Postcards from social outings

From tables and talk to teaching table-talk

2009-08-04T11:01:00.004-04:00

Do you ever wonder how we account for our abilities in remembering? What is the place of rememberings in our dis-assembling of the social?

One of Latour’s core principles is his emphasis on objects and on unravelling “things” more completely so that we make fewer shortcuts into meaning without properly addressing the origins of these meanings – as they are present and mediated in objects primarily. I am thinking now about memories, and about how rememberings or memories become objects in my current sociality.

I am now very attached to small round café tables – I associate these tables with intimate interpersonal events of meeting, talking, getting to know friends and closer friends – I find such small round tables with their cast iron legs and laminate tops and matching wrought-iron chairs everywhere. I see them even when I don’t see them. – I transpose and transform similar tables and chairs at my neighbourhood fair trade coffee bars – into these cast-iron tables. I hear conversations that have occurred, I remember jokes and stories, I see hands gesturing, cigarettes waving, and waiters and waitresses delivering the props for these dramas. I remember being transformed from one way of thinking to another, from one language to another. I can trace lines of connection between my earliest experiences as an actor (and woman, always a woman ;-) at such a table and my present-day search for a suitable representative table that can be installed in my new office. I want to create movement in my world as a new teacher through this relationship. What’s in a table you ask? Nothing really. But from this Latourian perspective, a small round table that is explicitly reminiscent of a European (really a French) café is replete with memory and meanings that conjure my social self, and that confer a certain affective structure. I can speak and act differently if I am able to conjure this memory of this table set up an outdoor café.

What’s in a memory that contributes to my sociality? Do memories fit the Latourian definition of matters of fact or matters of concern? Are memories absorbed into my personal theories of action? And of course, is a memory really a veritable object in this way, or is it something else?

I know that tomorrow I will go looking for that particular place, and space and even if I don’t find it, I will find its representation in another place and space and I will remember and I will be transformed again. Such is the power of associations.

Closed ... for vacation! Come back in a month.

2009-07-17T17:02:00.006-04:00

Café Bern in the Nieuw markt in oldest Amsterdam is a hole-in-the-wall restaurant success story - where the menu hasn't changed in at least 25 years. And where reservations and lineups any night of the week are virtually certain. In fact the only thing that's changed is the smoking by-law that pushed people outside for their before and after dinner smokes (cigarettes that is!). This is a restaurant designed for sociality - all the dishes are fondus - meat and cheese with decent salads. I've eaten there on my own and with others - and I always want to return - the closest I've found to comfort food in Amsterdam. Even when eating alone, you're placed at a table with other strangers and conversations inevitably ensue! I was there again last Friday and enjoyed the food and company and felt like I was once again properly initiated into the city's local (and selected tourist) culture. Tonight as I walked by, then, I was surprised and entertained to see the place closed up tight with a hand-made sign on the door that says "VAKANTIE na 17 augustus WEER OPEN";-) Everybody needs a holiday - and here in Amsterdam in the heart of outdoor cafes and all-night parties - the staff of Cafe Bern are 'gone fishing'. I still have more to learn.

Friday night at the OBA - 2 years later

2009-07-17T14:51:00.020-04:00

I am sitting at an internet station in the OBA - Amsterdam's still newish central public library, which opened in June 2007. I happened to be here for 3 weeks during that summer, and I was a regular at the OBA where I would come each day to sit at a computer and work on a few chapters of my thesis. During those weeks I developed quite an attachment to this library. It's big, beautiful and stylish in Dutch architecture kinds of ways (promotional video here). It's situated away from the central city, closer to the train station and more of the tourist routes rather than the local pedestrian / bicycle routes. Big buildings need big spaces and there aren't many available for this size, in this city's centre.

When this library opened it was designed and billed as a major cultural/tourist space in addition to providing the 'standard' library services. I had many observations at the time and was generally impressed and envious all round. OBA seemed to be library designed for people to come and be for shorter or longer visits - it has many comfortable areas for patrons to read, sit, reflect, talk, meet, eat, compute, and on.

Here I am 2 years later and I want to note some of the changes I see based only on my 2 visits this week. Although I also know that no two communties are ever alike I think there still may be lessons in organizing worth recording. One of the small opportunities for sociality the OBA offers is just inside the front door - an upright piano - I have been tickled each time I've seen or heard the piano start while I'm here. It's available for any patron, any time. Today there are now 2 benches at the piano and a sign about how to use it - the need for a policy, for user guidelines was obviously needed for some reason - leading me to wonder if eventually any places where serendipity and library users meet - institutional policies will finally always be needed. Why is this?

Tonight the library is pretty quiet - people working individual at tables, computers, reading in chairs. A bit too quiet for my liking. So when I heard people talking over at the self-checkout and return bins, I hung around to watch. There is a bank of 4 self-checkout/return machines located along a transparent wall which surrounds the state-of-the art sorting technology - a room sized conveyor belt with bins and a lone person sitting at a terminal. A middle-aged couple was standing at the machine; the woman was depositing her dvds into the return slot, one at a time. Clearly she wasn't quite sure if the machine was "receiving" her returns because she kept leaning down and talking into the slot - if I was guessing, it would be something like "is it ok, did you get it?" that she was repeating (in Dutch) after each deposit. Meanwhile, the lone staff member on the other side of the wall did not even look up and kept working at his computer. And the other staff member across the aisle at the holds desk, also didn't even lift her gaze at this person-object conversation. Her husband seemed to be trying to assure her that it was ok as he smiled and encouraged her to continue with the returns. Eventually they completed their returns and headed upstairs for more films.

