Bumper Stickers Research Articles

Enter the Alter-Left

Enter the Alter-Left

The Library: Defender of Freedom of Speech and Expression?

Over the years, I have tried mostly in vain to get libraries to subscribe to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit journal I have been publishing on literature, democracy, and dissidence since 1998. To date, I've managed to obtain 15 institutional subscriptions. Compare that to the well over 500 obtained by Agni and Poetry magazine. As a result of one attempt, Watertown Free Public Library ended up issuing a three-month trespass order without warning or due process. That was the only time I have ever been to that library. One would suspect I must have had done something terrible like issue violent threats, swear belligerently, or make sexual jokes. But none of that occurred. Hard to believe? Perhaps not.More recently, on June 19, 2012, I was sitting in Sturgis Library (Barnstable, MA), described by former library trustee Kurt Vonnegut as a clapboard tomb. There I was in a corner alone in a room quietly working on my laptop, something I had been doing there about five times per week for a year and a half. The director and no less than three police officers suddenly entered. When I asked what I had done, the director said: You've been critical of me, you don't like it here, so now you can't come here anymore. Actually, I did like the library, though I did not like the director's egregious violation of her own policy.One of the officers the trespass announcement. I asked for how long. He asked the director, who responded, permanently. I asked for a written document. The director there was none. It was verbal. I asked why three officers were necessary and mentioned I did not carry a weapon. At that point, one of the other officers grabbed my arm, twisted it around my back, then frisked me. I was not resisting arrest. I was not put under arrest. Days later, I would discover that officer was a training officer who was training one of the other officers present, using me as a live training dummy. And that was that. For me, what happened was unbelievable. No warning at all! And no due process whatsoever. So, what was my crime?Outside, one of the officers told me to go to Town Hall, when I asked where I could go to lodge a complaint. A day later, that is what I did. But Town Hall informed me it had no jurisdiction over the library and that I should go to the police station or contact the president of the library committee. Unsurprisingly, the president would not respond to my correspondence. She was, after all, a good friend of the library director. At the police station, I was able to obtain a written record of the police action. But on it, there was no mention at all of the duration of the trespass order. The officer, who had taken the director's phone call, told me the director had I made her feel uncomfortable, had said inappropriate things, and that it had been an ongoing concern. And that was all. The director had not mentioned I was critical.If politically-correct proponents one day have their way, making someone feel uncomfortable might indeed become a criminal offense. Fortunately, it is not yet thus. Besides, shouldn't a library director have a little spine? Was her remark not a bit childish? After all, I do not have a criminal record, have no tattoos or visible scars, and do not walk around naked. In fact, over the year and a half I had been going to Sturgis Library I rarely ever spoke to the director, though in the beginning of that period I had asked her to consider subscribing. She had no, arguing the library was a friendly place and that there was too much negativity. So, is democracy now family unfriendly and negativity? And what about all the sex and violence DVDs the director had been periodically purchasing for the library? Well, people in power positions can often be impervious to logic and reason.During that earlier period, I had placed one flyer on a car windshield in the library lot because that car had a bumper sticker: Everything I Learned Was from Reading Banned Books. …

