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PRIVACY (Politics & Psychology) – Blog post 5

As my previous readings within Politics have led me to identify the areas of globalization and security as paramount in relation to the issue of privacy I have extended my reading to specific books focusing on this concepts.

Globalisation, Competitiveness and Human Security (1997) – Cristobal Kay ,states that globalisation can include political negotiations, cultural trends and increased internationalisation of economic activities. It is also the process whereby enterprises become interdependent and interlinked globally via strategic allegiances and international networks. The book  discusses changes occurring on a global level. Such changes are beyond the influence and henceforth the control of any individual person, community or even the government. It is therefore logical to link these dynamics to society experiencing feelings of insecurity over many related issues, including that of loss of privacy. After the end of the Cold War in 1989, which was predominantly viewed as a positive outcome as it reduced the fear of global military conflict which would have threatened peace and security, many political and economical reforms were instigated within developing countries and at the global level there was an overwhelming sense of security due to the dissolution of the threat of nuclear war. However it has been purported that there are new specific threats to human security, many of which have international or global dimensions as their root causes can be traced to events and processes occurring outside of their territories, namely globalisation and competitiveness. The UNDP (1994):23 produced a list which delineates all aspects of human security; on that list under political security was violation of human rights – privacy connotations. The implication is that globalisation and competiveness can be directly attributable to human development and to reduce people’s insecurities.

Globalization and insecurity – political, economic and physical challenges (2002) – Barbara Harriss-White, gave the definition of insecurity as ‘unsafe or unreliable’ and  determined that there are four areas of physical insecurity which are interrelated:

1. Threats to persons, property and/or environments
2. Economic and political autonomy of states
3. Instability, particularly of market
4. Vulnerability – a susceptibility to damage, closely but not completely aligned with poverty and inequality

This book also discusses globalization as a political process, whereby the main forces producing it have moved away from industry and weapon production towards instead, technology, information and communications, and financial control of everything else. It is suggested that it is the political project that causes insecurity via poverty, regulation of health and the reworking of national politics.

For the psychology part of my independent disciplinary review this week I have been reading : Self – Presentation Impression Management and Interpersonal Behaviour (1995) – Mark R. Leary. Self-presentation deals with the ways in which human behaviour is affected by people’s concerns with their public impressions. The norm would be that individuals would prefer that others perceive them in a flattering light rather than in an undesirable manner. Thus people may act in a certain way in order to make an impression on someone e.g. the job applicant in an interview. It is determined that generally people’s concerns with others’ impressions constrain their behavioural options and so individuals would be reluctant to conduct acts which would be seen as morally/ socially reprehensible in public. This is not necessarily negative though as a world where no-one cares about the opinions of others would be far more detrimental. Consider people saying or doing anything without considering the feelings of others etc. However it is possible for people to be too concerned with what others think about them which can lead to feelings of insecurity building up. The book also discusses the differences between exaggerations and lies in relation to the fact that individuals are multi – faceted and can therefore convey many different aspects of their characters, the majority of which may be genuinely true attributes, depending on the circumstances. Thus rather than lying per se, people may select the images they want others to form from their repertoire of true-self images.

There are two prevalent thinkers in relation to self-presentation: Erving Goffman who was a sociologist and wrote ‘The presentation of self in everyday life’ (1959) in which he determined that much can be gained by focusing on public behaviour, and Edward Jones (1990) ‘The study of impression’, in which he discussed management and self – presentation being an integral part of the study of interpersonal perception as it is not possible to fathom how people view each other without knowing the dynamic to self-presentation at the same time.

I will be continuing my reading further into these areas within my two disciplines as I feel that there is far more valuable information to be obtained towards the overall research.

Last week I investigated how sociology used historical analysis, cross cultural research, individual case studies and the examination of changing social trends. This week I return to economics, with an examination of the nature of supply, and elasticity in a market. These theories are central to which goods get to a market, and the price at which they retail.

                Supply is the amount of any good or service that a company is willing to produce for a set price. Building on this the law of supply states that all other things remaining equal, the higher the price of a good the greater amount which is supplied. Companies cannot produce every product demanded by the market due to supply constraints and the need to remain profitable. As such it’s imperative that companies calculate the required supply, and not to flood a market. The main factors affecting the supply of a good in a market are known as the factors of production, first among these is price, if a good is expensive to produce, less are made, furthermore if the price of producing a good increases, due to external factors, for example the price of producing a plastic toy will go up if oil prices rise, as such less toys will be produced. Competition and complimentary goods also affect the supply of any given goods, in highly competitive markets its prudent to supply a smaller number, if there are a large number of complimentary goods, supply goes up. The expected future price of a good also effects supply, if a good is predicted to rise in the coming months, the supply available now will be reduced to save supplies for later use, ensuring later profitability. Conversely if the price of a good is expected to fall, it is good to increase current supply as such to reduce the impact of the reduced price. The number of suppliers in any given market also governs the total available supply. The more producers there are the more that it is possible to produce and supply to the consumer. The final factor that economists consider affecting supply, is technology, this is a catch all term to describe pretty much any other factor, and can be concerned with actual technological issuess, for example, a company invests in a new machine which allows them to produce and supply twice of much of any product for the same price as before, supply will increase. Technology however could also include factors such as a natural disaster, which may reduce the availability of raw materials and hence reduce supply.

                Supply is based on planed sales of a product. Based on the relationship between the nature of demand (See blog 2) and its interaction with supply, all sales of any given product eventually reach an equilibrium, where the quantity of a good demanded equals the quantity of a good supplied. How much a product is demanded affects the overall selling price as individuals are willing to spend more money on the product, if a product is rare, for example a mint 50 year old comic, then demand goes up relative to the quantity available, and hence price goes up. A surplus or excess of any product will reduce the relative value of any product, and reduce price. Based on this relationship it  is important that businesses manage the available supply and demands of a product to ensure god returns. Advertising helps increase demand for a product, reduced supply increases price, as such if consumers value a product demand goes up, and if this available in limited quantity, price goes up. It is to be noted that sellers commonly reduce price to a point lower than the idea market cost to gain increased market share, this tactic is common among supermarkets, especially in the run up to large events such as Christmas.