It struck me as odd (and funny too) however, that here in this beautiful space with loads of room and opportunity for distributed conversation, the only talking to be heard was a patron speaking rather loudly into a thin slot where a very large piece of very efficient library technology is housed. Certainly a candidate for the next "Funniest Public Library Videos" screenings ;-) And no staff member acknowledged or even responded - maybe it happens all the time and they are used to this behaviour. Nevertheless, it's distinctly anti-social in my view - what do you think?

A couple of other changes noted - where there were piles and piles of bicycles chained and organized outside the front door of the library, there is now an outdoor cafe and a security guard to ensure that all bicycles are parked 'legally' in the underground lot. Libraries and restaurants as new partnerships?

At the reference desk, the staff now sit "outside" their attractive but closed pods or desks, much more visible to one and all. And the reference staff member I chatted with briefly noted a little apologetically that the majority of their visitors at the library were still tourists.

These are just a few random thoughts - the clock is ringing and it's time to go - I still love it - I still feel so at home here, but oddly, it's just a little bit more quiet than I expected or than I would prefer. Meanwhile, I'm wishing I could still play the piano well enough to go over there and try it out!

Not rocket science

2009-06-29T09:47:00.016-04:00

That objects are the raison d'être of our sociality is on one hand not rocket science -- rocket science being my container for all the difficult 'answers' that explain the universe, but that remain mysterious, puzzling, and perpetually beyond my reach. If I sound a little obsessive on this topic, well I am and there will be more. Because it occurs to me again (and again) - that for librarians, the transformative power and action of objects is ... just ... well ... no big news. Librarians and library patrons and library collections of 'objects' go together like hands and a pair of gloves, like sommeliers, wine and wine glasses, like viewers, paintings and walls, like subjects, light and photographs, for example. The point is that when we speak of the power of objects, it's pretty easy to understand how objects themselves change us, act on us, socialize us, when those objects push any one of our senses into being differently. Ask someone about their favourite songs, recipes, food, drink, books, artists, paintings, photographs, piece of nature and you will hear them talk about how any one or more of their senses is set off, or is moved and changed. Questions then abound about whether the change is made durable by these objects, whether the change "sticks." Marketeers are desperate for such changes and we are inundated with exposure to their objects.

But in part because I am a librarian, I am pre-disposed to sorting - that is, I often want to sort things into categories - there are many non-librarians who also share this inclination. And everyday we as individuals are being asked to 'sort' more and more of our objects into categories for various purposes (garbage quickly springs to mind). So what about all those hunks of plastic, or inanimate objects that surround us - do these objects also transform you and me? I was trolling through used furniture and 2nd hand treasure stores this weekend and objects abound. When do such objects become "matters of concern that modify a state of affairs by making a difference" (Latour, 2005). When do these treasures move me in durable ways? And how will I know? Objects that 'speak' to me are easier to understand as creatures socializing me - but sometimes a desk is just a desk and a chair just a chair.

I still think the Subject-Object-Subject arrangement is how I and others are able to 'BE in the world' - and what Latour calls for is more prominence for these objects as veritable 'actors'. I'm still waiting for the next chapter in rocket science when I hear that our latest rocket scientists have discovered a new category of objects that reflect, think, feel, cry, gasp in pain, and laugh uncontrollably without provocation or assistance.

Objects as actors

2009-06-28T21:58:00.005-04:00

I have been re-reading Latour’s Re-assembling the social – an extended discussion of actor-network theory (ANT) and have been thinking much more about the role of objects. According to Latour, human relations are only ever weak ties, made stronger and made ‘social’ by the non-human objects which are often associated with these human interactions. More than symbolic, and more than being carriers of meaning, objects are the actors where sociality – in its dynamic, transformative, motion-full – action takes place. In my life, objects have always had a lot of significance – but more as symbols than as the dynamic link itself. For Latour, objects provide a durability to sociality that humans cannot and he argues this persuasively, even though I have intuitively rejected this view.

Durability literally means a hardness, a resistance to change, and the concept also suggests the idea of structure (to me). So, how do objects ‘work’ as social actors? Parent-child, lovers, friends, or colleagues. ANT tells us to dis-assemble these relationships, focussing much more on the action and movement that the objects play. I look at my kids and understand that all the clutter of toys, furniture, clothes, equipment, living paraphernalia are actors in our family stories. Both my kids had favoured blankets – which I used to soothe them, which in fact, did soothe them as babies. The computers, television, dvd and music collections in our house. All of these ‘objects’ have in some ways enacted bonds, connections, events, moments, sustaining our relationship. An obvious question is would we not have these bonds without these objects? Well, yes, in a biological way, but no, also in a social way. And even at that biological level, we are connected by birth, by objects, people, medical professionals, hospitals, etc., to get us into the world together. These objects play large roles (i.e., are major actors) in the drama of our lives together.

