Sunshine Skyways

Christmas, Anxiety and Depression or Borderline Christmas Memories

2010-12-24T12:02:00.004-05:00

The image of Christmas as a time when the whole family gathers together and everyone feels love for one and for all is not a reality for me and, no doubt, for many. It never was about love and loving to be with each other, although I wished it would have been. Instead, Christmas when I was a kid was more like my family pretending to be that way, although there always loomed the possibility that my Borderline mother would judge and then erupt into a rage ... although the eruptions were in the privacy of our home. As much as she didn't recognize boundaries, she erupted only in our home, when no guests were there. Perhaps, my mother's fears and other suffering were heightened during Christmas and during the shortest days of the year. Decades later, I still have feelings of anxiety and depression/sadness ... patterns of thought and feeling produced a long time ago, but still present. Maybe I'm in the process of grieving what was.

A Fractured Self

2010-12-24T11:42:00.003-05:00

During the process of exploring my within, I am challenged by my fractured self -- one of suffering, which is reflected in my latest art piece seen here. Perhaps, one has to metaphorically come face-to-face with one's suffering and accept it before continuing down the path of being whole.

Casualty of Borderline Mother Painting

2010-09-15T19:37:00.004-04:00

Here is a painting which is an abstraction of my oldest brother holding his first grandchild. In the photo he has a despondent stare. He seems disconnected to his granddaughter and his wife, who took the photo. He is emotionally disconnected from his family. According to my parents, he was "the rock" and "on the rock, they built the family," which meant being tethered to a Borderline mother who kept him by her side and without friends. Although our mother has been dead for years, he remains in her service, chained to patterns of thought and trauma forged early in his life as the chosen one.

The War is Over: A Compassion Meditation

2009-04-27T19:36:00.006-04:00

The War Is Over: A Compassion Meditation by Denise J., aka Sunshine Skyways.

Scene I: A large outdoor stadium before sunset.

A stage is set up at one end of the stadium field. Facing the stage, one can see the setting sun to the right. A very large blackened monitor appears suspended in the air at the back of the stage. Speakers and many smaller monitors are situated throughout the stadium. Seated in the stadium and on the field are generations of warriors. Many have obvious physical injuries. Many are in wheelchairs, are missing a limb or two, have very visible scars, have been severely burnt, and all appear emotionally and physically tired. Nonetheless, all are wearing body armor and carry weapons.

The stage is lit in subtle colors of the rainbow and all of the audience look up toward the stage. The lights fade to black. The stage is empty and silent for several seconds, then a gentle pulse of gold light lightens the stage and a Native American mourning song can be faintly heard. The song gets louder then an image slowly comes into view on the monitors. The mourning song ends once the first image is in focus. It is of a warrior who was killed in the war, showing how and when he was killed. His screams of pain and cries for help can be heard as he dies. Then images and sounds of generations of dying warriors are played for at least 10 minutes. Their screams of pain and cries for help as they die reverberate throughout the stadium, then the monitors fade to black as the screams and cries go silent. After a few seconds, another image comes into focus; it is of a non-combatant fatally injured in the war. She screams in pain and cries for help as she dies. Her image fades, then images and sounds of generations of non-combatants killed in the war appear in rapid fashion. Their screams of pain and cries for help as they die reverberate throughout the stadium for at least 10 minutes, then the images and sounds fade away. There is only silence and blackness for several seconds. Then an image slowly appears and cries can be faintly heard. Once in focus, it is of two warriors witnessing the terrible death of a warrior standing in front of them. The screams of the warrior killed in front of them and their loudly beating hearts can be heard as they dive onto the ground side by side, both covered in blood and pieces of body parts. The warrior on the left looks at the warrior to her right and sees that one of his arms has been blown off. She looks at her outstretched arms and sees a bone sticking out of her right arm. The camera shifts to their faces showing both disbelief and tremendous fear, which then morphs into their older faces showing the same fear and disbelief, just more subtle, but noticably engrained in the lines and wrinkles of their faces. Their faces and rapidly beating hearts fade away. The stadium is silent and black for seconds. Then images and sounds of surviving warriors and non-combatants wounded and emotionally traumatized by the war and the experiences that traumatized them are shown and heard in rapid fashion for at least 10 minutes. Then the sights and sounds fade away and it is silent and black in the stadium for several seconds. The only light is from the fading sun. Then, the photos of those killed, wounded and traumatized by the war appear simultanously, each like a pixel. Collectively, the pixels create the image of a lone young girl standing in a small patch of lawn. She has blood on her face and on her clothes. She is holding a teddy bear with a tattered green ribbon around its neck. The bear is missing an ear, eye and leg, and dried blood covers its belly and remaining leg. The young girl is looking around her. She is calling for someone, anyone, but no one responds. She cries; she screams. She is alone. The focus expands and now one can see there are dead bodies around her. Then the image expands again and one can see tens of bodies, then hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of bodies, then millions of bodies. The images of millions of dead bodies disappear and again one can see and hear only the lone crying girl and her traumatized facial expression and body langauge. She grows quiet, then slumps to the ground as blood comes from her mouth. She dies with her teddy bear by her side. Her image slowly fades away and as it does, her cries are joined with the cries of tens, hundreds, thousands then tens of thousands of others that can be heard for at least 10 minutes. The monitors then go black and the stadium goes silent for several minutes. After, a bright bolt of lightning appears on the monitors and its loud crash is heard, rumbling throughout the stadium. The monitors go to a deep blue and a golden light appears at the left side of the stage.

A person wearing a long red hooded ceremonial robe slowly and gracefully walks out onto the stage. S/he in turn is followed by another person wearing an orange ceremonial robe, followed by one wearing a yellow ceremonial robe, and so on until 7 people have slowly walked out on to the stage, one after the other, each wearing a different colored ceremonial robe that is a color of the rainbow. Once all 7 people are on stage, they slowly and gracefully form a circle. Those with hands and arms hold hands, those who can’t, do not. Gentle pulses of the 7 colors of the rainbow appears around and in the circle. The 7 people slowly move as a circle, first doing a complete turn from left to right then right to left, then they stop and the lights around them fade to a deep blue and a golden light appears at the right side of the stage.

A general appears in the golden light and slowly walks out on to the stage and into the circle between two individuals lacking arms. He is wearing a battered helmet, and dented body armor is strapped tightly to his upper body, forcing his shoulders up. His clothes and boots are dusty and stained with blood. He walks with a very visible limp and his right arm is bent. The light follows him as he walks. He stops and stands in the middle of the circle of 7 people. The 7 bow to the general, then slowly break the circle and walk and form a semi-circle behind him. The general turns to each of the 7 robed people and bows to each one of them. He then turns back to face the audience and moves to the front of the stage. As he does, he is lit in an orange-red light. He looks old and very tired. He has a visible scar across the right side of his face. He coughs, slowly removes his helmet, then begins to speak.

General: Good evening. We have been a warrioring people for a long long time. Our great grandparents, our grandparents, our parents, our sisters and brothers, our aunts and uncles, our cousins, our children, our grandchildren, our friends, our neighbors, and all of us have fought in war. All of us have witnessed comrades, friends, relatives, and strangers die before our eyes. Everyone of us has been an eye witness to the pain and suffering of war.

Now images of dying warriors and non-combatants reappear on the screen. One can hear their dying screams and cries for help. Images of people torn into pieces and other horrible images of people fatally injured appear on the screens. Many are warriors, but equally many are not. Many are older teenagers and in their 20s, but equally many are young children and elderly non-combatants. Many are killed on a battlefield, but equally many are killed in their homes, schools, neighborhoods, sacred spaces, and places of work and play. After seeing image after image after image of those dying, the monitors fade to black and speakers fade to silence.

General: The images that you saw and voices you heard are those who were killed in our war. Now look at the monitors to see and hear the warriors, their families and others who physically survived but were devastated by our war.

Images and voices of homeless, maimed, self-drugged, suicidal and otherwise mentally ill veterans are played. Images and voices of veterans experiencing flashbacks are seen one after the other. Images and voices of children, spouses, parents, siblings and friends crying at the funerals of killed warriors are played, then the images and voices of children, spouses, parents, siblings, and friends being neglected, abused and/or otherwise adversely affected by veterans are played. Both warriors and non-combatants speak of psychological losses and wounds that cannot be healed. Veterans speak of not being able to sleep or be comfortable in their own thoughts, and many speak of wishing they had died in battle because surviving is more painful. The faces of warriors traumatized by the war and non-combatants abused by traumatized veterans are shown in rapid fashion; they all have a look of being emotionally disconnected from the world. Then each face becomes a pixel and collectively each pixel forms the image of a young man about 20 years of age. He is curled up in a fetal position on a rug in a bedroom. The camera zooms to his face, and one can see both fear and sadness in his eyes. The camera then zooms to his right eye and in the eye are reflected images of the young man as a warrior shooting and killing a woman and two children. A slurred voice saying, “Fire! Fire!” is heard as he kills them. A hand reaches out to shake his in congratulations after he has done as commanded. He looks down at the bodies of the two children and sees in one child’s face a slight resemblance to his own. He looks at the dead woman and sees a slight resemblance to his mother. He looks at his rifle and at the people he killed. Then one sees him shaving in a mirror in the bedroom. He is not comfortable with who he sees in the mirror. The camera zooms out and again we see the young man lying in the fetal position on the rug. An original poem, an empty bottle of pills and an empty bottle of whiskey are by his side. One can hear a woman calling for him, then silence, followed by the images of the boy’s mother and father breaking down a door and finding their son unconscious on the floor of his bedroom. The mother dials 911, then the monitors fade to black. A siren, voices of EMTs trying to resusitate the young man and cries of his parents and his brother and sisters are heard, followed by silence.

General: Millions of people have been killed and traumatized by decades of war. We are a deeply wounded people, and we keep on adding to people’s pain and suffering by continuing to fight. All of us were born during the war, and were raised to accept war as a fact of life. We were taught that warriors are heroes, and we should all be ready to put on body armor, load our weapons, and march eagerly into battle. When I was a young man, I was eager to be a warrior because I wanted to be a hero. Heros seemed to be admired by everyone, and I wanted to be admired. After seeing and hearing the pain and suffering caused by decades of war, I have come to learn that a hero is not a person who killls or injures others. A hero saves lives and acts to reduce pain and suffering. A villain kills and acts to increase pain and suffering. So, what is a warrior? A warrior is trained and ordered to cause pain and suffering first and foremost. Doesn’t that mean a warrior is more a villain than a hero? I personally have killed and injured people that I did not know because I was a warrior and trained to believe: 1) they were the enemy, 2) enemies hate us and want to hurt us, and 3) we have to kill our enemies before they kill us. For that, I have been called a war hero, but there is no such thing. First and foremost, I was trained to be and became a villain. Over my career I have ordered hundreds of thousands of warriors to kill and injure people that they didn’t know. For generations we have killed and injured people that we labeled as the enemy.
Now listen carefully as I repeat myself. Heros save lives and reduce pain and suffering. Villains kill and increase pain and suffering. We have killed and injured millions of people, people we don’t know, generation after generation. War has made us villains. We have also hurt ourselves, generation after generation as shown in the videos you have seen. War has made us victims.
War is intellectually, physically and emotionally exhausting because we get stuck in living out our lives as villains and victims. There is and should be more to life than that, and our children, childen’s children and so on deserve more than being villains and victims. Thus, for our children, our children’s children, and so on, I declare it is time to put an end to our warrioring ways. It is time to take off our body armor and get rid of our weapons. It is time for us to rest, heal, and enjoy the great benefits that come from peace. We must and can work together to benefit others and ourselves. Therefore, on this day at this moment I am ordering all of you to stop fighting. There is no need, no reason for continuing the war or warrior ways.
It is the time for peace. If peace scares you, you are a victim of the war. War is hell, and any reasonable person does not prefer war or warrior ways. War is a terrible attack on the body and soul of everyone. To be scared of peace is to deeply scarred by war. Look at the monitors and see what has happened to us.

The monitor has two split images. On the right is a young boy, on the left a young girl. Both appear to be about 4 years old. The girl is jumping rope with friends in a playground. She and her friends are having a wonderful time. The boy is with his family and they are joyfully celebrating his birthday. The images of the young girl and boy fade then are replaced. On the left side of the screen appears the girl, who looks like she is about 12 years of age. She is with her mother and two brothers visiting her wounded father in a military hospital. The girl looks frightened as she looks at the man who is supposed to be her father. The father has a severe brain injury and appears incapable of parenting anyone. On the right side of the screen is the boy, who looks to be about 10 years of age. He is crying. His mother was killed in combat and he is with his father and siblings at his mother’s funeral. His father is crying and leaning over his mother’s casket as it is lowered into the ground. The boy throws a flower into the hole. The images then fade away and are replaced by new ones. On the left is the girl who is now a woman of 32. She looks tired and depressed. She and her mother are dressing her father, then they are getting him in her parents’ car. Her mother yells at her for being late and making her father late for his dialysis appointment. After her mother and father have left fo the appointment, the woman goes back into the house, into the kitchen, removes two pills from her pocket, grabs a bottle of whiskey from a cabinet, and swallows the pills with the whiskey. On the right of the screen is the boy who is now a man of 47. It is the general, and he is watching his son die of war injuries. He can not do anything to stop his son from dying. His son asks his father to tell his mother that he loves her and then tells his father that he loves him. The son then dies in his father’s arms. Both images then fade to black.

General: As you can see, I watched my son die. I ordered his unit into battle and with that order, I led my son to his death. He was not the only one to die that day. Many others died and were permanently injured. They were mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, best friends, and comrades.

Images of warriors when they were young children appear. The young children are playing games and enjoying life. Each child’s face shows a passion and enthusiasm for the human experience. Then the faces morph and age. The once passionate and enthusiastic faces and playful sounds of children are replaced by images and sounds of warriors killing and being killed, injuring and being injured. Those images and sounds fade and are replaced by images of generations of veterans who look and sound tired, beaten, traumatized. The images and sounds disappear.

General: Our grandparents, parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, spouses, relatives, friends, and neighbors have all been scarred by decades of war. And the wounds get deeper and more painful with each year that we continue our warrioring ways. Now look into the monitors and see what war has done to you.

Images of every person in the audience appear on the screens. First, each person is a young child of 3 with an exhuberance for life and joy to be with others. Second, each is a child of 10 years of age and being taught to believe that certain people are the enemy. Those images are replaced by each person attending at least one funeral for someone killed in the war and seeing many others permanently injured by the war. In turn, those images are replaced by videos of each audience member being trained to be a warrior, followed by the horrors that s/he actually experienced in the war, then followed by the images of each person as a veteran haunted by painful memories and physical injuries of being a warrior. Those images fade to black.

General: You know the pain and suffering of war; it is a hurt that never goes away. Why do we do this to ourselves? War is crazy. I am done with fighting and being a warrrior. I will no longer kill or injure others. I will not continue the cycle of pain and suffering. I will not carry or use a weapon, and I will not wear body armor.

A fire pit appears behind the general, then a Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker, wearing a beautiful, sparkling gold, pink and white robe, walks out on to the stage and stands by the fire pit. The General turns to face the fire pit, then walks towards it, finally stopping within a foot of it. He then struggles to remove his body armor, and gestures for someone to help him. The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker helps him remove his body armor. It comes off and looks as if it had been a dead layer of skin on his shoulders, upper back and chest. He slowly removes the rest of his uniform and throws it, his body armor and gun into the fire pit. Three people wearing gold and pink robes walk out on to the stage. Soulful flute music can be heard as they walk. Each is carrying a torch. The three walk to the pit, and set the uniform, body armor and gun on fire. The uniform, body armor and gun merge into a gold and pink flame, and there is no smoke. In a flash of sparkling gold, pink and white light the flame, uniform, armor and gun disappear. The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker turns and faces the audience. She is holding a gold and pink robe. She hands the robe to the general and gestures for him to put in on, which he does.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker (to General): As the sun sets and the moon rises, as the tide rises and falls, as birth leads to death, it is time for you to stop warring and be at peace. You have been at war too long, and you are terribly wounded. You are tired, and you need to rest. The robe that you wear is a healing robe and the symbol of the Peacemaker. With it you are no longer a warrior. Now say, “ I am no longer a warrior.”

General: I am no longer a warrior.

The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and General hug each other and as they do, similar fire pits appear throughout the stadium. The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and General walk to the front of the stage and face the audience.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and General (in unison): Now, it is your turn to rest and be healed. Remove your uniforms, body armor and weapons, and throw them into a fire pit. If you need help, someone will help you.

Everyone in the audience either alone or with help removes their uniforms, body armor and weapons and throws them into a fire pit. After all uniforms, body armor and weapons are in the fire pits, persons wearing gold and pink robes come with torches and light the pits on fire. A gold and pink flame appears in each. The piles of uniforms, body armor and guns merge into the gold and pink flames, and there is no smoke. In a flash of sparkling gold, pink and white light, all of the flames, uniforms, body armor and guns disappear. More robed persons come out among the audience; they are carrying gold and pink ceremonial robes. They give each person in the audience a robe and all put on a robe.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and General (in unison): As the sun sets and the moon rises, as the tide rises and falls, as birth leads to death, it is time for you to stop warring and be at peace. You have been at war too long, and you are terribly wounded. You are tired, and you need to rest. The robe that you wear is a healing robe and the symbol of the Peacemaker. With it you are no longer a warrior. Now say, “ I am no longer a warrior.”

Audience Members (in unison): I am no longer a warrior.

Two children, each wearing a gold and pink robe walk out onto the stage. One is carrying food and the other a goblet of healing juice. They walk up to the General and Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker (to General): The food and juice before you represent the healing spirit of the Peacemakers. As food and drink are necessary for life, the healing spirit is necessary for a compassionate, loving life.

The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker takes some of the food and gives it to the General. She gestures for him to eat it,which he does. She then takes the goblet, hands it to the General and gestures for him to drink from it, which he does. He hands the goblet back to the Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker, who in turn gives it back to one of the two children.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker (to the General): You are now a Peacemaker. Peacemakers do great things. They love others, are compassionate, and act to reduce the pain and suffering of others. In so doing, they honor themselves and others as spiritual beings. Now say after me, “I am a Peacemaker.”

General: I am a Peacemaker.

The Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker walks to the Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and they give each other a warm and loving hug. As they continue to hug, children, all wearing gold and pink robes, walk out into the audience. Half carry food, the others goblets of healing juice. Once dispersed through the audience, the children turn and look up at the stage. The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker stop hugging and turn to face the audience.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker (in unison) : The food and juice before you represent the healing spirit of the Peacemakers. As food and drink are necessary for life, the healing spirit is necessary for a compassionate, loving life. This food and juice is the healing spirit for you.

The children gesture everyone in the audience to eat and drink, and they do. After everyone has had food and juice, gold, pink and white lights gently pulsate and the sound of “Om” reverberates softly throughout the stadium.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and the Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker (in unison): You are now Peacemakers. Peacemakers do great things. They love others, are compassionate, and act to reduce the pain and suffering of others. In so doing, they honor themselves and others as spiritual beings. Now say after us, “I am a Peacemaker.”

Audience (in unison): I am a Peacemaker.

The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker bow to the audience and then to each other, and hug each other. Similarly, everyone in the audience bows to the Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker, then to each other, and give each other hugs. As they all hug, the sound of “Om” is replaced by the sound of a gentle rain. Many to most of the audience members begin to cry and cry for several minutes, stop, then cry again and again. The Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker also begins to weap. He cries for a long time. After he stops, he looks out over the audience.

Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker (in unison): We are now Peacemakers, and we do great things. We love others, are compassionate and act to reduce the pain and suffering of others. We also cry when we personally experience pain and suffering and witness it in others. In so doing, Peacemakers honor themselves and others as spiritual beings.

Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker: No doubt, it will feel strange for me and many of you to be a person of peace. I was a warrior for a long time, and being a Peacemaker will be like being someone else, not me. We will be like strangers to ourselves, but by becoming Peacemakers, what a wonderful gift we are giving ourselves, our families, our children, their children and their children’s children and so on. We will reap benefits that those at war can never have, but always try to gain. Now, go back to your families and communities and live in and spread peace. It is the greatest gift of all. It is the act of heroes.

The Woman-Shaman-Peacemaker and Ex-General-Now-Peacemaker bow to the audience, then to each other, and walk off the stage, followed by the 7 people wearing the robes the 7 colors of the rainbow. As they do, videos of Peacemakers helping others are seen on the monitors. The videos end with the words, “Live in and Spread Peace.” The monitors fade to black, and the audience exits the stadium to the peaceful melody of the Peacemakers.

Patterns of thought in a borderline world

2008-06-27T11:37:00.000-04:00

Patterns of thought that divide and identify some as bad needing to be managed by the experts or superiors (aka the regulators). With knowledge constructed by them and for them, the experts rationalize their attempts to control those whom they designate as needing their guidance. Whether in the name of science or God or other ultimate source, their knowledge is held up as unquestionable.

My mother was stuck in a borderline world of patterns of thought that identified/labeled me as deviant; and as such, in her mind, I always needed regulation, which meant being watched. Walls blocking me from her view were minimalized, so that my "bedroom" was a very visible section of hallway. The only room in the house where there were four walls where I could block her out was the bathroom. Yet, whether in or out of the bathroom, I did my best to be invisible, out of her gaze.

When threatened by her own patterns of thought, she erupted, threatening my existence to demonstate her ability to snuff out or continue my life. Perhaps, that was the ultimate in inequality ... it being her decision to end my life and with it all self-expression or not. She threatened me with death many times from the time I was 2 or 3 years of age.

My mother seemed free to express herself with her range from ignoring me (which for me felt like acceptance) to focusing on me in a murderous rage. My expression and self-expression were supposed to conform to her prescribed role of what I should be. When she expressed her hatred and anger at their extremes, I was most silenced, reduced to an object like a statue made of stone. If I expressed sadness or hurt, she turned up the rage to make me feel worse. So, I had to appear emotionless, like a stone, while her body went stiff and mechanical, her voice changed, and her eyes focused menacingly into my eyes.

Her anger and hate silenced and traumatized me. My mother certainly didn't want to hear my point of view; hers was the only one that mattered. My mother was a self-proclaimed moral expert/authority, and as such, she judged me as evil and needing her correction. At the same time, she was afraid that something would happen to me, like being raped by a drunk, so she would try to regulate who I was friends with and activities I did with those friends. For example, she would not let me go camping with my best friend's family because she claimed there would be drinking there. Her vision of evil awaiting to pounce on me while already being in me must have been tormenting for her. Perhaps, her torment from being sexually abused by a drunken older brother and neglectful parents and she projected onto me her feeling that she was both evil and the victim of evil. My mother likely had no sense of a core and peace of mind that comes from having a sense of a core. Perhaps, her torment was having to construct what little core she had from the outside from her imaginations of what others believed and wanted her to be. She had no peace of mind, just patterns of thought stuck in a vortex of emotions of fear, anger and hatred, with few connections to love and compassion for others and herself.

Thoughts of a Budding Taoist/Buddhist

2007-10-31T13:54:00.000-04:00

Perhaps, I am like a swirl in a river that is composed of millions of swirls. Yet, my ego mind dissolves the river and instead creates/imagines each swirl to be an independent body of water. The imagined independent body of water, in turn, is imagined to be interacting with other and different bodies of water. Together, the collection of imagined separate bodies and interactions make up my reality, which my ego mind translates into the reality of concrete facts, not imaginations. At the same time, my ego mind imagines my self to be better than all others, giving my imagined independent existence more importance, although I am just a swirl among millions of swirls and all are the same, all are of and in unity with the river.

Buddha Love and Compassion

2007-10-24T18:38:00.000-04:00

I've been reading a number of Buddhist books. What draws me to Buddhism and Taoism is that they are not judgmental. What also draws me to Buddhism is its practical teachings that have helped me become aware of continuous psychodramas that I create and cast myself in. Those psychodramas can be one's reality and only reality. By developing a greater awareness (or mindfulness), I am not getting sucked into authoring and casting myself in those psychodramas. Also, I believe that greater awareness (or mindfulness) is a path to greater love and compassion. Above is a painting that I recently finished that reflects these thoughts.

Borderline Personality Disorder

2007-09-19T11:10:00.000-04:00

A very dear friend of mine grew up with a mother with borderline personality disorder. After many conversations with him, reading what he described about his childhood, and reading various books on the illness, I was moved to do the above painting, which I call the Borderline Vortex. The words on the right express what he experienced growing up with a borderline mother.

New England Scene

2007-09-06T20:12:00.000-04:00

I love New England. Perhaps, it is because I grew up there. Above is a photo of what I think is very typical New England.

Golfing in the Berkshires

2007-09-06T19:58:00.000-04:00

Last week we played a beautiful and very affordable mountain course in the Berkshires called Bas Ridge Golf Course, which is in Hinsdale, MA. Above is a photo of the 10th green looking down from the area by the tee.

Graffitiexpressions

2007-08-17T16:38:00.000-04:00

I transformed Mind Swimming I into Mind Swimming II to Graffitiexpressions, which appears above.

Mind Swimming II

2007-07-04T18:50:00.000-04:00

Mind Swimming I

2007-07-02T16:48:00.000-04:00

I've been in a creative mood lately and I finished a painting last night that I call Mind Swimming I. It's 24" x 36" and is composed of oil and latex paints, burlap, and CDs.

Memory Fragments

2007-07-01T20:31:00.000-04:00

I finished this painting a couple of weeks ago. I call it Memory Fragments.

Critical Realism

2007-01-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

[T]o what extent can society be studied in the same way
as nature? Without exaggerating, I think one could call
this question the primal problem of the philosophy of
the social sciences (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 1).

In the history of sociological thought, the answer to the above question has been the subject of intense philosophical debate with naturalists on one side and anti-naturalists (or humanists) on the other. While naturalists believe that social scientists can and should replicate the methodology of natural science to study human society, anti-naturalists do not.

Both sides of the debate represent intellectual tours de force in the sociological tradition. Naturalists dominated the early beginnings of sociology and anti-naturalists have dominated since the paradigm shift that began in the late nineteenth century.[1] For many contemporary sociologists, the debate is and/or should be over; however, critical realists, such as Roy Bhaskar, argue that a “qualified anti-positivist naturalism” is possible (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 3). But “What is a ‘qualified anti-positivist naturalism’?” and “Should social scientists accept it?”

To answer these questions, I begin like Bhaskar with a “real world” divided by an isomorphism of sites and activities where nature as non-manmade is the site of natural processes and society as manmade is the realm of human practices. Despite the division, however, we assume both nature and society are real in the sense that they both affect human activities because every person has both a biological/physical existence and social existence.[2] The army that invades and destroys a village, for example, is no less real than the volcano that erupts and destroys a different village.

Any theory used to explain either a natural or social event, such as the destruction of one of the above villages, is a human construction that is locally and historically situated. For examples, while ancient Romans believed volcanic eruptions and military conquests were caused by gods, a contemporary volcanologist contends that volcanic eruptions are caused by diverse physicochemical processes at depth; and someone who agrees with Joseph Schumpeter believes an army creates a war and destroys a village to validate its existence. Bhaskar and anti-naturalists agree that all theories, whether of the natural sciences or not, are socially constructed; however, Bhaskar and other critical realists argue that natural science theories, as opposed to other theories, are epistemically successful or in other words, better in the sense that they are the result of “practical research work” in a social and historical process that successively unfolds deeper levels of reality (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 18; Steinmetz, Kemp).[3][4] But what is practical or useful depends on the individual or group, and in this sense Bhaskar is an epistemological relativist.[5]

Natural science, according to critical realists, has two dimensions. First, there is the “transitive” dimension, which is comprised of theories which constitute our knowledge of reality and indirectly connect science with reality. As all theories are social constructions, natural science theories are transitory and fallible objects of science, although not equally fallible (Bhaskar, 1998). Second, there is the “intransitive” dimension where mechanisms, which are the permanent and universal objects of science, exist independently of scientific or any other human practice and represent a dimension of reality that transcends our experiences.

Natural or social reality, according to critical realists, has three levels. The first level, the “empirical”, is the subset of reality that is composed of our direct and indirect experiences. For example, we can directly experience through visual observation the beating of a frog’s heart or the execution of a condemned prisoner, and indirectly experience the beating of a frog’s heart by watching blood flow into other parts of the frog’s body or the execution by looking at the prisoner’s death certificate. The second layer, the “actual”, is logically prior to the empirical dimension and is constituted of series of events that occur whether we experience them or not. The third and final dimension is logically prior to the “actual” and is reality as a whole. It is in this third dimension, the “real”, where mechanisms (and structures and powers) that produce the series of events are “intransitive” and may or may not be experienced; (Danermark et al.; Bhaskar, 1998).[6] Thus, mechanisms (and structures and powers) are irreducible to the events they generate, and events generated are irreducible to what is experienced.

