Apparent Freedom Research Articles

Outcasts on the inside: academics reinventing themselves online

Recent developments in digital scholarship point out that academic practices supported by technologies may not only be transformed through the obvious process of digitization, but also renovated through distributed knowledge networks that digital technologies enable, and the practices of openness that such networks develop. Yet, this apparent freedom for individuals to re-invent the logic of academic practice comes at a price, as it tends to clash with the conventions of a rather conservative academic world. In other words, it may still take some time until academia and the participatory web can fully identify themselves with one another as spaces of ‘public intellectualism’, scholarly debate and engagement. Through a narrative inquiry approach, this research explores how academic researchers engaged in digital scholarship practices perceive the effects of their activity on their professional identity. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is used as a theoretical construct and method to capture and understand the professional trajectories of the research participants and the significance of their digital practices on their perceived academic identity. The research suggests that academics engaged in digital practices experience a disjointed sense of identity. The findings presented in this article illustrate how experiences with and on the participatory web inform a new habitus which is at odds with a habitus that is traditionally expected in academia.

Encouraging the managerial imagination: ethnography, smart phones and novel ways of seeing

This paper invites discussion of the role, potential and limitations of employing the ethnographic lens in undergraduate management teaching as a response to growing concerns over the usefulness of critical management education. Specifically, it outlines the case for employing the smart phone as a novel channel through which to introduce would-be managers to new 'ways of seeing' (Berger, 1972). Describing how this is achieved in practice through the production of photo essays and online films, the paper contributes to our understanding of how the apparent freedom afforded by the ethnographic lens to 'see anew' is necessarily constructed through the disciplinary effects of ethics, copyrights and the privileging of a very particular academic audience. The result is a necessarily circumscribed pedagogic space that nonetheless allows room for the doubt, uncertainty, contradiction and experimentation that is essential for more engaged learning and critical managing.

Black Twitter? Racial Hashtags, Networks and Contagion

Race itself has become a digital medium, a distinctive set of informatic codes, networked mediated narratives, maps, images, visualizations that index identity. (1) There is a growing body of research exploring issues of race and ethnicity in digital environments. Social networking relations, modes of online communication and digital identities have been revealed to be far from race-neutral. (2) Research has raised questions concerning how extant racial segregations and inequalities have spilled over into the virtual realm, highlighting the creation of new kinds of digital divides. The oft-cited, iconic 1993 New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner announcing 'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog' captured the apparent freedom of a blossoming World Wide Web. However, the original cyberspace promise of 'leaving the meat (body) behind' has done little to withstand the racialization of online spaces. The internet has always been a racially demarcated space and today the plethora of online communication platforms (instant messaging, email-lists, blogs, discussion forums and social media) continue to exhibit varying degrees of identity marking and racialized segregation. (3) The internet, in other words, is a manifold set of sociotechnical practices, generative of digital privileges and racial ordering. It has become apparent that online race is complex and mutable. This picture supports Geert Lovink's declaration that: 'The idea that the virtual liberates you from your old self has collapsed. There is no alternative identity'. (4) That digital media should be understood as merely an adjunct to the 'real' world is, then, an increasingly tenuous standpoint. But this should not be taken to mean that there is a static replication of 'off-line' identities online, far from it. Online racial inclusions and exclusions are dynamically transforming, augmented by the explosion of 'Web 2.0' social networking sites, and modes of access (broadband and mobile phones). For instance, the rise of social networks witnessed the 'white flight' of users from MySpace towards Facebook. (5) And variations in the adoption of social media by different ethno-racial groups have become more visible. (6) The hype of Web 2.0 celebrating user participation and content generation has obscured the racialized protocols that circumscribe our online interactions. (7) Web studies exploring race and ethnicity have principally conceived identity as a 'lived' social construction or hegemonic mode of representation. The relationship between communication platforms and identity practices is difficult to unravel, particularly as research in this field risks essentialising online activity in relation to supposed ethno-racial designation. The rapidly expanding digital landscape poses a further challenge to researchers, as the 'real-time' speed, propagation and irruptions of race online create a presentism that seemingly resists critical analysis. (8) Modalities of race wildly proliferate in social media sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter: casual racial banter, race-hate comments, 'griefing', images, videos and anti-racist sentiment bewilderingly intermingle, mash-up and virally circulate; and researchers struggle to comprehend the meanings and affects of a racialized info-overload. (9) The complexity of online racial formations raises the question of whether adequate attention is being paid to the significance of the online environments that race exists in: how are both race and digital networks transformed in their mutual encounter? This essay offers an analysis which centres upon exploring the technosocial production of race. Digital networks are generative of race and can be grasped by an approach attentive to the operations of online platforms. My contention is that a move to a materialist understanding of digital media and networks (10) opens up new possibilities for rethinking how race works online. Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White intimate that 'race itself has become a digital medium'; thus the materiality of both race and the digital can prompt an alternative approach and method, beyond the mantra of race as a social construction. …