                With markets always moving to achieve equilibrium, large scale shifts in supply or demand can lead to uncertainties in a market. The price elasticity of demand give a measure of how responsive the market is to price changes, some products are inelastic, such as alcohol and petrol, both products have consistently increased in price, yet demand has remained unchanged. Other products however are very elastic and are affected by minor shifts in price, for example if a large box of Dazz is sold at £18, demand and supply will settle at this price, if a similar box of Bold enters the market at £10 the demand for Dazz drops substantially. This occurs because Bold is a close substitute for Dazz and hence acts to increase the elasticity of the market. The web has increased the elasticity of many products, as it has allowed a greater awareness of many products substitutes, hence the relative price falls.

                Similar elasticity exists for supply, as the cost of producing any products may vary as a function of the quantity demanded. if the cost per unit of producing an item does not vary based on the quantity produced, its supply can be considered inelastic, if there is a price point that any quantity of units can be produced then the supply can be considered elastic.

                 So why do we care about supply? The web has turned most of the globe into one big market place, hence the supply of the majority of items has increased. This means that the relative price of products have fallen, allowing consumers increased power in the market. Consumers have freedom and power, potentially reducing the relative importance of traditional economic theory.  

Until next time!

PRIVACY (Politics & Psychology) – Blog post 4

Now that I feel that I have established some grounding for myself within the subjects, this week I have resumed reading more into areas of politics and psychology that can be directly applied to the issue of privacy, which I am investigating.

Regarding politics, I have been reading ‘Contemporary Political Philosophy’ by Will Kymlicka. It was interesting to discover that dating back to key founding factors which led to Western civilisation, the dilemma of privacy rights versus public accessibility were clearly evident. Plato in his ‘republic’ predicted a society where the offspring of the ruling class would be educated in common and as such segregated from the normal family life. Envisaged as the ideal city – the kallipolis was made up of both men and women who, if they possessed the same assets, would receive the same education and have the same access to careers; with no emphasis on who would be the homemaker and child-carer in those circumstances. The implication is that both the feminine aspect of intimacy and the masculine virtue of honour should share equal importance if both genders have equal treatment, however Plato was actually scornful of emotional closeness and instead presumed that honour was all-important and that anyone regardless of their sex, would want to obtain it. This hegemony of males in the kallipolis has all the makings of totalitarianism (the annihilation of the private sector as in George Orwell’s 1984). Furthermore Aristotle’s ‘politics’ offers a contemporary distinction between the private family life and that of the ‘polis’, the democratic decision-making forum which voiced all the citizens’ voices. However, Aristotle thought that the private domain was dull and of no interest i.e. stagnant household governance; whilst the ‘polis’ was enlightening. This preference for public over private is preserved within etymology. The word private is attributable to the Latin ‘privare’ which means to deprive, thus the notion of privacy for the majority of classical thinkers was linked to deprivation rather than voluntary withdrawing.  These epistemologies have led me to start comparing principles such as Totalitarianism vs. Democracy and Self-Determination which I will research further into next week along with further reading into more contemporary issues such as security and globalization.

For the psychology part of my study I have been fortunate enough to obtain a recommended core text book from an Undergraduate psychology student. ‘Psychology’ by Martin, Carlson and Buskist. For all my previous psychology reading this book achieved the previously impossible! It provided me with a definitive definition of what is psychology. Therefore If I am to understand that psychology is ‘the science of behaviour’, literally interpreted as ‘the science of the mind’, it encompasses behaviour which can be directly observed and behavioural characteristics can be utilised within principles and theories to explain individual actions. Returning to the area of social psychology, in particular ‘self’ and ‘identity’, social psychologists are of the belief that people have many different selves in relation to different situations. Markus and Nurius (1986) determine that ‘selves not only describe how we are, but how we would like to be, called possible selves.’ The ‘self- discrepancy theory’ by Higgins (1987) distinguishes between ‘the actual self’ – how one really is, ‘the ideal self’ – how one would like to be and ‘the ought self’ – how one thinks they should be. Thus the first two are types of ‘self-guides’ which encourage a variety of self-related behaviours, whilst the latter engages ‘prevention’ behaviour in that we would strive to abstain from doing what may be frowned upon by society. In Sedikides, C. ‘The Self’, the theory of ‘the looking glass’ is purported (Goffman 1959) in which ‘people actively attempt to create desired impressions or appraisals of themselves in the minds of the social audience’. In accordance with this, Shrauger and Schoeneman (1979) determined that people ‘see through the glass darkly’ – individuals perceive themselves on what or how they think others see them rather than on how others actually see them. Robson & Harter (1991) also provided a theory about ‘self-worth’ being based on peer-pressure. Next week I will continue reading other seminal theories of psychological behaviour and ‘self and ‘identity’.

I have also read the journal recommended to me by Olivier  -Newell, P. B. (1995). Perspectives on privacy. Journal of Environmental psychology, 15(2), 87-104. It provides an excellent review of the psychological literature on privacy and within it  limits of all different conceptions about privacy in psychology are listed and explained in great detail.

I am also reading ‘The Second Self’ by Sherry Turkle. This book deals with psychology of computing and it is particularly insightful into how computers affect individuals’ relationships, how they perceive themselves and society in general. First published in 1984, it provides a historical account of computing behaviour but also can be applied to contemporary issues and development over the past two decades. I am mindful though, of not going off on a tangent about privacy and technology at this juncture and I am reading this in order to make a link between my issue and the Web within my final report.

This week, I went historic.

As part of my sociology reading, it was apparent that societies do not just exist in isolation, but rather are the product of thousands of years of traditions and culture. A central theme suggested by Gidden’s is that society is the product of uncertainty, when individuals work together they increase their chances of success. In response to this, society can be seen as having evolved in distinct epochs, hunter-gatherers, pastoral and agrarian societies, traditional non-industrial, post industrial or modern societies, and post modern information age societies. Not all societies evolve at the same pace, if at all, with external factors influencing their development. According to Kautsky (1999) traditional societies were based on the desire to create an empire, for control of limited resources. Post industrial revolution, there was a mass exodus of labour from the countryside and a migration in to cities which became large population centres, with this migration came a shift in social life, as people became one of many, the majority of relations became impersonal.

