Thursday, January 20, 2011

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Sociologist: a job, not a wave sensitivity

When I heard the twitter of @ PierreLouisR was that Jamel Debbouze sociologist knighted by the institution that is undeniable Telerama, I told myself "I must make a note over there." But it is a little young in the world of blogs - which still writing the second book of sociology that I read in my life - who beat me: Mercklé Pierre said in his blog, pretty almost everything I wanted to say about it . Probably better than me and more, since it has the good taste to pay Maffesoli in stride. So I take this opportunity for him to advertise: that he is joining your RSS feeds!

A little quote anyway to make you want to highlight and I agree:

So first a "coup" Telerama, a hook in brush cover to the core of their readership in the grain. It is then perhaps there is another possible use of the term, that such maneuvers can only encourage journalistic: to be "sociologist" is not a profession (doing investigations, publish books and articles, teaching ...) is to be endowed with certain qualities, sensitivity ... the same way that being "philosopher" also means being able into perspective, to separate things, or be "psychologist" is to understand the thinking of others, then be "sociologist" that would be sensitive to the plight of others, and be prepared to be indignant, to borrow a word in vogue ...

It should be emphasized that this is the problem: being a sociologist, is a profession, but too often it is seen as a wave sensitivity, a tendency or something not really rationalizable. The former problem is: in his Invitation to Sociology addressed just that in 1963, Peter Berger devotes the first pages to say what is not the sociologist. And he said first that it is not a "friend of mankind" sensitive to the pain of others and willing to help them, nor even a reformer ready to improve society and the plight of the weakest. Sociologists may also be that, but they are not all - some have been or are staunch conservatives - and this is not what makes them sociologists.

However, it must be clear: this does not mean what it says and Jamel Debbouze, who may not have asked for this adhesive label, is without merit. What can be said of the suburbs is not necessarily wrong - I admit, not very sensitive to the humor of "comedians", I have a very vague idea of what it can tell much about this subject here or on other . his speech or his experience is not "wrong" per se. Simply be a sociologist, is to do a little more than say something relevant: it is trying to prove that they are. Sociology I love reading - I hope to one day say "I did" - do not just say things that seem relevant but also tries to prove that they are.

The speech of a comedian or any other artist has a value in itself: he calls it mobilizes, it puts people face their contradictions. Consider the first sketch Coluche: saying "is the story of a guy ... a normal guy ... white, what, what was he doing if we put our face everyday racism that makes us think a "normal" man is always white and that blacks have enough features to change the meaning of a joke? Especially by adding thereafter "y 'stories, it's more fun if he is a Jew ... and y' has other it's more fun is a Belgian Sir" ...



It did not work in sociology. But his remarks had an eigenvalue in the way he could and still can denounce a situation or an attitude, perhaps a more effective and more widespread than could a work of sociology. This is perhaps Jamel Debbouze: one wonders what interest there is to fold a type of speech very respectable on another. And why we have so much trouble recognizing the intrinsic value of humor.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

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The job interview soon a total institution?

Via actuchomage.org site, we learn that Job center offers, in partnership with Ereel, an "endowment fund to support innovation in Europe" (it's beautiful, I cry), training for unemployed to help them find new jobs. On the agenda: a reminder that the interview is one of many mechanisms for compliance of bodies and, perhaps, souls ...

's article actuchomage. org focuses on the question of the origin of the foundation and the question of the supposed contribution of such formations in the fight against unemployment and the return to employment . I'll let you read and get an idea by yourself on these points. Rather, the same pictures that caught my attention. Consider:



These are images taken from the article actuchômage. Org. They are obviously taken from the site Image Bureau, the main company involved with the action (watch the site automatically launches a very unpleasant music: when it pretends communication specialist, such a bad taste should not be forgiven). They give a good idea of what constitutes such makeover to find a job.

