Week 6 - Exercise and answers

The art of playing: Comparing kids play in 1971 with today (40 years on)

Question 1: What kind of popular culture did you select for your study? Why do you think ethnography or observation is particularly suitable for studying this aspect of social life?

Although I don’t know if play as in children playing can be seen as popular culture, it is an important aspect of social life, as play is an essential part of learning to interact socially.

I would like to investigate the difference between children playing in the 1970s to children playing in the 2000s. My target group would be adults who were between 5 and 10 years of age in 1971 and children who are between 5 and 10 years old at the time of the research.

Question 2: What setting will allow you to research this topic (for eg, a pub, park, sports arena, restaurant, etc)? How does the setting 'frame' the cultural activity in question?

I would research the place where I grew up myself – a suburban locality: A street in the country town of Morwell, in the Gippsland district of Victoria. Playing in 1971 happened either on the street, in the neighbour’s backyards or in the cow paddock behind the backyard fences. The housing situation has hardly changed since then and I expect to find families in the area that were already local in 1971. This neighbourhood will have their own children and newly arrived people will have settled in as well. There will be children around at the age of 5 to 10 years, but will they experience play the way the kids did in 1971? What are the defining aspects that changed the way kids play?

Question 3: How long do you think you would have to spend in this setting to obtain the data you require?

It would take approximately six weeks from the beginning of the year (summer holidays) to the first two weeks into the new primary school term. School is a place where kids are outside the control of their parents. I would like to investigate if kids interact (play) differently at school.

Question 4: What do you think you can claim or not claim on the basis of the research time and effort you have proposed in Question 3?

I think I can claim that play has significantly changed over the last 40 years. While play in the 1970s was all about kids doing things together, I believe that today’s kids spend more time in isolation with technological devices. I further believe that parents prefer their children to stay at home as they are worried that something could happen as soon as they lose direct contact (see, hear, talk), giving away control to third parties.

In my view two factors have changed the way children play and are allowed to play: Technology and Media
Technology: Modern technology can help parents to keep total control of the kids. Modern communication devices like mobile phones and computers, providing modern communication devices.

There are two qualities of control:
• The active control taken by parents, I regard as a dominant control. This sort of control is aimed at the kids of anxious parents, who try to stay ahead of every move their kids make. Examples are that parents text message with friend’s parents when the kid is over there and make sure that at least one adult always has control over where the kid is. This severely reduces the opportunities for play and social experiences being made outside parental control.

• Then there is what I call the immobilizing control of modern technology. Computers, TV, game devices. Kids no longer have to leave the house to catch up with their friends. Artificial interaction is provided by computer games, mobile phone applications (apps) and in front of the TV.

• It would be interesting to further investigate at a later time in the future if these kids develop social deficits.

Media: As I already made clear, I believe that media is responsible for modern parents constantly panicking about the security of their kids. This makes it hard for them to leave their kids unobserved. I believe the reason for this irrational behavior is irrational news coverage as we know it and artificially produced fear and worry through so called reality soaps. The biggest questions constantly asked in the media are focused on fear: ‘Do we have to be scared?’ ‘Can this situation repeat itself in my family?’ Although times are safer than ever, parents are worried more than ever about everything including the safety of their kids.
I would like to proof that both technology and modern media have a severe impact on the way that kids are brought up. Children’s understanding of play has changed dramatically.

To prove my thesis I will design a questionnaire and…

…interview local members of the neighbourhood who were in the age group of 5 – 10 in 1971 upon their playing habits. Interview teachers and parents who brought up kids between the age of 5 – 10 in 1971 and ask them how kids behaved in their surroundings and what hey did during breaks at school. Ask parents which measures they took to keep control over their kids when they were playing.

…interview local kids from the neighbourhood who are 5 – 10 during observation time upon their playing habits. Interview teachers and parents who are bringing up kids between the age of 5 – 10 today and ask them how kids behave in their surroundings and what they do during breaks at school. Ask parents which measures they take to keep control over their kids when they are playing.

