User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes

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Contents

[edit] Coursenotes

  • Ragin, Constructing Social Research:1) social research - interplay between evidence and ideas 2) consists of a) analysis of a movement (involves its deconstruction into elements, also analysis of non-participants as well as particiapants) and b) synthesis of evidence (see which elements are similar) 3) analytic frame - key concept 4) four building blocs of social research: ideas, evidence, analytical frame, images 5) be selective in chosing your evidence 6) images a) are idealization of real cases (ideal types?) b) imply explanations c) are guides for further research 7) challenge of social research: clear specification of ideas, rigorus examintation of evidence, 8) in qualitative research, frames are flexible (can be changed) 9) qualitative research process: selecting cases and sites, use of sensitizing (early) concepts, claryfing cases and categories, 10) qualitative is about fewer, but enhanced data 11) Analytic induction - systematic examination of similarities that seeks to develop concepts or ideas (look for similarities, develop a subcategory for them from a higher category) 12) study of a single case 13) data condensers vs data enhancers 14) analytic induction and theoretical sampling
  • Mayer N Zald, John D McCarthy, Social Movements in an Organizational Society:
    • social organizations as carriers of the social movements. Organizations are not stable beaurocracies oposed to lively movements, they are two sides of the same coin.
    • resource mobilization theory (resource mobilization): social movement activity is a behaviour with a goal. Organization is more important then acquisition of the resources, or the resources themselves. It focuses on interactions between social movement organizations (SMOs) and other organizations (SMOs, businesses, governments, etc.). Organization infrastructure is another aspect of study in this approach.
    • open systems view of organizations: need to adapt to enviroment. There is really no static enviroment, it's formed from other organizations. There are competitors for the same resource base (even though they may have similar goals). There are clear enemies: countermovements, authorities - who are often the target of change advocated by the SMO. Triad: movements, countermovements, authorities. Third party: media?
    • SMI: social movements industry: SMOs with similar goals. Economic approach: niches, positioning, product differentiation, growing or declining industries, social controls instead of government regulations,
    • social movement sector comapared to society. Different societies. Size. Classes. Life style. Politicization.
    • Organizational infrastructure can explain the differences in success rates of movements and countermovements. Adopting existing social networks can be a great boon (example: pro-life movement using established religious infrastrucure).
  • Herbert Marcuse, Eros and civilization: social meaning of biology - history of not class struggle, but fight against repression
    • He begins with the conflict postulated by Freud in Civilisation and Its Discontents between human instincts and the necessary repression brought on by the socially-acquired conscience (or superego). Freud claimed that the history of man is the history of his repression and that 'Our civilisation is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.' Sublimation of sex produces the energy for progress, and the price of progress is the substitution of guilt for happiness. Freud thought that this was due to an inevitable biological clash between Eros and civilisation. Marcuse argues that 'the irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle) and Eros (pleasure principle), but between alienated labour (performance principle) and Eros.' He believes that a socialist society could engender 'non-alienated libidinal work', 'a non-repressive civilisation based on 'non-repressive sublimation'. The argument depends on the theses that instincts are subject to historical modification and that repression is largely an historical phenomenon. Marcuse concludes that biological repression itself is not the problem but that our troubles stem from the additional 'surplus repression' produced by the specific historical institutions of our own period. The result is that Freud is converted in to a sort of eroticised Marx.[1]
    • Freud claimed that the human civilization was, founded on the suppression of instincts. Sex in any form produces the energy for progress and the price of it (since Enlightenment) always was loosing part of happiness to guilt. Freud thought that this was because of the inevitable biological clash between Sex and civilization. Marcuse sees Sex as part of civilization and argues that 'the conflict is not between work [life without leisure] and Sex [leisure and pleasure], but between performance and Sex.' Sex is allowed for managers, or for workers outside sex industry when not disturbing performance. Marcuse believes that a socialist society could be a society without needing the performance of the 'poor' and without suppression. For him biological repression itself is not the problem but the extra repression, coming from historical institutions of our own period. Marcuse unlike Marx doesn't use the abstract division Poor and Rich, but the Common Sense observation Older less flexible and Younger curious. [2]
    • Intro
      • The sacrifice has paid off well: in the technically advanced areas of civilization, the conquest of nature is practically complete, and more needs of a greater number of people are fulfilled than ever before. Neither the mechanization and standardization of life, nor the mental impoverishment, nor the growing destructiveness of present-day progress provides sufficient ground for questioning the “principle” which has governed the progress of Western civilization. The continual increase of productivity makes constantly more realistic the promise of an even better life for all.
      • Does the interrelation between freedom and repression, productivity and destruction, domination and progress, really constitute the principle of civilization? Or does this interrelation result only from a specific historical organization of human existence? In Freudian terms, is the conflict between pleasure principle and reality principle irreconcilable to such a degree that it necessitates the repressive transformation of man’s instinctual structure? Or does it allow the concept of a non-repressive civilization, based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations?
    • Chap.1
      • If absence from repression is the archetype of freedom, then civilization is the struggle against this freedom.
      • The notion that a non-repressive civilization is impossible is a cornerstone of Freudian theory.
      • Freud’s metapsychology is an ever-renewed attempt to uncover, and to question, the terrible necessity of the inner connection between civilization and barbarism, progress and suffering, freedom and unhappiness — a connection which reveals itself ultimately as that between Eros and Thanatos. Freud questions culture not from a romanticist or utopian point of view, but on the ground of the suffering and misery which its implementation involves.
      • Throughout the world of industrial civilization, the domination of man by man is growing in scope and efficiency. Nor does this trend appear as an incidental, transitory regression on the road to progress. Concentration camps, mass exterminations, world wars, and atom bombs are no “relapse into barbarism,” but the unrepressed implementation of the achievements of modern science, technology, and domination. And the most effective subjugation and destruction of man by man takes place at the height of civilization, when the material and intellectual attainments of mankind seem to allow the creation of a truly free world.
