Lessons from fashion's free culture

Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. In her talk, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.

See also:  Ready to Share

 

Common features of controversies

Controversies involve all kinds of actors – human beings, human groups, natural and biological elements, industrial and artistic products, economic and other institutions, scientific and technical artifacts, etc. Every controversy functions as a “hybrid forum,” a space of conflict and negotiation among actors that would otherwise happily ignore each other. A controversy is a meeting place of the most disparate topics; they form new alliances, new hybrids with each other. [Range & Diversity]—What topics and entities are brought into play?

Controversies display the social in its most dynamic form – Social unities that seemed indissoluble suddenly break into a plurality of conflicting pieces, under the pressure of internal oppositions. In controversies, any actor can decompose a loose network and any network, no matter how heterogeneous, can coagulate to function as an actor. [Fusions & Fissions] (…of Alliances & Oppositions)—What alliances and opposing are forming and transforming between which actors?

Controversies are reduction-resistant – Disputes are, by definition, situations where old simplifications are rejected and new simplifications are still to be accepted or imposed. In controversies, actors tend to disagree on pretty much anything, including their disagreement itself. That’s why issues are so difficult to solve, because they are impossible to reduce to a single resuming question. The difficulty of controversy is not that actors disagree on answers, but that they cannot even agree on questions. Every question itself can result in a ramification of questions. E.g., “is world temperature increasing?” Leads to actors arguing what world means (some area of the world? The world average? Surface or the atmosphere? Urban, rural, or wild areas?) Etc. [De-simplification] [Problematizations of Simplifications] (…of answers, question terms, questions)—What are people saying “it’s not so simple” about?  Which questions, question terms, answers, and answer terms are people problematizing?

Controversies are debated – Controversies emerge when things and ideas that were taken for granted start to be questioned and discussed. It used to be the case that economic growth was generally seen as good; but after pollution and global warming debates, people of even begin to wonder about de-growth as a desirable path. Controversies are discussions (even if not always verbal ones) where more and more objects are discussed by more and more actors. Who, before global warming, ever thought that Inuit communities and polar bears may have opinions on industrial strategies? [De-Grantification] [Apparitions of the Unexpected]—What unexpected or taken-for-granted ideas and things are being questioned and discussed?

Controversies are conflicts – The construction of a shared universe is often accompanied by the clash of conflicting worlds. No matter how trivial their objects may be, actors always take quarrels very seriously, for they know that social order and social hierarchy are at stake. Controversies decide and are decided by the distribution of power. Controversies are struggles to conserve or reverse social inequalities. They might be negotiated through democratic procedures, but often they involve force and violence.)—Which worlds will be affected by this or that controversial outcome?  How will they be affected?  IOW, what is at stake?  Which worlds, ways of life, activities, etc. are at stake?  Which social orders-arrangements or inequalities will be conserved or reversed or rearranged?

SOURCE:  Divining in Magma, Tommaso Venturini

Choosing a good controversy: questions and avoidances

“Although every collective phenomenon can be observed as a controversy, not every controversy makes a good object of study. Unfortunately, there are no exact instructions on how to choose a good controversy—all that we can provide are some recommendations to avoid bad ones: 

Questions for Finding Good Controversies: Where is the largest and most diverse assortment of actors involved? Where do alliances and oppositions transform recklessly? Where is nothing as simple as it seems? Where is everyone shouting and quarreling? Where do conflicts grow harshest?

Avoid cold controversies – Controversies are best observed when they reached the peak of their overheating. If there is no debate or the debate is lethargic, if all actors agree on the main questions and are willing to negotiate on the minor, then there is no authentic controversy and the resulting cartography will be either boring or partial. Good controversies are always hot: they may involve a limited number of actors, but there must be some action going on.

Avoid past controversies – Issues should be studied when they are both salient and unresolved once an agreement has been reached, a solution has been imposed with a discussion has been closed in some other way, controversies lose rapidly all their interest. Past issues can be investigated only if observation can be moved back to the moment when the controversy was being played out.

Avoid boundless controversies – Controversies are complex and, if they are lively and open, they tend to become more and more complex as they mobilize new actors and issues. When selecting your study case, be realistic and resource-aware. Mapping huge debates, such as global warming or genetically modified organisms, requires these amounts of time and work. As a general rule, the more a controversy is restricted to a specific subject matter, the easier will be its analysis.

Avoid underground controversies – for a controversy to be observable, it has to be, partially at least, open to public debates. Confidential or classified issues as well as sectarian or Masonic groups expose social cartography to the risk of drifting towards conspiracy theories. The problem is not that few actors are involved in these controversies, but that these actors have a secretive attitude. The cartography of controversies was developed to map public space and it performs poorly when applied to underground topics.