The results will then be analysed, allowing to confirm or to rebut my thesis.

Week 6 - Ethnography

Comments on lectures and readings:

Joanne Finkelstein (1989) 'The Meanings of Food in the Public Domain'

For God’s sake, thank you to Erasmus of Rotterdam for inventing basic table manners and also to Catherine de Medici for inventing the fork. Otherwise we might all still be spitting stuff under the table, ripping flesh from a bone with one hand and ripping of a piece of bread supported by the guidance of a large knife. We might still be burping, farting, scratching our scrotums and poking stuff out from between our teeth with the aid of the same knife we might use to prong another piece of steaming flesh.

As Mary Douglas (1972:61) has pointed out: ‘If food is treated as a code, the messages it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed. The message is about different degrees of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries and transactions across the boundaries.’ This is brilliantly expressed in the Pizza scene within Wog Boy, where Steve is invited to dine out with the Government people, but cannot relate to the posh food served. As a result he rings his friend Frank to order a number of Pizzas for himself and guests who are looking for a hearty meal rather than a pompous dinner. Frank shows up in his singlet, balancing a pile of Pizza cartons, while his friend Steve is dressed in a smoking. Frank doesn’t realize the situation and addresses his friend in a casual way and Steve politely asks him to leave as he disturbs the mood. Frank – of course – takes it as an insult. This is a brilliant scene to demonstrate class as it is perceived in a restaurant.

‘Sennett (1976:23) has described how previously women were not well accepted in public: In the restaurants of the nineteenth century, a lone, respectable woman dining with a group of men, even if her husband were present, would cause an overt sensation, whereas the dining out of a bourgeois man with a woman of lower station was tacitly but studiously avoided as a topic of conversation among any of those near him.’

Joanne Finkelstein (1994) 'Dining Out'

...no comment.

Margaret Visser (1991) 'Ritual'

…can’t find reading

Comments: Lecture 11 – MP3

What kind of material would you use for a research on how the Shane Warne scandal broke? Newspapers – they are there in the library. Trace how a scandal unfolded (use different sources of newspaper).

Find out how women’s magazines deal with a scandal.

Readers are men or women or from different social background – newspapers will try to address their target group.

In your assignment move beyond pure description. Make clear how narratives are related to each other. 

Who’s cast the role of hero and villain? How are women presented?

Research methodologies:

·         Ethnography: Take a notepad and/or a camera with you. "Hawthorn experiment": Do workers increase their output under different lighting? Hawthorn effect.

·         Semiotic analysis: Images, clothes and fashion – studying Goths and finding out about symbolic etc.

·         Narrative analysis: About how stories are told – find out about the pattern. Relation between characters – what do we actually learn from the film, play, radio show?

·         Tabulated data (ABS, data I already have in my course reader, A.C. Nielsen). Clearly identify the dependent and the independent variable. Independent variable is doing the explaining.

Present your finding as clearly as possible.

Ethics: Get an ethics clearance for the kind of research that you are doing. Awareness about the impact of the researcher on the research is crucial.

Observation rather than interviewing. For an interview you will need a permission from UNI.

Reflexivity – being aware of your own self, your own emotions and prejudices as a part of the project.

Getting on to the next chapter - Food

Prior lessons were about popular culture – now we will dig deeper into examples of popular culture.

Introducing Margaret Visser. Sociological significance of food. Finkelstein quotes the classic people discussing gastronomy. “Tell me what you eat and I tell you what you are.’

What is elegant food? French cuisine e.g. – is meant to be more refined. 

National symbols: Vegemite, Pies, BBQs (the rituals around it)…

Authentic and Fake Food.

The sociology of eating might look at nutritional discourses (the way we talk about/discuss something).

How do reasonable or sensible people eat?

Eating has become sexy through the media.

Food tends to become prototyped. Why would you have a particular red wine with a particular red meat?