In response to the decline of traditional communities, a new community was formed, with the rise of the nation state, individuals felt part of a much larger society, as such rather than being a member of a village they became English, or French, or Spanish. (As an aside historically Italy and Germany became states long after most of Europe, and they remained city states far longer) The rise of the nation states gave far more influence to the relative governments, allowing for the start of national agendas.

The growth of nation states allowed for the expansion of western imperialism, founded primarily on fortune and firepower, nations were far stronger, both in terms of sheer productivity, and technology, such as gunpowder based military, than those who opposed them, the subsequent result was the rise of colonial superpowers, with the rise of the British and French colonial empires, based on trade. The Spanish empire, which had embarked on imperialism based primarily on looting rather than trade, had failed to innovate and was in decline by this time. Colonialism was driven primarily by economics, and central to capitalism was a growth of inequality and poverty, western powers became richer at the expense of indigenous populations, helping to create the third world. It has been found that societies that industrialised in the modern age have had some of the largest groths ever recorded, for example South Korea is now one of the worlds leading exporters of modern goods, despite being an agricultural society until post the Korean war, in the 1950s, of course western investment has acted to encourage this growth, with the US investing billions to turn the nation into a capitalist paradise, as a result of the Cold war.

So what causes theses societies to change? Unfortunately there is no one theory on this, but rather societal change is influenced by culture, physical environment and politics. Factors such as religion influences cultural, these can act to enhance or reduce the speed of change, such as the demands to translate the Latin bible into English in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, resulting in increased literacy rates for the average population. Culture is also influenced by communication technology, mass communication has encouraged the growth of societies, from the invention of the printing press to the development of the internet. One of the largest influences on culture is the individuals that govern, and influence them, leaders can be seen as an extension of societal desires, a true embodiment of the culture, leaders can be great war leaders, such as Napoleon, or Caesar, scientific and industrial innovators such as Newton or Brunel, or great social motivators, such as Ghandi, Washington or even Jesus. Physical environment motivates social trends due to limited resources, the ancient Egyptian empire relied on agriculture as there were insufficient  animals to hunt, whereas native Americans were never encouraged to develop farming based communities due to an excess of bison and buffalo, natural resources also encourage conflict as imperial powers attempt to gain advantage. The influence of politics is also a complex relationship, Marxist theory states that politics are a direct consequence of the economic nature of a society, however there are examples where fundamentally different political organisations have both used capitalists economies, such as Nazi Germany and the US. A far clearer link can be seen as the ultimate expression of political will and its affect on society, the military. Countries like the USSR and North Korea invested vast sums of capital into the development of military might, resulting in a twofold impact on society, due to limited finite resources, investment into the military reduced investment into the welfare and productivity of the nation, having a negative impact on growth, secondly strong aggressive military can lead to a reduction in individual freedoms, acting to reduce creative innovation.

 So how does all this relate to the modern world and economics? The western world has emerged due to a decline of traditionalism and a growth of rationalism, key to capitalism is the idea of self improvement, the same idea that drove individuals into the cities is still driving the desires of millions today, the growth of communication technology has freed the individual, people are free to develop their own distinct personality, and own identity. The growth of the same technology has increased the power of the state, allowing governments alter the lives of many in sweeping decisions, such as mass cuts to public spending. The society we live in today may be fundamentally different to societies of the past, but we are the product of our history.

The modern post industrial world is based on globalisation, driven mainly by the growth of ITC and the web. Globalisation has allowed individuals to transcend national borders and have a far greater sense of social responsibility across the globe, for example the web has allowed real time images of natural disasters on the opposite side of the globe, encouraging people to try and help, despite individuals ever likely to even visit the country in question. Wars are no longer fought with the aim of territorial gain, but to protect rights, usually based on western morality. Many have suggested that the web has brought the world closer, but all this has achieved is the flattening of culture, to be replaced by a global culture, based on an Anglo-American ideal, the British empire is far from dead, it just went digital. English is by far the global language of trade, the global language of the web, western imperialism could still be seen as alive and well. Globalisation is the complex marriage of society, economics, technology, and individualism, ideals which the west have long encourage and developed. Trade may have brought prosperity to many second world nations like China, but in an increasingly weightless economy (Quah,1999) the west still holds most of the trump cards.  

It is impossible to truly separate sociology and economics, they are intrinsically linked.

In order to establish whether i can look at economics in sufficient detail to make it a worthwhile exercise (in relation to the question of reputation) i’ve been focusing on that for the last ten days. Things are a bit more promising i think; provided i concentrate on the social capital side of things i’m confident i can tie everything together coherently.

I’ve been making my way through Economics by Parkin, Powell and Matthews, which i’ve found very accessible and easy to read. The authors try to illustrate reasonably complex concepts (for me they are reasonably complex, anyway) with simple analogies, the majority of which for some reason seem to include David Beckham. Below are the key things i’ve got from the first part of the book.

What is Economics? 
It is the social science that studies the choices that individuals, businesses, governments and entire societies make as they cope with scarcity and the incentives that influence and reconcile those choices.

Microeconomics & Macroeconomics
Microeconomics is the study of choices that individuals and businesses make, the way these choices interact in markets and the influence of governments. Macroeconomics studies the performance of the national and global economy.

Two Key Economic Questions
How do choices end up determining what, how and for whom goods and services get produced?
When do choices made in the pursuit of self-interest also promote the social interest?

Trade-Offs and Opportunity Cost
Trade-offs are a way of conceptualising the process of making a choice between alternatives. For example, when you choose to write your IDR blog rather than watchint the One Show you face a trade-off. By writing this blog i am (hopefully) becoming better educated and giving myself a better chance in doing well in this course, which may lead to a better career later down the line. But i am missing the One Show, so i am trading off current entertainment(?!) with my future ‘performance’.  Linked to this is opportunity cost. If i want to go and see ‘Due Date’ this weekend, the cost of the ticket will preclude me from having a pub lunch on Sunday. Therefore, the opportunity cost of seeing Due Date is the pub lunch i won’t have; that is, the pub lunch is the highest valued alternative that i would have done if i did not go to the cinema.