Critical realists argue that natural science work has been based upon the above belief that reality is differentiated. They also contend that natural scientists’ observation and creative imagination are and have been useful in discovering what the causal mechanisms of the “real” may be (Bhaskar, 1998).[7] There are many famous examples of natural scientists using both experimental observation and creative imagination to discover causal mechanisms that are otherwise invisible. For example, Danermark et al. gives the example of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Otto Loewi who solved a century’s old biological problem in a dream and then created and conducted an experiment that supported his imagined solution.[8] Before Loewi’s dream and experiment, it was believed that an electrical impulse traveled through a nerve and caused a muscle, such as the heart, to contract. However, it could not be explained why the same electrical impulse could travel through one nerve and cause the heart to beat faster and then travel through a different nerve and cause the heart to beat slower. Loewi’s hypothetical (or dreamt-up) solution to the riddle was that there were different substances found in the different nerves, and consequently, different chemical reactions were produced from the same electrical impulse. Loewi’s experiment supported his hypothesis and showed that the “active mechanism” is chemical substances. In turn, the knowledge that chemical substances caused a muscle to contract motivated the scientific quest to discover what the active mechanism is within the chemical substances, which once discovered motivated the quest to discover its active mechanism, and so on.[9]

Of great importance to critical realists is that although Loewi was responsible for triggering the mechanism (the chemical substances), he did not create the mechanism, that is, the “intransitive object”. The experiment connected him as the experimenter to the intransitive dimension of science and to an intransitive object of natural reality, although his identification/definition of that mechanism was theory-laden and connected him as a scientist to the transitive (social) dimension of science and indirectly to natural reality.

Many natural science experiments are interventions in reality that produce experiences of natural phenomena that otherwise would not be possible.[10] Specifically by creating closed systems in a laboratory, positivist natural scientists are able to observe distinct causal mechanisms that exist in nature but that in open systems are beyond our abilities to experience as unambiguous causes and effects or at all. Experimental closed systems are created and recreated by different positivist scientists at different times and in different places in order to see if empirical (measurable) results are replicated, to put theories to the empirical test, and discover empirical invariances (laws) of reality.[11] This empirical grounding has been considered to be essential to and illustrative of the success of the positivist natural science process. This epistemic success may suggest that critical realists accept positivist naturalism: 1) one that assumes knowledge is ultimately derived from what can be observed, 2) theories can and must be empirically tested to determine their validity, and 3) the goal of science is to discover laws of reality that are constant conjunctions of events, such as “If A, then B.” However, Bhaskar and other critical realists do not.

Critical realists reject both empiricism and positivism, a variant of empiricism. Empiricists believe reality, whether natural or social, is objective and single-layered in the sense that it has only an empirical dimension, and knowledge is obtained from the unity of sensory experience and reality. Thus, for empiricists, knowledge is always a posteriori and infallible, and the creative imagination (as abduction and retroduction) is not a valid mode of inference despite its practical use as illustrated by the example of Loewi’s dreamt-up solution.[12][13] What is observed by empiricists (and positivists) to be an invariance for a subset of distinct objects and events (cause and effect) is generalized to be an invariance for all objects and events and reality as whole. Thus, the generalization of invariance is the law of reality, whether natural or social (Potter and López).[14] In this way, reality is reduced to what is known by experience and it is essentially a system of distinct causes and effects.[15]

Critical realists, as realists, agree with empiricists and positivists that science is about something that exists independently of the individual researcher. However, they vehemently disagree with empiricists and positivists that: 1) reality has one dimension that is observable, 2) science is outside society, 3) knowledge is objective and infallible, and 4) causal laws are empirical measurable regularities. Critical realists also reject the positivists’ claim that scientific knowledge, whether natural or social, is a continuous process of submitting theories of relations between observable events/phenomena to decisive empirical tests to determine their validity because, as anti-positivists, they believe empirical facts/tests are always theory-laden and the relation between theoretical concepts and the objects that the concepts refer to is never unambiguous and simple (Danermark et al.). Instead, critical realists contend that scientific theories, whether natural or social, are descriptions of unobservable structures and mechanisms that “causally generate the observable phenomena” (Keat and Urry, 1978, p. 5). Thus, abduction and retroduction, which are rejected by empiricists and positivists, are included in and important to the critical realists’ “modes of inference” (Danermark et al., p. 73).[16] Moreover, causal laws are not universal empirical regularities, but instead are tendencies, which may include contradictions, and are better understood as statements about what objects are and the powers (mechanisms) they have because of their structure (Danermark et al., p. 55).

Critical realists’ reality, whether natural or social, is triple-layered, has observable and unobservable objects and events, and its “real” or “intransitive” dimension is where mechanisms (and structures and powers) that produce the series of events that may or may not be observed are located. For social scientists, this means society is not reducible to the individuals that constitute it; social structures and mechanisms have emergent powers.[17] It also means that what is real for critical realists is what has causal efficacy. Thus, poverty, class and unemployment, for examples, are real, although they may appear to be no more than abstractions, because they are historically and culturally determined concepts that represent generative mechanisms (of enduring structures) (Danermark et al.).

Of great importance to critical realists is the belief that real objects (causally efficacious abstractions) provide points of reference from which different social theories can be compared. The best theories are those identified as having the greatest explanatory power and advantages. However, limits and problems of theories cannot be ignored nor can one ignore the interests that powerful groups may have in those theories (Bhaskar, 1998, p. 148).

A natural scientist can ignore everyday explanations of natural phenomena and still do good natural science; however, a critical realist cannot. Everyday explanations or meanings of social phenomena, such as the use of money, must be included in social science research because they constitute the mechanisms behind the activities that make up social phenomena (Danermark et al., p. 33). Moreover, these explanations are created and used by “inherently interested and committed co-subjects” as they relate to and take part in the social world that they belong to (ibid., p. 32). This means a social scientist researcher who accepts critical realism is always engaged in participant observation. S/he begins with theories, observations, and lived experiences and constructs an explanation of the underlying structures and mechanisms (and power) that account for such phenomena.[18] This further suggests to this author that critical realist research is essentially ethnographic.

The most contentious aspect of critical realism has been Bhaskar’s argument that a scientific understanding of society is possible.[19] As stated in the beginning of this paper, the possibility of naturalism is part of a long historic debate in sociology. Critical realism may represent for some a return to the errors of prior advocates of naturalism, such as orthodox Marxists, because it dares to invoke claims of an independent reality (Spencer). However, the naturalism that motivated earlier advocates, such as orthodox Marxists, is not the naturalism of Bhaskar’s critical realism. Critical realism is not grounded in the empiricist/positivist natural science of earlier advocates, and certainly is not based in the orthodox Marxists’ mechanistic metaphor with a utopian ending. His approach is novel because he redescribes natural science, knowledge, and reality and their relationships to each other. Thus, what structures, mechanisms and agents are and what their relationships to each are in critical realism are not the same as those postulated by earlier proponents of naturalism. Critical realism should be accepted by sociologists as another approach to making sense of the social world.

ENDNOTES:
1. Early naturalists include Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857), Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903), and Lester Frank Ward (1841 – 1913). Among the early anti-naturalists are Wilhelm Heinrich Rickert (1863 – 1936) and Max Weber (1864 – 1920). Certainly, orthodox Marxists were naturalists.
2. One could argue that social existence is natural as it is the nature of humans to live in society, and the division of society and nature into two separate realms is simply an abstraction to emphasize the differences in humans’ abilities to affect the two.
3. There is always uncertainty. Bhaskar rejects any argument that suggests scientific knowledge follows a path of inevitable progress by successively eliminating uncertainty and in the end results in knowledge that is as permanent and universal as the reality it describes.
4. According to Bhaskar (1998, p. 12), “science identifies a phenomenon (or range of phenomena), constructs explanations for it and empirically tests its explanations, leading to the identification of the generative mechanism at work, which now becomes the phenomenon to be explained, and so on.” This may remind the reader of the following popular story of the search for the ultimate cause. A son asked his father what caused the world to stay in place. The father said the world rested on the back of a giant elephant. In turn, the son asked his father what held the elephant in place. The father answered that the elephant rested on the back of a giant tortoise, which in turn motivated the son to ask what held the tortoise in place. The father answered another tortoise and under that was another tortoise, so that tortoise was on tortoise all the way down.
5. One could argue that a theory about AIDs that leads to a reduction of AIDs deaths is better than a theory about AIDs that increases or does not change the number of AIDs deaths because reducing deaths is always preferable. However, an epistemological relativist is also an ethical relativist, and one theory is never better than the other. Scientific theories are never socially (or ethically) neutral; they can be and have been used to cure and kill, lessen and inflict pain, feed and starve, and perform other acts of compassion and violence.
6. As “intransitive”, they exist and operate independently of our knowledge of them.
7. Critical realists do not suggest that scientific knowledge, whether natural or social, is infallible. Consequently, knowledge of mechanisms and/or other aspects of reality is never the Truth, but is always what “may be”.
8. Another famous example is the discovery of the circular structure of the benzene molecule by Kekulé who is said to have dreamt one night that the molecule was like a snake biting its tail. Whether inspired by his dream or not, Kekulé’s “thought experiment” solved a lingering mystery in chemistry.
9. This further illustrates the belief that empirical facts are theory-laden.
10. One could say that an essential aspect of science is the quest to increasingly expand our opportunities to observe natural phenomena that are beyond our unaided sensory perceptions. This is illustrated by historical technological developments that have allowed scientists to increasingly see smaller and smaller phenomena, so that what can be seen by the unaided eye is expanded to what can be seen with a magnifying glass, which in turn is expanded to what can be seen through a compound microscope, which in turn is expanded to what can be seen through an electron microscope.
11. The same closed system is supposed to yield the same empirical results because reality exists independently of the experimenter. If not, either experimental conditions were changed and it’s not the same closed system or the results were incorrectly measured and/or reported. Similarly, neoclassical economists’ thought experiments, which create closed systems with assumptions of ceteris paribus or mutadis mutandis, represent their positivist beliefs that relationships between economic institutions and agents must be cut off from external influences and experiments should generate universal results.
12. The empiricist’s experience is always objective. Meanings of phenomena are contained within the objects of the experience and are immediate and unambiguous. The following yearning of one of the characters in Jack B. Yeat’s short play, The Green Wave, is fulfilled in the empiricist’s world:
I like things to mean something, and I like
to know what they mean, and I like to know
at once. After all, time is important, … and
why waste it in trying to find out what
something means, when if it stated its
meaning clearly itself we would know at
once.
13. In the history of positivist natural science, photographs of people have been used by scientists to validate their theories of racial and ethnic differences (Sturken and Cartwright, 2001). The subjectivity of the photographer/scientist and persons who view the photographs is not considered. Moreover, technology, like science, is assumed to occur outside society. Positivists assume technology is not a social construction shaped by particular cultures and powerful groups.
14. Danermark et al. (p. 77) define induction as “a process where, from observations of a limited number of events or phenomena … universally applicable conclusions are drawn from a larger population without leaving the empirical level.” Deduction is the process where a conclusion is derived from a set of premises, and is used to “deduce the particular from the general/a universal law” (ibid., p. 83).
15. Bhaskar describes empiricism’s reduction of reality to knowledge of reality as empiricism’s “epistemic fallacy” (Bhaskar, 1978, p. 36; Danermark et al., p. 21).
16. Positivists use both deduction and induction to make inferences. Critical realists use deduction, induction, abduction, and retroduction. Abduction is a creative process of the imagination that makes new connections and relations among phenomena. Retroduction is the process of advancing from an empirical phenomenon to its generating mechanism.
17. Society, according to critical realists, is composed of human actions, but is not reducible to or can be explained by intentional human actions as illustrated by the following statement by Bhaskar (1998, pp. 34, 35):
Society is both the ever-present condition (material cause)
and the continually reproduced outcome of human
agency. And praxis is both work, that is, conscious
production, and (normally unconscious) reproduction of
the conditions of production, that is society. One could
refer to the former as the duality of structure, and the
latter as the duality of praxis.
By the last sentence, Bhaskar means that “people, in their conscious activity, for the most part unconsciously reproduce (and occasionally transform) the structures governing their substantive activities of production” (ibid, p. 35). For example, I
did not marry my husband to reproduce the nuclear family although that action does reproduce the nuclear family, and I did not divorce my first husband to destroy the nuclear family.
18. Retroduction is a fundamental part of the logical reasoning of a critical realist and is illustrated by this process of moving from phenomena to causes of those phenomena.
19. Could Bhaskar have created critical realism without invoking naturalism? I believe he could have. Certainly he could have presented and argued for the philosophical underpinnings of critical realism without making reference to natural science and constructing the philosophical basis of a natural science that is compatible with the philosophical underpinnings of critical realism. However, that would not have been as provocative.

REFERENCES:

Bates, Stephen R. 2006. “Making Time for Change: On Temporal Conceptions within (Critical Realist) Approaches to the Relationship between Structure and Agency” in Sociology, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 143 – 161.

Bhaskar, Roy. 1998. The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, 3rd edition. Routledge, New York.

---------------. 1978. A Realist Theory of Science, 2nd edition. Harvester Press, Brighton.

Danermark, Berth; Ekström, Mats; Jakobsen, Liselotte, and Karlsson, Jan Ch. 2002. Explaining Society: Critical Realism in the Social Sciences. Routledge, New York.

Harré, Rom and Bhaskar, Roy. 2001. “How to Change Reality: Story v. Structure -- A Debate between Rom Harré and Roy Bhaskar” in After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism. Eds., José López and Garry Potter. The Athlone Press, New York, pp. 22 – 39.

Keat, R. and Urry, J. 1975. Social Theory as Science. Routledge, New York.

Kemp, Stephen. 2005. “Critical Realism and the Limits of Philosophy” in European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 171 – 191.

López, José and Potter, Garry. 2001. “After Postmodernism: The Millenium” in After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism. The Athlone Press, New York, pp. 1 - 18.

Murphy, Raymond. 2004. “Disaster or Sustainability: The Dance of Human Agents with Nature’s Actants” in The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, vol. 41, no. 3, (August), pp. 249 – 266.

Pleasants, Nigel. 2002. Wittgenstein and the Idea of a Critical Social Theory: A Critique of Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar. Routledge, New York.

Spencer, Neville. 1995. “The Rediscovery of Reality” in Green Left Weekly, 190, June 7.

Steinmetz, George. 1998. “Critical Realism and Historical Sociology: A Review Article” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 40, no. 1 (January), pp. 170 – 186.

Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. 2001. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford University Press, New York.

Thomas, David. 1979. Naturalism and Social Science: A Post-Empiricist Philosophy of Social Science.

2007-01-16T17:28:00.000-05:00

Unit 1, Part 2, Activity 1: Read Durkheim’s Rules of Sociological Method, Macmillan, 1982, 50 - 60. Apply Durkheim’s argument, identify a social fact and consider your relationship to that fact: in what ways is it ‘external’ to you, and how does it ‘constrain’ you?

[S]tructure is systematic and patterned,
while agency is contingent and random;
… structure is constraint, while agency
is freedom; … structure is static, while
agency is active; … structure is
collective, while agency is individual.
Hays, 1994, p. 57

Common in social theorizing are dualities such as those described above by Hays. Another duality could be that while structure is social, individual is psychological or biological. In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim argues against social philosophers and others who contend that social phenomena are no more than epiphenomena of individual biology or psychology and as such, social phenomena are reducible to and appropriately studied as fields of biology or psychology. One could say that for those social theorists, the social is always personal; there are no impersonal phenomena. However, in language, monetary currency, law, time, and other social phenomena, Durkheim observes social facts that are wholly impersonal because they cannot be created or changed by an individual; these social facts are not reducible to an individual. Consequently, he describes social facts as “external” phenomena because they are exogenous to the individual mind, objective, and observable. Moreover and arguably most importantly for Durkheim, these facts represent constraining forces on the individual.

Social facts are essential to the education/socialization of any individual, and every individual becomes (or is) a social being. Having been born and raised in the United States (U.S.), I have communicated and continue to communicate both orally and in writing in the American English language in order to be educated, employed, and otherwise active in the society. Since my birth, I have been exposed to and taught the rules and structure of the American English language and its applications. At no time have I or any other individual created any of the rules or structure of the language nor can I or any other individual change them; the American English language has and continues to exist externally to me and all other individuals. Moreover, no one, including me, forces it upon herself to learn and use the language nor has a political dictator forced me or any other individual to learn and communicate in the language upon punishment of death or imprisonment. However, I cannot act as if the language did not exist or were different than what it is.

The American English language is objective and both empowering and limiting. It is empowering because any individual, such as I, can use it to identify oneself and communicate with others within the society to obtain what s/he wants and needs. At the same time, American English is limiting because it constrains self-expression and communication with others to a particular set of sounds and symbols that I or anyone must duplicate in order to be understood by others in the society. If I were to do something as mundane as to order a restaurant meal in a different language, such as Ojibwe or Finnish, I could be understood and successfully responded to; however, it is more likely that I would receive silence in return, a simple request to communicate in English, or harsh words that other languages are not welcome by that audience. Most likely I would have to restate my order in English in order to get what I want. Although English is not the official language of the U.S. as codified by law, it is an obligation, nonetheless, of living in the country.

A social fact, such as the American English language, is a collective creation not reducible to the sum of actions of (separate) individuals. Although it is external to any individual and coercive, it becomes internal through formal and informal education and voluntary when an individual personalizes that collective creation. For example, American English is my primary and preferred language to hear, speak, read, and write; and I do not feel coerced to use it. However, it is easy for me to imagine my immigrant Finnish grandparents experiencing the frustrations and fears of having to learn and use a language that was until they emigrated unnecessary and undesired. The American English language, like any social fact, is both a product and a force of a particular society.

REFERENCES:

Class Notes to Structure & Agency in Modern Sociological Theory.

Durkheim, Emile. 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method, 8th edition. The Free Press, New York.

Gidden, Anthony. 1972. “Introduction: Durkheim’s writings in sociology and social philosophy” in A. Giddens (ed.) Emile Durkheim: Selected Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1 - 50.

Hays, Sharon. 1994. “Structure and Agency in the Sticky Problem of Culture” in Sociological Theory, vol. 12, no. 1 (March), pp. 57 – 72.

Sharrock, Wes. 1987. “The Individual and society” in R.J. Anderson and W.W. Sharrock (eds.) Classic Disputes in Sociology, Unwin Hyman, pp. 126 – 56.

A Phenomenologist's Nightmare?

2007-01-13T17:17:00.000-05:00

"Please tell me about your experience of the storm." he said to her. "Which experience do you want? Do you want the experience as it happened, my experience of it as I remembered it last month, or my experience as I remember it now?" she asked. "Give me anyone of them," he replied. "Well, I think I prefer the experience of describing the experience as I experienced it when it was actually happening" she said, "so that is what I will talk about."

Death of a Very Dear Friend

2007-01-05T19:03:00.000-05:00

It's been many months now since my friend, Tony Guglielmi, died. He died on September 13, 2006, in Delaware. Tony was like a brother to me. Well, actually more like a brother than either of my biological brothers. He was a great friend and I miss him very much.

Personal vs. Community Experiences of Disaster & PTSD

2007-01-05T18:28:00.000-05:00

I am almost finished reading Kai Erikson's book Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. One of the chapters is devoted to descriptions of individual trauma and another to collective trauma. The individual traumas are described within the stories of the survivors, many of whom have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Coupled with those experiences of personally witnessing people drown and seeing and smelling death and destruction were the loss of community: the Buffalo Creek community was destroyed by the flood. What a tragedy to lose both one's sense of self and one's community. A close friend of mine shares something with the survivors of Buffalo Creek; she has PTSD. She did not survive a natural disaster; instead, she is a victim of domestic violence. She was not physically abused, but emotionally abused. In many studies of disaster, there is one event at a specific time, such as an earthquake or flood, that is the cause of individual trauma; however, my friend was a victim of repeated attacks over a period of many years when she was a child in her parents' home. Whereas a natural disaster or technological disaster is a public and often publicized event, what occurred to my friend in her parents' home was private. Her attacker's public and private personas were very different. The attacker played the role of a wonderful Christian and loving parent in public, but turned into a hateful murderous witch within the walls of the home. It seems those who experience individual trauma from public events may have an advantage over those who experience individual trauma from private/domestic events in the sense that the cause of their experience is already out there in the media and it's okay to talk about it. Those who are abused by a parent or other relative are encouraged to remain silent; it remains private, within the home. It took many years for my friend to confide in me about her PTSD and her parent with borderline personality disorder because she was afraid that I (like others) would not want to hear her story and/or would find it unbelievable. The parent with the mental illness certainly affected my friend and her family. There is both a personal and collective trauma. In time I hope my friend finds more people that she can talk to about her painful childhood experiences and cry with, and that by doing so she can further be healed.

Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood

2006-12-19T18:31:00.000-05:00

I am reading Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood by Kai Erikson, which is a must read for someone with an interest in the sociology of disaster. Its greatness is its communicating what the disaster meant to the people who experienced it.

Flaneur

2006-12-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

Observing and hiding amongst the millions.
Being just another presence among the many passing by,
Like Simmels' "flaneur".
Seeing briefly, not knowing, at most projecting from Self to Other.
Watching, hearing Others speaking to Others.
Vicariously connecting to strangers.
A peace in anonymity, but why?

Being an outsider from within, a participant observer.
Being involved without involvement.
Letting go while remaining connected.
Letting the mind observe the Self,
A split in time that is timeless.
There is peace in that.
Perhaps, that is what peace is.

Flying On Ice

2006-12-03T08:39:00.000-05:00

Oh, I forgot.
I forgot how I loved ice skating.
Like flying, the cool wind at my face.
Isn't it funny how I had to rediscover that joy within the Beltway.
One has to leave those things that surround the Self to rediscover a Self.
A Self lost years ago.
Reclaiming a joy, a good that was cast aside for equally good reasons.
There is a joy to be experienced when flying on ice.

A Cool Saturday Morning in Metro DC

2006-12-03T08:36:00.000-05:00

Being ... in the present, imaging the past, imagining the future.
Waiting for transport to go home among the books.
A cool Saturday morning in Metro DC.
Ride the Metro to a chai tea fix.
Walk the Mall up the Hill into the LOC.

The Grace in Dying

2006-07-21T16:07:00.000-04:00

I am not dying, but my closest friend is, and I love him like a brother. To better understand what he is experiencing I have been reading the book, The Grace in Dying, which is helping me understand the terminal illness and dying process. He and I are on the same Path of the Return, but he is farther along the Path. It saddens me to think of life without him.

Byodo-In Temple

2006-05-29T11:06:00.000-04:00

Here is a photo of the beautiful Byodo-In Temple on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

San Francisco

2006-04-23T19:58:00.000-04:00

Last week I was in San Francisco, a city that I really like. While there, I had the chance to go to Haight-Ashbury, a place that has an interesting history.

Armadillo

2006-04-16T20:20:00.000-04:00

We took a walk yesterday along a walking trail at Little Manatee River State Park and saw this armadillo.

The Assassination of Sitting Bull

2006-04-10T12:56:00.000-04:00

Many facts of Sitting Bull’s death are uncertain, clouded by conflicting accounts of the event. What is certain, however, is that he died from gunshot wounds on December 15, 1890, after being arrested by Indian reservation police.

One of the first official reports of Sitting Bull’s death was the December 15, 1890, telegram from Indian Agent McLaughlin to Indian Commissioner Morgan, which appeared in many newspapers the following day. The telegram states Sitting Bull was killed during a failed attempt by his followers to rescue him from Indian reservation police who had arrested Sitting Bull and were taking him to Standing Rock. The telegram states (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1890, p. 1):

Indian police arrested Sitting Bull at his camp, forty miles southwest of the agency, this morning at daylight. His followers attempted his rescue and fighting commenced. Four policemen were killed and three wounded. Eight Indians were killed, including Sitting Bull and his son, Crow Foot, and several others wounded. The police were surrounded for some time, but maintained their ground until relieved by United States troops, who now have possession of Sitting Bull’s camp. Sitting Bull’s followers, probably one hundred men, deserted their families and fled west up the Grand river. The police behaved nobly and great credit is due them. Particulars by mail.

The Los Angeles Times (L.A. Times) embellished the above account, and on December 16, 1890, published a story of a fierce battle between non-aggressive reservation police and hostile Indians getting ready to go on the warpath. The article states that either a police officer or one of Sitting Bull’s followers shot and killed Sitting Bull during the chaos that existed during the initial minutes of the fight.

The L.A. Times article reads like a script for a future Hollywood western. The cavalry comes to the rescue (L.A. Times, December 16, 1890, p.1):

[T]he hostiles charged upon the police, firing as they came. A hand-to-hand struggle ensued, during which Sitting Bull, who was not shackled, gave his orders in a loud voice. For several minutes the firing was heavy and deadly. In the furious fusilade Sitting Bull fell out of his saddle, pierced by a bullet, but it is not known whether it was fired by the charging party or police…The hostiles fired with deadly accuracy, and slowly dropped the police from the field. If the cavalry had not come up at this time, it is probable that the force would have been annihilated. The soldiers were quickly into action. A skirmish line was thrown out, and then, kneeling and firing as they advanced, the troops, with machine guns playing over their heads, poured a withering fire into the savages.

The same day as the above article, an L.A. Times editorial celebrated Sitting Bull’s death. The editorial describes Sitting Bull as a “remorseless and implacable savage,” who was “blood-thirsty,” “cruel,” “vengeful,” and “murderous,” and who was “the cause of more trouble to the white man and the white man’s government than any Indian” (p. 6). Given this character description, it is not surprising that the editorial suggests Sitting Bull should have been executed ten years before, upon his surrender in 1880.

The New York Times (N.Y. Times) mirrored the same sentiment in a December 16, 1890, editorial about the event. According to the editorial, Sitting Bull was “one of the most mischievous and turbulent Indians,” who troubled Indian agents and U.S. Army officers. The editorial implied his death was the solution to a nagging problem.

L.A. Times and N.Y. Times’ characterizations of Sitting Bull were representative of the characterizations of him promoted by the Indian agent at the Standing Rock Reservation, military authorities, and government officials in Washington. In a telegram to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the fall of 1890, McLaughlin described Sitting Bull as “a man of low cunning, devoid of …an honorable trait of character, but on the contrary…capable of instigating and inciting others” (Beasley, p. 14). Military authorities produced images of a murderous Sitting Bull and were quick to announce that Sitting Bull’s death was the solution to their problems at Standing Rock and perhaps throughout the Dakotas (Coleman). President Harrison described Sitting Bull as “the great disturbing element in his tribe,” and expressed relief upon receiving word of Sitting Bull’s death (Washington Post, December 16, 1890, p. 1).

The details of Sitting Bull’s death increased and changed for several days after the initial newspaper reports. On December 17th, the N.Y. Times reported that reservation police shot and killed Sitting Bull, which differed from the L.A. Times report of the previous day that he could have been killed accidentally by one of his followers. According to the N.Y. Times article, the shooting of Sitting Bull was a planned response to any attempt to rescue him. The article says, “It is evident that there was, cruel as it may seem, a complete understanding, from commanding officer to the Indian police, that the slightest attempt to rescue Sitting Bull should be a signal to send the old medicine man to the happy hunting ground” (December 17, 1890, p. 1). The same day a Chicago Tribune article suggested Sitting Bull would have been killed whether an attempt was made to rescue him or not (Coleman, p. 231):

That the government authorities, civil as well as military, from President Harrison and General Miles down, preferred the death of the famous old savage to capture
whole-skinned, few persons here, Indian or white, have a doubt. It was felt that Sitting Bull’s presence anywhere behind bars would have been the cause of endless troubles, while should he fall victim to the ready Winchester, the thousands of Messiah-crazed Ghost dancers would rudely realize that his ‘medicine,’ which was to make them bullet-proof, would be worthless…

On December 18th, the N.Y. Times continued to change its account of Sitting Bull’s death and published what it called “the actual details of the fight in which Sitting Bull was killed” (1890, p. 1):

The police under Bull Head, Lieutenant of Police, and Shave Head, First Sergeant, went into camp near Sitting Bull’s village on the night of the 14th, and the next morning went into Bull’s camp and made the arrest. Sitting Bull expressed his willingness to go with them, but wanted to make preparations for the ride, and ordered his horse to be gotten ready. While Bull Head and Shave Head were in the shack where the old chief was getting ready, two bucks enveloped in blankets entered the shack, and throwing off their blankets opened fire on the police… In the fight that followed, Red Tomahawk killed Sitting Bull. Ten or more of Sitting Bull’s followers were killed. Seven police were killed, and Bull Head and Shave Head were desperately wounded, Shave Head dying later.

According to above article, an Indian named Red Tomahawk, who was one of the reservation police, killed Sitting Bull. That fact that Sitting Bull was killed by an Indian who intended to shoot him, as opposed to an Indian who accidentally shot him, was touted as proof that Sitting Bull had enemies among his own people.

A day later on December 19th, the Washington Post (Post) reported it was Bull Head, not Red Tomahawk, who shot and killed Sitting Bull. According to the Post article, Bull Head shot Sitting Bull twice.

Four days after publishing its first report of Sitting Bull’s death, the N.Y. Times continued its assault on Sitting Bull’s character in a December 20th editorial. The editorial describes Sitting Bull as having been “always disgruntled, always an element of discord, to the last degree suspicious and superstitious, and altogether one of those Indians who insist upon their rights but never recognize their duties,” and now deceased, he is a “good Indian.”

Not one of the previously mentioned newspaper articles or editorials laments the death of Sitting Bull. It is described as a rightful death, the outcome of the police acting in self-defense; however, there was a very different perspective as illustrated in a letter from Reverend W.H.H. Murray published in the December 21st issue of the New York World. Murray writes (Bland, p. 25):

The land grabbers wanted the Indian lands. The lying, thieving Indian agents wanted silence touching past thefts and immunity to continue their thieving. The renegades from their people among the Indian police
wanted an opportunity to show their power over a man who despised them as renegades, and whom, therefore, they murdered. And so he was murdered.

