Commentary on "How Not to Reform Humanities Scholarship"

So lots of people in rhetoric and writing, especially computers and writing, are talking about Gary Olson's post "How Not to Reform Humanities Scholarship."

Olson counsels deans and department chairs—and us—to beware "commentators there who were recommending changes in how the discipline conceives scholarly work." In particular, he notes:

Among other things, the reforms call for replacing the traditional monograph-style dissertation with alternative types of final projects; reconceiving professional scholarship to be less dependent on traditional forms and standard scholarly venues; and moving more toward open-access dissemination of scholarship. 

Olson argues that "the proposals are wrongheaded and ill-timed" for various reasons:

Retaining the monograph-style dissertation.

• "Learning to produce a traditional monograph-style dissertation, then, is essential training for a humanities scholar these days because the experience helps neophyte scholars overcome the cultural and cognitive sway of attention deficit to which we are all prone now."
• "allowing doctoral students to produce alternative projects may well disadvantage them on the job market, as hiring committees—or at least some members of them—may not be as receptive to experimental forms and may favor candidates who have, in fact, produced a monograph."

Using traditional forms and venues; avoiding open-access scholarship.

• "more and more online journals are claiming to employ a peer-review process. That could be a positive development if we can arrive at a point where the community of scholars has confidence that the review process in online venues is as rigorous as it is in top-tier print journals. At the present, however, many scholars are still skeptical that the processes are equivalent."

Olson concludes: "We're trying to keep new and aspiring colleagues from making choices that might damage their careers, at least until more consensus can be established within the disciplines. And we're trying protect [sic] the reputation of the humanities."

Olson's argument has not been well received by some readers, both in the comments, on Facebook, and in at least one blog commentary. As one commenter points out, Olson is covering—and not properly separating—two different issues: whether the proposals will damage the scholarship itself, and whether the proposals will lead to work against which the academy (dissertation, tenure, and promotion committees) is prejudiced.

Here, I only focus on Issue 1: whether the proposals will damage the scholarship itself. And in this sense, I think Olson's argument is a mixed bag. 

For instance, although I strongly prefer monograph-style dissertations—they provide a strong framework for developing a research arc—monographs are not the rule in many other scholarly fields. When Olson warns that "critics of the humanities to assume that [the humanities] are inferior disciplines and therefore expendable," I remember that in many fields, the monograph is seen as a post-tenure project, one that a senior scholar can take on because her or his "real" work of articles, conference proceedings, and grants has already been done. Scholars in these other fields still manage to "produce long, in-depth, sustained projects," but those projects consist of tightly interrelated, tightly argued strings of publications. Surely we can't blame the digital age for how, for instance, molecular biologists publish.

I have a bit more sympathy for Olson's argument about online publications, though I think he hasn't quite done his homework. As many commenters have correctly noted, many online publications - including journals and books - have indeed established peer review processes. For instance, the WAC Clearinghouse includes several open-access books that are edited by top-flight scholars and dually published online and in print. The medium itself doesn't matter; the process does.

At the same time, open-access books and journals face at least two problems that impair their process. 

One is a money-and-labor problem. A traditional academic press makes money from (some of) its publications, and that money goes to a lot of necessary things besides stamping ink onto dead trees: encouraging submissions, picking up the tab for sending the journal editor to recruit papers at conferences, offering small honoraria to reviewers (in the case of books), copyediting, checking references, designing book covers, and promoting publications. With scholar-supported open-access journals, this work is still necessary, but must be shifted to people who are willing to do it for free - usually scholars, who must then take time away from their own scholarship, teaching, and/or graduate mentorship to do work that they're not necessarily well prepared to do. In particular, scholars who are good at big-picture applications such as journal editing are often not good at small-picture applications such as copyediting. 

The other is a chicken-and-egg problem. A traditional journal makes its reputation in part by 

(a) enlisting a recognized senior scholar as editor; 

(b) enlisting an editorial board of scholars who can apply a consistently high standard to reviewing articles; and 

(c) recruiting high-quality papers that exceed that standard. 

Without those conditions, any journal will struggle. Open-access journals are at a particular disadvantage at this present moment, though, because 

(a) senior scholars recognize that they take a lot of work due to the money-and-labor problem, so they don't take them on, leaving less advanced scholars to fill the gap; 

(b) without a senior scholar as editor, journals face difficulties in recruiting senior scholars to their editorial boards and enforcing consistent standards from their editorial boards, as well as 

(c) recruiting papers from senior scholars. 

(All these issues stand apart from the fact that senior scholars are the most likely to distrust open-access publications.) 

So (a)-(c) work against open-access journals, depressing the necessary confidence that will lead scholars to submit papers and tenure review committees to accept those publications as demonstrating high-quality scholarship. In turn, that lack of confidence means that scholars tend to send their best work to traditional journals.

I do think that the prejudice in favor of print publications will fade away over time—we're in a transitional period. But unless open-access publications can decisively address both the money-and-labor problem and the chicken-and-egg problem, that transition period will be a lengthy one. 

Democrats for Drones

The Washington Post reports on a poll today about the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies, including its vastly expanded use of drones. Key paragraphs:

Obama has also relied on armed drones far more than Bush did, and he has expanded their use beyond America’s defined war zones. The Post-ABC News poll found that 83 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s drone policy, which administration officials refuse to discuss, citing security concerns. 

The president only recently acknowledged the existence of the drone program, which some human rights advocates say operates without a clear legal framework and in violation of the U.S. prohibition against assassination. 

But fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year.

The poll's results are lamented by some on the left, who see the results as exposing hypocrisy - after all, liberal Democrats opposed the Bush administration's much more sparing use of drones. Equalityanddemocracy.org asks "Do you surrender your autonomy by joining a political party?" while Glenn Greenwald calls it "repulsive progressive hypocrisy." People on the right agree, with Instapundit calling the previous opposition to Bush-era drones "partisan crap" and linking to Hot Air's sardonic overview.

We can stipulate that the poll results reflect hypocrisy, but that misses what I think is the important strategic picture. Why have consecutive administrations stepped up the use of drones, and in particular, why has the Obama administration scaled up its use of drones so much? If we step back and take a broader view of military development over the past few decades, the expanded use of drones looks like an obvious answer to a conundrum our political leaders face.

That conundrum is concisely explained in John Arquilla's excellent 2008 book Worst Enemy. On the one hand, the US finds itself involved in an increasing number of theaters, due in part to political pressure to do something. (Today's possible intervention targets include Syria.) On the other hand, we dearly want to minimize soldier casualties - especially now, with an all-volunteer army and 24/7 news covering each casualty. So how do we satisfy both conditions? Arquilla's suggestions in 2008 included reinstating the draft and leaning more on influence operations, both of which he preferred to Powell-era airstrikes that minimized US casualties at the expense of increased civilian casualties. But he also suggested that better organization and communication could give an advantage to comparatively low-tech dispersed solutions such as drones.

The problem is that weaponized drones have functioned like small Powell-era airstrikes. They reduce the likelihood of US military casualties - to zero - and they expand the number of theaters in which the US can practically operate. But they retain the likelihood of civilian casualties, and in doing so, reproduce the problems of the Powell Doctrine on a smaller, more dispersed scale: "staggering expenditures, major collateral damage inflicted upon innocents, and growing global resentment of the United States" (Arquilla p.xi).