Margins
If i study five nights a week instead of four, and my marks go from an average of 50 to 60, the marginal benefit of that extra night’s study is the difference between my old and new average – 10%. The marginal cost of getting that extra ten percent is the night i lose socialising. In order to evaluate the benefits, i would have to establish whether the extra marks outweigh the cost of socialising less.

Human Nature and Social Interest
There is an economic assumption that humans act in their self interest; that is, they make the choices that get hte most value for them based on their values. A question the book seems very keen on addressing is when self-interested acts are alos in the social interest.

How Economics is Studied
Economics is not an experimental science, ands as such has to be studied through other means. Given that you cannot really conduct bound economic experiments in the laboratory, the book details and describes methods used to study economics. These include Observation and Measurement, Model Building and Testing Models.

I’ve been necessarily brief; there really is a lot of material that i’ve tried to distill down to the core components. Thus far it’s a rewarding task, and i feel quite comfortable with all of the concepts above although i’m fairly sure i had at least an elementary understanding of most of them. I’m going to press on with this book for the next week or so, as it has only touched on social capital and i think this will be the area that i can most strongly link back to my topic area.

Reading:

Aitchison, J (1972): Lingusitics, An Introduction. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Thomas, L & Wareing, S (1999): Language, Society and Power: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

Trudgill, P (1983): Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. London: Penguin.

In my last blog post I outlined some of the basic principles of linguistics. This week I will be going into more detail regarding this discipline and attempting to highlight areas of relevance to my topic, Organisation. As I mentioned in both last weeks blog and my initial statement of my intent to study linguistics, I am interested in finding out how language shapes social organisation and forms bonds, both within and between different communities and cultures. This blog post will look at the how language exists and is structured, and then how it can be used on basic levels to encourage and enforce social interaction.

Understanding Language.

Noam Chomsky argued that anyone who has learnt a language must have, at some point in their development, internalised a set of rules regarding the proper use of that language. In some ways, language can be thought of as a game, with rules and players, as well as being turn based. Linguists see language as having a functional role in human life; some examples of these functions are;

• Obtaining information. Eg: “What colour is the sky?” “The sky is blue.”
• Creating action. Eg: “Come with me!”
• Enforcing social bonds. Eg: “Well done!”

Of course language is extremely flexible, and these functions often interact when we are communicating. For example, the conversation:

“Can you go outside and tell me what colour the sky is?”

“Yes…the sky is blue”

“Thank you”

shows language being used to first create action, then to supply information and finally to supply social kudos to the actor. Similarly, the sentence;

“Come with me if you want to live!”

is an example of information being supplied to influence an action. Such common multiplicity in language shows how useful it is in quickly dealing with many different situations which we find ourselves in daily. While many animals have ways of communicating information and action through sound (in fact, the sentence “come with me if you want to live” is one of the most commonly communicated messages in the animal kingdom, next to “we should have sex”), only humans have the capacity to construct complex meaning and abstraction in language. To elaborate, animals communicate what is immediately relevant, such as immediate observations and feelings;

“I am hungry, where is the food?”

“The food is in this tree”

whereas humans can communicate past and future experiences with a descriptive element;

“The banana I ate this morning was delicious!”

“I want a banana too!”

“Well you’ll have to go to the banana tree, climb it, and get one for yourself”

Imagining a solution to a problem is only useful to a society if it can be quickly and effectively communicated to members, and in this respect humans are extremely advantaged thanks to language.

Language construction and semantics.

Language, in its most basic format, is made up of phonemes, which are the smallest sounds which distinguish two words. For example p and b in the English language are phonemes, as they distinguish words such as pit and bit. Phonemes expand to create groups of consonants and vowels, which make up words. Words are then characterised with semantics. Semantics is extremely important in understanding language, as words are far from universally recognisable. Identical words can have far from identical meanings, and humans have evolved to carry out internal logical inference to assess the semantics of a word or sentence. For example, someone who heard the word “duck” while standing on a golf course may logically infer that they need to carry out an immediate action, and someone who heard the same word spoken by a child standing next to a lake might logically infer that the child is referring to the species of bird. Semantics, then, allows us to understand the language we hear and make decisions regarding its usefulness.

Of course, sometimes these decisions are wrong, no matter how logical the thought processes are, and language semantics can become very complicated very quickly. Many words in languages share common semantic components, for example “bull” and “man” both refer to adult male mammals, but we cannot use the terms interchangeably, except as similes. Humans get around this problem of this component overlap in language by working from established prototypes. When one thinks of a bird, one does not tend to think of a penguin, but of a robin, which is closer to the prototypical bird. However, because language is constantly evolving, prototypes can be endemic to certain social groups and certain social settings. If you overhear the word “bird” used by a group of men of a certain age in the local pub, you would be forgiven for assuming that these men are referring to a particular woman, and are not members of your local RSPB branch. This kind of word fuzziness makes logical inference so important when communicating, but shows that it can, on occasion, be incorrect. When humans are unfamiliar with words they hear in a language that they recognise, they can usually solve this problem by asking for clarification; “Excuse me, when you say bird, what do you mean?” and then storing this information as a new internal subset rule of language, something like:

IF SPEAKER= Simon, ENVIRONMENT= Pub, WORD=’Bird’ THEN INFER word= ‘woman’.

And in this way language semantics can constantly evolve and adapt as an individual moves through various social groups and environments.

Pragmatics

Continuing this discussion of the unpredictable nature of language, we can discuss pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of unpredictable language use, and its creation is commonly attributed to philosopher Paul Grice (1913-1988), who identified efficient communication between humans in four maxims of conversation;

• Quantity: giving the right amount of information when talking.
• Quality: Being truthful when talking if the truth is known.
• Relevance: Relevant answers to questions or relevant statements to contexts.
• Manner: Clear and ordered structuring of communication.

Grice observed that these principles for cooperative communication exist in all languages and are so a core part of communicating,  for example when talking to a baby or animal which cannot respond, people will still communicate as if they were expecting a response, and follow one or more of the maxims. However, Grice also observed that the above maxims are often broken, and more commonly by certain social groups within a society. A politician, if we are being pessimistic, may be more inclined to mislead or respond irrelevantly to a question than a scientist. Pragmatic linguists note that when faced with random, useless or simply untrue information in language, humans will often try and draw reasonable conclusions and seek to understand the meaning of what was said, rather than simply rejecting the statement as a failed response. Our minds reason that only matters of extreme importance could cause someone to break the maxims of conversation, for example;

“Did you enjoy your day at school dear? Your maths teacher says that you have been LOOK OUT FOR THAT TIGER!”