The Real Cost of Childcare: Motherhood and Flexible Creative Labour in the UK Film Industry - Review Essay

There is one clear factor that leads to women's inequality in the labour market: becoming mothers (The Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, 2007). It is difficult to talk about women and work without talking about childcare. The same would not be true about a discussion of men and work and this is still one of the most obvious difficulties to be managed by working women, even those who choose not to have children. It is the potential of all women to have children and the associated disruption to their career that can lead to women being perceived as less worthy of investment – of time, of career advice, of promotion and even of pay (Fitt and Newton, 1981, Groysberg, 2008, McGuire, 2002, Wajcman, 1998). In the UK film industry, only 14% of women have children compared to 40% of men (Skillset and UK Film Council, 2008). Work in the UK film industry shares many traits of other creative professions such as flexible working hours, project-based employment, uncertainty, precariousness and irregular and often unreliable payment. Skillset's report on the status of women in the creative industries in the UK found that representation is highest in sectors comprising larger employers in which more stable, permanent employment models are common, such as terrestrial television (48%), broadcast radio (47%), cinema exhibition (43%), and book publishing (61%) (Skillset, 2010). This paper considers the hidden inequalities in the apparent freedom of a creative professions such as the UK film industry, paying particular attention to the role of the screenwriter in order to illustrate how continued gendered assumptions about a women's role as a mother and the primary carer for children can impact on their career opportunities in a creative industry.

Like a Horse and Carriage: (Non)Normativity in Hollywood Romance

Like a Horse and Carriage: (Non)Normativity in Hollywood Romance

Slimming Lines

The article looks at advice on how to dress the body in order to achieve a slim figure from around 1960 and after 2000. How should clothes consumers materialize the ideals verbalized and visualized? How are big consumers portrayed, and what can contribute to making their bodies socially accepted, or preferably beautiful? The material shows how the communication of the ideal is maintained despite the change in communication form. Around 1960 the books were clear in their communication of the norms. In today's literature norms are no longer presented as norms, but are referred to as personal choices and a matter of well-being. In this way the strict ideal of similarity can be sustained under the guise of individuality. The article can therefore contribute to an understanding of why so much apparent freedom results in so little variation in the ways in which people actually dress.

No visible difference: a women's empowerment process in a Cambodian NGO

The lives of female Cambodian NGO staff are characterised by the contradictions of apparent freedom and multiple invisible constraints on their behaviour and choices. An empowerment process facilitated by an expatriate did not produce the expected responses of sisterhood and group action. Through a series of workshops, learning emerged about the context-dependent nature of concepts of empowerment, and the irrelevance of many Western models for other cultures. Fear and mistrust, rooted in both traditional culture and the post-conflict context, are powerful and profound blocks to change in women's lives. No visible difference in workplace behaviours appeared after the empowerment process. However, the women responded to new insights about their lives, beliefs, and culture in ways that had meaning for them; and they reported significant benefits for family and social relationships.

