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moving

2011-12-13T19:10:00.001-08:00

Just a reminder to my very small handful of subscribers that this blog has been moved here to tumblr: http://yellow-noise.tumblr.com/ where I will continue my usual short posts consisting of quotes, but also hope to do more substantive writing over the next few months.

restart

2011-09-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

I seem to start a new blog whenever I start a new season. (My choice of platform may also reflect changing Internet trends: self-hosted --> xanga --> blogger --> tumblr).

I started a new season over a year ago, but it's taken me a year to get back on my feet and write again. Please find me here: www.yellow-noise.tumblr.com

(I'm finally abandoning my 7th grade internet alias. No more leighcia. Too bad I still have my embarrassing 7th grade email that I still use for all those frequent buyer miscellaneous rewards programs.)

(For the time being, I will keep most of this blog up, but may be deleting some of the more personal entries.)

the recruitment of human assets

2010-06-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Reading about recruitment at elite universities brings back memories of investment banking and management consulting propaganda. Note their profligate use of words that suggest opportunity and elitism.

David Pyle, Managing Director of Fixed Income at Morgan Stanley at a Princeton recruiting event, 2000:

Our goal is to be the preeminent global firm, to be what we already are, the top. We want people coming into work every morning knowing that we’re at the top and always striving to be at the top. We are global; if you’re not global, you can’t win…. People are our single most important asset… Our people are the smartest in the world… There is no one in the world that we can’t reach and that’s middle of everything. We have huge reserves of capital and human assets, and we want to recruit the type of person that always wants more, who is not happy being second… Our theme is “network the world”.

From a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter 2001 recruitment ad:

Anything is possible. This is where the generation of new ideas lives. Because we’ve built a global network of people who see possibilities where others see confusion and risk—and who know how to turn those possibilities into realities. And by working at internet speed- propelling dozens of companies and millions of investors into the new economy. We are propelling careers all over the world.

These messages compelled confused and anxious undergraduates into hours of resume writing, recruitment presentations and interviews. For those of us who have spent a lifetime climbing the meritocracy ladder, investment banking and management consulting is a comforting next step compared to the prospect of actually figuring out how to live our lives. These careers promise prestige, excitement, learning, wealth and endless opportunity--- who could refuse? And it is only expected that we would be attracted to institutions that reproduce the elitism and selectivity of the colleges we attend. If the future is uncertain, we should strive to preserve the privilege of our Ivy League educations in the most secure way possible. *

And so, in 2010, even after the financial crisis of 2008, investment banking and management consulting recruitment remains attractive and competitive.

* Teach for America has taken advantage of this by being super selective in order to create an “elite cadre of teachers”…. For us organization kids, we need achievement paths.
** All recruitment excerpts taken from Karen Ho's Liquidated

luxurious times

2010-06-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

The stunning productivity of the agriculture and manufacturing sectors-- the roots of post-industrialism-- should be cause for celebration. The ancient Greeks would have seen the current moment as a turning point in human history, where only a tiny fraction of the population's hours are needed to produce all the food, clothing, shelter and material goods people need to live comfortable. Surely, we were on the verge of a society devoted to a life of art, literature, and contemplation. Instead, Americans face economic anxiety and chronic insecurity about the future. Houses are going into foreclosure, food prices climb ever higher, and millions of families are one medical crisis away from bankruptcy. Why is there such a disjuncture between the economy's capacity to produce and the lived experience of Americans?

~ Gerard Davis, Managed by the Markets

conspicuous consumption

2010-05-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

It may turn out that the life of idiotic ostentation makes humanity quite as despicable as the life of a drunkard, and that the image of God is less defaced in a saloon of the Bowery than in those jeweled birthday parties for dogs with which the New York Four Hundred disgust all civilized mankind. That much of this is, in the face of the world's needs, an enormity for which all defense is mere shamelessness no conscientious person will deny... Take the advertisement of a present-day 'millionaire's hotel,' with the assurance it gives of 'the very last word in sumptuousness.' Is this not one of the features of our time upon which we all trust that a wiser age will look back, not only with condemnation, but with a sense of nausea?

~1918 article in the American Journal of Sociology by Herbert Stewart, professor at Dalhousie University in Novia Scotia

If we allowed ourselves to see what we're doing every day, we might find it too nauseating. I mean, the way we treat other people-- I mean, you know, every day, several times a day, I walk into my apartment building. The doorman calls me Mr. Gregory, and I call him Jimmy... Now already, what is the difference between that the Southern plantation owner who's got slaves? You see, I think that an act of murder is committed at that moment, when I walk into my building. Because here is a dignified, intelligent man, a man of my own age, and when I call him Jimmy, then he becomes a child, and I'm an adult. Because I can by my way into that building.

~ Andre Gregory in 1981 Film My Dinner with Andre

It appears that I'm back. That may have been a record length hiatus. Sometimes real life takes over. In any case, I thought I'd ease back into blogging by posting these two quotations found in Rachel Sherman's Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels, an excellent book for the record (which also reminds me, I'm about a year behind on book reviews). Blogger's Amazon Associates Integration ads has also reminded me that I should stop patronizing Amazon. If you click through the book link above, it'll take you to a social enterprise firm, Better World Books, a B Corporation... but I feel like a hypocrite because I just made an order of books off Amazon...