    • Chap.2
      • "the struggle for existence takes place in the world too poor for the satisfaction of the human need without constant restrain, renounciation and denial" (p.35) thus the need for work
      • Marcuse argues for fallacy: it's not scarcity per se, but organization of thereof (capitalism?). No distribution according to needs, but to power.
      • "Domination is excercised by a particular group or individual in order to sustain and enhance itself in a priviliged position."
      • Progress is a byproduct of preserving scarcity
      • stages of civilization implies social evolutionist view
      • "such restrictions of the instics might have been enforced by scarcity (...) but they have became a privilige and distinction of man"
      • "scarcity has been intensified by the hierarchical division of labor"
      • performance principle - economic stratification
      • little free time (alienated labor)
    • Ch10
      • In Marxist Utopia, will we be sex maniacs?
  • Auctions:\
    • 3 community (group indentity - dress code - knowlege less for success, more for community feel), spontanity, stock market as the exception (buyers don't care about other buyers - duel market. Auctions that maximize fairness (English) are more common then those maximizing bids (English). Creating community is often the job of an auctioneer, with jokes, food, and such - otherwise buyers will be weary. Yet auctions may also increase social relations: selling something to a friend, if he is dissatisfied later, makes it less liekely he will be dissatisfied with the seller. Communal status may be more important then the fair value. Legitimacy: objects are reborn, gain new meaning bestowed by the community.
    • 4 going beyond economics. Social goals and meanings. Fairness is not an economic byproduct, it is a sociological goal from the start. More on legitimacy: Example: car selling (people not complaining about price dumping - auction legitimizes the price as well "we couldn't get more"). Legitimacy of a collective decisions. Justification: others are paying as much (legitimization of inflated price). Reporting of even minor flaws before the auction. Fair price and the pools: avoid bidding wars and underpriced items, buy worse items: "we are not stealing it - we know what's the fair price, we wont underpay but we wont overpay". What is fair differs and reflects the history of a community.
  • Sidney Tarrow: Natinal politics and collective action:
    • rediscovery of important role of politics,
    • social movements sector. Success of failure of SMOs is dependent on the entire sector (industry) and relations between SMOs within.
    • political opportunity structure.
    • cycles of protest - cycles of democracy? "at every upstart of a wave of conflict we shall be induced to think that we are at the verge of revolution; and when the downswing appears, we shall predict the end of conflict". Economic cycles. Pure cyclical models (nothing changes in the long run_ vs evolutionary models (steady change in the long run)
    • state as a social movement
    • In 'Power in movement' Tarrow notes how changes in communication have affected the diffusion of political ideas, news of citizen mobilizations and revolutions worldwide, expanded the importance of worldwide public opinion, and shrunk the distance between exiles and their home countries. Media have evolved as a powerful 'fourth power', able to shape public perceptions of the entire social movements. Media may help some social movements, but may also compund the damage done to others, especially if they transmit brutal repressions and thus discourage others from following in their footsteps.
    • Optimism: the potential of the weak to humble the powerful through social mobilization
    • Four requistes of sustainable social movements: 1) political opportunities, 2) diffuse social networks 3) familiar forms of collective action (aka Tilly's repertoires of contention) and 4) cultural frames that can resonate throughout popoulation.
  • Dieter Rucht Themes, Logics, and Arenas of Social Movements
    • logic of a movement - hidden, deep variables shaping the movement (in addition to more visible variables like faction struggle or leadership skills). The logic of the movement impacts forms of organization, methods of moblization and arenas of conflict. Logic is related to basic social changesthat produce new expectations, strains and conflicts. They in turn are refelect in global social struggles in a given historical period.
    • macrostructural approach: social movements are linked to deeply rooted structural changes that has been identified as modernization breakthrougths in the spheres of "system" and "life world". Those breakthrough create in turn demands, expactations and opportunities for action, as well as dangers and various side effects.
  • Craig Calhoun New social movements of the early 19th century
  • Steven J. Taylor, Robert Bogdan Introduction to qualitative research methods
    • Ch1. history. methodology
      • qualitative researchers are concerned with meanings people attach to their lives
      • qualitative research is inductive
      • qual met is holistic: people/settings/etc. are not reduced to variables but looked upon as a whole
      • qual res are concerned with how people think and act in their everyday lives
      • all perspectives are worthy of study (of judge but also of deliquent)
      • qual res emphasise validity (meaningfullness, relevance to empirical world)
      • qual res is flexible
    • sociological perspectives
      • phenomenological perspectives (phenomenology) - view human behavior as products of their definitions of their world. The task or research is to capture how people construct realities. Subperspectives:
        • symbolic interactionism: Charles Horton Cooley, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Robert Park, W.I. Thomas and others. Primary importance on the social meanings people attach to the world around them. Blumer premises: 1) people acts towards other people (things, etc.) based on the meanings those people (things, etc.) have for them 2) meanings arise in interaction (are not inherent to objects) 3) meanings are attached through interpretation
        • ethnomethodology - Harold Garfinkel. Refers to subject method of study: how people maintain the sense of external reality. Meanings are ambigious and problematic. Researchers analyze the ways people apply rules and understandings in specific situations to make them clear. Examine the common sense. Note that some researchers link et. to s.i., while others don't.
        • feminist research
        • postmodernism - reject the Enlight. faith in reason, rationality and progress. Challenges science, examines axioms. Popular withing philosophy (Foucault).
  • Mark Lichbach
  • Lichbach in "What makes rational peasants revolutionary"
    • peasants resist commercialization of agriculture
    • capitalism and imperialism = commercialization
    • what about serdom?
    • what are selected incentives? From personal experience I have to say that they do seem to work: I am much likely to support a movement which will give me a nice t-shirt or such. particularistic benefits / material self-interests
    • probably the largest peasant revolution in Poland (and likely eastern europe) was the Kosciuszko Insurrection, whose leaders (Kosciuszko) offered a powerful incentive to peasants: freedom from serfdom.
  • "Contending theories..."
    • economic approach: public good model, expected utility model, prisoner's dillema model,
    • Rebel's dillema - costs of action, chance of success
    • rational peasants should not rebel - so why do they?
