers that use netnography as a method. For instance, how important it is to go beyond the “unobtrusive and painless” online data collection and interact face-to-face with the members of a community? How relevant it is to track community members’ activities on other online spots beyond the board/group/website being studied?
Besides this methodological aspect, some characteristics of geocaching suggest that it is a unique context in which to study consumer culture:

First, the use of multiple technologies (GPS devices, internet, PDAs, digital cameras) combined with outdoor activity, nature and travel may attract and bring together individuals with diverse backgrounds, profiles, interests and motivations. Besides, these two essential components of the game, technology and nature, require geocachers to articulate their incursions into these two apparently opposite environments.
Second, the main rule of geocaching (“take something, leave something, and sign the book”) adds complexity to the social and communal aspects of the game because it promotes the exchange of objects among players and gives them the opportunity to obtain recognition and prestige (e.g. the first to sign the book of a very challenging cache is celebrated among geocachers). Could play be one central link that brings a community together?
Finally, because the game was created and developed by consumers without encouragement from active market agents, the importance of interaction and cooperation among participants to keep the game active is enhanced.

My initial thoughts linked geocaching to the communal aspects of play. Thanks to the insightful comments of professors Belk and Kozinets, who read the first version of the paper, I’m also looking at references on amateurism, consumers as producers, and the re-enchantment of everyday life.
Geocaching is a fascinating activity and this research project has been one of my top priorities for this summer. You will certainly read more about it in future posts here. In the meantime, here’s a nice video about geocaching by Tessa Banks Jeff Orlowski from the Dept. of Communication of Stanford University.

Summer readings

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:12:00 +0000

I’ve been visiting bookstores, trying to take a look on what they’re displaying as the must-read books for this summer. And I notice that something that was already big enough to have an exclusive shelf now has gained the main display, in the center of the store: the “chick-lit”.
Chick-literature is a term used to denote genre fiction written for women and marketed to young, single, working women in their twenties and thirties. Wikipedia tells us that “the genre's creation was spurred on, if not exactly created, by Sure Towsend’s Adrian Mole diaries which inspired Adele Lang's Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber: The Katya Livingston Chronicles in the mid-1990s.” The genre got much more attention and fans after Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones’ Diary became a movie, in 2001.
A good chick-lit title inevitably contains at least one of the following words: shoes, dresses, friend, sister, boyfriend, bride, girl, or a female name that refers to the main character in the book. The covers must be colourful (or cute), and there’s always a touch of pink somewhere.
I’ve read the “Devil wears Prada” two years ago just to realize that I liked the movie better. I started to read Marian Keyes’ “Watermelon” but gave up after reading two or three of the book’s dozens of chapters. So I’m ill-equipped to criticize the genre, and I don’t even want to do it. I’m just intrigued. Marian Keyes alone sold more than 10 million copies of her books (all chick-lit). There are books and blogs dedicate to the genre, and even Naomi Wolf criticizes it (oops: the link will take you to an Oprah show: “Stupid Girls”).
So who are the readers? What are they looking for in these books (distraction-enlightenment-help-something else)? How is this genre impacting on a generation of women?

All I know for now is that these books are not in my summer reading list... Have you read any chick-lit? Do you feel like reading it?

Royalty-free picture from "The Image Bank"

Could you be a good blogger? Final part

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Here they are: the final questions to determine whether one can become a successful blogger or not:

15. Do you enjoy reading? - Being good at writing is very helpful - but so is the ability to read what others are writing. If I were to video tape myself over a day of blogging I suspect I’d find that I spend more time reading each day than writing. For every post I write I would read at least three.

16. Are you an organized person? - While I’m sure many bloggers are completely chaotic and unorganized - there comes a point in most serious blogger’s lives when they have to get at least a little organized. With incoming emails, following lots of feeds, writing perhaps on multiple topics/blogs and moderating comments all going on at once (plus more) it’s pretty easy for time to slip away without getting much done.