Indeed, what happens to women who lend themselves to this game? Well, obviously, to find a job, they are pushed to feminize. Not that they are particularly male at first, that is to say in the pictures "before", but it is clear that the efforts of the business makeover is to accentuate the femininity. Whether in clothing, hairstyles, makeup (not less than two companies make up the program proposed by job center) ... and attitude. Is evident in the poses adopted, probably at the request of photographer and under the advice of relookers by women in question: not only are they smiling or more "open", whatever This word can mean well, but the eyes of deer-cons in diving at the unveiling of the shoulder through the bust through hands on hips, one is in a game closer to the seductive, where femininity is to be seen often in all its fullness. The band offered by the site Ereel on the page with its "action" for the makeover of unemployed also leaves no doubt about it: it shows a photo of a young blonde-on make-up, the very red lips and bare feet resting on the table. An attitude that has nothing "professional" but for "female" in this term may be more contemptuous frivolity and sexualization. The photo does not déparaillerait in a catalog or on La Redoute the cover of a porn DVD.

What we ask for unemployed goes much further than the mere sake of self-presentation without a hitch: they are encouraged to adopt such an attitude and quite a unique role, which is assumed to be the expected by the recruiters and companies. This role is very clear: it is the woman. Not that of professionnel.le, not that of travailleur.se, not that of futur.e employé.e, but that of women. And this change can not simply be visibly plastic, be limited to one garment: the presence of a psychologist in the action and changes in gestures that leave to see through photographs clearly suggest that it is to take over the whole personality of the individual.

We understand the idea behind it: to take care of yourself to regain confidence and become "entrepreneur of oneself", able finally to find work as desired. But this confidence is not so clearly only through adherence to gender norms: take care of you, ladies, is your makeup to be pretty for the man who hired you ... And be "entrepreneur of oneself" is never a way to defer the burden of unemployment on an individual through - "you're not trying hard enough!" - Rather than a collective issue - "there are not enough jobs!". us once again the hammer of individual responsibility ...

Proceedings of the interview, which prepares such actions, probably more numerous than this simple news might suggest, therefore plays a particularly important role here. It does not merely select certain candidates, but serves as a pretext to control and transform them into dimensions of person who goes beyond the scope of work. To find work, they say to these women, you must change the personality not only have more skills, not only be more professional, not only have more skill or training best suited, but to be more feminine, prettier, more feminine ... In times of unemployment, job interview and everything that surrounds seem to adopt certain features of the qu'Erving Goffman called "total institutions," those who undertake to support the entire life individuals as to redefine all of their personalities.

It is here that women matter. What about men? This injunction does kind of conformism does these ladies, or is it shared the point that the men are asked to remove or abandon the features most "Feminine" in their appearance and personality? I'm willing to bet yes. Even if the thing is probably less of an impact, since joining the masculine role is probably more spontaneous as it may seem "natural." It does not say much for the kind of self-transformation required by the orders to be "entrepreneur of oneself" are less cumbersome to wear, whatever its kind.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

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Should we starve the public servants? Polanyi and incentives "economic"

After Christian Jacob, president of the UMP group in the National Assembly, invited to "think hiring officials for life ", this old sea serpent has produced quite a stir. Issuance Of grist example could help to raise this issue at an issue devoted the insecurity in the public service. Why this challenge? Also because this would be an efficiency gain for the government. A further sign, in fact, from the grip of what Karl Polanyi called the "fallacy economy ".

Although Christian Jacob was able to highlight the opportunities for mobility offered by a questioning of the status of officials, listening to the issuance of France Culture leaves no doubt that this statute is primarily criticized because it puts officials to protect from losing their jobs, so competition so incentives to work, and otherwise encourages to laziness at least less effective than a less protective status would require them to continue. This point could not be more clear in the remark Nicolas Lecaussin , the "liberal" media of the confrontation, that in France, 75% of young people want to become servants "rather entrepreneurs. There would

much to say about the general interpretation of this figure, so often advanced and so rarely sourced. Taken as an indicator of pussilanimité of French people towards capitalism or market (the famous "French disease"), you might as well read the general ignorance of the public: he would still want to know what position occupy these "75%" because there is no guarantee that everybody wants to be, for example, teachers in college. This would also know if that appeals is not, perhaps, more the meaning given to certain jobs rather than their safety. In short, we should know a little more, starting with where you got that figure ... Otherwise, he joined the many false arguments that pollute the extensive public debate.