*Note: For professional reasons, I'd like to keep my blog anonymous. I'd appreciate it if you refrain from mentioning my name or identifying characteristics in the comments. Thanks! I am also contemplating getting rid of all my labels. They don't make any sense!

work/life balance revisited*

2010-02-23T17:48:00.000-08:00

In the nineteenth century, there was a prohibition in the United States on banks opening branches in communities other than the ones in which they originally operated. People had to trust the bank if they were to deposit their money in it, and bankers had to assess the character of borrowers before writing loans; it was generally believed that “the bankers’ interests and the interests of the larger community are one and the same,” as a historical sociologist of banking writes. We might imagine a banker sits down with a young couple and begins to form a judgment of their credit worthiness, that is, their character. This character is knowable because there is a community. Maybe the banker asks around at the grocery and the hardware store, and notes subtle cues in the tone of voice or body language of their proprietors as he mentions the name of the applicants and inquires after their record of credit. Satisfied, he vouchsafes their creditworthiness to his colleague bankers, who live in the same community, and a mortgage is secured. A thirty-year relationship is established between the bank and the couple. The banker feels he has done a good turn, helping virtue to its reward by the diligent application of his own powers of discerning observation, and his knowledge of the ways of men. He exercises prudence; his work calls on some of his best capacities…

Now consider the reality of the mortgage broker circa 2005, whose work takes on a very different character under absentee capitalism. Knowing the mortgage he secures will be sold by the originating bank (a branch of a nationwide bank) to some other entity, he needn’t concern himself with the creditworthiness of the applicant. The bank has no interest in the ongoing viability of the loan; its interest is limited to the fees it gets from originating the loan. The mortgages will be bundles on Wall Street then these bundles will themselves be transformed through securitization… The original encounter between mortgage broker and borrower as they sit across from one another is fraught with moral content- questions of trust- and both of the original parties no doubt experience it this way, in 2005 as ever. The mortgage broker gets a feeling in his gut. But this information is discarded through a process of depersonalization. The discarding is purposeful. Indeed the originating banks get frequent phone calls from Wall Street investment houses, urging them to invent new kinds of loans in which the borrower doesn’t even need to claim income or assets, much less prove their existence. This makes a certain kind of psychic demand on the mortgage broker who actually writes the loans: he must silence the voice of prudence, and suspend the action of his own judgment and perception.

Why would a system demand the stupidification of the mortgage professional? Again, imagine it is 2005. Unprecedented concentrations of capital have arisen, and these pools of money are competing with one another to find a home, and get a return. As a result, there is an insatiable worldwide appetite for mortgage-backed securities among investors. Further, the fees to be made from all the transactions between originator and investor are fueling a Wall Street boom. Therefore more loans must be written. So our mortgage broker writes loans that he knows to be bad, and makes a lot of money. Stripped of the kind of judgments that are at the very heart of the idea of “credit,” shot through with bad faith, his work is now predicated on irresponsibility, rooted in the absence of community. Whatever lingering fiduciary consciousness he may have has become a liability, given the rush to irresponsibility by his competitors. The work cannot sustain him as a human being. Rather, it damages the best part of him, and it becomes imperative to partition work off from the rest of life. So during his vacation he goes and climbs Mount Everest, and feels renewed. The next summer, he becomes an ecotourist in the Amazon rain forest. It is in this gated ghetto of his second life that he inhabits once again an intelligible moral order where feeling and action are linked, if only for a couple of weeks.

~ Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

* The original work/life balance post can be found here.
** Wow, that quote took a very long time to type up. Please let me know if I made any typos.

addendum

2010-02-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

Speaking of the dangers valuing abstract knowledge over tacit knowledge, this American Life broadcast Two Steps Back (275) recounts how standardization efforts have frustrated a successful public school teacher's ability to teach.

(This American Life contains some very interesting programs. They're interesting enough that I'm actually willing to up to put up with Ira Glass and general NPR smugness in order to listen to them.)

perfectly normal

2010-02-20T07:54:00.000-08:00

The Unknown Citizen

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

~ W.H. Auden (Found via 3QuarksDaily)

Ultimately society becomes nothing more than a collection of statistical regularities and statistical categories. It makes little difference whether the category is a traditional one of social structure (age, sex, class) or a kind of person (child abuser, homeless) because the statistical category is the great equalizer—it strips the meaning from a social category and the individuality from a human kind. Society is statistical and so are the individuals who comprise it.
…
The main reason we measure everything human is that the concept of normality has placed that of morality, or as Ian Hacking puts it, the concept of normal people replaced that of human nature. The traditional view of human nature was a moral one. Belief in a transcendent God or in natural law allowed humans to be defined according to an ideal or to virtues. Virtue was not based exclusively on public opinion, or average behavior.
…
The normal is now an epiphenomenon of statistics, which when applied to human culture and the individual turns quality into quantity and imperialistically imposes the equality of standardization upon the individual and society.

~ Richard Stivers, The Illusion of Freedom and Equality

calculating fashion

2010-02-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

Matthew Crawford, in Shop Class for Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work*, distinguishes between two types of knowledge— abstract/universal knowledge and experiential/intuitive/tacit knowledge. According to Crawford, universal knowledge “aspires to a view from nowhere. That is, it aspires to a view that gets at the true nature of things because it isn’t conditioned by the circumstances of the viewer. It can be transmitted through speech or writing without loss of meaning, and expounded by a generic self that need not have any prerequisite experiences.”