17. Are you a Social person? - There are many styles of blogging but when it comes down to it most bloggers have some sort of a desire to connect with readers. Some bloggers keep readers at an arms length (they might switch off comments and rarely respond to emails) but it’s probably an advantage to actually engage your readers in someway. If you don’t like people then this might be challenging. Another related question might be ‘are you an approachable person?’

18. Do you enjoy ‘virtual relationships?’ - Some of the most social people I know are terrible when it comes to online interactions. They just don’t ‘get’ it and are much better face to face than via email, instant messaging or in a forum or comments thread. Being comfortable with speaking to and working with people you’ve never met before is an advantage if you’re a blogger. Connected to this - it’s also important to be what I call ‘virtually intuitive’. One of the dangers of relating to people online is that all can not be as it seems. Developing the ability to work out whether others are who they say they are and of good character is probably a skill to develop.

19. Are you a creative person? - Once again this is not a ‘must’ - just an advantage. The web is a cluttered place and being able to develop content and community that stands out from the rest and that surprises readers is a big plus.

20. Do you have Stick-ability? - While some blogs are overnight successes, most are not. In fact many (most) blogs are never as successful as their owners would like. A long term approach is one of the basic pieces of advice that I’d give most bloggers.

21. Are you Consistent? - One of the common reasons that I see bloggers getting into trouble with their readers or other bloggers is that they change the way they approach their blogging midstream. Bloggers that are constantly changing the topic of their blogs, or who increase their expectations on readers suddenly, or who change the ‘voice’ that their blog is written in can end up losing the respect of their readers. While no one likes a boring blog - people do like to know what to expect to some extent.

22. Are you honest and transparent? - If you answer no to this one then you can expect to eventually be found out. While in real life it can be reasonably easy to keep secrets or be two faced - the blogosphere has a culture of people keeping an eye upon each other and digging where you don’t want them to dig. While you’ll want to develop boundaries around what you do and don’t blog about, you will need to be willing to disclose conflicts of interest and be willing to be held accountable for the things that you say.

23. Are you willing to work hard? - The level that you need to work on a blog will be dependant upon your goals and objectives for it - but if you have goals of being the next big thing then you’ll be guaranteed of a lot of hard work. Of course this is the case with any thing in life and not just blogs.

This is the set of questions that helped me increasing my score. I got 77 (10-8-9-9-9-7-8-7-10). Calculate yours! However, there's actually no prize for the one who scores better - except for the glory of knowing you can be a great and successful blogger in this gigantic and amazing blogosphere.

Successfull blogger potential - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:38:00 +0000

Another seven questions from Rowse's list. If you missed the first questions, you can scroll down for them or find them here. Calculate your score and check if you can be a successful blogger!

"8. Do you have time? - Linked to the need for regular updates is the fact that this takes time. Do you have enough time in your schedule to write daily? Not only that do you have time to moderate comments, respond to reader questions, read other bloggers posts, network with other bloggers etc?

9. Are you thick skinned? - If you start a blog, the chances are that it will be found and that others will write about you or some aspect of what you’re doing. This is great when the comments of others are positive and in agreement with you - but it’s not much fun when you’re critiqued (sometimes fairly and sometimes not). Do you have the ability to take criticism well?

10. Are you willing to be in the public spotlight? - Blogging is a public act. Every day you put yourself into the gaze of others. People will analyze your words and lifestyle. Some will want to know more about you and some might even recognize you in public (it’s happened to me a few times). While few bloggers (if any) are ‘celebrities’ - putting yourself ‘out there’ every day is a strange thing to live with and can have it’s consequences. Keep in mind that once you write something online it is very difficult to get it removed. You might be able to delete your blog but archives services (and other bloggers) pick up a lot of what you write and so you could be living in the public splotlight for a lot longer than you’re a blogger.

11. Do you have any technical ability? - If this were a requirement of blogging I’d have never gotten far, but it is an advantage to have the ability to learn and work on a technical level. You’ll be working on a computer with web based software and at times you’ll need to ‘tweak’ your blog. Knowing how to do it yourself can be very handy. If you’re not this type of person, you might want to make friends with someone who is.