Still, it appears many of its recurrent use that in a certain tradition of thought, the job security provided by the Staff is very problematic because it would lead to inefficient operation of services public. In the absence of the risk of losing his job, the organization simply could not be economically efficient. The denunciation of inequality "unacceptable" between those who are exposed to this risk and those who will escape, one way or another, in the same direction.

So that in this perspective, there is an economic incentive: hunger. Indeed, in our societies, not having a job means not being able to feed themselves, nor have access to all goods that are considered socially necessary for everyone, whether it be housing, clothing , hobbies, etc.. It is through the course of employment that you earn the right to get all these things. Even though there are "safety nets", these are tenuous enough so that hunger can not be fully satisfied without the sale of his work. Poverty, fear of hunger and deprivation: that is what is the essential motivation that guide our economic behavior.

Has it always been this way? To this question, Karl Polanyi replied in his various writings (especially those collected in his Essays ) so we can more clearly "no." Hunger has not always been the primary economic motivation. It is a characteristic of our societies have the only possible economic incentives, to the exclusion of all others. This is what in fact "market societies", societies which Polanyi hoped that the Second World War had marked the collapse. Had he lived, to paraphrase Brassens, then showed him no.

What Polanyi argues on the basis of historical and anthropological exploration of primitive economic systems - understood here: "that precede the advent of self-regulating market in the West of the nineteenth century" - is that hunger has not always been an incentive or economic motivation. Instead, he says, in many societies, hunger does not exist. At least as a personal experience: an individual could not be hungry if his group was itself in starvation. Otherwise, all sorts of obligations required them to look after those who can not or want to work from those who hunger, those who can not obtain by themselves for their food. This has been, in Europe, the moral obligation to let the poor take part of the harvest, an obligation which has eventually become institutionalized in the "poor laws" which Polanyi discusses the disappearance of England in the late eighteenth century as the beginning of the "market society". This does not mean that the beneficiaries of such a system were living in luxury, but at least they were not threatened by hunger and death. So the concrete right, for those who wish to pursue a lifestyle of their choice - a central idea in Polanyi and who would, perhaps, to please those who call themselves "liberal."

But then why are they working people? Well for other motives than the fear of hunger and the search for gain.

But what about social organizations other than the market economy? Hunger and gain are they also linked to productive activities which determine the existence of the company in question? The answer to this question is clearly negative. In general, we find that the social organization of production is falling as the motivations of hunger and gain are not solicited And in fact, where the fear of hunger is related to productive activities, that motive is MEOE other important drivers. Such a mixture of motvations is what we mean by the term social motivations : This is the type of incentive that makes us conform to a behavior approved by society. A brief overview of the history of civilization does not show us the man acting in the service of his individual interest in acquiring material goods, but rather to ensure its position, its rights and benefits ("Should we believe in economic determinism? " Tests , P. 524).

Motivation to work is not lacking: to acquire or guarantee a certain social status, comply with standards and values, etc.. In fact, these motivations exist in our societies, and, except for some very specific cases, such as some traders actually only motivated by profit and gain ever greater, most people have relatively complex motivations work. A fear of hunger and the search for profit in addition, often dominant, other reasons that range from simple pleasure taken in the activity that engages with many different moral considerations. In history and the recognition that we can not get any incentives. And cases of officials choosing disobedience as a way of combating stress the attachment thereof to the content of their job, not the only gains they can derive. This is also true in private.