Our society values this abstract knowledge—we crave more “technique” as Jacques Ellul would describe it. We value processes, technical manuals, best practices and flowcharts, rather than experiential or tacit knowledge. Crawford describes the basic idea of tacit knowledge:

“We know more than we can say and certainly more than we can specify in a formulaic way. Intuitive judgments of complex systems, especially those made by experts… are sometimes richer than can be captured by any set of algorithms.”

Perhaps the difference between intuitive knowledge and abstract knowledge is best illustrated by the supercomputer Deep Blue and the master chess player Garry Kasparov. Though Deep Blue did beat Kasparov, it relied on a different sort of intelligence, if it can be called that at all, than Garry’s. Kasparov himself writes:

“Instead of a computer that thought and played chess like a human, with human creativity and intuition, they got one that played like a machine, systematically evaluating 200 million possible moves on the chess board per second and winning with brute number-crunching force.”

When we only recognize abstract knowledge, we bureaucratize human intelligence. In the words of Crawford:

“Appreciating the situated character of the kind of thinking we do at work is important, because the degradation of work is often based on efforts to replace the intuitive judgments of practitioners with rule following, and codify knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that then stand in for situated knowledge.”

The nonprofit sector subscribes to abstract knowledge, evidenced by the proliferation of jargon about “innovation,” “portfolio,” “outcome measurement” and “performance”. In my consulting work, I struggle with what kind of knowledge I implicitly support. But like a good stereotypical female blogger, I'm going to spend the rest of this blog post writing about clothing (Actually according to this, female bloggers prefer to write about Christmas, family, love and babies. Matt says that I ought to question whether the dataset analyzed is a representative sample).

Getting dressed is a difficult and stressful task for me. It’s a complicated operations procedure, rather than an expressive fun activity. Basically I think of it this way: I need to optimize my appearance given a set of constraints: amount and type of physical activity (e.g. biking or walking), indoor and outdoor temperature, level of desired formality and professionalism, level of comfort, clean clothing available and semi-clean clothing available. (I complicate this task by keeping a pile of worn-once-or-twice-but-still-clean clothing that I keep in a drawer that I try to wear before that drawer overflows).

In deciding what to wear, I first think about all my constraints. For example:
- Need to bike in regular clothing today. Need a skirt that will allow ample leg movement. No pencil skirts.
- Workshop presentation. Need to dress professionally and make sure that you have a decent shirt underneath your sweater because you get really hot when presenting…
- Um, you’ve already worn that black cardigan three times this week.
- Um, you don't have enough time to put on two pairs of tights. (Trust me, when you wear two pairs of tights at the same time, the second pair is very difficult to put on).

And then I rely upon mental algorithms I’ve developed to optimize appearance, primarily from my husband’s excellent fashion advice:
- Best colour combinations for me are black + grey + one other colour (which cannot be yellow, brown or navy, but would ideally be purple or blue).
- I can ditch the black and do grey + navy + white. Or maybe do beige + navy or beige + brown, but beige and brown are not the best colours for me.
- Only one article of clothing can have patterns, ruffles or extra embellishment
- Skirts generally look better than pants as long as I can find appropriate matching tights. Skirts must be above the knees!
- I can’t wear dangly earrings when I have my glasses on. It's just too many metal appendages.
- Fitted clothing usually looks better. I am supposed to avoid empire waists, puffed sleeves, boatnecks and blazers.
- Apparently the whole trendy/Michelle Obama wearing a belt over a cardigan looks stupid on me.

Given that my algorithms are not very well developed, I often find myself venturing in foreign territory. This often proves disastrous or atleast results in a tardy appearance at work. For instance, this morning, I wanted to wear a brown sweater. My algorithm for brown (brown + beige) was not going to work because I didn’t have any beige skirts or khakis. So I tried a pair of grey jeans, but they didn’t fit over my long underwear. Then I tried brown workpants that were too stripey compared to the stripe texture on the brown sweater. Then I tried a brown skirts which proved too brown. Then I panicked, since I was running later, and finally opted to just wear blue jeans, which were rather uncomfortable.

So this is why it takes me 20 minutes to get dressed in the morning. Perhaps I can reduce it to 10 minutes if I use a flowchart. Or maybe I should diagram a set of successful outfits at different levels of constraints and choose from the list. (I once though about creating such a diagram for biking clothing for weather… e.g. which thickness of gloves do I need given the daily range of temperature and windchill?). Or write a computer program that draws from a database of all my clothing and then compiles outfits based on inputted variables. That would be pretty awesome.

Alternatively, I could try to develop some experiential knowledge.**

* The famous essay that preceded the book is well worth reading.
** Or I could get rid of all my clothing and just buy a few sets of black skirts, black tights + grey shirt + grey cardigan. And just wear it ALL THE TIME. Simplicity is so tempting sometimes, but unfortunately I like novelty and variety and other comforts afforded by my American educated class privilege.
*** This only a slight caricature. I actually think about getting dressed in the morning this way. That is why it is so stressful. It’s up there with grocery shopping and meal planning and cooking (yet another algorithm-dependent area of my life). A quick google search has yielded a few others who have "best practices" for getting dressed.

you can only trust debtors

2010-02-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

… another innovation of the early twentieth century: consumer debt. As Jackson Lears has argued, through the installment plan previously unthinkable acquisitions become thinkable, and more than thinkable: it became normal to carry debt. The display of a new car bought on installment became a sign that one was trustworthy. In a whole sale transformation of the old Puritan moralism, expressed by Benjamin Franklin (admittedly no Puritan) with the motto “Be frugal and free,” the early twentieth century saw the moral legitimitation of spending.