For now, the political advantages of projecting force without risking our volunteer forces outweigh the disadvantages. So of course the Obama administration - and administrations of either party in the near future - will continue and expand drone strikes. And this expanding drone policy will continue to garner broad public support - unless the public becomes more isolationist, relieving the political pressure to intervene in a broad range of theaters.

Reading :: The Story of Writing

The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs, & Pictograms, Second Edition
By Andrew Robinson

I just finished reviewing Robinson's slim book on writing, Writing and Script, which is largely a condensed version of this thicker and larger book. The Story of Writing has over 350 illustrations, many of which are photographs. It's a beautiful book, appropriate for display as well as reading, and many of its comparisons and descriptions gave me the same thrill that I got when reading Schmandt-Besserat's books on the origins of writing. What an amazing thing it is that we developed writing, and that we held onto it long enough to make it useful!

Robinson focuses on the origins and development of writing here, and in much more detail than he could in Writing and Script. So he gets to devote whole chapters to (for instance) cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Linear B, Mayan glyphs, Chinese writing, and Japanese writing. He also devotes a whole chapter to undeciphered scripts - a fascinating chapter, and one that helps us to realize just how fragile a writing system can be.

If you're interested in the origins of writing, but you're not an archaeologist, I recommend this book. It's a beautifully illustrated and well written introduction.

Reading :: Writing and Script

Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction
By Andrew Robinson

This little book lives up to its subtitle: It's pocket-sized and only 157pp, and serves as a condensed version of Robinson's earlier book The Story of Writing. Like that earlier book, Writing and Script attempts to provide an overview of writing from its emergence to the present day. That's an enormous charge, but most of the book covers the origins and development of writing.

In fact, I picked up this book specifically because I was interested in learning more about the origins of writing. I've read about it in Denise Schmandt-Besserat's work, but wanted a broader take. In this sense, Writing and Script provided a nice overview. Robinson is openly skeptical of Schmandt-Besserat's thesis that writing emerged from tokens, characterizing it as a minority view for which "the correlation is patchy"; although the "theory is reasonable, it seems overcomplicated" (p.7). Robinson favors the view that tokens and bullae accompanied the origin of writing but did not precede it; rather, writing emerged from pictograms (p.8). "What is virtually certain, though, is that the first written symbol began life as pictures" (p.9).

Robinson discusses the geographical origins and likely chronology of writing's development (p.19 et passim), acknowledging the many questions about whether it appeared first in Mesopotamia or Egypt, and suggesting that writing was invented many times in different places (an account at odds with Schmandt-Besserat and Erard's assertion that it was only invented three times in human history).

Overall, Robinson packs a lot of information into this little book. I very much enjoyed the accounts of writing and the comparisons of different scripts, especially the ones that are genetically linked. The book is a quick but fascinating read, and I recommend it highly if you're at all interested in the development of writing.

Reading :: The Next 100 Years

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
By George Friedman

As I mentioned in a recent review, Friedman is CEO of Stratfor, an Austin-based provider of geostrategic analysis. In this book, Friedman attempts to forecast the geostrategic challenges of the next century. Given the tremendous changes of the last 100 years, one might consider this undertaking to be well beyond the ability of even a foremost geostrategic analyst. Friedman acknowledges the point and emphasizes that he can't predict the details of the future - just the broad outlines. For instance, Friedman predicts that the US will continue to be the dominant global power, despite predicted challenges from Russia (2020s), an alliance between Turkey and Japan (2050s), and Mexico (2080).

Those challenges may seem oddly specific, but Friedman argues that they flow from the geostrategic implications of each country. Russia has become a net commodities exporter, meaning that it has a limited window to achieve security by reclaiming a buffer region via satellite countries, including Poland - which will not want to go back into the fold. Japan is a net importer and must guarantee the steady flow of imports for its own strategic security, and that need will clash with US interests in the Pacific. And Mexico, Friedman says, will pose a challenge late in the century not just because it will be a first-world nation at the US border but also because the US border region will become culturally much more similar to Mexico. So Friedman confidently predicts that these issues, involving these entities, in roughly this timeframe, will come to pass.

Friedman does also speculate in greater detail about these conflicts, though he marks these as speculation. This speculation reaches its height in Chapter 11, where Friedman plots out a war in which Japan and Turkey join to attack US' ally Poland in the 2050s. The war begins when Japan's moon base launches missiles to disable the US' orbiting battle stations, providing cover for Turkey to invade Poland in super-soldier exoskeletons - well, you get the idea. Chapter 11 would make a great plot for a science fiction story.

Reading this book is like reading vintage Toffler. As a thought experiment, it's intriguing, and the timeline helps us to consider how geostrategic issues such as borders and imports may lead to conflicts later in the century. But for every prediction Toffler got right, he had at least one that went wildly wrong. Yes, we have adhocracies all over the place, but we don't have undersea villages. Similarly, this book's value is more in how it helps us to consider geostrategic issues and their implications than it is in providing specific predictions. If that's something you're interested in doing, certainly take a look.

Reading :: America's Secret War

America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies
By George Friedman

George Friedman is the CEO of Stratfor, an Austin-based provider of geostrategic analysis. Stratfor has unfortunately been in the news lately because it was hacked over the holidays, about a week after I read this fascinating 2004 book on the Global War on Terror.

America's Secret War describes "the Fourth Global War," the current war that the US faces against Islamic extremists. The first three wars were World War I, II, and the Cold War - and perhaps it's a function of the book's 2004 publication date that Friedman sees the GWOT as a similarly scaled struggle.

In any case, Friedman tells a compelling story of how al Qaeda prepared for September 11, what drove them and their allies, what space they operated in, and what strategic and tactical decisions they made. He then turns his attention to the Bush Administration's response, also in strategic and tactical terms. What I appreciate about this account is its Machiavellian evaluation of how these strategic and tactical responses worked and how they operated within the larger geostrategic context. For instance, Friedman builds the case that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq in large part because doing so would help them put substantial pressure on the Saudis to crack down on AQ supporters. Friedman reports these decisions dispassionately: in a characteristic statement, for instance, he says that "The decision to invade Iraq was not a good one and very few in the administration thought it was. It was simply the best decision available given the limited menu." If that statement seems overly generous to the administration, compare it to the discussions on how the administration trusted Chalabi - Friedman is neither a Bush apologist or antagonist, but simply a geostrategic analyst.

How accurate is his analysis? I have no idea. I'm not a geostrategic analyst myself, and Friedman provides few citations to help us independently verify his points. But as an account that provides a starting point for  understanding the strategic and tactical choices of all players - al Qaeda, the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Europe, etc. - this book is intriguing and highly readable. See what you think.

Reading :: Smart Thinking

Smart Thinking: Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems, Innovate, and Get Things Done
By Art Markman

Art Markman is a psychology professor here at UT and the director of our Human Dimensions of Organizations program. He's very smart and engaging, and that personality comes through in this very accessible, lifehacker-ish book. Think Dave Allen meets Lifehacker backed by deep research experience in cognitive psychology.

