Archive for category Diaspora
Google, China and The Ghosts of Opium Ships
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Diaspora, Immigration on August 4, 2010
One aspect of the web that I have pretty consistently ignored here is some inquiry into what I guess you’d call its ‘global dimensions’. For example, I imagine that if you were to somehow map both global flows of online information and global flows of capital, you’d find some interesting things: places where they overlap in ways you expect, and others where the opposite is true.
Given that for some time, ‘postcolonial studies’ was my field, this oversight is rather strange. So, in my most recent column for This Magazine, it felt sorta’ good to take on some of the online ‘inter-cultural issues’ that aren’t discussed as much I wish they were. This particular one is about Google, China, and the wave of strangely strident blog posts that accompanied the Mountain View company’s withdrawal. Yes, it’s significantly later than the actual event, but “print time” etc.
Also, in a weird and strange twist for me, I was almost, kinda’, sorta’ happy with this one. Not that it’s particularly brilliant, mind you – just that I think I’ve said what I set out to, and that re-reading doesn’t entirely make me cringe. Which, you know, feels nice.
Wax Interlude: Tere Naina
I can’t stop listening to this song. Don’t worry if you don’t understand the lyrics – I don’t either! It’s still stupid catchy. It’s from recent release My Name is Khan, which apparently (according to Wikipedia) is about both post-9/11 prejudice and the tension that 9/11 produces in the films’ main romantic couple.Why it’s coming out now, I have no idea.
I also wonder: to what extent do ‘western’ audiences know that a surprising number of Indian film stars are Muslim? All those famous, buff Khans aren’t Hindu, right? I’ve always been curious if that distinction makes its way across cultures. Despite a great deal of communal strife, Bollywood occasionally lives up to the ideal of ‘India-as-secular-democracy’. Just don’t get me started on the way Sikhs are portrayed though – beyond the fact that Sikh characters are almost never actually portrayed by Sikhs, they are always represented as stupid, comic relief etc. Grrr.
Does the Net Alter Traditional Structures of Authority?
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Culture of Technology, Diaspora, Immigration, Theorizing the Web on July 13, 2009
In a video on Ideas Project, Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, talks about whether the net can affect structures of authority. Some of it is the usual ‘expertise versus crowdsourcing’ discussion, but I think it’s still a good starting point for discussion. My thoughts follow the video clip.
- In providing examples of what exactly is changing, Newmark’s first is advertising. Later, when he talks about things we can all do, the first thing he mentions is user review sites. It seems an interesting choice. After all, for all the high-flung rhetoric that many – including me – throw around about the democratising appeal of the web, a significant portion of user-interaction takes place in relation to consumer goods and the sites that discuss them. Primarily, this is because of ease and accessibility: user reviews and the like are a great entry-point for those who wish interact, help others and to see the collected effect of that aggregated content. At the same time, it does highlight that a dominant mode of Western web culture – and possibly more than just the West – is consumption and the display and discussion of that consumption. This both is and is not resistant to ‘traditional structures of authority’.
- But this question of ease is also connected to the material and physical possibilities, and limits, of using the web to congregate and collaborate. Iran is the perfect example here, as even a thoroughly grassroots, crowdsourced reaction to repressive structures of authority can fail to impact those same structures when the power to beat, torture and shoot still lies with those who are in control. It must be said, however, that the effect of the representation of this resistance, as it filters both through the web and houses and coffee shops in Iran is, according to people like Zakaria, yet to come .
- At the same time, this last point raises another issue. Traditional structures of authority work through a combination of material, top-down control – the police, the army, the schools etc. – and a more ideologically based, loosely-dispersed network that, rather than forcing people to do things, beckons them by asking them to identify with a particular ideal or set of goals. The contrast might best be characterised by the difference between, on the one hand, being forced to join a military organisation and, on the other, joining of your own accord because you feel that it is your patriotic duty, because you are good citizen and that your country is good etc etc. If that’s the case, then what happens when the web fragments channels that distribute information and those that function as ‘horizons of identification’ , i.e. provide a differing vision of what it means to be a citizen, to be a person etc. etc.