~ Matthew Crawford in Shop Class as Soulcraft

Not only do we have moral legitimitation for debt, but we also have institutional legitimitation. Matt and I have been entangled in paperwork as we’ve tried to establish his credit score. Every credit card application has resulted in rejection, not because Matt has bad credit, but because he has no credit. He’s a poor candidate for credit because he has never had a debt before.

*That being said, with the recent recession and growing concerns for the environment, debt and spending are beginning to take on different moral meanings.

simulating friendship*

2010-02-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

Priority of sensation over substance. William Deresiewicz writes, in reference to Facebook:

We have turned [our friends] into an indiscriminate mass, a kind of audience or faceless public. We address ourselves not to a circle, but to a cloud.... There they are, my friends, all in the same place. Except, of course, they're not in the same place, or, rather, they're not my friends. They're simulacra of my friends, little dehydrated packets of images and information, no more my friends than a set of baseball cards is the New York Mets.

Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling—from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves, rearranging the tokens of connection like a lonely child playing with dolls. The same path was long ago trodden by community. As the traditional face-to-face community disappeared, we held on to what we had lost—the closeness, the rootedness—by clinging to the word, no matter how much we had to water down its meaning. Now we speak of the Jewish "community" and the medical "community" and the "community" of readers, even though none of them actually is one. What we have, instead of community, is, if we're lucky, a "sense" of community—the feeling without the structure; a private emotion, not a collective experience. And now friendship, which arose to its present importance as a replacement for community, is going the same way. We have "friends," just as we belong to "communities." Scanning my Facebook page gives me, precisely, a "sense" of connection. Not an actual connection, just a sense.

* I could also call this, as you may expect, "when words change their meaning" or "when words lose their meaning", but I thought it might be nice to have a change
** I discovered Deresiewicz via Charles Petersen's article In The World of Facebook

when words lose their meaning*

2010-02-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

Diversity.

Example 1: Fashion magazine Love celebrates the diversity of eight of the most “beautiful people” in the world. Is it just me or do they look pretty similar? (via Sociological Images)

Example 2: Visit any business school website and you’ll be sure to find the words “diversity” mentioned somewhere about their student bodies. Yet my friend related to me earlier this year that admissions officers at top business schools told her that they prefer students to have no more than three years of work experience.

Example 3: In our workplaces, in our churches, we comment with smug satisfaction about the diversity present, generally in reference to multilingual capabilities and skin color. But oftentimes, this diversity is superficial at best, a visual characteristic of a group of people who share similar educational background, political views, lifestyles and socioeconomic status.**

A commenter on the Sociological Images blog entry referenced earlier writes:

Media decision-makers know that in 2010, the concept of “diversity” is a useful tool to generate a positive response in audiences, especially when the piece explicitly says, “Hey, this is diverse.” Whether or not there’s discernible “diversity” in whatever they’re labeling as such, the label itself gets the applause.

It’s like putting puppies or daisies in an ad. And it’s a particularly cynical trick they use when they just throw in the word “diversity” to drum up feel-good vibes in something that’s actually quite mundane and not at all groundbreaking, diversity-wise. (Original comment found here)

* I’ve lost count of the number. It might be 7, not counting variations. I should probably make this a tag. Speaking of which, I hate my tags. What I mean when I use them seems to keep changing.
** Not to say that ethnic diversity is unimportant and should not be celebrated, but let’s recognize that there are other forms of diversity that in multicultural America may be more meaningful.

standard of living

2010-02-05T15:29:00.000-08:00

I attended an informal fundraiser for Haiti hosted by my sister-in-law in order to raise funds for Explorers Sans Frontieres last weekend. A friend shared about her numerous trips down to Carrefour, Haiti (Carrefour is about 6 miles south of Port-au-Prince). She lived with a family and spent many months teaching English. She recounted the love, the joy and the generosity amongst the people she lived with and related how the community has been coming together post-earthquake to rebuild.

The media has bombarded us with so many images of suffering, of chaos and of poverty since the Haiti earthquake, a sensational portrayal of a poor backward country: multitudes of impoverished (black) people in need of aid and help from our superior society.

Before we condemn Haiti and its people to our categories of exoticized and backward other as we succumb our personal opinions to the CNN newsfeed, let us remember the richness of the lives of people who live there. I was particular moved by my friend’s reflection on the death of a close friend of hers:

“He didn’t survive the earthquake. He was 30. But I thought to myself at age 30 in Haiti, you’ve already lived a long hard life, but he lived a full life. He experienced so much.” (paraphrase)

A full life. Many of us here in America never live a full life.

I leave you with something from Reason for Being: Meditation on Ecclesiastes by Jacques Ellul:

Let me repeat that the absence of progress does not result in sameness or stagnation. “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done” (Eccl. 1:0). These words do not amount to a quantitative or practical assessment, but, as we have said, a judgment concerning being (“What has been… what will be”), and the way people carry out their action- not the means of human action. There is an enormous change in the way Genghis Khan killed (with the saber) and our way (with nuclear bombs), but the behavior pattern is the same. Murder, envy, domination—these do not change. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

To use a classic distinction, we can have (quantitative) human growth, but this does not indicate (qualitative) human development. As noted earlier, we need to look at reality in terms of what God reveals to us. We may live in the “illusion of progress,” but God’s revealed truth shows us what it really amounts to.