And so often people, even when they are aware that laws of conversation have been broken, will allow the speaker to continue, accepting that there must have been a reason for the interruption in normal proceedings, even if the reason is not immediately known.

Pragmatic language therefore has much to say about the power of language, and this explanation of acceptance to broken norms can show us in part why skilled orators, such as lawyers, politicians and journalists, can coerce or influence certain social groups who may or may not be aware of the misuse of language directed at them. We have all seen interviews with politicians who evade certain questions, providing irrelevant answers or random information, and while this may enrage some members of a society, other listeners will assume that there must be a socially beneficial reason for the evasion. These listeners are often of a lower social status than the speaker and have less experience with language on a lexical level (they may not understand the words or the meanings that the speaker is using). I will discuss social classes and language further in two weeks.

What I hope this blog post has shown is that language has laws at a basic level. Language is a construction of sounds, created by humans to achieve certain results. As we evolve, so does the language we use and we are constantly updating our internal rulebook through logical inference to deal with new semantics, situations and social groupings that we find ourselves in. When it comes to use, as long as the basic construction rules are obeyed, language is found to be very flexible, and can be used by those skilled in communication to achieve a variety of ends. However, the basic principles of language and communication are still within us, and it is somewhat comforting to know that, even in a modern world where it new words are constantly created and old ones reinvented, that we still have core uses and needs for language that have remained more or less unchanged since our first words. Although I have not mentioned explicitly my topic of organisation, it is implied through much of the above analysis that language and communication is at the heart of our need to be close to one another, to express emotion, share ideas and survive as a community.

Next week, I will be returning to sociology to discuss sociological theorists and the idea of organisation.

PRIVACY (Politics & Psychology) – Blog post 3

So continuing on with my reading into two unfamiliar disciplines, it occurred to me this week that perhaps I may have been ‘jumping the gun’ somewhat by pre-empting the key areas within politics and psychology in relation to the issue of privacy, without obtaining a basic knowledge of what these two subjects are concerned with. Thus I have taken a step back from looking at the areas of ‘self’ within psychology and ‘security’ within politics and decided to read more about the basic underlying principles of each discipline instead.

For psychology I have been reading a number of books in order to gain an insight into the founding psychologists and the theories they presented.  In particular I have found the following helpful:

Psychology – Carlson, Martin & Buskist (2004)

Psychology: an integrated approach – Eysenck (1998)

Approaches to Psychology 2^nd ed. – Glassman (1995)

Beginning at the philosophical roots of psychology, I have been acquiring information about different theories and who conceived them, such as: Rene Descarts (1596-1650) – Dualism (the belief that it is possible that all reality can be divided into two separate identities: mind & matter), John Locke (1632-1704) – Empiricism (the pursuit of truth through observation and experience), David Hume (1711-1776) – Positivism (the concept that all meaningful ideas can be defined by observable material) and Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) – Idealism (the belief that knowledge of events in the world are not purely obtained from direct experience rather that knowledge is the outcome of inferences based on the accumulation of past experiences derived via the senses. Perhaps the most productive way to utilise all these concepts would be to correlate them and use them in a manner whereby they complement each other as it seems obvious to me that they all have basic similarities in that they are all concerned with the workings of the mind and the way in which individuals acquire knowledge.

Regarding politics, I have conducted similar research into the development of political ideologies and key theorists and resumed my reading of Political Thinkers: from Socrates to the present – David Boucher & Paul Kelly (2003). From here I have identified a number of important and influential schools of thought. Starting with the The Sophists, whose key ideas included moral and political issues and accepted a group way of thought such as justice being essential to society but also being beneficial to the individual, democracy being limited and justice being perceived as a convention as opposed to nature, which brings pleasure; law is unable to uphold justice thus it is better to be unjust wherever possible (Protagoras, Thrasymachus & Antiphon). Following on from the Sophists were the great thinkers Socrates (Elenchus – questions and answers leading to ignorance being admitted; Virtue – the basis of knowledge in conjunction with other virtues such as wisdom, courage, justice; Daimonion – the ‘inner voice’ which opposes active participation in politics; Techne – arts and crafts used as analogies for the basis of civil obedience) Plato (Forms – non- dynamic objects which are accessible to the mind but not the senses, providing reputable standards for good judgement and knowledge) and Aristotle (Human Nature – humans are social and political animas and in order to live a full life, require harmonious fellowship with others in a community) who collectively redefined a stronger case for justice. Already I am discovering that some theories have an underlying theme of human perception and also behaviour seems inherent as a recurrent theme.

The more I read into these two disciplines the more I am assuming that there may be some overlapping theories and concepts which can be applied to the issue of privacy and as such privacy on the Web. However I do not want to be too presumptuous or have too many pre-conceived notions without any evidence!

A little moment to say how I feel:

Haralambos and Holborn’s Sociology. Themes and Perspectives has been recalled back to the library. Sniff. So I am returning it today.  We’ve had some good times, but today I have to say goodbye.

So I’m starting to think, why am I doing this?  I’m reading these huge (heavy) textbooks and trying to find out what the sociologist’s think about gender and sexuality.  But what I have really been trying to concentrate on is why they think these things.  What methods have they used to come to these conclusions?  That is the most important part of this research, to try to understand how the discipline of sociology applies its methods to individuals and groups to try to understand about gender and sexuality.  It seems from this week’s readings that interviews and observation are the favourites for gender and sexuality.  There is a certain amount of scientific approach later on (80s onwards) when looking at sexuality, particularly the work of Fausto-Sterling, and this is refreshing, but it always goes back to the interview.  How far can a conversation with someone who says that they are a ‘female’, ‘transexual’, ‘male’ really help to explain what gender is I wonder? I’m going to outline, as I do every week, what I have been reading, but I really do wonder if I am going to find anything more about methodological approaches and methods of investigation for sociologists than I have already discovered in these first year undergraduate textbooks.  I think that I may need to up the level of reading a little if I am going to get anything more than a broad overview to methods, so far, it has not expanded form last week’s list of:

• participant observation
• quantitative research in the form of surveys, questionnaires and interviews
• qualitative research in the form of interviews and observations
• secondary data
• content analysis
• discourse analysis
• case studies
• life histories

I’m not saying that this isn’t a good list, in fact I think that it covers the social side of human quite well, but there are gaps, when looking at gender, in looking at the physical attributes of individuals and the effects of this on our understanding of gender.  What about the genes, and the body, and the brain?  Or is this just socio-psychology and I am never going to find the answer I want sitting amongst the sociologists?  Craig has given me a book on Social Psychology, which I have been so tempted to read all week; but I am trying to stick with pure sociology for the first few weeks… we’ll see how that goes this week.