    • Structure Oriented (SPOT) - movements are triggered by (incentives created by) political opportunities and are helped by mobilizing structures and cultural frames. Weberian approach. But also struggle for power to control scarce resources - Marxist approach.
    • Rational Action Oriented (CARP) - collective actions involve public good/prisoners' dillemas, Hobbesian approach
  • Charles Tilly
    • Social Movements 1768-2004:
    • For half a century a major stream of my work has concentrated on how, when, where and why ordinary people make collective claims on public authorities, other holders of power, competitors, enemies and objects of popular disaproval.
    • Major shifts in the array of means by which ordinary people made collective claims on others occured in WE and NA between 1750 and 1850 - and the new arrays can be colled 'social movements'
    • uses Economist as a reference (for events)
    • social movements: a form of contentious politics
    • sm: giving ordinary people the power: The rise and fall of sm marks the expantion and conctraction of democratic opportunities
    • can we find an exception to the rule?
    • The social movements, as an invented institution, could disappear or mutate into some quite different form of politics.
    • democratization promotes the formation of the social movements
  • Michael Foucault
    • Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison studies how prisons specifically, but really all institutions of coercion schools, armies, etc.) developed. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc.
    • Just around the time of Damien's execution, though, an important series of challenges occurred. The crowds became increasingly unruly, sometimes chasing off the executioner and carrying the criminal away in triumph. Faced with this type of disobedience, the sovereign had to respond with ever-increasing displays of power, and the possibility of full rebellion came to hover over every punishment, Clearly, a new solution was needed. - consider Tilly, social movements
    • The solution was found in the new methods of production revolutionizing the Western world. The modern prison is an even more complete exercise of power than the spectacle of the gallows. The transition from torture to control as a means of punishment represents a massive shift in systematic uses of power and authority within society. Foucault analyzes the Industrial Revolution in terms of its production of "docile bodies" conditioned to their role in the rapidly technologizing society. Foucault calls this production the science of discipline; its main principles are spatialization, complete control of activity, repetition, detailed hierarchies, and normalizing judgments. All of these combine to create self-reinforcing systems of power and control. Each level looks to the one above it for knowledge or direction. The subject gaze of the lower also controls those above by reinforcing their role as knowledge providers. In this sense, powers is not simply the control exerted by elites upon the masses but a whole network of interlocking conditions and coercions; power is not directed by elites, flowing top to bottom, but is localized in institutions.
    • Foucault 'DP' begins in a way Hitchock would've be proud for: with the detaile description of an 18th century execution of Robert-François Damiens, "The flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs, and calves with red-hot pincers"
    • Humanist schemes such as Jeremy Bentham's `Panopticon' promised to end criminality and provide surefire ways of `grinding rogues good', but they were not acted upon. For example, in the modern prison there is no attempt to instill an automatic association between particular crimes and particular punishments. Incarceration has become the common answer to everything, varying in length but not greatly in character. Prison discipline has been drawn from a collection of diverse tactics rather than a single overarching rationality. It was through the disciplines of the barracks, the workshop, the schoolroom and the hospital, that the modern prison system became possible.
    • One important consequence of this fragmentary logic is that there is no serious possibility of the prison system reducing overall levels of criminality (it operates according to principles which ensure that it “…cannot fail to produce delinquents.”). Punishment is not geared towards the production of Bentham's new model citizens, it tends instead to function as a school for crime, taking in offenders and grinding out delinquents. Failure was built in from the start. But here Foucault asks an important question: what is served by this failure? He answers by pointing to the production of a seemingly marginal, but supervised milieu of criminals. Such delinquency allows illegality to be localized and it allows the criminal group to be used by the justice system in order to survey the entire social field. Criminality becomes an instrument of power. In addition, crime becomes gauged by degrees of anomaly and normality. The disciplinary society -- the school, the court, the asylum and the prison -- is set in a struggle against all forms of anomaly. Prison grinds society uniform.
    • Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But, he suggests that the shift towards prison which followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine".
    • Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and assymetrical that we call the disciplines. (p.222)
    • Foucault thus suggests that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern age - bodies which function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms.
    • These changes, where a coercive institution replaces the city of punishment, arose from a definite change in the mechanisms of power and technology. The emphasis on representations, coupling of ideas, and the person of the criminal gives way to one focused on the body and 'soul', on training mechanisms, on the manipulation of the individual. The goal is to generate an obedient subject who obeys and responds automatically. This does not require spectacle. It does, however require total power over that person, omnipresent and enforced automatically. This can and must be secret and private, although there is a risk that arbitrary despotism will return.
    • Question: in a society where power is less centralised, prisons are more likely to exist?
    • "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?" One of the central points of Foucault's discussion of the carceral system is that the form of discipline associated with the modern prison is not contained within prison walls, but derives from the society beyond those walls. The mechanisms of control, examination and classification operate within all the institutions that Foucault discusses. Indeed, power in its various forms flows through all of them. Prisons resemble these other institutions not just because they have similar architecture, but because they all fulfill similar functions.
  • Anthony Giddens
    • outsider to social theory
    • power:
      • In rules, Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as "the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries."
      • Most directly then, space does more than provide the "settings of interaction" (Giddens, 1984); it itself is a fundamental constituent of knowledge/power regimes. The point to draw from these various comments is that in order to understand something like continuing education in the professions we have to map a geography of it as a set of social practices, a human geography in which power is created, enacted, altered. In Giddens’ view, the very framework of our social lives, modernity, is fundamentally shaped by different sense of space and time than in pre-modern times.
      • The study of power is not a secondary consideration for social science. Power is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person (theory of structuration)