* Note: This post was written one or two weeks ago.
** My sister-in-law is involved in another fundraiser for Haiti that will take place on Thursday Feb. 25th at 6:30pm. The event is called Help for Haiti: Beyond Media Coverage and will be held at the Penn Museum.

when words change their meaning

2010-01-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

In its original sense, a profession is an occupational grouping that has sole authority to recruit, train, and supervise its own members. Historically, only medicine, law and the academic disciplines have fit this description. Certainly flight attendants do not yet fit it. Like workers in many other occupations, they call themselves “professional” because they have mastered a body of knowledge and want respect for that. Companies also use “professional” to refer to this knowledge, but they refer to something else as well. For them a “professional” flight attendant is one who has completely accepted the rules of standardization.

~ Arlie Russell Hochschild in The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

Being professional once suggested integrity. True professionals governed themselves, establishing and holding themselves accountable to the standards of their field. Now being professional mostly means conforming to a set of outward behavioral standards. It has everything to do with the exterior and nothing to do with the interior.

charitable hypocrisy

2010-01-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

I posted a link about a year ago referencing a satirical piece that highlighted the social context in which a nonprofit operates. The nonprofit provides job training and employment for ex-cons, “black or brown men”, who were mostly arrested for petty crimes such as drug possession. Ironically, the daughter of a rich board member of this nonprofit was also involved in drugs, but sits comfortably in rehab with “her needs met” and her “crimes mitigated”.

W.E.B. DuBois’s the Philadelphia Negro, a study of blacks in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century, reminded me of this satirical piece. DuBois notes that while Philadelphians were unwilling to give blacks decent jobs, they supported charitable institutions that cared for the poor. He writes:

For thirty years and more Philadelphia has said to its black children: “Honesty, efficiency and talent have little to do with your success; if you work hard, spend little and are good you may earn your bread and butter at those sorts of work which we frankly confess we despise; if you are dishonest and lazy, the State will furnish your bread free.” Thus the class of Negroes which the prejudices of the city have distinctly encouraged is that of the criminal, the lazy and the shiftless; for them the city teems with institutions and charities; for them there is succor and sympathy; for them Philadelphians are thinking and planning; but for the educated and industrious young colored man who wants work and not platitudes, wages and not alms, just rewards and not sermons—for such colored men Philadelphia apparently has no use.

~ W.E.B DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro (1899)

While much has changed since DuBois’s time, similarities remain. Too many jobs do not pay a living wage. And in the current state and structure of the economy, I don’t believe there are sufficient living wage jobs for everyone in this country. We live in country that relies upon low-paid labor to sweep our floors, clean our toilets and wash our dishes. We live in a global system where we rely upon low-paid labor to sew our clothes and manufacture our toys. And so the poor must always be amongst us.

There is a place for charity. But sometimes we might spend too much time trying to figure out most effective educational and training and rehab programs, and not enough time addressing the social structures that may have led to this poverty in the first place. We spend so much time trying to move individual people up the “educational ladder”—college or proper vocational training—so they can get good jobs. But many have already noted that there are too many people overeducated for their jobs. And I’m not sure if the economy will grow out of this problem.

America also likes to romanticize the individual entrepreneur both locally (Joe the Plumber) and internationally (microfinance anyone?), but worker-owned companies or cooperatives are often more effective at achieving economies of scale and lifting more people out of poverty.

Without resorting to the failed model of state ownership, could there be better ways to organize and structure work? Could we get rid of the need for janitorial staff by creating a cleaning rotation amongst office-workers? It may be inefficient, but that doesn’t make it a less appropriate way to organize work. Or, what if workers owned their companies so that they can share in the profits that their sweat and blood created? So that they are no longer just a cost to be reduced in order to increase profits.

Maimonides, a 12th century Jewish philosopher, noted that the highest degrees of charity was a business partnership (shared ownership) with a poor person. The rich board member no longer sits on the board of his fancy schmancy nonprofit/bakery, giving his large contributions (large for the nonprofit but pitiful compared to his assets), but instead starts a bakery and makes the poor black man a co-owner.

pieces of history

2009-12-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

Some people who buy used clothing become fascinated by their previous owners. They want to know why the person originally bought the item and when he or she wore it.* I usually have no interest in the “personal history” of used clothing, but earlier this week, I had my moment of historical fascination.

After picking up prescriptions, I decided to browse in this thrift store on 19th street between Market and Chestnut. I don’t even know its name, but it’s one of those “real” “hole-in-the-wall” thrift stores. The stuff is cheap, it smells funny and there was a homeless man, or atleast a man who smelled homeless, sitting in the store, talking to one of the employees.

In any case, I bought three 100% wool skirts.** All three of them had ILGWU International Ladies Garment Workers Union “Union Made” “Made in the USA” tags on them.

Founded in 1900, ILGWU was one of the most progressive and important unions in the United States, reaching its peak of power in 30s and 40s. It began to decline in the 1960s and eventually merged with two other textile unions in 90s. Aside from being a union, ILGWU was also primarily a women’s union and given its start date, it was giving women economic and political representation even before they were allowed to vote.