- But I don’t mean this so much in the sense of ‘the government doesn’t control the airwaves, man’. Instead, what’s much more interesting to think about is what happens when ideas like individual citizenship, and the idea of national identities themselves – notions based on the constitutive relationship between a person and a singular structure of authority or identity – shift and change in relation to much broader horizon of possibilities. More simply, when half of your friends are from different countries, and half of your life is spent in a world where borders are much more murky (but still there) will it be as easy to identify as a national citizen, or someone of a particular ethnicity etc.? And then what happens to the idea or the state of the group or the government? Will the exercise of power, both in the repressive and affirmative modes, be as straightforward as it once was? And what happens when people’s interests aren’t limited to just one nation-state or one ideological sphere?
- And I just realised why I banged out so many words. This is the actual question I’m asking: most discussion about authority and the web conceives of the exercise of power as an act of repression – “you cannot do this thing, we will not let you”. But there is also a long-established line of thinking, initiated by thinkers Althusser and Foucault, that suggests power works through affirmation, through encouraging particular behaviours and thoughts, through ‘creating individuals in its image’. How does a discussion about power and the web change if we think about authority in that way – rather than as the ogre who blocks you as you try to cross the bridge?
Razing Green Spaces to Revitalise The Suburbs
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Diaspora, Immigration, Toronto on June 26, 2009
That, apparently, is what’s going on in Amsterdam. Its Slotervaart neighbourhood has been plagued by poverty, crime and ghettoisation for years now. But, as my fave columnist Doug Saunders explains, part of the problem is precisely the open design of the suburbs, that has made the area “a lonely expanse of bleak concrete buildings separated by big, frightening, empty spaces, and no connection to the wider world.” To fix it, they’re making the suburb more like downtown: getting rid of the open spaces, building high-density high-rises and giving tax breaks to young entrepreneurs to come set up businesses there. It’s an interesting re-think of the problem of the suburbs, one that reverses the trend of having big-box stores and other chains move into downtown cores and, instead, exports the indie spirit from downtown to the burbs.
And while my primary focus on this blog has always been technology and the web, over the past year or so it’s become increasingly apparent to me how important sub/urban spaces are to creativity, productivity and one’s quality of life. It’s easy sometimes to forget that, for all our rhetoric about the ethereal, diaphanous virtual, physical spaces still significantly impact our lives. And after moving back into downtown Toronto after a rather unpleasant 2 year stint in the suburbs, the things that quickly struck me about downtown living again were:
- Higher population density means it’s far easier to find niche interests that are more difficult to sustain in the suburbs, whether vegan restaurants, poetry readings or organic coffee shops.
- The proximity and frequent overlap of residential and business/entertainment areas means that people can engage in cultural activities far more easily. Put more plainly, when you just have to walk for five minutes to see a show or grab a pint, you do it more often.
- Multi-income neighbourhoods, where broke students, young immigrant families and wealthier, established individuals all live near to each other, facilitate mixing much more readily than large, more homogeneous neighbourhoods in the suburbs.
Yet, beyond all these obvious, optimistic statements, the thing that has always troubled me about the sub/urban split is the manner in which moving from the fringes of a city to its centre has always carried some rather uncomfortable cultural metaphors. The closer you get to downtown, the more difficult it is to engage in things that don’t fit into a ‘mainstream lifestyle’, and often, ‘to move downtown’ is also to move into the cultural mainstream, a mentality that fits far too closely with a politics of assimilation. In one sense, assimilation is both necessary and good. But when it is underpinned by a hierarchy of cultures that assert the superiority of a host country’s values, that’s when it starts to get messy and rough on people who ‘don’t fit’. It’s that kind of exclusionary discourse that encourages people to say where there are more people like them.