The book is aimed at a general audience, and contains a lot of useful advice. Smart thinking, Markman explains, is "the ability to solve new problems using your current knowledge." So Markman gives us plenty of advice and exercises on increasing mental agility, absorbing more information, single-tasking during multitasking (it turns out that I probably shouldn't check my email during meetings - who knew?), and maximizing one's memory. All of these are backed with research, although Markman keeps the citations light, and all are associated with solid exercises.

Smart Thinking is not itself a research book, nor is it meant to be. It's an afternoon read that is accessible to everyone, useful to everyone, and full of advice that can help readers improve their mental agility. Take a look.

Reading :: The Wolf and the Prince

The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE [Kindle Edition]
By Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, and Peter Erdelyi

A while back, I reviewed Graham Harman's The Prince of Networks, in which Harman, a philosopher, examined Latour's work in terms of metaphysics. Although I have a hard time staying engaged with philosophy, the book was still interesting to me.

Think of The Prince and the Wolf as the "behind the scenes" companion to The Prince of Networks. It's the transcript of a symposium involving Latour and Harman at the London School of Economics, February 5, 2008, when Harman's book was in draft form. Harman had not yet finished the final chapter, but the bulk of the book was complete enough for Latour and the relatively small audience to read in advance of the dialogue.

Latour and Harman are both witty speakers and they both field solid questions from each other and the audience. Unfortunately, the dialogue did not manage to engage me in the way that The Prince of Networks did: it's heavy on philosophy, and I bore easily. But if philosophy pulls you in the way that (say) methodology pulls me in, or if you want to gain a deeper understanding of how The Prince of Networks developed, definitely pick up this book.

(Did you miss me?)

My blogging has been very light lately, not because I've stopped reading, but because I've been far too busy. So I have a backlog of several books. I may not blog them all, but I will try to make a dent in the pile over the next week or so.

Seminar: Writing Persuasive Business Proposals

I've been teaching proposal writing courses to undergraduates since the mid-90s - in fact, I'm teaching one this semester. But this year, as part of my work with UT's Human Dimensions of Organizations program, I'll also be presenting a one-day seminar on proposal writing.

From the description:

In this seminar, attendees will examine business proposals as persuasive arguments: they will take these proposals apart, examine their underlying components, and learn how to put them back together in ways that make them more effective. Using a proven methodology for developing these types of documents, attendees will generate basic proposal arguments to address a case study. This case study will allow students, working in small groups, to identify the problem presented in the case study; generate components of the proposal; analyze stakeholder dynamics; tie these complex elements together into a coherent, easily comprehensible argument; and outline a proposal based on this groundwork. Finally, the class will workshop applications to actual cases that attendees bring in.
After this seminar, attendees will be able to:

• Understand basic proposal structure and logic.

• Identify basic proposal sections and understand how they work together.

• Clarify and identify objectives.

• Develop a methodology for reaching the objective.

• Perform audience analysis by identifying stakeholders, investigating their concerns, and weighting criteria accordingly.

• Connect your team’s qualifications with the specific requirements implied in the situation and methodology.

• Develop structured benefits that address the situation.

• Tie these complex elements into a coherent argument.

• Learn how to rework an ill-defined problem into an effective proposal.

• Pour all this information into a basic proposal format.

The proposal-writing methodology used in this seminar was developed for large consulting agencies, but it can also apply to other sorts of proposals and reports in a variety of organizations.

If you need to write, evaluate, or consider proposals in your work, and if you're in the central Texas area, please consider joining me. And if proposals aren't your focus, consider one of the other spring seminars that HDO will be offering.

Questions? Contact me at clay.spinuzzi@mail.utexas.edu.

Transparency in Commenting: An Unintended Experiment with Google Docs

I've been requiring students to turn projects in via Google Docs for a couple of years now, for at least three reasons:

• It's online, so students don't have to worry about forgetting their homework at home and I don't have to worry about carrying around a stack of papers when I grade.
• Docs are private by default, but easy to share with specific collaborators. So students can post online without having to worry that their papers will be seen by unintended readers.
• It has a lot of collaborative functions, so students can easily collaborate and peer-review.

GDocs isn't the only tool that will do these things - I could have students use a closed wiki, Zoho Write, or various other tools. But GDocs is easy to use, imports MS Word fairly well, and looks enough like Word that I don't have to provide much of a tutorial. And now that UT has gone with Google Apps for students, the barrier for entry has been lowered. 

Finally, Google also keeps improving GDocs' functionality, so I find new capabilities in the suite each semester. 

But I have traditionally used GDocs as a read-only platform when I grade: I typically read the project, then type up comments in a separate window. That way there's no danger that students will see my comments before I post the grades. (The grades, of course, are posted in the university's secure system, never in a form stored on an outside server such as GDocs or email.)

Here was my reasoning for not embedding comments in the document:

• Students might log in, see the comments, and get paranoid.
• Students might actually try to edit the document while I'm working on it.
• I might make a comment that I later realize is based on a poor reading of the paper. Sure, I could delete it later, but students would still see some of the backstage work that I prefer to keep hidden.

But in one of my courses this semester - Principles of Technical Writing - I decided to go ahead and comment inside the documents as I went. The rewards seemed too high not to do so. GDocs' new commenting system allowed me to highlight individual characters or phrases, then comment easily in the margins, and it also allowed me to post replies to my own comments. I had seen my students use this system well in their peer reviews, and I saw the real benefits for the fine-grained commenting I needed to do on their proposals. 

But there was a little thing I forgot about the new commenting system until halfway through the first paper. Every time you make a comment, by default, it emails the document's owner. Not only was there a chance that students would see my comments in practice, it was assured. When I realized that, I had a moment of panic, then realized the damage was done. I shrugged, put a comment at the top of the page to the effect of "I'll fill in overall comments once I'm done grading," then graded the others in the same way.

Students loved it.

I was quite surprised, actually. I thought that the many emailed comments, some positive, some critical, would make students paranoid. But they reported - both at the time and today, at the end of the semester - that they appreciated seeing the grading work going on. From their perspective, here are some of the advantages:

• They knew when I had gotten to their paper.
• They had a good idea of how their paper was shaping up, just by looking at the comments.
• Many were busy enough with other classes - apparently they take other classes too - that they deferred reading the emailed comments until they had time. So they weren't becoming more tense with each email.
• By the time I wrote up the overall comments, they had a good idea what I was going to say.

Later in the semester, when I was having them turn in minor revisions every class period, they were also impressed by how quickly I got to their papers and how quickly I could comment them (an unexpected boost to my ethos). 

Talking over this experience with the students, I realized that more than anything, they appreciated the transparency. They are used to professors black-boxing the commenting process, but that doesn't mean they can't handle a more transparent process. They actually prefer it. And that makes total sense: They're used to seeing short messages (think texting, Twitter, Facebook) and they're mature enough to understand that the overall comment and grade are inductively realized through this process that I accidentally made transparent. 

In the end, my students recommended that I continue commenting this way. And I believe I will.

Join me at SIGDOC 2012

Consider joining me at the 2012 ACM Special Interest Group on Design of Communication conference, which will be held in Seattle, Washington, October 3-5, 2012.