The next day a World editor wrote that a member of the Eight Cavalry, Corporal Gunn, supported Murray’s characterization of the event. The editor described Sitting Bull’s death as “organized butchery” (Bland, p. 27).

On December 23rd, the Post continued to revise its account of Sitting Bull’s death when it published a December 16, 1890, telegram from McLaughlin:

At daybreak on Monday morning the 15th, the police went to Sitting Bull’s camp direct to his house, and surrounded the house; a detail was sent into the house where Sitting Bull was sleeping on the floor, the remainder staying outside. They aroused him and announced their purpose, at the same time raising him to a sitting position, and he at first seemed inclined to offer no resistance, and they allowed him to dress, during which time he changed his mind and they took him forcibly from the house. By this time the police were surrounded by Sitting Bull’s followers, members of the ghost dance, and the first shot was fired by ‘Catch-the-Bear,’ one of the hostiles, and the
lieutenant of police, Bull Head, was struck, the fighting then became general in fact, it was a hand-to-hand fight. Sitting Bull was killed, shot through the body and head in the early part of the fight, by Bull Head and Red Tomahawk, each of whom shot at him. Four policeman were killed outright and three wounded, one of the latter dying at the agency hospital this morning…

McLaughlin claims one of Sitting Bull’s followers, Catch-the-Bear, started the fight when he fired the first shot. In this official scenario, the police acted in self-defense when they shot and killed Sitting Bull.

The World continued its assault on the government’s story of Sitting Bull’s death as reported in the Post, N.Y. Times, and many other newspapers. According to a December 28th article in the World, “The impression here is growing stronger every day that Sitting Bull’s death was brought about by deliberate assassination… Were it not for the World’s correspondent’s unearthing the real facts the country would still believe that Sitting Bull was shot by Indian police while resisting arrest. There was no resistance whatsoever. It was a crime, cruel and cowardly” (Coleman, pp. 232, 233).

More facts of Sitting Bull’s death were revealed in testimonies and reports in the months and years that followed. Captain Fechet of the Eighth Cavalry contradicted McLaughlin’s claim that Sitting Bull was killed in self-defense during a fight started by his followers. Captain Fechet writes in a report, “The attempt to arrest Sitting Bull was so managed as to place the responsibility for the fight that ensued upon Sitting Bull’s band which began fighting” (Coleman, p. 232). Captain Fechet’s remark suggests the police wanted to incite the Ghost Dancers into a fight. Combined with earlier remarks that the police and military planned to shoot Sitting Bull if a fight ensued, it follows that the police incited the Ghost Dancers to fight, thus creating the conditions to kill Sitting Bull. It was preferable to Agent McLaughlin and the military that it appeared that Sitting Bull died in a fight as he resisted arrested, instead of being murdered by Indian police.

Fanny Kelly, who was captured and taken prisoner by a Sioux war party, then returned to her husband, lived with Sitting Bull’s band and described him as a man very different from the one described by McLaughlin, military authorities, and officials in Washington. In an 1891 book edited by Bland, Kelly states, “Sitting Bull was a true nobleman, and great man. He was uniformly gentle and kind to his wife and children and courteous and considerate in his intercourse with others” (Bland, p. 27). In the same book, Catherine Weldon, a teacher and missionary who spent much time among Sitting Bull’s people, also describes Sitting Bull as a good man. She writes (p. 29):

Sitting Bull was not treacherous, nor cruel. He was not a liar, nor a murderer, as has been charged. He was a man of true nobility of character and generous deeds. As a friend, he was sincere and true, as a patriot devoted and uncorruptible. As a husband and father, affectionate and considerate. As a host, courteous and hospitable to the last degree. He was a typical Indian, and he held tenaciously to the traditions, of this people as sacred legacy. He distrusted the innovations sought to be forced upon the Indians. He believed that all the white men cared for was to get the Indian’s land from him. He had no faith in Government Commissioners or Christian
missionaries. What he saw of white civilization did not impress him favorably. There was too much avarice and too much hypocrisy in it. He never signed a treaty to sell any portion of his people’s inheritance, and he refused to acknowledge the right of other Indians to sell his undivided share of the tribal lands. For this he was denounced as obstructionist, a foe to progress … His influence with his people was very great. This fact made him unpopular with all who saw in his policy and
influence obstruction to their selfish schemes, hence they demanded his removal.

According to Weldon, Sitting Bull’s family and others who were eyewitnesses described to her the death of Sitting Bull. Weldon’s description of the event contrasts sharply with McLaughlin’s telegrams: (Bland, pp. 29, 30):

A squad of agency police under command of Bullhead went under cover of night to arrest Sitting Bull. The military were close by to support the police, if necessary.
Bullhead and his party arrived before daylight, and entered Sitting Bull’s house without being discovered. Sitting Bull and his family were in bed. Bullhead called out “Sitting Bull, are you here?” “Yes, answered the Chief, “How.” Bullhead then lit a match and discovering the chief, he dragged him from the bed. He made no resistance but asked to be allowed to dress. Then Crowfoot, Sitting Bull’s youngest son, a mere boy, and Catch the Bear, gave the alarm. Immediately Bullhead shot Sitting Bull through the heart. Another policeman, Red Tomahawk, put a ball in his head. Not content with this they then beat his head to a pulp, and then rifled his pockets. Crowfoot, who had hid under a bed, was dragged out and killed though he was unarmed, and begged for his life piteously. His skull was crushed and four balls fired into his body. The fight now became general. Though Sitting Bull’s friends were so completely surprised that many of them did not have even a knife with which to defend themselves. The troops came up almost immediately, and then the fighting ceased.

Current newspapers and other media continue to publish contrasting descriptions of the death of Sitting Bull. For example, an article by Harriman in the April 25, 1999, issue of The Virginian-Pilot says (p. M14), “On the 15th, Sitting Bull, the most illustrious of all Indian leaders and the most uncompromising as well, was taken into custody and shot to death by Indian police when he resisted.” The article does not describe the death as a murder or assassination; Sitting Bull is killed because he resisted arrest. However, an April 8, 1995, article by Sharkey in the London, England, newspaper, The Guardian, says (p. T27), “Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, the Lakota’s greatest leaders, were both assassinated.” The 1999, 2nd edition of Religious Leaders of America, agrees with The Guardian article and says Sitting Bull was assassinated. A 1991 article in Canadian Dimension (Dimension) by Taylor says (p. 13), “Early on December 15, 1890, 43 Indian police surrounded Sitting Bull’s cabin, but in the commotion which followed his arrest, he was shot and killed.” Later in the Dimension article, the death is described as a murder.

Current Indian scholars give different accounts of the death of Sitting Bull. Angie Debo’s account suggests Sitting Bull was killed by Bull Head. She does not say if Bull Head, “the wounded man,” intended to or accidentally shot Sitting Bull. Debo writes (p. 291):

On December 14, 1890, McLaughlin on orders from Washington sent thirty-three of his police to arrest the Chief, while two troops of cavalry marched out to support them if necessary. Before dawn the next morning the police quietly entered his house and took him into custody. The camp sprang into life and more than 150 fanatic dancers began to surround them. One of them shot and fatally wounded a policeman, and the wounded man then shot Sitting Bull. A fight followed, in which even the women participated with knives and clubs. Four of the police were killed and another badly wounded, while the ghost dancers lost seven besides Sitting Bull and three wounded. The cavalry arrived, and the dancers were subdued.

Dee Brown’s account varies from Debo’s in many respects. Debo says 33 police were at Sitting Bull’s camp, Brown says 43. Debo does not say if Bull Head intended to shoot Sitting Bull, Brown says he did not. Debo suggests only Bull Head shot Sitting Bull, Brown claims Red Tomahawk delivered the fatal shot. Brown states (p. 437):

Just before daybreak on December 15, 1890, forty-three Indian police surrounded Sitting Bull’s log cabin. Three miles away a squadron of cavalry waited as a support force if needed. Lieutenant Bull Head, the Indian policeman in charge of the party, found Sitting Bull asleep on the floor. When he was awakened, the chief stared incredulously at Bull Head. “What do you want here?” he asked. “You are my prisoner,” said Bull Head. “You must go the agency.” Sitting Bull yawned and sat up. “All right,” he replied, “let me put on my clothes and I’ll go with you. He asked the policeman to have his horse saddled. When Bull Head emerged from the cabin with Sitting Bull he found a crowd of Ghost Dancers gathering outside. They outnumbered the police four to one. Catch-the-Bear, one of the dancers, moved toward Bull Head. “You think you are going to take him,” Catch-the-Bear shouted. “You shall not do it!” “Come now,” Bull Head said quietly to his prisoner, “do not listen to anyone.” But Sitting Bull held back, making it necessary for Bull Head and Sergeant Red Tomahawk to force him toward his horse. At this moment, Catch-the-Bear threw off his blanker and brought up his rifle. He fired at Bull Head, wounding him in the side. As Bull Head fell, he tried to shoot his assailant, but the bullet struck Sitting Bull instead. Almost simultaneously, Red Tomahawk shot Sitting Bull through the head and killed him.

Some have argued that Sitting Bull was an accident victim, killed when Bull Head accidentally shot him. Vine Deloria and Ward Churchill argue Sitting Bull’s death was a political assassination, not an accident. I agree with Deloria and Churchill.

REFERENCES:

Beasley, Conger, Jr. 1995. We Are a People in This World: The Lakota Sioux and the
Massacre at Wounded Knee. The University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville.

Bland, T.A., ed. A Brief History of the Late Military Invasion of the Home of the Sioux. The National Indian Defense Association, Washington, DC, 1891.

Brown, Dee. 1991. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American
West. Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Churchill, Ward. 1998. Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians. City Lights Books, San Francisco.

Coleman, William S.E. 2000. Voices of Wounded Knee. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

Debo, Angie. 1970. A History of the Indians of the United States. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1988. Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Gale Group. 1999. Religious Leaders of America, 2nd edition.

Harriman, Stephen. April 25, 1999. “Indians Win the Battle, Lose the War; Custer’s Last Stand Made The Flamboyant Soldier Immortal, but it Signaled The End of The Indians’ Independence” in The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA). April 25, 1999, p. M14.

Philadelphia Inquirer, The. December 16, 1890. “Sitting Bull Killed.” P. 1.

Los Angeles Times, The. December 16, 1890. “His Last Sit; Reclining Bison Killed by the Indian Police; The Old Reptile Taken by Surprise and a Hot Fight Ensues.” P. 1.

-------------------------. December 16, 1890. Untitled Editorial. P. 6.

New York Times, The. December 16, 1890. “The Last of Sitting Bull; The Old Chief Killed While Resisting Arrest.” P. 1.

-------------------------. December 16, 1890. “Exit Sitting Bull” (editorial).

-------------------------. December 17, 1890. “The Death of Sitting Bull; Story of the Old Medicine Man’s Last Fight.” P. 1.

Sharkey, Alix. April 8, 1994. “Indian Giver” in The Guardian (London). P. T27.

Taylor, Walt. 1991. “Wounded Knee 1890 – Unquenchable Spirit 1990; History of Wounded Knee” in Canadian Dimension, vol. 25, no. 1, January.

Washington Post. December 16, 1890. “Sitting Bull Shot.” P. 1.

--------------------. December 19, 1890. “Death of Sitting Bull.” Pp. 1, 4.

--------------------. December 23, 1890. “Sitting Bull.” P. 1.

The General Allotment Act of 1887

2006-04-04T20:55:00.000-04:00

This post is about historical arguments for and against the General Allotment Act of 1887, which is also known as the Dawes Act after its Senate sponsor, Henry A. Dawes. Under the Dawes Act (Act), American Indian tribes lost legal standing and their communal lands were divided among individual members. The Act was intended to facilitate Indian assimilation into the broader society, however, as it undermined tribal life, it did not increase Indian acceptance by Euro-American society (Senier, 2000). The Act cost American Indians two-thirds of their land, and much of what remained was rendered effectively useless as it was inherited by successive generations (Bobroff, 2001).

There are more historical documents from people who supported the passage of the Act than from those who opposed it. Among its proponents were common beliefs that communal land ownership was a primitive system, which stunted socioeconomic development, and Indians needed a system of private property ownership to become civilized (Steel, 2000). Speaking at the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1883, apparently about the Cherokees, Dawes said (Debo, 1968, pp. 22, 23):

The head chief told us that there was not a family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own. There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not own adollar. It built its own capitol … and it built its schools
and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common. It is Henry George’s system, and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can
own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.[1]

Implicit in Dawes’ argument are the beliefs that private ownership of land increases individual (and national) wealth because it rewards an individual’s hard work, and communal ownership encourages laziness because a good worker subsidizes the indolent.[2] The conservative economic faithful sermonized that communal land ownership stifled competition and individualism, which were necessary for economic growth. According to Ezra A. Hayt, in 1879, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, common ownership of land “prevented individual advancement,…spirit of rivalry, and the desire to accumulate property for personal use of comfort which is the success and advancement in all white communities (Prucha, 1973, p. 80).[3]

Images of lazy Indians were produced and circulated as evidence of a system of property rights that had to be changed. One of these images appears in the recently rediscovered and republished novel, Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891), by Muscogee writer, S. Alice Callahan. The main character, Wynema, argues that allotment would be a good cure for the lazy Indian. She says:

We should have our own homes, and contrary to ruining our fortunes I think it would mend them …There are so many idle, shiftless Indians who do nothing but hunt and fish; then there are others who are industrious and enterprising; so long as our land remains as a whole, in common, these lazy Indians will never make a move toward cultivating it; and the industrious Indians and ‘squaw men’ will inclose as much as they can for their own use. Thus the land will be unequally divided, the lazy Indians getting nothing because they will not exert themselves to do so; while if the land were allotted, do you not think that these idle Indians, knowing the land to be their own, would have pride enough to cultivate their land and build up their homes?

Wynema’s position on allotment mirrors the argument given by “pro-allotment reformers and so-called Red Progressives,” who contended that lazy Indians, not U.S. government policy, were to blame for Indian poverty (Senier, 2000, p. 426).[4] The attack on “lazy Indians” was an attack on Indian men and the traditional sexual division of labor in Indian societies. Indian societies were noted for divisions of labor in which women were the farmers and male economic production was mostly limited to hunting, fishing, and trading (Hoebel, 1978; Trigger, 1990; lecture notes).[5] The Act’s proponents accepted the Euro-American belief that farmers are and should be men, not women, and Indian men should be yeoman farmers on allotted land.

Allotments of land were not a new idea. The Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts “had insisted that the praying Indians each take up a plot of ground and become farmers like their white neighbors” (Deloria and Lytle, 1983, p. 8). Farming was considered to be a good Christian occupation, as it required long hours of work.[5] As whites contended that Indians needed to be Christianized, allotment and farming were promoted as tools to obtain their conversion and salvation.[6]

Pro-allotment groups were largely composed of eastern educators and politicians, who, without question, accepted the Euro-American patriarchal model of agrarian civilization and possessive individualism (Champagne, 1994; Senier, 2001). They argued that Indians, particularly Indian men, had to change. Hiram Price, Commissioner of Indian Affairs in President Cleveland’s first administration, said (Prucha, 1973, p. 94):

Give the Indian his land in severalty. Let him feel his individuality and responsibility, and a sense of proprietorship. Encourage him to go to work and earn his living and provide for the future wants and necessities of himself and family, and abandon his shiftless, do-nothing, dependent life.

Allotment supporters also offered another reason: it was necessary to protect the Indians. Two books by Helen Hunt Jackson promoted this argument. The first, A Century for Dishonor, chronicled the U.S. government’s unfair treatment of American Indians, and is associated with the creation of Indian Rights associations (Seiner, 2001). Jackson and Indian Rights groups argued that allotment and citizenship would give Indians the land and other rights they needed to survive. The second, the 1884 bestseller, Romona, used a romance plot — between a mixed-blood heroine, Romona, and a full-blood Indian hero, Allesandro — to advance a protest against white encroachment and brutality. The two young lovers elope; then as they strive to live peacefully and self-sufficiently, they are continuously forced by white settlers to leave and rebuild their home and lives somewhere else. Finally, the book ends tragically when a racist white settler murders Allesandro. Allotment supporters used Romona to generate sympathy for Indians, who had adopted the Euro-American lifestyle, but were tormented by whites that continuously threatened to and did take their lands (Senier, 2001). Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Haut, suggested the Act would save Indians (like Romona and Allesandro) by giving them the protection they needed from land-hungry whites (Prucha, 1973, p. 80):

The experience of the Indian Department for the past fifty years goes to show that the government is impotent to protect the Indians on their reservations, especially when held in common, from the encroachment of its own people, whenever a discovery has been made rendering the possession of their lands desirable by whites.

Critics rejected Haut’s contention that the government could protect individual rights, but not collective rights. The government could have upheld and enforced the legal rights of Indians, collectively, to their lands (Washburn, 1971; Senier, 2001). The government did not respect nor understand Indian collective rights, particularly ownership of communal lands, and had no incentive to protect these rights.

The government and white settlers’ notions of property were based on John Locke’s notion that land ownership resulted from improvements made to the land (Wright and Gitelman, 1991). Although Indians made ecological changes to the land, such as by hunting and burning the underbrush, these improvements were judged as illegitimate and subsequently rejected (Cronon, 1983). Indians did not own the land because they were not situated on a fixed plot of land — farming it and using it to produce; or in other words, they did not own it because they did not inhabit the land like Europeans (Senier, 2001; Cronon, 1983).

The prospect of “freeing up” surplus lands after the Indians had received their allotments was promoted unabashedly in 1881 by then Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz. Schurz said the surplus lands would be a way to “open to settlement by white men large tracts of land now belonging to the reservations, but not used by the Indians” (Senier, 2001, p. 42). Alice Cunningham Fletcher, a strong supporter of speedy and forced allotment and an Indian agent, argued that Indians had far more land than they needed and whites had far less land than they needed (Senier, 2001). Of course, white settlers favored the Act because it would offer them land.

Alexander Lawrence Posey, a Creek Nation member, supported allotment under the prevailing circumstances of the time; however, he argued that all Creek land should be allotted to Creeks and none sold to outsiders (Littlefield and Hunter, 1993). Critics of the Act predicted that it would make it easy for a government with a history of stealing Indian land to take prime land and give it to whites, while allotting marginal lands, less suited for agriculture, to Indians.

In its initial form, allotment was supposed to require the approval of at least two-thirds of a given tribe, but that proposal changed once pro-allotment groups determined that tribal acceptance was a threat to U.S. sovereignty (Senier, 2001). Allotment would be forced with no consideration for treaties that identified tribes as sovereign nations with fixed land boundaries.

Critics of allotment contended that allotment would reduce, not improve, economic conditions for Indians. Statements by two characters in Wynema: A Child of the Forest illustrate the argument that allotment would be devastating. First, Genevieve, one of the main characters, says (Callahan, p. 52):

This sounds like the lands will be allotted whether the Indians like or no. I cannot see the matter as it has been presented by you, and as the papers advocate it, my idea is, that it will be the ruin of the poor, ignorant savage… Were the land divided, these poor, ignorant, improvident,
short-sighted Indians would be persuaded and threatened into selling their homes, piece by piece, perhaps, until finally they would be homeless outcasts, and then what would become of ‘Poor Lo!’ None of his white brothers, who so sweetly persuaded away his home would give him a night’s shelter or a morsel of food.

Second, Gerald Keithly states that allotment would be disastrous for those tricked by white men into selling their land, and many would be tricked.

Gerald Keithly was right. Millions of acres of tribal lands were lost through fraud (Champagne, 1994). In a 1903 letter, Posey writes (Littlefield and Hunter, 1993, p. 119):

For more than a year, Creeks had made accusations that large land-trust companies were at work in the Creek Nation, acquiring options on large numbers of Creek allotments by fraudulent means. By the summer of 1903, rumors were rife that corruption was wide-spread among officials of the Justice and Interior departments in Indian Territory. The growing scandel indicated that those officials, including members of the
Dawes Commission, were engaged in large-scale land speculation, particularly in the Creek Nation. The process of allotment provided opportunities for the materially ambitious to make money in real estate ventures.

Despite supporters’ predictions that the Act would benefit Indians, it didn’t. Land reserved for Indians was often the harshest and least productive. When, by chance, Indians received better land, it was “often seized by force, trickery, or dubious foreclosure” (Shaw, 2000). When Indians tried to pool their resources and act together to achieve economies of scale, the government stopped them from doing so (Bobroff, 2001).

The policies established by the Dawes Act ended 47 years after its creation with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Robert Chicks, President, Stockbridge-Munsee Community of Mohican Indians, summarizes the Act’s effects:

During those 47 years, the federal government took away over 90 million acres of tribal lands that were previously guaranteed to tribes by treaties and federal law. This was over two thirds of the land base, and over 80 percent of their value, as the best and most productive lands were the first to be taken. The remaining tribal lands, if any were left, were discontinuous, fractionated, and difficult to use for any economically productive purposes such as grazing or agriculture. The effects of the Allotment Era were devastating to tribal communities economically and socially, and the effects continue to this day.

ENDNOTES:

Henry George was a nineteenth century political economist who argued that private ownership of land did not raise the masses out of poverty because the unequal distribution of land created an unequal distribution of wealth. The small numbers that owned much of the land received most of the wealth. George argued for communal ownership of land.

In neoclassical economics, this is the so-called "free rider problem".

Generosity and economic equality, which were organizing principles for many tribes, were to be replaced by selfishness and inequality.

Essentially the same argument can be made today against social welfare. The stereotypical welfare recipient is constructed to be an unmarried black woman with children, who is poor because she does not want to work. This woman and women like her unfairly take money from hard-working and respectable inndividuals. Recipients of corporate welfare, however, are popularly described as deserving.

On the other hand, it was believed that Indian men who traditionally hunted and fished had too many leisure hours, which led to consorting with the Devil. The same judgment was not applied to English aristrocrats and other members of the leisure class.

Biological, cultural, and religious racisms were combined. Then, as now, the missionaries did not reflect upon the religious racism inherent in the Christian need to convert non-Christians so as to save them.

References:

Brobroff, Kenneth H. “Retelling Allotment: Indian Property Rights and the Myth of
Common Ownership,” Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol.54, No. 4, May 2001, pp. 1557 – 1623.

Callahan, S. Alice. Wynema: A Child of the Forest, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1997. Originally published in 1891 by H. J. Smith and Company, Chicago. (This is probably the first novel written by a woman of American Indian descent.)

Champagne, Duane, Ed. Chronology of Native North American History from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present, Gale Research Inc., Washington, DC, 1994.

Chicks, Robert. “Statement of Robert Chicks, President, Stockbridge-Munsee Community (of Mohican Indians)” before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, June 19, 2001.

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New
England, Hill and Wang, New York, 1983.

Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run Deep: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1968.

Deloria, Vine Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1983.

George, Henry. Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth, The Remedy,15th Anniversary Edition, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, New York, 1937.

Hoebel, E. Adamson. The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains, 2nd Edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, New York, 1978).

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. and Carol A. Petty Hunter, Eds. The Fus Fixico Letters, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1993.

Senier, Siobhan. Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance: Helen
Hunt Jackson, Sarah Winnemucca, and Victoria Howard, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2001.

-------------------. “Allotment Protest and Tribal Discourse: Reading Wynema’s Successes
and Shortcomings,” The American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 3, June 22, 2000.

Steel, Michael. “Trying to Right a Century of Wrongs,” The National Journal, Vol. 32, No. 36, September 2, 2000, p. 2725.

Shaw, Jeff. “Bitter Harvest: Indian Farmers Allege Years of Discrimination at the USDA,” In These Times, October 2, 2000, p. 20.

Trigger, Bruce G. The Huron: Farmers of the North, 2nd Edition, Harcourt Brace Javonovich College Publishers, New York, 1990.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law, 2nd Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1971.

Cheyenne Women Warriors: A Marginalized History

2006-04-01T12:52:00.000-05:00

The two most two popular images of American Indian women are Pocahontas, the beautiful Indian woman who saved the life of and fell in love with Captain John Smith, and the quiet squaw enslaved to her husband.[1] Other less popular images are the exotic oversexed seductress and the viscous torturer of prisoners (Bataille and Sands, Green, Harjo and Bird). None of these images accurately depicts the lives of American Indian women. The fullness and complexity of American Indian women’s experiences have been reduced to simplistic images that are consistent with a patriarchal perspective of what women should be as in the case of Pocahontas or what women become in an uncivilized society.

E. Adamson Hoebel’s The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains is an example of American Indian women being denied the fullness and complexity of their experiences. In Hoebel’s account, Cheyenne women did not go into battle, were not medicine women, and were never tribal leaders. However, Grinnell suggests otherwise in his The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life. There are accounts of women fighting, charging the enemy and counting coup (Grinnell, p. 157, Volume I).[2] Furthermore, Grinnell suggests the possibility that Cheyenne women may have played more prominent roles in the political decision-making and spiritual activities of the tribe but if so, their roles would have changed over time. Grinnell cites the “traditions of women chiefs and of women who have possessed remarkable mysterious powers or have shown great wisdom in council” to support the theory that Cheyenne women could have been more prominent in political and spiritual affairs of the tribe (p. 156, Vol. I).

Buffalo Calf Trail Woman[3] and Yellow Haired Woman[4] were two Cheyenne women warriors who should not be overlooked. Buffalo Calf Trail Woman “had killed in battle and had ridden against the soldiers of both Generals Crook and Custer (Sandoz, p. 17). She saved her brother at the Battle of the Rosebud. According to an account found in Stands in Timber and Liberty (pp. 188, 189),[5]

Some of the bravest Cheyenne warriors — White Shield, Comes in Sight, White Bird, and the Sioux Red Cloud and Low Dog — were riding back and forth letting the soldiers shoot at them. Louis Dog was watching and he said he couldn’t see how the soldiers missed them… Comes in Sight’s horse was shot when he was halfway across the gap. He landed on his feet running zigzag. His sister had ridden with the warriors that day. She was watching him and saw the soldier scouts start down to kill him. She came on the run as soon as his horse somersaulted over, and Comes in Sight jumped on behind her and they got away. The Cheyennes named the battle for that. They always call it ‘Where the Girl Saved Her Brother’.”

As told by John Sipes, Jr., the great, great grandson of Buffalo Calf Trail Woman, in an interview for Rocky Mountain PBS, she was born in 1844 in Yellowstone country, Wyoming.[6] Buffalo Calf Trail Woman was a warrior and owned a warhorse. She was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, 140 pounds, and was a great rider known for her “stamina to ride and ride and keep fighting.”[7] She was enough of a military threat to the United States that she became a prisoner of war.[8]

Yellow Haired Woman was an outstanding warrior as well. She made a direct stand in an important battle between her people and the Shoshonis in 1869 (Neithammer). According to Neithammer, Yellow Haired Woman was in the midst of the battle when she rode up to a Cheyenne and Shoshoni that were engaged in a struggle. Yellow Haired Woman “dismounted, drew her butcher knife, and stabbed the Shoshoni twice” (Neithammer, p. 168). Yellow Haired Woman later killed a Shoshoni prisoner by stabbing him through the armpit, and then scalped him.

Women who could shoot a rifle or bow, such as Buffalo Calf Trail Woman and Yellow Haired Woman, fought the enemy. According to Sandoz (p. 62), “Buffalo Calf Road and Yellow Woman gave their small ones to the others with babies... Then the two went gravely to the rifle pits, where Bull Hump’s Leaf and several other women who could shoot the guns or bows were already waiting.”

Some Cheyenne women who followed male warriors into battle did not fight but sang instead (Sandoz). Nonetheless, these women were in the midst of the fighting. One such Cheyenne woman was Pretty Walker who was said to be able to “go calmly into the path of bullets as her father” who was Chief Little Wolf (Sandoz, p. 18).

It follows that if Hoebel ignores women warriors, he would not mention stories of a women warrior society. Grinnell offers partial support for the existence of a women warrior society; however, he suggests that women who have been in battle may have constituted a class instead of a society.

Support for a women warrior society appears in the interview with Sipes,
book by Niethammer, and a recent obituary. According to Sipes,

[T]he warrior women had their own guild, had their own songs, their own medicines, war shields. [Buffalo Calf Trail Woman] did carry a war shield which was part of her
preparation for war. The Old Ones say that she had her own medicine that was given to her by a medicine, well it would
not have been a medicine man, it would have been a medicine woman that worked in that guild of the warrior women which
is as I explained, they had other Cheyenne warrior ladies that did fight also.

According to Niethammer, the women warrior society was a small society of Cheyenne women, most of whom had been to war with their husbands. The society was said to hold secret meetings, which no one else could attend. Yellow Haired Woman became eligible for the women warrior’s society when she killed and scalped the Shoshoni prisoner (Niethammer). The third piece of evidence comes from an obituary for Florence Whiteman who was believed to be the last member of the Northern Cheyenne women warrior society, known as the Elk Scrapers (Newsday, April 25, 2001).

Only a chosen few were admitted into the women warrior society. According to Sipes, one could request membership, but one had to qualify to be accepted. Once accepted, the society would start to train her. “It was big training” (Sipes). At the same time, these women were having babies and maintaining their lodges.