Gastronomic knowledge is a source to find out about how and why we eat the way we do.

Taboos derived from religion have an impact on the preparation and presentation of food (kosher, Halal…)

Comments: Lecture 11 – MP3

Case studies on food and shopping.

The phenomenon of Dining out and is there a reaction on fast food.

Classification of people into different society groups based on the food they eat, also, what sort of people go to fast food restaurants?

On Margaret Visser: She goes to dinner with one of her colleagues and the colleague brings her son, who picks up the spaghettis with his hands. Embarrassment: child doesn’t know the ritual codes of eating in a restaurant.

What is a ritual? Morning Prayer, going to church – defined in the social sciences as any social event that as a clearly defined beginning and end and appears over time.

Habits are things that we repeat more unconscious and there is less magic associated to it. 

What is ritualized about dinner? Invitation, arrival, the order of the dishes, when one can begin, how much to eat…

However, formal and casual dinners are rituals: Even a picnic or casual dinners are rituals (it is the way we prepare us for it)

Why are codes important in the discussion of food? The child who picked up the spaghettis with its hands didn't know the codes. Codes become more explicit when people don’t confirm. Codes are very important when people don’t follow them. When people don’t follow them they become very clear. The ritual and its codes can be used by groups to determine who you let into your socal circle. This is plain snobbery. Different groups have different ways of snobbery, subculture will consume a beverage or a drug in a different fashion than others, defining whether or not you fit this particular subculture group.

It’s not just enough to know the rules. Acceptance can only be achieved if the candidate is confident to obey to the rules in an easy and confident way.

Emily Poster's etiquette book explains exactly what to do with your mouth at the table. Interestingly today we still keep to this etiquette unconsciously as we were brought up with this sort of etiquette, in the aim not to offend anybody else at the table with gross behavior.

Visser says that the mouth is a boundary line between the outside and the inside of the body. The gate through many substances may pass in, but shouldn’t come out again.

On Elias: Visser has a more micro-interaction observations. Elias goes on more generic aspects – the macro observations. Looking at the society in general.

He looks at etiquette in books from the 1500s. Eg Erasmus of Rotterdam, who wrote a book pitched at young males of the upper class, cultivating them to be a civilized individual. On the other hand it’s fine to fart at the table in his times. Erasmus calls the change in behavior or the trend in society at the beginning of the modern age, a civilizing process: Human beings trying to show that they are human beings by acting less and less like animals. To have the capacity to control your urges. Suppression might also be the reason for pornography, alcoholism, drug abuse etc. These habits cause embarrassment if people find out about it. 

Elias talks about the internalization of manners.

On Dining out

Finkelstein….

Fastfood: McDonalds atmosphere is very easy to recognize. It is the same all over the world.

Finkelstein says that there is a trend away from home prepared food. Pizza Hut, McDonald, Hungry Jacks are becoming dominant in popular culture. They are now becoming nutrition conscious (Subway).

In pre-industrial society the whole family might have engaged in producing harvesting and preparing food, while nowadays it grows across the counter, warmed up and ready to eat.

Finkelstein suggests that we are loosing sociability through this trend.

McDonaldisation (first coined by Ritzer in 1993): .Forget about modernism and postmodernism, forget about technological society – we live in a McDonaldised society.

The principals of fast food restaurants increasingly dominating western society and the world.

What is the logic? What Max Weber coined the rationalization of society. Calculative or instrumental rationality. The most efficient means for achieving a given end.

We not only see it in food, we also see the trend in leisure like popular music (which is sort of standardized).

Following Weber, bureaucracy would be the key to modern society. Interstingly, following the lecture and the description of Webers thoughts reminds me of Brazil, a 1985 film by Terry Gilliam of Monthy Python’s fame.

Hint on the way sociologists use terms:

If words end on …sation, it means that everything is moving into one direction, a trend.

Unidirectional accounts like McDonaldisation tend to ignore counter tendencies. So they also grossly generalize, which means that they should be carefully discussed.