We're looking for research and technical papers, experience reports, and posters. Deadline for submission is June 1, so get started now! Don't hesitate to contact me with questions, and please do get the word out to colleagues and grad students.

Reading :: The Sling and the Stone

The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century
By Col. Thomas X. Hammes

If you're looking for an overview of fourth-generation warfare - networked, dispersed, focused on persuading decision-makers, essentially politics (and rhetoric) through other means - this 2006 book is a very good start. It has flaws, which I'll discuss in a moment, but these are overshadowed by the insights Hammes brings to the table.

Those who have been reading my blog over the last few years may be familiar with the term "fourth-generation warfare" (4GW) primarily through the works of John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (although they tend not to use the term for reasons I'll discuss in a moment). Hammes describes 4GW in this way:

Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) uses all available networks - political, economic, social and military - to convince the enemy's political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit. It is an evolved form of insurgency. Still rooted in the fundamental precept that superior political will, when properly employed, can defeat greater economic and military power, 4GW makes use of society's networks to carry on its fight. Unlike previous generations of warfare, it does not attempt to win by defeating the enemy's military forces. Instead, via the networks, it directly attacks the minds of enemy decision makers to destroy the enemy's political will. Fourth-generation wars are lengthy - measured in decades rather than months or years. (p.2)

And a page later:

There is nothing mysterious about 4GW. Like all wars, it seeks to change the enemy's political position. Like all wars, it uses available weapons systems to achieve that end. Like all wars, it reflects the society it is part of. Like all previous generations of war, it has evolved in consonance with society as a whole. It evolves because practical people solved specific problems related to their fights against much more powerful enemies. ... Mao started this form of war ... (p.3)

Fourth-generation warfare is grounded in Alvin and Heidi Toffler's book War and Anti-War, which applies their wave theory of history to war (see Hammes p.10).  In this theory, different innovations (agriculture, industry, information) led to fundamental changes in social organization, and each form corresponded to a form (or generation) of warfare. (For more fine-grained examinations of the relationship between societal organization and warfare, see Bobbitt's books The Shield of Achilles and Terror and Consent and Max Boot's War Made New.) In Hammes' reckoning, the generations of warfare looked like this:

• 1GW: From the invention of gunpowder in the feudal era, through the transition to nation-states, peaking during the Napoleonic wars. (Ch.2)
• 2GW: From Waterloo to World War I, enabled by more taxes, more wealth to tax, more industrialization, better transportation systems, and more patriotism. (Ch.2)
• 3GW: From the end of World War I, when the social contract had been dramatically altered; maturing in 1940 with the Blitzkrieg, which became the prototype for later doctrines such as the US' AirLand Battle (Ch.3). 3G warfare continues to guide the strategy and doctrine of nation-state warfare, although it is giving way to other approaches.

But, Hammes argues in Chapter 4, society has changed considerably since World War II. Changes include:

• International organizations that infringe on national sovereignty, e.g., the UN (p.33)
• The rise of regional organizations that  infringe on national sovereignty, e.g., the WTO (p.34)
• An increase in the number and diversity of nations (p.34)
• The number of stateless actors, including transnational actors (Greenpeace, al Qaeda) and subnational actors (the Kurds, the IRA) (p.35)
• International financial markets (p.35)
• The sharp growth of the information sector, which produces "wealth-generating assets [that] are easily moved - and are often part of geographically distributed networks in their day-to-day operations" (p.38)

Hammes summarizes: "Warfare is coming to parallel this model" (p.38). And he notes that this warfare often involves unrest, leading to "the severe breakdown of order within many ... postcolonial 'nations'" - the scare quotes denote how artificial the nations' boundaries are - resulting in "much earlier social organizations - tribal, clan, or gang" (pp.41-42). (Note the parallel with Ronfeldt's TIMN concept, also based on the Tofflers' wave theory of history, in which different organizational forms are concatenated but can decompose over time.) In sum, Hammes says, the Industrial-Age hierarchy is giving way to the Information-Age network, not just in societal and economic organization, but also in warfare (p.42).

Over the next few chapters, Hammes identifies 4GW's birth in Mao's insurgency (Ch.5), then examines its  development in Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap's model in Vietnam (Ch.6), then via Nicuragua's Sandanistas (Ch.7) and the Palestinian Intifada (Ch.8). Hammes examines each of these in detail, making his admiration clear for how the leaders of each phase developed 4GW (strategically, tactically, and operationally - he doesn't evaluate their objectives themselves). A critical turning point is in Chapter 9, when hardline Palestinians led by Arafat "squandered" the gains of the Intifada and turned to clumsy conventional warfare. This clumsy move was exploited by hardline Israelis, who themselves began to expertly use 4GW tactics to provoke Palestinians to open defiance and violence (p.119). These tactics gave the Israeli hardliners the upper hand in the public relations battle - and as Hammes points out, 4GW is about messaging (p.128). Israel learned to excel at 4GW, using its insurgency-derived tactics in the service of the nation-state.

In Chapter 20, Hammes begins to discuss al Qaeda, particularly its focus on messaging. For instance, one "critical aspect of al-Qaeda's image among Muslims" is that "he [bin Laden] is careful to fulfill the requirement to declare his intent before attacking" (p.146), ensuring that AQ doesn't just appear to be appropriating others' attacks. From there, Hammes moves to Afghanistan in Ch.11, particularly examining the conglomeration of anti-governmental forces (AGFs), including AQ, the Taliban, smugglers, drug dealers, foreign powers, Pashtuns, and other tribal leaders. "The AGF is a true networked, 4GW enemy and will display all the resilience characteristics of such enemies" (p.166). He doesn't use the term interessement, but that's what came to mind for me. 

Chapter 12 brings us to Iraq's anti-coalition forces (ACFs), which represents a similarly interessed group of different associations. "Each [member of the ACF] fights for its own goals. The goals of each group may be at odds with others," he says (p.179), sounding much like Ronfeldt's description of the networked organizations that supported the Zapatistas.

These different cases bring us to Ch.13, where Hammes discusses the disadvantages that the US faces due to changes in technology. Although we are accustomed to thinking in terms of the advantages we gain in warfare, Hammes (sounding like Robb) argues that IT has actually eroded our lead because 4GW enemies can match and exceed our capabilities more easily, using continuous innovation with off-the-shelf tools and commercial networks. "New technology favors a new generation of war," he warns (p.192). Although the US' "systems are the most powerful, most capable, most technically advanced in the world," those systems don't give us an inherent advantage because of "our current organization and the changing threat we face" (p.192). The US military's organization is outdated and hierarchical, he says (p.192), while our assets are outclassed by the commercial assets available to enemies (p.194). Indeed, enemies "are free to exploit the full range of commercially available information technology" (p.195). More importantly, "today's terrorists are organized as networks rather than hierarchies" (p.196). 

In the next few chapters, Hammes attempts to answer the question: What do we do about it? "The future is flexibility," he argues in Ch.17, the final chapter. Among other things, he suggests using network theory to better examine 4GW networks and identify key leaders (who won't be major nodes, but will communicate with them). (Notice that network theory is different from networked organizations, although the two are often confused.)

