Category Archives: nationalism

democracy, Education, Ethnography, folkloristics, informal learning, Learning, Nation-States, nationalism

Planting Landmines

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The ever-thoughtful Carl Dyke graciously provided me with this expression as a way to talk about edubloggers might call “lifelong learning.” Part of teaching is about exposing students to some notions which may have radical effects later on in their lives. This is especially true for us in social sciences as some of the things we discuss not only go against the grain of some well-ingrained notions but also connect with very intimate ideas people may hold.

I think the example we were using was the construction of ideas about Nation-States/Countries, Citizenship, and Democracy. Lots of people (and, clearly, most of our students) assume that the ideas we have about States and governance are continuous and even equivalent with those held by any group at any point of history. Simply put, national identity is taken as a “natural” idea. Which makes it hard for some people to discuss such issues in a historical perspective. This is one reason I enjoyed Appiah’s “Golden Nugget” idea so much (not to mention that his talk was quite entertaining). It’s a way to put the very notion of “Civilization” in perspective (without using an evolutionary model). Carl also provided me with references to Eugen Weber and to the Taviani Brothers’ Padre Padrone. We could even use scene 3 of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (video). All of these things are, in my mind, landmines. Actually, “mind landmines” or, erm, “landminds.” (Should I get a trademark?)

Of course, literature on nationalism (Benedict Anderson, Terence Ranger, Eric Hobsbawm, etc.) can also be used. Personally, I tend to like work on similar subjects by ethnographers like Regina Bendix and Kelly Askew.

Those “landminds” are only triggered when people start really looking into issues lying underneath society and politics. But when they explode, these landminds can be quite transformative. As per the deadly effects of the explosives from which they’re inspired, these landminds destroy some apparently strong intellectual models.

So, although I see landmines as a major problem, I do see part of my work as “planting landminds.”

Much less positive than the usual “planting the seeds of knowledge” metaphors, but also much more powerful.

ethnocentrism, journalism, media, Nation-States, nationalism, Orientalism, patriotism, personal, Places, ramblings, rants

Ethnocentrism and Toponymy (Draft Notes)

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This one is more of a rant. At least, it’s about a pet peeve. But I don’t think I’ll flesh it out unless I feel really motivated.

Basically, I wish people used more precise terms to designate different parts of the world and I can’t help but feel that there’s some ethnocentrism involved in the placenames used by many people including (or especially) journalists.

It’s really not about political correctness. It’s about accuracy, precision, clarity.

Terms I tend to like:

  • West Asia
  • Southwest Asia
  • Central Asia
  • Eurasia
  • North Asia
  • East Asia
  • South Asia
  • Southeast Asia
  • North Africa
  • West Africa
  • Central Africa
  • East Africa
  • Southern Africa
  • Northeastern Africa
  • Northwestern North America
  • Northeastern North America
  • Northeastern United States
  • Southeastern United States
  • Southwestern United States
  • Continental United States
  • Continental Europe
  • Southeastern Europe
  • South America

Term use I find just a bit tricky but still fit, for mostly historical reasons. I just wish they were more precise.

  • Americas
  • Europe
  • Central Europe
  • Eastern Europe
  • Western Europe
  • Northern Europe
  • Southern Europe
  • Scandinavia
  • Baltic
  • Balkans
  • New England
  • North America
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
  • MidWest
  • The North
  • The South
  • Central America
  • Caribbean
  • Antilles
  • Oceania

I also get slightly annoyed at the reliance on country names, especially in mainstream media, but I do understand why they seem so important to journalists and news-guzzlers.

Terms which rapidly get problematic:

  • “America” (Is it the continent, the “United States of,” or the very concept of the “New World?”)
  • Bible Belt
  • Sunbelt
  • Rust Belt
  • Middle America
  • Orient
  • Occident
  • The West
  • Black Africa («Afrique Noire»)
  • Latin America
  • Levant
  • Far East
  • Near East
  • Middle East

Of course, “Middle East” is the one I find most problematic. Not only has its meaning shifted over the years but it’s one of those terms which hides more than it reveals. Oh, sure, I enjoy ambiguity. But I like ambiguity when it’s purposeful, obvious. Honest. The type of ambiguity afforded “Middle East” is more than Orientalism. It’s halfhearted neo-colonialism.

Ah, well.

Austin, cultural anthropology, nationalism, patriotism, Texas, United States

Only in Austin: P. Terry's Burger Stand

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“Only in America” has become something of an expression, in the United States, to talk about things which are possibly only found in this country. As a cultural anthropologist, I can’t help but question the validity of those claims of “American exceptionalism” when I hear them. As a non-citizen, I tend to perceive those claims as rather nationalistic in tone.