So I feel like I’ve brought home three little pieces of history. (In fact, I feel reluctant to take out my scissors and do my usual round of alterations). I wonder about the women who produced them. Where did they work? What were their working conditions like? Did their union involvement make them feel like they had some control over their jobs?

It’s difficult these days to find union-made clothing. “Made in China” is a far more common label. Yet buying these three old skirts reminded me that this was once not the case.

Speaking of buying stuff, please refer back to last year’s entry for sources for buying fair-trade or ethically-produced gifts. I also seem to regularly rant about labour issues.

And speaking of the holidays, here's some light and pleasant reading suggestions. I actually haven’t read most of these, but they are all on my never-ending to-read list. The first book is political philosophy about community organizing. The next two are written by journalists about working conditions in America, either based on first-hand undercover experience (Ehrenreich) or interviews and research (Greenhouse). The latter three books are written by academics. Class Acts is, if I’m not mistaken, based on participant observation and research at a luxury hotel and is primarily concerned with the relationships that develop between the rich clientele and the hotel workers. The final two are more theoretical works about the organization and structure of labour.

Reveille for Radicals (Saul Alinsky)
The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Steven Greenhouse)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (Barbara Ehrenreich)
Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels (Rachel Sherman)
The Ownership of Enterprise (Henry Hansmann)
Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (Michael Burawoy)

Note: I actually wrote this entry in late November. I just haven’t had a chance to photograph the skirts and post the entry until now.
* I also hate it when people distinguish between “vintage” and “thrift” clothing. To me, used clothing is used clothing. Some items may be better quality than others and some may be older, but I don’t find clothing called “vintage” inherently more valuable than clothing called thrift. (Then again, it could be more valuable in that I could probably sell an old skirt called “vintage” for much more than thrift store skirt). It’s marketing. Vintage shop geniuses who make money off ugly 70s polyester dresses.
** I initially planned to buy two skirts, for a total of $14, but the cashier decided to give me one of the skirts for free. After buying these skirts, I noticed another skirt and decided to try it on. Unfortunately it had a small stain on the front so I decided it wasn’t worth the $10. The cashier was disappointed that I wasn’t going to buy it so he offered to sell it to me for $2. That wool fabric alone would cost me $20 to buy, so I bought the skirt. Three skirts for $8, the price of a Center City lunch. Nice! This is why I love *real* thrift stores, as opposed to pricey consignment shops.

on being feminine

2009-12-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

I occasionally like to visit the website Real Simple for recipes and organization tips. One of my secret indulgences is reading “how to organize your life” books and articles. It makes me feel like I am actually organizing my life, rather than just reading about it.*

This poll appeared on one of the side panels:

What is your favorite type of book?
a. A good mystery.
b. A heartfelt romance.
c. A historical novel.
b. A memoir.

If you haven’t noticed already, NONE OF MY FAVOURITE TYPES OF BOOKS are in this list. General journalism? Sociology? Theology? Even science fiction? I suppose I’m not Real Simple’s target audience and that I don’t have typically “feminine” tastes in books. In fact, I find it insulting that the poll suggests that women mostly like fiction (mystery, romance, historical fiction) or “emotional” non-fiction (i.e. the memoir).

But atleast the poll suggests that women read. Most women’s magazines would lead me to conclude that women are only interested in losing weight, attracting men, buying clothes, planning weddings, cooking, hosting parties and keeping a house clean. Not that male-targeted magazines are any better. What’s the tagline for Maxim again? Girl. Sports. Beer. Gadgets?

Our mainstream representation of gender is limiting and depressing. Is being feminine about shopping, watching chickflicks and dressing like Carrie Bradshaw? Is being masculine about drinking beer, watching sports, and checking out girls?

In any case, I had no particular agenda for this entry. Much like my ethnicity, I don’t often reflect on how gender affects my life and others’ perceptions of me. But it does become relevant from time to time. I especially find it amusing that I have a “masculine” personality type (INTJ), but feminine hobbies.

If you’re interested in exploring media representations of gender, Sociological Images is a great source. Check out their tag for gender. A few highlights:

Should a phone be masculine or feminine?
The infamous I’m a boy, I’m a girl books
Business Week posts a story about women hedge fund managers that mentions nothing about families or motherhood under the “Working Parents” section of their paper
The uncanny juxtaposition of girls playing with "boy" toys

Other interesting stories I’ve stumbled upon:

We use men and women’s names differently
The mockery of Twilight is a gendered mockery because it's easy to hate on teenage girls

*One of my other secret indulgences is reading “Top 10 Trends” list. I like to read them so I can conclude that all the trendy items are ugly. As a result, I can feel superior because I'm not a slave to fashion. But if I realize that some cheap shirt I picked up from the thrift store is on the list, then I can also feel superior because I own something fashionable . It’s a win-win situation! Instant smug satisfaction boost!

an ethic for knowledge

2009-12-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

The notions of 'scientific' detachment and objectivity in ethics research appear illusory at best, a betrayal of both our respondents and ourselves, at worst. Yet, if all truth is subjective and shared meanings are impossible, are we wasting our time as scholars, conducting studies to satisfy our own selfish pleasure in the discovery of the particular-- with no hope of finding something of value to say to those who inhabit the world we examine? If that is the case, shouldn't we perhaps move on to a more productive line of work-- writing fiction or making widgets?