Sexuality (and a tiny bit of gender)

There’s just enough time to give a quick review of the chapter on Sex and Gender (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008: 90-142).  The section begins with a critique of ‘malestream sociology’ based on the work of P.Abbott, C.Wallace and M. Tyler (2005).  There is a mention of the biological differences between man and woman; sexual diomorphism (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008: 92-93), where sexual diomorphism is biological fact (cf. Warton, 2005: 18) and the distinction that sex and gender are different (cf. Stoller, 1968).  The chapter discusses the rhesus monkeys from Goy and Pheonix’s experiments (1971) and the work of Archer and Lloyd (2002) on testosterone and criminal records, and goes on to outline Oakley’s criticism of the rhesus monkey experiemnts as not including the social context affecting the hormone levels (1981) and also Halpern et al. work on aggression and testosterone in teenage boys (1994) that shows there is no correlation between testosterone levels and aggression.  Archer and Lloyd say that although hormones contribute to aggressive behaviour, peer groups also affect behaviour, they say that there is an ‘interaction between biological and social processes (Archer and Lloyd, 2002).  I think that this is interesting when considering the representation of gender online as the communication between groups needs to be considered when thinking about the way that an individual is choosing to present themselves (or feels that they have to present themselves) online.

Haralambos and Holborn go on to discuss sociobiology (2008: 94-96).  This is a topic that I am going to read more into as I think that it will have a lot to say about the links between genetics and behaviour and therefore could be useful when thinking about the presentation of sexual identity online.  Barash applies Wilson’s worn on sociobiology to gender and sex (Barash, 1979; Wilson, 1975) saying that reproductive strategies produce different behaviours between males and females, resulting in different social roles.  Looking at the literature for this subject available in the University of Southampton library, sociobiologists seem to use animal behaviour to explain their theories, and it seems to me that this may not therefore wash when you move the theories across to humans.  Blier writes against sociobiology, saying that they are ethnocentric (1984), this is a really interesting point.  If studying different societies results in different behaviours of men and women being observed, does this necessarily mean that sociobiology is wrong? Or does it mean that there are other factors at play that have resulted in an exceptional situation occurring? I don’t agree with this, but I am saying it as the internet is an exceptional situation perhaps? And so the work of sociobiologists, whether true or false in its statements, becomes irrelevant when all of the social norms are being broken and the communities are abnormal?  Looking at whether communities online are abnormal or not isn’t within the scope of this little project; I wish it was as I believe that they are not abnormal and that the world online is an exact copy of the world offline.

Haralambos and Holborn go on to discuss the sexual division of labour (cf. G.P.Murdock, 1949) and also the cultural division of labour (cf. A.Oakley, 1974).  Oakley looks to disprove Murdock’s idea that biology determines the division of labour between the sexes, she does this by looking at the labour divisions of a range of societies (1974), but again, she is using the sociologist’s approach of studying the behaviours of societies and then concluding that they are representative of all of the individuals, past and present, on earth.  Oakley identifies where socialisation into gender roles occurs: manipulation of child’s self-concept; canalization of boys and girls using objects; verbal appellations for children; exposure to different activities (1974).  But, as Haralambos and Holborn point out, Oakley misses the other reasons for this behaviour; Connell points out that it is not always passive, consider the active seeking out of pleasure he says (i.e. wanting to wear high heels because they make you feel sexy)(Connell, 2002:138-141) – not sure about this one: why do you feel sexy in high heels? Because of the societal behaviours, this is not an active seeking out, this is a passive enforced behaviour, I think.

The chapter then moves onto gender attribution, in particular the work of Kessler and McKenna, ethnomethodologists who look at how people characterise the world around them, where gender is socially produced, and that there is therefore no way to tell between a woman and a man easily (Kessler & McKenna, 1978:885-7).  It seems to me that they come to some of their conclusions using interviews to think about how transsexuals remove their perceived sexuality by others from their actual physical attributes that may make an individual make an assumption about their sexuality.  This is done by: content and manner of speech; public physical appearance; information about their past life; private body and how to hide details of their body that would point to a particular sexuality (Kessler & McKenna, 1978).  This is very interesting in the online world. Where do these four processes happen when you are online?  The private body is easier to conceal, but I would argue that the manner and content of speech, the public physical appearance (assuming that it has to be chosen by the individual from a selection of possibilities, as in SecondLife) and the past life are all just as difficult to construct online as they are offline.   I think that we are just as constrained by these processes online as we are offline.

Haralambos and Holborn introduce Fausto-Sterling and the idea of transgendered people, where dualistic views of being either male of female are not appropriate (Fausto-Sterling, 2000), her work is also based in the social processes that create gender, she says that gender is ‘embodied’.  Key to this is that the development of neural processes in the brain is connected to the experiences we have, so our social factors and our body’s factors reinforcing one another so that gender is materialised within the body (Fausto-Sterling, 2000).  The section ends with Connell’s idea that biology and culture are fused together (Connell, 2002).

Next Week

Feminism is discussed in depth in the introductory textbooks that I am using for this early stage of my reading.  I am going to read through Abbott et al., 2005. An Introduction to Sociology. Feminist Perspectives, for this part of my research.   I know that I said that I would do it last week, but I have been quite surprised at how useful the undergraduate textbooks have been.  I am going to try to move onto biology also this coming week, I have the texts that I identified last week sitting on my desk staring at me.  I am loathe to start them as I think that I know already what they will contain…

This week, I have begun to investigate the economic component of the independent disciplinary review; the main text I used for this was “Economics” by Parkin, Powell and Matthews. The authors describe economics as the social science of choice, and they differentiate between two main types, microeconomics, the economics of individuals and small businesses; and macroeconomics, the economics which concentrate on nations and large multinational companies.