Ok, so let’s take the relationship of lovers. As I was thinking about this kind of social tie and objects, a large grin spread across my face. Think of all of the movies or television shows you’ve seen where a partner is fighting with the other (often the woman fighting with her man) and the “stuff” begins to be thrown out windows onto the street or doorstep –I see all kinds of ordinary and special clothes, shoes, sports equipment, keys, photos, etc. in a pile. Are the objects themselves ‘just’ the signs or symbols of the relationship? No, in a way, these objects make the relationship alive and durable across time. If we take the objects away, that’s when we are on more precarious ground – because what keeps lovers together in a social relationship afterall?

In a couple of my relationships that have ended, I have also instinctively packaged up the objects because they ‘speak’ too loudly still of the relationship – in better or worse moments. They remind, they act, they re-tell, they keep alive, relationships which I as the human actor, was moving to end. I have a very large box of correspondence from those closest to me over the years – in a box in the basement. The fact that these objects are still here, speaks to their potency as traces of durability of the social. Well, maybe this is too obvious, you could say. It is and it isn’t. When we analyse any social interactions, I don’ t think we pay enough attention to how the objects ‘act’. I’m not quite ready to insist that objects are independent actors in my life, but I can see how they make my relationships ‘happen’ (or not) so often.

Where I’m left now is wondering – in some post-sci-fi world where there are NO OBJECTS around us – where we are only our human selves, what happens? Does Star Trek have an episode about this vision in the future? Even Adam and Eve had a garden and an apple!

Haute practice on a Paris rooftop - April 30/2009

2009-05-17T21:13:00.007-04:00

Last month I returned to one of my favourite places in Paris that I feel I ‘know’ in a particular way and that is to the Centre Pompidou, museum of modern art, and its rooftop restaurant, chez Georges. In keeping with the museum itself, the restaurant design is ultra-chic, neo-modern, white and spacious with an exterior terrace. White linen napkins and tall wine glasses sit on every table. The view towards the Eiffel tower is spectacular - unimpeded, the eye follows rooftops, picture windows and intensive gardens across the city towards the monuments on which France was founded – the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysee and more. I had set aside this entire day before Mayday to hang out at the Pompidou, to wander and soak up the people, the place, art and interactions. Once through the queues, I found the escalator and went all the way to the top to begin my descent floor by floor, room by room. It was my first hot sunny day this spring and despite the prices, the restaurant terrace was simply too inviting. As I was early by Paris standards, there were still many tables waiting to be filled. After approaching a waiter to ask if I could sit at any one of the vacant tables, I was immediately and sharply corrected with notorious Parisian rudeness, as he pointed me to the hostesses’ desk. And thus began my observations of one of the many essential activities within the haute practice of French restaurants.

I inquired about a table “juste pour moi” in my accented but functional French, was scrutinized from head to toe by a 20-something woman, before being asked if I wanted “déjeuner” or just “café.” Knowing the correct response for my purpose, I replied brightly “déjeuner, svp” at which she smiled (only) politely and led me to a table in the sun closest to the back side of the hostess desk and farthest from that very expensive panorama of the city. But for me, this table was worth far more than the view. The hostess or ‘reception’ desk of any high-end restaurant is its own micro-practice of cuisine from the perspective of commerce, class and sociality. From one perspective, haute cuisine practice involves the interactions between the kitchen and their Michelin inspired food critics and is ultimately a practice about the immaterial value of ‘reputation’ or the material value of the star system. That’s the sociality part. However in the lesser ‘haute’ restaurants (not mentioned in the Michelin guides) the hostess desk women and the large field of servers have another piece of this practice; the greeters have been assigned a tiny piece of the restaurant’s ‘reputation’ to manage and generally they seem to know the power with which they have been charged.

As I sat and ate my smoked salmon, sipping a nice glass of white wine, soaking up sunshine and heat, I watched a documentary ‘short’ of “sociality” and “reputation” being enacted before my eyes. Initially there were only two women at the hostess desk – one (H1) dressed entirely in black skirt and top, clearly younger (perhaps barely 20), and the other (H2) an older brunette in a black and white dress, holding the mobile phone in her hand as if it were an artist’s rendering of a prosthetic extension. Soon other prospective guests were lining up for their interview with H2 while simultaneously casting their eyes beyond her into the field of tables, trying to will this beautiful gatekeeper into placing them at just the right angle to the view, the other guests, and to the sun. H1 mostly stayed behind the desk, watching her partner’s moves, and trying also to look just as confident, but not quite succeeding as she too often re-arranged her skirt and pulled her top up as it was clearly just a little too uncomfortably exposing. She greeted the next guests and looked at the table map but was somehow not permitted to assign a table without the permission or agreement of H2, who meanwhile, was both answering the phone and constantly moving from desk to table and back, herding guests. At one point an older man approached the counter, leaned across quickly and greeted H2 with three cheek kisses; without discussion or question or negotiation, he was seated at ‘le meilleur table’ as if it was already his, as if he was expected. Meanwhile, a woman dressed in completely in purple – baggy sweater, tight pants and very high matching stiletto heels – with badly dyed reddish hair and generally uncharacteristically un-chic, wondered among the still vacant tables, and oh-so-precisely moved chairs - centimetres only, but as if aligning them along an invisible grid, and as if this little action was also an essential feature of the restaurant’s reputation. She was clearly not in the H group, but was a quality control manager, perhaps.