~ Jeanne Liedtka from her article "Exploring Ethical Issues Using Personal Interviews" published in Business Ethics Quarterly Vol. 2 (1992)

Something of value to say to those who inhabit the world we examine. If I ever do become a serious researcher, that's what I hope I can do. I want to contribute to knowledge (knowledge with a lowercase k), that helps people better understand their lives. Otherwise, I might as well just knit socks, because we all know there is much weariness in the making of many books.

In any case, I finish my class on Thursday. I promise that I will post ten gazillion blog entries after that. Then again, knowing my incredible powers of concentration, I will probably post ten gazillion blog entries before my final proposal is due.

when words hide their meaning

2009-11-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

We rarely evaluate anything as morally right or morally wrong anymore. Those terms seem outdated. Many of us celebrate this cultural shift as it suggests freedom from oppressive social norms. But while we no longer resort to a vocabulary of right and wrong, our language can still speak with power and oppression.

From Edward Skidelsky, Regular Words that think for us:

Beyond inappropriate

No words are more typical of our moral culture than “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string.

Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or less replaced a number of older, more exact terms: coarse, tactless, vulgar, lewd. They encompass most of what would formerly have been called “improper” or “indecent.” An affair between a teacher and a pupil that was once improper is now inappropriate; a once indecent joke is now unacceptable.

This linguistic shift is revealing. Improper and indecent express moral judgements, whereas inappropriate and unacceptable suggest breaches of some purely social or professional convention. Such “non-judgemental” forms of speech are tailored to a society wary of explicit moral language. As liberal pluralists, we seek only adherence to rules of the game, not agreement on fundamentals. What was once an offence against decency must be recast as something akin to a faux pas.

But this new, neutralised language does not spell any increase in freedom. When I call your action indecent, I state a fact that can be controverted. When I call it inappropriate, I invoke an institutional context—one which, by implication, I know better than you. Who can gainsay the Lord Chamberlain when he pronounces it “inappropriate” to wear jeans to the Queen’s garden party? This is what makes the new idiom so sinister. Calling your action indecent appeals to you as a human being; calling it inappropriate asserts official power.

The point can be generalised. As a society, we strive to eradicate moral language, hoping to eliminate the intolerance that often accompanies it. But intolerance has not been eliminated, merely thrust underground. “Inappropriate” and “unacceptable” are the catchwords of a moralism that dare not speak its name. They hide all measure of righteous fury behind the mask of bureaucratic neutrality. For the sake of our own humanity, we should strike them from our vocabulary.

We speak like enlightened relativists, circumscribing our judgments within the rhetoric of tolerance. In the end, we judge everything without believing in anything.

*This reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s saying: A cynic is the one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Being cynical, I suspect his witty phrase applies not only to cynics, but to our consumer society as a whole. We know the price of everything (and how to shop for the best price), but of value, we know little.

it's a wonderful life revisited 2008

2009-10-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from the article "The Rise and Fall of Finance and the End of the Society of Organizations" cited from the death of the corporation? on orgtheory.net:

The traditional model of banking is fairly simple: Banks gather deposits from savers, who are paid interest, and lend it to borrowers, who pay it back at a higher rate of interest.

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, banker George Bailey explains this model to his anxious depositors, who are causing a run on the bank: “No, but you . . . you’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house . . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?”

The best-known form of securitization is mortgage- backed bonds, in which hundreds or thousands of mortgage loans are pooled together and then divided into bonds that, by the law of large numbers, have more predictable and “safer” returns. This practice allows banks to free up funds for additional lending and generally lowers the cost of taking out a mortgage. Rather than relying on a local bank and its depositors to fund their home purchase, buyers can access funds from dispersed investors around the world via mortgage-backed securities.

A modern-day George Bailey might have a more difficult time explaining contemporary banking: “No, but you . . . you’re thinking of this place all wrong, as if I held your mortgage on my balance sheet. I sold your mortgage to Countrywide 10 minutes after we closed the deal, and they sold it along with 3,000 other mortgages to Merrill Lynch, which divided it into bonds that were bought by a Cayman Islands LLC, which bundled them together with other mortgage-backed bonds into a collateralized debt obligation that Citigroup sold to a Norwegian pension fund. Now what are you going to do? Stop making your payments and force those Norwegian retirees to go back to work?”

obscenely rich

2009-09-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

To be rich means... to live in more than one room... to own more than on pair of shoes... to have a choice of what to eat...

It’s humbling to be reminded of how obscenely rich we are.

a new species (2)

2009-09-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

I would have just twittered this article, found via orgtheory.net, but it was too good to pass up for a quick late night quotes-only blog entry:

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

...

On today's court, the direction Justice Sotomayor suggested is unlikely to prevail. During arguments, the court's conservative justices seem to view corporate political spending as beneficial to the democratic process. "Corporations have lots of knowledge about environment, transportation issues, and you are silencing them during the election," Justice Anthony Kennedy said during arguments last week.

~ Jess Bravin

I'm sure it's a real hard guess as to who I agree with more. =)

true understanding

2009-09-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

For those who become serious scholars, the ultimate test of a good idea is the taxi-driver test. If you are on your way somewhere to present your idea and you cannot in five sentences explain what you are talking about well enough so that your taxi driver or the person in the adjacent aircraft seat can understand it and see why it’s interesting, you don’t really understand your idea yet. You aren’t ready to present it. This holds no matter how complex your idea is. If you can’t state it in everyday terms for an average person with no special interest in it, you don’t understand it yet. Even for those working in the most abstruse formalisms, this is the absolute test of understanding.