Unravelling children's "freedom of choice"

This article is offered as a provocation for teachers, encouraging them to reflect on underlying assumptions about the ways in which resources for children's learning are managed. The article explores how the familiar notion of children's 'freedom of choice' was played out in a centre. It describes how, within the apparent freedom, teacher controls set parameters around the range of available resources and children's access to them, and defined how they might be used.

Home Range Analysis in the Study of Spatial Organization on the Comb in the Paper Wasp Polistes Dominulus

AbstractIn order to understand how the apparent freedom of individual movements can concur with social order in a colony, we investigated spatial relationships between foundresses, workers and immature brood in a paper wasp. This is the first time an ecological analytical approach (home range analysis) has been employed to describe small scale spatial use in a social context. In this study, home range was not used in its strictly ecological sense, but rather applied to the comb. Our results show that the positions individual wasps assumed on Polistes dominulus combs are spatially structured. Workers and foundresses do not occupy the comb in random distribution, but rather follow predictable spatial patterns. Each active wasp has its own spatial fidelity area, at least over a 1 d observation period, spending the majority of its time within a very small area averaging approx. 12% of the comb but occasionally it may cover an area of up to 50% of the comb surface. Dominant females occupied a significantly smaller area that either subordinate foundresses or workers. Areas patrolled by workers varied in shape and size, with no relation to time spent on the comb, wasp density or position of immature brood. All the wasps clumped around the dominant female, who proved to be the only individual affected by cell content. Nevertheless, although the wasps tended to clump together, average superimposition rates among nest‐mates was very low (higher in workers than foundresses), suggesting that the wasps limit each other’s individual spaces.

The Chicken or a Real No-Brainer

In a C4 trituration of a chicken feather the participants experienced a state of psychological blindness and a refusal to be cognisant of their motivations. Aimless activity, superficial talk, meaningless social interaction were used to hide fears and insecurity. A desire to belong to a group and to conform helped to cover up fears of starvation and of survival. Even the sense of apparent freedom afforded by New Age ideologies ended up in boredom and resignation, because no transformation of unconscious fears had occurred. “Chicken” might be a remedy for people who live their lives unconsciously and avoid confrontation with their fears through conforming to mainstream societal norms.

Considering the First Steps toward a Stable and Orderly Way of Bacterial Life

Bacteria are small unicellular organisms who could well enjoy a bohemian life—moving independently wherever and whenever they want to and existing with no regard for conventional rules of behavior. In spite of this apparent freedom, most bacteria abandon their footloose lifestyle as soon as they come into contact with a surface. Irrespective of whether the surface is of biotic or abiotic origin, they clinch to it, forgoing independence in favor of settling down. Similar to animals that gather in flocks and people who live in societies, surface-attached microbes can form networks as multicellular communities called biofilms. Bacterial biofilms are heterogeneous structures of increasing complexity that consist of differently specialized cells enclosed in a self-produced polymeric matrix associated with the surface [1]. Depending on the setting and the composition of biofilms, they may have either beneficial or detrimental effects on our environment and health. One of the most serious concerns about biofilms is their high antibiotic tolerance, which makes the treatment of infections difficult and contributes to the spread of antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria [2]. A high antibiotic tolerance in biofilm bacteria can partly be explained by a surface-induced change in gene expression, but how does this happen? What are the first critical steps towards an orderly life on a surface and how are these controlled? These questions have puzzled scientists for a considerable amount of time, and still do. Attempts to solve these questions can be roughly divided into two major approaches: one focusing on physicochemical aspects of cell–surface interactions, the other aiming at elucidating the expression of adhesion-specific genes. When bacteria approach a surface they encounter an energy barrier, and a balance of repulsive and attractive forces determines whether adhesion occurs. Several theoretical models originally developed for colloidal particles have been used to describe this process, including the Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory [3], the thermodynamic approach [4], and an extended DLVO theory [5]. However, the predictions made for cell–surface interactions in terms of electrostatic interaction forces or interfacial energy have only limited success, because they do not take into account the heterogeneity of bacterial cell surfaces [6]. Bacterial cells not only have a variety of cell surface structures, they also sense and respond to changes in their environment by immediately adjusting their gene expression, which results in dynamic cell surface alterations. Among surface-induced cellular changes, an altered expression of cell envelope components is of particular interest because it directly affects the mode of intimate cell–surface contact. To understand the genetic basis of the decisions bacteria make upon surface contact, many studies have focused either on the characterization of adhesion factors or on the isolation of biofilm-deficient mutants. During the past decade, a huge interest in biofilm research has resulted in amazing insights into how various cell surface structures affect the rate and extent of attachment, e.g., [7–10], how biofilms grow and develop in coordinated steps, e.g., [11–16], how the extracellular matrix is produced, e.g., [17,18], and how bacteria inside biofilms communicate via signal molecules, e.g., [17,19]. However, the very first steps that actually cause bacteria to stick to a surface and that are required to trigger reprogramming of gene expression are still not well understood. To a large extent, this lack of knowledge is due to a lack of appropriate methodology.