As all types of guests approached the hostess desk, I was relieved to observe that everyone was subjected to the same ‘once-over’ inspection – looking perhaps for rips or flaws in the garments or vetting the store names on shopping bags in case there was sufficient evidence to reject someone. Only the brashest tourists desperate for the perfect Eiffel Tower photo ignored the signs, walked past hostesses and guests and sidled right up to the balcony’s edge camera in hand. And each time H2 directed her eyes immediately to H1 and not too subtly gestured – at which point H1 would walk over and tell the tourist in her sweetest voice, “Vous ne pouvez pas, Madame (always a Madame), désolé, c’est interdit dans le restaurant” – but of course every tourist simply ignored this junior H1, perhaps smelling her weakness. And with each unsuccessful interaction H1 then looked to H2 with some fear as if she wasn’t sure if she her next instruction would be to physically remove these interlopers single-handedly. Darwinian evolution is alive and well!

It all got a lot more interesting and nuanced when H3 arrived - the dynamics of the practice changed again. Taller, thinner and more angular than either H1 or H2, H3 exuded a supreme confidence and an overt control and territoriality. Rather than acknowledging her fellow-practitioners with the traditional two-cheek kiss, H3 stuck out her hand and gave her name to – first H2 and then H1 - and immediately took the pen to the table map, positioned herself in between the other women and started to address and then seat the next guests in line such that H1 moved even further off to the side, while H2 held her ground, also holding onto the mobile phone which continued to ring. It seems likely that this was an established routine already – where the senior greeter was unencumbered by the telephone and was free to check with the waiters on timing and tables, on responding to the personal requests for shade or sun or for this table and not that one. This hierarchy with three levels was clearly visible, with H1 as the junior observing and being instructed by both H2 and H3, simultaneously and occasionally with conflicting messages - “Juste ici, pas là-bas.”

That high-brow restaurants are good examples of practice and of varying degrees of I-mode and we-mode commitment is perhaps obvious – but for me, the surprise was to see the ‘greeting’ piece of this practice so clearly in action. Practices are performances and in this way they can be entertainment of a sort while also serving the goal of instruction – in this case on French cuisine ways of organizing, learning and knowing ;-) As I exited the stage of chez Georges finally, I felt myself relax – happy that I would never be required to perform such exaggerated (or highly skilled) reading, sensing and enacting of some of the finest Parisian rooftop dramas. I'm a highly skilled museum visitor however!

Practicing writing - we-modes and I-modes

2009-04-10T11:44:00.027-04:00

I have been thinking about the writing process - the academic writing process in particular - which is a formal activity with many protocols and technical requirements that must be fulfilled in order to successfully publish. In many disciplines academic writing is increasingly collaborative - specifically, there is more than one author/researcher. Academic writing itself is a practice that is organized around various activities, that is oriented towards knowing and learning, that is sustained by 'wanting' or by 'knowing and relational' gaps and that is supported by material props or objects. And practices generally require some form of sociality in order to be sustained. I am wondering about how sociality plays out in the practice of academic writing (not the peer review process of feedback and commentary but the initial writing process, putting words onto digital paper) - sociality being the human tendency to bind oneself with others in interdependent relationships. Because most academics are by organizational training and design solitary, individualistic actors whose identies are so strictly defined and then valued by their individual cognitive contributions materialized in such limited forms of books and articles. How is it that academics come to write together and are there differences (discernible in the written object) that capture any of these differences? How do we 'value' individual actors in a practice? Why do more and more academics co-author their works - in spite of their institutional value systems which privileges and rewards individual accomplishments. Are they also seeking sociality because sociality has something else, something more 'valuable' to offer to them? Something that can't be seen or recorded on any cv?

Tuomela (2007) writes about I-mode and we-mode distinctions in his philosophy of sociality. He argues that sociality is founded on joint intention and commitment and that these commitments are expressed either as one or the other. I-mode sociality occurs when two individuals with private interests team up to write a paper where they will both 'gain' something, where their goals may overlap but which remain separate and where the 'value' of the practice will also remain more private (recognition by their individual institution for purposes of promotion and evaluation). Though I-mode actors in a practice may benefit through shared knowing and learning, the benefit/outcome doesn't necessarily amplify in the same way as it does in we-mode sociality. We-mode sociality occurs when actors explicitly commit their individual intentions and commitments and become a 'plural subject', an 'irreducible we'. In this version of sociality, the practice may superficially 'look' the same as the I-mode version, the material objects may also be identical, but my intuition tells me something becomes different across the time-space dimension. And does it matter that the same actors collaborate across time and space or is it the type of commitment only that matters? Random speculations for now.

I suspect the power of collaborative writing - be it academic, or 'creative' - is in the writers' choices around sociality (Mead-Bateson, Plath-Hughes, Marx-Engels even, come to mind). I think academic collaboration is more often I-mode sociality but that some (influential) writers' contributions may be keeping we-mode commitments invisible. Literary collaboration is often known or public. But did someone read with and write with Galbraith or Mill or Heidegger? Maybe behind those academic greats there were others who made up an irreducible we at different times? And is there an identity question in practice? Do you get to be 'more' of yourself even in a we-mode practice? Maybe this is another one of those wonderful paradoxes that should be internalized. As a newly 'outed' academic writer, I see these questions and this practice in my future.