Okay, that's the summary. Now a brief critique. Although Hammes does an excellent job describing 4GW, the wave theory of history - at least in this implementation - is a bit too deterministic and rigid. John Arquilla speaks out about this general tendency in his recent book Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, in which he argues that "The generational concept is simply inaccurate": irregular, networked, decentralized warfare has been around a long time and has often been synthesized with dominant forms of warfare. Similarly, Arquilla's longtime writing partner David Ronfeldt - although he certainly subscribes to the Tofflers' wave theory of history - emphasizes that the organizational form of the network is the "first and forever form," perhaps newly emergent, but not representative of a historical stage. [correction 12.5.2011 - Ronfeldt writes to correct me: he called Tribes the "first and forever form." Mea culpa.] Ronfeldt similarly describes other organizational forms as being synthesized together (Tribes, Institutions, Markets, and Networks = TIMN) rather than each form giving way to the next. 

That criticism is more important in terms of theory than in practice, however, Although I disagree with Hammes about the notion of emergent historical stages leading to generations of warfare, I admire the depth and breadth of his examination of 4GW. It's an excellent book, informative, gripping, and well worth your time. Those of you who study rhetoric, as I do, may also find ways to apply it to other domains. Take a look.

Reading :: On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods

On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods
By Bruno Latour

I really enjoy most of Latour's work, but I strongly prefer his case study-based work, which seems more grounded and richly illustrative, to his more philosophical work. Alas, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods is in the latter category. What's more, two of its three chapters represent extended but essentially warmed-over versions of work that Latour has already discussed in Pandora's Hope and Iconoclash. Latour has done some work to pull these chapters together, partly by overlaying religious references throughout (for instance, he says that his second chapter is about the Second Commandment and his third chapter is written as a sermon). But I wanted more out of the book.

One thing that Latour does do here, though, is to examine and defend religion in a more vigorous way. Specifically, he wants to stop seeing religion as contending with, or indeed even speaking about, the same things that science does. Here's a passage from his sermon in Chapter 3:

I have to note at the beginning that I am not trying to produce a critique of religion. That truth is in question in science and religion is not, for me, in question. Contrary to what some of you, who might know my work on science (mostly by hearsay), might be led to believe, I am interested mainly in the practical conditions of truth-telling and not in debunking religion, after having disputed the claims of science (so it is said). If it were already necessary to take science seriously, without giving it some sort of "social explanation," such a stand is even more necessary for religion: debunkers and iconoclasts simply would miss the point. Rather, my problem concerns how to become attuned to the right conditions of felicity of those different types of "truth-generators." (p.100)

That is, he wants to examine religion just as he has examined science: not in terms of how it reveals Reality but in terms of how it makes truth-claims. He attempts to do this not by talking about religion but rather by talking "religiously," that is, "by demonstrating it in vivo" through his sermonic argument (p.101). Unfortunately, although I am sympathetic to Latour's general argument, the sermon left me cold; it seemed quite similar to Latour's other arguments.

As a side note, I should note that Latour takes a few sideswipes at Durkheim throughout, most specifically leveling the same critique that I did in my recent review, the critique that Durkheim has overgeneralized the experiences of specific tribes as a developmental stage for all religion. This is vintage Latour.

If you're very interested in a Latourean take on religion, this book might be a good read for you, specifically because it draws together some of his previous work in a religious context. But although I find religion endlessly fascinating, I felt underwhelmed. See what you think.

Reading :: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
By Emile Durkheim

(The above link goes to a different version of the book: mine is the 1915 version, reprinted by Free Press in 1965.)

Partly through this book, I tweeted that I wish I had read this book first, before Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind. There, Levi-Strauss criticizes the notion of totem, which is Durkheim's starting point in his study of religion. In fact, I should have probably read Frazer's The Golden Bough before Durkheim, since Durkheim's book is in great part a critique of Frazer's position that totemism is magic, not religion.

In any case, Durkheim provides a meticulous and detailed discussion of elementary religion - that is to say, totemism as practiced in Australian and North American tribes - and argues that religion started with these elementary forms before developing into the more structured, personified forms we know today. He asserts that

before all, rites are means by which the social group reaffirms itself periodically. From this, we may be able to reconstruct hypothetically the way in which the totemic cult should have arisen originally. Men who find themselves united, partially by bonds of blood, but still more by a community of interest and tradition, assemble and become conscious of their moral unity. For the reasons we have set forth, they are led to represent this unity in the form of a very special kind of consubstantiality: they think of themselves as participating in the nature of some determined animal. Under these circumstances, there is only one way for them to affirm their collective existence: this is to affirm that they are like the animals of this species, and to do so not only in the silence of their own thoughts, but by material acts. ... the imitative rites appear as the first form of the cult. (p.432)

Durkheim makes this argument while maintaining respect for all forms of religious life. But I wonder about his argument, which rests on the assumption that tribal peoples represent a universal stage of development and thus their beliefs are a snapshot of the beliefs at that stage of development. Did the peoples living in, say, Crete or Okinawa or Ireland also go through these selfsame levels of development and evolve their own religions in the same way? Unfortunately, Durkheim provides only a few examples of how Western religions may have developed from cults.

Nevertheless, the book is a tour de force in examining totemism in Australian tribes specifically. Durkheim carefully and sedulously examines each aspect of totemism, relating all of them to his central thesis. If religion or tribal dynamics are interesting to you, certainly take a look at this classic.

Reading :: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Innovation and Entrepreneurship
By Peter F. Drucker

This book is one of Drucker's classics. Unfortunately, I had a hard time maintaining interest - perhaps because I'm not an entrepreneur, but also perhaps because it's not sparkling prose. Nevertheless, it's a classic for a reason - Drucker packs a lot of information in here.

For instance, here's Drucker's pithy explanation of what an entrepreneur does: "the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity" (p.28). Indeed, "entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield" (p.28). Entrepreneurs must innovate systematically, and that means "monitoring seven sources for innovative opportunity" (p.35). The first four are symptoms of change within the enterprise:

• the unexpected
• the incongruity
• innovation based on process need
• changes in industry structure or market structure (p.35)

The last three "involve changes outside the enterprise or industry":

• demographics
• changes in perception, mood, and meaning
• new knowledge (p.35)

In the rest of the book, Drucker examines each of these points in turn, in great detail. He cautions us to always expect and look for change so that we can get ahead of it. Specifically, he says that every three years, we should put everything on trial - "every single product, process, technology, market, distributive channel, not to mention every single internal staff activity" (p.151). Essentially, he says, don't become comfortable in routine. Don't ossify. 

And this is an important point. Although Drucker is talking to the enterprise, he says that 

'Planning' as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Innovation does indeed need to be purposeful and entrepreneurship has to be managed. But innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous, specific, and micro-economic. It had better start small, tentative, flexible. (p.255)

 Sage words. If you're interested in innovation and entrepreneurship, read this book.

Reading :: The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
By Eric Ries

Eric Ries had a problem. As cofounder and CTO of IMVU, a Silicon Valley startup, he knew what his customers wanted: to connect instant messaging with virtual reality avatars.

Initially, the idea was to create avatars you could use to interact virtually with your friends. Your friends might be on different IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo Messenger, or iChat – which might sit on your desktop like separate spigots at a soda fountain. But IMVU would interoperate with all of them, serving as a sort of universal service for connecting your friends across all of these networks.