Mediating solidarity

With the apparent increase in the number of alternative political media, political pluralists are again faced with the question: does the proliferation of subaltern counter-publics lead to a multiplication of forces? Fragmentation in political culture is fuelled by the rise of identity politics that focuses on consumption not production. Party allegiances and class alliances give way to more fluid and informal networks of action. Postmodern theorists celebrate fragmentation because it allows the recognition of diversity in political desires, acknowledges difference between individuals and debunks the myth of homogenous political units leading ultimately to liberation. But for political efficacy there must be more than the apparent freedom that comes with embracing difference and diversity. This article argues that if we accept the description of society as fragmented, in order to create a viable political community then solidarity is crucial. In a global economy, solidarity can be mediated through new communication technologies but the challenge is to articulate the politics online with actual movements and struggles on the ground.

Feng Zikai (1898-1975) : un caricaturiste lyrique

Feng Zikai (1898-1975), a lyric cartoonist. The work of the cartoonist Feng Zikai (1898-1975), an artist born in Zhejiang and closely connected to the Westernised literary circles of Shanghai in the 1920-1940s, contrasts with that of his fellows by its lyrical inspiration. A close examination of his cartoons, which are painted with a brush, shows that, despite an apparent freedom in style and tone, their main features are a conciseness, an implicit seriousness, and a depth which recall classical poems, which were often his inspiration. Feng’s cartoons indeed transpose into his own time a way of thinking peculiar to the ancient literati elite, combined with a philosophy of life influenced by Buddhism. Although he could be very incisive, Feng Zikai especially endeavoured to communicate the flavour of everyday life and to express the empathy he felt towards children, people of modest means, and those of humble station. Concerned with the reality of his time, his cartoons are tinged with an emotion which gives them a lyrical complexion.

Hostages of Destiny: Gender Issues in Today's Poland

In an e-mail of June 2002, some women on Gender Link noticed that in Polish there is an expression, ‘husband of trust’, used to describe a person in the workplace appointed to represent workers’ interests. This role is more often than not given to women, and yet they are called ‘husbands of trust’. ‘Isn't that strange,’ they said. ‘Isn't it time to change this?’. It is. The change in gender role identities has started with questioning the language. It has started with asking who has produced and is reproducing the language, and for whom. The journey has not stopped there. From looking at language it has continued through social stereotypes, work, labour, money and the division of power, and reached the law and legal system itself. In Poland, the path has been rather circuitous and uneasy for we are, more than many other countries, bound by Catholic tradition mingled with apparent freedom. We had the ethos of Solidarity, and Lech Wałęsa. Wałęsa had a badge of the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus on his jacket, which somehow helped label all Polish women, even those still very young, a ‘Mother Pole’. To resist that identity one needed to look beneath the image and be brave enough to call oneself just a woman. This article will try to analyse that process.