Behaviour or practice

2009-04-10T11:22:00.004-04:00

I posted a longer version of this entry on the Information Reseaarch blog in response to a prompt by editor Tom Wilson who is stirring debate around the differences between the concept of 'behaviour' and 'practice' in the information field. Here is my first thinking on this distinction. But more thinking is certainly needed!

Behaviour as a concept incorporates social, cognitive and physical dimensions; behaviour draws more strongly on (social) psychology while practice draws more on sociology and social philosophy. I also do not view behaviour and practice as being in opposition – I view behaviour and practice (without the adjective ‘information’) as slightly different and differently ‘pitched’ concepts. Gherardi defines practice initially as the domain “where doing and knowing are one and the same” – and of course this looks very much like the social/cognitive/physical idea of behaviour just noted ;-). The distinctive feature of practice, however, which Gherardi adds and then emphasizes is the dimension of material connectivity or relationship that binds activities and behaviours together in material ways – similar to Latour’s process of translation. Practices are connections of subject-object activities that become habitualized and habitualizing at the same time as they are destabilized and destabilizing. Activities are constantly changing and thus the notion of practice while perhaps more visible through rules and routines is more accurately ‘structured’ by its constant stance towards change and learning. Practice is the “’figure of discourse’ that allows the processes of “knowing’ at work and learning in organizing to be articulated” (Gherardi, 2007, xiv). Behaviours on the other hand are not necessarily constituted by the same array of connections between subjects and objects institutionalized across the time-space field. Practices are made up of behaviours. I acknowledge this is a fine distinction – requiring much more research within our discipline - but which I put out here for further talk and study. From my perspective, I understand behaviours as more individual and mentalistic, discrete, not necessarily material and they tend to be more susceptible to a process of unitization or transactionalization, even as they are situated in complex social contexts. Whereas practices are more difficult to bound, and rarely ‘end’ or ‘begin’. In my study of public library reference service, I observed many, many behaviours and activities (putting pencils beside public internet machines, moving books on and off book trucks, using the computer, answering the telephone, standing up and talking to patrons), but I also observed a complex array of actions and interactions that entailed specific relationships between and among subjects and objects – at its most basic, the interaction between patrons and library staff around questions which are asked and then answered. I argue that these interactions are micro-practices and that the reference service as a whole is more visible in its entirety when understood as a practice. Like Savolainen, in his work on everyday information practices, I also use the term ‘everyday’ to characterize the public library reference service. And is a ‘reference interaction’ also identical conceptually to an ‘information behaviour’? I think it would be difficult to argue this. I moved to practice-based theory because that’s what my data and analysis were suggesting – that the more relevant ontological unit of study is not the information behaviour but rather, the practice – for understanding how knowing and learning occurs at the public library’s reference desk. We could say that the difference between these terms is simply a historical-political turn by schools of academics. However, the renewed prevalence of practice-based study and theorizing in the philosophy, organizational and managerial studies suggests that it is a concept which is useful where behaviour simply is not, and is not enough. From an information studies perspective, I would argue for the relevance of practice-based theory as another lens through which we can learn more and learn differently about the field of information. And I am now waiting for Savolainen’s book to arrive in my mail.

Immaterial talk

2009-03-17T08:55:00.006-04:00

I received a copy of this message and I immediately felt it would be a perfect social outings postcard - because this message means many things to me. I love the words 'immaterial' and 'material' just like I love the words 'value' and 'values.' They are words that have many ideas and associations within them. They are words that behave as discourse, objects and subjects for me. What do they mean to you?

Hi Erik,

The English translation of the course, "Management van Immateriële Waarden" should be "Management of Intangible Value" or simply "Management of Intangibles". Unfortunately it is currently advertised as "Management of Immaterial Values", and I don't think you mean what the title currently suggests.The word 'immaterial' commonly means 'irrelevant, or unimportant under the circumstances'or'onbelangrijk'. It is used in accounting, for example, to describe issues that are judged to not matter to users of accounting statements.

I am sure that your course is certainly not about anything immaterial!

Best,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for your message. I think you should know that there is a tag line for this course, that appears in the course calendar and which often perplexes potential students: "A course about values that are too small to matter." Maybe this is helpful in explaining the intention.

Erik

2009-02-28T16:36:00.007-05:00

The end of solitude by WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ click title

A must read for all writers, thinkers and lovers. Regardless of your century or your 'ism', please go offline and stare at a blank page for a few hours and later a few days and then finally build it into your life on a regular basis. Find your fear of aloneness and embrace it. I'm starting now.

So what about all this 'stuff'?

2009-02-18T20:28:00.012-05:00

I am working on a paper about the relational dimension of practice. The most recent social theory (e.g., Latour, Knorr-Cetina) focuses on the important role objects have in mediating social relationships. Very simplistically stated, knowledge objects help us ground our sociality across time and space. They are envelopes of meaning which we incorporate into our shared life stories and to which we give symbolic meaning. In turn these objects give our social and relational lives stability and substance: they make our relational activities visible in ways we as humans cannot.

Check out my book cover here - beautiful isn't it? A classic knowledge object mediating my sociality as an academic. It "means" a deep practice - a practice of associations among me, my library colleagues with whom I conducted my study, my fellow students, my thesis supervisors, my de Maatschap colleagues, and on. But I’m wondering if it’s possible to have an enduring or substantive (i.e., across time and space) relationship that remains invisible and without mediating objects, never seen, but still mutually known and still a relational practice in significant ways? Is it possible for humans to be relational without objects that are unique or particular to those social activities? I'd like to say yes, because I don't like the idea that objects "come between" me and my social lives. But I think it's true.