[edit] SM presentation

  • Charles Tilly and Jack A. Goldstone: Threat (and Opportunity): Popular Action and State Responce in the Dynamics of Contentious Action
    • opportunities (South Africa black activists, 1980s): international support, increase in black education enrollment, fewer color bans on employment, legalisation of black trade unions
    • interesting similiarity to Poland in 1980s: government steps up repression (state of emergency in South Africa, martial law in Poland), yet both countries see 'widespread formation of local civic associations and significant expansion of worker militancy' (also in both regimes trade unions are on the forefront of the fight: Congress of South African Trade Unions, Solidarity. 'Despite the state of emergency in most industrial cities, despite banning of many community organizations, and despite detention of thousands of activists without trial', mobilization accelerated in both countries. Question: why were those repressions not effective (enough)?
    • Tilly notes the increased radicalization of SA activists. In Poland, there was also increasing number of people calling for violent action (although it never took place).
    • Tilly notes: 'over SA as a whole, this sort of interaction between repression and local activism produced a suprising pattern: when governmental threats increased, so did popular opposition.' Same thing in Poland in 1980s. Tilly: 'the threat was focusing resistance (...) - an anomaly'. Later he notes that empirical findings suggest (in some cases) a POSITIVE correlation between rise of repression and increased mobilization. Also other examples: Palestinians, Iran, Germany.
    • how opportunity is created? Tilly: external or internal factors weaken the state and/or changing social conditions increase the resources and confidence of popular groups seeking change. Opportunity is positivly correlated with actions and state concessions.
    • repression = threat = in theory, anti-opportunity. Tilly disagrees.
    • opportunity defined: the probability that social protest actions will lead to success in achieving a desired outcome (specificly weakening of state)
    • theat defined: costs that a social group will inccure from from action and inaction.
    • thus (perceived) chance of success is very important. Low costs also are important.
    • Gains = (Value of succes * chance for success) - costs of the protests; chance of success = state weakness + popular support; value of success = new advantages + avoiding current/anticipated threats (costs) of inaction
    • Graph - p.187
      • cost of concessions and repressions to the state is important in determining its responce. Here the political system becomes important: in democracies, repression is much more expensive then concessions, while a authoritarian system finds repression more cost-effective.
    • Scenarios
    • Conclusion: the correlation between rising opportunity and rising protests is not simple, as it is skewed by the threat factor. Similarly there is no simple correlation between concessions or repressions and lowering of protests. Basically 'not enough' concessions and/or repressions may have an effect contrary to the expected. Note: if we would try to draw a graph for this, it would likely have curves, not lines. Compare also to Elasticity (economics) and Indifference curve.
  • Goldstein: "class approach" - political opportunity for change (passage of NLRA) was created by increased radicalization and militilization of labor movements (S&F critique: impact of rad. is overrrated); state is heavily dependent on societal forces and those social forces forced the state to take action; social unrest from below triggered elite action designed at social control from above (give enough concession to prevent the escalation of demands) (S&F critique: it was only a minor factor).
  • Skocpol&Finegold: "state-based and electorally based approach" - political opportunity was created by political actors foremost. 2 main factors: 1) failure of previous political act (National Industry Recovery Act of 1933 and Public Resolution No.44) and 2) the growing strenght of the Democrats were instrumental for NLRA (Goldstein critique: it would've happened without them too and it was caused by social unrest anyway). It's puprpose was not to quell unrest but to promote economic recovery. Failure of the previous political acts forced political actors to try plan B ('do something') - especially as it weakened the previous opponents of the 'plan B', and as it increased the workers expectations (and repertoires of contension (?)). Growing strenght of Democracts (plan B supporters) was due to redestricting ("not increased labor militancy") - shift in electoral politics (Goldstein critique: no, it was due to depression). Wagner act was "the product of the administratively situated policy learning".
  • S&F about G: "his argument are not as novel as he suggests" "rest on selective evidence and can explain neither (of the two important issues)" "misinterprets the plain intentions of the law" "tries to shortcircuit many (...) factors" "scholars should not just present stories based on selective descriptions and counterfactual speculations"
  • S&F about G cont.:Goldstein correctly suggests that social movements can create an overall context in which political leaders feel they "must do something" [but errs] in attributing the motivations of political actors (who drafted and voted for the proposal) to pressure from social movements. Goldstein suggest that indirect influence from ongoing labor unrest is the cause of NLRA passage
  • G about S&F: "making a fetish of qualitative statistics" "repeating assertions over and over again (while supplying no evidence for them) does not make them so" "they have "discovered" a new set of statistics" "house of cards state autonomy approach"
  • Goldstein: S&F overstress the importance of "independent reformist intelectuall agendas and and a broad range of governmental and other phenomena, all mistakenly subsumend under the umbrella of state activity" while ignoring the reality ("growing strenght of radical organization not restricted to small segments of population"). They see state actors as autonomous, taking advantage for their own reasons
  • Goldstein: the 1934 elections cannot be understood just as an independent variable affecting the political actors, it is a dependant variable influenced by growing radicalization
  • Goldstein: the passage of NLRA was not merely a responce to particular events just before its passage but to an increasing wave of social protests and rapidly increasing importance of social organizations - a process that have been in development for number of years. Theory of state autonomy limits one's view of politics to exclude relevant societal and political influences.
  • Goldstein: repressions were not contemplated because they would create more dissent. S&F: no, they could've been used
  • nice conclusion of S&A: there are many factors that forced government to concede, and labor pressure was just one of them
  • nice conclusion of G too

Markoff artcicle:

  • interaction of powerholders (elites) and challengers (social moveemtns)
  • this interaction is crucial to understanding the actions of both actors
  • not everything can be explained by long term processes, for example: alliances of opportunity
  • social movements leading to change in social politics
  • Sidney Tarrow: interlinked cycles of protest and reform
  • Charles Tilly: social movements consist of "sustained interactions among group of individuals" (Social Movements Old and New)

Example: early revolutionary France: peasants revolutions and power elites legislation

  • political campaign for peas
  • peasants interact with non-peasants, learn of anti-segineural sentiments and plans
  • if long term processes may realign interests and resources, short term processes may provide vital opportunities
  • nice conc (top 28)

[edit] Habermas and the PS

  • lifeworld is the world as it immediately presents itself to us prior to scientific or philosophical analysis. It is an enviroment made by practices and attitudes, a realm of informal culturally grounded understandings and mutual acommodations. In the lifeworld, individuals draw from custom and cultural traditions to construct identities, negotiate situational definitions, coordinate action and create social solidarity.
  • relation between the philosophy of law and political theory. Law, Habermas says, is the primary medium of social integration in modern society. Law, in the first place, is power: it is a coercive instrument, linked with violence, that extracts obedience and common behavior from its subjects because of its claim to the power of enforcement. But power alone does not grant law its legitimacy. It is also based on a normative claim. In modern society, law derives its validity from consent, the consent of the governed.
  • power: Habermas's treatment of the role and meaning of the concept of "power", as it was elaborated in his two previous volumes, "The Theory of Communicative Action" and "Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action", has therefore undergone some significant changes in this book. The revised notion of "power" as a positive influence that is produced in communicative space, runs contrary to Habermas's original concept of "power" in his "Theory of Communicative Action" where power was understood as a coercive force that had to be avoided in order for the discursive situation to prevail.
  • medium of law which gives legitimacy to the political order and provides it with its binding force. Legitimate law-making itself is generated through a procedure of public opinion and will-formation that produces communicative power.
  • public sphere contrasts with the private sphere, and is the part of life in which one is interacting with others and with society at large. Much of the thought about the public sphere relates to the concept of identity and identity politics.
  • The public sphere is the “place” where free citizens come

together to freely deliberate political thought, contemporary affairs, and public policy.

  • history and 18th century successes
  • decline As early as the 1960’s, Habermas asserted that the public sphere has undergone a

significant shift in its ability to provide an open forum for content-focused discourse and expressed his concern that mass-media was shaping the public opinion. In his magnum opus of Theory of Communicative Action (1984) he criticized the one-side process of modernization led by forces of economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas traced the growing intervention of formal systems in our everyday lives as pararell to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and culture of mass consumption. These reinforcing trends rationalize widening areas of public life, submiting them to generalizing logic of efficiency and control. As routinized political parties and interests groups substitute for participatory democracy, society is increasingly administered at a level remote from input of citizens. As a result, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating.

  • In his view, the idea of the public sphere involved the notion that private entities would draw together as a public entity and engage in rational deliberation, ultimately making decisions that would influence the state. As a historical formation, the public sphere involved a "space" separated from family life, the business world, and the state.
  • Democratic public life only thrives where institutions enable citizens to debate matter of public importance. He describes an ideal type of "ideal speech situation", where actors are equally endowed with the capacities of discource, recognize each other's basic social equality and in which their speech is completly undistorted by idealogy or midrecognition.
  • Habermas is optimistic about the possibilty of the revival of the public sphere. He sees hope for the future in the new era of political community that transcends the national state based on ethnic and cultural likeness for one based on the equal rights and obligations of legally vested citizens. This discoursive theory of democracy requires the political community which can collectively define its political will and implement it as policy at the level of the legislative system. This political system requires an activist public spehere, where matters of common interest and political issues can be discussed, and the force of public opinion can influence the decision making process.
  • public shpere and the net?