Front Porch

Front Porch Harry L. Watson, Editor Click for larger view View full resolution This issue asks: How should we remember the Civil War? National Cemetery, Fredericksburg, Virginia, 1974, photographed by Raymond W. Smith. [End Page 1] Readers who experienced the Civil War Centennial of 1961–65 may recall a pair of cartoons that circulated widely in those days. In one, a doddering Union veteran clutches the Stars and Stripes and wearily advises, “Forget it.” In the other, an equally old but defiant Confederate brandishes his own side’s Battle Flag and snarls back, “Fergit, hell!” In a brief online search, I found no trace of the Yankee, but “Fergit, hell!” is still plentiful, as a license plate, a bumper sticker, and a slogan in debate. If we can’t forget it, how should southerners remember the Civil War? Over the years, we’ve done so in many ways. Well into the twentieth century, African Americans honored Emancipation with repeated commemorations, variously focusing on the Proclamation itself, on other key milestones, and especially on “Juneteenth” or June 19, fully two months after Appomattox, when federal troops finally brought freedom to Galveston, Texas. Once a local holiday, Juneteenth celebrations are now more widespread than ever. Southern white memory has been utterly different in tone but much more conspicuous. First came private sorrow, bitterness, and rage, immediately searing the survivors and ultimately preserved in family stories. My mother remembered the promising youth who was supposed to become a doctor but went to war instead. He came back so traumatized that he was never good for anything, and forced his wife to support the family. My father could tell of his great-grandparents with six sons. One died beforehand, one lost an arm, three died in combat, and one returned whole. When those personal losses prompted recognition, it usually occurred in cemeteries, over the graves of the fallen themselves. Only later, as the cult of the Lost Cause gathered strength, did monument-building move to the public square and place all those obelisks and bronze sentinels to guard our courthouse lawns. Later still, when the immediate participants had all gone and even the family stories were beginning to fade, many came to overlook the grief and pain, not to mention the issue at stake, and remembered the Civil War era as an age of lost splendor, when belles were belles and men were heroes. The reenactment craze began among women, as society ladies donned hoop skirts to give house tours, assert their social standing, and show off their azaleas. Aside from squiring their partners to antebellum balls, men only joined in later, reenacting actual battles and reliving the glorious days when white male command needed no defense or explanation. Acts of Civil War remembrance once reinforced the public order of segregation and Jim Crow. They also confirmed the private memories of most whites, or even replaced them, as when anti-Confederate families and regions forgot there was any such thing as southern Unionism. With Jim Crow legally dead and publicly unregretted, however, the picture has become more complicated. Diversity has entered Civil War memory, with secessionist celebrations vying with Juneteenth ceremonies and widely attended municipal events that applaud Emancipation. Will one set of rituals finally inspire universal veneration for the “new birth of [End Page 2] freedom”? Or will the others sustain a memory of victimization that is just as sad and bitter as the old official version? It’s hard to be sure, but this issue of Southern Cultures explores the range of possibilities. Click for larger view View full resolution Wall Mural, Jacksonville, Florida, 1974, photographed by Raymond W. Smith. Blain Roberts starts us off with a trip to Charleston’s Secession Ball, held on December 20, 2010, the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession. Her visit grew out of a book she is writing with her husband about the current Sesquicentennial, and it took her to rival commemorations, in which belles and beaux faced black protestors originating from the church of Denmark Vesey, South Carolina’s most famous slave rebel. Charleston being Charleston, Roberts found the cult of the Lost Cause putting up a brave front, but can...

Latin Justice

Latin Justice

Psychiatrist on Mission to Help Mentally Ill People in Poor Countries

Brandon Kohrt, M.D., Ph.D., studied to become a medical anthropologist and psychiatrist. With his formal education completed, he sees his destiny as helping people in low-income countries.

Addiction: White House Seeks “Third Way”

AS THE US POLICY DEBATE ABOUT drug abuse careens between old approaches that have led to incarceration of many for drug-related crimes and emerging ones that seek to legalize marijuana, the White House has released a new drug control policy (http://1.usa.gov/ZvNdGA) that administration officials describe as a “third way” to address substance abuse. The new strategy emphasizes evidencebased approaches to prevent and treat substance abuse disorders. “It’s very much time for a new approach,” said R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and former police chief of Seattle, during a press briefing in April. Kerlikowske explained that like many in law enforcement, he long believed that drug dependence reflected moral failing and a lack of willpower. But an increasing body of scientific evidence suggests that substance abuse causes changes in the brain that make it difficult for individuals to stop using and that treatment can help curb these behaviors. “Addiction is a disease,” Kerlikowske said. “It can be diagnosed; it can be treated.” Addiction’s economic toll on the country is massive, costing $193 billion in lost productivity, health care, and criminal justice, he said. Given the complexity of the problem, Kerlikowske said, simple “bumper sticker” answers won’t work. “We are not going to solve the problem with legalization or incarceration,” he said. Instead, the new policy suggests a dual approach, emphasizing prevention and treatment for individuals as well as criminal justice efforts to curb the national and international drug trade. The report lays out a strategy that increases funding for programs to prevent youth from starting drug use, supports expansion of drug courts to shift individuals with substance abuse disorders out of the criminal justice system and into treatment, and promotes screening and early intervention for such disorders in primary health care. Additionally, the ONDCP has created the first office dedicated to supporting individuals in recovery from substance abuse disorders and recommends several specific changes to laws that, in their current form, may hamper recovery efforts. “It’s a significant break from the idea that substance abuse is strictly a criminal justice problem,” said A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, chief executive officer and cofounder of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia and a former deputy director of the ONDCP. “It’s trying to strike a balance between public safety and public health.” The new direction is rooted in the emerging evidence based on the neurological underpinnings of addiction and evidence supporting prevention and treatment strategies, according to Kerlikowske. Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, explained at the briefing that until recently, the health care system had distanced itself from addiction because of the stigma associated with the disorder and the misconception that drug dependence was a voluntary behavior and moral failure. But studies of addiction suggest that chronic drug use damages the brain in ways that cause changes in behavior and impair an individual’s self-control. “In order to be able to control your urges, your brain has to work properly,” Volkow said. Additionally, research has suggested that both genetic and social circumstances may con-