Users hated it. Adoption at first was incredibly low.

In fact, in IMVU’s in-house tests, users enjoyed creating avatars and using them to chat with strangers. They enjoyed meeting new people anonymously. But they did NOT want to tie together their IM networks, and they certainly did not want to allow these strangers in their AIM buddy lists. They were strangers!

Ries says that he and the others at IMVU had a hard time accepting this. He kept dismissing what the test users were saying, assuming that they simply didn’t represent IMVU’s market. But every new batch of test users said the same thing. Meanwhile, IMVU’s usage stats remained essentially flat.


Ries had seen his product as a way to help old friends interact in new ways in the same place. That’s what would make the service sticky. But the test users consistently told him they didn’t want that. They wanted a way to create virtual identities and use them to meet new friends who also had virtual identities. In essence, he wanted a clubhouse and they wanted a costume party. The two objectives implied different products, different services, different marketing strategies – in fact, they implied that IMVU would have to pivot.

As Ries makes clear, they could very well have ignored this issues and consequently failed in the marketplace, chasing after nonexistent users. But instead they decided to pivot. They wrote off the sunk costs in the first option, including a considerable amount of interoperability code that Ries had written himself. And they reformed their strategy.

But they didn’t capitulate – they synthesized their vision with what the customers would accept. That synthesis involved changing the product, of course, but also the process and internal structure of the company. Ries instituted a set of continual feedback metrics to better regulate this synthesis, building a product and service that helped users discover needs they didn’t know they had. As Ries put it:

We adopted the view that our job was to find a synthesis between our vision and what customers would accept; it wasn’t to capitulate to what customers thought they wanted or to tell customers what they ought to want. (Reis 2011, p.50)

It worked. The flat growth became steep growth. And Ries developed a set of techniques for establishing continuous feedback and improvement in startups. These include qualitative and quantitative measures, but also guidance on when and how to pivot. It's a fascinating book: fascinating as in well written and interesting to read, but also fascinating as in sparking ideas for innovating quickly and interpreting feedback on a fast cycle. If you're involved in startups, software development, or other fast-paced innovation, read it.

Reading :: What Technology Wants

What Technology Wants
By Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly, cofounder of Wired, wrote this 2010 book as a meditation on how technology has developed and how it might develop autonomously. He coins the term technium to delineate what he's examining:

The technium exists beyond shiny hardware to include culture, art, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. It includes intangibles like software, law, and philosophical concepts. And most important, it includes the generative impulses of our inventions to encourage more tool making, more technology invention, and more self-enhancing connections. (pp.11-12) 

"Technium" is thus a very broad term, essentially covering civilization from the first use of language onward. That breadth allows Kelly to argue that

after 10,000 years of slow evolution and 200 years of incredible intricate exfoliation, the technium is maturing into its own thing. Its sustaining network of self-reinforcing processes and parts have given it a noticeable measure of autonomy. It may have once been as simple as an old computer program, merely parroting what we told it, but now it is more like a very complex organism that often follows its own urges. (pp.12-13)

The Latour fans out there may warm to the notion that Kelly is embracing a form of symmetry, seeing nonhumans in the same way that he sees humans. But that's not Kelly's viewpoint. This is not an ontological text.

Rather, Kelly is actually arguing that the technium - in which we are important but minority partners - is evolving as an organism (not as an actor-network). He makes his argument by starting with homo sapiens's discovery of language (Ch.2) and moving on through various stages of technology. Based on this discussion, he proposes that evolution's triad of vectors - functional (adaptive), structural (inevitable), and historical (contingent) (p.123) - is matched by a triad of vectors for technological evolution: intentional (open), structural (inevitable), and historical (contingent) (p.183). Indeed, he strongly argues that inventions seem to be inevitable at certain periods, and selects a number of examples of inventions that appeared at different points on the globe at roughly the same time. (The examples don't include what I would consider to be the most important and germane one, writing, which was invented only three times in the world's history, at very different times.)

Kelly, then, makes a very insistent argument for a teleological understanding of technological change, one in which we will be surpassed by and (Kelly hopes) integrated with our technological creations. It strongly reminds me of Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines.

Unfortunately, I don't think the book's argument holds together well. At many points - such as Kelly's argument that technological inventions pop up at roughly the same time across the globe - evidence is thin and seems cherry-picked. We don't get to see many counterarguments or concessions. Since Kelly's claim is extraordinary, we might expect some extraordinary proof, including a better explanation of why technological change could occur similarly in very different places under very different conditions - and neither the strong proof nor the strong explanation are forthcoming. Due to these issues, I can recommend What Technology Wants as an interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking read, but I can't say that it lives up to its claims.

(someday I will blog again)

I see that it's been over a month since I blogged last, and even longer since I blogged a book review. This makes me sad. But I've fallen behind because (a) I've been reading books that don't relate as deeply into my core scholarship, so I haven't felt so compelled to write about them and (b) I've been even busier than usual.

As a result, I have about 5-6 books that I need to review. (That's not all I've read, just all I plan to review.)  Those include a book I finished this summer. Hopefully I'll get to these over the break.

MA in activity theory

A remarkable opportunity. From Yrjo Engestrom:

Dear Colleagues,
The next round of selection of students for our Master's Degree Program in Adult Education and Developmental Work Research (entirely conducted in English) starts today, the 21st of November. The application period will end on the 31st of January, 2012. For those who are not familiar with the Finnish education system, we would like to emphasize that high quality university training in this country is free of charge (there are no tuitions) for all students, including those coming from abroad. 

The Master's Degree Program in Adult Education and Developmental Work Research is based on cultural-historical activity theory and trains competent developers and interventionists in workplaces, organizations and other communities. The program selects 12 students every second year to ensure close individual supervision and collaboration in a compact academic community. 

The program was launced in 2006 and is based on the 20-year tradition of developmental work research conducted in the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning CRADLE at the Institute of  Behavioural Sciences (IBS) of University of Helsinki. This is an interventionist research approach rooted in the legacy of Vygotsky and Leont'ev and internationally recognized as an innovative framework to study work and learning. During their studies students are typically involved in research and development projects conducted in the CRADLE and in its partner organizations. 

Please circulate this call and encourage students to apply. 

For more information, see:
http://www.helsinki.fi/atmo/brochure_2011.pdf andhttp://www.helsinki.fi/atmo/ 

With kind regards, 

Yrjö Engeström      Reijo Miettinen     Annalisa Sannino     Anne Vierros

CFP: Connexions Issue 1

If you're an academic interested in professional communication, especially in an international context, I encourage you to consider this CFP for Connexions.

Excerpt:

The first issue of connexions • international professional communication journal | revista de comunicação profissional internacional aims at examining the field from your point of view on

• the past, present, and foreseeable future of the practice, research, and teaching of international professional communication, in local, national, international, and global contexts,

• and/or

• how the practice, research, and teaching of international professional communication has reacted to changes in context, and acted upon its contexts, in different parts of the world.

Reading :: Street Corner Society

Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian SlumBy William Foote Whyte

My family has been considered white since before I was born - probably since about 1960. But it was not always so. When my parents decided to get married in the mid-1950s, my father's family called my mother "the white woman" (she is of Northern European extract). Her family similarly didn't consider an Italian-American to be white.