[edit] References

[edit] Gaming clubs

Fans, fandom:
  • Scott Thorne, Gordon C. Bruner - 'An exploratory investigation of the characteristics of consumer fanaticism ' - Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal - [3] [4]
  • Matthew Hills - Fan Cultures - general overview of fans and fandom [5] fan cultures book
SF
  • Camille Bacon-Smith - Science Fiction Culture [6] book science fiction culture
Comics
  • Premo Steele, Cassie - Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers - [7]
    • whether one is a Fanboy or a True Believer, the preferred hangout is the specialty store. Here, as they talk shop, the culture proliferates. They debate among themselves, spread news about the industry, arrange trades, discuss collectibles, and attach themselves to their particular mainstream.
    • Comic store is the most important site for the comic culture. They serve as a kind of cultural clubhouse where fans can spend time being themselves among themselves and other like-minded individuals.
    • Born from the changs in comic distribution they became increasingly popular since 1980s, by the begining of 1990s selling over 80% of comics.
    • They sell other items of interest to fans.
    • Despite all the merchanside, many regulars find that the real reason for patronizing those estabilishments is interaction with people there, including other customers and employees. In this way, the comic store is a centre not only for commerce, but also for culture.
    • Sometimes I think I come here just to talk to my friends instead of to buy comics,” one of Daydreams' regular customers said about the store
    • American society does not respect comics. Supportive environment - reaffirmation.
    • It is not uncommon to find employees having long conversations with customers about...
    • Finding fellowship at the comic shops is important part of their popularity and success.
    • p.8 - female customers
    • For visitors, it can be an alien world. Sense of awe for some newcomers. Moment of epiphany (especially for those already interested in a hobby - note T&B comment on many fans not realizing there is a large fandom out there). The discovery of the comic shop can rekindle childhood interests in adults. Later: Although the store may function as a clubhouse for regular readers, for others it is intimidating and they may find it difficult to get involved (females).
    • Darcy? Sullivan suggests that the comic book store is "a fundamental part of the way in which [fans] interact with the medium"
    • The shop's clientele is limited to a very exclusive group of people. It makes it a cultural place in a way that a general audience store can never be, but prevents many people from becoming a part of that culture.
    • different customers [8]
    • Extreme difficulty in finding the comics without a comic shop, but still managable: comic book culture existed before the comic shops.
Community
  • Community: As Jenkins (Henry Jenkins in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture[9]) suggests, fans are not a community in a traditional sense. For Rheingold, a community is any cooperative group of people and, according to him, “every cooperative group of people exists in the face of a competitive...
        • Henry Jenkins: example of a complete membership [10]
          • ethnographic account of the media fan community drawing on the works of Michel de Ceteau (model of "poaching," in which an audience appropriates a text for itself).
          • ...considers fandom status as a new form of community, one formed by relations of consumptions and categories of taste. Filk music.
  • Jeffrey A Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans, [11] - black superhoroes book
  • P.Zinkiewicz, S. Smith, Sense of Community in Science-Fiction Fandom, Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 105-117,
  • Henry Jenkings, Media studis: A Reader:
    • Fandom constitutes an alternative social community.[12]


Anime
  • Fred Patten, Carl Macek - Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews - manga/anime fans [13] book anime and manga
CCGs
  • J. Patrick Williams, Consumption and Authenticity in the Collectible Games Subculture: collectible games (cardgames), choice, self-identity, commodification online
RPGs
  • Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games
  • [14] [15] Gary Fine 1983, book, store and players: [16]
    • books citing Fine: Sara Delamont - Fieldwork in Educational Settings: Methods, Pitfalls and Perspectives - [17]
  • The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic - [18] - Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic
  • K Lancaster - The Journal of Popular Culture, 1994 [19]
    • Specialty game and hobby stores thrived
Comp games
  • computer games - gender differences - Sheri Graner-Ray, Sheri Graner Ray, Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market [20]
  • computer games - customners come into store with opinions - Alan Gershenfeld, Mark Loparco, Cecilia Barajas, Game Plan: The Insider's Guide to Breaking in and Succeeding in the Computer and Video Game Business [21]
  • game designers, playing game as a kids - career in the industry - Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, Steven Hoffman - Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games - [22]
    • There are about 5,000 non-chain game hobby stores in US[23] - small stores privately owned and run by people who love the games (and/or comic books)
    • Hobby games are the domain of males in their teens or twenties who play religiously every week or more. In general these games are extremly complex and and it is not unusual for fans to spend hundreds of dollars a year getting supplements, cards, figuringes or rulebooks for a single game. Hobby games fall into three main categories: roleplaying games, minature games and trading card games.
  • Cybercafes and Cybergames: Virtual and Non-Virtual Spaces for Identity Construction and Social Development - Frank L. Samson - identity construction (online gamers): study of computer and boardgames centers: usually attracted younger student patrons during the early afternoon through late afternoon hours while the late night crowd tended to be much older, ranging from late teens through twenties, thirties, and seemingly middle-aged patrons (see Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet).
Other
  • Kurt Lancaster - Warlocks and Warpdrive: Contemporary Fantasy Entertainments with Interactive and Virtual Environments [24]

Keywords:

  • hobby+games+community

[edit] Sci fi

[edit] Wikipedia

Main article: Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies

[edit] Books

  • Thomas W. Malone, The Future of Work, Harvard, 2004: "Wikipedia is about as extreme loose hierarchy as ever imagined"
    • p.1 - history [25]
    • factors contributing to quality [26]
      • highly skilled and educated editors are attracted to the idea
      • Given enough eyballs, all bugs are shallow
      • NPOV
      • Dealing with vandalism
    • Wales and Sanders were influential in setting the original direction and guiding policies, but now the community operates effectively with very little menagerial intervention"[27]
    • "It success so far shows that amazingly loose hierarchies can can create impressingly large and complex results".
    • "The success of Wikipedia shows that noneconomic motivations can cause people to do what one would have though would require financial investment".
    • "Suprisingly the desire for personal recongnition doesn't appear to be the primary motivation. For most people, the attraction is the intellectual addictive pleasure of the task itself, the remarkable freedom everyone has to improve the product and the satisfaction of working together towards a grand vision".
  • Dan Gillmor, We the Media, O'Reilly, 2004,
    • Wiki is a profoundly democraticized form of online information gathering [28]
    • an example of how the grassroots in today's interconnected world can do extraordinary things
    • participatory media
    • defies first-glance assumptions
    • when wiki works it engenders a community that has the tool to take care of itself[29]
    • broken window syndrome
    • importance of debates
    • Jimmy Wales is the benevolent dictaror but community has its arbitrationa and other tools too
    • Wiki communities look at first glance fragile, but are in fact very resiliant[30]
    • People are inherently good
  • Jon Lebkowsky, Mitch Ratcliffe, Extreme Democracy, Lulu Press,
    • One of the largest social software communities[31]
    • Wikis can deliver quality at low cost and at large scale (transaction cost analysis, team and club good - see Cliffordi [32])
    • what makes wiki work, comparison with Slashdot [33]
    • behind a community is a social network
    • changes consumer into participant[34]
    • Wikis allow to participate in horizontal information assemblies
  • the largest example of participatory journalism to date[35]