Acknowledgement of women warriors and a women warrior society puts into question Hoebel’s depiction of Cheyenne women. All of the warrior societies were by and for men according to Hoebel. Any female participation was restricted to “four virgin daughters of tribal chiefs as maids of honor to participate in their ceremonies and to sit in the midst of the circle of war chiefs when they meet in common council. Select girls of ‘the very best families’ who exemplify the Cheyenne ideal of chastity and perfect conduct are thus held up for others to emulate” (Hoebel, p. 41). What he produces is an image of women as saints or Miss America/Miss Cheyenne contestants. “Womanhood, though it is denied direct access to power and authority, receives high deference and reward” (Hoebel, p. 41).

Hoebel is not the only historian/anthropologist who has marginalized American Indian women in the military, spiritual-medical and political life of a tribe. The United States’ Bureau of Indian Affairs (Bureau) would not recognize women chiefs and the Bureau actively disenfranchised tribal women through dissolution of traditional social structures (Green). From the sixteenth to the twentieth century little was written about Native American women who resisted colonialism and were leaders of their tribes (Bataille and Sands).

It is ironic that Hoebel states (p. 87), “Human perception and human evaluation are colored and shaped by the underlying cultural postulates which are the foundation of knowledge and belief,” yet he does not admit that his knowledge of the Cheyennes is colored and shaped by a European-American cultural lens. Instead, he argues the Cheyennes’ experiences are shaped by their culture. Hoebel implicitly suggests that he is a scientific observer, and what he knows about the Cheyennes is the Truth, which is not influenced by any culture.[9]

Hoebel’s omission of Cheyenne women warriors and medicine women is consistent with patriarchal views that a woman’s realm is in the home, where she prepares food, makes clothes, bears children, prepares the tipi, and quietly supports her husband. He also understates the significance of the Cheyennes’ matrilineal society. Hoebel is not unique in this regard. Many historians/anthropologists have distorted matrilineal, matriarchal, and matrifocal societies. According to Bataille and Sands (p. xi),

Because matrilineal and matriarchal societies were both mysterious and threatening to the Euro-American patriarchal system, most early documentation of Indian women’s experience is misinformed and ethnocentric, more attuned to the colonists’ norms for female behavior than to the actuality of indigenous cultures or any interpretation of them Indian women might have articulated.

Images of American Indian women as princesses and saints, slaves to tribal men, exotic seductresses and viscous torturers appear to be more acceptable than images of American Indian women as tribal chiefs, medicine women and warriors based on the popularity of the former images. In her bibliography about Native American Women, Green states that the two hundred years of occasional and derogatory writing about Native American women before 1900 produced few details about Native American women; however, the references to Pocahontas produced Pocahontas novels, plays, biographies and critical literature for the twentieth century. Written accounts and oral histories by American Indian women and men were ignored in favor of “the mythologizing found in diaries, missionary accounts, travel tales and popular folklore (songs, stories, etc.) and the mythology grew without reference to those accounts that eschewed mythology” (Green, pp. 2,3).

There were Cheyenne women warriors. Women like Buffalo Calf Trail Woman, Yellow Haired Woman and others that could shoot a gun or bow were mothers, wives and warriors. That is not a myth. Some Cheyenne women fought courageously in battle for their nation against other American Indian tribes and United States military forces acting for a U.S. government bent on taking their land and eliminating the Cheyennes’ way of life. The myth is that American Indian women were and are Pocahontas and saints, slaves, seductresses and torturers.

ENDNOTES:

Examples of early nineteenth century images are Alexis de Tocqueville's 1831 description of American Indian women as living in complete servitude, Francesco Arese's 1837 description of Sioux and Menominee women as slaves of their husbands, and Frederick Marryat's depiction of Indian women as hard-working women who never complain and are "amply recompensed by a smile from their lord and master in the evening" (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/fem/indian.htm). The Walt Disney cartoon film Pocahontas shows an American Indian woman with a Barbie-doll-like figure, who is more brown-skinned than red, and whose love is so great that she falls in love with the enemy. She is truly the noble savage wanting and needing to be civilized by a patriarchal society charmed by her beauty and innocence.

In fairness to Hoebel, one could argue that he does suggest women were warriors when he states, "Women, too, gather to count coup on the enemy" (p. 21). However, he does not elaborate and the statement becomes hidden.

Also called Buffalo Calf Road Women, Buffalo Calf Woman or Mochis.

Also called Yellow Woman or Ehyophsta.

This story is also found in Grinnell, p. 157, Volume I.

Mr. Sipes is a Cheyenne Chief and Cheyenne historian.

Buffalo Calf Trail Woman survived the Sand Creek Massacre, but lost her entire family. During the slaughter, she picked up her father's rifle and was able to escape. She kept the rifle and in time used it against the U.S. Army. No doubt the memories of the horrors perpetrated by the Colorado militia at Sand Creek contributed to her fighting spirit.

Another story about Buffalo Calf Trail Woman fighting soldiers appears in Viola.

Unlike the rationalists who believe that theory or knowledge determines experience, Hoebel is an empiricist. He implicitly suggests that his knowledge comes from objective observations. However, he fails to see that knowledge shapes experience and experience shapes knowledge, and that all knowledge is subjective.

Bibliography

Bataille, Gretchen M. and Kathleen M. Sands. American Indian Women: A Guide to
Research, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 1991.

Green, Rayna. Native American Women: A Contextual Bibliography, Indiana University
Press, Bloomington, 1983.

Grinnell, George Bird. The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life,
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1972.

Harjo, Joy and Gloria Bird. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native
American’s Writings of North America, W. W. Norton & Company, New York,
1997.

[ ] . Obituary for Florence Whiteman, Newsday, April 25, 2001.

Sandoz, Mari. Cheyenne Autumn, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1966.

Sipes, John Jr. “Interview with John Sipes, Jr” for Rocky Mountain PBS Documentary
Tears in the Sand. http://www.karma.org/tears/interv2.html

Stands in Timber, John and Margot Liberty. Cheyenne Memories, 2nd ed., Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1998.

Viola, Herman J. It is a Good Day to Die: Indian Eyewitnesses Tell the Story of the
Battle of the Little Bighorn, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1998.

Puzzle Painting

2006-03-25T11:38:00.000-05:00

Beau in standard pose

2006-03-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

Here's Beau in one of his favorite poses looking for food.

The Sopranos: Tony in ICU

2006-03-23T20:30:00.000-05:00

The large open wound in Tony's stomach looks like he was shot with a shotgun. But Junior used a handgun. Was the large hole due to an exploding bullet?

Review of Women, Development, and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia by Virginia Rinaldo Seitz

2006-03-20T19:36:00.001-05:00

Ethnography as Speaking Out for Women: A Review of Women, Development, and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia by Virginia Rinaldo Seitz

Women, Development, and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia is a feminist ethnography about the marginalization of working-class Appalachian women and how, despite and because of their marginalization, they have acted for the betterment of their families and communities through strategic collective interaction, and in the process, have transformed themselves. Virginia Rinaldo Seitz’s methodology is complex, her empirical statements powerful, and at times, both include contradictory elements; nonetheless, her ethnography as a whole is compelling for two reasons. First, it effectively challenges stereotypes and other negative images of women and Appalachians, especially those found in the popular media and implicitly supported by development experts who use the culture of poverty theory to claim Appalachians are poor because of their pathological and backward culture.[1] Second, its critical-feminist use of life story interviews results in gendered, working-class, local descriptions of marginalization and indigenous gendered-development activism, and in this way, the book speaks out for, not about, working-class Appalachian women. In so doing, it confronts traditional development practices, which define development as economic growth and women’s contribution as increased employment, which assume outside experts are necessary, and, yet, which are inconsistent with local individual, family, and community needs.

For anyone with little-to-no knowledge of Appalachians beyond the stereotypes one hears or sees in the popular media, Seitz ethnography is insightful because its life stories rebut the stereotypes of Appalachian women as naïve, wild, dim-witted, superstitious, fatalistic, and continually pregnant and barefooted (Byrd; Heller). The women of her study are none of the above. Instead, they are resourceful, idealistic, and hard working despite and because of their marginalization. Furthermore, it is out of their resourcefulness, idealism, and hard work, along with their feelings of responsibility for the wellbeing of their families and communities, that they have become development activists working for social, economic, and political change. Seitz underscores that they are not exceptional women; they are not male-identified, nor have they rejected their families and communities; they are ordinary. However, later in the text, she admits that some of her participants may be exemplary.

Seitz uses the first two chapters to describe her research methodology, which is an innovative, feminist, and, at times, conflicting montage of elements of interpretivism, critical theory, feminist standpoint theory, and grounded theory. In the first page she warns the reader that the “presentation is not linear” because the text is and presents an “interative and reflexive exploration of change.” Perhaps, that warning is, in part, to prepare the reader for contradictions within the text that mirror the contradictions that emerged during her research process.

Early in the second chapter Seitz clearly rejects positivism because she is concerned with things that would be rejected as unknowable and irrelevant by positivists: meanings, motivations, and social structures of gender and class relations, and accepts an anti-positivist or, what shell calls, her “post-positivist” approach grounded in elements of interpretivism and critical theory (p. 16). Seitz accepts, like interpretivists and critical theorists, multiple, socially-constructed realities that may conflict and a more personal, interactive mode of data collection because meaning (interpretation) can only be communicated through such interaction. However, unlike interpretivists, but in agreement with critical theorists and some feminists, she claims that interpretivists do not go far enough to reject the researcher-researched distinction. Specifically, Seitz argues that the relationship of the researcher and researched should not just be interactive, but should be interactive and empowering to both, and although there are multiple interpretations of reality, researchers should place central importance on the lives and experiences of those who have been marginalized in society.

An important and potentially contradictory element in Seitz’s methodology is her use of feminist standpoint theory to imply that the knowledge produced by the working-class Appalachian women of her study or any oppressed group is “a more complete and therefore privileged knowledge of society” (p. 18). Just as positivists privilege method, in the sense that they claim to use objective methods that produce the Truth, similarly feminist standpoint theorists privilege the knowledge of women, and perhaps, in that sense, some-to-all feminist standpoint theorists assume that the knowledge produced by women is objective, grounded in the Truth. If Seitz accepts the assumption of an objective epistemology, then she contradicts a fundamental assumption of both interpretivism and critical theory, and agrees with a positivist assumption. Furthermore, she may also share the positivists’ ontology of a “real” social reality. If so, this reality, although it may be contested, is ultimately revealed by those who have been marginalized and, in some sense, are “outsiders.” This reviewer, however, believes Seitz uses feminist standpoint theory, not because she believes it produces an objective truth, but because she is an advocate for women, not just a laissez faire moral relativist.

Grounded theory, which is a research process used to develop theory, also informs Seitz’s ethnography, particularly her data collection and analysis. There are many variations of grounded theory; however, according to Charmaz and Mitchell (p. 160), they all include the following strategies:
1. simultaneous data-collection and
analysis;
2. pursuit of emergent themes through
early data analysis;
3. discovery of basic social processes
within the data;
4. inductive construction of abstract
categories that explain and
synthesize these processes;
5. integration of categories into a
theoretical framework that specifies
causes, conditions, and consequences
of the processes.

Seitz’s grounded theory is similar to Charmaz’s constructivist approach: it assumes multiple, socially constructed realities, recognizes and encourages the mutual creation of knowledge by the researcher and researched, and its goal includes interpretive understanding of subjects’ meanings (Charmaz).

Both grounded theory and Seitz’s ethnographic research begin with central concepts (Denzin). For Seitz, there are two: “marginalization” and “empowerment.” These central concepts are important to her as a feminist and critical researcher, and she makes that known to the reader in the first chapter. She starts with “working definitions” of these concepts and uses them to form questions that frame her research, in the hope that the resulting life stories become the text for “drawing out the ‘extralocal relationships’ and structural constraints on women’s lives” (p. 19). These definitions change through a recursive and reflexive process, with both the women in her study and Seitz empowered to change the definitions.

The author’s concern for and use of reflexivity is implicitly woven throughout the text, but is explicit in the second chapter. There she explains her personal motivations for the study and describes relationships that she strategically developed, encouraged, and discouraged with her participants inside and outside the research process, and which affected her data and conclusions. Seitz explains to the reader that it is out of her feminism, dissatisfaction with the Women in Development (WID) literature, anti-positivism, and fifteen years of experiences living and working in Southwest Virginia that she chose to focus on the lives and experiences of working-class Appalachian women in Southwest Virginia. These people are marginalized because they are women, because they are working-class, and because they are Appalachian, and for each and all of these reasons, they have been excluded from knowledge construction, and in particular, the knowledge that justifies social and economic policies that affect them. , Seitz is a feminist, activist and scholar, and she wants to “speak out” for these women (p. 7). Thus, it is out of all of the above that her study seeks to generate a gendered, working-class, local knowledge of the marginalization of working-class Appalachian women and how that marginalization influences their collective struggle for social, economic, and political change. Specifically, her ethnography seeks to answer the following questions (p. 2):
1. “How are women marginalized and oppressed on the basis of their class, gender, and other positions of difference?
2. How do women theorize an understanding of class and gender?
3. Under what conditions do women come together collectively for social change?
4. What associations provide contexts for women’s empowerment? (and)
5. How are women empowered through their grassroots collective practices?”

A sixth question that Seitz derives from the above is:
6. “Does the feminism (as theory and practice) of women in this research setting share standpoints with third world feminisms?”

To generate a gendered, working-class knowledge that can answer the above questions, Seitz is emphatic that she does not repeat data collection methods that for centuries have been used to produce male scholars’ knowledge of women and authorities who have spoken for women. Thus, she rejects any data collection technique, such as a survey, that controls informants; reduces their ideas, thoughts, and memories to words of the researcher; and does not require face-to-face interactions. Instead, she uses a data collection method that avoids control over the subjects of her research and develops a researcher-researched connectedness so both researcher and researched are co-equals (Brewer; Oakley, 1981, 2000; Reinharz, 1992). Seitz agrees with Oakley and Reinharz that the open-ended interview process is the best method for feminist research because it permits access to participants’ ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own words rather than the words of the researcher; permits non-verbal communication and emotions; produces non-standardized information that allows researchers to make full use of differences of people; and creates participants, not respondents, who are essential for the construction of a gendered knowledge. Therefore, the open-ended interview process is the primary data collection technique she uses, and in particular, Seitz uses life-history interviews because they can be focused around biographically meaningful events for her research participants that occurred because of their participation in community organizations. These biographically meaningful events or “epiphanies” connect personal troubles to public issues (Denzin, 1989). For Seitz, epiphanies are particularly useful in explaining “the ‘how’ questions of social change”; therefore, she restricted her participants to working-class Appalachian women who have experienced epiphanies through their participation in local community organizations (p. 21).
For twenty-three months, Seitz ‘met, individually and in groups, numerous women from Southwest Virginia [and] attended their meetings and celebrations, observed them working, went out for coffee, and visited their homes” (19). She states she used her own knowledge of the area, based on fifteen years of living and working there to identify and contact “more than twenty key informants,” all of which are women, “’development catalysts’” and could help her identify associations that met her four criteria (20). ,
In the second chapter, Seitz states that five associations were found that met the four criteria, and which could “provide collective contexts for women’s empowerment”, and where she had no long-term personal involvement (20). However, in an endnote for the chapter, she admits that her analysis shows that two of the associations do not meet two criteria. , Later during the research process, because it is reflexive, Seitz adds a sixth association. The six associations are:
1. Gender Equity Support Group: A community college support group for women as individuals who are getting job training and/or enrolled in degree programs.
2. Income-Generating Cooperative: A group, organized by a local woman, of about twenty women who do piecework sewing in their homes as wage laborers, not entrepreneurs.
3. Coal Employment Project: A national advocacy and support group for women miners that was formed by a small group of women miners “’to help miners claim their rightful place in the coal industry’” (147).
4. Family Auxiliary of District 28 of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA): An association of wives, widows, mothers, daughters, sisters, and other family members of coal miners.
5. Dungannon Development Commission: A community development organization that was formed in 1979 “in response to the practical gender needs of one-hundred women working at a local sewing factory” (186).
6. Ivanhoe Civic League: A community development organization that was formed in reaction to the county’s plan to sell an industrial park rather than bring industry to the town of Ivanhoe.

Seitz states she contacted each association, fully disclosed the purposes of her research to them, and asked for permission to conduct her research during formal and informal meetings with members. During association meetings, she asked members for volunteers or names of women who could represent other women in their groups. She used a strategy of snowball and purposive sampling techniques and eventually selected twelve women for her life story interviews.
The effort to obtain data for ethnographic research is very different from that sought by the positivist researcher. While the ethnographer works to “get in,” which means becoming connected and personally involved, the positivist’s effort is to be estranged by “procedural objectivity” (Burawoy, 10). Seitz “gets in” by fully disclosing the purposes of her study and revealing shared experience and sympathy for the women’s collective efforts. She reveals personal information about herself: she is a mother, divorcee, head of a household with two children, and about the same age as many of her participants. By personalizing her relationship with her participants, Seitz and the women of her study develop relationships of trust and mutuality, and in so doing, Seitz describes herself as an “outsider within” (Seitz, 19). She is a participant-as-observer who becomes an “observer-as-participant” when she conducts the intensive interviews.
According to Seitz, most of the intensive interviews were conducted during a period of ten months. In two to four sessions, with each session varying from three- to eight-hours long, these women told Seitz their life stories. She states that she guided, did not control, their conversation by use of an open-ended interview guide, which was reflexive; it varied with the women being interviewed and as their life stories were told.
As stated above and implicitly, Seitz’s primary data collection technique is intensive interviews, specifically life-story interviews. She states that she recorded all of these interviews and produced verbatim transcriptions of each interview within one week of their occurrence. These transcriptions include her observer comments, which are Seitz’s comments that “convey settings, describe processes, and reflect on meanings for both the subjects and the researcher” (23). These transcriptions are her primary data.
Other data, which “provided illustrative materials for analysis of the [primary] data,” include field notes, which were produced from interactions with women in the associations, videotapes, photographs, memorabilia, and other documents and print materials (24).
Seitz’s claims her analysis was an interactive process of going back over transcripts of each interview numerous times as each life story was reconstructed and used Denzin’s approach of bracketing central and recurring themes. Consequently, her analysis should have taken the following five steps (Denzin):
1. Locate within the life stories key phrases and statements that speak directly to marginalization and empowerment.
2. Interpret the meanings of these phrases and statements.
3. Obtain the participant’s interpretations of these phrases and statements, when possible.
4. Inspect these meanings for what they reveal about recurring themes of marginalization and empowerment.
5. Offer a tentative statement of marginalization and empowerment in terms of the recurring themes in the previous step.

Conceptualization is an important process for Denzin’s analysis, and it is for Seitz’s as well. She uses the process to locate marginalization and empowerment in the life stories and social environments of her participants. In this way, she presents the results, which are the recurring experiences and feelings of marginalization and empowerment, as they occur within the participants’ families, at work, and in their communities, in their own words and emotions and Seitz’s summaries of such.
What marginalization and empowerment mean to the working-class Appalachian women of her study is presented in chapters three to eight. Marginalization and empowerment began with the following working definitions:
Marginalization: To cause to live
on the edges of society by excluding
from participation in any group effort.

Empowerment: A process aimed at
consolidating, maintaining, or
changing the nature and distribution
of power in a particular cultural
context…
The twelve women of the study speak of being isolated and powerless because they are female, working-class, and Appalachian. Recurring experiences and feelings of isolation and powerless of these women are communicated in the third through fifth chapters on family, work, and community. For example, in the chapter on the family, Seitz presents the following summaries,
· 10 participants “acknowledged that the most difficult aspect of growing up was recognition that their sex made them powerless”(4).
· Staying home and missing school was routine and accepted by schools because girls were expected to mother their younger sisters and brothers.
· “Threats of abandonment and shunning by family members, and fears about life outside the extended family network were recurring themes in the interviews” (66).
· Not to marry was not a choice, for all participants.
· 9 women spoke of verbal abuse, “being ‘put down’ or told that they ‘weren’t worth anything’” (58).
· 7 spoke of being slapped, 4 of being beaten, and 1 of being raped by her husband.
· “For wives of workers in an uncertain and vulnerable industry, dependency was enforced economically as well as physically” (56).

Along with experiences and feelings of isolation and powerless in their families, at work, and in their communities, the women also speak paradoxically of experiences and feelings of empowerment in their families, at work, and in the community. For example, in chapter three on the family, Seitz reports:
· Some women married as a way to “escape the
deprivations or degradations of both poverty
and being female” (53).
· “the women still perceive a primary
relationship of equity and mutuality as their
ideal, if not their experience, of marriage”
(61).
· “Women found the strength to endure and some-
times resist abusive relationships with
husbands because of their children” (63).
· 4 of the 6 women who divorced, “initiated
separations to protect their children if not
themselves” (64).
· 1 woman’s form of resistance was staying in
her marriage to give her child financial, if
not emotional, security, as a form of
resistance.

Seitz analysis demonstrates that she satisfied her goal to limit her intensive interviewing to women who have been changed by their participation in one of the six associations, and in the process is able to compare the opportunities for change that these associations allow. Women in the Gender Equity Support Group and Income Generating Cooperative reported that participation in their groups increased their and their peers’ individual self-esteem and self-confidence, and helped them recognize their “inadequacies as productive workers were based on structural inequalities” (143). Participants in the Coal Employment Project (CEP) expressed that their participation in CEP allowed them to both identify their needs and determine how they could participate in association; it helped them develop a gender consciousness. Those in the Family Auxiliary told stories of improved self-esteem and strategic collective actions that were taken during the union’s dispute with the Pittston Coal Company and which changed them by raising their class consciousness and gender consciousness. The women in the Dungannon Development Commission (DDC) reported that their participation in DDC changed their foci from individual self-interest to the interest of workers in the factory, and then to the community as a whole, with the conviction that community development should be indigenous and inclusive. Finally, the women in the Ivanhoe Civic League communicated that through their participation in the League they have become conscious of and have acted on strategic gender needs, and in the process have recognized that they, as women, “have some power within their communities,” and within their homes (216). ,
Any ethnography, from positivist to postmodernist, should include a discussion of reliability and validity because they have traditionally been the methods used to evaluate academic research, especially positivist research. To this, Seitz does not disappoint because a section in the second chapter is entitled, “Issues of Reliability and Validity.”
For Seitz, reliability refers to replicability, and specifically to the question, “Would similar recurring themes be described by different respondents?” That the answer to that question is a concern to her is evidenced by her research strategy to select women who were identified by others in their groups as being able to speak for their experiences. Furthermore, she reports that she asked similar questions to other women in one association to assess the commonality of experiences of change (25):
In one association, … I have had
several opportunities to ask similar
questions of other members and to
discuss my analysis of their
collective experiences with
respondents and with others. Other
members have described similar
processes of change through
participation in the group.

Seitz defines validity as an assessment of the veracity of the respondents’ accounts because it is the women who describe and explain their marginalization and empowerment. Because she is a critical feminist, and because she believes there are multiple, socially constructed realities and each life story is a “’fiction of self-representation,’” she rejects concerns for validity and instead shifts the concern to “’subjective mapping of experience” (26). By making that shift, she rejects concerns that participants may lie or be misinformed and, instead, tells us that these women should be heard because we can learn from them.
Linked to reliability and validity is an approach called “triangulation,” which refers to the crosschecks made to assess if data are valid and an effective representation of the phenomenon being studies (Schensul et al.). Crosschecks are made by obtaining information in different settings, from different persons, and at different times (Class Notes). Seitz interviews twelve women who are members of six different associations, and as stated above, she poses similar question to different women in one of the associations. Furthermore, she interviews the twelve women not just in one session, but, instead, in two to four sessions that range from three to eight hours. The life-story interviews are conducted as conversations in the women’s homes, in a park, laundromat, restaurants, coffee shops, and their places at work, with concerns for the idiosyncratic effects of place on the life stories. For example, at least one of these women is always interviewed in the same place (24):
one respondent who was not overtly critical
of a project organizer was always interviewed
in the group’s meeting place [because] her
husband would not have appreciated [Seitz]
coming to her home.

Social sciences researchers are also traditionally concerned with generalizability, which refers to the ability to make inferences about a larger population based on research results from a sample (Schensul et al.). The women of Seitz’s study are working-class Appalachians from Southwest Virginia who have participated in six specific associations and experienced epiphanies because of their participation. Seitz does not claim that the twelve women that she interviewed speak for all women, all of the working-class, or all Appalachians; instead, she reports that these twelve women speak for the experiences of other women in their associations.
Ethical concerns are imbued throughout Seitz’s research process. First, she does not hide her motivations from the reader; she identifies herself as a critical feminist who has lived in Southwest Virginia for fifteen years and how that motivates her study. Second, she does not conduct her research in secret. She declares that she “was careful to fully disclose the purposes of her research and to ask permission to carry on the study” in both formal and informal meetings with members of the associations (22). Third, she protects the confidentiality of the women and assures their anonymity. She does not report data in ways that could be used to construct “individual profiles” and then identify the women, nor does she create fictionalized composites of working-class, Appalachian women, because Seitz wants each woman to be heard in her own words (26). Fourth, she respects requests to speak off the record. For example, Seitz reports there are few quotes from one participant in the Coal Employment Project because “she asked that the tape recorder be turned off while we were discussing this association” (244). Fifth, and finally, she admits that although every participant is quoted or summarized at least once in each of the analysis chapters, “not all women are given equal voice on the page” (26).
Just as Seitz’s ethnographic research is an iterative and reflexive exploration of the experiences of working-class, Appalachian women in community associations, a reading and review of her ethnography is an iterative and reflexive process. What can appear as a complicated and, at times, inconsistent mix of elements from alternative research paradigms can also appear as a strategic and thoughtful feminist interplay. Furthermore, what can be judged as a compelling, but, at times, flawed mix of empirical statements, can also be understood as inevitable products of the dialectical tension between subject and object, between researcher and researched, between powerless and empowered, and between insider and outsider. The women of the study are marginalized as women, as working-class, and as Appalachians, yet, despite and because of their marginalization, they have acted for the betterment of their families and communities through strategic collective interaction, and in the process, transformed themselves.
Bibliography

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Atkinson, Paul; Coffey, Amanda; Delamont, Sara; Lofland, John; and Lofland, Lyn, eds. 2001. Handbook of Ethnography. Sage Publications, Inc., London.

Brewer, John D. 2000. Ethnography. Open University Press, Buckingham.

Buraway, Michael. 1998. “The Extended Case Method” in Sociological Theory, Vol. 16, No. 1 (March), pp. 4 – 13.

Byrd, Robert C. July 25, 2003. “Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd: The ‘Real Beverly Hillbillies’ is Real Garbage.” www.senate.gov/~byrd/byrd_speeches/byrd_speeches_2003july/byrd_speeches_200

Calkins, Maria Vita. 2004. “The Road to College: The Anatomy of a Qualitative Inquiry.” Presented at Ethnographic and Qualitative Research in Education (EQRE) Conference (June) in Albany, New York. Online at
www.albany.edu/eqre/L3conferencePapersP1.htm.

Charmaz, Kathy. 2000. “Grounded Theory: Objectivist and Constructivist Methods” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd Ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. Sage Publications, Inc., London, pp. 509 - 535.

-------------- and Mitchell, Richard G. 2001. “Grounded Theory in Ethnography” in Handbook of Ethnography. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lynn Lofland, eds. Sage Publications, Inc., London, pp. 160 – 174.

Class Notes for Ethnographic Methods. Online at www.man.ac.uk/sociologyonline/course/Ethno/social.htm

Davies, Charlotte Aull. 1999. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. Routledge, New York.

Dean, John P. and Whyte, William Foote. 1958. “How Do you Know If the Informant is Telling the Truth?” in Human Organization, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 34 – 38.

Denzin, Norman K. 1989. Interpretive Interactionism. Applied Social Sciences Research Methods Series, Volume 16. Sage Publications, London.

----------------- and Lincoln, Yvonna S., eds. 2000. Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd Ed. Sage Publications, Inc., London.

De Vaus, David. 2002. Surveys in Social Research, 5th Ed. Routledge, Australia.

Doner, Richard and Strahan, Randall. 2001. Syllabus for “Qualitative Methods/Spring 2001.” Department of Political Science, Emory University. Online at www.asu.edu/clas/polisci/cqrm/syllabi/donerstrahan.htm.

Ethnographic Research, Inc.
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Garson, G. David. “Participant Observation.” Link to Syllabus for Quantitative Research in Public Administration, North Carolina State University. Online at www2.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/pa765/particip.htm.

Gold, Raymond L. 1969. “Roles in Sociological Field Observations” in Issues in Participant Observation: A Text and Reader. George J. McCall and J.L. Simmons, eds. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Massachusetts, pp. 30 – 39. Originally published in 1958 in Social Forces, vol. 36, pp. 217 – 223.

Hall, Barbara. “How to Do Ethnographic Research: A Simplified Guide.” Public Interest Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania. Online at www.sas.upenn.edu/anthro/CPIA/METHODS.html.

Hall, Matt. “Appalachian Stereotypes: Funny or Fatal?” www.morehead-st.edu/units/honors/mark2k1/#appstereo.

Harris, Marvin. 1980. Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology, 3rd Ed. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York.

Heller, Laura Anne. 2004. “Appalachian Stereotypes – Then and Now.” Online at http://poetess77.com/writing/appalachian.html (June 6).

Ivanhoe Civic League. “Welcome to Ivanhoe” at http://wythe.pcsos.com/t-ivan.htm.

Janesick, Valerie. 2000. “The Choreography of Qualitative Research Design” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd Ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. Sage Publications, Inc., London.