The next large theme handled was production, including 4 main factors of production, land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. Land refers to the raw materials used in the production of goods, labour the work that individuals must complete in order to produce the good, capital the assets that a company must have to produce the goods and entrepreneurship, the organisation and goals the business possesses.  Simply by looking at these factors it is clear that the digital revolution would fundamentally change what, and by whom goods are produced. The increase in digital media means that companies, and increasingly individuals do not require large amounts of natural resources, for example, a mash up artist just requires a copy of the intended parent files. Additionally many digital users do not require vast assets to produce goods, many of which can be created using a PC, potentially with a key piece of required software, this is far smaller than the large production facilities which many companies are required to possess. It is clear therefore that just from a basic level that the web has altered or has the potential to alter the fundamentals of economics. The authors contend that the information revolution in the 1990s and the subsequent growth of the web has altered the lives individuals in much the same way as the industrial revolution of the 1700s and 1800s.

Economics does take a negative view of individuals, arguing that all individuals are fundamentally self centred and individualistic, who always act according to self interest.(As an aside, economics  seems to view individuals as being governed by the id, and pleasure principle in Freudian psychology) This action is taken as a given by economists, who argue that the role of the state is to manage the wants of the citizens, as no individual can ever be truly satisfied. Scarcity is a common to all, as individuals inherently want for more, they can never be satisfied, due to limit of resources, making every decision a trade-off. This is easy to see in everyday transactions, as individual only has a finite set of resources, as such we must make decisions on how best to use our limited source. Based on the notion of limited resources, economics also focuses on opportunity costs, that is the cost of not doing something else with the resources an individual possesses. Interestingly economists only look at this in terms of profit and loss rather than simply opportunities for other activities, for example an individual may invest a significant amount of time developing social bonds by spending time with a large group of friends, the individual has not gained a direct use of their capital, and as such they may have been better investing their time into completing required work. Sociologists could argue that spending time with others fosters the gain of social capital, a potentially valuable resource. The investment of resources is always a trade off between activities, as such actively investing in the future reduces the resources available now, in exchange for increasing the potential for resources in the future.

As Individuals only have a finite set of resources, it is obvious that individuals benefit from specialisation, individuals cannot be the best at everything, but by specialising and gaining expert skill levels in one subset, they can produce the best goods they can. If multiple specialists from different skill sets combine, they can then trade, allowing all parties to gain a benefit, and access to goods otherwise denied to them. Interestingly this is where the growth of the web contradicts with classical economic theory, many of the youtube sensations, or web mash up artists are not experts in these fields, and in the vast majority of cases are not trading their ideas for a form of capital gain, but simply to be a member of a community, or to express creativity, of course it is possible to argue that these could count as investments into the future but it seems very unlikely that this is the motivating factor behind such actions.

The next large economic theory I focused on was demand and supply, a key tenet in economics, central to demand is the law of demand, which states that if all other factors are equal, the lower the cost of an item the higher the demand. It is possible that this is where the web has fundamentally revolutionised consumer behaviour, the web has allowed individuals to access information, at a relatively low cost, that would have potentially remained inaccessible, Wikipedia has allowed everyone with an internet connection to learn about a variety of topics, e-commerce has allowed individuals to access goods otherwise denied to them at a lower cost. The web is used in rural areas of developing countries to check the global price of goods to ensure that the farmers are getting a fair price for the goods that they produce. People generally want greater value for money, demand more, and value innovation more. Of course it could be argued that these social trends started long before the explosion of the massed web, but the web has fundamentally changed the perceptions of value and the way the global game is played.     

The coming week I will be returning to sociology to see how sociologists can help explain these trends, and consider whether we are simply in the start of a snow ball, and whether this trend could continue indefinitely in its current state, or whether these trends are somehow doomed. The web has allowed the Djinn out of the lamp, and people don’t want him to go back in. If classical economics is based on the “Wealth of Nations”, written in 1776, is the coming age characterised by the wealth of the individual, with classical economics being resigned to antiquity?

Blog Post two – Sociology.

I have been reading about Sociology and Gender from two main texts, Marsh et al. (2009) Sociology. Making Sense of Society and Haralambos & Holborn (2004) Sociology Themes and Perspectives.  Both have given me a really good broad overview into general sociological approaches, as well as more in-depth details of sociology’s approach to understanding gender.

I am particularly interested in the key issues as outlined by Marsh et al. of sociological perspectives in practice and how sociological knowledge is produced.

Sociological perspectives – key issues:

It seems from the readings that I have carried out so far that there is no unified body of approaches to/theories in sociology.  Sociologists seem to struggle to agree on concepts, I am particularly interested by Gouldner’s criticism describing social surveillance as ‘cow sociology’ (1975).

Sociology seems to claim to follow a scientific method to collect data with which it can make statements about behavioural patterns, but these tendency statements do presumably invest quite a high percentage of their accuracy on the dependency of regularity.  People are not necessarily always going to behave in a predictable manner, even if sociology has studied other individuals/groups in a similar situation in the past.   I like the idea of considering in every situation these factors: biological, psychological and social.  But, as my first book on sociology tells me, it is often difficult to distinguish between these factors.

Production of Sociological knowledge

Marsh et al. outline the cyclical trends in sociological research (2009:119), as highlighted by McNeill (1990), and also discuss the importance, as put by Pawson, in the differences between positivist and interpretivist approaches to understanding social research: “both qualitiative and quantitative approaches face identical problems and need to adopt common solutions.” (Pawson, 1989:31-2).

According to Marsh et al., sociologists like Karl Marx, Durkheim and Weber base their work on analysing second-hand evidence, such as historical sources and not on first-hand research.  Whereas Charles Booth and Seebohn Rowntree were all about the survey and qualitative research (Marsh et al.,2009:119).  So there seems to be a dichotomy with the forms of research most appropriate for generalising societal behaviours, or for making statements on a much smaller scale of individuals’ actual behaviours.

I wonder how this will all tie in with looking at gender from a sociological perspective. ..