[edit] Articles

[edit] Becoming Wikipedian

  • based on interviews (@/phone) with 9 Wikipedians
  • "many of the individuals involved in the site’s genesis initially had little confidence that an openly-editable website could ever come to resemble an encyclopedic information resource" (see also Sanger, L. The early history of Nupedia and Wikipedia: a memoir. In DiBona, C., Stone, M. and Cooper, D., editors, Open Sources 2.0, O'Reilly Press: Sebastopol, CA,)
  • "Wikipedia entries are stylistically indistinguishable from those found in a traditional, print source" (see also Collaborative authoring on the web: A genre analysis of online encyclopedias.)\
  • "Application of the history flow method to Wikipedia allowed the researchers to recognize and describe four patterns of cooperation and conflict on the site: vandalism and repair; anonymity versus named authorship; negotiation; and content stability." (see also Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations.)
  • "individuals come to understand Wikipedia as a community of collaborative authorship and claim membership through participation and self-identification."
  • Legitimate peripheral participation and activity theory
  • LPP: newcomers do small tasks and are drawn in to more central and involved issues ("a move from encyclopedia consumer to encyclopedia creator")
  • "At the periphery of Wikipedia, novice users contribute by reading articles out of interest, noting mistakes or omissions, and correcting them."
  • "Even as they contribute to the articles, new users tend to make only minor changes. Several of the participants reported a reluctance to make drastic changes when they first began contributing to the Wikipedia" (this may explained why editors more active in WP:V are generally more experienced)
  • "as they moved toward fuller participation, participants adopted a caretaker role with respect to some collection of articles. Over time, these collections grow. Eventually, Wikipedians identify with the community as a whole, adopt the goals of building a sound information resource, and see themselves as managers or creators"
  • "In the move from novice to Wikipedian, goals broaden to include growing the community itself and improving the overall quality and character of the site." (per above)
  • "When asked why they contribute to the Wikipedia, many Wikipedians recognized the project’s overarching goals, the appeal of community, and perceived contributions to society" - also altruism is critizied by several studies
  • "All participants reported that the first thing they do when logging into the Wikipedia is check their 'watch list'."
  • "How the Interface Helps"
  • "It is only as individuals are drawn into the Wikipedia community that they begin to understand that Wikipedia is a community and begin to recognize the richness of community standards and roles." "In Wikipedia, a part of moving from the periphery toward fuller participation is becoming aware of the community that you are joining."
  • "Whereas all users are subject to community punishment (from chastisement to banning) if they act inappropriately, Wikipedians are expected to give new users some leeway. As one participant noted, “We have a policy of don’t bite the newcomers and forgive and forget.”" "Another convention that is understood by Wikipedians but not by novices is that anonymous contributions are inherently suspect, so new users are encouraged to register and get usernames and to always sign their contributions to discussions."
  • "Some Wikipedians assume the role of system administrator. Administrators are not meant to hold privileged positions in the community. According to our interviewees and to the Wikipedia site, obtaining administrator status is not difficult. It is available to any established and therefore trusted member of the community and provides access to functions such as removing vandalism from page histories, blocking IP addresses or ranges from editing, and editing secure pages such as the top page of the site."
  • "These patterns suggest a new emerging genre, not only of information resource, but of collaborative activity" (new genre)

[edit] Preferential attachment

  • "In particular, we found here one of the first large–scale confirmations of the preferential attachment, or “rich–get–richer”, rule."

[edit] Explaining Quality

  • [36]
  • positive correlation between number of edits and high-quality contributions
  • "In the only systematic study of the quality of content that we are aware of, Wikipedia is found to be comparable in quality to traditional encyclopedias (Lih 2004)."
  • "two types of contributors, the strongly committed expert and the passerby contributor" - found in open source and on Wiki
  • "A different type of incentive for contributors is the desire to be part of the Wikipedia community."
  • "According to this discussion, contributors to Wikipedia are motivated by two different factors: (1) reputation and/or (2) commitment to the group identity of the Wikipedia community."
  • "For each contributor, we use the Wikipedia differencing algorithm3 to compare the differences between three documents: (1) edit, the edit submitted by the contributor, (2) previous, the version of the article prior to the edit, and (3) current, the current version of the article as it exists on the day the sample was drawn.". "We measure the quality of an edit by calculating the number of characters from a contributor’s edit that are retained in the current version, measured as the percentage retained of the total number of characters in the entry (retained in current/total in current)."

[edit] Organization

  • "Wikipedia can be considered as an ex-treme form of a self-managing team, as a means of labour division."
  • "The traditional way to coordinate was by means of a superior, who had either to simply divide labour and to monitor it, or to manage a team of people. In the literature from the past decennia, an alternative to this tradition has arisen: self-managing teams. The Wikipedia community can perhaps be seen as an ultimate kind of self-management."

[edit] history flow

  • One pattern we call firstmover advantage. The initial text of a page tends to survive longer and tends to suffer fewer modifications than later contributions to the same page. Our hypothesis is that the first person to create a page generally sets the tone of the article on that page and, therefore, their text usually has the highest survival rate.

[edit] talk before you type

  • we find that these pages serve many purposes, notably supporting strategic planning of edits and enforcement of standard guidelines and conventions. Our results suggest that despite the potential for anarchy, the Wikipedia community places a strong emphasis on group coordination, policy, and process.
  • Despite this far-reaching discussion, at this point little empirical data has been published about the fundamental inner workings of Wikipedia.
  • Growth rate of namespace pages: Wikipedia namspace: 1211 in 2003 to 81738 in 2005 (68x growth rate, the second largest in the project (after user talk discussions))
  • "The existence of such projects plus the growth of differentnamespaces suggests that a growing amount of activityhappens in auxiliary spaces where users coordinateaction rather than edit articles. This pattern echoes thetendency of active Wikipedians to move from having alocal focus—editing individual articles—to a more highlevelconcern for the quality of content and the health of the community, as described by Bryant et al."
  • "Each page was analyzed by two separate researchers to ensure coding consistency; when the classifications disagreed, they were resolved through mutual discussion."
  • "The next notable category of postings is made up of references to official Wikipedia guidelines, which account for 7.9% of the activity in Talk pages. This indicates that policies and guidelines are actively used by the Wikipedia community."
  • "we found that conversation on Talk pages is in some respects formalized and policydriven. Special etiquette has evolved for the Talk pages, and explicit references to written guidelines are frequently invoked. Overall, the kind of process and policy enforcement that happens in Talk pages seems to play a crucial role in fostering civil behavior and community ties"
  • "Finally, it would be worthwhile to investigate the evolution of the policies and processes that serve as reference points during discussion. Such trappings of bureaucracy are often seen as the result of the exertion of power from the top down, yet in Wikipedia they seem to emerge, to some degree, spontaneously. It would be fascinating to explore whether Wiki technology— seemingly antithetical to bureaucracy—actually supports or even encourages conventional forms of organization."