This last remark leads us to the fallacy that economic Karl Polanyi has repeatedly denounced. For why in the private cases of disobedience are they if not impossible at least rare? Just because hunger is the incentive for them dominant. Not because it is naturally stronger than others, but because the social organization leads to make it so strong. The economic fallacy is the belief that the economic organization of ours is the organization "natural", valid at any time and any place - a failing that economists are never fully able to abandon or said in passing. We tended to think that only hunger and gain are the "real" incentives and "true" motivations "economic" and that all others are at best a vague ideology placed on material interests ( where one sees all that separates Polanyi Marxism). And our economic organization is built precisely on this belief, so it becomes "real" for us. It is the organization of hunger, the maximum lift of solidarity that each safeguarded against this threat, which made individuals of workers on a market to sell their work. And it is this market that excludes other possible motivations of the field, they took away some of their force in people's minds.

Returning to the original question: the status of civil servants. One quickly understands that there may be other reasons for them and that rather than trying to replace them the reason for the hunger, it would be equally feasible to develop, for example by asking recognition of everyone's work.

But we can go further. The constitution of hunger as the only "real" economic motivation was not translated because of the devaluation of other causes of action, other incentives. That is the yardstick that individuals consider the interest of work, primarily if not to the exclusion of all others. And this is also true for public servants: they too are worked by the economic fallacy and can indulge in thinking that their motives in terms of gains, as they appear on the bottom of their payroll, do not justify all their efforts. Therefore, one can conclude that it transforming our company into a market that is causing the problems that the proposed deal by extending a little more ...

Doubtless one could then propose to take over the problem again fresh, and rather than discuss the retention or deletion of the Staff, consider the place of work and motivations across society. Precarious workers, real public service through the many alternatives to the famous "status", merely extends the reasons for hunger and earnings. It pushes people to seek nothing other than their work escape from famine or benefit which they can enjoy at their leisure. In short, it devalues confidently "work value" some gargle. Companies that know how employee involvement is important would do well to reflect on this. Maybe they would reach their goals better if they were using with their employees other incentives to those that we persist in thinking to be the only "economic".

Thursday, January 13, 2011

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"In the Castle of Argol" - Gracq


What I often tell myself, in my soul and his inner optimist always a bit messy anyway, is that with the literature, given everything that was written from the beginning that human beings knows about listening to something other than hodgepodge protean and sticky in a culture that does its hearings and turnovers as shameless talents of entire cohorts of writers who toil through wage shameless us believe that selling a book and a yogurt, a car and a Wagner opera, it's the same thing, comma (phew) no one is ever in the whole of his short life free to discover the wonders.
So it's not worth all strive to read between 15 and 25 years, especially if it does nothing to better understand and please the teachers, whatever their sex, save some for the road ... You'll need it.
So I come in, after this introduction, penetrating about who leads.
I had never read anything by Mr. Gracq what happiness is in store for me I not tell me later I still myself while writing these lines. And what luck! Since this gentleman wrote lots of books. And as for yet I have read that!

"At Castle Argol": if writing is building, getting lost, paint, play music elements, to live extraordinary beings we instinctively can find the mirror in us, then this writing is well both heaven and earth, and the substance of the flesh, and simmer the most subtle and most secret. If writing is a moment, cover a world of a unique look, which never looked upon anything, and never look over anything, the time to raise some lives above everything and to make this jewel burning of which is falling hands on the last page, we have reinvented what there is most precious in solitude, ie, its necessity as the need of the world, then this button to write a form of perfection. If writing is cut, slide after slide, transparent and filled with the designs of the spirit, the fates of people in the most unlikely we familiar with, familiar with the requirements of the happiest of our imaginations, so that writing is a wonder .

And I weigh my words.

"At Castle Argol" Gracq:

First paragraph: Though

the campaign was still warm from the sun all afternoon, Albert embarked on the long road that led to Argol. He took shelter in the shade already grown hawthorn and set path. He wanted to give
another hour to enjoy the agony of the accident. He had bought a month earlier mansion Argol, woods, fields, outbuildings, without the visit, on the enthusiastic recommendations - rather mysterious - Albert remembered this strange accent, throaty voice that had decided - a very dear friend, but a little more than is proper, amateur de Balzac stories of chouannerie, and also crime novels. And without further deliberation, he had signed petitions for clemency foolish to chance.