Book Review: Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World, by Arran Stibbe

Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World. Arran Stibbe. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013. 214 pp. $70.00 hbk. $25.99 pbk. $19.99 e-bk.Vegetarian leanings aside, I chuckled once at a bumper sticker on a beater car pro- claiming, If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World eloquently answers that question. Animals Erased is written by Arran Stibbe of the University of Gloucestershire, who is an important contributor to multidisciplinary research and education into environmental sustainability. Stibbe uses engaged critical models of learning that bring disparate audiences, such as researchers, policy makers, and stu- dents, to a greater awareness of their roles within, impacts on, and responsibilities for the natural environment.Stibbe's expertise is in linguistics and ecology, uniting fields in environmental sci- ences with journalism, public relations, and communication studies, among other dis- ciplines. Animals Erased is a wonderfully vexing book inviting healthy discussions in classes in any of these areas. It should be required reading for anyone working in public policy related to, or public communication on, the food industry nationally and internationally.Animals Erased stems from a variety of thought-provoking journal articles Stibbe published in the 2000s in reaction to tragic agribusiness events in recent years causing unprecedented-and he argues, unnecessary-human brutality leading to epic scale suffering of animals. Stibbe presents compelling moral and ethical arguments that posit animals are sentient beings, a term Tibet's Dalai Lama also uses. Stibbe recounts, for instance, misreporting about a sudden spread of hoof and mouth disease in Britain, which at its nadir led people to massacre and incinerate six million sheep, cattle, and pigs. Stibbe claims such hyped but fundamentally phony crises have global ramifications at all levels. He identifies how language is used to denigrate animals and to rationalize destructive practices that prioritize human desires over needs. He uncov- ers violent, unsustainable policies and procedures on animals. Stibbe maintains that grave human errors comprise prevailing human-animal relationships, extending from the highest government decision makers, to media reporting on food sector issues, to the world's largest animal production operations and food distributors, to smallest-scale rural farmers.The trajectory of the book is purposefully peripatetic. From the outset, Animals Erased defines how humans, particularly in developed nations such as the UK, have long used language, discourse, and visual symbols in everyday metaphors found in interpersonal conversation to books, images, movies, and food industry reports to rationalize how modern meat-eating habits unnecessarily, and unobserved, inflict large-scale trauma on animals.In chapters 1 and 2, Stibbe portrays linguistic and discursive slights capitalistic humans cast on specific animals being used in massive-scale food production. …

Choose Happiness

bumper sticker

I Brake for Blind People

bumper sticker

I Can't See where I am Going

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'Ambient Accountability' - Fighting Corruption When and Where it Happens