[edit] Vandals, Administrators, and Sockpuppets

  • Literature Review and Theoretical Underpinnings

[edit] social networks

  • [37]
  • "wiki facilitates a collaborative document editing effort relying on the contribution of multiple authors in a concurrent system. This enables combining the contributions in an effective and democratic way allowing all the ground knowledge about the article/lemma to be present in the most recent revision of the article. By democratic, we also refer to the ability of anyone who uses the wiki to contribute or to make modifications to content contributed by someone else."
  • Visualization of the Social Network of the Contributors for the individual article
  • pywiki tool

[edit] transformation

  • "frequently sub-communities covering more specific topics or smaller groups of friends are established", rule of 150

[edit] Community Building

  • deaths, space mission example for rapid updates
  • describe benefits of user community for encyclopedia building project

[edit] Public sphere

  • Perhaps the most exciting use for wikis, however, is for political documents like petitions, resolutions, or manifestos. Using wikis, a community of rational-critical debaters could develop documents that would represent their truly collective interests; any private interests would quickly be deleted by the vigilance of other wiki participants.
  • Because they continuously subject writing to constant scrutiny, wikis can perhaps be more trusted than content from commercial publishers.

[edit] phantom authority

  • ease of reverting vandalism
  • administrators = experienced and trusted users/developers. administrators can exercise a certain degree of institutional authority. Indeed, they are allowed to ban IP addresses and permanently delete pages and their history.
  • In the past: "Wikipedian must send an e–mail to the English Wikipedia mailing list (WikiEN–L), giving his or her login name and requesting access"
  • In this sense, Wikipedia is characterized by a system of "distributed authority" (Mateos Garcia and Steinmueller, 2003a [38])
  • Final policy decisions are up to one of the founders, Jimmy Wales [13]. However, if this sort of benevolent dictator attempted to deviate from a neutral and objective policy towards content (for example, in order to push a specific political agenda), then the license [14] provides a strong counter–balance to his power. The contributors may and should, in such a case, take the database and the software and set up a competing project (Larry Sanger, the other founder of the project and former chief editor, left Wikipedia on 1 March 2002 and set up the Citizenpedia project). Also, Jimbo quote: ""[I]n order to hold the project together, and in order to keep the largest possible group of people working together on the central project, I must listen carefully to all elements of the community, and make decisions that are satisfactory to the best interests of the encyclopaedia as a whole""

[edit] German study

  • Wikipedia is the largest open content project
  • similarities and differences between the motivation of contributors to Open Source projects and Wikipedia: F/OSS projects provide clear individual incentives for contributors -> Wikipedia is an even more extreme example of voluntary engagement in Internet-based projects.
  • The results reveal that satisfaction ratings of contributors are determined by perceived benefits, dentification with the Wikipedia community, and task characteristics. Contributors’ engagement (e.g., hours per week) was particularly determined by their tolerance for opportunity costs and the experienced characteristics of their tasks, the latter effect being partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. Most relevant task characteristics both for contributors’ engagement and satisfaction were autonomy, task significance, and skill variety. Additional motives reported by Wikipedia contributors suggest the importance of generativity.

[edit] network analysis

  • some interesting facts about the cultural biases underlying the overall structure of Wikipedia. Not surprisingly it seems clear that it is a resource strongly biassed towards Western culture and history.

[edit] Mutual Aid

  • the community itself. One might characterize it according to the definition Kropotkin wrote of in his Britannica article on anarchism: “harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups.”
  • Not surprisingly, Wikipedians sometimes disagree: each contributor resisting the other's influence on the joint outcome of a contested article,
  • discusses how disputes are mitigated or resolved: WP:DR worthwile to note Wikipedia:Etiquette
  • hesitation in drawing too sharp a line between agreement and conflict ("in the Wikipedia context it is difficult to distinguish between agreement and disagreement"). - particulary in discource
  • "there is a surprising level of civility;"

[edit] Cultural Differences

  • [39]
  • we investigate the relation between users' behavior in Wikipedia and their cultural backgrounds as defined by the cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede (1991).
  • "How, if at all, do differences in the cultural backgrounds of Wikipedia contributors influence their behavior?"
  • "An analysis of all edit operations performed on the French, German, Japanese, and Dutch Wikipedia pages about the topic game shows that there are correlations between Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the nature and frequency of specific edit operations made by contributors."
  • Hofstede applies the term culture primarily to national groups, admitting that while nations are not the best way to study culture, "they are usually the only kind of units available for comparison and [thus are] better than nothing" (Hofstede, 2002, p. 1356).
  • His dimensions have been found to be relevant to web design (Marcus & Gould, 2000; Robbins & Stylianou, 2002; Sheridan, 2001) and aspects of web-based communication (Tsikriktsis, 2002; Wilson, et al., 2002). Although Hofstede's work has attracted criticism (e.g., McSweeney, 2002), like others (Callahan, 2005; Hofstede, 2002; Singh, Zhao, & Hu, 2003) we feel that his cultural dimensions represent a significant contribution to cultural research and theory. A comprehensive summary of the arguments for and against the use of Hofstede's dimensions can be found in Callahan (2005).
  • It can be inferred that in countries with a higher PDI, most people are used to following orders. Important or powerful decisions are made by a few powerful people and not by the citizens themselves (Hofstede, 1991). People from a country with a relatively high PDI are not used to taking the initiative and do not feel that they have the power or right to make the decision of deleting somebody else's work.
  • " To arrive at a set of categories, we followed the process of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). We processed the pages and extracted possible categories as they emerged. By doing this several times in an iterative cycle, the categories were refined according to the data until saturation was reached. "
  • very useful Table 1
  • The findings of this exploratory study show that content analysis methods can be useful for investigating cultural differences in wiki communities. The methodology further demonstrated that valuable information can be extracted from the history page of a wiki, by categorizing and then relating it to cultural dimensions.

[edit] Dinosaurs in Cyberspace?

  • [40]
  • Dinosaurs in Cyberspace?: British Trade Unions and the Internet, S Ward, W Lusoli - European Journal of Communication, 2003 - intl-ejc.sagepub.com
  • ICTs have the potential to decentralize power within hierarchical union structures, enhancing participation.
  • to mobilize union members, foster more extensive national and international campaigning and democratize and decentralize union structures thus eroding Michel’s iron law of oligarchy (Diamond and Freeman, 2001a; Greene et al., 2000, 2001; Lee, 1997, 2000; Hogan and Grieco,

1999).