Last paragraph:

In the midst of the long December night by the stairs deserts, through the deserted rooms, with torches extinguished, torchlight spilled, he left the castle under the garb of the traveler. Soon his footsteps led him (for he hurried into the cold night) went to the Magic Albert and Heide had followed a fatal day. The skirts of his coat floating surrounded him as black wings. And behind him, and his brain they reached in areas where acute serve the heightened senses, not sounded the depths of the cold night - its not? They came to him from the depths of the night - and he recognized them as if he had ever expected. But it did not turn toward the mysterious traveler. He did not return. He ran in the middle of the fairway, very quickly, and not followed. And, losing breath, he felt that now would not join him, and in the all-powerful failure of his soul, he felt the icy flash of a knife sinking into his shoulders like a handful of snow.

>>> Go and feast on what is between these two paragraphs. Now, later on, but if possible before dying.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

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Words sewer

Those are dirty words, these phrases filthy, filthy remarks, heard here and there for years, inadvertently sown by false media awards declaimed as a world inevitable by a few repositories of political authority or economic purposes pitifully shameful to distill the poison flow depths that take the place of ideals, project, program.
An exhaustive list would be long to do. So it may be sufficient to its option to pick a few and put them together to sew the pieces and find the plan taking shape when, in the case or it would still be a discovery, or appear to have confirmed seeing the outlines of an appalling and barbaric speech consistent assertions these words despite denials dispersed after them by their creator and their henchmen in search of a contradiction with fig leaf to cover their shamelessness instincts too compromising.
It is not exactly issue a demonstration. It comes by itself. Awaken the sense of listening sometimes fragmented which prevents us to relate, as they are yet in their wake threatening, these words all of the outputs breviary insane voices that are transmitted by oral gravediggers of the human whose brood swarms everywhere today and who take pleasure at any particular sober and counting and everything under the chopping blade fixing their balance sheets. Starting
course by humans.

"Society does not exist! "Uttered the well-shabby boursico shopkeeper who did so calamitous Office ruling British government from May 1979 to November 1990. Taking his dreams a reality in fact she proclaimed her dearest wish: that the company did not exist. No longer existed. That everything that makes the social body in the country is reduced as much as possible to a set as possible individualities undefined, reduced, in turn, only to be more, each, than competing all others. And the best man win. Best to do all the characters that make the dominant Almighty on this subject so dominated the first time, and even submitted a second time to compete among themselves.
Later, later, an officer of a large factory programs debilitating nature television retailer, a magazine whose profile had to guarantee confidentiality about the discretion of nauseating, the sole object of his action: broadcast programs whose content is mentally uplifting least possible that there are flattered that there are more primary, more basic, more rough, so that consumers of these programs are in position to absorb like sponges docile other content of this richly rewarding TV channel: the multiple and long beaches advertisements. Formulated with the very words used by the direct This officer spoke in substance as well: "My job is to sell available brain time to Coca-Cola. In a terminology more common formats own language, if we dare say, this breed of greedy bosses outright, it could have been a less explicit form but not a mechanical closer to those that are user manuals for recurring exercises profitability boundless: "The profitability ratio of an advertisement is proportional to the reduction of sensory transducers. The efficiency of these sensors must be kept closer to the level where are the instincts. Any form of development intelligence relied on free will and critical thinking should be avoided and even forbidden. "
A little further, a little later, it was the turn of the leader of a powerful employers' organization, at the inauguration of its first term in office, seem to leave one of the foundations of its political approach and economic: "Life is fragile, love is precarious, why not work would it not? Madame defender of the interests of an entrepreneurial class among the most archaic and most backward in the world forum expressed concerns of shareholders, contributors club neo-feudal she had to take the lead. As many tusks obstinate and obtuse, never accept nor in form or in their substantive laws in our republic, our democracy, allowed employees to classes to improve their situation in a haphazard economic development, to acquire rights against the forces possessing little incentive to share, to evolve, taking on progressively from the pomp and dreadful tragedies in the history of the Twentieth Century, the path of an existing structure, reconstruction of a reconstruction of what produces what is called generically cohesion of a society.
Love is precarious? And what is mixed does one lady?
Life is precarious? What does this mean? Yes, that's right: the life of the little rodent that hops around in the meadow while a hawk on his background, his life is precarious. The delicate dragonfly flutters to the surface of the pond frog thank you for an appetite, his life is precarious. The gazelle is going to drink at the edge of a pond while the big crocodile walks between two waters, life is precarious. But all this has a name. A name that, whatever its geographical relevance, means all of such behavior: it's called the law of the jungle. And the law of the jungle is a strictly opposed to that which should guide in the ideas and manners, that any civilization that decides to move away from the time of the caves.
Still further, which brings us of course times when we are the primary resident of the palace where sits the summit of power in our country offered an extension to the above quotes. While we have noted that in his case is a slip, which will tell some of his detractors amazed that he had not meant what he had said. With the potential for conviction of these people, it is therefore only a ridiculous flirtation with intent wry smile. "The human being is not a commodity like others. "Said the provisional potentate.
is when I entered the "active life, (ie there are more than thirty years now), assuming that the life of a child or adolescent is a passive life, that began to be promoted in the same panels, indicators of their premises, the semantic shift that changed a few years in business the "Service staff "to" Human Resources ". Followed by dragging a modernist whose pidgin vocabulary endless pollution from fouling the political thought and action economist at which it was submitted, this index at the time could first appear with the artifice Searched . Make that the word is human superposât at first sight the word "resources". So forget that in the former designation "personal" contained in itself the presence of people.
Resource: as a subject. As commodity. As amount of gross proceeds to be agreed to reluctant to dominate the plasticity to be able to use as easy as any other.