I thought about this bit of family history when I read the classic ethnography Street Corner Society, set in the Italian slum of "Cornerville" (in reality a neighborhood in Boston) in 1937-1938. These Italian-Americans were decidedly not considered "white" by others or by themselves. Furthermore, they formed more fine-grained strata within the community. As Whyte describes it, this slum was populated by an older generation of Italian immigrants ("greasers") and their American-born children, who are "strongly attached to their parents, and yet they look down on them" (p.xviii). These immigrant families came from various regions in Italy, with the lowest-rank region being Sicily. (The name Spinuzzi is Sicilian.)

At the height of the Depression, these young Italian-Americans had trouble finding work, so they spent much time hanging around on corners - in gangs at younger ages, but as they grew older, in informal groups or more formal societies.

Whyte took advantage of a fellowship by living in Cornerville and spending most of his waking time with these men, who were in their late 20s. The result is a classic sociological ethnography that, despite its flaws, holds great insights.

First, the insights. Whyte, a careful student of human interactions, begins to detect patterns of status and mutual obligations in the groups, clubs, and societies he frequents. For instance, Doc, his main informant was the leader of The Nortons. As leader, he had to meet heavier obligations than lower-rank, less capable members. In fact, Doc, though he had no job, often spent his free money on helping lower-status members.

But leadership does have its privileges. To his surprise, Whyte realizes that the men's bowling scores closely track the men's current rank in the group - to the extent that a low-ranking member who is an excellent bowler in other contexts would bowl poorly against higher-ranking members, apparently despite himself. Furthermore, someone who loses status bowls progressively worse against lower-ranking members.

Whyte studies a drama club, a social club, a local political club, and (from a distance) racketeering, and sees these sorts of rank relations throughout. But in each context he gains fresh insights. For instance, in racketeering, he realizes that in Cornerville, "the primary function of the police department is not the enforcement of the law but the regulation of illegal activities" (p.138).

In politics, Whyte draws out some of the ethnic tensions in Cornerville's relations with the rest of the city. For instance, one Cornerville man tries to persuade another to vote for his preferred candidate, who is also Italian-American: "Why not give a Wop a chance?" (p.161). Elsewhere, an Irish-American politician complains to Whyte that "the Italians will always vote for one of their own," even if they claim they will vote for another candidate: "The Italian people are very undependable," and hard to hold to account because "You can't tell one Italian from another" (p.195). Indeed, Whyte concludes elsewhere that "the Italians are looked upon by upper-class people as among the least desirable of the immigrant peoples" (p.273).

No wonder that, as Whyte relates in his retrospective appendix, Saul Alinsky loved the book (p.358).

This version of the book, the 50th anniversary version, has three appendices. The first is a retrospective in which Whyte discusses the book's reception and impact, its criticisms, and a bit of his methodology. He also reveals the real name of the community he studied and the names of his informants, who had all passed away by that point, and he describes discussions he had had with them about the book. These are all interesting, but raise some important questions about Whyte's work.

Recall that Whyte studied Cornerville as a junior fellow at Harvard, before beginning his PhD work. He quickly fell in with his main informant, Doc, the 29-year-old leader of the Nortons. Doc was by his accounts upright and honest, but also very savvy about maintaining leadership. Doc also, Whyte reveals, read and commented on every line of Whyte's manuscript.

Doc doesn't come off as a completely strong leader in the manuscript, which frankly describes some of his failures and loss of rank. But he generally comes off better than, say, Chick, an aspiring politician who is his main rival. Revealingly, Whyte describes a talk he had with Chick years after the book's publication. Chick is unhappy with his portrayal, and tells Whyte that Doc vocally agreed with him the last time the two had talked. Whyte is startled at first, but realizes that of course Doc would say that: he has to deal with Chick and probably doesn't want to admit that he knew about the portrayal beforehand.

A less charitable interpretation is that Doc steered Whyte's account to damage his rival, while maintaining deniability.

Nevertheless, Whyte's book is really exceptional. The references are very thin - something that apparently caused controversy on Whyte's dissertation committee - but the study is well told and well textured. Despite my less charitable interpretation, no one really comes off very badly in the story, even the racketeers. I highly recommend it.

Reading :: The Penguin and the Leviathan

The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-InterestBy Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler's previous book, The Wealth of Networks, was an academic book about how peer production works. This one is a popular book that explores the related question of how peer production and similar cooperative enterprises can work, since they seem to contradict the seemingly natural impulse of self-interest. As Benkler points out, this assumption of rational self-interest underpins so many things that we take for granted: in economics, rational choice theory; in law, harsh punishments; in business, top-down hierarchies; in government, the Leviathan. Yet, Benkler argues, cooperation is deeply ingrained in us and can serve to revolutionize all of these areas.

Benkler's examples are familiar to anyone who has read others' books in this vein, such as The Starfish and the Spider and What's Mine is Yours. (I confess that I thought: again with Linux, Zipcar, and Toyota? Surely there are other examples.) But Benkler covers new ground by delving into the nature/culture debate, describing evolutionary as well as cultural roots of cooperation; psychological and social influences; empathy; fairness; and morals. That is, Benkler follows themes of cooperation through several disciplines.

The result is a fine popular contribution. But in covering so many disciplines, Benkler spreads his argument too thin. For instance, he touches on the nature-nurture debate that stretched through the entire 20th century, but doesn't engage in it deeply except to summarily conclude that both are influences. Similarly, his discussion of psychological and social influences hinge on the notion of Goffman's work with frame, but he doesn't do much with that notion besides demonstrating that when people see the same task within competing frames, they perceive it differently. In these, and in the other chapters, Benkler takes relatively narrow conversations happening within a given discipline and characterizes these conversations as what those disciplines have discovered about cooperation. Obviously he has to gloss if he's going to apply all of these disciplines to one topic in one book - but that's a very thin gloss. I would have preferred much more hedging and, well, framing.

However, Benkler does manage to counteract so many of the obvious yet flawed objections to peer production, objections predicated on a view of humanity as simply selfish or self-interested. If you deal with people who roll their eyes at the notion of open source software or who caution you not to look at Wikipedia because "anyone could write anything there," this might be the right book to give them.

Reading :: Patterns of Culture

Patterns of Culture
By Ruth Benedict

Ruth Benedict's 1934 classic Patterns of Culture deserves a more detailed review than this one, but unfortunately I don't have that review in me right now. It's an interesting book, strongly taking the side of culture in the nature-vs.-culture debate that raged throughout the 1930s: "Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex," she argues (p.14), particularly for human beings, who are marvelously plastic. But cultures do have larger tendencies, larger patterns, that show up in individual actions and gestures (p.79).

Indeed, Benedict argues, we can think of cultures as broadly Dionysian (seeking to annihilate bounds and limits and "break through into another order of experience" through excess, pp.78-79) and Apollonian (seeking to reinforce and follow bounds, p.79). She illustrates these two sorts of cultures with extended discussions of the Pueblos of New Mexico, the Dobu of New Guinea, and the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island. All of these accounts are fascinating.