12. Do you take yourself too Seriously? - One of the characteristic I think bloggers should have is a sense of humor - particularly when it comes to looking at themselves. While there are plenty of examples of bloggers who do take themselves too seriously, most successful bloggers seem to have the ability to laugh at themselves also.

13. Do you have a blend of humility and Ego? - Coupled with a sense of humor should be humility. While bigheadedness abounds in the blogosphere it’s often the humble blogger who ends up on top. Having said this having a healthy ego and view of your own worth as a person is also a good characteristic to have as there is an element of ’self promotion’ that comes into blogging at times. Getting this balance right is not always easy - but it’s worth working on.

14. Are you willing to learn? - I like to look at blogging as a journey where everyone knows something but nobody knows everything. This is the case on any topic you want to blog about and the best bloggers are willing to share what they know but seek out and promote what others know also. In this way everyone learns - even the ‘experts’. "

My score for Part II is embarassing: 6-everyone knows a PhD student lacks free time (at least free-of-guilt free time); 5 - Is crying a good way to cope with criticism?; 6 - I don't want to be famous, but I don't mind getting credited for everything I say or do; 3 - HTML, anyone?; 4 - I really prefer laughing at the PhD comics than at myself; 7 - working on that; and 10 - if there's something I want to do, is to learn!
Total score: 41

I will post the last questions tomorrow (of course you may have already read all of them from the source).

What it takes to be a good blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:00:00 +0000

I was reviewing the research diary I wrote to the “Logics of Social Research” course I took last year with Professor Gareth Morgan when I found a list of questions one should ask herself before deciding to create a blog. I got it from ProBlogger, a blog (of course, but there’s also a book) owned and written by Darren Rowse, a full-time blogger. He dedicates the blog to “to helping other bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.”
I analyzed the list for my Philosophy of science exercise hoping it could help me uncovering some of the many reasons why people create and maintain blogs. I must say I still don’t have the answer to this question – I’m constructing it slowly, in pieces (or posts), and the more blogs I read, the more it seems to me that each blogger adds a new and particular reason to my collections of bloggers’ motivations.
I’ve been telling my PhD. colleagues and friends (hey, are you still there?) that I started to blog. Many of them have reacted enthusiastically and some are also thinking about blogging. So, for you and for myself (because I still have to learn everything about this), here are the first 7 of Rowse’s 23 questions that summarize what it takes for someone to be a successful blogger:
1. Do you enjoy writing? - Blogs are predominantly a written medium. If you do not enjoy writing then the chances are you might not enjoy blogging.
2. What’s your Message? - While there are many applications for blogging, underlying most (if not all) of them is the aim of communicating some sort of message. Do you need/want to communicate something? Do you have a message? Starting a blog just because you want one might be fun, but it might also be a waste of time.
3. Are you a good communicator? - I don’t believe that only good communicators should have blogs - (they can be a tool for people learning communication skills to improve) but it can be an advantage to have some basic communication skills.
4. Are you better at writing or speaking? - Most communicators have a preference (or at least have better skills in one form or another). If speaking is more your thing you might want to consider Podcasting or even a Video based web site.
5. Do you want to be the central voice on your website? - While blogs are good at building community - they generally feature one person (or a smaller group of people) as the central voices in a conversation. Other people have to respond to the voice of others. If you’re after something where anyone can start a conversation then a Forum might be a better medium.
6. Are you a self starter? - Starting a blog takes a little initiative. While blog software these days makes it simple to start them, they don’t run themselves and take a motivated person to both getting them off the ground.
7. Are you disciplined? - Similarly blogs require regular attention over time. While daily posting is not essential, it’s probably a good level to aim for. Will you be able to motivate yourself to write something new every day?

Calculate your score! Let’s say you can score from 0 to 10 on each question. Adding your points for all the 7 questions will result in your Successful Blogger Potential Part I.