It is fashionable to assert that national policies or international, or almost all subject to rules that economists no promoter has never been directly confronted with the practice of suffrage as it exists in a democracy, these policies, therefore, do not proceed from any ideology, no established body of thought as was the case, for example, Marxism, its aftermath and its avatars.
Wrong. Certainly there would be no such thing as "bible" containing all the project economics called liberal or neo-liberal or ultra-liberal, according to the chapels.
But there is a draft. It may seem authoritarian and for the less biased to collect the contents in a few quotes. But over the troubled waters of political discourse electorally committed to demonstrate programmatically singularities but chained to a total tyrannical imperium, to reveal the watermark soujacent, also aimed at décomplexion, however, seems even flow from this source words that escape the clergy government to serve this project in exchange for thrones and glories coarse. This project may still be available for the benefit of a certain democratic spirit, soon to be residual and ever adulterated inaccuracies on which the ruling Peoples could have taken but which media vehicles ensure the daily slow heavy, confident and development.

"The human being is a commodity like no other, but a commodity nonetheless. To use it with all the possible gifts should be in shape, to model the propensity to respond with the same facilities as any other commodity. To reach this state the human being should be deprived of up to everything that makes so little that it is his personality, his person: the thinking, emotions, Judgement, memory, culture. The objective to be pursued to obtain the desired semi-finished product is the reduction of the individual to even less than himself, the way of subtracting any recourse to a mode of socialization or association who can help to generate or regenerate some element of solidarity whatsoever. "
Nb: This last quote is not Alain Minc.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

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The Sources of geek culture

I spoke a few days ago : the geek has since become few years, a figure of strength and legitimacy uncommon. So much so that a film like Kick-Ass was supported by a surprising reversal: replace the super-hero by the geek. Other examples could be cited, it is certain that geek culture has been widely disseminated. Becker is rereading I found a clue to understand where it comes from.