Good counter tendencies in terms of Fast Food would be the desire to eat healthy, also the desire to have authentic food experiences.

Week 5 - Ethnography and Narrative Analysis

Exercise:

Herbert Adams Pot Pie: The Australian Women's Weekly, August 2003

 

Herbert Adams Pot Pie: The Australian Women's Weekly, August 2003

1.                   List the various signifiers you found in the advertisement.

Arranged cutlery, arranged glasses, earth wear dish with food, text ‘The complete meal.’, packaging image.

2.                   What signifieds do you think are attached to the signifiers you have identified?

Five course meal:

·                     Arranged cutlery - four sets of forks and knifes and a spoon and fork for desert

·                     Arranged glasses – three glasses to provide the appropriate drink with each course

A main course providing the experience of a multiple course meal:

·                     Text ‘The complete meal’

3.                  Do you think the predominant signs in this image work iconically, indexically or as pure symbols?

Partly indexical, partly symbols:

Indexical: 

·                     The setup of the cutlery and the three glasses are indexical signs for a multiple course meal.

Symbols:

·                     The quality of the cutlery (sparkling, polished) is a symbolic sign for wealth/status.

·                    The wooden table sans table cloth and the pot containing the pie are symbols for down to the ground, no-fuss food serving.

4.                  What mood, feelings or associations does the picture connote? Can you deduce from the image who the intended audience for this advertisement is?

In my opinion this advertisement is designed to transport the message that Herbert Adams’ Pot Pie is a top quality product. It can fill in for an entire course meal, from entrée to desert. I have to admit that my perception would have expected a beer glass with a pie, but all three glasses suggest wine with it. Regardless, the target group in this particular case is certainly women (advertisement taken from Women’s Weekly), maybe that is why a beer glass is missing. It would be interesting to find out if there are other examples from different magazines that are read by men more frequently than Women’s Weekly.

Using warm brown colours the mood is inviting to take a seat and give Herbert Adams’ pie a chance instead 

of a posh meal. You may use some high quality cutlery to give it a try.

I assume that Herbert Adams is targeting a high culture audience, people who do not just eat to satisfy their basic needs, but who like to enjoy a good meal. Food has always been popular with Australians, but the overwhelming success of TV shows around food (Hell’s Kitchen, The Cook and The Chef, Poo’s Kitchen, etc. pp.) as well as successful publications like The Good Food Guide annual, issued by The Age newspaper in Melbourne, indicate that quality has become a major issue with Australian Foodies. Good food is not cheap and it takes some effort to prepare it. I believe that Herbert Adams make the suggestion that their pot pie belongs into this food category.  

5.                   Do you think the image is intended to be polysemic? If so, how and why?

As long as the person reading the advertisement is familiar with upper class dinner settings, there is no space for polysemic interpretations. For this group of people the message is pretty straight forward. However, it might be confusing to those in Australian society who don’t know what a course meal is, people who only cook at home for the purpose of feeding the family and those who do not go further than McDonalds, the local fish’n’chips shop, the pizza take away or a food court for dining out.

Week 4 - Mapping 'Taste' Preferences / Analysing Images

AECP = Australian Everyday Culture Project

Lecture 7 (audio)

Theme: The Issue of Taste

Education and income shape esthetics people have and the choices they make (TV / Radio)

“Chose which magazine takes your fancy”

A female student chose Woman’s Weekly because there is no sex in there (!)

Are taste and choice mundane everyday things?

Why study taste?

Choosing a magazine is pretty mundane – the future of the world is not depending on them

Marketing agencies are pretty much interested in the same social dependencies, the patterns that emerge from people’s choices

 Taste is what we like and what we dislike – both are similarly important

You learn a lot about people from their aesthetical preferences

Wallpaper magazine in general is regarded as a wanky magazine that is read by wannabe rich people.