Lavenda, Robert H. and Schultz, Emily A. 2000. Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain View, California.

LeCompte, Margaret D. and Schensul, Jean J. 1999. Designing & Conducting Ethnographic Research. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.

Lincoln, Yvonna S. and Guba, Egon G. 2000. “Paradigmatic Controversies, Contradictions, and Emerging Confluences” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd Edition. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. Sage Publications, London.

Margolis, Eric. 2001. “Video Ethnography: Toward a Reflexive Paradigm for Documentary.” Online at http://courses.ed.asu.edu/margolis/videoth2001.html. Originally published as “Video Ethnography” in Jump Cut, vol. 39, pp. 122 – 131.

McGhee, Nancy Gard and Meares, Alison C. 1998. “A Case Study of Three Tourism-Related Craft Marketing Cooperatives in Appalachia: Contributions to Community” in Journal of Sustainable Tourism, vol. 6. Online at www.channelviewpublicationsk.net/jost/006/004/jost006004.pdf.

Oakley, Ann. 1981. “Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms” in Doing Feminist Research. Helen Roberts, ed. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 30 – 61.

Oakley, Ann. 2000. Experiments in Knowing: Gender and Method in the Social Sciences. The New Press, New York.

Pearson, Nelda K. 2002. “Relying on Ourselves: The Spirit of Rural Community Development” in National Housing Institute’s Shelterforce Online, 121, Jan/Feb at http://www.nhi/online/issues/121/Pearson.html.

Ratcliff, Don. 2005. “Qualitative Research Methods.” Online at www.vanguard.edu/faculty/dratcliff/index.cfm?doc_id=4254.

Reinharz, Shulamit. 1992. Feminist Methods in Social Research. Oxford University Press, New York.

Scott, Shaunna L. 1996. Review: Women, Development, and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia. Contemporary Sociology, vol. 25, no. 4 (July), pp. 515 – 517.

Schensul, Stephen L.; Schensul, Jean J., and LeCompte, Margaret D. 1999. Essential Ethnographic Methods: Observations, Interviews, and Questionnaires. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.

Skeggs, Beverly. 2001. “Feminist Ethnography” in Handbook of Ethnography. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn Loflant, eds. Sage Publications, Inc., London, pp. 426 – 442.

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Taj, Farhat. 2004. Women and Women Police Station, Peshawar, NWFP, Pakistan. Master’s Thesis, Center for Women’s and Gender Research, University of Bergen, Norway. Online at www.ub.uib.no/elpub/NORAD/2004/uib/thesis01.pdf.

Trochim, William M.K. 2001. The Research Methods Knowledge Base, 2nd Ed. Atomicdogpublishing.com, Cincinnati, OH.

Big Summer Card

2006-03-15T18:35:00.000-05:00

Every summer golfers can receive discounts at local golf courses with The Big Summer Card, which is a great way to save $$ as one plays various courses in the Tampa Bay area.

Hot Market Cooling Off

2006-03-10T20:34:00.000-05:00

On February 1, 2006, The Wall Street Journal had an article on "the Gulf Coast's hot real-estate climate enveloping the [Bradenton, Florida] area". What is interesting is this article appears after demand had started to cool, and the speculative bubble seemed about to burst.

Yoga in Daily Life

2006-03-07T20:15:00.000-05:00

When I lived in the Metropolitan DC area, I took yoga classes that were taught by Yoga in Daily Life teachers in Alexandria, Virginia. Although I enjoyed the introductory yoga class, the more advanced classes started to feel "cultist" to me.

Structure and Agency in Marxian Thought

2006-03-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

Structure and agency, or in other words, society and individuals or macro and micro, have been and continue to be an unresolved and yet, very important, dualism in the social sciences because how social theorists conceptualize the relationship between society and individuals "determines their methodologies and their understanding of social reality and social change" (Gimenex, p. 19). Social theories and empirical studies -- past, present, and future -- are fundamentally dependent upon underlying notions of how individuals relate to society.

This post examines and compares how Marx and orthodox Marxists answered the question, "What is the relationship between society and individuals?" In so doing, it illustrates important methodological differences in the history of classical social thought.

One method of eliminating the problem of the unresolved dualism of society and individuals is by eliminating one of the concepts. For example, one can theorize that individuals exist prior to and have properties that exist independently of society, such as a biologically determined human nature, and that society is nothing more than the term to denote the sum of individuals and their actions and interactions. Formally, this metaphysical approach is known as ontological individualism, and it can be found in the writings of some rational choice economists, such as Léon Walras, who assumes markets are nothing more than the sum of individual actions and interactions.[1] Conversely, one can theorize that society exists prior to and has properties independent of individuals, and furthermore, that social change results not from the actions of individuals, but from objective laws of social change. This latter approach can be called dogmatic structuralism, and it is this second approach that can be seen in the writings of the orthodox Marxists, such as Stalin.[2]

In Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Stalin conceives of a material world that exists prior to and independently of individuals and casually determines their thoughts and actions.[3] It is an objective reality, which evolves according to a natural law, which Stalin claims has been scientifically examined, tested, and proven to be true. Stalin and other orthodox Marxists then contend that the material conditions of society are objective, exist independently of individuals' wishes and desires, create society, and evolve according to social law.[4] Consequently, the objective understanding of social reality and social change is to be found in the scientific study of the social law of development and not in the study of individuals and their motives. And with that emphasis on cause-and-effect and objective laws like what one finds in nature, sociology for orthodox Marxists is a natural science. It is social physics.[5]

Orthodox Marxists reduce society to an historical socio-economic formation, which is defined by its economic base: the "mode of production". This mode of production is the totality of the "productive forces" and "relations of production", and all three -- the totality and its two parts -- exist as objective reality and are the social reality (Buzuev and Gorodnov).[6] Social change is the historical development of the mode of production, which proceeds by changes in the forces of production and subsequent changes in the relations of production, and which ultimately is the effect of social law: a universal law of technological change. Non-economic processes, such as legal, political, educational, religious, artistic, literary, and ideological processes, are marginalized to the extent of being epiphenomena that make up the "superstructure".

In the orthodox Marxist conceptualization of the relationship between society and individuals, individuals are psychological, not sociological, subjects of study. Class is the smallest social unit. Thus, agency is no more than "the ability of an emerging class to carry out a historic project dictated by the onward march of the productive forces of society" (Bowles and Gintis, p. 93). [7]

Although Stalin and the other orthodox Marxists believed Marxism-Leninism was the empirical Truth about society, social change, and the society/individuals dualism, it was not a predictive model of broad or specific social change as professed (Kolakowski). Rather, it was a social theory grounded in the strict determinism of historical processes that extended from natural law and which yielded a utopian ending that greatly conflicted with the harsh realities of Stalinism.[8]

Marx was not an orthodox Marxist; however, passages from his writings are found in the works of Stalin and other orthodox Marxists to support their "scientific" understanding of society. First, for example, orthodox Marxists evidence that Marx, like them, claims society and Nature are parts of a single system, and, as such, such social science will and should be a natural science. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx states:[9]

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural sciences; there will be one science. ... The social reality of nature, and human natural sciences, or the natural science of man, are identical terms.

Second, orthodox Marxists show that in the "Preface" of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx, like the orthodox Marxists, believes society to be an organic whole composed of an economic base, called the "mode of production", and a non-economic superstructure.[10] Together, the productive forces and relations of production causally determine the mode of production, which ultimately "conditions" social behavior and consciousness, while the superstructure merely supports the economic base:[11]

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Third and finally, for example, like orthodox Marxists who claim that it is scientific fact that society and classes evolve as the material conditions change, in a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, Marx claims he proved classes are the effect of specific historical modes of production and that the productive evolution climaxes in a classless society (Marx and Engels, p. 45):[12]

What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is bound up only with specific historical phases in the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

In the above statement by Marx and in texts by orthodox Marxists, history appears as an independent entity, which uses man for its own fulfillment (Kolakowski). Consequently, it seems that both Marx and orthodox Marxists believe taht men do not make their own history. However, Marx explicitly rejects such an idea in other writings. In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx rejects as idealist the materialist doctrine that claims social conditions determine thinking and cause change. Bottomore and Rubel quote Marx to have written in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe and Die Heilige Familie (p. 78):

History does nothing; it 'does not possess immense riches', it 'does not fight battles'. It is men, real, living men, who do all this, who possess things and fight battles. It is not 'history' which uses men as a means of achieving -- as if it were an individual person -- its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

It is clear from the above quote that Marx does not reduce man to an epiphenomenon of history, contrary to orthodox Marxism. Thus, Marxist humanists, such as Fromm, contend that Marx's "understanding of history [is] based on the fact that men are 'the authors and actors of their history'" (Fromm, p. 13).

There are other passages in Marx's writings that contradict orthodox Marxism's conceptualization of structure and agency. First, for example, in Theses on Feuerbach Marx vigorously rejects theories that reify human creations with supernatural powers that are perceived as being superior and prior to their creators. Orthodox Marxists' reified technology and reified history represent a higher power that determines our social being, not unlike religious reification, which Marx opposes.[13]

Second, some of Marx's writings describe a theoretical system that supports methodological individualism, which is contrary to orthodox Marxism's dogmatic structuralism (Elster; Classical Society Theory class notes, University of Manchester). Methodological individualism is the doctrine that social phenomena can and must be explained as outcomes of individual behaviors and decisions. It denies collectivities, such as classes and the state, the ability to be autonomous decision makers.[14] In the Communist Manifesto, Marx begins chapter one with the statement, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (p. 13). Those class struggles are not the relationships of abstract entitites, such as the relationships of Ricardo's capitalists, laborers, landowners, and tenants who exist outside of history, but instead are relationships of different types of individuals, such as capitalists and laborers, who act and make history.[15] Individuals are primary as reflected in a letter in 1846 to P.V. Annenkov, in which Marx states, "the social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development" (Cohen, p. 13).

Individuals for Marx are neither all powerful nor completely powerless and irrelevant. As a philosopher and historian, Marx rejects theories grounded in either ontological structuralism, such as orthodox Marxism, or ontological individualism. Instead, he describes individuals as affecting and affected by other individuals and collective entities, past and present, and their effects depend on their scale and duration as social things. The less durable and smaller something is, such as a conversation, an individual or a small group, the more it belongs to agency, whereas the more historical and larger something is, such as language, the state, or an organization, the more it belongs to structure. For example, Marx uses as an example the fact that a single individual does not have the power to create the language that is spoken because its development results from the "great many diversified and dispersed actions by very many individuals", past and present (Classical Social Theory class notes).[16] Because much of Marx's writings focus on considerable historical developments and very large collectivities, it is understandable that some Marxists and non-Marxists believe he is a structuralist, particularly a dogmatic structuralist like Stalin and other orthodox Marxists. However, he is not, and Marx reminds us of that fact in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: "we must avoid postulating 'society' again as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual. The individual is the social being."

As discussed in this posting, Marx's writings evidence that he did not have a single or simple answer to the structure/agency problem, and that has been an enigma to many Marxists and non-Marxists. Perhaps, that enigma is not the fault of Marx as much as it is of readers who require structure and agency to be polar opposites in a fixed relationship regardless of scale and duration of social things.[17] Instead, Marx's conceptualization of the relationship between structure and agency appears to be on a continuum dependent upon the scale and duration of the social thing)s) being examined.

ENDNOTES:

It is also known as Marxist structuralism.
This material world is nature.
The material conditions of life refer to what people produce, such as food, clothing, and shelter, and how they produce those use values. The production of material wealth is the primary social process.
According to Cornforth, if there were no causal laws in nature and society,
[w]e could not decide upon or carry out even the simplest actions, for we would never know what to do in order to secure the results we intended. We would not possess even the freedom to make a cup of tea, for example, for we would never know whether the water would boil or, when we poured it into the teapot, whether the resulting brew would turn out like. Still less could we carry out any more complex social activities, for everything would be in chaos. In fact, we could not exist at all.(p. 187)
Furthermore, it is because society and nature act according to objective laws that there is the "human freedom" to act according to knowledge of those laws (ibid).
The forces of production are labor and the means of production, which are tools, raw materials, and capital that labor uses to create use values. The relations of production refer to the ownership of the means of production.
The individual is not part of the social reality of orthodox Marxism. Consequently, Petrovic claims "there is no place for man" in orthodox Marxism (p. 22).
In light of the dogmatism of orthodox Marxism and tyranny of Stalinism, one can understand why some social scientists associate "structure" with "repression" and other words, such as "objective", "causes" and "mechanisms", and associate its antonynm, "agency", with words such as "freedom", "subjective", "reasons" and "intentions".
This appears in the chapter, "Private Property and Communism".
The economic base or mode of production is also known as the economic infrastructure.
The above quote and chapter 32 of Capital, Volume I, suggest Marx was an economic and technological determinist.
That Marx's moral concerns drive his social theory is obvious. What he foretells as the end of social evolution is consistent with his revolutionary ideals.
Thus, a devout orthodox Marxist who lives in a capitalist country should sit back and wait for technology and history to necessitate revolution in her country despite Marx's fundamental belief that actions, not ideas, change the world.
Ontological individualism presumes individuals precede the society or community to which they belong and reduces all social phenomena to individuals and their actions and interactions. Thus, social reality is no more than individuals and their actions and interactions. Methodological individualism does not presume individuals exist prior to and independently of society or their communities nor does it define what the social reality is because it is methodological, not ontological.
In Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ricardo assumes capitalism is the end of history. Private ownership of the means of production, production of use values for their sale, and relations of laborer to capitalist and tenant to landowner are optimal and eternal. Economic laws of value, of wages, of rent, of profit, and so on, are objective, and economic outcomes are inevitable and optimal.
In the first chapter of Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations 1857-58, Marx declares, "Language as the product of an individual is an absurdity. But so also is property."
For example, some have criticized Weber for not being methodologically consistent. In his theory, he is an individualist, but in his empiricall studies, a structuralist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Karl Marx Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy.

Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. 1986. Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought. Basic Books, Inc., Publishers: New York.
Buzuev, V. and Gorodnov, V. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers: Moscow.
Cohen, G.A. 1986. "Historical Inevitability and Human Agency in Marxism" in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London; Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Predictability in Science and Society, vol. 407, no. 1832, (September 8), pp. 65-83.
Cornforth, Maurice. 1971. The Theory of Knowledge. International Publishers: New York.
Elster, Jon. "Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory" in Theory and Society, vol. 11, pp. 453-482.
Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. "Beyond Agency" in Sociological Theory, vol. 19, no. 1, (March), pp. 24-40.
Fromm, Erich. 1966. Marx's Concept of Man. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.: New York.
Gimenez, Martha E. 1999. "For Structure: A Critique of Ontological Individualism" in Alethia, vol. 2, no. 2, (October), pp. 19-25.
Hankins, Frank H. 1939. "Social Science and Social Action" in American Sociological Review, vol. 4, no. 1, (February), pp. 1-16.
Katzner, Donald. 1988. Walrasian Economics: An Introduction to the Economic Theory of Market Behavior. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA.
Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, Volume I. Oxford University Press: New York.
Marx, Karl. 1844. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm.
-----------. 1848. Communist Manifesto. Henry Regnery Company: Chicago, 1954.
------------. 1857-58. Pre-Capitalist Economic Foundations, 1857-58. Obtained online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm.
-------------. 1859. Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Obtained online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm.
------------- and Engels, Frederick. 1848-95. Letters to Americans: 1848 - 1895. International Publishers: New York.
-----------------------. 1845, 1846, 1859. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books: Amherst, New York, 1998.
Petrovic, Gajo. 1967. Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Anchor Books: Garden City, New York.
Ricardo, David. 1817. Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: London, 1937.
Ritzer, George and Gindoff, Pamela. "Methodological Relationism: Lessons For and From Social Psychology" in Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 128-140.
Roemer, John, ed. 1986. Analytical Marxism. Cambridge University Press: New York.
Stalin, Joseph. 1938. "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/Stalin/works/1939.
Swingewood, Alan. 2000. A Short History of Sociological Thought, 3rd ed. St. Martin's Press: New York.
Webster, Murray Jr. 1973. "Psychological Reductionism, Methodological Individualism, and Large-Scale Problems" in American Sociological Review, vol. 38, (April), pp. 258-273.

Review of Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, Volume I.

2006-03-03T20:45:00.000-05:00

Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, Volume I. The Founders. Leszek Kolakowski. Trans. by P. S. Falla. Oxford University Press, New York. 1978.

Leszek Kolakowski is a Polish philosopher who began his academic career as an orthodox Marxist, but later became disillusioned with Marxism under Stalinism, and by the mid 1950s was one of the most prominent revisionist Marxists in Poland. The outspoken Kolakowski was banned from the party in 1966 and from teaching two years later. Subsequently, he went into exile and began what was to be a series of visiting positions in the United States and Canada until he settled into a permanent position at Oxford University.[1] It is out of these experiences that Kolakowski wrote the three-volume set, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution to answer the question, "How, and a result of what circumstances, did Marx's philosophy culminate in Stalinism?". This book review concerns Volume I: The Founders, who are Marx and Engels, but mostly Marx.

Kolakowski identifies Marx as a "German philosopher" and as such, he argues that the starting point of an understanding of Marx's writings and Marxism is to be found in Marx's philosophical inquiry about human nature and human phenomenon, which was influenced by Hegel, Feuerbach, and other philosophers dating back to the Neo-Platonists. In so doing, Volume I does what Stalinism viewed with contempt: it pays respect to pre-Marxist philosophers. Specifically, Kolakowski rejects the Stalinist judgment that Marxist philosophy is scientific and, therefore, anything preceding Marxist philosophy is of no essential importance for the understanding of Marxism because it is pre-scientific.[2] Instead, Kolakowski evidences pre-Marxist philosophical conceptions to be essential components of Marx's thought and Marxism.

Kolakowski equally rejects Althusser's claim that a philosophical reading of Capital demonstrates an epistemological break in Marx's thought from its juvenile humanism, Hegelian dialectic, and philosophical theory of history with its utopian ideals, to its mature structuralism, non-Hegelian dialectic, and scientific theory of history devoid of utopianism (Althusser). Kolakowski believes there is continuity in Marx's philosophical thought as evidenced by philosophical conceptions in Capital that are consistent with conceptions in Marx's earlier writings, such as alienation, duality, Hegelian dialectic, and Species-Being.[3]

Volume I presents a challenge for readers without philosophical backgrounds because Kolakowski presumes the reader has basic and, at times, more than basic philosophical knowledge. The first four chapters are complicated and sometimes puzzling descriptions and examinations of pre-Marxist philosophers that influenced both Hegel and Marx, puzzling because at times it is not apparent if the author is summarizing the original philosophies or analyzing their concepts of human nature and human phenomenon from a Hegelian/Marxist or other perspective.

Kolakowski begins his analysis of Pre-Marxist philosophers with the Neo-Platonists, especially the mystical thinker, Plotinus, and highlights their extensive influence on Christian theology and medieval philosophy, which in time influenced the Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and others. Kolakowski's descriptions of Plotinus' theories of emanation and individual salvation are sufficient to be understood by a reader with little philosophical training and who has access to an online philosophy dictionary or encyclopedia; however, his subsequent descriptions of the theories' transformations in Christian theology, medieval philosophy, and later philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach are too sketchty to be understood by those without more sophisticated philosophical training. The problem is mostly due to what could be described as the author's hit-and-run-like rhetorical style of taking a name or concept out of the history of philosophy and inserting it into a sentence without explanation.[4] Consequently, some of Kolakowski's potential insights become lacunae in his argument. For example, although he finds in the Neo-Platonists' concepts of man, dialectic and progress presages of Marx's concepts of Species-Being, dialectic, and progress, that continuity of philosophical thought is not seen or appreciated by readers who are without backgrounds in philosophy.[5]

Volume I demonstrates that although Marx attempted to avoid the dilemma of utopianism versus historical fatalism, he does not, and in part for that reason, Kolakowski charges that Marx's works are not valid guides to social action. [6][7] Furthermore, he shows that Marx's and his co-authored writings with Engels use contradictory concepts, such as those that are steeped in "Promethean humanism" and "utopian idealism" versus structuralism and historical fatalism. [8][9] Consequently, the philosophical contradictions of the founders have resulted in a conflicted Marxian tradition in which various Marxists have aruged that only they know the Truth of Marx's thought, and some of those Marxists have been apologists for the tyranny of Stalinism. Volume I can be understood as a prelude to the author's reaction reaction to that despotism in the subsequent volumes. However, it can also be understood as a prelude to dismissal of Marxism as a whole, and this is unfortunate because Kolakowski does see brilliance in Marx's writings, such as Marx's "principle that men's spiritual and intellectual life is not self-contained and wholly independent but is also an expression of material interests" (p. 371).

ENDNOTES:

Kolakowski no longer identifies himself as a Marxist of any kind.
The Stalinist (or orthodox Marxist) view of Marxism as a science is illustrated by the following quote:
Marxism-Leninism is a coherent scientific system of philosophical, economic and socio-political views, and is the world outlook of the international working class, who are called upon to rejuvenate the world on socialist and communist principles. Marxism-Leninism is a science about the cognition and revolutionary transformation of the world, about the laws of development of society, nature and human thinking (Buzuev and Gorodnov, p. 11).
Because orthodox Marxists categorize Pre-Marxists thinkers as idealists, not scientists, they conclude that it is a mistake for Marxists, who are true to Marxism-Leninism, to find guidance in the writings of Pre-Marxists. That is illustrated in Stalin's statement that "in order not to err in policy, one must look forward, not backward" (Stalin, p. 5).
Volume I is not unique in its rejection of the Althusserian claim that the Mature Marx negated the philosophical thought of the Young Marx (van den Berg, Petrovic). Petrovic gives one of the more humorous statements regarding the Young versus Mature Marx debate:
The 'young' Marx is not a juvenile sin of the 'old' genius, who wrote Capital. Marx's youth was not merely a passing young-Hegelian episode, but a period of which Marx developed the basic philosophical conceptions to which he remained faithful in his later works. Without the 'young' Marx, a full understanding of the 'old' is impossible (p. 13).
Because Kolakowski presumes the reader knows the basic history of philosophical thought.
Man, according to the Neo-Platonists, is a duality because he is only partly of this world. Although his lower soul is in the physical world, his higher nature is independent of the body and belongs eternally to a divine realm without multiplicity. Consequently, the Neo-Platonists describe man as not knowing his true, primordial self. In order to negate this duality, which was created by a negation -- that is, the negation or emanation of the One, the Neo-Platonists advocated the process of contemplation in the form of dialectical reasoning. Kolakowski aruges that Marx's concepts of the alienated man and "Species Essence" or "Species Being" arise from the Neo-Platonists' view of the duality of man. Both Marx and the Neo-Platonists believe in a higher, not-of-this-world, primordial or non-historical aspect of man. Furthermore, both Marx's dialectic and the Neo-Platonists' dialectic are essentially an historical process of negation of negation that ends with the unity of man and an Absolute. Marx's contention that communism results in man's return to his "Species Essence" -- in which individual human power and interest, particularly creative power to produce use values for oneself, is at one with community production and interest -- is consistent with the Neo-Platonists' belief that contemplation results in man's return to the highest form: the One. However, they differ. For the Neo-Platonists, progress is an individual experience, whereas for Marx, it is a social experience.
Recall, that according to Stalinism, Marxism-Leninism is the one and only guide to social policy. Thus, the author continues his attack against the Marxism of Stalinism.
Perhaps, as a reading of Borochov suggests, Marx believed he was neither utopian nor fatalist because he did not ignore the historical process and believed that it was man who made his own history. At stated by Borochov:
Utopianism always suffers because it strives to ignore historical process. Utopianism wishes by means of human endeavor to create something not inherent in social life. Fatalism, on the other hand, assumes that the effective participation of human will is impossible with regard to these historicall processes, and thus it drifts passively with the stream. Utopianism knows of no historical process. The Utopianists fear to mention the phrase 'historical process'; for they see in the so-called historical process fatalism and passivity. The fatalists on the other hand, fear the conscious interference with the historical process as a dangerous artificiality. The fatalists forget that history is made by men who follow definite and conscious aims and purposes only when those aims and purposes are well adapted to the historical necessities of social life.
By "Promethean humanism", Kolakowski means secular humanism, which has in part a tradition of defiance dating back to the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greeks idolized Prometheus because he defied the authority of Zeus by stealing the fire of the gods and bringing it down to earth. For that he was punished; yet, he continued as a revolutionary.
Hegel's work is steeped in Christian humanism where God is the Revolutionary who perfects man, whereas for Marx, it is the revolutionary philosopher and the proletariat who bring about the ultimate social change.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Althusser, Louis. 1979. "From Capital to Marx's Philosophy" and "The Object of Capital" in Reading Capital, pp. 11-198. Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Etienne. Trans. Ben Brewster. Verso: New York.
Buzuev, V. and Gorodnov, V. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers: Moscow.
Borochov, Ber. 1906. "Our Platform, parts IV-VI" The Ber Borochov Internet Archive at http://www.angelfire.com/il2/borochov/platform2.html
Classical Social Theory class notes, University of Manchester.
MacGregor, David. 1980. "Evaluating the Marxist Tradition" in Contemporary Sociology, vol. 9, no. 4, (July), pp. 486-488.
Moore, Edward. 2001. "Plotinus (204 - 270 C.E.)" in The Internet Encyclopedia at http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/plotinus.htm
Petrovic, Gajo. 1967. Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Yugoslav Philosopher Reconsiders Karl Marx's Writings. Anchor Books: Garden City, New York.
The Radical Academy. http://www.radicalacademy.com
Sociology Online. "Marxism & the dialectic" at http://www.sociologyonline.co.uk/soc_essays/marxism1.htm.
Stalin, Joseph. 1938. "Dialectical and Historical Materialism." Online at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/Stalin/works/1938/09.htm
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://plato.stanford.edu
United States Library of Congress. 2003. "2003 John W. Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences: Leszek Kolakowski" at http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/kolakowski.html
Van den Berg, Axel. 1988. The Immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the State to the State of Marxism. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey

Marxists Internet Archive

2006-02-27T18:57:00.000-05:00

An excellent electronic resource for students of classical social theory is the Marxists Internet Archive (MI Archive), found at http://marxists.org. The MI Archive includes archives of Marxist writers, history and subjects, an encyclopedia of Marxism, and a "guide to writers relevant to understanding the concept of Marxism" (http://marxists.org/reference/index.htm. As evidence of the worldwide interest in Marxism and commitment of the volunteer non-profit organization that created and manages the web site, the MI Archive is translated into at least thirty-nine languages, and its servers are found in Asia, Britain, France, Galicia, Russia, and parts of the United States to expand its access.

The MI Archive is visually pleasing and logistically well constructed so that it is easy to navigate. On the home page, equally sized digital images of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky frame large bold letters that identify the site, its primary contents, and other important links such as searches and contact information. A simple click on one of the four images forwards the student to the archive about that marxist author. For example, by clicking on the photograph of Marx, one is forwarded to the "Marx & Engels Internet Archive", which includes date, subject and multi-lingual indices, collected and selected works, biographies and letters, and an image gallery, First International Archive, PDF Index, link to contact the sponsor of the web site, and multiple search options (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/index.htm.

Each archive within the MI Archive contains multiple links to associated topics and texts within and without it to aid the beginning student. For example, someone new to Marx and Marxism can search the web site's encyclopedia for the concept, "class struggle". That search being the student to the section on "class", which defines the Marxism concepts of class and class struggle and includes passages authored by Marx and Engels to illustrate the uses and meanings of those concepts and links to related concepts and suggested further readings within the MI Archive (http://marxists.org/glossary/frame.htm.

For the more advanced student of Marx and Marxism, the links of subjects, authors and writings provide useful insights into the common and divergent threads within the Marxian theoretical tradition. For example, one who is interested in learning more about the rift within the Marxian theoretical tradition regarding the humanism of the young Marx versus the structuralism of the old Marx can begin with a subject search of "humanism". That search results in thirty-seven matches ranked by the quality of the match. Each match has a number of conspicuous yellow starts to denote the quality of the match with the subject search. A click on the first of the two highest ranked matches leads to the document, "Marxist Humanis and the 'New Left'" (http://marxists.org/subject/humanism/index.htm. That document describes the development of Marxist Humanism as an historical event that emerged from rejection of orthodox Marxism, attraction to and growing acceptance of liberal sentiments, and "failure of the Communist Parties to adquately respond to these sentiments." The document also explains that Marxists Humanists usually ground themselves in the humanistic writings of the young Marx, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1988, and to give emphasis to that written explanation, the document includes an image of the young Marx. It also includes links to the Manuscripts, relevant sections of the encyclopedia, archives of Marxist Humanist writers, and other archives, such as the archive of antihumanist Marxist, Joseph Stalin.

Links to the MI Archive can be found in academic, labor, and other web sites, which further demonstrate its quality and widespead appeal and use. For example, a quick Internet search yielded many web sites with links to the MI Archive of which four are listed below:

"Guide to Philosophy on the Internet" Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana www.earlham.edu/~peters.philinks.htm
"Historical Studies World Wide Web Resources" Historical Studies-Social Science Library, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey http://www.admin.ias.edu/hslib/hsres.htm
"Labor Studies and Radical History" Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California http://hll.org/Links.html and
"Socialist Links" Chicago Socialist Party http://www.chicagosocialistparty.com/links.html.

Frost in Florida

2006-02-15T19:20:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I woke up and saw frost on the ground. In Florida! Here's a photo.