"The three cultures ... are not merely heterogeneous assortments of acts and beliefs," she asserts in Chapter VII. "They have each certain goals toward which their behaviour is directed and which their institutions further" (p.223). She adds that these cultures are essentially incommensurable (p.223).

But, she adds, "it would be absurd to cut every culture down to the Procrustean bed of some catchword characterization" (p.228). "Facile generalizations about the integration of culture are most dangerous in field-work. ... None of the people we have discussed in this volume were studied in the field with any preconception of a consistent type of behaviour which that culture illustrated" (p.229). Indeed, the discussed characterizations are not types, she says, but rather "each one is an empirical characterization, and probably is not duplicated in its entirety anywhere else in the world" (p.238).

Benedict goes on at some length in this vein in Ch. VII. That's a relief, since that's what I took her project to be up to this point in the book. But the number of times she goes over this point makes me wonder if that's the reaction she originally received when she shopped around the manuscript. I would have liked it better if she had been able to integrate this clear point much more thoroughly earlier in the book, especially in pp.78-79 and throughout the three cases, so that we didn't receive this impression at the outset.

In any case, the book is certainly worth reading as an anthropological classic. But in terms of careful explication and analysis, I was not entirely impressed.

Reading :: Victim Advocacy in the Courtroom

Victim Advocacy in the Courtroom: Persuasive Practices in Domestic Violence and Child Protection Cases
By Mary Lay Schuster and Amy D. Propen

Over the last few years, the two authors have written some important articles on domestic violence and child protection cases in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. These articles are really quite strong, describing the cloud of different advocates, volunteers, and texts that surround the courtroom in these chaotic, emotionally charged cases. And in this book, the authors summarize their three-year study of Victim Impact Statements, including interviews with judges and advocates, analysis of models and sample VISes, and courtroom observations.

The book builds on and amplifies the work of the previously published articles. Here, the authors take us on a tour of these difficult cases, introducing us to the judges, advocates, victims, and defendants; the many genres that accompany each stage of the process; the competing interests; the tangled practices; and the standards of proof used to make decisions. We feel sympathy for the victims and their families, but - and here I think the authors are to be commended - we begin to feel some sympathy even for the defendants, who may have given in to poor impulse control and now face the possibility of losing their kids forever. We also become to understand the difficult, conflicted jobs of the judge and the court-appointed special advocates, who must determine the best course of action from what are sometimes a set of unappealing alternatives. After reading this book, I began to understand how difficult and complicated such work is, how genres and practices help to structure and guide it, and how families are affected by it. If you're interested in the court system or genre studies, take a look.

Reading :: Tristes Tropiques

Tristes Tropiques
By Claude Levi-Strauss

Tristes Tropiques is Claude Levi-Strauss' memoir. It's a remarkable book for a number of reasons, not least because Levi-Strauss sees the humor and vanity in every human connection. At many points, the book made me laugh out loud - remarkable, since the book begins with Levi-Strauss fleeing Nazi-occupied France and attempting to make it through US bureaucracy with his ethnographic materials. From this scene, Levi-Strauss' previous journeys to South America are told in flashbacks, flashbacks that unfortunately never quite bring us back to the original scene. The book lacks closure, both in this large sense and in the smaller encounters he describes with Brazilian aristocrats, South American missionaries, various Native American tribes, and informants in India.

The encounters with the Native American tribes were the most interesting ones for me. Levi-Strauss describes himself as a once-idealistic, but eventually cynical and crafty, ethnologist who must use his wiles to extract information and avoid being exploited by his informants. At one point, he makes a gift of bolts of red flannel to a nomadic tribe; when he wakes up the next day, they are all covered from head to foot in flannel, men, women, children, even pets. By midday they tire of the flannel and leave it on the ground. This inspires a hatred of red flannel in him, and he trades away the rest of the bolts as soon as possible. At another point, the chief of another tribe admires his aluminum pot and offers to trade it for a large supply of (loosely speaking) beer. After Levi-Strauss refuses, the chief smiles and simply takes the pot. After encounters like these, Levi-Strauss begins using his own tricks: in one tribe, it is forbidden for outsiders to know members' names, but he realizes that he can get children to tell him each others' names by provoking fights between them.

More interesting to me was what Levi-Strauss did not cover. Levi-Strauss conducted many of these visits with his wife, but she rates only one mention in his book - when she had to be evacuated due to an injury. Up to this point, Levi-Strauss had described his visits with the tribes as if he were the only anthropologist on the expedition!

Levi-Strauss is a marvelous writer, but there's something a little too neat about his interpretations. For instance, he notes that the face tattoos in one tribe are similar to the arrangement of huts in another tribe, and he postulates that the tattoos are a subconscious yearning for the other tribe's arrangements. At other points, he makes similar leaps.

Toward the end of the book, rather than returning to the opening scene, Levi-Strauss compares and discusses religions. At one point, which is perhaps more shocking in 2011 than it was in 1955, Levi-Strauss claims that religions have devolved into more and more controlling forms, with their early pinnacle being Buddhism and their late nadir being Islam. The book ends with the sort of contemplation about the future of mankind that was fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s.

Overall, the book was highly interesting and entertaining. It gave me new insights into Levi-Strauss, provided more context into his anthropological work, but didn't necessarily give me a lot of faith in his methods. Nevertheless, it's a terrific read. Pick it up and take a look.

Reading :: Linked

Linked
By Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

A while back, Mark Zachry, who knew of my interest in networks, recommended that I read this book. It's a popular book that overviews "the new science of networks," which is to say, network analysis. Needless to say, it's fascinating.

Network analysis shouldn't be confused with networked organizations (e.g., Castells; Arquilla & Ronfeldt) or sociotechnical networks (e.g., Engestrom; Miettinen; Latour; Callon; see my second book). Rather, it's a way of examining how any particular type of node connects with other nodes. It has a strong mathematical component. And although it can be applied to people (as in social network analysis), it can also be applied to atoms, bits, citations, bus terminals - anything that can be conceived as a class or type, then connected to others of the same class/type.

Barabasi does a terrific job of describing how network analysis has developed as it is applied in different fields and to different problems. Along the way, he discusses concepts such as emerging clusters, hubs and connectors, small worlds, and power laws. Due to his clarity and examples, he illuminated several things for me about network analysis - and particularly its differences with, and strengths and weaknesses in comparison with, networked organizations and social network analysis.

If you're interested in networks under any of these headings, I strongly recommend this readable book.

Present Tense 2.1 is out

Present Tense 2.1 is out. Essays look pretty interesting, especially Brian McNely's essay on sociotechnical notemaking.

Come see me at Lavacon

All, but especially business types: I'll be presenting soon at The LavaCon Conference on Digital Media and Content Strategies, which is November 13–16, 2011 in beautiful Austin, Texas.

And I mean beautiful: highs are usually in the 70s F in November. Great conference weather.

But Lavacon looks like a thing of beauty too. My session is "What Makes Nimble Organizations Work?" I'll be drawing from my recent case studies on nimble organizations, including a search marketing company, independent contractors, and coworkers, and discussing six characteristics that make these nimble organizations work so well.

When you register, use the referral code “spinuzzi” to receive $100 off. Hope to see you there.