Another interpretation is that it is “the sensuous materiality of the human body [that] may identify the ‘missing link’” (Pels, Hetherington & Vandenberghe) - that binds objects’ “naked materialism” with our human performances of “discursive idealism.” In this view, what's important is how knowledge objects participate in our performances of human relations.

Intuitively I think we weave im/material objects (broadly defined) into our relationships without always conscious intention and deliberation. The closer the objects are in time/space to our relating, the more subjective, active or significant these objects are in our sociality and the less distinct or separate they appear to be. Over time/space distances, however, objects become just that – more ‘objective’ or remote to our relational sociality.

I have a friend I have known for many years, with whom I used to correspond regularly. I remember how these letters would arrive at my house and how they would ‘perform’ in those moments as the friendship itself across the distance. Today these letters are in a box; they have lost their immediate performative qualities; they are much more ‘object’ like now, something that collects and contains relational practice, but not something that still conjures that relational practice, that shared knowing and meaning. And yet I still 'practice' this friendship with its own set of activities, knowing and meanings, though there are fewer material enactments these days - a telephone call, or facebook posting periodically. And the sociality is also different now - less intense. Maybe less social. Less of something. Less visible to both of us. More spaces between us.

Does this mean our relational practices are stronger or weaker, more visible or invisible, more present than absent, according to the performative intensity or power of the objects that mediate them? Or is the intensity and texture of a practice more influenced by joint intentionality? Hmmm ... at the very least, I think it might not hurt to keep a closer eye on what's happening to the im/material 'stuff’ that props me up, that 'dresses' my sensuous body-in-action!

Practice in action

2009-01-14T20:14:00.009-05:00

I was showing this photo to my French teacher recently as an example of sociality and practice. He immediately saw something I didn't initially although now I understand what he describes - the "practice of library" in this photo - do you see it? What he sees in the arrangment of the women in action, is a representation of the straight lines of library shelves, books, people reaching for books, the cyclical business of learning in libraries, and an organizational design which puts hierarchy into a plane of teaching, practicing and learning. Can you determine who is the teacher in this photo? Yes, of course, the woman at the far right is the teacher for the moment. I love the earnest look of the woman at the far left and I like the natural arrangement these women assume. The sociality of this practice is the physical engagement of these women - clearly showing us what "inter-subjectivity" looks like! And Pierre is now taking this image to his tai chi students to illustrate the same principles. This photo is used in a class on material & immaterial values - and its caption reads:

A practice is a materially mediated nexus of activity where understanding and intelligibility are ordered, a central phenomenon of human/nonhuman life (Schatzki).

A story of meaning

2008-12-22T22:48:00.001-05:00

Here's one of my favourite stories from my research on reference service that I think illustrates the difference between value and meaning, and the difference between an individual borrowing a book or two individuals learning more together about how to deal with a common and uncommon everyday experience:

Librarian: Yeah, oh yeah. It is so funny, how you’re like the confessor, you know you are the priest, or the bartender, like a guy today starts spilling his guts. It was a good one, I wish you’d been there. He was having a spiritual crisis. He’s very well dressed, economically very well off, middle aged. It’s so funny what people will tell you, you know they almost have to tell you because they’re like … A lot of times they’re researching something that’s very private and he wanted this book, “What should I do with the rest of my life?” by a self-help author that’s really popular. And he just started talking to me – he said, “My sister died 2 years ago and my brother died the year before that” – and he’s like “You know, I’m starting to have some questions, you know I’m a chef, I know what I’m doing with my work life but I just have some bigger questions.” And he wasn’t upset, though. He wasn’t upset – he was ready to start thinking about things. And I just said, “You know death’s like that, you have to start thinking about things, you know you can’t put things off.”

Interviewer: You said that?

Librarian: Yeah. It was a serious conversation.

Interviewer: Why would you say that? Why do you feel like you can and want to?

Librarian: Because he was reaching out, you know, he’s opening up and that sometimes is a little uncomfortable. It can be, but at the same time, in modern life people are very isolated sometimes. And it’s a public library and it’s some place they can be out in public. And I do think people do feel isolated and it’s a way for them …. And if they’re going to open up, you know, I don’t think you should go “oh --- get back, get back, too much” And sometimes yeah, but death, you know, death you’re not supposed to talk about in public. And I’ll talk about death, I’ll talk about that. And his point was, he says, to me, “You know my sister died, and my dad, he thought it was nothing. Get over it. Just get over it. … And I don’t think so. Death – something like that you shouldn’t just get over it.” And I thought, you know that’s a very wise thing to say, and so he wanted to get this book to help explore that.

This is a great story - however it's only a single story in one time, place and space. Somehow we have to find ways to transpose every story of meaning into a symbolic representation of the "meaning of library." Still a big problem, still lots of work to do.

Stuck on a problem ...

2008-12-22T20:34:00.021-05:00

When I left full-time public library work in 2003 and began a shift of my professional identity - from practitioner to LIS researcher-doctoral student, I brought with me a few particular "problem statements" that remain unanswered from my practice. And one of the most important ones relates to the ideas of "value" - value as an economic concept, value as a social and philosophical concept. Library values and library value - for example, intellectual freedom and contingent valuation schemes for library services.