What I’d like to see is an emphasis on not only making the suburbs more ‘downtown-y’ but also to preserve some of their cultural difference in the transition – i.e. that temples, outdoor markets and dance clubs (random examples) be included alongside plans for retails centres and generic arts facilities. We shouldn’t only strive to make the suburbs like downtown; we also need to export the delightful cultural hybrids we produce in the suburbs to all those hipsters living downtown.
Web Audiences and Audienceship
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Culture of Technology, Diaspora, Immigration, Theorizing the Web on May 20, 2009
It occurs to me that I probably wrote my slightly silly previous post on The Big Bang Theory because it speaks to a pet obsession of mine: the relationship between public representation and private identity. So, I found this post by MIT grad student Xiaochang Li very relevant, as it touches on the relationship between (not-so) mass culture and the identity of those who watch/read it.
In her post, she marks out a difference between audiences – e.g. ‘a working class audience’, ‘an Asian-American audience’ – and what she terms ‘audienceship’, which Li argues “steers us away from the audience as a category of person and towards audience as a sort of situation that describes particular sets of practices and engagements with texts and cultural materials”. That’s clever and useful, particularly given the increasingly multiple identities of global consumers of media.
Put it slightly trite terms, it’s not that ‘different people’ watch The Big Bang Theory but that individuals become different people when they watch that show – just not ‘actually’. It speaks to the idea that we engage with culture in specific moments and, though identity never stops informing who we are, each time we do, there is a situational and temporal uniqueness at play. And if the difference of new media is that it is participatory, that specificity is useful, particularly as it relates it the idea of citizenship:
But there is, I think, something compelling about that linkage, as new media forms and platforms make audience an increasingly public act, both in terms of visibility and in terms of the public sphere. I’m still sorting through some of these things, but it strikes me that many of the audienceships that I look at — particularly in the fan-driven online circulation of transnational media content — are not only collective imaginaries, but collaborative ones, communities of sentiment that are radically involved in creating, selecting, curating, and distributing the very text and images that shape them.
What is even more interesting to me is that she suggests that if you think about being part of an audience as constituting identity, then audienceships are also “publics”, fluid groups of people who are always potential political subjects when they are engaged with global online media.
It’s good stuff and it’s a good, if unabashedly academic blog. Worth the read.
The Big Bang Theory: Bastard Child of the Web
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Culture of Technology, Diaspora, Immigration, Theorizing the Web on May 20, 2009
For those of us who, perhaps reluctantly, fall into the category of ‘the geeky and the nerdy’, it’s clear the web has done a lot to put our formerly derided pursuits and personalities into the limelight. Maybe for this reason – or possibly because my brain fell out of my ass and I just didn’t notice – I’ve recently been watching a lot of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory.
Though in most ways it’s a pretty straightforward (and quite good) American sitcom, it’s one of those shows that probably wouldn’t have existed prior to the web. It’s hard to imagine a show about four unabashedly nerdy, video-game-playing, comic-book-reading scientists succeeding, say, in the early nineties. With the rise of ‘geek chic’ and a general acceptance that nerds have some sort of use, however, things have changed.
Yet, The Big Bang Theory is hardly the most interesting of the web’s cultural progeny, especially when you compare it to the exciting, often cutting-edge stuff that goes on online. What is intriguing, however, is the way in which the show highlights some of the contradictions of geeky web culture.
On one hand, the show features the classic American liberal-humanist tropes about identity, honesty and egalitarianism. The moment Penney reminds Leonard that liking comic books, toys and games is what makes him who he is – and goshdarnit, he’s a great guy – the show simply repeats the ‘accept who you are’ mantra of a million other sitcoms.