But it’s all good.

And it can be fun to apply the same concept to Austin, as it’s a rather unique city. Austinites have almost a patriotic attachment to their city. It might even come from the fact that most of them come from elsewhere… 😉

As the name implies, P. Terry’s Burger Stand is a small hamburger restaurant. Had seen it before (it’s in my neighborhood) but didn’t really know what it was. Noticed that the Austin Chronicle’s readers poll had the place listed as Best Fast Food for 2007. Became intrigued, browsed their site…

As it turns out, they’re “Anti-Fast Food” and the owner opened the place after reading Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. They use “ethical” meat, get fresh produce every day, pay their employees decent wages, and seem to genuinely care about things besides profit. They play a bit of “Austin humor” in the fact that their vegetarian burgers are on the “South Austin Addition” part of their menu.

Had “The Double” as a combo, with iced tea as the drink. It didn’t really take longer than at a fast food to get the food ready. The tea was rather good (and unsweetened iced tea is one of the things I like about living in the South). The fries were nice, somewhere between typical fast food fries and genuine Belgian fries. Hadn’t noticed that the double was a cheeseburger (I don’t like processed cheese) but it was rather good as burgers come.

Things which surprise me for such a “high-minded” place:

  • The burger tastes almost exactly like a generic burger from a mainstream chain. Same type of sauce, iceberg lettuce, bun… Not that it’s a bad thing as it probably makes it easier to reach the “mainstream consumers.” But I somehow expected something which would be very unique in taste. Maybe not like La Paryse or even like Frite Alors. But at least like BellePro.
  • It’s mostly a drive-thru. As a compulsive pedestrian, I can’t help but associate drive-thrus with consumer culture, conspicuous consumption, etc. Not as “Anti-Fast Food” as a sit-in burger joint.
  • They use as much wrapping material as any fast food chain location would. It does make sense for a drive-thru to wrap the food but, since I ate on premises, I thought they might have used a reusable tray or something vaguely “ecological” like that.
  • In the “pleasant surprise” category: their food is very decently priced. Especially when compared to the average meal in this city. I also mean to imply that the portions are rather big, which does make their pricing even more impressive but also goes with the whole “American fast food” model.

Overall, a nice experience. And I do perceive something “typically Austin” about the place. It’s both very clearly connected with mainstream U.S. culture and just a bit on the quirky side of things. Noticed the same balance at the Book People bookstore and at the Magnolia Café diner (“Sorry, we’re open”). Not to mention all the coffeeshops like the Flipnotics Coffeespace from where I’m sending this blog entry.

arrogance, nationalism, open-source, podcasting, podcasts, Radio Open Source, United States

Lydon at His Best: Comeback Edition

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Already posted a blog entry about Radio Open Source (ROS) host Christopher Lydon being at his best when he gives guests a lot of room.

I’ve also been overtly critical of Lydon, in the past. Nothing personal. ROS is a show that gets me thinking and I tend to think critically. I still could have voiced my opinions in a softer manner but blogging, like other forms of online communication, often makes it too easy to use inflammatory language.

At one point, I even posted a remarkably arrogant entry about my perception of what ROS should do.

But, what’s funny, what the show has become is pretty much what I had in mind. Not in format. But in spirit. And it works quite well for me.

Lydon posted a detailed entry (apparently co-authored by ROS producer Mary McGrath) on the thought process involved in building the new ROS show:

Open Source » Blog Archive » As We Were Saying…

Despite the “peacock terms” used, the blog entry seems to imply a “leaner/meaner” ROS which gives much room for Lydon to do his best work. Since it started again a few weeks ago, the show has been focusing on topics and issues particularly dear to Lydon including Jazz, American cultural identity, U.S. politics, and Transcendentalism (those four are linked, of course). It’s much less of a radio show and much more of a an actual podcast as we have come to understand them in the four years since Lydon and Dave Winer “have done the first podcast in human history.” In other words Lydon, a (former) NYT journalist, has been able to adapt to podcasting, which he invented.

What is perhaps most counter-intuitive in Lydon’s adaptation is that he went from a typical “live radio talk show” format with guests and callers to a “conversation” show without callers, all the way to very focused shows with extended interviews of varying lengths. Which means that there’s in fact less of the “listener’s voice” in the show than there ever was. In fact, there seems to be a lot less comments about ROS episodes than there were before. Yet the show is more “podcasty.”

How?