SOURCE:  Diving in Magma, Tommaso Venturini

How to start a movement

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.)

Controversy Analysis Resources

Article on...

Observing controversies: Diving in Magma

Describing controversies: Building on Faults

--Designing Controversies and their Publics (slideshow)
--Designing Controversies and their Publics (article)
--Mapping controversies talk

Student-reporter Report#1 Criteria

1. this report will be an attempt to use the tools, techniques, and ideas of sociology to understand some real-world data
2. include your question(s)
3. include a hypothesis (if you have one)
4. use at least 3 ideas from your textbook (or approved alternative text) to make sense of (i.e., describe) a dataset
5. use at least 2 ideas from 2 different articles from your reader (or approved alternative text) to make sense of (i.e., describe) a dataset
6. (and thus) have at least 5 in-text citations
7. all cited or borrowed ideas used must be paraphrased NOT quoted (this includes textbooks, reader, and dataset ideas, though leeway can be requested for dataset ideas or statements)
8. have a Reference page with textbook, reader, and dataset citations
9. any online datasets will be cited in the Reference section using their hyperlinked webpage address
10. report essay should be organized in paragraphs, which should flow in a logical sequential order (i.e., point A, point B, point C, etc.)
11. report should be 2 pages, single spaced, 1" margins, using Times New Roman 12pt font
12. report should include a visual that contributes to an easy and speedy comprehension of some of the data
13. reports-in-progress should be submitted (preferably during the class meeting period) for teacher review and critique 3 times prior to final submission
14. report should be interesting (by addressing realworld issues or matters of concern)
15. report should be objective/objectful (by following technical social scientific protocol--i.e., "just observe and describe")
16. include memos/drafts, field notes, sketches, and inquiry logs at the end of the report (recommended until Report#2)

About the Blog

This blog is dedicated to ignorant people thinking with the tools, techniques, and ideas of sociology:  "In my own work at universities I have been much struck by the paralysis of thought induced in pupils by the aimless accumulation of precise knowledge, inert and unutilized. It should be the chief aim of a university professor to exhibit himself in his own true character—that is, as an ignorant man thinking, actively utilizing his small share of knowledge."--A.N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education and other essays p. 37

Excerpts on Mental Illness

Goffman on the vicious circle of insane asylums – “… there is a vicious circle process at work. Persons who are lodged on “bad” wards find that very little equipment of any kind is given them – clothes may be taken away from them each night, recreational materials may be withheld, and only heavy wooden chairs and benches provided for furniture. Acts of hostility against the institution have to rely on limited, ill-designs devices, such as banging a chair against the floor or striking a sheet of newspaper sharply so as to make an annoying explosive sound. And the more adequate this equipment is to convey rejection of the hospital, the more the act appears as a psychotic symptom, and the more likely it is that the management feels justified in assigning the patient to a bad ward. When a patient finds himself in seclusion, naked and without visible means of expression, he may have to rely on tearing up his mattress, if he can, or writing with faeces on the wall – actions management takes to be in keeping  with the kind of person who warrants seclusion.” P.306, Asylums

Gregory Bateson on the schizophrenic process – “It would appear that once precipitated into psychosis the patient has a course to run. He is, as it were, embarked upon a voyage of discovery which is only completed by his return to the normal world, to which he comes back with insights different from those of the inhabitants who never embarked on such a voyage. Once begun, the schizophrenic episode would appear to have as definite a course as an initiation ceremony – a death and rebirth – into which the novice may have been precipitated by his family life or by adventitious circumstances, but which in this course is largely steered by endogenous process.

                In terms of this picture, spontaneous remission is no problem. This is only the final and natural outcome of the total process. What needs to be explained is the failure of many who embark upon this voyage to return from it. Do these encounter circumstances either in family life or in institutional care so grossly maladaptive that even the richest and best organized hallucinatory experience cannot save them?” Perceval’s Narrative P.xiii-xiv

RD Laing on disturbed people – “the immediate interpersonal environment of “schizophrenics” has come to be studied in its interstices. This work was prompted, in the first place, by psychotherapists who formed the impression that, if their patients were disturbed, their families were often (113) very disturbing.” P.112 – 113, The Politics of Experience