More encouragingly, the slow development of Sheldon (who most likely has Asperger’s, and is played very well by Jim Parsons) is a fine example of what comedy does well: he exaggerates human foibles (fastidiousness, a lack of empathy) to produce a comic effect. You don’t want to be Sheldon, but you can learn lessons from him. In this sense, the show speaks to the egalitarian ideals we used to cling to when the term “information superhighway” was still being bandied about: these geeks may be different, but underneath, aren’t we all kinda’ the same?
At the same time, if Big Bang is a child of the web, it also showcases some of its worst tendencies. Raj, the Indian import scientist, is probably the best example. Due to some inexplicable neurosis, he is mute around women. Taken alone, it’s a bit funny; when considered in light of the constant feminisation and de-sexualisation of Asian men, it’s a little weird.
It’s also uncomfortably similar to the vaguely xenophobic, classist tone of sites like Buzzfeed (I know that’s a pretty unsubstantiated accusation, but I’m slowly collecting evidence). If one part of web culture is bringing difference to light, another part is holding it up to ridicule.
Yeah, it’s all ironic and we’re all so over sincerity and politics, but the ridicule at the core of a lot of web culture assumes a lot about its audience: namely that they’re largely white, educated and culturally-savvy. Anyone who isn’t, is made fun of, and The Big Bang Theory walks a fine, ambivalent line between challenging and reinforcing stereotypes.
While I don’t in any serious sense consider ‘geek’ an identity category, the show is invoking the much more general idea of ‘difference’ and does some weird things with it.
Anyhoo, I’ve just been watching it a lot and thought I’d spit out some initial reactions. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Note: the image in this post comes from Deviantart user ~petite-madame.
More “Future of Liberal Democracy” Stuff
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Diaspora, Immigration, Immigration and Diaspora on May 10, 2009
Bit of a departure in topic for SiW, but this is really worth the read. Famed Marxist critic Terry Eagleton writes on “Culture and Barbarism: Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism” in Commonweal. It’s good stuff: it starts by wondering why we all seem to be talking about God more, but goes on to think about multiculturalism and, more interestingly, does a really interesting refiguring of the ‘clash of civilizations’ shtick. It’s long, but worth your time. Here’s a bit of’ the payoff at the end:
The distinction between Hitchens or Dawkins and those like myself comes down in the end to one between liberal humanism and tragic humanism. There are those who hold that if we can only shake off a poisonous legacy of myth and superstition, we can be free. Such a hope in my own view is itself a myth, though a generous-spirited one. Tragic humanism shares liberal humanism’s vision of the free flourishing of humanity, but holds that attaining it is possible only by confronting the very worst. The only affirmation of humanity ultimately worth having is one that, like the disillusioned post-Restoration Milton, seriously wonders whether humanity is worth saving in the first place, and understands Swift’s king of Brobdingnag with his vision of the human species as an odious race of vermin. Tragic humanism, whether in its socialist, Christian, or psychoanalytic varieties, holds that only by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own.
By the way, if you are ever looking to get a relatively quick gloss of some recent academic theory, Eagleton’s Literary Theory isn’t too bad a place to start.
(Oh, my second ‘by the way’: I read this on the subway this morning using Instapaper on the iPhone. It really is amazing.)
The Long Tail of Multiculturalism
Posted by Nav in Culture of Technology, Diaspora, Immigration, Theorizing the Web on April 26, 2009
What effect does the web have on immigrants and minorities living in the West?
The following article appeared in the March/April issue of THIS Magazine, a publication the New Yorker recently called “Canada’s equivalent of The Nation“. In the off chance you want to link to the article, please use the link at the (new, greatly improved!) THIS site.
As in so many immigrant families, weekend mornings in my house always meant one thing: “our shows” on TV. We are of Indian descent, and the sounds of the latest Bollywood hits were a staple of our Saturdays and Sundays, as much a part of our weekends as omelettes and the newspaper. But for all the nostalgia, we had little choice. For years, if you were an immigrant looking for your own media, your only other option was one of the “ethnic” grocery-cum-video stores that still pepper neighbourhoods today. And while these shops function as impromptu community centres, there was always something a little unsettling about having to drive to an out-ofthe-way plaza only to pick up a poor-quality knock-off DVD.