I will start: 7 (love to write, though struggling with doing this in a second language) – 4 (still unclear message) – 6 (I do have basic communication skills!) – 9 (definitely prefer writing than podcasting or appearing in video) – 7 (I’m fine with monologues, though they can feel lonely sometimes) – 7 (With a little push from a professor) – 6 (I can be disciplined, in the Brazilian way, you know).
Daiane’s total score on Successful Blogger Potential Part I = 46

PS: I will post the other questions this week, on a daily basis.
PS 2: Although my blogging endeavours are not aimed to achieving a six-figure income, I will definitely keep reading ProBlogger.

Babies 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:34:00 +0000

I don’t remember how, but last week I found an interesting website: Babyspot. It’s like a Facebook, an online social space to network, but for babies. James Rivera, co-founder and COO of Babyspot, presents it as “a free and secure site that allows users-specifically parents-to create profiles that give them the ability to post news, pictures, and videos of their children for fellow parents and family members to see.”
My first thought about this was something like: WOW, it’s never too early to get into the web... But then I breathed and realized I was acting as a digital immigrant (which I am, indeed), not realizing that instead of being an artificial product offered to over excited new-parents, this is merely a well thought use of the communication resources currently available to us. It is something as natural as it was, twenty years ago, sending a long hand-written letter and a single printed picture of your baby to a relative living in a distant city.
However, I cannot avoid feeling amazed by the possibilities... Let’s think forward: 20 years from now, these online babies will be adults. And they will have detailed memories of their early lives. They will have not only some pictures and videos, but daily updates about their early achievements and also comments from their parents, their parents’ friends, relatives, and even from strangers. They will have an artificial memory – everything that our limited human brain is not able to retrieve from the past will be stored somewhere – easily accessible.
Here comes the digital immigrant again: I think there’s a reason why we don’t remember our early childhood in detail. What will happen when we grow up informed by these early memories? How different people we’ll be?
It seems I’m not the only one who’s thinking about it. Take a look at the pictures I took this Sunday from a store’s window in Stratford:

Walking a mile in others' shoes

noreply@blogger.com (Daiane Scaraboto) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:20:00 +0000

An article at today’s Toronto Star called my attention for its illustration: two chimpanzees sitting together. Their gestures and postures are so ostensibly human that I couldn’t avoid reading the scene as an intimate talk between two old friends. While one of them is sad, maybe hopeless, the other one is looking at his “friend’s” face, smiling and leaning toward him. A hug wouldn’t do better.
The article mentions a study on the way chimpanzees deal with conflicts and consolation. That’s to illustrate that even our ancestors are able to express something we may be lacking: empathy. Douglas LaBier, psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, explains what empathy really means in a Washington Post article:

“Unlike sympathy -- which reflects understanding of another person's situation,
but viewed through your own lens -- empathy is what you feel when you enter the
internal world of another person. Without abandoning your own perspective, you
experience the other's emotions, conflicts or aspirations.”

He defends that “empathy deficit disorder” (EDD) develops when people pay too much attention to themselves, focusing too much on acquiring money, power, status, and feeling completely disconnected from other people’s (even close people like spouses, family members and friends’) issues. Luckily, LaBier says, empathy can be developed, regained, learnt.
Apart from the controversy (some say it’s just another label to turn what may be an ordinary emotion or state of mind into a disease) I see an interesting overlap between LaBier’d definition of empathy and my understanding of participation in ethnographic research.
Again: “Empathy is what you feel when you enter the internal world of another person. Without abandoning your own perspective, you experience the other's emotions, conflicts or aspirations.”
Isn’t this what we should strive for when doing fieldwork? Most researchers feel that talking, eating, dressing, and acting like the members of the group being studied will help to develop empathy. Maybe empathy is what determines the difference between the good and the poor participant observation, not so much the length of the fieldwork or the number of informants one has. Any other thoughts?

PS: I know it seems that everything to be said about “Sex and the city – the movie” was already said, but let me give my two cents on this: I always envied their friendship – that was the most amazing thing on the series to me. However, I think the movie stretches their friendship to a point that it becomes unnatural. The characters are too empathetic! When the four are together, it seems there’s no space to self-absorption, it’s everything about the one who is in most need. And because this is not “Carrie: The movie”, each one has the right to become the center of the others’ attention for the same amount of time, but that’s something we’ll hardly get in real friendships.