The Harmony of Fixed Fate and Free Will in theIliad

Eberhard argues convincingly in his 1923 volume,Das Schicksal als poetische Idee bei Homerthat fate is a narrative device in theIliadandOdysseywhich guides the narration towards resolution. As an example of fate at work, he cites the narrator harnessing fate to fulfil ‘what must happen’ when Zeus finds the deaths of Sarpedon and Hector difficult. Movement towards resolution, however, is not the only force motivating the narration. Achilles' vacillations between remaining or quitting pull the narration away from resolution: such episodes suggest the idea of an apparent freedom within fate. If Iliadic fate or free will were unwavering dogmatic notions, their coexistence would be problematic. But perhaps harmony between the two is possible when free will in theIliadis—like Eberhard's conception of fate—a poetic or narrative device.

Launching the Unified National System: What happened in South Australia

The focus of this article ison the processes by which five tertiaryinstitutions in South Australia were integratedinto the Unified National System in 1991. Incontrast with what occurred in some otherStates, the South Australian institutions wereallowed unusual scope for self-determinationwithin the broad national policy framework. Inpractice, this apparent freedom of choiceproved a mixed blessing. Institutionalambitions no less than individual aspirationsand self-interest tended to modify and delaydecision-making processes. However, the longdrawn-out wrangling and debate eventually ledthe key participants from conflict tocooperation and an acceptable compromise.

Poetic Pains in Formal Pleasures Bound

There is pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know. shifts and turns, Th' and inventions To which the mind resorts, in of Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win-- T'arrest the fleeting images that fill mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, And force them sit, 'till he has pencil'd off A faithful likeness of the forms he views; ..... Are occupations of the poet's mind So pleasing, and that the thought With such address from of sad import. . . . (Cowper, Task, 2.285-93, 298-300) (1) the winter of 1801-02, Wordsworth was in great deal of pain, poetically and otherwise (Curtis, 3-26). Having attempted, and failed, to add third book to the poem to Coleridge in December, 1801, Wordsworth resumed his painstaking revisions of The Pedlar at the end of January, yet soon despaired of completing it to his satisfaction. Experiencing poetic pains devoid of pleasure, Wordsworth's fruitless chace of terms during this period constantly let him physically the worse for wear, as Dorothy's journal regularly attests. After noting on February 28th, for example, Win very ill, employed with the pedlar, she wrote on March 3rd, was so unlucky as to propose to rewrite Pedlar. Wm got to work and was worn to death (73, 74). Unable thus to steal away from--let alone steel himself against--such themes of sad import, Wordsworth found relief in being read to by Dorothy. Nearly as often as she records Wordsworth's insomnia and assorted somatic pains, Dorothy quickly notes as well that she rea d him to sleep or attempted to distract him from his own words with those of others, and between December, 1801, and June, 1802, the two read widely in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Daniel, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Drayton, Jonson, and Milton (see Dorothy Wordsworth and Wu). With the completion of new work (including revisions to the Preface) for the 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads early that spring, Wordsworth's poetic pains finally won him new set of as his poetry suddenly manifested an astonishing range of formal experimentation for poet whose voice had heretofore largely confined itself to the cadences of (Miltonic) blank verse and his own peculiar adaptations of ballad stanzas. Appropriating at various times such diverse forms as rhyme royalle, the Spenserian stanza, variety of short Elizabethan lyric stanzas, Italian and Miltonic sonnets, and the irregular Pindaric ode, Wordsworth appeared to find to the poetic crisis of the winter in these multiform expedients and inven tions, (Curtis 62-69; Heath 22-24, 123-26). Indeed, as Wordsworth later wrote in an unpublished Advertisement for the two-volume Poems of 1807 (where many of these lyrics first appeared): Short Poems of which these volumes consist, were chiefly composed to refresh my mind during the progress of work of length and labor, in which I have for some time been engaged; and to furnish me with employment when I had not to apply myself to that work, or hope that I should proceed with it successfully. . . . They were composed with much pleasure to my own mind, & I build upon that remembrance hope that they may afford profitable pleasure to many readers. (P2V 541) As Jared Curtis remarked of Wordsworth's crisis of 1802, these lyric poems ought to be read as a remedy, release, refreshing and pleasure-giving employment arising almost in recompense for the poet's discouragement and irresolution over the 'work of length and labor' (12). Implicit in Curtis's observation, though never finally articulated, is what I will argue here: Wordsworth's resolution consisted, however paradoxically, in releasing himself from the apparent freedom of blank verse for the binding schemes of form--a nominal loss for which there was indeed abundant recompense. In of terms, Wordsworth turned in 1802 to the chase of older meters and forms, for it was only in their liberating restraints that he could finally steal . …

