January 22, 2006

Donna Gaines: Teenage Wasteland

Gaines, Donna. 1998. Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Overview:

Gaines starts out as a reporter for the Village Voice sent to investigate Bergenfield, New Jersey where four kids in 1987 committed suicide together followed by another pair the following night. Copycats spiraled around the nation and a class moral panic broke out. Upon entering the town, she realized that it would be a challenge to get the kids to talk - media had been hounding them continuously. In building their trust, she became more curious about what was actually going on. She left the Voice and started her sociology PhD. This book is her dissertation, a brilliant ethnography of working class kids in this town.

The style and writing are unbelievable. She juxtaposes her own experiences growing up 15 years earlier in a similar working class suburb on top of the stories of the Bergenfield kids, brilliantly placing herself in the narrative and showing the ways in which she is interpreting what is actually happening.

The ethnographic account reveals a critical shift in America. Traditionally, working class kids had a potential notion of success - working class jobs that were valued - unions, high end factory work, opportunities for advancement. Sure, it was never as well-paid as white collar work but that was OK. In the late 80s, those jobs were disappearing. Most of these kids' parents were out of work. Where on earth were they going to get work when they grew up?

"Working-class kids have learned patterns of coping with an educational system originally designed by middle-class reformers to elevate the masses. It is generally agreed that the values and 'cultural capital' needed to survive and thrive in this environment has given middle-class kids a bigger advantages... But if the (working-class) parent culture itself is dying out, the strategies learned from it have no value. They won't lead to reproducing one's parents' lives in industrial labor. They'll lead to nowhere" (156).

These burnouts were being pushed out of mainstream education in order to raise the perceived value of the schools as college feeders. These kids were being shipped to alternative institutions, vo-tech programs. Yet, the vo-tech programs were educating the kids for jobs that no longer existed. Furthermore, many of these kids resented the system because they felt as though they were being discriminated against based on their musical tastes, smoking and other burnout behavior. In short, the kids felt completely marginalized and out of the system. The system resented them and they resented the system.

The burnout kids had a different language and value system than the educators and they spoke past each other. "The 'burnouts,' as a clique, as carriers of a highly visible 'peer-regulated' subculture, posed threat to the hegemony of parents, teachers and other mandated 'agents of socialization" (37). The schools created programs to make it look like they were dealing with the problem, but they never understood the burnouts or what they were going through.

Music became the religion of these youth as their experiences were told through Metallica and other hard rock bands. "It's a sad irony - because the only place where taboo subjects like sex, death, suicide, loneliness, and terror are discussed is in their music" (208).

Hanging out is the primary pastime, with kids meeting in the parking lots of 7/11 and finding hide outs to get away from the surveillance of the police. "This constant threat of the police always intruding upon anything that was going on was a source of chronic anxiety" (82). Sex and drinking are a given. Cutting is common.

Boredom ran deeply in this culture and the suicides made it clear that "the kids' complaint of 'no place to go' had to be taken seriously" (86). It was no longer just a complaint, but a death wish. "There was perpetually no place to go and nothing to do" (80). "It was taken for granted that if you refused to be colonized, if you ventured beyond the boundaries circumscribed by adults, you were 'looking for trouble.' But in reality, it was adult organization of young people's social reality over the last few hundred years that had created this miserable situation: one's youth as wasted years" (86).

"Kids understand their right to party as their right to create, express, and commune. It is a crucial political question for young people. The right to produce and to express yourself through culture is essentially a First Amendment issue" (206).

There's also extensive conversations about the increase in generational divide and how organized sports are one of the few places where people hang out across the generations - to watch, play and talk about sports (92). With that gone, everything became about peers. "If you were falling, your friends, peers, scene brothers, your generation, would be there to catch you, pick you up, and push you forward" (214).

"Families are falling apart, and the papers are full of atrocities perpetrated by adults on kids. You can't trust anyone. The school bus driver, your pastor, the babysitter, even your dad could rape you or beat you or lock you up and no one would even care!" (187).

"Adults worried about protecting kids' 'morals' but were completely unconcerned that the minimum wage hadn't gone up once during the whole decade. Since the 1960s kids have lost power in leaps and bounds; but when they turned to 'Satan' or to other youth culture traditions for help, for comfort, for support, adults complained that the kids were being seduced by evil. Everything kids did to empower or protect themselves in recent years, any refuge they created from adult indifference and brutality was turned around and used against them" (192).

Military used to be a road out but any kid who goes through detox is exempt from the military (172). "Waste-disposal problems in Bergenfield were getting worse. For as long as anyone can remember, the armed forces were the last shot. But for some kids, even that was moving out of reach... Garage #74 had served as the last available dump site in Bergenfield - the final solution to the town's teenage waste-disposal problem. A place for expendable youth" (173).

"Responsibility for containing young people, for prolonging their entry into the work force, is now shared among families, school, the military and juvenile jails" (157). [This is deeply connected to "Learning to Labor"] "Kids don't see the point of going to school when it didn't lead to anything" (155).

The only way out was through fame - sports, music, etc. Thus, those who won that lottery became the idols of that generation. "In the scheme of things average American kids who don't have rich or well-connected parents have had these choices: Play the game and try to get ahead. Do what your parents did - work yourself to death at a menial job and find solace in beer, God or family. Or take risks, cut deals, or break the law. The Reagan years made it hard for kids to 'put their noses to the grindstone' as their parents had. Like everyone, these people hoped for better lives. But they lived in an age of inflated expectations and diminishing returns" (151). It's no wonder that the 80s were filled with cocaine and dreams of being spectacular.

"Their way of fighting back is to have enough fun to kill themselves before everything else does" (103). "Sometimes the only control over life kids feel they have is starting it (pregnancy) or ending it (homicide, suicide)" (242).