Different approaches to sociology

Haralambos and Holborn’s publication has a good introduction to the differences between structural and social action theories (2004:855-856).  I found the outlines of functionalist (Durkheim, Merton and Parsons), social capital (Putnam), conflict perspectives, including Marxism (Marx), neo-Marxism (Gramsci), post-capitalism conflict theory (Dahrendorf), and social action and interpretive perspectives (Weber, Ritzer) really useful.  I struggled to understand symbolic interaction (Mead and Dewey) with its notion of the self (2004:881), although the argument put forward by Ropers that “the activities he [Mead] sees men engaged in are not historically determined relationships of social and historical continuity; they are merely episodes, interactions, encounters, and situations” (quoted in Meltzer et al., 1975) that Haralambos and Holborn include in this section (2004: 883) does make the approach of the symbolic interactionists a little easier to understand.  I loved the section on phenomenology (2004:885) (Schutz) with its wonderfully sensory approaches to understanding how people come into contact with the world.  As an Archaeologist, this is an approach that I have come across many times and feel quite comfortable with as a useful way to try to think about the way that knowledge is constructed and shared.  Humans creating their own idea that there is a society is something that I love the idea of, I wonder how far this approach could be used to think about the way that we understand our own gender and other individuals’ projections of their own gender (or notion of it)…

Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) seems a bit off the wall (it was developed in the 1960s, so…).  It looks at social order as fiction, which I like, and which could be great when looking at gender constructs (can I say that it’s a ‘construct’ this early on; maybe not).  But I do not feel comfortable with the idea of social life as Garfinkel’s words here: “essentiall reflexive” (1967).  So an account of the social world actually constitutes that world (Haralambos & Holborn, 2004:885-7).  So that would mean that our attempts to define the world are what creates the world, and this really doesn’t sit well with me.  Haralambos and Holborn tell us that Gouldner was “scorn[ful]” of Garfinkel (1970) (I am liking Gouldner more and more), and Giddens apparently said that Garfinkel had little reference to “the pursuance of practical goals or interests” (1977).  I like to think that sociology will always look to try to understand why people behave in certain ways and look at the effects of external factors on individuals’ behaviours, and Garfinkel doesn’t seem to think that this is important.   Modernity, postmodernity and postmodernism (I had no idea that there was any difference between these two) are also outlined in this section of the book.

Postmodernism (Lyotard, Baudrillard, Philo and Miller) is discussed in terms of Lyotard’s work with language, knowledge and narrative (1984).  There is also a small paragraph tackling Lyotard’s  approach to computers and how they were the principal “force of production” (1984), and where knowledge has become commodified and will cause wars in the future.   Haralambos and Holborn comment that Postmodernism allows for the “possibility of tolerance and creative diversity, in which humans are not corrupted by some doctrinaire metanarrative” (2004: 893).  ‘High modernity and beyond’ is the subtitle of the next section, and this provided much opportunity for further reading.  The section looks at Giddens, with the heightened possibility for greater reflexivity, with sociology as “the most generalised type of reflection upon modern social life” (Giddens, 1991), the opportunities for globalization, and the transformations that were possible where capitalism becomes a ‘post-scarcity system’ – Are we there now with the web? I think I need to read a bit (lot!) more about this as it could be really relevant to the approaches to gender thinking about the ways that participation online is affected by ideas of who we are and what we want (of which I am sure gender is an inextricable factor).

Methods for looking at social life

Participant observation, Quantitative research in the form of surveys, questionnaires and interviews, and qualitative research in the form of interviews and observations are all outlined by Marsh et al. (2009:120-125).  Interestingly, there is also some time given in the book to the other methods of research, such as the use of secondary data, content analysis and discourse analysis, and case studies and life histories (2009:130-139), and these could be potentially very useful in looking towards understanding gender on the web.  I will look into these different methods in more detail as the weeks go on, but for now they have made me think about the tools that sociologists have available to them as being more than a survey, a questionnaire and an interview.  Even here, there has been a revelation, in the types of interviews possible: discussed by Marsh et al. as being: 1) in-depth, 2) interactive, and 3) the most fascinating for me, generative.  This comes from Gubrium and Holstein who say that both the interviewee and the interviewer are participants in a social process so the respondents are: “constructors of knowledge in collaboration with the interviewers” (1997:114).

References

Haralambos, M. & M. Holborn, 2004.  Sociology Themes and Perspectives, Collins: London

Marsh, I., M. Keating, S. Punch, J. Harden, 2009. Sociology. Making Sense of Society, Pearson Longman: London

Please note, I have not read the following books, but I have Googled the references that I have mentioned above from two books that I have read, so that if you are interested in looking up the various bits that I have mentioned in the whistle-stop tour of my reading this week, you can do so easily.

Garfinkel, H., 1970. Studies in Ethnomethodology, Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Giddens, A., 1977. Studies in Social and Political Theory, Hutchinson: London

Giddens, A., 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in Late Modern Age, Polity Press: Cambridge

Gouldner, A. W., 1975. For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today, Harmondsworth: Penguin

Gubrium, J. F., & J. A. Holstein, 1997. The New Language of Qualitative Method, Oxford University Press: Oxford

Lyotard, J.F., 1984. The Postmodern Condition, Manchester University Press: Manchester

Meltzer, B.N., J.W. Petras, L.T. Reynolds, 1975. Symbolic Interactionism, Routledge & Kegan Paul: London

Pawson, R., 1989. A Measure for Measures: A Manifesto for Empirical Sociology, Routledge: London

Next week…

My plan is now to look a little more in detail at some of the sociological ideas that I have come across and to read some sections of general sociology books about Gender.  I’ll stick with Haralambos & Holborn and Marsh et al., but will also look at some more specifically gender related texts, including Abbott et al. (2005) An Introduction to Sociology. Feminist Perspectives, Backett-Milburn & McKie (2001) Constructing Gendered Bodies, and the one that I am most excited about: Case (1990) Performing Feminisms. Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. That last one may seem a little off the wall, but I am thinking that the idea of feminist theory and theatre may translate quite nicely across to the web as at the moment I don’t see why actions within virtual communities can not be seen as being performative, and there are some good links to identity and gender online within these communities. I think.