Women in the Early Vietnamese Communist Movement: Sex, Lies, and Liberation

This article looks at the development of attitudes towards women within the early communist movement in Vietnam. Using the careers of two female militants as examples, it contrasts the enduring patriarchal view of women within the party with an apparent freedom of sexual relations among party members in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It concludes that, far from being liberated from patriarchy, women who joined the party had to sacrifice their individual rights to the revolution. If there was any sort of equality within the party, it lay in the degree of self-sacrifice demanded of rank-and-file members.

Monitoring, enforcement, and the choice of environmental policy instruments

How to choose among the dozen policy instruments available to environmental management agencies has been a matter of concern and debate among environmental economists for the entire life of the profession – nearly four decades. The ability, or lack of it, to measure the quantities or observe the actions made "enforceable" by particular policy instruments ought clearly to be central to this choice. However, all too often the monitoring problem has been assumed away. When it is reintroduced in realistic forms, we find, not surprisingly, that some favorite policy instruments, such as pollution charges, are not applicable to some important problems, such as runoff pollution from farms; that marginal subsidies, by changing the burden of proof, may no longer be symmetric with charges; and that the apparent freedom from monitoring requirements of the newly fashionable instrument involving the public provision of information about firms or products is "paid for" by our inability to say anything about its performance on other dimensions that are also of interest.

“Feeling My Way”: Jazz Improvisation and Its Vicissitudes—A Plea for Imperfection

A newcomer to jazz who listens to a certain recorded performance of "My Funny Valentine" by Miles Davis is likely to be shocked at its roughness.3 He will hear cracked notes not quite in tune, sloppy triplets, unaccountable pauses, arbitrary shifts of rhythm, and chaotic runs that go nowhere. Knowing that performances of similar quality in "classical" music would never see the light of day, he will be puzzled to learn that many such jazz performances are recorded and issued to the public. Strikingly, improvised jazz also exhibits a chronic defect of an almost opposite kind, namely, that much of the music seems routine, predictable, and formulaic. A main feature of Theodore Adorno's harsh critique of jazz turns on the charge that the jazz musician's spontaneity is a myth-indeed, that on the whole the music is monotonous.4 In the same spirit, Winthrop Sargeant, whose classic study of jazz betrays a peculiar love-hate relationship with its subject, declares that "a sturdy repetition" of the music's basic elements always underlies "the apparent freedom of improvised" jazz.5 After listening to too many performances that merely shuffle through a sequence of orderly but tired cliches, a listener may be tempted to conclude that the charge is basically correct. One might pair the problems and dub them the formalist's complaints. The reason for calling them "formalist" should be clear: Music that is disordered, chaotic, and musically confused will for obvious reasons fail to satisfy formalist criteria of aesthetic excellence. Just as obviously, music that is formulaic, banal, and oversimple will fail to satisfy the formalist. Of course, jazz performances can be messy, or routine, or both at the same time-for reasons that are not very interesting-as when simple phrases are executed badly by beginners. I want to set such cases aside in order to address the deeper issue that the formalist's complaints jointly reflect. As we shall see, the formalist focuses too narrowly on the sheer acoustic dimensions of the music at the expense of other considerations-in particular, those that concern (1) the cultural matrices of the music and (2) the process by which it is generated. After considering some resources for talking the formalist out of the grounds for his complaints, we shall see there remains one dimension of the music's imperfection that these strategies cannot rationalize. However, I shall argue that even this residual imperfection can be regarded as a vital aspect of improvised jazz, provided it is framed the right way. In order to set the stage for the discussion, we need to detail some of the features of improvisational activity.