Who does not say geek today? The owner of an iPhone any claims to be such. Provided that play World of Warcraft, it might as well run as "ultra-geek". And even the girls, long excluded more or less voluntarily in this universe (apparently they still are, as evidenced by the picture below, found here), there are being supported by women's magazines too happy to fill pages and pages around the neologism "geek "and articles on" how to flirt with an iPhone. " Myself in that yard there, I can say geek. After all, I read Pratchett at a time when some neo-geeks gets off on the Mini-Keum.


True geeks, those who made the computer a way of life and who read The Lord of the Ring in VO before Peter Jackson did not make it trendy riled up. Even if only because the subtle differences between geeks, nerds and dorks (myself, I never understood anything) are routinely forgotten. Because they were a real deviant culture, and are now being absorbed by those they have always opposed. See noobs back - badly - its markings, it is understandable that it has something irritating. Especially when Apple tries to establish itself as the top of the geekitude, while the real pros swear by the PC that you can work yourself.

But where does this geek culture? Where she takes her roots? I would like to move a hypothesis from this classic of sociology what Outsiders . In Chapter 5, Howard Becker is studying "the culture of a deviant group", namely "dance musicians" 50-60 years in the United States. Based on field experience - he himself was a jazz musician - he clearly identifies a particular culture, actually not that different in its operation, our culture geek to us. In particular, these musicians are making a clear difference between them and the "squares" (a term translated in the French edition by "caves"), namely those who are not musicians. How not see a parallel with how the geeks monitor carefully the boundaries of their group?

But what is there is a unity of this culture? Why did it develop? Because the musicians dance all face common problems, and in returning to interaction between them, thus develop shared meanings. These problems have to do with the nature of their profession:

musicians dance [...] can be simply defined as people who play popular music to earn money. They perform a service business and the characteristics of culture they attend to common problems arising from these trades. These are distinguished in their entirety by the fact that their members maintain contact more or less direct and personal with the consumer's final product of their work, which they provide customer service. Consequently the customer is able to direct the worker in performing his task, and apply a range of different sanctions, ranging from informal pressure to abandon its services.

service professions are related in one hand a person whose business is focused full time on this job and whose personality is more or less deeply involved in it, on the other hand, people whose relationship to the job is much more casual. Sometimes it is inevitable that each party is represented very differently to how the service should be done. Members of service professions generally agree that the client is unable to truly evaluate the service they produce and they are extremely irritated by attempts clients to control their work. The result is a latent hostility and conflict, methods of defense against outside interference becomes a concern of the profession, and a sub-culture develops this whole problem. (Pp. 105-106)

These problems are not they also faced equally those who choose to make computer hacking and complicated machinery of their daily job? This passage reminded me immediately this post on The Oatmeal : entitled "How does a web designer goes straight into business," he recounts in great detail a similar conflict that musicians dance, between a web designer which has a clear idea of what a job well done, and a client who has obviously a different idea because, of course, the clown does not know anything about computers. One could almost re-write the following dialogue between two musicians to replace "band" with "software" and "cellar" with "noobs" (or any equivalent term), and put into the mouth of a geek, everyone would believe :

Dick: "It was the same when I worked at Club M. All the guys with whom I came to college and loved the band ... It was one of the worst bands with whom I ' I worked and they all thought it was excellent. "
Joe: "Oh, sure! Is a bunch of wineries." (P. 114)

can also refer to this post another computer expert, Kek blogger who makes websites through his company Zanorg: he recounts his difficulties when asked to work in an agency, then he prefers to work from home. Again, there is an independent IT professional against stupidity and severity of clients unable to properly serve a simple copy and paste, or worse, so disabled that they are reduced to using Apple rather than the real PC for true geeks who want to tweak lots of things in all directions.

My hypothesis is that the geek culture finds its roots here. Originally, computing was an activity of enthusiasts, often gathered on American campuses, which were able to define their own criteria for evaluation of what a good program because they were interacting with each other. With the spread of computers, they have faced in business and elsewhere, to people who claims to send to other computers, and different assessment criteria. They come into conflict with those of computer scientists that define a significant part of their identity around computer-generated graphics. This requires that they manage this conflict, and geek culture gives them that opportunity by designing a space independence for them. The specialized knowledge in areas that some would regard as trivial, eg science fiction, Star Trek or another, are means to express their exceptionality in relation to all-comers, however, which imposes specific ways of working. In the same way that jazz musicians told, admiring how to Becker one of them had set fire to a car just for fun ...