“There is no such “condition” as “schizophrenia,” but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event. This political event, occurring in the civic order of society, imposes definitions and consequences on the labeled person. It is a social prescription that rationalizes a set of actions whereby the labeled person is annexed by others, who are legally sanctioned, medically empowered and morally obliged, to become responsible for the person labeled. The person labeled is inaugurated not only into a role, but (122) into a career of patient, by the concerted action of a coalition (a “conspiracy”) of family, G. P., mental health officer, psychiatrists, nurses, psychiatric social workers, and often fellow patients. The “committed” person labeled as patient, and specifically as “schizophrenic,” is degraded from full existential and legal status as human agent and responsible person to someone no longer in possession of his own definition of himself, unable to retain his own possessions, precluded from the exercise of his discretion as to whom he meets, what he does. His time is no longer his own and the space he occupies is no longer of his choosing. After being subjected to a degradation ceremonial known as psychiatric examination, he is bereft of his civil liberties in being imprisoned in a total institution known as a “mental” hospital. More completely, more radically than anywhere else in our society, he is invalidated as a human being. In the mental hospital he must remain, until the label is rescinded or qualified by such terms as “remitted” or “readjusted.” Once a “schizophrenic,” there is a tendency to be regarded as always a “schizophrenic.”” P.121-122, The Politics of Experience

What ants teach us about the brain, cancer and the Internet

 Ecologist Deborah Gordon studies ants wherever she can find them — in the desert, in the tropics, in her kitchen ... In this fascinating talk, she explains her obsession with insects most of us would happily swat away without a second thought. She argues that ant life provides a useful model for learning about many other topics, including disease, technology and the human brain.

Problem-Solving Template

1) FORMING or DEFINING A QUESTION, IDEA, OR PROBLEM

– Focus on the Problem:  “What am I really trying to do here?”   Defining one’s labor.

– Name your confusion.

2) ENGAGE IN THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH:  GATHER INFORMATION AROUND A QUESTION

3) BASTA STAGE:  STOPPING RESEARCH

4) GESTATION:  (1) DETACHMENT FROM THE QUESTION, DIVERGENT BEHAVIOR – HOLDING THE QUESTION, AND KEEP IT IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND, (2) APPROACH THE QUESTION THROUGH METAPHOR, CRAZY UNRELATED THINGS – “WHAT WOULD THIS QUESTION LOOK LIKE IF IT WERE A TREE OR A CHESSBOARD?”, (3) VISUALIZE WHAT THE ANSWER MIGHT LOOK LIKE

Imagination Techniques:

1. ask:  ...ur mind for an answer

2. relax: sleep-ball-drop-method, walk, lie down and look at the sky

3. mash ups: blend disparate things (concepts) and think with or between them (e.g., metaphor)

(1) idea #1 (& free associations) + idea #2 → blended free associations + relevance question: “What does or could this mean for the present problem?”

(a) E.g., the mind gives an image of giant headphones (a blended free Association) + “Who are we not listening to, and who do we need to listen to?” – – The thinker tied together the relevance of listening to headphones with listening to people:  similar affects.

4. connect & combine: put things together that don’t go together or that are not obvious

(1)   e.g., shoes with a broom and a dustpan connected to them;

5. Framing and reframing problems

(1) ask different questions

(2) jokes: “People ask me (X).  And I say, Mom (Y).” – From people frame to mom frame.

6. challenging your assumptions:  (1) working with unfamiliar problems, (2) working with questions that poke holes in one’s assumptions

Feelings of Knowing:  Am I getting closer?  Can I do this now?  Or is this beyond my reach right now?

1. DIVERGE:  What do you do when feelings of knowing are absent?  Relax and forget about the problem.

2. CONVERGE:  What you do when feelings of knowing are present?  Keep struggling; stay up and drink the cup of coffee.

5) EUREKA (MUSE) MOMENT:  THE IDEA WITH AN ANSWER OUT OF THE BLUE

6) PROCESS OF MAKING:  BRINGING AN IDEA INTO BEING – OPERATE WITHOUT FEAR; IF YOU CAN’T MAKE THE THING, THEN FIND PEOPLE WHO CAN

1. mistake moments/trial and error: improvised moments, playing around, failure as catalysts for the creative process

2. Exploration/Experimentation:  What can I do with this material, idea, process, etc.?

i) Construction play:  playful building; playfully learning by doing; thinking with your hands and creating quick, fast multiple low resolution prototypes/drafts (going for quantity)

ii) Role play:  imagining interactions; Acting out (authentic) scripts.

(1)   Analogous role play (e.g., getting waxed to see what it’s like for burn victims to have dressings removed)

7) TESTING, CRITICISM, SHARING: BRINGING THING INTO THE SOCIAL SPHERE

– share creativity with facilitators

8) RINSE AND REPEAT

SOURCES (TED talks):  Raphael DiLuzio (TODD HENRY) (Alex Grey) Kirby Ferguson, Tim Brown, (Tina Seelig), Janet Echelman, (Gregg Fraley), Jonah Lehrer, (Jonathan Tilley),