Well, for one thing, there doesn’t seem to be as strict a release schedule as there would be on a radio show. While most podcasters say that regularity in episode releases is the key to a successful podcast, it seems to me that the scheduling flexibility afforded podcasts and blogs is a major part of their appeal. You don’t release something just because you have to. You release it because it’s as ready as you want it to be.

Then there’s the flexibility in length. Not that the variability is so great. Most episodes released since the comeback are between 30 and 45 minutes. Statistically significant, but not extreme variability in podcasting terms. The difference is more about what a rigid duration requirement does to a conversation. From simple conversational cues, it’s quite easy to spot which podcasts are live broadcasts, which are edited shows, and which are free-form. Won’t do a rundown right now but it would make for an interesting little paper.

The other dimension of the new ROS which makes it more podcasty is that it’s now clearly a Lydon show. He’s really doing his thing. With support from other people, but with his own passions in mind. He’s having fun. He’s being himself. And despite everything I’ve written about him as a host, I quite enjoy the honesty of a show centered on Lydon’s passions. As counter-intuitive as this might sound given the peacock terms used in the show’s blog, it makes for a less-arrogant show. Sure, it’s still involved in American nationalism/exceptionalism. But it’s now the representation of a specific series of voices, not a show pretending to represent everything and everyone.

So, in brief, I like it.

And, yes, it’s among the podcasts which make me think.

democracy, Internet, linkfest, nationalism, social networks, Web 2.0

Internet Democracy

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There’s been several “If X were a country” analogies, especially with MySpace as a target.

But then:

If the Internet was a country, it would be many times larger than the country of MySpace The Something Awful Forums

And then:

Nicholas Negroponte, the noted futurist and author of ‘Being Digital’, once observed that if the Internet were a country, it would be the nicest place on earth. Security and Vulnerability

Not to mention:

If the internet were a country, you’d know a relative of almost everybody. Scribd

It’d be interesting to use notions we have about actual countries to follow the analogy further. Some might think that the Internet could have a president but most of us seem to agree that the current structure of the Internet, without a specific “head of state,” works fairly well. We’ve known for a while that ordered anarchy can work:

In his classic study of the Nuer of the Southern Sudan Evans-Pritchard presents them as naked cattle-herders, seasonally nomadic, living in grass huts and supplementing their diet of animal products by horticulture. They form a congeries of tribes, sometimes gathering into loose federations but without central administration, rulers or grading of warriors or elders, and the age-sets into which they are divided have no corporate function. Evans-Pritchard speaks of ‘leopard-skin chiefs’ among them, but makes it clear that this position is backed by no coercive force. They show some specialisation but nothing amounting to a profession and cannot be said in any strict sense to have law, for there is no authority with power to adjudicate or enforce a verdict. In sum, ‘their state might be described as an ordered anarchy’. From Village to Empire

Associating the ‘Net with that anarchic model isn’t new. What seems to me a bit newer is to call that system “democratic” (especially in the context of User Generated Content, and other “Web 2.0” phenomena).

Even newer, to me at least, is the idea that the open and flexible nature of the Internet as it was originally designed might not be part of redesigns of the Internet.

Should we apply a more democratic model for the new Internet? How far should the “country” analogy affect the way we remodel the ‘Net?

The literature on nationalism and communities could help.

Anthropology, cultural awareness, culture, fieldwork, globalisation, nationalism, opinions, Orientalism, patriotism, Québec, ramblings, rants

Took a While

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The latest episode of Télé-Québec’s Les Francs Tireurs had a segment on international humatarian aid. (Especially of the Euro-American CICR and Reporters sans frontières style.) Maybe there are more (I don’t to watch much television) but this one was the first television report which had a thoughtful and insightful discussion of the negative impacts of humanitarian aid.

Of course, several parts of the discussion were probably edited out (hosts on the show are sometimes explicit about the “need” for editing) and it did sound at times like discussions that most anthropology students have had at one point or another (usually pretty early on in their training) but it was quite refreshing, especially when compared to the usual news reports on how bad the situation is supposed to be anywhere else in the world (i.e., any place where people live a different lifestyle).

What’s funny is that the two main participants in the show were quite honest about the biases of Quebec society in terms of humanitarian aid. This is a society (my own upbringing) in which people pride themselves to be “open-minded” (often meaning “more open-minded that you“). Yet people take humanitarian aid as a sacred principle, not to be criticised. Some aid workers in Africa and elsewhere seem to think that their mission (the religious connotations were discussed on the television show) is to help Others become more like them. Pretty charitable when you see your own habits as the only appropriate way to live, but pretty damaging when you transform knowledgeable human beings into the object of pity.