The comparison between a group of artists, musicians, dance and computer workers should not be surprising. The independence of the artist, his creative abilities, his strong personality, his talent inserted in projects where it brings something new, brief all the classical representation and a bit exaggerated in its business are in the heart of the operating principles of contemporary capitalism: we know from Boltanski and Chiapello, and I I talked at length about it a while ago . Therefore, it is not surprising that geek culture is spreading: it is deeply consistent with the "new spirit of capitalism." Hackers of all stripes do make may not always realize how they are ultimately conformist.

The parallel with jazz musicians can be pushed a little further. Their salvation, "see you later, alligator "eventually spread far beyond their borders, as the term" square ", which has come to mean any person or boring" old fashioned "(although the term" cheesy "or itself become old-fashioned). This also happens to geeks. In deviant subculture, regarded with suspicion by most conformist members of society but the eccentricities tolerated because of the services they render (play music making computer programs), they gradually join the ranks of the dominant culture. It was this qu'acheva to rock in the field of music. Perhaps what awaits geeks. Not sure whether they like it.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Ceramic Kitchen Wares

Resolutions sociological

Now is the time for resolutions. Mostly, they are quickly forgotten, this is normal in the absence of support, the individual will is weak. So much to take collective resolutions. Hey, why sociologists do not they collectively take a few good resolutions?

Resolution No. 1: do no quotes no quotes. Because it takes a lot of problems anyway. Hein, Ali? Although apparently not that much, and should perhaps be taken as a resolution not to over expose those who do, because it also causes problems. Hein, Peter?

Pierre Dubois was right to attack those who violate the most elementary rules of intellectual honesty and claimed, in addition, a blank check to do so. I can recall this quote from an economist, a Jevons: "A despotic calm is the triumph of the error. In the republic of the sciences, sedition and even anarchy are favorable in the long term than greatest happiness for the greatest number. "

Resolution No. 2: Flowing directly from the Resolution No. 1: social scientists should use 2011 to settle once and for all the problem with some current. Because this is what emerges most clearly from the discussion Dubar - Cibois. "Obviously we disagree on this point with the current maffesolien and its allies, but I have not noticed there is a conflict between other current" it wrote. There are disagreements and struggles in different currents and different approaches - for example it is ensured that Bourdieu and Latour can not feel - but at least everyone can sit around a table to match a minimum of sociology as an empirical science, a science investigation. This agreement can be made with the post-modernists. So it might be good to eat it.

Resolution No. 3: Think carefully before released a provocative thesis in the media. That's what we should teach the book's publication Hugues Lagrange Denial cultures. There could not have healthy discussion of this book, even among sociologists, because the question of media coverage has come to overlap with all others. Lagrange could repel critics by accusing them of refusing on principle results, and critics were forced to compromise between the book itself, and media reception of it. Result: an intractable debate. This does not mean that we must refrain from any intervention in the media, but it is probably necessary to think about how we do it.

Resolution No. 4: Complete the join the ranks of geeks encouraging the use of software from the command line gives you the impression of being reincarnated Alan Turing, persecution and less. Kind of R or LaTeX or others that probably exist and I do not know. Why? Because the geek has become one of the most popular and most positive of all. So why not enjoy it.

Resolution No. 5: more interested in what goes on in high school. Because reform is not over, because the program SES Terminal will be published in February, because he will have to pay attention to what is there - we were promised that such social class removed first to reappear. And because the question "Is that what I do would make sense for a college student?" is a good question to ask whether it makes interesting sociology. Certainly not the only one: in general, ask if you are doing would make sense for someone who is not a sociologist is probably a good thing.

I book all those resolutions for debate and discussion of who will. And Happy New Year to all.