~ Andrew Abbott in Methods of Discovery

Think back to your first years in graduate school. The most mathematically complex papers required a great deal of time and effort to read. The papers were written as if to a private club, and we felt proud when we successfully entered the club. Although I copied the style of these overly complex and often poorly written papers in my first few research attempts, I grew out of it quite quickly. I didn’t do so on my own. I was lucky to be surrounded by mature confident researchers at my first academic appointment. They taught me that if you are confident in your research you will write to include, not exclude. You will write to inform, not impress. It is with apologies to my research and writing mentors that I report the following events.

The preference falsification in which I engaged was to intentionally take a simple clear research paper and make it so complex and obscure that it successfully impressed referees. That is, I wrote a paper to impress rather than inform—a violation of my most closely held beliefs regarding the proper intent of research. I often suspected that many papers I read were intentionally complex and obscure, and now I am part of the conspiracy.

~ from economist David Hakes, quoted on orgtheory.net

the recovery of virtue

2009-09-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

After many months of what appeared to be politics as usual, President Obama managed to give me hope again with his speech on Wednesday night. (And I can only hope that his rhetoric is matched with substance—integrity is after all often defined as coherence between the internal and external).

I was especially moved to hear him quote Ted Kennedy towards the end of his speech:

[Ted Kennedy] repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that "it concerns more than material things." "What we face," he wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."

…

That large-heartedness - that concern and regard for the plight of others - is not a partisan feeling. It is not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character. Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand. A belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgement that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.
…

And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al.) noted back in 1985, the loss of the notion of civic virtue and warned of its potential consequences. Obama’s speech suggests that we recover the value of virtue and character in our national discourse. While the concept of virtue may not give us clear answers about the size and role of government in our technologically complex society, it can atleast be a guiding principle in how we frame our public debate about how this country should be governed.

From Habits of the Heart:

We spoke of the belief of Madison and the other founders that our form of government was dependent on the existence of virtue among the people. It was such virtue that they expected to resolve the tension between private interest and public good. Without civic virtue, they thought, the republic would decline into factional chaos and virtue, and probably end in authoritarian rule. Half a century later, this idea was reiterated in Tocqueville’s argument about the importance of mores – the “habits of the heart” – of Americans.

…
As the twentieth century has progressed, that understanding, so important through most of our history, has begun to slip from our grasp. As we unthinkingly use the oxymoron “private citizen”, the very meaning of citizenship escapes us. And with Ronald Reagan’s assertion that “we the people” are a “special interest group”, our concern for the economy being the only thing that holds us together, we have reached a kind of end of the line. The citizen has been swallowed up by the economic man.

Yet this kind of economic liberalism is not ultimately liberating, for, as became quite clear with the final two visions of the public good described, when economics is the main model for our common life, we are more and more tempted to put ourselves in the hands of the manager and the expert. If society is shattered into as many special interests as there are individuals, then, as Tocqueville foresaw, there is only the schoolmaster state left to take care of us and keep us from one another’s throats.*

* I realize this quote may suggest that one-payer government-run healthcare system would be the perfect example of putting ourselves in the hands of the manager and expert and handing the disciplinary ruler over to the schoolmaster state (you know with the death panels and all). I am not inclined to read the passage in that way, especially not in the context of the book, but I will leave it up to you ponder.

instant gratification

2009-09-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

With class starting this fall (I am a teaching assistant for one course and taking another course) in addition to my full time job, I suspect this blog may fall into neglect. That being said, I want to try to update this semi-regularly. So here goes:

After working on never-ending projects with teeny tiny needles and sock-weight yarn, I’ve forgotten how quickly you can finish something if you use thicker yarn.

Project: Gretel Hat Attempt #2
Pattern: Ysolda's Gretel
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Black
Needles: Size 4 for the ribbing; Size 6 for the cable section
Size: Knit size regular but omitted rows 6-9 in the "Regular and Slouchy Only" section
After a failed attempt to knit this hat earlier this year, my second attempt turned out fairly successfully. The hat fits well, does not make my head look like a gigantic balloon, will be warm and does not clash with my coat or scarves. In my book, that counts as a success. More photos can be found here and here.

Project: Very Fetching Mitts
Pattern: Fetching on Knitty.com
Yarn: Patons Australia Merino Deluxe DK (a gift from Australia from Matt)
Needles: Size 4 circulars
Modifications: Added an extra set of cabling at the wrist.
Yet another pair of fingerless mitts to protect me from the cold that will be our house this winter. These ones are thicker, looser and cover less of my fingers than my other pair. We'll see which one ends up being more practical. This project was also incredibly quick to knit! It only took me about 4 days of regular knitting. I believe the hat took about 1-2 weeks of regular knitting.

In comparison, normal socks take me about 3-4 weeks of regular knitting. Fancy socks take about 4-8 weeks. And good old tangled yoke cardigan is probably going to take me 20+ weeks of regular knitting to make, if not more.

I guess if I like instant gratification, I should try sewing more.

*Note: Photos are courtesy of hubby whose status as a rock star has made his blog more popular than mine. I am slightly jealous. Every blogger secretly dreams that he or she can blog full time and earn a living, and then win a Pulitzer Prize for "Serial Online Commentary".