I propose the concept of ‘ambient accountability’ as a new, nimble, yet very promising addition to the research program, policy debate and most importantly practical toolbox of accountability mechanisms. As a first working definition ambient accountability can be broadly described as all efforts that seek to shape, use and engage systematically with the built environment and public places and the ways people experience and interact in them, in order to further transparency, accountability and integrity of public authorities and services. The concept provides a fresh perspective to think about accountability mechanisms as strategic spatial interventions that empower people right in the place, right at the time when they have to deal with potentially corrupt public officials and service providers, or when they happen to pass by project sites or institutions where corruption issues may surface. Ambient accountability has several qualities that make it an ideal complement to the existing toolbox of accountability mechanisms and it can help address some of the key challenges and shortcoming that have found to plague many social accountability innovations. I develop a first typology of ambient accountability with three interlinked clusters of mechanisms that respectively focus on helping citizens to better understand ‘what ought to happen’ (their rights, entitlements), what is actually happening (the performance of the official, institution etc.) and what to do, if things go wrong (who is responsible, how to complain effectively). Examples from all over the world are provided for all these three clusters, demonstrating the incredibly creative and diverse spectrum of ambient information and design interventions that can provide inspiration. However, so far these mechanisms have not been systematically explored, evaluated and adapted in a targeted manner by the governance community for the purpose of fighting corruption. Ambient accountability provides a very exciting new lens to understand an important segment of corruption risks and develop new ideas for tackling them. It provides a common frame to bring together a new accountability alliance and tap into the expertise, experience and creativity of many stakeholders that are usually not an integral part of the anti-corruption conversation -from architects and city planners to public space designers, signage experts, as well as urban activists and artists. And ambient accountability provides a particularly elastic framework for this brainstorm, experimentation and action agenda, as it covers possible interventions that mix the very simple bumper sticker with the very high tech urban screen, that cover official institutional initiatives just like bottom-up, artistic interventions, that range from micro tactics that work with placards and fly posters to macro-strategies that think about how to design entire buildings and public spaces. What’s more, insights and lessons on the information-to-action transmission belt from a wide variety of disciplines confirm the potential and promise of ambient accountability. From the vantage point of cognitive information science, political communication or social movement studies to insights from sociology of corruption, knowledge management or environmental psychology, ambient accountability looks like a very promising concept to explore and enrich the fight against corruption. The article proceeds as follows: The following chapter 2 briefly takes the pulse of the current practice and discourse on accountability, its drivers, lessons learned and identified challenges. It puts a particular focus on the increasingly concept of social accountability and summarizes some key challenges to its effective implementation as arise from a first set of assessment reports. Chapter 3 then introduces and defines the new concept of ‘ambient accountability’ as a rather simple, but potentially very useful and creative addition to the practice and debate on accountability. It provides a first definition and Chapter 4 elaborates the concept further by offering a first typology of three interrelated cluster of ambient accountability mechanisms and it provides a number of examples for each of these that highlight the diversity and broad spectrum of possible ambient accountability interventions. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss why ambient accountability can reasonably be expected to make a big impact. They explain the complementary role that ambient accountability plays in the context of more conventional accountability mechanisms and also draw on insights from a wide range of related disciplines that make this high potential even more plausible. The scale of expected benefits and impact, however, stands in stark contrast to the lack of systematic research, idea incubation and strategic practical focus on ambient accountability. Chapter 7 directly picks up on this disconnect and outlines an extensive list of practical suggestions on how ambient accountability could be further developed and what types of new stakeholders could be brought into this conversation. As this first exploration of potential next steps and future coalitions further confirms, ambient accountability dovetails ideally with several interesting developments in the field of governance, urbanism, technology, activism and even art. It is high time to get started.

'Stuff Doesn't Just Happen': The Disenfranchised's Bumper Sticker

'Stuff Doesn't Just Happen': The Disenfranchised's Bumper Sticker

Where Will Change Come From?