Why Be In Online Group?

2006-02-12T17:47:00.000-05:00

Why do individuals participate in online groups or communities that use bulletin board technology? According to study by Ridings & Gefen (2004), the most popular reason is information exchange.

Symbolic Interactionism and Performing Identity

2006-02-11T20:30:00.000-05:00

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach within sociology that contends that one's identity is created through her/his interactions with others. In other words, my identity is (or identities are) socially constructed. Although Herbert Blumer (1900 - 1987) coined the term in his 1937 article "Social Psychology," its foundation can be found in the writings of Charles Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and others. The construction of I necessitates the existence of the Other (or Others), and my experience of I and the Other (or Others) is derived from my interactions with the Other (or Others) and my imagination of the Other's (Others') perceptions and evaluations of me. This idea is found in Cooley's notion of "The Looking Glass Self", which is found in his Human Nature and the Social Order (1902):

In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how one's self — that is any idea he appropriates — appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might by called the reflected or looking glass self:
'Each to each a looking glass
Reflects the other that doth pass.'

As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and we are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it.

A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal element: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification. (pp. 179-185).

In Mead's "The Genesis of the Self and Social Control", it is also clear that the Self exists through interaction with others and a reflexive imagination:

...the self that is central to all so-called mental experience has appeared only in the social conduct of human vertebrates. It is just because the individual finds himself taking the attitudes of the others who are involved in his conduct that he becomes an object for himself. It is only by taking the roles of others that we have been able to come back to ourselves. We have seen above that the social object can exist for the individual only if the various parts of the whole social act carried out by other members of the society are in some fashion present in the conduct of the individual. It is further true that the self can exist for the individual only if he assumes the roles of others. (p. 268)

When one appears in front of a mirror, one sees one's reflection. One sees one's self. Similarly, an individual can perform in front of a mirror and pretend that s/he is watching her/his interaction with someone else. In this example, the individual is both performer and audience, both subject and object. This duality does not appear solely when standing in front of a mirror because my imagination can create it as well. For example, what I do when I am interacting with someone else is affected greatly by what I imagine her/his reactions to be of what I say verbally and non-verbally.

Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self uses a "dramaturgical approach" to study the self. Basically, it is the idea that an individual's interaction with another (or others) can be understood as if an actor was giving a performance within a setting and the other is (or others are) her/his audience. The setting is the location of the interaction, such as a coffee shop, office, or restaurant. In his analysis, Goffman divides an individual's performance into a "front" and a "back" (or backstage). The front refers to "that part of an individual's performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance" (p. 22). According to Barnhart, the "front acts as the vehicle of standardization, allowing for others to understand the individual on the basis of projected character traits that have normative meanings." Put another way, the front is the part of the performance which is used to persuade others that the performer is the ideal example of an individual in that particular role and situation. Thus, the front is the set of messages that the performer communicates and imagines to be consistent with a norms, mores, and laws of society. The back or backstage is that part of the performance which communicates that the performer is not consistent with the ideal. For example, during an interaction with her minister, Margaret's front is the set of messages that she communicates and imagines to be consistent with that of the ideal mother. Her back is the set of messages that she communicates and imagines to be inconsistent with that ideal, but consistent with herself as a particular individual. How much back or backstage information Margaret gives to the minister is dependent upon what she believes of her self and the mininster's reaction to her being any other than ideal. At one extreme, she may sincerely believe that her front is representative of her self as a particular individual, so there is no back performance that would suggest she is not ideal. At the other extreme, she may believe that she is very much the opposite of the ideal mother, but nonetheless, she may not want to communicate any information that would suggest she is anything but the ideal. Consequently, she may intentionally convey misinformation about her self as a particular individual in an attempt to control the minister's impression of her as a mother (Goffman).

Associated with one's performance are messages "given" and "given off". For Goffman, verbal communication (oral or written) is "given", whereas non-verbal communication is "given off".

The expressiveness of the individual (and therefore his capacity to give impressions) appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off. The first involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and solely to convey the information that he and the others are known to attach to these symbols. This is communication in the traditional and narrow sense. The second involves a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor, the expection being that the action was performed for reasons other than the information conveyed in this way.(Goffman, 1959, p. 2).

This can be illustrated with a continuation of the prior example. During the interaction with her minister, Margaret may work hard to "give" and "give off" messages that she is the ideal mother. She may "give" by speaking glowingly about her children and how much she loves them, and "give off" by using a tone of voice, body language, and other forms of non-verbal communication to express that she is a wonderful mother. It is easier to control what is given versus given off. Consequently, some authors equate "given" with intended messages and "given off" with unintended messages. However, an individual uses both given and given off messages to create the front and back.

Goffman distinquishes one's "appearance" from one's "manner". Appearance is what the performer looks like, and in face-to-face communication, it is a significant source of information. A person can look at the performer and identify her/his race(s), ethnicity(ies), gender, height, weight, hair color, eye color, age, and other visible features used to label the individual. Appearance is difficult to change, and in many ways, it moves with us no matter what visual setting we are in. For example, Margaret is seen as white and female no matter where she goes in physical space. Manner, on the other hand, is how the performer acts, and that is much easier to change and changes with the setting.

When a performer interacts with another, both intended and unintended messages are communicated. Moreover, intended messages may be include both information and misinformation. For example, a person can intentionally inform a neighbor by saying that s/he is going to San Francisco next month and also misinform the neighbor by purposively lying about the duration of and reason for the trip. Goffman divides the communication of misinformation into two types: deceiving and feigning. A performer deceives another by giving messages that are intended to misinform, that is, by verbally communicating misinformation. On the other hand, a performer feigns by giving off messages that are intended to misinform, that is, by non-verbally communicating misinformation.

In text-only communication, a performer is not seen. Consequently, the performer's appearance and all other non-verbal messages are absent. The performer is reduced to her/his set of given messages, that is, her/his written word. As text, can one unintentionally communicate information that s/he does not want the audience to know? Moreover, as text, does the performer have greater ability to create, conceal, and falsify her/his identity(ies)?

------------
Bibliography:

Barnhart, Adam D. "Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." Obtained online at www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/CURRIC/soc/goffman.htm.

Cooley, Charles. 1902. "The Looking Glass Self" in Human Nature and the Social Order. Scribner's, New York, pp. 179-185. Found online at www2.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/DSS/Cooley/LKGLSSLF.HTML.

Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, New York. Obtained online at www2.pfeiffer.ed/~lridener/courses/GOFFSELF.HTML

Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden City, New York.

Mead, George Herbert. 1913. "The Social Self" in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. 10, pp. 374-380. Obtained online at http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Mead/default.html.

-------------------. 1925. "The Genesis of the Self and Social Control" in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25, pp. 251-277. Obtained online at http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Mead/default.html.

Gemeinschaft

2006-02-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 - 1936) was a German sociologist who explored differences among community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). The following quotes are from Tönnies's Community and Society: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and were found online at www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/courses/GEMEIN.HTML.

Family life is the general basis of life in the Gemeinschaft. It subsists in village and town life. The village community and the town themselves can be considered as large families, the various clans and houses representing the elementary organisms of its body; guilds, corporations, and offices, the tissues and organs of the town. Here original kinship and inherited status remain an essential, or at least the most important, condition of participating fully in common property and other rights. Strangers may be accepted and protected as serving-members or guests either temporarily or permanently. Thus, they can belong to the Gemeinschaft as objects, but not easily as agents and representatives of the Gemeinschaft.

Giddens Quotes

2006-02-09T19:27:00.000-05:00

The following quotes by Anthony Giddens appear on the BBC's website.

It is wrong to think of globalisation as just concerning the big systems, like the world financial order. Globalisation isn't only about what is 'out there', remote and far away from the individual. It is an 'in here' phenomenon too, influencing intimate and personal aspects of our lives. The debate about family values, for example, that is going on in many countries, might seem far removed from globalising influences. It isn't. Traditional family systems are becoming transformed, or are under strain, in many parts of the world, particularly as women stake claim to greater equality. There has never before been a society, so far as we know from the historical record, in which women have been even approximately equal to men. This is a truly global revolution in everyday life, whose consequences are being felt around the world in spheres from work to politics.

As tradition changes its role, however, new dynamics are introduced into our lives. These can be summarised as a push and pull between autonomy of action and compulsiveness on the one hand, and between cosmopolitanism and fundamentalism on the other. Where tradition has retreated, we are forced to live in a more open and reflective way. Autonomy and freedom can replace the hidden power of tradition with more open discussion and dialogue. But these freedoms bring other problems in their wake. A society living on the other side of nature and tradition - as nearly all Western countries now do - is one that calls for decision-making, in everyday life as elsewhere. The dark side of decision-making is the rise of addictions and compulsions. Something really intriguing, but also disturbing, is going on here. It is mostly confined to the developed countries, but is becoming seen among more middle class groups elsewhere too. What I am speaking about is the spread of the idea and the reality of addiction. The notion of addiction was originally applied exclusively to alcoholism and drug-taking. But now any area of activity can become invaded by it. One can be addicted to work, exercise, food, sex - or even love. The reason is that these activities, and other parts of life too, are much less structured by tradition and custom than once they were.

As the influence of tradition and custom shrink on a world-wide level, the very basis of our self-identity - our sense of self - changes. In more traditional situations, a sense of self is sustained largely through the stability of the social positions of individuals in the community. Where tradition lapses, and life-style choice prevails, the self isn't exempt. Self-identity has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before. This explains why therapy and counselling of all kinds have become so popular in Western countries. When he initiated modern psychotherapy, Freud thought he was establishing a scientific treatment for neurosis. What he was in effect doing was constructing a method for the renewal of self-identity, in the early stages of a detraditionalising culture.

The democratising of democracy also depends upon the fostering of a strong civic culture. This is absolutely central. Markets cannot produce such a culture. Nor can a pluralism of special interest groups. We shouldn't think of there being only two sectors of society, the state and the marketplace - or the public and the private. In between is the area of civil society, including the family and other non-economic institutions. Building a democracy of the emotions, of which I spoke last time, is one part of a progressive civic culture. Civil society is the arena in which democratic attitudes, including tolerance, have to be developed. The civic sphere can be fostered by government, but is in its turn its cultural basis.

Can Cybercommunities Have Sacred/Spiritual Landmarks?

2006-02-04T11:29:00.000-05:00

My identity, that is, who I am, comes out of the community(ies) of which I am a member. In a community that is grounded in an area in physical space, it is easy for me to declare that I am a member of that community when I live within that area, although I may never speak to anyone. One could argue that there can be or is something special about communities in physical space that currently or can never exist in cyberspace. For example, there may be a physical landmark within the geographic boundaries of the community that is a sacred/spiritual and historical place for a community, for example, a mountain. Consequently, it is of great value to the community and to any member of that community. If I were a member of that community, it would shape who I am. Its physical presence would be reflected in rituals and practices. My location in physical space would be in relation to that sacred/spiritual place. Where is or will be the sacred/spiritual in cyberspace?

Technology, Society, Community, Family, and Self: Chapter One

2006-02-03T16:09:00.000-05:00

What effect does technology have on society and persons, families, and communities within that society? Is technology everything, in the sense, that it ultimately determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society? If so, when technology changes, do society, communities, families, and our thoughts and actions change as well? Or is technology nothing, in the sense, that it has no effect on the kind of society or communities that we live in, the structure of our families, or our thoughts and actions as members of society? Or still, is the correct answer somewhere in the middle? That is, does technology affect society, communities, families, and our thoughts and actions, AND at the same time, do our thoughts and actions, families, communities, and society affect technology?

According to those who believe in technological determinism, technological change is the cause of social change. Technology determines the kind of society and communities we live in, the structure of our families, and our thoughts and actions as members of that society. In Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the following passages are often quoted to argue that Marx was a technological determinist:

Social relations are closely bound up with production forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. (itals my emphasis)(Marx, 1963, p. 109)

The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarized as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which corresponds definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Marx, 1975, p. 425).

For Marxist technological determinists, such as the Orthodox Marxists Buzuev and Gorodnov, the evolution of technology is described by stages of technological development, which correspond to stages of social development. Thus, the handmill creates feudal society, and when the handmill is replaced by the steam-mill, feudal society is replaced by the capitalist society. In turn, the ultimate societal form emerges when capitalist technology is replaced by a new technology, which is hindered by the capitalist division of labor and system of private property; and consequently, the new technology necessitates their elimination and birth of a communist society.[1]

For Marx (and Orthodox Marxists), capitalist technology creates a fragmented society. Not only does it produce the system of private property and the division of labor, it also separates workers from themselves as species beings and separates individuals and families from their communities by creating and privileging private interests over common interests (Marx, 1998).[2] The community as a real, organic place of shared interests (and wills) becomes an illusion in capitalist society. What a real community is or should be is relegated to dreams, desires, and works of fiction.

In the 1960s, there was a U.S. television comedy show called The Andy Griffith Show. Andy was the sheriff of Mayberry, a small town in the south, where he lived with his son, Opie, and Aunt Bee. Mayberry was a homogeneous place, and everyone who lived there seemed to be respected as an individual and accepted as having a place in that community, even Otis the town drunk. Mayberry was a romanticized version of community, which had at its roots the vision of community described by Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel in the late 1800s. For both Tönnies and Simmel, a community was an organic whole characterized by its fellowship, custom, understanding, and consensus of its members and member families (Tönnies, 1963; Simmel, ; Fernback, 1997). Mayberry was an Americanized example of Gemeinschaft at its best, a small area on a map where folks lived together, knew each other, and were not coerced to remain silent or conform to fit into the community. [3]

The Andy Griffith Show was a television comedy show about folks in a community, but what has television as a technology/form of electronic media done for community? According to McLuhan (1964), television and other forms of electronic media are creating community by retribalizing the human race.[4] Satellite communication networks are eliminating differences in time and space, so that a person in Des Moines, Iowa, can see and hear on television what is going on at the moment in Cape Town, South Africa, or anywhere else on the planet. In this way, television is tearing down old boundaries and creating a "global village" of which everyone on the planet is a member. McLuhan's theory is grounded in a belief that the level of communication technology determines society, community, family, and how we think, feel, and act. Thus, it is another example of technological determinism. Moreover, it also presumes the existence of a natural law of inevitable progress.

In contrast to McLuhan, Putnam (2000) argues that television is contributing to the erosion of community, particularly, the erosion of U.S. communities as Americans withdraw from political and civic activities and retreat to their homes to watch television.[5] What it means to be politically involved is being transformed from engaging in political action to watching television news programs. Fundamental to Putnam's analysis of the community and the decline of civic participation in the U.S. after 1968 is the concept of "social capital," which "refers to connections among individuals — social connections and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them" (2000, p. 23).[6] Social capital is essential for community building and maintenance. However, when people substitute time watching television (being "couch potatoes") for time engaged in networks of civic engagement, such as bowling leagues, interfaith groups, or neighborhood associations, both bonding and bridging social capital decline and communities weaken.

Another and related factor in the decline of community in America, according to communitarians, is increasing individualism (Etzioni, ; Sandel, Bellah, ). In the U.S. the excesses of individualism have contributed to the creation of a society of increasing numbers of individuals, who instead of being embedded in community, are isolated from others and not directed by the community to act responsibly and reasonably (Etzioni, 2003).

Similar arguments have been and continue to be made regarding the effect that computer-mediated communication (CMC) has on society, communities, families, and individuals. In 1995, John Perry Barlow placed himself among the cheerleaders for CMC (and among utopians as well) when he stated in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel. I come from Cyberspace ... We are entering a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here ... Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

Barlow suggests that CMC will create new communities by creating opportunities for bridging social capital that did not exist before because of racism, sexism, and other kinds of prejudice.

ENDNOTES:
1. Critics of Marx and Orthodox Marxists, such as Kolakowski, argue that Marx's technological determinism is grounded in utopian ideals of a better world: it is believed that there is a natural law of technological/social evolution where communism is the end point of that evolution.
2. A person's "species being" is a person's true Self as a social being in a community where individual and common interests are in accord.
3. According to Tönnies, kinship (Gemeinschaft of blood), common place (Gemeinschaft of place), and shared meanings (Gemeinschaft of mind) combined in time and space to create a strong sense of community. Industrialization destroyed Gemeinschaft and replaced it with Gesellschaft, where relations were impersonal and calculative and private actions were favored over public works. Like Marx, Tönnies saw industrialization as a destroyer of community and creator of segregation. Industrialized society weakened bonds of kinship and devalued the importance of the family, which were critical to the strength of a community.
4. McLuhan argued that there are 4 stages of technological/social development: 1) Tribal Age, 2) Literate Age, 3) Print Age, and 4) Electronic Age. Changes in communication technology changes society, communities, families, and the way we think, feel, and act. The last stage retribalizes us all by unifying the planet.
5. Putnam was not the first to be concerned about the decline of communities. Ehrenheit's 1995 book The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America was concerned with the increasing political emphasis on expanding individual choices at the expense of community and civil authority.
6. Putnam's Bowling Alone is about social change, the debate about the rise and fall of community, and public concerns about the decline of U.S. communities. Putnam states,

Of babyboomers interviewed in 1987, 53 percent thought their parents' generation was better in terms of 'being a concerned citizen, involved in helping others in the community,' as compared with only 21 percent who thought their own generation was better. Fully 77 percent said the nation was worse off because of 'less involvement in community activities.' In 1992 three-quarters of the U.S. workforce said that 'the breakdown of community' and 'selfishness' were 'serious' or 'extremely serious' problems in America. In 1996 only 8 percent of all Americans said that 'honesty and integrity of the average American ' were improving, as compared with 50 percent of us who thought we were becoming less trustworthy. Those of us who said that people had become less civil over the preceding ten years outnumbered those who thought people had become more civil, 80 percent to 12 percent. In several surveys in 1999 two-thirds of Americans said that America's civic life had weakened in recent years, that sociall and moral values were higher when they were growing up, and that our society was focused more on the individual than the community. More than 80 percent said there should be more emphasis on community, even if that put more demands on individuals. Americans' concern about weakening community bonds may be misplaced or exaggerated, but a decent respect for the opinion of our fellow citizens suggests that we should explore the issue more thoroughly.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Buzuev, Vladimir and Gorodnov, Vladimir. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers. Moscow.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2003. "Communitarianism" in Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, Vol. 1, A-D. Karen Christiansen and David Levinson, eds. Sage Publications, New York, pp. 224 - 228.
Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth, and Dissolution. 1. The Founders. Oxford University Press, New York.
Mark, Karl. 1998. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction of the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY.
---------. 1975. Early Writings. Ed. Quintin Hoare. Random House, New York.
---------. 1963. The Poverty of Philosophy. International Publishers, New York.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster, New York.
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1963. Community and Society. Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. Harper & Row, NY.

Quotes on I

2006-02-02T19:51:00.000-05:00

In what Sense is 'I' a Social Conception? — The answer is this is apparently something as follows: 'I' is social in that the very essence of it is the assertion of self-will in a social medium of which the speaker is conscious. A sympathetic study of the early word will, I think, make this quite plain. 'I' is addressed to an audience — usually with some emphasis — and its purpose is to impress upon that audience the power ('I make go'), the wish ('I go play sand-pile'), the claim ('my mama'), the service ('I get it for you') of the speaker. Its use in solitude would be inconceivable (though the audience may, of course, be imaginery). To put it otherwise, 'I' is a differentiation in a vague body of personal ideas which is either self-conscious or social consciousness, as you please to look at it...(Charles Horton Cooley, 1908, p. )

On the other hand, the stuff that goes to make up the 'me' whom the 'I' addresses and whom he observes, is the experience which induced by this action of the 'I.' If the 'I' speaks, the 'me' hears. If the 'I' strikes, the 'me' feels the blow. Here again the 'me' consciousness is of the same character as that which arises from the action of the other upon him. That is, it is only as the individual finds himself acting with reference to himself as he acts towards others, that he becomes a subject to himself rather than an object, and only as he is affected by his own social conduct in the manner in which he is affected by that of others, that he becomes an object to his own social conduct (George Herbert Mead, 1913, p. 375)

Alan Watts

2006-02-01T12:44:00.000-05:00

It's Wednesday; I'm telecommuting today, and now it's my lunch break. Usually when I telecommute I play some CDs to provide background music while I work. However, this morning I listened to my favorite radio station, WMNF. This morning's programming included a talk by Alan Watts, who I find to be a wonderful speaker. His talks are humorous, insightful, and inspirational. He passed back in the early 1970s, but his thoughts put into words are timeless.

Who Am I in Cyberspace? Part One

2006-01-30T20:26:00.000-05:00

The characterization that one individual can make of another by virtue of being able directly to observe and hear that other is organized around two fundamental forms of identification: the categoric kind involving placing that other in one or more social categories, and the individual kind, whereby the subject under observation is locked to a uniquely distinquishing identity through appearance, tone of voice, mention of name or other person-differentiating device. This dual possibility — categoric and individual identification — is critical for interaction life in all communities except small isolated ones...(Goffman, 1983, p. 3).

In face-to-face interactions, I have a physical appearance which others see and use to place me into racial, ethnic, gender, age, and other social categories. Without saying or writing a word, my posture/stance, personal grooming, eye contact, clothing, facial expressions, use of personal space, smell, and physical gestures communicate who I am, both intentionally and unintentionally. However, in the world of cyberspace I have no physical body. I cannot point to my chest and say, "Here I am." As such, I cannot display myself as a physical entity for others to see my race, ethnicity, gender, age, height, weight, class, and other social categories based on visual inspection. Consequently, what I am in physical space is not me in cyberspace.

In a text-based virtual group or community, who I am is based entirely on what I write. I am nothing but words...

Bibliography:
Goffman, Erving. 1983. "The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address" in the American Sociological Review, Vol. 48, No. 1 (February), pp. 1 - 17.

Status and Discrimination in Online Groups

2006-01-27T21:12:00.000-05:00

Organization members who occupy high-status positions tend to dominate group discussions, which in turn gives them more power and social influence than members in low-status positions. For example, managers talk more than subordinates and men talk more than women. Higher-status members are more vocal even when they are not more expert on the topic under consideration... (Weisbrand et al., 1995, pp. 1124, 1125).

Does computer-mediated communication promote equality among members of a group? A person in cyberspace who communicates in text messages is not seen; s/he has no discernable body. Consequently, without face-to-face contact, physical features, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, that are used to determine or assign status to and discriminate against a person are missing. Also missing are the person's posture, proximity, touch, body movements, facial expression, eye behavior, smell, and vocal cues, which are used to communicate with others. One could say that in text-based cyberspace, every person is reduced to the written word.

Does this reduction of every group member to text eliminate racial, gender and other differences? The answer would be "Yes" if there were no verbal cues to differentiate members. However, the answer is "No." Text includes both intended and unintended cues that are used by readers to assign race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and other labels to the author.

Community and Social Networks, Part Two

2006-01-24T21:17:00.000-05:00

As stated in my January 22nd posting "Community and Social Networks, Part One", Wellman (1997) considers six characteristics of social networks:

Density,
Boundedness,
Range,
Exclusivity,
Social Control, and
Tie Strength.

When a network is dense, members of the network have direct and frequent contact with all other members; however, when a network is sparse, only a few members communicate directly and frequently with each other. In a tightly bounded network almost all of the relationships remain within the network's population; but, in a loosely bounded network members of the network communicate with people outside the network. An example of a dense, tightly bounded online group is the set of people on a distribution list within an organization in which anyone on the list can send and read messages with all others on the list, but no one shares those messages with people off the list. An example of a sparse, loosely bounded online group is a large public group where anyone can send and read messages with others on or off the list and where only a few within the group regularly communicate with each other.

Dense, bounded groups, such as an office distribution list, almost always have a small range, that is, the population within the group is fairly homogenous. On the other hand, sparse, unbounded groups tend to have a large range, meaning they tend to have a heterogenous population, which motivates a greater diversity of relationships. Some members of electronic groups prefer to and do have one-on-one conversations with other members via email whether the group supports exclusivity or not. However, if members of a group do not know any other member's email address or other personal contact information, then private conversations aren't going to happen because all contact is public among members.

Exclusivity is linked to social control. The ability of two members to carry on a conversation in private with and out of view of the rest of the group is dependent upon the control that someone or the group has over members' contacts with other members. In terms of an office group, it may be the group's supervisor or another higher up that works to ensure that everyone works together and communicates publicly. On the other hand, there may be a promise in the conditions of joining a group that all contacts with people in the group stay within the group. Sparse, unbounded groups tend to have less social control "because of their weak interconnectivity" (Wellman, 1997, p. 194).

One could expect that the strength of relationships in dense, bounded groups are stronger than those in sparse, unbounded groups; however, that is not necesssarily the case. If a dense, bounded group is composed of members who were involuntarily assigned by a supervisor to be in the group, the ties may be weak because members didn't come together out of shared interest or mutual gain. Instead, the reason d'être of the group may be to assist in the implementation and completion of a group project and nothing more than that. Just as friendships cannot be forced on people in real space, friendships cannot be forceably created in cyberspace. Strong ties, such as friendship, arise voluntarily. Strong ties tend to provide emotional support, companionship, goods and services, and a sense of belonging (Wellman, 1997, p. 196).

Bibliography:
Wellman, Barry. 1997. "An Electronic Group Is Virtually A Social Network" in Culture of the Internet. Sara Kiesler, ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers; Mahwah, New Jersey, pp. 179-208.

Community and Social Networks, Part One

2006-01-22T20:00:00.000-05:00

What is the connection between community and social networks? According to Quan-Haase and Wellman (2002, p. 2), a community can be defined as "social networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity." When a community is understood this way, it is not limited to a village or town or other place in physical space. Moreover, one does not have to have face-to-face contact with other members of a community when it is a set of social networks.

The Internet is a collection of computer networks, and when the Internet connects people and organizations, it forms an "infrastructure of social networks" (Wellman and Hampton, p. 3). Thus, Wellman (Sept. 2001) contends that "computer networks are inherently social networks." As stated by Wellman in 1997 (pp. 185, 186):

Sitting in the privacy of their homes, people connect online with fellow members of newsgroups and other, usually specialized forms of virtual communities ... Such virtual communities inherently connect all directly with all — everyone can read all messages — but their size and fragmentation means that few members are strongly connected. Hence computer-supported social networks are not destroying community but are responding to, resonating with, and extending the types of community that have already become prevalent in the developed Western world.

Not all social networks are the same. Wellman (1997) considers six characteristics of social networks:

Density, which refers to the extent and frequency of contact among all members. The greater the contact and frequency of contact among members, the greater the density.
Boundedness, which "refers to the proportion of network members' ties that stay within the boundaries of the social network" (p. 187). Within tightly bounded networks almost all contact remains within the population.
Range, which describes how large and diverse the population is within its boundaries. When social networks are dense and bounded, they tend to have a small range, that is there tends to be more homogenity in social characteristics of network members (p. 190).
Exclusivity, which refers to the ability to contact other members of a community. The more exclusive social networks are, the less access members of a community have to each other.
Social Control, which considers group pressure or "community influentials" that may create, constrain, and manage a person's contacts and exchanges (p. 194). There tends to be more social control in dense, bounded groups than sparce, unbounded ones.
Strength of Relationships, which is a "multidimensional construct encompassing the usually correlated variables of a relationship's social closeness, voluntariness, 'multiplexity' (breadth), and to a lesser extent, frequency of contact" (p. 195). People with strong ties tend to offer each other more and a wider variety of social support in the form of "emotional aid, goods and services, companionship, and a sense of belonging" (p. 196).

In Part Two, I will explore how these 6 characteristics are used to consider differences in social networks and communities in cyberspace.

END OF PART ONE

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Quan-Haase, Anabel and Wellman, Barry. November 12, 2002. "How does the Internet Affect Social Capital?" Forthcoming in Marleen Huysman and Volker Wulf, Eds. IT and Social Capital.
Wellman, Barry. September 14, 2001. "Computer Networks As Social Networks" in Science, Vol. 293, No. 14, pp. 2031-2034.
------------. 1997. "An Electronic Group Is Virtually A Social Network" in Culture of the Internet. Sara Kiesler, ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers; Mahway, New Jersey; pp. 179-208.
------------, and Hampton, Keith. 1999. "Living Networked On and Offline" in Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 6 (November), pp. 648-654.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Creature from Other Galaxy Found in Florida!

2006-01-21T18:41:00.000-05:00

World Exclusive: Scientists from NASA have discovered a creature from another galaxy living in Florida! According to an eye witness who is a relative of a friend of a distant cousin of a local bartender, the space creature's spacecraft crash landed on the west coast of Florida in 2004, and the creature was recently seen lounging in a house where this world exclusive photo was taken. The creature looks like a domestic house cat with glowing eyes.

Global Village?

2006-01-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

In 1962 Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, "global village" in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. The idea of a global village was further developed in his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. According to McLuhan, the development of television and satellite communication networks was offering coverage of events across the globe in real time, thereby collapsing time and distance, which was turning the world into a global village.

McLuhan's prediction of a global village created by television did not come true. However, there are some who believe that the Internet will create such a place. However, for such a village to exist, the Internet will have to erode cultural differences and create a singular world culture. Yet, is a global village something everyone on the planet should aspire to create in the name of "one world, one people"? If so, for what reasons? Would it expand American cultural hegemony?