"The importance youth once held in the social order declined and their civil rights have eroded with it" (237). "We consistently doubt kids' ability to make important decisions, but we will punish them for what they decide just the same" (238). "Young people are the only minority without formal self-representation" (239). "As the 'minority of minorities', young people get the lowest pay, have fewer rights, and suffer more absolute structural regulation than anyone. Under control, they are encouraged and coerced to defer to adult authority. Kids are taught to mistrust their own instincts as 'immature' and 'inexperienced'" (239).

Questions that this sparked:

How does contemporary curfew affect things now? Are there latch-key kids these days?

Who has the right to "hang out"? What are the limitations? It used to be the police.. now what? Burnouts dominate the classic hang out locations - malls, skating rinks, railroads, parking lots, woods... were they once mainstream hang out locations? Where do jocks hang out?

Is surveillance about making sure your kid doesn't become a burnout because there's no way out? Is this the reason for activities? Does MySpace reveal the burnout side of everyone? Is that why we fear it?

Did the late 90s boom temporarily hold back the decline of opportunities? Are we facing a whole new level of doubt?

What are the opportunities for working class suburban and rural youth?

Posted by zephoria at 8:58 PM | TrackBack (0)

November 28, 2004

Erving Goffman: "On Face-Work"

Goffman, Erving. 1963. "On Face-Work." Interaction Ritual New York: Anchor Books.

Synopsis:

In "On Face-Work," Goffman articulates how people negotiate face in everyday social interaction. Some definitions are key:

- "Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes" (5)
- line - "a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation and through this his evaluation of the participants, especially himself" (5)
- face-work - "actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent with face" (12)
- self: 1) "image pieced together from teh expressive implications of the full flow of events in an undertaking" and "kind of player in a ritual game who copes honorably or dishonorably, diplomatically or undiplomatically, with the judgmental contingencies of the situation" (31)

Goffman argues that the flow of events produces face (7). Maintaining face feels good - we have an emotional attachment to the face that we maintain. Disruptions of this, or losing face, result in a loss of the internal emotional support that is protecting oneself in a social situation (9). In order to face-save, one must be socially perceptive (13).

Face saving is not just a process of the social actor, but of the audience as well. There are social protocols for helping someone maintain and save face, most notably avoidance mechanisms, overcompensating and apology.

There is a ritual around correcting the way in which face is managed socially - challenge, offering, acceptance and thanks (22). This helps maintain the "expressive order" (19). Tact is part of helping embarrassing moments of losing face. The language of "hint" is critical to protect tact (30). Of course, all of this is culturally defined and the relationship between tact and face management often collides when different cultures meet. "Trouble is caused by a person who cannot be relied upon to play the face-saving game" (31).

Relevence:

The process of managing face is so critical to everyday social interaction, but this face-work does not translate online. Thus, what are the mechanisms by which we do face-work to help maintain social order? The formalized process of this eliminates "tact" and is part of what makes the digital world appear so autistic in nature. Face-work cannot be simply articulated because so much of it is constructed around hinting. Furthermore, there are easy cultural collisions that complicate everything.

While Goffman doesn't bring Mauss into this conversation, there are deep connections between this and Mauss's notions of gifting.

Posted by zephoria at 9:46 PM | TrackBack (0)

November 5, 2004

Max Weber: "Science as a Vocation"

Weber, Max. "Science as a Vocation" in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Translated and edited), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp. 129-156, New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.

Synopsis:

"The task of the teacher is to serve the students with his knowledge and scientific exposure and not to imprint upon them his personal political views" (146).

Speaking to students at Munich University in 1918, Max Weber addresses “Science as a Vocation." Weber begins by explaining what it means to have a vocation in science, comparing the trajectories in Germany and America. This section is ripe with messages that a vocation in science is a miserable task, full of all sorts of grief. He challenges anyone who suggests that they have a calling for science, explaining that they will never overcome the grief without the intoxication of a "personal experience" of science and the passion to pursue it. He continues on to address the personality of one pursuing science, explaining that while those in science are measured and evaluated on their teaching, only few possess the ability to succeed at teaching and research. Weber's depiction of the scientist is almost pitiful, but the descriptive, reflective nature of the speech makes it quite thought provoking.

Weber's next move is to consider the meaning of science as a vocation, pointing out the illusory notion of all considered meanings of science as: "the 'way to true being,' the 'way to true art,' the 'way to true nature,' the 'way to true God,' the 'way to true happiness'" (143). Due to the political culture of his time, science as a vocation can only have value if it answers, "What shall we do and how shall we live?" (143). Weber argues that science as vocation fails all of the internal presuppositions, but it not because science is actually free from presuppositions. Quite the contrary, one critical presupposition underlies all notions of science: that something is 'worth being known' (143). "Whether life is worth living and when - this question is not asked by medicine... Aesthetics does not ask whether there should be works of art... Whether there should be law and whether one should establish just these rules - such questions jurisprudence does not answer" (144). Those engaged in science do not have to explain whether it is worthwhile.

Given this presupposition that Weber argues that, "the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform" (146). The role of the teacher is to teach facts, not to address the value of things; doing so is akin to being political. In the remainder of the speech, he admonishes teachers for engaging in political discourse in the classroom. To be political is to take advantage of one's power. While students may seek a leader, a teacher is not a leader. Likewise, he speaks to students, asking them not to value a teacher based on his skills as a leader (150). Removing the political and leadership-related qualities from teaching does not destroy the value of a teacher. Science contributes to the technology of controlling life, methods of thinking, tools and training for thought, and a process with which one can gain clarity. This is what students should be seeking when they seek out science.

Continue reading "Max Weber: "Science as a Vocation""

Posted by zephoria at 5:42 PM | TrackBack (0)