  • enhances individual members’ abilities to inform the leadership’s decisions and hold leaders accountable.

[edit] Assessing the Radical Democracy of Indymedia: Discursive, Technical, and Institutional Constructions

  • [41]
  • the most active members accrue respectability that translates to

more de facto power within the collective.

[edit] Introduction: The Potential of the Internet Revisited

  • [42]
  • the ability of ICTs to alter both the vertical relationship between members/supporters and elites and also horizontal member-tomember relationships - leaders are more accountable, transparency increses, elites find it harder to control information, members communicate more easily,
  • Early days: Finally, it’s important to remember that in many respects we have barely started and that technology is evolving rapidly. Nor do we necessarily yet have the consistent long-term research evidence or research tools to understand the impact of new ICTs. Analysing the role of television in the 1950s, some 30 years after it first emerged, would have underestimated its eventual impact. In

[edit] Union renewal, union strategy and technology

[edit] Getting Past Democracy

  • [44]
  • Michels's iron law of anarchy is essentially equivalent to agency theory in microeconomics: just as the firm's agents tend to favor their own personal self-interest over the interests of the stockholders, political leaders tend to favor their own interests at the expense of their followers.

[edit] Resource review

  • One much talked about error was highlighted by the American journalist John Seigenthaler, Sr., who discovered that the Wikipedia article about himself contained some malicious, and completely untrue, statements (for example, linking him with the assassinations of both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy), which had been placed on the site as a joke and which had remained unchecked for four months. The information was edited as soon as the news was made public, and was even removed from the ‘history’ of the page (every page has a history of every version which is progressively saved), but it served as yet another reminder that such an open resource will always have to be read critically.

[edit] Foran - future of revolutions

1
  • we depart from Skocpol's revolutions
  • is the age of revolutions over?
  • Goodwin: growth of democracies which are less vulnerable to revolutions
  • Selbin: but growing ineqaulity (neoliberalism) will counteract that
  • Foran: some argue state is losing power, thus revolutionaries are less tempt it to engage state
  • Foran quotes Paige about importance of definitions. Some elements of the 'repertoire of contentions' are becomig obsolete - 'violent seizure of state power through class-based revolts from below'. Instead - peaceful change on social experience, conciousness and power relations.
  • non-violent revolutions - a growing trend? instead: education of the civil society which helds power in democracies. BUT Talibans/Al-Qaida - violent revolutionaries?
  • new trend - antiglobalization movement -> global revolution?
2-Paige:
  • need to redefine revolution - old Marxist-Leninit definition is no good
  • but more like - socioculutral/metaphysical change (american civil right revolution, etc.)
  • uneasy coexistence of neoliberalism with global humanism
3-Farhi
  • blurring between reform and revolution - refolution, non-revolutinary revolutions
  • condemn old definitions
  • new definitions - fluent, and will be changed
4-Parker
  • another definition - globalization
  • also notes not all revs target states and they have impact on non-political arenas
  • revolutionary narrative in a globalized imaginary - framing new ways
  • weakening states
  • states replaced by new forces
5-Goodwin
  • socialism - but reformist, not revolutionary
  • again: revolutions come from dissatisfaction with a present, not visions of the future
  • peaceful democracy more powerful than economical troubles: state may not bring social justice, but reform is easy
  • mass (social?) movements will be the force of change
6-Parsa
  • economic issues - cause for violence
  • students and academic - vanguard (education), innovative, use technology (Internent)
  • 'at least in the developing world'
7-Selbin
  • never say never
  • power of stories - adapting global/foreign to local
  • revolutions differ
  • visions remain
8-Vilas
  • definitions can be variously interpreted, and same with trends
13-Kellner
  • power of internet -> cheap, asynchronous, indivudual->many, many->many, many->indvidual, etc.
    • new media
  • new theories/tools needed
18-Foran
  • new organizations needed, new economic system

[edit] Qualitative

User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes/Qualitative

[edit] Papers

[edit] Lisa

Paper comments:

  • table of contents is something I found very useful and always put in all my papers
  • p.4 - As it stands, scholars have explained - citations missing (what scholars? where, when?). Same on p.14 (In spite of scholarship which claims that men enter nursing for utilitarian purposes)
  • I really like research methods - it's useful
  • p.8 - grammar? The ideas that suggest intimate care-giving as feminine is [are?] a gender practice - also grammar notes possible in other places but I am not a native E. speaker - suggestion: have sb read it through for grammar
  • tense p. 5 - 'I examined' but 'I also seek'
  • passive - p.5 This article analyzes....
  • simpler words: p.8 -> evidences -> shows; 'inform their reflexivity' - I don't understand what it means... Again 'normative gendered ideologies inform ideas of care' - inform word... I'd use something else (influence?)
  • 'Male nurses also engage in practicing heterosexuality as a way for patients to feel safe with them. ' - huh? elaborate please, sounds interesting :) Did you mean 'demonstrate' by remarks? (p.20 stuff? what about p.17?)
  • like the end of 'Gender Practice: Intimate Care is Feminine'. Such short, direct sentences make great points and facilitate reading - try to have more of them. The story is nice and useful to.
  • Male and female nurses revealed several strategies for handling patients who harass or are inappropriate in other ways. - yes, do expand and illustrate, sounds very interesting
  • won't some details reveal person's identity? For example, Brett's described on p.12-14. I am sure his collegues would have no trouble recognizing him. Is this ok? Even when he is described in a positive light?
  • 'Jared, a nurse of color,' - what's the point of race remark here? p.17
  • 'All male nurses I interviewed commented on the regularity with which their sexual orientation was questioned – both overtly and covertly. - Are are they right?
  • 'Their experiences disrupt normative views on intimate care.' - that's the first time you use 'normative views', what are they?

[edit] MT comments

  • people are happy with my 'being an admin disclaimer' now?
  • Xi notes that my avitity/lenght of participation are not as relevant to the Iron Law. Michels note lenght is important, but doesn't speak much about activity. Should I stress their connection with IL or call them control variables?
  • tables - small because big one doesn't fit
  • Xi: I would not report every detail of the process of the data analysis. In fact, I would only report the final model(s) with the variables finally survived after various testing. - do we agree?
  • explain dumps more?
  • is 'my judgement' issue clear now?
  • Jane - "can you say this in a more positive way that would support Wikipedia?" - sure :)
  • Kim:move oligarchy in front of Wiki?
  • corrs to appendix
  • minor/major examples - box, table
  • decided to capitalize on the growing public
  • charismatic leader, pretige,...
  • challenge/dispute, the edit or the user
  • editor/user
  • see ill 2
  • dodac obrazki: WP:V, edit summary
  • winner/defeated, won/lost, victory/defeat
  • reverts / revert dispute
  • admins
  • total