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal there is an interesting article by Christopher Rhoads entitled, "In Threat to Internet's Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives". The subtitle is "Rise of Developing Nations, Anti-U.S. Views Play Role; Pioneer Sounds the Alarm. A 'Root' Grows in Germany." A memorable quote is made by Khalad Fattal, who is head of a "nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Internet multilingual." Mr. Fattal says, "'There is no such thing as a global Internet today. ... You have only an English-language Internet that is deployed internationally. How is that empowering millions of Chinese or Arab citizens?"

A central issue concerns who has control of the Internet. As the article explains, the U.S.-based nonprofit organization Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) and the U.S. Department of Commerce have the sole power over what domain names are used and who controls each name. However, "[a]s the Internet's role grows around the world, some are uneasy with the notion that a U.S.-based body overseen by the U.S. government has sole power over what domain names are used and who controls each name. Other countries such as China also say Icann is too slow in forming domain names in non-Roman languages, hindering the development of an Internet culture in those countries." Last November at a United Nations summit in Tunis the U.S. delegation was challenged by "more than 170 countries to give up unilateral oversight of Icann." The U.S. countered by arguing that "the Internet is too valuable to tinker with or place under an international body like the U.N." At the same time, the article notes fears that "Washington could easily 'turn off' the domain name of a country it wanted to attack, crippling the Internet communications of that country's military and government." One could add that it would not have to be a military attack, but it could be an economic one as well.

Social Capital, Part Two: Is Cyberspace a Social Vacuum?

2006-01-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

Community and social capital seem to be inseparable terms. This statement is supported by sociologists, such as Ferlander (2003, p. 64) who states, "[s]ocial capital is the essence of community, as social connections are the aggregations that develop community, sense of identity and belonging." Furthermore, "[c]ommunity can be seen as the arena where social capital can be created and maintained" (ibid, p. 65). Although not as blunt as Ferlander, Putnam (2000) contends the two terms are "conceptual cousins" that are positively related.

A primary concern of Putnam's Bowling Alone is the decline of social capital and community ties in the United States, which Putnam suggests is due in part to more and more Americans withdrawing from their communities and, instead, staying at home to watch television. This withdrawal from public/social involvement has caused some to fear that the Internet will continue what television started: Americans will continue to withdraw from their communities as they devote more of their time to being alone in cyberspace and having virtual social connections, which will further erode real communities. But is cyberspace a social vacuum? Does our time there diminish our community involvement?

An essential link, but not the only link, between the concepts of "social capital" and "community" is "social networks" or "social connections." That this is an essential link is not lost on Wellman (1997, p. 181) who contends that "[b]y definition, people who use computer networks have social relationships with each other that are embedded in social networks." Wellman sees virtual social networks as creating, not destroying, communities:

Sitting in the privacy of their homes, people connect online with fellow members of newsgroups and other, usually specialized forms of virtual communities... Such virtual communities inherently connect all directly with all — everyone can read all messages — but their size and fragmentation means that few members are strongly connected. Hence computer-supported social networks are not destroying community but are responding to, resonating with, and extending the types of community that have already become prevalent in the developed Western world.

Unlike television, which promotes passivity, the Internet promotes interactivity and social networking. It extends community from the neighborhood into virtual spaces where people come together out of common interest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Ferlander, Sara. January 2003. THE INTERNET, SOCIAL CAPITAL AND LOCAL COMMUNITY. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Stirling, Department of Psychology. Online at www.crdlt.stir.ac.uk/Docs/SaraFerlanderPhD.pdf.

Pigg, Kenneth E. and Crank, Laura Duffy. 2004. "Building Community Social Capital: The Potential and Promise of Information and Communications Technologies" in The Journal of Community Informatics, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 58 - 73.

Wellman, Barry. 1997. "An Electronic Group Is Virtually A Social Network" in Culture of the Internet. Ed., Sara Kiesler. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers; Mahwah, New Jersey, pp. 179-208.

Execution of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

2006-01-16T16:04:00.000-05:00

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the U.S., a day to honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. Today on WMNF, my favorite local radio station, I heard a wonderful interview of William Pepper, author of the book An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. Dr. Pepper was the King Family's attorney in the 1999 legal trial King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Conspirators. The jury of that trial heard sufficient evidence to confirm that Martin Luther King was assassinated by a conspiracy that included Loyd Jowers and agencies of local, state and federal government. Nonetheless, the beliefs that James Earl Ray acted alone and killed Dr. King and that there was no conspiracy seem to live on despite the evidence to the contrary.

Social Capital, Part One

2006-01-14T18:47:00.000-05:00

The political economists of the nineteenth century from Marx to Marshall to Bellamy — took capital from the social point of view. Today's social capitalists, apparently take 'the social' from capital's point of view. The one reflected an age coming to terms with capital, the other an age cominng to capital for its terms. Then, 'social capital' expressed an explicit antithesis to an unsocial perspective upon capital, now, an implicit antithesis to a noncapitalist perspective on society (Farr, 2004, p. 25).

According to Putnam, the first known use of the term "social capital" was by West Virginia rural educator Lyda Hanifan in 1916 (2000). For Hanifan, social capital was:

those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit... The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself.... If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may be a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors (Putnam, 2000, chapter one).

If one scans the online and traditional literatures, it seems that there is widespread agreement that Putnam is correct in his assertion that Hanifan was the first to use the term. For examples, the following authors repeat that Hanifan was the first to explicitly use the term: Bagchi, Bertin and Sirvan, Herrman, Olate, Smith, and Wulf. However, conceptualist historian James Farr shows that Hanifan was not the first. Philosopher John Dewey used the term, although not defined the same way, in his 1900 publication The Elementary School Record and in subsequent works, which may have influenced Hanifan (Farr, 2004). Moreover, the term was in use at the time that Hanifan wrote about it. Furthermore, Farr demonstrates that Marx was the first to use the term "social capital" (gesellschaftliche Kapital) "as an aggegate or 'quantitative grouping' of individual capitalists that formed a fund for further production" in 1867 in Capital (ibid, p. 18). Consequently, what social capital is has not been the same since its use.

Recently, social capital has become a useful concept when studying virtual communities, in large part because of Putnam. According to Putnam, social capital "refers to social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity. ... Social networks have value" (Putnam in oecd Observer). Moreover, social capital "is comprised of a complex of obligations, expectations, norms, and trust embedded in the relations between members of a community. ... Whereas physical capital can be thought of as the tools and training that enhance individual productivity, social capital refers to the 'features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit (Putnam, 1995, p. 67)" (Young Larance, 1998, p. 6).

At present, there seems to be no universally accepted definition of social capital. However, Farr notes that "social capital is complexly conceptualized as the network of associations, activities, or relations that bind people together as a community via certain norms and psychological capacities, notably trust, which are essential for civil society and productive of future collective action or goods, in the manner of other forms of capital" (2003, p. 4).

End of part one.

Bibliography:
[1] Bagchi, Barnita. September 2, 2005. "Engendering ICT and social capital" at Digital Opportunity Channel, online at www.digitalopportunity.org.
[2] Bertin, Alexandre and Sirvan, Nicolas. [date unknown]. "Social Capital and the Capability Approach: A Social Economic Theory." Online at www.socialeconomics.org/uploads/Bertin-Sirvan.doc.
[3] Clarke, Rory J. March 2004. "Bowling together" in OECD Observer. Online at www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/1215/Bowling_together.html.
[4] Farr, James. 2003. "Social Capital: A Conceptual History" in Political Theory, vol. 31, no. X, pp. 1 - 28.
[5] Herrmann, Vera. [date unknown]. "The Concept of Social Capital in Network Analysis: Implications for Design and Intervention." Online at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/46/2382134.pdf.
[6] Olate, RenÃ. 2003. "Local Institutions, Social Capital and Capabilities: Challenges for Development and Social Intervention in Latin America." Online at http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/olatepaper.odf
[7] Smith, Mark K. 2000, 2001. "social capital" in Infed encyclopedia, The World Bank Group. Online at www1.worldbank.org/prem/poverty/scapital/topic/edu1.htm.
[8] Young Larance, Lisa. September 1998. "Building Social Capital from the Center: A Village-Level Investigation of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank." Online at www.movingideas.org/content/en/report_content/wealth_in_america.htm.

Modified 1/17/06

Cat Dives into Wardrobe!

2006-01-12T19:56:00.000-05:00

Major Milestones in the Evolution of Virtual Communities

2006-01-10T22:00:00.000-05:00

The following timeline of "significant developments in the evolution of virtual communities" is based on Karyn Y. Lu's article "Virtual identity and virtual community".

1975: Electronic mail and mailing list
According to Keith Lynch's timeline of net related terms and concepts, the first mailing list was the MSGGROUP for those on ARPANET. However, Lu does not identify the MSGGROUP as the first virtual community. Instead, she gives that honor to the ARPANET mailing list SF-LOVERS, which Lu says was created in 1978; however, Lynch gives SF-LOVERS a 1979 launching. Regardless of which was truly the first virtual community and what is the correct date of the creation of SF-LOVERS, there appears to be general agreement that the first virtual communities were mailing lists on ARPANET, which included
HUMAN-NETS, NETWORK-HACKERS, SF-LOVERS, and WINE-TASTERS.

1978: Bulletin Board System (BBS)
The first BBS was created in 1978 and was called the Computerized Bulletin Board System.

1978: Multi-User Domain/Dungeon (MUDs)
A MUD is a multi-player computer game. According to www.livinginternet.com, the first MUD was created in 1978. However, Wikipedia claims the first MUD was created in 1977. Lu's timeline lists the beginning of MUDs as 1979.

1979: Usenet
Usenet is a "distributed Internet discussion system" that was conceived in 1979 and implemented the following year.

1986: ListServ
ListServ is an automatic mailing list server/system, which was developed in 1986 for BITNET.

1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
An IRC is where people can get together on the Internet to have an online text conversation in real-time. The first IRC was created in 1998 in Finland as an alternative to a BBS.

1989: America On-Line (AOL)
In 1989 the Bulletin Board System company Quantum Computer Services changed its name to America On-line. The company's aggressive marketing strategy has greatly increased the number of people online and as members of online communities.

1991: Webcam
The Trojan Room coffee shop was the first online group to use a Webcam to send a live image.

1993: Doom
In 1993, Doom introduced the world to networked multiplayer gaming.

1994: ThePalace.com
An avatar is an image or graphical representation of a person online. According to Lu, when ThePalace chat software was created in 1994, it became the first site in cyberspace to create an avatar world. However, Wikipedia does not seem to support that view. Regardless of when avatars were created, they have become commonplace in online communities.

1995: Wiki sites
In 1995, WikiWikiWeb became the first wiki site. In a wiki, anyone can change or create new pages.

1996: Instant Messaging
The use of instant messaging exploded after November 1996 when Mirablis introduced ICQ, a free instant-messaging utility that anyone could use.

1999: Live Journal
Live Journal, which was created in 1999, is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a diary, journal, or blog. What made Live Journal stand out was its friends list.

1999: EverQuest and Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)
EverQuest was not the first MMORPG; however, its fancy graphics and "sheer scale ... was just something else." According to wikipedia, an MMORPG is "an online computer role-playing game in which a large number of players can interact together or against another in the same game at the same time."

1999: Napster
The original Napster was released in June 1999, and it was the first first peer-to-peer music sharing service. At that time it allowed community members to trade MP3 files free of charge.

2003: Friendster
Friendster is a free online community that is a social networking site. Although it was not the first social networking site, it was the first to be "based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon" (Wikipedia).

What's a Virtual Community? Can a Virtual Community Exist?

2006-01-08T11:37:00.000-05:00

What is a virtual community? Can a virtual community exist? According to the Dictionary.com, one definition of the word "virtual" refers to something that exists only in the imagination or is fake, such as virtual reality, which is simply a computer simulation of what is real. If one limits the definition of virtual to that which is unreal, then a virtual community is not real; it is no more than a pseudo- or simulated community. As a pseudo-community, it exists only in cyberspace when people are logged on to their computers.

Nonetheless, communities do exist in cyberspace. According to Rheingold, a virtual community is a social aggregation that emerges from the Net "when enough people carry on ... public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form [a web] of personal relationships in cyberspace." Fernbach & Thompson define virtual community as a set of "social relationships forged in cyberspace through repeated contact within a specified boundary or place )e.g., a conference or chat line) that is symbolically delineated by topic of interest." A definition that I like is inspired by Roberts: a "community is a group that you belong to, that you feel you belong to, and that you share important things [or interests] with," whether in the material world or in cyberspace.

The community where one lives is created and held together by geography and family: shared geography and genealogy. An online community, however, is created and held together by the shared interests of its members, who may live in different parts of the world and have no shared genealogy.

A Typology of Information Exchange Within Online Communities

2006-01-05T20:00:00.000-05:00

I recently found online the article "Information exchange in virtual communities: a typology" by Gary Burnett, which appears in the July 2000 issue of Information Research. For Burnett, almost all online communities "rely upon the exchange of texts between writers and readers in an ongoing discursive activity" (p. 2). Consequently, online communities "function as social spaces supporting textual 'conversations' through which participants can find both socio-emotional support and an active exchange of information" (pp. 2, 3). Burnett's typology considers the types of information exchange/behavior that occur in online communities.

Burnett divides information behaviors within online communities into two broad types: 1) Non-interactive behaviors, and 2) Interactive behaviors. The classic example of a non-interactive behavior is "'lurking,'" when someone reads messages written by others, but does not write, and, consequently, is among the "largely invisible." [1] Interactive behaviors, on the other hand, involve writing messages as well as reading others' messages. Burnett divides interactive behaviors into two essential types: A) Hostile interactive behaviors, and B) Collaborative or positive interactive behaviors. Hostile interactive behaviors are "a sort of verbal violence" that can involve either a few participants or an entire community. Burnett identifies four types of hostile interactive behaviors. First, and the most common form of hostile interactive behavior, is "flaming," which is "simply online ad-hominem argumentation, aiming neither for logic nor for persuasion, but purely and bluntly at insult" (p. 14).[2] Second, is "trolling," which is "deliberately posting a message for the purpose of eliciting an intemperate response" (p. 15).[3] The third form of hostile interactive behavior is spamming, sending unsolicited and unwanted emails and messages; and fourth, is "cyber-rape" or virtual rape, which is the most violent exchange of messages. The most well-known example of cyber-rape occured in Lambda Moo, and is discussed in a November post of this blog.

Burnett divides Collaborative Interactive behaviors into two primary categories: 1) behaviors "not specifically oriented toward information" and 2) behaviors "directly related to either information seeking or to providing information to other community members" (p. 18). Behaviors that ARE NOT specifically oriented toward information are divided into three types: A) Neutral behaviors (pleasantries and gossip), B) Humorous behaviors (language games and other types of play), and C) Empathetic behaviors (emotional support). Behaviors that ARE specifically oriented toward information include 3 types: 1) Announcements; 2) Queries or Specific Requests for Information, with queries i) made by other community members, ii) taken outside the community, or iii) presented directly to the community; and 3) Directed Group Projects.

1. Although invisible to the community, lurkers are engaged in "significant information-gathering activities" (p. 13).
2. For more on flaming, see Andrew Heenan's Guide to Flaming and wikipedia's definition of the term.
3. For more on trolling, see wikipedia's definition and Urban75's discussion of the term.

Brokeback Mountain

2006-01-04T16:17:00.000-05:00

I am looking forward to seeing the movie, Brokeback Mountain, this weekend at either the Burns Court Cinema in Sarasota or the Tampa Theatre in Tampa. After doing a word search of "Brokeback Mountain" in Blogger, I found at the blog, Just Keepin it Real, a copy of a letter about the movie by Larry David, which is a great satirical piece that counters some of the homophobic commentary about the movie.

Fort DeSoto Park

2006-01-03T18:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day, so we went with friends to Fort DeSoto Park, which is located in St. Petersburg. In addition to its beautiful beaches, especially its North Beach, which was rated as the U.S.'s top beach in 2005, the park gives great views of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Myakka River State Park

2006-01-01T18:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a fine day for exploring Myakaa River State Park, which is one of Florida's oldest and largest state parks. It's a great place to see birds and alligators, as shown in the accompanying photo.

WHAT A DAY FOR A MASSAGE!

2005-12-30T17:22:00.000-05:00

It's a long holiday weekend. In the photo above is Princess. She has taken off her watch and is waiting for a massage.

Blog Publishes Memos Showing British Complicity in Use of Torture

2005-12-30T16:36:00.000-05:00

This morning on NPR, I heard a report that former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, had published documents showing the complicity of the British Government in the use of torture to extract information. The U.S. blog, Daily Kos, links to Murray's blog and the documents. According to Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, the Uzebistan government uses torture not just for the U.S. and its allies, but also against its own people.

Red Sox Nation and Return of the Curse

2005-12-27T18:53:00.000-05:00

I am a member of Boston Red Sox Nation. Being a Red Sox fan has meant experiencing the highs and lows of a team that, until 2004, seemed cursed because it had not won the World Series sice 1918. That the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 on the night of a total lunar eclipse while I was in New Orleans is memorable.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, rivalry in major league baseball is the one between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees. That the Red Sox were down 3 games to none against the Yankees and came back and won 4 straight in the American League Championship Series in 2004 is nothing short of miraculous given the talent that the Yankees had. IT WAS A GREAT TIME TO BE A MEMBER OF RED SOX NATION!

That was then and, well, today is a different story. Red Sox management have dismantled the 2004 team that won it all. Among the players that are gone are Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, Johnny Damon, and Bill Mueller. It seems the curse has returned, which is a Red Sox management that alienates and gets rid of our best players. But, I guess the management doesn't care because it still will sell out Fenway Park night after night.

Merry Christmas, Hyvaa Joulua, God Jul

2005-12-25T18:44:00.000-05:00

It's December 25th, which means for many in the U.S., Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere, it's Christmas, which is a day for celebrating with family and friends, which means we are with family and friends and this is a very short post.

The Sopranos

2005-12-20T20:25:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite television shows is The Sopranos on HBO. A fan site that I like is thesopranos.com. The various predictions for season 6 at that fan site are well thought out and intriguing. I ask myself why I enjoy the show so much, because I hate the misogyny of Tony, Silvio, and the other male characters. Perhaps, I enjoy the show because of the way it offers the viewer the opportunity to gaze into the private lives of underworld figures, who aren't usually seen. For Tony and his crew, it's all about doing whatever to get money, and lots of it, regardless of who they hurt and how they get it. Just like the movie The Godfather, The Sopranos shows that capitalism and crime go very well together.

Community as Superorganism?

2005-12-19T19:48:00.000-05:00

According to the Seattle Community Network, a "community is not just a collection of individual human beings. It is a super-organism that belongs to and is part of culture, composed of interactions between people, everything that is learned" (my emphasis). That a community is equated to a superorganism is reminiscent of plant ecologist Frederick Clements' argument that a plant community is literally a superorganism (Hubbell). Whether a community is literally or figuratively a superorganism, such thinking contradicts the methodological individualists, who posit that society or community is nothing more than a collection of individual actors. Another metaphor, but from chemistry, is that two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen combine to create water, which is unlike its constituent elements, but, at the same time, is essentially H 2 O. Are communities more than the sum of their individual members? Do interrelationships within a community create things that would not result from individual actions without community?

Birds in Pond

2005-12-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

This morning there were more birds than usual by and in the pond. Hooded mergansers were busy fishing in unison, and a little blue heron and what-looks-like a short billed dowitcher were always close by on shore. Out of the frame were mallards, an egret, and a wood stork.

Thoughts on Community

2005-12-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

Is a community simply a synonym for village, town, city, or other area in geographic space, such as Lanesville, where I grew up? Or is a community a group of people with something in common, such as the place where they live, religious beliefs or sexual orientation.

Does a community emerge whenever a group of people have something in common? For example, is a group of people who go to the same New Year's Eve party or concert a community? What distinquishes a community from a mob or ad hoc gathering? When does a group of people with something in common become a community?

As a child, through the choices and ethnic backgrounds of my parents, I became a member of the Lanesville community, the local Lutheran Church community, and the Finnish-American community, which, for me, were communities bounded in physical, personal, and social space, with their own different and shared histories. My home was in Lanesville; I went to school in Lanesville; I went to church in Lanesville; I visited relatives in Lanesville and adjoining Pigeon Cove; I played with friends in Lanesville; I bought things at stores in Lanesville; and I fished, swam, skated, and more in Lanesville. Lanesville was a very important place for my first-generation American father and mother because it rooted them in multiple overlapping and supporting communities. That reminds me of a poem that I read years ago, which was written by a Swedish or Finnish immigrant, and when translated into English is, "A Tree That Only Leafs." The poem describes a tree that produces leaves; however, it lacks roots, which is probably how many immigrants, like my Finnish grandparents, felt. They survived and seemed to thrive in their new place; however, they never felt rooted, rooted in community(ies).

Online News, Blogs, and Journalism

2005-12-15T21:02:00.000-05:00

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel. I come from cyberspace ... We are entering a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, and there is no matter here... Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws ... that claim to own speech itself through the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish. A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow, February 8, 1996

Introduction:
As stated in my December 11th post, during a month in 1998, an independent online news operation, the Drudge Report, was in competition with and beat established media giants. Matt Drudge's one-man tablog beat newspapers and broadcast news outlets to three of the biggest stories of the 1990s in one week. The success of his Web site supported the hopes and dreams of those that believed the Internet would revolutionize societies by creating bottom-up political-economic structures, which would include legions of global citizen reporters.[1]

Advantages of Online News:
Drudge's scoops made it very clear that a Web site had many advantages over print and broadcast news sources. First, the speed with which he could publish and distribute a story in his Drudge Report was immediate and instantaneous. After a source gave him the information for a story, he was able to put the story out on the Web immediately and distribute it instantaneously through cyberspace. Second, Drudge could publish and distribute a story at any time of the day or week; his was a 24-hour production cycle, unlike newspapers that published once a day, news magazines that published once a week, or radio and television news broadcasts that occurred at prescheduled hours each day. Third, unlike the traditional news business, which had substantial barriers to entry, there were almost no barriers to entry into online news. All Drudge needed to create the Drudge Report was a computer, modem, Web publishing software, and online access. Fourth, he could link his story to other stories within his Web site or other Web sites, thereby adding details that newspaper, magazine, and broadcasting outlets could not. Fifth, Drudge's Web site could be interactive, inviting readers to comment on posts and supply new information, unlike newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasts, which limited reader and audience participation to "letters to the editor" and call-in talk shows. Sixth, the Drudge Report was available on demand, and he could email readers on his mailing list whenever a new story broke. Seventh, Drudge's Web site was a very inexpensive way to publish and distribute stories. Eight, and finally, stories in the Drudge Report were infotainment -- a mix of a few facts with a lot of attitude and gossip, which seemed to have entertainment value, and which was much cheaper to produce than news stories based on standard journalistic practices, which involved fact checking and investigative reporting.

The Internet as a source of news (or gossip) did not begin with the creation of the Drudge Report in 1995. Online news sites started in July 1980 when The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio offered an electronic edition via CompuServe (Carlson), and by 1982, the number grew to 11 newspapers with electronic editions online, also via CompuServe (ibid). By the end of the 1980s a "handful of [established] papers and broadcasters [had] started dial-up bulletin board systems" that were plain text and included classified advertisements, business and entertainment listings, and some news headlines; and most were affiliated with dial-up platforms, such as CompuServe (Palser). In 1992, the Tribune Company launched Chicago Online on AOL, and a year later Chicago Online began publishing the entire newspaper online (Palser, Carlson). In April 1993, there were only 12 North American dailies on line according to the Newspaper Association of America (Palser); however, after the release of the Web browsers Mosaic in 1993 and Netscape 1.0 in 1994, the numbers changed significantly to 20 in April 1994 and 60 in 1995 (ibid). In 1995 the Boston Globe and Raleigh, North Carolina's, News & Observer were among a group of newspapers that debuted their sites on the open Internet. Up until then newspapers' online editions were limited to people who used a particular dial-up service, such as AOL (ibid). In August 1995, CNN launched its news site, CNN.com, and in July 1996, MSNBC went online; and both quickly became the U.S.'s top online news sites (Palser, Carlson). By 1996, most of the national news organizations, print and broadcast, in the U.S. had gone online and established separate online newsrooms and business units (Palser). Online editors quickly realized and acted on the advantages of the 24-hour news cycle that the Internet made possible, which caused them to scoop their slower print and broadcast counterparts (Scott 2005). By the late 1990s, local newspapers and broadcasters had moved into cyberspace as well, so that by 2000, "there was scarely a newsroom in the [U.S.] that didn't have a Web presence" (Palser).

Web sites of national and local print and broadcast news organizations were not the only online news sites. Portals, such as Yahoo! and AOL, created news sites that collected and presented links to other organizations' stories. Also, Web-only, independent, for-profit news sources emerged, such as Salon.com in 1995, Cnet in 1995, Slate in 1996, and APB News in 1998. These Web-only news operations attracted many talented journalists away from the traditional media. Unfortunately, for these independent operations, "it was almost as expensive to produce high quality journalism online as it was in the [material] world -- except no was willing to pay for content on the Web", unless it was the "most exclusive" and could be sold to subscribers (Scott).

Dot Com Bust:
Generating online revenues was a BIG problem. Studies in 2000 showed that the percentage of Web users that were clicking on banner and button ads had fallen to 0.1 percent (Carlson). The lack of advertising and subscription revenues experienced by both established and independent for-profit news organizations led to many cuts in online news staffs during the dot com bust. In June 2000, APBNews, which had received awards for superior journalism, was $7 million in debt and had only $50,000 in the bank. All of its staff was cut, and the APBNews.com name, Web site, domain names, and other assets were sold in September of that year. Three months later, Salon.com cut 20 percent of its staff. Among the established media giants, in 2000, CBS cut almost 25 percent of its Internet staff in June; NBC Internet cut 20 percent of its staff in August, and the Tribune Company laid off 34 employees from its Interactive department in October, of which 20 of the employees were from LATimes.com. And in 2001, 130 employees of CNN's interactive operation were laid off in January, and that same month, the New York Times cut 17 percent of its Internet staff.

Not all online news sites were damaged by the dot com crash. In fact, during the crash, "most of the nonprofit sites, institutional zines, and blogs not only survived, but flourished," in part, because of their unique content, and also because of either volunteer labor or user support (Scott).

Emails, Blogs, and Other Online News Sources of News After September 11th
Just as stories in and about Drudge's tablog boosted the use of Internet news sites during coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the attacks on September 11, 2001, also increased traffic on the Internet. Emails were a major communication tool after the planes hit the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. According to a study conducted by the UCLA Internet Project, 57.1 percent of email users -- more than 100 million Americans -- received or sent messages of emotional support, messages of concern, or questions about victims of the attacks. Although blogs and other Web sites were considered to be a minor source of news about the attacks, they were more useful in coordinating efforts after the attacks, and are and will be useful in analyzing that moment in history. The U.S. Library of Congress has a September 11, 2001, Web Archive. In the archive are Web sites produced by individuals/volunteers, public interest/advocacy groups, and others. For examples,some of the archived Web sites produced by an "individual/volunteer" are: How to Find Your Loved Ones, Shoulder to Shoulder, The City Stories Project, Alternative Asian Voices WTC Trajedy Page, Michael Moore, Kottke.org and Wrongwaygoback: World Trade Center Sequence of Events. And some of the archived Web sites produced by "public interest/advocacy groups" are: Amnesty International USA, Index on Censorship, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Blogs and Journalism:
One of the Web sites listed above, Kottke.org, is a well known blog created by Jason Kottke, and because of its success, Kottke is now a professional blogger. The posts from Kottke's site that are archived in the September 11, 2001, Web Archive are a mix of news and comments regarding the 9-11 attacks and other social events, combined with personal stories and observations. Kottke.org is both an informing and entertaining blog; however, one could argue that, although it is a fine example of personal publishing, it is not an example of internet journalism. According to Rebecca Blood, blogs and journalism are "fundamentally different." Blogs that link to and comment about news reported by journalists are examples of "participatory media," whereas journalism is "characterized by strict adherence to accepted practices and standards" (ibid).[2] Journalists speak directly to witnesses and use multiple sources to fact-check a story, whereas bloggers do not. Nonetheless, blogs, such as Kottke.org and Atrios' Eshaton, give us insights into how the various media report on and analyze events, and the blogs can add to the analysis.[3]

Two Iraqis' blogs, The Baghdad Blog and Baghdad Burning, and two embedded reporters' blogs, Baghdad Blog and Back to Iraq blur the line between mainstream reporting and blogging. All 4 bloggers describe their lives in Iraq during the war. If descriptions and analysis of one's personal experiences and observations of war or other social events are not journalism, then none of the blogs are examples of journalism. Nonetheless, they are sources of news and analysis that compete against and complement each other.[4]

Conclusion:
Over time the utopian hopes of the technological determinists have faded. The Internet has and will not eliminate the media giants, and, in fact, Scott argues that they are creating new business models to make their Web sites more lucrative, which include future subscription fees and more infotainment. Nonetheless, there will also be independent online news outlets, such as OnMyNews, and blogs that report local, regional, and national news stories that compete against and complement the established media.

----------------------
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the public turned to Internet sites in large numbes as a news source during the Clinton-Lewinksy scandal, and "online users gravitated to the major national news sites: MSNBC, CNN Interactive, USAToday Online, nytimes.com, and washingtonpost.com" (Lasica 2000).
[2] In the article, "Weblogs and Journalism in the Age of Participatory Media," which is linked to above, it seems Blood accepts a positivist's notion of journalism, that a journalist can report on an event that is value-free.
[3] Atrios is credited for being the first to analyze comments made by Senator Trent Lott and posted on ABCNews.com that alluded favorably to the Jim Crow south. Eventually, more damaging information came out and Lott resigned. The Lott resignation put another blogger into the national spotlight.
[4] In his blog, Allbritton describes himself as the "first fully reader-funded journalist-blogger."