In a recent editorial in the New York Times (New York Times Editorial, 2012), rising income inequality and the unbalanced debt burden are identified as the reason our economy is struggling, and why (by implication), unless this situation is remedied, austerity measures are destined to fail. Clearly, this revelation does not come as news to an Occupy Movement that, if nothing else was accomplished (and we can argue there are other important outcomes), raised in the minds of most people the questions of who has and who does not have wealth, how is this inequity fueled, and what can we do to address this severely unequal income distribution. While some bumper stickers report a 425:1 ratio of average CEO to average worker salary, recent research does provide a sobering picture of 325:1 in 20101 (almost returning to the pre-2008 meltdown level of 344:1, see Anderson et al., 2011: 3). Before this movement began, the main topic of political discussions and water cooler conversations focused on two questions: How large was the deficit? What must we do to eradicate our debt? Now, a majority of the people in this country agree that inequality is a major, if not the main, problem to be addressed and rectified. But, as a friend in California writes me, if the editorial board of the New York Times now says ending income inequality is long overdue then ‘the system’ must truly be scared. The IMF report did not go unnoticed in the press when it first was released (see Harkinson, 2011; Plumer, 2011). Indeed, even the New York Times had an article on the subject (Porter, 2011) in which the political indifference to this inequality was called into question. Perhaps, as the general argument goes, unequal income provides incentives for most to work harder as they aspire to higher economic levels of income and consumption. But this extreme inequality poses more of a barrier than an opportunity, because it blocks the ability of most to improve their situation. Berg and Ostry (2011) point out that across many societies the higher the national level of income inequality the shorter the period of sustained growth, and posit that the US economy will experience a similar drag on its recovery because of the extreme gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent (see also Kumhof et al., 2012). So again, why this editorial and why now? Perhaps the answer can be found in the rising level of unrest and public demonstrations against austerity measures across Europe. The 2012 elections in France and Greece offer us some insight as their electorate soundly rejected the parties of austerity. At the same time, many blame the economic plight on ‘outsiders’ or others ‘undermining’ the foundations of their society. These sentiments were captured by the gains made both by leftist parties and by neo-fascist or extreme right wing parties in France and Greece appealing to xenophobia and anti-immigrant feelings among the growing numbers of unemployed and dispossessed. In the US, the Tea Party traffics in the same rhetoric of ‘America for Americans’ and ironically issues calls for austerity programs that will not harm their own members, leading to the ironic demands that the US Government keep hands off their Social Security and Medicare, or the complete disconnect when in interviews people proclaim that they only received Food Stamps and Welfare to sustain themselves, but no one gave them a 450818 CRS0010.1177/0896920512450818EditorialCritical Sociology 2012

Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: The Early Writing and Work of R.D. Laingby BeveridgeAllan. Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2011, 352 pp., $79.95.

Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: The Early Writing and Work of R.D. Laingby BeveridgeAllan. Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2011, 352 pp., $79.95.

Advocacy for Art Education: Beyond Tee-Shirts and Bumper Stickers

(2012). Advocacy for Art Education: Beyond Tee-Shirts and Bumper Stickers. Art Education: Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 20-23.

Using Health Information Technology to Prevent and Treat Diabetes

Using Health Information Technology to Prevent and Treat Diabetes

The Grammar of Context: Breakfast, Bumper Stickers, and Beyond

The Grammar of Context: Breakfast, Bumper Stickers, and Beyond

Everyone's a winner: Life in our congratulatory culture

Joel Best is a master of writing pithy, concise books about important megatrends in contemporary mass culture. Among his earlier titles, readers would have enjoyed Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads, More Damned Lies and Statistics, and Stat-Spotting: Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data (all published by University of California Press). This volume, about being a winner in the era of what he calls “Status Abundance,” and the construction of social class in the Facebook era, is another good read with far-reaching implications for the field of the sociology of communication, mass culture, and education. Whether it is parents boasting on a bumper sticker about their child's excellence, or faculty sitting through long honors ceremonies where nearly everyone gets a prize, Best's hypothesis that we live in an age of Status Abundance is plainly visible in mass culture. His assertion that status and class are conflated forms the rationale for this mediation and explication of how we live surrounded by the need for and demands of self-congratulation. Best dissects the symbolic from the paradigmatic, and implies throughout the six-chapter book that our culture is shaped by its powerful beliefs in its own positivism, whether constructed, manufactured, or mediated. He cites Michael Barone's trenchant observation about the demographics of self-congratulation, that there are two periods of life: Soft America through the school years including higher education and Hard America from ages 18 to 30, when people are subjected to competition and accountability (p. 3). Best provides a vernacular with which to analyze the categories of status and its operation in social groups, and concludes his first chapter with the assertion that “Inflation” exists.

Soapbox for the Automobile: Bumper Sticker History, Identification, and Preservation

First produced in the late 1940s, the bumper sticker quickly gained prominence in the early 1950s and over the years has served a wide range of purposes—from advertising tourist attractions and promoting public safety to political campaigning. As a result, many bumper stickers holding value as historical, cultural, or aesthetic artifacts have been collected by archives, museums, and libraries. Due to their potentially unstable composition, however, bumper stickers often present challenging preservation issues. In order to identify the types of bumper stickers currently held by U.S. cultural institutions and assess their preservation needs, a survey of over two-thousand bumper stickers was conducted. This paper documents the survey findings and provides guidance for dating and preserving bumper stickers.

Market Values Permeate Both Foreign Policies and Prison Policies

When the United States invaded Iraq, bumper stickers began appearing saying “How did our oil get under their sand?” The point was to question the real motivation for this huge investment of tax dol...