Academia, Canada, comment-fishing, French, linguistic anthropology, mailing-lists, Nation-States, nationalism, New Brunswick, Québec

Stable Bilingualism and Multilingualism in Canada

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This is a slightly edited version of one of my posts on the LingAnth mailing-list. Susan Ervin-Tripp had posted a message about endangered languages. I mused about possibilities for bilingualism or multilingualism to be stable. Claire Bowern described such patterns. As a follow-up, Peter Patrick mentioned the Canadian situation. As a Québécois, I felt compelled to post something about what I perceive Canadian bilingualism and multilingualism to be like. This is not meant as an expert opinion on the situation.

Without further ado…

Glad to see such an interesting discussion about language diversity. My two (Canadian) cents, to keep the ball rolling. (I’m sending those comments as a French-speaking linguistic anthropologist from Montreal who is not a specialist of Canada.)
Bilingualism in Canada is quite specific. Unless otherwise specified, the term “bilingual” refers to individuals who are fluent in both French and English. There is a perceived imbalance in the degree of “bilingualism” among French- and English-speakers. Bilingualism in other languages tends to be treated separately. Fluency is evaluated using many criteria, including “accent” and even eloquence.
English and French are the (only) two official languages in Canada. Official status for both languages has important consequences in federal politics and administration. Given the official status of both languages, bilingualism often implies advantages in professional placement. New Brunswick is the only province to be officially bilingual (it has the largest French-speaking population outside of Quebec); Quebec is officially French-speaking (with important political consequences); other provinces are officially English-speaking; territories follow federal regulations, though Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun has official status in Nunavut (not sure on the details).
Functional bilingualism can be said to be fairly stable in some specific regions. However, the situation in most French-speaking communities outside of Quebec is usually perceived as a potential switch from French to English: children of “inter-marriages” are likely to only speak English. This switch is perceived, in French-speaking communities, as tantamount to language loss. Language insecurity is at rather high levels in many French-speaking communities outside of Quebec.
In Quebec, the perceived likelihood that French would disappear has decreased dramatically over the past several years. In such a situation, bilingualism is infrequently perceived as a threat. French-speaking Quebeckers appear quite secure in their (our) language use and they (we) will often use English in multi-lingual situations, without any fear of language, status, or identity loss. Perhaps because of French language ideology, English-speakers fluent in French tend not to speak French with native speakers of the language (outside of formal contexts in which bilingualism might be expected).In short, the general model is one of monolingual communities (either French- or English-speaking) with bilingual individuals.Multilingualism is often seen as a completely separate issue. Apart from the status of the French language here, multilingualism in Canada seems fairly comparable to multilingualism in the U.S., despite significant differences in policies and in perceptions. A simplistic explanation of differences: for a relatively long time, Canadian policies have tended to emphasize the right for immigrant groups to “maintain their cultural identities,” including their native languages (the “mosaic” model instead of the “melting pot”); several languages besides English and Spanish are involved in social and political issues; multilingualism is probably more of an urban phenomenon throughout Canada (most of the Canadian population is concentrated in a relatively small number of cities); languages of First Nations/Aboriginal/Native/Autochtonous groups are the object of some concern but relatively little attention is paid to those issues by the general population.
Regardless of these issues, the three-generation pattern [monolingual to bilingual to monolingual] is perceived as the dominant one throughout Canada, with relatively few exceptions. Stable bilingualism in, say, Punjabi and English or Italian and French is usually limited to specific neighborhoods in one of Canada’s largest cities.
To briefly go back to the original article which sparked this discussion, language diversity in Canada is probably increasing but the notion that this diversity might threaten English is rather uncommon. One of the reasons might be that functional bilingualism is perceived favourably by many people.

I’m posting it here because I’d be delighted to get feedback on it. More specifically, I’d like to be proven wrong on some of those issues. The best way to overcome one’s own biases is to publicly discuss them and it’s quite possible that my perspective or that my observations are flawed.

In fact, I noticed after posting that message that the Northwest Territories (NT) follow their own language policies, giving official status to several Aboriginal languages. From a page on language rights:

The Official Languages Act recognizes the following Official Languages: Chipewyan, Cree, Dogrib, English, French, Gwich’in, Inuktitut, (including Inuvialuktun and Inuinnaqtun) and Slavey (including North and South Slavey). They are given equal status according to the individual provisions of the Act.