**Subtitles added December 20, 2005

State Violence

2005-12-13T21:54:00.000-05:00

A few hours ago we watched on Link TV the independent news show Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. Tonight's show was about the State murder of Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed in California. The mainstream press talks ABOUT him as an ex-gang member who never repented for murderous acts, while independent reporters, such as Goodman, talked WITH him to get his story, and what emerges from Goodman's interview is a thoughtful man, who regretted what he had done in his youth, who claimed that he did not commit the murder that gave him the death penalty, and who was, until he was executed, acting behind bars to stop kids from joining gangs.

Robbing Rodent Strikes Again!

2005-12-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

World Exclusive!!!
This blog has just been informed that a second store in the Tampa Bay area was robbed by the Golden Hamster less than one hour ago! The newest victim to the robbing rodent is the Pets R Us store in Pinellas Beach. According to a source with a cousin who is a friend of the boyfriend of a witness to the crime, the Golden Hamster forced a store employee and a customer to lie on the floor before grabbing bags of hamster treats and pine wood chips and running out of the store. According to a second source who is familiar with the police investigation of the first robbery, Tampa Bay Police have no clues as to the identity and whereabouts of the Golden Hamster; however, a reward of $500-worth of various pet products have been offered to anyone who has information that will lead to the arrest of this thief. Below is the recently released artist's sketch of the suspect that was commissioned after the first robbery. An area scientist believes the 6-foot hamster is not a man in a hamster costume, but actually a mutated hamster that escaped from a secret DOD laboratory in New Mexico.

A Tablog Gets National Media Attention

2005-12-11T11:37:00.000-05:00

The first generation of Web journalism was bland, irrelevant, and generally clueless. Nobody paid much attention to it. Then came the Clinton scandal and Starr report, and everything changed. It was the first time that official Washington, journalism, and the Internet bumped into one another nose to nose. (Jon Katz, quoted in Lasica 2000)

With Clinton-Lewinsky all notions that one could make clear cut distinctions between serious and less serious news outlets, even between news and non-news genres had been effectively destroyed. Whether one started the day by listening to National Public Radio or Howard Stern, by watching Good Morning America or CNN, by reading The New York Times or The Star, the topic was the same. (Williams & Delli Carpini 2000)

In 1998, an Internet tabloid newspaper (or tablog) better known to those with a penchant for Hollywood gossip and tidbits about political scandals beat established newspapers, news magazines, and television broadcasters to one of the stories of that decade. In a series of posts that began on the evening of Saturday, January 17, 1998 (23:32 PST), the Drudge Report broke the story that a former White House intern had claimed to have had a sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton. Although it may have been tempting to dismiss the first post as just another example of Matt Drudge's tablog's unfounded stories, such as when it reported that an anonymous Republican claimed court records existed to show that Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal had committed violent acts against his wife, the post attracted the attention of mainstream journalists and others for two reasons. First, not all of the tablog's exclusives were false; it did have previous, although rare, firsts that held up to scrutiny, such as when it broke the news that Connie Chung was being fired as co-chair of CBS Evening News in May 1997, that Princess Diana had been killed in a fatal car accident in August 1997, and that Republican Bob Dole had selected Jack Kemp to be his vice-presidental running mate in 1996.[1] Second, and perhaps more importantly, unlike most of its original stories that were gossip supplied by anonymous tipsters and then spiced with innuendo, the January 17th post seemed to be based on information compiled by a mainstream journalist for an established news magazine. Part of that famous first post is repeated below:

The Drudge Report has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top Newsweek suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. ... The Drudge Report has learned that tapes of intimate phone conversations exist.[2]

By early the next morning, the post was the topic of public-affairs forums of Usenet newsgroups, first, at alt.current-events.Clinton.whitewater and alt.impeach.clinton, then it moved on to "more mainstream political discussion groups" (BBC News). On ABC's Sunday morning program, This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, neoconservative commentator William Kristol was the first to mention the topic of the post in the mainstream media. Kristol said the story in Washington that morning was that Newsweek had killed a big story based on taped-recorded conversations of a former White House intern; however, his comment was dismissed by former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, who said the Drudge Report was a discredited gossip column, and its veracity questioned by Sam Donaldson, who argued that Newsweek may have delayed publishing the story until it had additional information (Brill 1998).

Drudge's post used innuendo to suggest that Newsweek editors' decision to pull Isikoff's story was motivated by their desire to protect the president, which played into the myth of a liberal press. According to Brill (1998), however, Newsweek chairman and editor in chief Richard Smith decided to delay publishing the story for 3 reasons: 1) Staff were unable to question Lewinsky directly, 2) Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had asked the magazine to delay publishing the story because he and his staff planned to use Lewinsky by having her wear a wire to get more information; and 3) Newsweek staff were not satisfied with what was heard and not heard about Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan on the audiotapes.[3]

On Monday, January 19th, talk of Drudge's first post continued. The Washington Post reported "that 'commentators on ABC discussed reports that Newsweek killed a ... sensational story alleging a long-running tryst involving Clinton while he's been president'" (Kalb 1998). Later that evening the story that the president had had sex with a former intern was mentioned on the CNBC talk show Equal Time (Kalb 1998), and Ann Coulter, who was a pundit on the show, advised viewers to read the Drudge Report. Also, during that day the story was mentioned on the Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club (Boston Globe January 22, 1998). Furthermore, at the end of the evening (22:33 PST), Drudge scooped the established media again when he identified the former White House intern as Monica Lewinsky:

The Drudge Report has learned that former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, 23, has been subpoenaed to give a deposition in the Paula Jones case.

On Tuesday, January 20th, the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader, known as a "staunchly conservative" newspaper, featured the story in an editorial entitled, "Bimbo Eruption," which cited the Drudge Report for its "reliable sources in the Washington media" (Kalb 1998; Boston Globe January 22, 1998; alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater). But it just wasn't "staunchly conservative" newspapers that were paying attention to the alleged scandal. According to Kalb (1998) and Brill (1998), there now seemed to be a race among established news sources to get their versions of the sex scandal out in cyberspace, print, and on the airwaves as soon as possible. That morning both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times published stories of a sex scandal on their Web sites, and later that day ABC News put the story on its Web site (Kalb 1998).

The next day, January 21st, both The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times made the sex scandal their feature stories of their printed editions. Both newspapers seemed to follow Matt Drudge's journalistic practice of using shadowy tipsters to make titilating accusations. First, the Post's story with the headline,"Clinton Accused of Urging Aide to Lie," used anonymous sources to suggest that there was unquestionable evidence that Clinton urged a witness to lie under oath:

Sources said [Linda] Tripp provided Starr with audiotapes of more than 10 conversations she had with Lewinsky over recent months in which Lewinsky graphically recounted details of a year-and-a-half-long affair she said she had with Clinton. In some of the conversations -- including one in recent days -- Lewinsky described Clinton and Jordan directing her to testify falsely in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against the president, according to sources.

Second, the Los Angeles Times' story, "Starr Examines Clinton Link to Female Intern," relied on vaguely identified sources to report its grand allegation:

A panel of federal judges has authorized the Whitewater independent counsel to examine whether President Clinton encouraged a woman to testify falsely regarding the nature of their relationship, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday. ... Sources told the Washington Post that the associate [of Lewinsky's who was familiar with her during her tenure at the White House] provided Starr with audiotapes of more than 10 conversations she had with Lewinsky over recent months in which Lewinsky graphically recounted details of a 1.5 year-year affair she said she had with Clinton.

Not to be outdone, ABC Radio and ABC's Good Morning America reported the allegation of a sexual affair between the president and Lewinsky and cited "a source with a witness familiar in the matter," who alleged that "Lewinsky could be heard on tape claiming the president told her to deny an affair and that Vernon Jordan 'instructed her to lie'" (Project for Excellence in Journalism).

The first news reports on the scandal by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and ABC were representative of the established media's early coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky story. Rumor, third-hand reports, and wild speculation were used to spin sensational stories more traditionally found in tabloid journalism, such as the Drudge Report (Lasica). However, there were some bright moments for the media, such as Michael Isikoff's January 21st article for Newsweek Interactive on AOL. Isikoff identified his sources as Kenneth "Starr's deputies" and Linda Tripp; furthermore, his report contradicted any story that suggested there was hard evidence that the president or Vernon Jordan had instructed Lewinsky to lie.

The Drudge Report continued to contribute to an evolving media frenzy, and on January 21, 1998, it scored its third scoop. That day it reported that there may exist physical evidence of a Clinton-Lewinsky sexual affair:

investigators have become convinced that there may be a DNA trail that could confirm President Clinton's sexual involvement with Lewinsky, a relationship that was captured in Lewinsky's own voice on an audiotape. Tripp has shared with investigators a conversation where Lewinsky allegedly confided that she kept a garment with Clinton's dried semen on it -- a garment she said she would never wash?

The same day, January 21st, a Newsweek special online report mentioned that Monica Lewinsky was heard to say on tape that the president had given her a dress. Newsweek's statement that the president gave Lewinsky a dress was mundane in comparison to Matt Drudge's story that there was presidential semen on an intern's dress. Drudge's story was an example of sensational journalism, and it got the attention of the established media so much so that in the days and weeks that followed, the established media was talking about and to Drudge as it produced a Clinton-Lewinsky blitzkrieg and made Drudge a celebrity and a new media power.[5]

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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Despite the Drudge Report's questionable record of presenting the news, it was considered, nonetheless, "something of a must-read" for many in the Washington press corps (Lasica 2000).
[2] Steven Brill is among many of those who suspect that it was Lucianne Goldberg who leaked the story to Matt Drudge.
[3] At that time there was a rumor that Vernon Jordan and/or President Clinton had asked Monica Lewinsky to lie to Kenneth Starr and his investigating team.
[4] According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism' s report, The Clinton/Lewinsky Story: How Accurate? How Fair?, Kenneth Starr was accused of using reporters to shape public opinion in the Lewinsky case by leaking prejudicial grand jury material. "The judge in charge of the Starr grand jury gave credence to those accusations by ordering Starr to show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court for leaks" (p. 6). By leaking information to the reporters, the media became actors in the stories they were reporting.
[5] The business departments of established media took notice. Drudge's style of reporting -- which used few facts, a lot of gossip, attitude, and innuendo -- was cheaper than traditional journalistic practices, such as investigative reporting and fact checking. Plus, his site regularly got a large number of hits, which suggested his style was entertaining as well. As corporate news departments have fallen to the pressures of the bottom line, there has been a tremendous rise in news as infotainment (Scott).

Breaking Story! Golden Hamster Robs Pet Store

2005-12-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

World Exclusive!

A source has just told this blog that a golden hamster robbed a Tampa area pet store at gun point this morning. After forcing the store manager and another employee to lie face down on the floor, the hamster tied the two with duct tape, then escaped with 15 to 20 pounds of aromatic wood chips. Both witnesses identified the hamster as a male, about 6 feet tail with golden brown hair. Both employees agreed that he was one of the largest and cutest golden hamsters that they have ever seen. "I just wanted to take him home and watch him run on the spinning wheel," said the store manager. A detective on the scene suspects the robbery was the work of the famous thief, the Golden Hamster, who is suspected to be a man in a beautifully custom-made golden hamster costume. The Tampa Bay police are asking for anyone who may have information about this robbery to call its tip line.

Great No-Bake Vegan Pie

2005-12-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

As someone who is lactose intolerant and prefers a vegetarian diet, I'm always looking for vegan recipes. A few months ago I found and tried the recipe at www.veganchef.com called Almond-Berry-licious Pie. The pie was easy to make, and it tasted great.

Another Cat Photo

2005-12-06T21:22:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of Beau, one of our three cats. Beau, like the other two, is FIV-positive. Before we got Buddy, Beau, and Princess, we had a wonderful cat named Tater, who was FIV-positive. Tater lived to be about 14 years of age despite his FIV. In honor of him, we adopted our current cats.

Hooded Mergansers and Bird Watching in Florida

2005-12-05T15:57:00.000-05:00

The winter months in the Tampa Bay area provide an opportunity to see migratory birds that are found in areas as far north as Canada during other seasons of the year, such as mergansers. Every morning for the past 2 weeks five or six hooded mergansers have been appearing in the pond in back of our house to fish.

For you serious and not-so-serious bird watchers, I strongly recommend that you check out the Great Florida Birding Trail, which is scheduled to officially open on January 14, 2006. The Great Florida Birding Trail is a 2000-mile highway trail which unifies existing and new birding sites throughout Florida.

Hiking in Little Manatee River State Park

2005-12-03T19:17:00.000-05:00

Today was a beautiful Saturday in December in the Tampa Bay area, so we decided to hike half of the 6-mile trail at the Little Manatee River State Park. The park is a great place to see native plants. Close to the trail we saw two large and distinctive spiders, which we believe are golden silk spiders, and which are shown in two of the photos. The first photo above that shows a spider includes a quarter ($0.25) so you can get some perspective of how large they are. It was our first time seeing these spiders and they really are beautiful. The local weather is supposed to be equally good tomorrow, so we will probably hit a local golf course, such as the Mangrove Bay Golf Course, which is a beautiful city course in St. Petersburg. The sunny days and warm temperatures in December and throughout the winter months are just part of what's great about living in the Tampa Bay area. We certainly don't miss the chilling temperatures, snow, or freezing rain that we experienced living up north.

Was It a Gulf Sturgeon in Tampa Bay?

2005-12-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday when I was walking along the shore of Tampa Bay, I thought I saw a Gulf sturgeon, which is a rare thing. Its head certainly made me think it was a sturgeon, but the body didn't seem as angled as shown in the photo on the National Marine Fisheries Service website.

Cat Dives into Cabinet!

2005-12-01T19:17:00.000-05:00

Here's Buddy. I had the cabinet door open only for a few seconds, turned my back, and he dove in.

End of November

2005-11-30T21:44:00.000-05:00

Time flies when you are having fun, and it's hard to believe that another month is over, and 2006 is only a month away. 2005 has been a pleasant year. We went to New Mexico for a week in July, which was great. Here's one photo from that trip.

Types of Blogs

2005-11-29T20:05:00.000-05:00

There is no general consensus regarding types of blogs. PC Magazine contributing editor, John C. Dvorak and President of Knowledge Jolt, Inc., Jack Vinson, claim there are only two basic categories of blogs. For Dvorak, they are: 1) the Traditional Blog, "where a Web surfer shares his online discoveries," and 2) the Web Diary, "where a person shares his or her thoughts of the day" (my emphasis).[1] Vinson's categories are very similar, if not essentially the same: 1) the Filtering Blog, which links to websites, frequently with commentary, and 2) the Exposition or Expository Blog, which is primarly about writing, rather than linking. Two examples of Dvorak's Traditional Blog and Vinson's Expository Blog are Robot Wisdom and Daily Kos. Two examples of the Web Diary or Expository Blog are Stephanie's Diary Blog and My Poetry Blog.

Wikipedia,however, identifies ten basic categories of blogs, which are based on differences of the primary focus of the blog:

News and Political: These blogs break, shape, and spin news stories and discuss political issues, usually from a particular ideological perspective. Popular examples are the right-wing blog, InstaPundit, and left-wing blog, Daily Kos. Other examples are Josh Marshall's blog, which was instrumental in forcing Trent Lott to resign his position as Senate Majority Leader, Scripting News, Wonkette, AndrewSullivan.com, and Howard and Jim Dean's blog, Blog for America.
Personal: These blogs focus on personal thoughts and experiences, and include diaries, poetry, prose, photos, and so on. Examples of these blogs are Stephanie's Diary Blog, Random Thoughts from a Random Girl, My Poetry Blog, David Byrne's Journal, and Judith Polakoff Photography.
Topical: These are blogs that focus on particular topics. Wikipedia divides this category into 7 sub-categories:
1. Health: These are Patient and Caregiver blogs. Two examples of Patient Blogs are My Breast Cancer Blog and Online Support Group for Those With MS. Two examples of Caregiver Blogs are The Patient's Doctor and The Caregiver's Blog.
2. Literary: These blogs are about literature. Three examples of Literary Blogs are Bookslut, The Elegant Variation, and Rake's Progress.
3. Travel: Travel Blogs focus on the journey of an individual or journeys of many. Examples of Travel Blogs are Arun's Travel Blog, Lorenzo Gariano's Everest Ascent 2005, and Travel Blog.
4. Research: These blogs present individual or group research or report findings of recent research. Examples are Medical Research Blog, Cross-Media Entertainment, and Schizophrenia Research Blog.
5. Legal: Blogs about the law that are created by lawyers and law students. Examples of Legal Blogs are Energy Legal Blog, a law student's blog by Nicholas Holtz, and Ars Boni Et Aequi, a blog about German law in English.
6. Media: The media is the focus of these blogs, with some serving as media watchdogs. Examples of Media Blogs are Bewildered Herd, Who Owns the Media?, and HypergeneMediaBlog.
7. Religious: These blogs discuss religious topics and aetheism. Examples of Religious Blogs are Velveteen Rabbi; SmartChristian Blog; The Buddhist Blog; the Quaker Blog, Consider the Lilies; and My Scientology.
Collaborative (which are also called Collective, Group, or Community Blogs): Everyone or individuals within a group can create posts in a Collaborative Blog. Two previously mentioned, Online Support Group for Those with MS and Travel Blog,, are Collaborative Blogs. Three other examples of Collaborative Blogs are dane101.com, Whedonesque, and the widely known MetaFilter.
Educational: These blogs are created by students or teachers or are about education. Two examples of Student Blogs are Earthshine Student Blog and this blog, Sunshine Skyways. Two examples of Teacher Blogs are Bernard's Blog and Teacher Blogs, which allows teachers to communicate with parents of their students. Two examples of blogs focused primarily on education are Dave's Educational Blog and pharyngula.
Directory: These blogs are about links; they collect numerous websites with interesting content. Robot Wisdom falls into this category, and so do a lot of News and Political Blogs. The Cosmetic Surgery Directory is another Directory Blog.
Forums/Other CMS systems: These blogs facilitate online discussions about topics selected by one of a few site owners. Only the site owners can post a new topic in Forum Blogs. Examples of Forum Blogs are Monterey Peninsula Real Estate Discussion Forum/Blog.
Business: There are 3 sub-categories of the Business Blog: Entrepreneurial, Corporate, and Advice.
1. Entrepreneurial: Blogs by entrepreneurs or about entrepreneurship. Examples of Entrepreneurial Blogs are Canadian Entrepreneur and The Entrepreneurial Mind.
2. Corporate: Blogs that are published by or with the support of a corporation. Examples of Corporate Blogs are KowaBunga! Technologies Corporate Blog, Google Corporate Blog, and HiWired's Corporate Blog, written by its tech support team.
3. Advice: Blogs that provide business advice or advise clients. Examples of Business Advice Blogs are All Business and Small Business Marketing Toolbox, which is offered by Hewlett Packard for its customer.
Personification: These blogs are written for a non-human, such as a cat or dog. Examples of Personification Blogs are I Crap in a Box, Bosco Dog, and The Shirley Letters, a hamster's blog.
Spam: Spam Blogs are divided into two sub-categories:
1. Link spam: Link Spam (also called Comment Spam) is spam found within a comment to a legitimate blog: the bogus comment includes links to the spammer's website. For more information and illustrations of Link Spam, check out the report, Detecting Spam Web Pages by Marc Najork.
2. Splogs: These are bogus websites, which doesn't have any written value; basically, it's a advertisement dressed up to look like a blog. Examples of Splogs are Refinance to a Low Rate Mortgage and Breast Enlargement Information.

Content is as diverse as the subjects that people talk about. Consequently,, one could could easily add the following and much much more to the above list:

Investment Blogs, which are blogs that give investment advice, such as The Big Picture.
Celebrity Blogs, such as actor Wil Wheaton's blog.
Food Blogs, which are all or mostly about food, such as Cooking With Amy.
Sports Blogs, such as a New York Yankees' fan's blog.
Movie Blogs, such as Film Fodder.
Tech Blogs, such as Tech Dirt.
Homelessness, such as The Homeless Guy, and
Sex Blogs, such as Twiddly Bits' Sex Blog.

Another interesting approach was used by Krishnamurthy, who proposed a classification scheme that divides blogs into four basic types along two dimensions: personal versus topical, and individual versus community, to create four quadrants.[2] The first type of blog combines the personal and individual, which is best illustrated by online diaries, such as. The second type combines the personal with community, and is represented by support group blogs, such as the Online Support Group for Those With MS. The third type combines the individual with topical, which is like an online column, such as Baghdad Burning. The fourth types combines community with topical, which has collaborative content, and is illustrated by online book clubs, such as Women Who Dare to Read.

Finally, as for my own attempt to classify blogs, I think one can propose that there are three basic categories, with each having multiple sub-categories. The first category would be blogs that are all links, no commentary, such as Robot Wisdom, that are structured solely to direct the viewer to other websites. One could say these blogs are externally driven. The second category would be blogs that include links and commentary, such as filter blogs. The third category would be blogs without links, such as diaries, which are structured solely to keep the viewer's attention within the blogger's webpage. Without links, a blog can be said to be internally focused. Each sub-category would be connected to the primary focus on the weblog, that is the content, such as news, politics, health, etc.

[1] That the author used "his" and not "her" to describe Traditional Bloggers and both "his" and "her" to describe the Web Diarist is included within an exploration of perceived gender differences in blogging in a future post.
[2] Herring, S.C., Scheidt, L.A., Bonus, S., and Wright, E. (2005) "Weblogs as a Bridging Genre" in Information, Technology & People, 18(2), 142-171.

Real Space and Virtual Space at Work and Home

2005-11-29T16:03:00.000-05:00

Bernard's Blog has an interesting post for November 26, 2005, with a link to a same-day article in the Guardian about MIT Professor, William J. Mitchell, who is the author of multiple books, such as Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City, and City of Bits: Space, Place, and Infobahn. Bernard notes in his post that he is particularly interested in Mitchell's "notion of the importance of 'unassigned space,'" because his department at Manchester Metropolitan University is curently exploring "new ways of using [its] buildings to go beyond the simple notions of lectures and seminars, to make more use of 'in-between spaces.'"

For Mitchell, as quoted in the Guardian, "Unassigned space, what used to be thought of as non-productive space, is actually where all the real action happens" in the wireless laptop culture. In cyberspace, "[y]our own address is not pinned to a place; it is simply an access code, with some associated storage space, to some computer located somewhere on the Net" (Mitchell). Consequently, for those who do information work, your work space can become ANY place where you can sit down, go online, and conduct information work, such as an airport terminal, hotel room, library, telecommuting center, coffee shop, train, one's home, or remote mountain cabin. Of course, whether your work space moves with you or not depends upon the technology and approval of your employer/institution and the acceptance of the owners/managers of commercial establishments and other places where you sit and go online. For example, although sitting at one's laptop at coffee shops may be accepted and encouraged by owners/managers of those venues, the same activity may not be welcome in many restaurants.

Currently, I telecommute once a week from my home, which, for me, is a welcome blending of real space and virtual space. I can wake up an hour later, forego an eighty-mile roundtrip drive, use my desktop to go online, and do my job. I'm home, but at work at the same time. I dream of the day that I can telecommute all of the time, so that I can spend 5 to 6 months in Vermont and the remaining months in Florida. I don't want a virtual Vermont to visit while I'm living in Florida; I want to really be there, and not experience it as a real virtuality.

Cats and Computers: What's Up With That?

2005-11-28T21:08:00.000-05:00

It never seems to fail. Any time that I am at my desktop computer, one of my cats HAS to jump up on the desk, stroll on or near the keyboard, block my view of the screen, then eventually sit on my lap. In fact, I have one on my lap right now. What is it that compels my feline friends to behave this way? I can walk into the family room, sit myself down on the couch, and put my feet up to watch tv, and odds are not one of my cats will jump on my lap or seek the same kind of attention.

Florida and Snowbirds

2005-11-27T20:01:00.000-05:00

Today was a beautiful November day in Florida, so we went to a local golf course to play a round. Rather than rent a cart, we walked the course and enjoyed the scenery, which included a young alligator, a few hawks, and snowbirds. Snowbirds are temporary residents of Florida that prefer Florida's warmer winter temperatures to snow and ice. They also seem to prefer life in slower motion. I suppose, since most, if not all, snowbirds are retirees, life is better after retiring from the "rat race." And why not savor life's moments when wintering in Margaritaville? Unfortunately, for folks like myself, who are in the fast lane (either by choice or circumstances), getting stuck behind a snowbird can be frustrating. They drive v...e...r...y s...l...o....w...l...y and sometimes change direction unexpectedly, especially if they are new to the area. Perhaps, if I were retired (which isn't going to happen soon unless I win the lottery), I would take my time and be in slower motion.

What Are Blogs? How Have Blogs Developed? PART TWO

2005-11-27T18:17:00.000-05:00

As stated in Part One, there were 23 weblogs known to exist in early 1999 according to a list published in Camworld (The Blog Herald: "A Short History of Blogging"). With so few blogs at that time, it is understandable how Rebecca Blood could have stated in The Weblog Handbook,, that "it was easy to read (daily) all of the weblogs on Cameron's list, and most interested people did."

The primary reason why there were relatively few blogs until mid-1999 is that their construction and maintenance required knowledge and skills typically limited to web developers. However, those knowledge and skill requirements ceased in July of 1999 when Pitas, the first free web-based tool designed to enable individuals to publish their own blogs easily and quickly was launched (Hadrian Summitt: "The Chronicles of Blogs"). Once Pitas was available, "suddenly there were hundreds of blogs" (Rebecca Blood: "Weblogs: A History and Perspective").

In August 1999, one month after Pitas was launched, two more blogging services were launched: Blogger, created by Pyra Labs, and Groksoup, created by Paul Kedrosky. By late 1999, Edit this Page and Velocinews (both under the umbrella of Userland) were released, which further increased the number of blogs (Jenna Thomson: "Blog History"). Now anyone could use any of these software products to quickly and easily create blogs without knowing anything about HTML or the structure of the World Wide Web. Futhermore, in late September of 1999, Diaryland was created, although at that time, personal journals/diaries were not considered to be blogs.

Early blogs were small in number and primarily or all about commenting on and linking to other websites; they pre-surfed and filtered news and information. However, the number of blogs exploded after 1999, and as the numbers increased and continued to increase, the content and format of blogs changed. Blog publishing software, especially Blogger, gave people the opportunity to dedicate a post to whatever topic(s) s/he chose to write about. Consequently, new blogs weren't just pre-surfing and filtering news and information as earlier blogs had done; instead, they were being used to tell personal stories, facilitate personal and group discussions, communicate news events, tell jokes, communicate other topics of interest, and explore new technology. Furthermore, they were being created and used by individuals, groups, schools, libraries, and businesses with little knowledge of and sometimes little interest in the nuances of the Web (ibid).

To say that there has been an explosion of blogs may be an understandment. According to Perseus, at the end of the first quarter in 2000, there were an estimated 29,500 blogs, and by the end of that year, 197,000 blogs. By the end of 2001, there were 951,000 blogs, and by the end of 2005, there is expected to be over 53.3 million blogs.

With tens of millions of blogs on the Web with varying content and format, definitions of a blog had to change and they did. Many definitions, but not all, now include personal journals and diaries as blogs, although purists, such as Ryan Kawailani Ozawa, continue to disagree. Nonetheless, whether a purist or not, a blog has become much more than it originally was. In the Fall 2003 issue of the Nieman Reports, Rebecca Blood adopted a broader definition, and defined a blog to be "a frequently updated Web site, with posts arranged in reverse chronological order, so new entries are always on top," although later in the same article she seems to retreat from that definition by adding that "Hypertext is fundamental to the practice of Weblogging."

Wikipedia defines a blog as "a website for which an individual or group generates text, photographs, viedo, audio files, and/or links, typically but not always on a daily or otherwise regular basis." According to Merriam-Webster, a blog is "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." Neither of these definitions suggests a blog must have links to and commentary about other Web sites. However, Ask Yahoo! retains a more traditional notion of a blog by defining a blog as a "personal or noncommercial web site that uses a dated log format (usually with the most recent addition at the top of the page) and contains links to other web sites along with commentary about those sites.

Perhaps, in time, blogs will become more standardized and commodified, and eventually there will be one definition that everyone agrees on. However, until that time, Wikipedia's definition is the one that I prefer because it goes beyond blogs comprised entirely of the written word to include photo, video, and audio blogs.

END OF PART TWO

Iris DeMent

2005-11-26T16:55:00.000-05:00

It's Saturday, and it has been a nice day to sit back, take care of home projects, and listen to music, such as Iris DeMent's album "Infamous Angel." I first became aware of Iris when her song, "Our Town," was played at the closing moments of the final episode of the U.S. television series, Northern Exposure. It's a sad and soulful song, and it was perfect background for the ending of the show. Two years ago my husband and I saw Iris perform in Alexandria, Virginia, at the Birchmere, and she was great. She puts a lot of feeling and thought into her lyrics and I just love her voice.

Latest Painting

2005-11-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of my latest painting. It's the first time that I've incorporated CDs into a painting.