Through our taste we classify ourselves and other people. It is not just an individual thing.  Groups share these preferences. They are also known as taste cultures. We usually talk about people that never meet but share the same taste.

A lot of pop-culture is mass mediated.

Tastes are demand preferences. Your utility functions – how much pleasures can you draw from your choice of consummation.

However, class ethnicity and age are also to consider.

There is a link between class and taste. But there are people that say that class is not so important nowadays anymore.

We do find distinct lifestyles – eating, drinking housing and leisure.

Taste is a way of drawing a boundary around a group. You’re either in or out (in-crowd).

Class is also about the resources that you have at your disposal (wealth, income, education, knowledge, appreciation).

·         Introduction to: Pierre Bourdieu

He says that class and taste are very strongly linked.

Taste in fact represents our habitués: The milieu, in which we grew up (family and school), where we learn how to stand in a social gathering, from a very early age.

Taste is never innocent; it is where I try to legitimate myself, performing a symbolic violence to others. Groups have certain perceptions of opposite groups. My lifestyle is good taste the other one’s isn’t. It is a game of competition.

Talking about resources he talks about forms of capital: Wealth and income are the reflection of our economic capital. Does it allow us to participate in certain activities expected from us. Other cultural capital is for you require a university – knowledge, appreciation, where you can show off that you know what post modernism is.

Bourdieu’s research is based on French society which still has a high level of snobbery.

Australia has a pretty flat hierarchy – some of the wealthiest people have the lowest tastes. Egalitarian society. Class doesn’t explain everything. In some cases gender and age are much more important than income.

However for the consumption of music cultural capital (Bourdieu) still plays a major role in Australia.

The Australian every day culture survey is about trends in groups, not anything about individuals.

Perhaps even Australia doesn’t have Snobs and Yobs anymore. Instead we have the omnivour and the univour. In terms of music anything that is out there against very specialized individuals. Is there no longe an elite? Interestingly omnivours and univours are not evenly spread across society. The overwhelming majority of Australians under 60 are omnivours in terms of music.

Lecture 8 (audio)

Guest Lecture (Assoc Prof John Lechte)

Methodological issues

Image: Narrative, representation, Icon

Takes up a magazine and asks audience if they want to meet the person. Is this a person literately speaking? It’s not; it’s an image – a photograph. 

People are trying to be literately about a person in an image.

What do I do when I take out photographs from a holiday – I think back about the situation captured in the particular picture. An example for an icon is when e.g. a man in a photograph looks like the man in reality. It is the icon of the man. This is an iconic representation – an apparent similarity is imminent.

According to Pearce (1839 – 1914) there is a Tripartheid: Icon, Index, Symbol

An index is a thing that is affected by the thing it identifies, e.g. a shadow (indexing the sun) or a windmill (indexing wind).

A symbol has an arbitrary relation to the item it symbolizes – a conventional relationship.

He was a producer of different signs (semiotics) – it’s difficult to keep track on the versatility of signs created by him.

If we don’t know the story behind an image we try to create something, try to make sense of it and give it a story.

Images represent something for someone.

Hot day, cold glass of beer – images do tell a story: This is the version of the image as a form of mediation.

What is image as epiphany – it has an impact on the viewer, even altering the psyche of the observer. Between 6 – 18 month children all of a sudden realize their image in the mirror. They tend to understand that the image is actually them. They recognize themselves.

There may be similar situations in our adult life when we have similar experiences. Images of Horror, Violence. A deep emotional experience.

Why don’t they have men on the front of women’s magazines, while there are always women are men’s magazines?

Images can be understood as immediacy. Like telling a story, images can have an impact on people’s lives.

What precisely is an image? Answer: Philosophical question which cannot be answered appropriately. There are too many applications for the use of the word Image.

Three ways of interpreting an image:

A medium a reflection of something, not the thing itself, but it can look similar. A representation.

1 stage: describe the image just as what it is and what can be seen in the image.

He refers to a number of magazine covers of Spectrum from the beginning of August onwards. Students describe what they can see.