I originally thought that Nunavut (NU) was the only Canadian Territory with its own language policies (different from federal policies). My impression is now that the status of Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun in NU is “more official” than the status of Aboriginal languages in NT, but that might have to do with the fact that NU’s governmental website seems to be fully available in Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun and the NT one is only available in English. If I’m not mistaken, Yukon (YK) directly follows language policies from the federal government. Of the three territories, NU has the highest proportion of native speakers of neither English nor French (71.4% in 2001). NT has a much lower proportion of native speakers of neither English nor French (19.4% in 2001). YK only had 9.9% of native speakers of neither English nor French in 2001.

(Interesting statistics on languages in Canada’s provinces and territories.)One thing I’m really not sure about is how different Canada is from the United States in terms of languages of “First Nations/Aboriginal/Native/Autochtonous groups.” From colleagues who work with such groups, I get the impression that some groups are “better off” on one side of the U.S./Canada border than some other groups but that, maybe, the situation is fairly equivalent on either side. I would assume that such a pattern would apply to language policies but I don’t know much about any of this. My general impression is that Inuktitut, Ojibwa, and Cree languages are rather well-protected in Canada and that Navajo and Ojibwa are well-protected in the United States. This impression might have more to do with my rudimentary knowledge about the number of speakers of those languages in the United States and Canada than with actual language policies.Another thing that would merit discussion is the proportion of active bilinguals among French- and English-speaking communities. The overwhelming impression among French-speakers (at least in Quebec and New Brunswick) is that they (we) are the ones who “accommodate” English-speakers by speaking English even in situations in which French-speakers greatly outnumber English-speakers. However, it seems to be a contentious subject as English-speakers are said to feel that they are the ones accommodating French-speakers. Some English-speaking friends alluded to this, but language use is a bit too touchy a subject for conversation among “bilingual” friends. There’s a lot of research on those issues, some of which I have read, but I’m still not clear on what is really going there. So I was walking on egg shells when I wrote my message, trying not to make any specific claim about accommodation. As a French-speaker who has lived in both Quebec and New Brunswick, my strong impression is that we, in fact, do accommodate much more frequently than English-speakers would in most informal situations. I really would like to be proven wrong, as I can’t wrap my head around the discrepancy. I guess that this is the point at which I’m too much of a French-speaker.

Another reason for me to post that message here is that, apparently, a colleague would like to use my message (as is) in class. Not that I expect others to use it but in such a situation, it seems even more important for me to ensure that my message isn’t too inaccurate.

So, again, I’d be really happy if some people could post comments here telling me inaccuracies in my short explanation on language diversity in Canada.

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Individualism, Freedom, and Food

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A surprisingly superficial podcast episode on what could have been a very deep subject.

Open Source » Blog Archive » The End of Free Will?

start a conversation about manipulation, persuasion and freedom from choice

To summarize the main issue of that episode: is marketing and "upselling" by restaurant chains undermining the individual freedom to choose quality food? Apparently simple a question, but billed as much more than that.

Maybe they refrained from delving deeper into any of those issues because philosophical discussions, perhaps aesthetic ones especially, are off limits in "polite company" in U.S. media. Too bad.

Actually, I’m genuinely disappointed. Not necessarily because restaurant chains are very important an issue for me (in Montreal, they don’t seem to have the exact same type of impact and I love to cook). But because the show’s participants all came very close to saying very important things about individualism, food, and freedom. The first two are too rarely discussed, IMHO, and the third could have been the "hook" to discuss the other two.

Ah, well…

If you want to know more about my thoughts on this podcast episode, check out some of the tags below.

consumerism, groupthink, Nation-States, nationalism, Québec, Radio Open Source, standardization

NYT Mindset, Nationalism, Wars

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On a recent episode of his Radio Open Source podcast, Christopher Lydon admits that the fact that the recent Israeli attack came between issues of the New York Times had an impact on his ability to reflect on the issue.

The episode itself, especially near the end, linked “normalcy” in Israeli society with a culture of consumerism with strong “Western” influences, the notion of a “Free State” (in this case, a free Jewish state), and being too boring for U.S. media. Fascinating. But quite specific. Many people do think through these notions and many of them either read the New York Times themselves or listen intently to those who do.

The notion of sovereignty came regularly in that podcast episode. Israel is a “sovereign state” and is allowed to defend this sovereignty. Interestingly enough, the notion of sovereignty has been a major part of the nationalist discourse in Quebec for a while. In fact, that version of sovereignty is less linked with protecting borders than with building a society on its own terms. Self-determination. Many Quebec sovereignists hope, in fact, for a world without national borders. Hearing comments on Radio Open Source, it seems like many people are still clinging to the existence of “Democratic Nation-States.” Hence the attitude that wars can be won by one of the countries involved.

Ah, well…