If you substitute the word "value" and its derivatives for the words "good" and "goodness" in the following statement from Buckland, (1982, 1988), then the conversation has not-so-simply moved across the time-space continuum, but the problem remains: have we actually resolved this issue as Buckland characterized it?

The concept of library goodness is ambiguous: "How good is it?" a measure of quality and "What good does it do?"a measure of value. are valid but quite different questions. If not, why not .... Although the quest for the Grail of Library Goodness has not (yet) been successful, there has been no lack of measures of performance proposed, nor of people proposing them. There have been plenty of suggestions. What is lacking is a sense of coherence ....

I continue to believe that despite a great deal of progress made on methods for assessing library performance over the years and summarized well in various ways (Durrance & Fisher, 2004; Matthews, 2007) libraries remain stuck in the language of value-values. Or the "how" and "what" of goodness. And for public libraries specifically, outcomes remain difficult to capture and methods are in the earliest stages of development and implementation (Durrance and Fisher, 2004).

I was asked by a colleague recently to justify the "value-add" of a particular library service - And what I wanted to reply was that depends (doesn't it always depend?) on whether you take the user or the institution's point of view on performance, on whether the value is only ever local or contextual or is subject to some global norm or standard. Is there a way to recognize both perspectives in the same equation? Or is there an equation at all?

Buckland poses a similar question framed as a "grand LIS research challenge" but using a different concept from "value" or "goodness":

How could we achieve a deeper understanding of what makes the use of library services personally meaningful? (Buckland, 2003, p.?)

I think we should set aside "value" as a keyword and focus more attention on "meaning." The questions then are more like those posed by Durrance & Fisher (2004) - how do libraries contribute to making meaning in our social and informational communities and how do such indivdual and shared meanings change (or not) ourselves and/or the world? Taking a practice-based or a "contextual" approach to the library service or activity seems to me, to be THE key to making this shift from value to meaning.

The social in network, the relationship in social

2008-12-11T00:03:00.007-05:00

I have been thinking about how we develop and sustain personal and professional networks in relationships conducted mostly online. I was an active FB participant until a month ago when I formally “withdrew” from the everyday participation that takes place there. While I still maintain an FB profile and regularly read the “news” from network members, I don’t contribute anything from my life anymore. No photos, no comments on people’s news, no statements about my “status” (neither “Mary is full of chocolate chip cookies” nor “Mary is overwhelmed with big feelings”), no news from my life – inane or life-altering. Which feels not quite right somehow. I feel like I’m not meeting my “social” obligation, I sometimes feel like another “creeper.”

I’m wondering about the social norm of reciprocity in voluntary or informal relationships – the giving, taking and sharing of the self with an other. Reciprocity suggests mutuality, an equal or balanced sharing, required in relationships.

Social network analysis (SNA) is now a common method for studying "tie" intensity (strong and weak) including distribution of relationships in and outside organizations (Granovetter, 1973). One aspect of Granovetter's (SWT) thesis argues that we need weak ties to socially bridge us to other groups, other ideas, other people and that if we rely solely on our strong ties, we become insular, inflexible, and by some suggestion, poorer learners and participants in organizational activities. I think FB is "sold" to us as a way to express or enact these weak ties, and thus to build up our relational capabilities. But somehow, FB as a designed social space invites me to loiter but not to really participate in meaningful relationship - either strong or weak. I find myself drawn in by a perverse social curiosity – but finally also disappointed. I don't really connect with the people I know well, and I read only disconnected fragments among "weak" "friends" talking to each other. Are weak ties reciprocal in any way? “I share this online space or room with you, but I don’t actually engage with you directly.”

So why do we participate? And how is it that we can so easily mix our strong ties with our weak ties in the FB space, without the ability (or the need) to differentiate these ties? And finally what do strong/weak ties tell us about constructing meaning-full human-to-human relationships, something closer to what we might understand as sociality? Maybe being a FB “creeper” does nothing for my network of “weak ties” - but I'm also not sure enough to quit creeping just yet. What would I do without it? Wait for an opportunity for a more direct connection for one-to-one communication - post to a blog, send an e-mail or text, pick up the phone. Meanwhile you'll find me under my rock.

For some interesting theoretical perspectives on social networks and networking, check out this article by MIT professor Judith Donath, from the socialable media lab.

Structure as an element of practice

2008-12-03T14:08:00.004-05:00

In Giddens' terms, structure consists of "rules and resources, organized as properties of social systems" (1984, 25) with characteristics of signification, authority and domination. The other critical aspect of structure in practice theory is that structures are both enabling and constraining simultaneously. Some examples of structure in using the public library organization as an example:

1. Formal policies, procedures, guidelines that direct service - go to any public library web page and under "About Us" or "About the Library" you will often find a list of policies that are immediately relevant to the public - e.g., collection policies, customer service policies, internet access policies, etc. These policies and procedures are both enabling and constraining - they allow, encourage and permit and they also contain or restrict at the same time.

2. Library buildings that make up the network of public library branches are also structures. This one is perhaps easier to see. But do you also see how library buildings contain as part of their essence, an organized set of rules and resources? And do you see how buildings constrain and enable agency also?