2 stage: Connotation

What does the image content connote? The students group discusses the eye that is displayed in the first image of the Spectrum magazine. What does the eye as in ‘eye mean? What does it stand for? Could stand for ‘I’, for vision…

You don’t just see, you make assumptions.

3 stage:

Who is speaking when we are interpreting? Is it really ourselves or are we influenced by someone or something? Do we have enough evidence to make consumptions about e.g. the covers of Spectrum or Good Weekend?

Answers to Exercises of Week 4

JOURNAL EXERCISE

Record your answers in your journal for future reference.

Question 1: In table B3 which is the 'independent' and 'dependent' variable (NB: The independent variable is the one that is causing or explaining variations in the other variable)

The independent variable in the first table is whether participants attended a tertiary educational institution.
The independent variable in the second table is the household income.

The dependent variable is a number of radio stations.

Question 2: Identify what could be regarded as 'high-brow' or 'low-brow' forms of consumption in tables B3 and B8. Are there any stations or programs where it is unclear as to whether it is a 'high-brow' or 'low-brow' form of culture? 

I understand low-brow to be popular culture versus high-brow being high culture. As the word popular expresses, this is about mass appeal. Applying this mindset to the first table of B3, I would simply express that high brow is the highest ranking radio station amongst respondents with a tertiary education, while low-brow is the highest ranking radio station amongst respondents without a tertiary education. Interestingly both respondent categories seem to have the same preferences with commercial FM. At the same time ethnic and community radio are both far more popular with low-brow respondents, while classical music and the Triple J program are heard much more frequently by a high-brow audience.

The second table makes no sense at all to me. I don’t understand what the income of a household tells me about the status of the audience of any particular radio station. If I have three kids and my wife has to care for them, I am the only person to have an income. I might earn well under 60K in a job that requires me to have a tertiary education. But what if my wife answers the questionnaire, not having any income at all? Is she low-brow? Or is she high-brow? Another example would be a well paid crane driver in an Australian harbour. These workers do not need any tertiary qualification, but are top earners at the same time due to the demand the job puts on them (stress, precision working etc.).

The exact same analysis applies to tables B8.   

Question 3: In table B3 what seems to be the stronger determinant of a stated preference in particular for 'high-brow' radio stations - income or education? What about 'low-brow' preferences? Are there any other variables that you think could be influencing the percentages (eg living location, age)?  How would this effect interpretation of the data?

I cannot determine any high-brow radio stations. Although preferences are clearly visible, they don’t indicate anything that would justify for the allocation of any particular radio station to one of both groups. In my personal opinion, household income or education are not necessarily the major factors to tell high-brow from low-brow.

First of all I would have analysed the programs of each single radio stations. Then I would have tried to find similarities between radio stations as well as factors that help distinguish them from each other. After that, rather than asking survey participants about their favourite radio station, I would have asked them, why they prefer any radio station. What is it that attracts the respondent about this particular station? Further, it is not the household or the income that listens to radio, these are individuals. Each individual has a different taste. It might have been more meaningful to survey individual consumers of radio and TV and then to find similarities between these individuals to research listening/watching patterns.   

Question 4: On the basis of these tables and your knowledge of Australian culture do you think we have a clear demarcation between 'high-brow' and 'low-brow- tastes in Australia? What might you use as evidence in mounting your case?

Whether you call it high-brow or low-brow, popular culture or high culture, in my view the borders are blurred. So far I have not found any defining data that clearly distinguishes between both. Australia is a unique amalgamation of different cultures, the major influences coming from Western and Asian culture. To retrieve meaningful data it might be necessary to find out about the cultural heritage of survey participants in the aim to better understand listening and watching patterns.  Although popular radio and TV stations clearly cater for the Anglo Saxon taste (lots of British and US-American TV programs, lots of British and US-American pop music), they do not necessarily reflect the taste of the Asian population that definitely not belongs to western world culture.