It was a disquieting state of affairs that only added to the isolation so common to the immigrant experience. But thanks to the web, things are changing. Minorities are no longer confined to gathering around a TV on weekends or driving to the nearest bazaar. With the mainstreaming of the internet, immigrant minorities have exponentially more access to film, music, and literature from their root cultures.
The difference in diversity between traditional and online outlets is striking. Zip.ca, Canada’s most popular online DVD service, currently has 728 Bollywood films available, which, last time I checked, is approximately 727 more than at my parents’ local Rogers Video. Walk into a Best Buy or HMV and you will be lucky to find a handful of “world music” CDs. In contrast, eMusic.com, Canada’s second-largest online music seller behind iTunes, currently has more than 33,000 artists under their international category. The disparity is staggering.
At the core of this pluralist promise is the “long tail.” Coined by Wired editor Chris Anderson, the term describes how the web’s massive capacity as a distribution network, coupled with its greatly reduced cost of delivery, allows online retailers to offer a much greater variety of content than bricks-and mortar stores. Rather than relying on selling huge quantities of a few blockbusters (the head), the theory suggests that online stores can thrive by selling just a few units each of a huge catalogue of titles (the tail). But though most of the technorati have focused on the long tail’s economic benefits — which might not be as lucrative as once predicted — few have yet to think through its impact on minority cultures.
After all, beyond merely having more choice, what does it now mean to be an immigrant in the face of this greatly expanded access to culture? My parents’ generation spent much of their life in a sort of cultural limbo. Unwittingly alienated by a majority culture, they sought out the familiar and the known. Yet, the trips to dingy stores around the margins of cities were more symbolic than anyone cared to admit and, despite a growing immigrant population, quality, selection, and currency were all lacking. Put off by mainstream culture and unable to connect with the contemporary culture of their homelands, they were stuck.
Flash-forward to today, and my mother can watch the most current movies from Bollywood at full quality, a few even in high definition. My father has a large MP3 collection composed of ghazals and classical Indian tracks he never thought he would find again. This is just the start: it says nothing of the radio streamed from Taiwan, the news sites from Somalia, the poetry from Pakistan, or the podcasts from Jamaica. The internet allows immigrants to engage in the currents of the cultures they know with an immediacy and range that simply could not have happened before.
The obvious danger is increased ghettoization. But in an unexpected way, the web allows for an equality of participation. The ebb and flow of media, the contemporary pulse, was once privy to those with Globe and Mail or Saturday Night subscriptions. But, though it is perhaps anecdotal, it seems no coincidence that, after finding Bollywood clips there, my mother also turned to the web for reports on the U.S. election or video from Oprah.com. Suddenly a part of the swirl of popular culture, my family’s cultural isolation lessened.
If minority alienation is a question of access and inclusion, then perhaps more than anything, the long tail means that the choice between assimilation and traditionalism has ceased to be an either/or proposition for immigrants. When one is no longer forced to cling to an imaginary past but can instead engage the cutting edge of both cultures, the movement to the contemporary Canadian becomes degrees easier and less threatening.
The web in itself might not be a magical panacea, but when immigrants are neither asked to constantly look back, nor entirely conform to an alien present, perhaps the ideal of multiculturalism has found a practical friend in the long tail of the internet.
Note: The pic here is of Kiran Ahluwalia, a Canadian-born, Indian-trained musician who has taken the up the ancient form the ghazal and reworked it with a slight jazz, ‘world-music’ inflection. While most Ghazals use established, often Sufi poetry, Ahluwalia has called on the few poets in Canada who write in Urdu to create some of her songs. It’s the sort of fusion that differs from the usual notion of blending and does something very cool – after all, to much of her audience, the newness of her approach remains entirely invisible.