3. Committees, work groups, communities of practice, branch library staff teams, story time participants, can also be structures in the "practice" of library. These groups of agents engaged in a shared activity either formally or informally organized can also be understood as a structure in the "practice" of library.

For example a storytime group of parents, caregivers, children and library staff can participate in a series of weekly programs where "rules" and "resources" unique to that particular activity become visible. In this case, there may be rules - informal or formally articulated - about how parents and caregivers participate with their children, there may be rules about how the children are expected to participate, etc. And while we might understand that all storytimes for toddlers in many public libraries will have the same elements, we should also understand that each storytime in each time-space-agent interaction will have its own enabling and constraining structure that evolves as the activity occurs.

The elements might be similar but how structure interacts with the agents or participants may differ across each separate storytime. This point is extremely important to recognize: structure is an inherent property of "practice" - it is part of the process and part of the outcome. It is not "something else", not the organization, not management, not the policy, not the building, but it is all of these aspects only as we can see them IN ACTION.

What is a practice-based approach?

2008-12-02T17:27:00.011-05:00

What is a practice-based approach (PBA) to organizing and why is it relevant for libraries? At some level, this question occupies most of my reflections and my thinking about how libraries and information organizations are already or perhaps should be changing or reorienting themselves. There are different definitions of PBA in the literature, mainly from sociological theory, but all definitions share the idea that "practice" is central and all share the idea that practice is emphatically "anti-dualistic" (Marshall, 2008). In practice, agency and structure come together in action, in "doing." And doing is often understood as "organizing" [for] and "learning." The togetherness aspect of practice is the dimension that makes practice a "social" theory and an activity that is fundamentally shared. Practice also occurs in time-space, it is always situated in this way. Which means that practice is often described in very "local" terms, making it difficult often to replicate "practices" across time and space and across differing socialities or activities. Making it also difficult sometimes to discuss practices in more theoretical or abstract ways.

Now, you can [and should] ask me, so what is "structure" and what is "agency" and what do they mean for libraries? And these are very important preliminary questions because everything we understand about practice and all of its significance as a theoretical approach to understanding and managing organizations today, comes originally from these two concepts.

What's in a name?

2008-11-26T22:19:00.013-05:00

I was recently asked to more precisely justify my use of the terms "client" and "patron" in my discussion of face-to-face reference services at the public library. Why not "customer" or "user" or "member" instead? Why use more than one term? Who should decide the term to be used in a research study - the library and the library personnel being studied, the members of the public who use the library, the researcher or even possibly, the "correct" term has already been established in the the research literature through a selection of expert works on various aspects of library work.

Matthews (2004) defines each of these terms from his perspective. I take issue with some of the emphasis he assigns. For example, he suggests that the use of the term "customer" indicates a "proactive" approach, whereas the use of the term "client" indicates a more one-to-one professional-personal approach. Ok, but are these exclusive? And more importantly, what about the connotations associated with these terms, what about the spillover meanings that we are also adopting when we transport terms from one intellectual or practice world to another.

So I looked up in Library Literature to see when and how often the terms "customer" and "client" were used with the term "public library" or "public libraries". Customer is clearly the preferred term and has been since at least 1969, with the most frequent use of the term during the past 10 years. Client is not a preferred term at all -and appears roughly once for every 4 times the word customer appears. I find the word "customer" to be simply far too loaded with meanings and connotations that are not necessarily present, but which over time we often come to assume are present. Customer suggests a one-way interaction where "something" is being purchased or is being delivered to the individual and the customer's participation in co-constructing the particular object of interest is, immediately, very limited. Maybe "client" is just as loaded as a term implying that libraries offer completely individualized services for each citizen. In my view, however, in my very particular use in face-to-face interactions at the reference desk, client is far more accurate. "Patron" might also be appropriate, as might be "user". (The word "user" never sounds very healthy somehow.)

Language is political, it is ideological and every day in libraries and in our research we participate in this formation of ideology. How we address our citizens, our members of the public, our readers, our viewers, our listeners, our members, our library patrons or clients or customers, is one small part of how we form and define these very important relationships. If we want our library patrons to actively participate in building the library services they want to use, which is a form of sociality, we need to address this issue of naming. Names matter and in some radical view, consistency does NOT matter.

About sociality, knowing, learning and technology

2008-11-24T13:51:00.003-05:00

Earlier this month I completed my doctorate at the Faculty of Information University of Toronto where I studied the social knowledge and learning practices of reference staff and their clients at the reference desks of three branch libraries in a large Canadian urban public library.

I am going to use this blog to throw ideas down on paper and put them out to anyone who finds them. It will be a place to collect ideas that I find provocative and which I might turn into research projects down the road. A place to put the first words to intuitions and experiences.

I am currently interested in social theory, sociality and social practices as they influence organizations. I am interested in organizing for learning, the immaterial value of material objects, the roles of structure and agency in our day to day informational lives. I am deeply connected to the world of public libraries and more generally to all libraries and the activities of librarians and information professionals. I hope I can both influence and participate in building the future of libraries and libraries of the future.

I like debate and I like to find the boundaries and then try to do my bit to move them. I laugh a lot and prefer to believe the glass is always at least half full. And I have many years of experience already of talking to myself, so this blog is another manifestation of that activity.